The P-Word! (Sometimes we have to talk about it)

I tend to avoid conversations about the P-word. Most people(not the P-word I'm referring to) tend to respond defensively when I express my thoughts on this particular P-word. They respond as if they were under direct attack; allow me to elaborate. I am a Black American male. I can hear the sighs of exhaustion at the previous sentence; "Another angry black American playing the race card the way they always do". "Down with the patriarchy and their litany of complaints, it's our turn!" But please hear me out.

This "post", for lack of a better term, is about the P-word so allow me to start with a story from my past. Most conversations about the P-word usually have a lot of layers. Here is one of mine.

At the tender age of 17, I enlisted as a soldier in the US Army. I went to Basic Training (that's the place where you are broken and then molded into a soldier) in November 85. One night a company formation (a mandatory assembly in full uniform) was called in the middle of the night. As we stood at ease (that's not as at ease as it sounds; the position is called parade rest) the following was said by our First Seargent:

Some of you joined this military because you were looking for an adventure. Some of you joined because you wanted to finance your education or just wanted to see the world. There used to be complaints in the past that people were uninformed about what they were signing up for. Whatever your reason for signing up was, it does not matter anymore. We are informing you that as of now the sixth fleet (that's the way I remember it) is heading towards Lybia! I don't know where you think you are going or what you signed up for but; "GENTLEMEN WE ARE GOING TO WAR!"

First, there was a deafening silence! You could only hear the words sinking deeper into the brains around me like they were sinking into my own 18-year-old brain! Then suddenly we erupted into a loud collective voice that raged! My platoon became the Hell Fighters that we were destined to be. The A 1 3 (Alpha Company 1 Batallion 3rd Brigade) where the mighty hell fighters are made. I wrote that! I literally wrote the call for my platoon. As usual, I digress.

Regardless of what we had signed up for we would become death. Death from the skies and death from the seas. We would bring sweet death to those who would dare to reap harm upon us, our enemies, or our democracy.

Some of us were given live ammunition and a mission to guard Ft. Dix NJ where I went through basic training. We were told not to fire warning shots; that would be a waste of ammunition.

We had trained for this! We were ready to count flash-to-bang time (if you are old enough to remember what that means I apologize), dawn a gas mask and clear it, issue self-injection if you suspected a biological attack, warn others of the attack, use an M50 machine gun, use an M60 machine gun, use your own M16 (girlfriend), use hand grenades, The LAW (light anti-tank weapon), and each of us knew how to deploy, connect, and ignite a claymore mine. This was not just theory back then. The budget was there, we did all these things. The budgets of our allies here in Europe could never have afforded to train the way we trained. We used live ammo and tracer rounds! Again I digress.

Thank God our appetite to test our newly acquired knowledge was not put to widespread use so I ended up working in an office.

Thank you to all the readers who were patient enough to bear with me up to this point. Without further ado, I am pleased to present my first post about politics, that dreaded P-word. I can't guarentee not to digress.

I am proud to be an American as corny as that sounds here in Europe (particularly in Germany). I know the color of my skin and I don't feel the need to be validated, confirmed, or defined by any person or entity especially one from outside of my borders. I don't need it because I don't let them (my own government) define who I am So I won't let you.

I am one of the few people on this platform who was willing to die on foreign soil protecting a nation of people who were convinced of their superiority but could as part of my job. Any serious military attack on Germany would have been an attack on me. Most of the casualties of a military strike on Germany would have resulted in mass casualties among my colleagues and I. Yet I have watched documentary after documentary about how political change was brought about in Germany by the sheer will and activism of the people.

In 1986 If I (Private Leonard Nimoy Slater) had encountered any soldier on German soil who was not a part of our alliance with loaded weapons, I would not have fired warning shots! But I would not have hesitated and I would have fired.

Ground zero was Fulda! That's is where the border was and were not bluffing.

Its sentiments like the ones expressed here that seem to trigger people. I am not supposed to make excuses for or have feelings that appear to reflect a sense of patriotism or to defend any aspect of the so-called patriarch. The politically correct thing for me to do is go left; after all, I am black. As Joe Biden himself once famously put it, "If you don't vote for me, you ain't black".

