“Happy Days Are Here Again”
Janyce Stefan-Cole
Changes are coming. I try to tell myself
I won’t be affected.
Maybe reversing climate control measures world
leaders are trying desperately to enact will affect me. New York may fill up with
smog again; we’ll experience strings of air quality alert days in hotter and
hotter, drier and drier summers. Or course, if global warming is all a hoax
perpetrated by the Chinese, we’re safe. If not, most likely I’ll be gone before
the waters rise and food becomes scarce in longer and deeper world droughts.
The millennials can worry that one—if I want to be selfish about it.
Walls won’t be going up in Brooklyn, nor will
midnight raids harass suspected Latinos in their beds, a la the Kremlin. Our
mayor has said our city won’t assist in Federal immigrant purges. That won’t
guarantee the rust belt states won’t hunt people down, or Louisiana or Kansas,
or Indiana, Oklahoma, Texas, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi or Arizona. I hope
there’s loads of press coverage when the cleansing begins, as they haul little
kids in Pjs onto busses headed south of the Great Wall of America. And I
sincerely hope the missing jobs come back once the corporations, who, after all,
are people too, find it in their hearts to quit sending them over that same
wall.
To me and my sisters: I would urge extra
caution in elevators, lonely corridors, crowded streets and subways. Our new
leader has okayed genital grabbing, long as a Tic Tac is on your assailant’s
tongue. Handicapped people, prepare to be laughed at. Minorities of all stripes
(increasingly that’s us whites, but never mind: power trumps numbers) prepare
to be fair game for KKKers and White Supremacists. LGBT? Could you slip back
into the woodwork till this blows over? Coming ideologues don’t think bakers
have to bake or sell you their wedding cakes. There’s even talk of caged camps
for Muslims, right here in the land of the free. “Oh, say can you see …”
No, no: Cheer up, the good old days are
back, America will be great again! Sing along:
Happy days are here again!
The skies above be dirty again,
The women won’t have choice
again,
And the sick will have no care,
We’ll all feel free to hate
again, plus
The rich won’t pay their
share again,
Let’s sing a song of cheer
again
Happy days are here
again!
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Janyce Stefan-Cole is the author of the
novels, The Detective’s Garden, and Hollywood Boulevard
Copyright©2016 by Janyce
Stefan-Cole – All Rights Reserved
