As an introduction I thought I should discuss what I want to do with “Living in Lethargy”. It’ll be mostly comic strips with some essays about my living in the USA for a very long time, my ideas, personal history, politics and culture.
Basically, I have always found myself to be a Cuban living in a country with really bad music. “Clown Show” seems like a fitting title as an opener about my awareness of humanity. Since the time I was a boy I have never understood how humans operate, but over time I have come to believe that most people - especially in the USA - are basically Neanderthals with really cool electronic toys. It’s painful to hear but even I have adapted to it in some form.
I was lucky to have grown up in a time when changes were happening. Good things started in the 1960s, but quickly halted with the assassination of President Kennedy. As a child my first Television moments that I recall were nights with my mother watching Jack Paar on “The Tonight Show”. I had no idea what was happening on the show, but it allowed me to stay up late with my mom.
The next TV event was the killing of Lee Harvey Oswald. I remember my mother being horrified by the killing because it was broadcast live and I was watching the TV at the time as if it were an episode of “Gunsmoke”. I remember my mother breaking down and the realization that this wasn’t pretend. I remember watching the broadcast of President Kennedy’s funeral and the little boy saluting the horse drawn casket as it went by. He was my age, but I had no idea who he was. It seemed appropriate at the time for what he was doing.
None of this really sunk in until later when Robert F. Kennedy was running as president or maybe it was before that. It was a documentary that they played in my school class about poverty. I took an interest because I remembered RFK talking with Jack Paar after his brother’s death.
The documentary was showing Kennedy entering homes and talking to people in the South. These people had nothing, but they were grateful to talk to him. You could see that the poverty that these people were living in visibly had an affect on him. He was sympathetic - but horrified and that resounded in me. I don’t think he’d ever seen such poverty since he came from extreme wealth.
As a family we weren’t wealthy like a Kennedy, but we weren’t even close to what these poor people were struggling with. It made me wonder why anyone should have to live like this and most likely RFK had the same reaction. My father had a sales job with International Harvester, the farm equipment company out of Illinois. His job allowed my mother to take care of us four kids and live in a nice house. My parents even sent us to Catholic school for an education, which cost money to attend.
A turning point for us kids came when my parents sat us all on the living room couch. We were going to the Catholic church fair that fall, but they felt a need to share with us four siblings what to expect.
I remember both of our parents pacing in front of us with some sense of nervousness as they explained that people come in all colors. That we were considered White, but the people that we were meeting at the fair were considered Black, but that made no difference as to whom they were compared to us.
We lived in a small town outside of Madison, Wisconsin, at that time. My father had invited a co-worker and his wife to the fair. The couple were Black, and this was not common in our small town. I suppose in hopes of avoiding any embarrassing comments from their obnoxious children they had thought that it was important to sit us down for a talk.
I don’t think any of us thought much about this parental talk as we stood as a family waiting for the couple to arrive at the fair. It wasn’t long before we were spotted by four clowns, who proceeded with their attack. We had never experienced clowns before, and now thanks to Stephen King all people fear clowns. At this time in the 1960s the four of us kids had no idea what was happening to us as the clowns surrounded us.
Their cackling voices and billowing colorful clothes were all we could see and hear. Our parents were gone, and panic set in on four of us. We were left to our own to deal and fend off these clowns. It was suffocating to be pressured into a small area with my siblings as we were surrounded by all this colorful fabric.
Finally the clowns ran off to accost maybe another bunch of children. What my parents were left with were horrified and crying children from that whole ordeal. It wasn’t long before the Black couple showed up. I don’t think any of us looked differently toward these people after the experience we had been through.
I’m sure that all my siblings had the same reaction that I did to the occurrence with the clowns. Why hadn’t our parents sat us down to talk about clowns?
We all grew up from that experience realizing there are no Back or White people on this planet. Basically all people are made up of combinations of greens, reds and yellows and throw in some blues. Since I have an art background I know that these are the basic colors that make up human skin color.
I have met Albino people and they aren’t truly white and a person with Vitiligo doesn’t have white skin. I have never met a white skinned person. The concept of white skin only pertains to clown make up.
That one experience taught me so much about racism. Basically all people are the same and want the same things. What’s amazing is that most people really don’t want all that much. A home, an income based on some form of work that gives them satisfaction and maybe love plays into it too. I have never met a lottery player that wasn’t interested in sharing their winnings with the people around them.
The designs of society are built on fearing others rather than the lunacy of clowns. Truly the clowns are meant for us to fear or laugh at. We accept the clowns in our society. We even accept their clown outfits or personas. The Bill Gates in their sweaters and glasses or Elon Musk as a man of the future. Warren Buffett is portrayed as the grandfather that still lives In Omaha, Nebraska. Dr. Anthony Fauci is presented in the media in a white coat reminiscent of an old country doctor.
What I remember most of our confrontation with the clowns is that you can’t ever trust what you know or see or are told. It’s up to a person to see through what is being presented to them and evaluate the information whether what form of media they appear on. It’s called critical thought.
As children it was explained about skin color, but no one ever explained what we thought were the true threat to our lives. Luckily we survived the ordeal with the clowns though it left us all wondering why our parents never explained something that we would actually fear.
I had a friend that was riding his bicycle home late from work, as he road by four or six Black guys they ran him down. They knocked him off the bike kicked and beat him for the twenty dollars that he had. He was taken away by ambulance and recovered.
Later he explained to me how he thought he was a racist. Whenever he biked past any group with Black guys he would move to the other side of the road. I explained that wasn’t racism - that was instinct. The trauma that he had experienced had affected how he rode his bicycle.
It really was no different than when we were kids and how we viewed the clowns. Black people weren’t the scary ones - but the clowns made an impact on all of us as kids. It set us up with a prejudice view of clowns. Maybe that learning experience left us with less fearful of people, but more concerned about experiences we enter into.
BUT - clowns left us with a long avoidance of them, though over time they seem less scary. I feel comfortable chatting with anyone no matter how they present themselves and I even tend to have empathy toward them as they talk about themselves.
I want to connect with them as they share their stories because that person is probably more like me than some wealthy elite. We all need to put on a smile and say hello to each other rather than staring at a phone or worshiping celebrity.
Truly until you can find that bond with others even with Trump or Biden supporters nothing in the USA will ever change. In almost fifty years now I have never voted for what I see as clowns in the democratic or republican party. These are the true clowns - or should I say evil clowns. Their only interest in humanity is selfishness and harassing the rest of us.
These clowns represent the circus owners like Ursula von der Leyen, Musk, Zucky, or even grandpa Klaus Schwab. The wealthy are the clowns in all they do and it should cause fear in all of us!