So when I tell somebody how excited I am about our Fundraiser in Tulsa Oklahoma, and I am met with a timid response with a follow-up like, "How Nice", "But Trump is going to destroy democracy". "He is the new Hitler". I have learned to temper my response. Because if I didn't, I would get the most radical labels. Don't get me wrong, black people are not that much better. Political correctness is not a white-only phenomenon. It is even more confusing than black conservatism but goes largely unnoticed.

One of my fellow soldiers and I founded a nonprofit organization as most of my readers know. I'm excited about being black and bringing all this positive black energy to this historical place.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwood_District,_Tulsa#Black_Wall_Street

Our fundraiser is literally being thrown at The Greenwood Cultural Center!

Just wrap your head around it for a minute. Two African Americans (the most politically accepted term for black Americans) are having a Reggae concert featuring Steel Pulse (one of the most influential Reggae bands of our times) at the site that was once the financial epicenter of The Black Community in America. A site that is also marred with one of the most horrific racial attacks in my country's history. There are even readers that are probably offended by my lexical choice, "racial attack". They would say, and rightly so, that it was a massacre.

There are and have been ongoing revitalization efforts in the area since its demise. I would like to think that Hashemo's Haus is one of the bricks that rebuilds Black Wall Street. I had never been to that part of our beautiful country until April 2024. To be a part of these efforts would mean a lot to any person regardless of race, religion, or ethnicity. But to be a black American and to be a part of that means so much to me.

After over 100 years the fight for justice continues for this community of black people. A community that could only have existed in America (in the western hemisphere). I am proud to be associated with this event in every way.

Somebody recently told me that there aren't any "American Black Owned" companies registered by Germany's Chamber of Commerce. That is fake news! I am Leonard Nimoy Slater and I own The Lucky Mushroom UG. We are proud to be founding members of Hashemo's Haus.

It's hard for most people to imagine what it's like to be a conservative black westerner in European society. My first conversation about the political landscape of Germany was reduced to colors the following way.

1. There is Black
2. There is Red
3. There is Yellow
4. There is Green
5. Be wary of the colors because any color further to the right than the Black is Brown!

I didn't make these political rules I was told about them. They were constantly being confirmed nightly in the daily news cycle.

Germany is also blue. Ask a German what that means.

Politics is never easy. Regardless of all the thirty-second segments of mind candy, we each receive in our perpetually updated bubbles personalized by the algorithm. Contrary to what the algorithm is preaching, things would not be better if everybody just thought like us.

The one thing that I like about politics in the USA is that personal freedom, real or perceived, is never taken for granted. We don't "do" kings, and emperors regardless of what the rest of the world is convinced of by the algorithm. Fear is fuel for the market. That is Business 101! The fear of war can be and is often more lucrative than an actual war; especially since our weaponry has become capable of so much destruction.

The P-word can cause so much division. One little anecdote I like to tell is the one about the other America that really exists. It doesn't matter if you think it's Hollywood. People of color and recent immigrants arrive in America armed with an image that they have of America based on preconceived notions that don't even scratch the surface of the complexity of our "race relations". You have heard things from colleagues, clients, friends, and officials. You were briefed on no-go areas. I would like to offer the following analogy.

America has two neighborhoods. On the edge of those two neighborhoods, two houses stand side by side. They are identical! All the appliances come from the same store. The inhabitants would describe their values as equal. They share the same religion. The same interests. Their children go to the same school. Their parents are cordial with one another. Two little boys live in those houses. One is blonde. The other is black. Their families don't really get along but the boys don't why. They are blood brothers. Anything that doesn't look and sound like them is foreign. They have heard about exotic places and languages but have never experienced them. The most exotic thing to them is them is the Indian (they are not politically correct) living in the woods.

They would never harm each other based on anything that is said in either of their collective communities. They are aware of the existence of places outside of this neighborhood but they don't desire to travel there. They wanted to go to the moon when they were kids.

Today, they do not fear the civil war talk being propagated in the media. This is a political reality so I am not asking for your approval. I am attempting to broaden your understanding of the American political reality. These two little boys vote and they are used to being called a lot of things by a lot of boys from a lot of different neighborhoods. They do not care!

They are used to being called dumb. A part of their true strength is that, like a pretty woman, they are underestimated.

I don't want to get caught up in the market's favorite fuel, fear, this political season. Harris or Trump will not be the end of our democracy. I mean no offense but we are not you. Our faith is not only in our currency it's in our democracy. As we sometimes say in the hood.

It's only politics.

It ain't that deep.

Leonard Nimoy Slater