Obscene Rhetoric by Frederick K. Foote, Jr.

“Every national disaster or threat evokes a series of mantras, slogans, maxims, and adages from our leaders and would-be leaders. These statements are patently untrue. These axioms are meat to mislead, misguide, and hide the brutal realities of our situations. They are obscene propaganda in support of the status quo. Here are a few.”
—Frederick K. Foote, Jr., April 4, 2020

Obscene Rhetoric

We are all in the same boat

We are not in the same damn boat.
My boat suffers from hypertension, diabetes, kidney disease, breathing disabilities, and sails in rough seas with few ports
Your boat is the U.S. Best Health and calms the waters with oily cash and is welcomed in every port.
My boat sails the southern waters, where governors refuse to extend Medicare to meet my needs to curry white votes.
Your boat is designed to carry you and yours and ignore me and mine.
My boat is capsizing in raging waters that are roiled by white leaders to preserve white business at the cost of black lives.
Your boat is taking on water. Mine is underwater.

We are in this together

We are not in this together. I’m in jail and prison cells. I’m in ghettoized neighborhoods with segregated schools. I’m in a stratified workforce. Even in the graveyards, we are separated.

We are Americans, and we will prevail.

You are willfully blind and woefully ignorant when it is convenient for you to be so - like now.

What doesn’t kill us only makes us stronger.

Chronic disease does not make one stronger - ever.

We are one nation United.

We are a nation separate, segregated, divided, alienated, and we will perish as we have lived.