"TRUMAN PASSING BY" by Jerry Mazza

Freelance writer Jerry Mazza has written a poem for me inspired by the article I wrote "Policing thought in America: Why can’t we discuss the events of 9/11?" following The Huffington Post's removal of a column guest written by Jesse Ventura about 9/11. Jerry is an expert on domestic politics and foreign affairs, having written hundreds of articles on politics and government for onlinejournal.com where he is an associate editor. His ground-breaking analysis on the corruption by our government on issues such as 9/11, foreign policy, the war on terror, the economy and more are consistently on target. (See also the blog "Jerry Mazza on Obama, 9/11 and Afghanistan" for a sampler of his writings and for my interview with him on JamesFetzerNews.)

Jerry is the author of "State of Shock: Poems from 9/11 On", a selection of narrative and lyrical poems, which are a call for help and reaction to the dangers facing our country. These poems suggest that an operation of the magnitude of 9/11 cannnot have been the work of 19 Islamic “terrorists” but rather the machinations of key members of our own ruling elite to start the “War on Terror” in a grasp for Mid-Eastern oil and power. Jerry's draws the conclusion that 9/11 constituted a form of coup d’etat for the Bush administration, the purpose of which was to restrict civil liberties, to acquire excessive powers for war-making and secure additional appropriations both to fund the war and control civil dissent.

Jerry Mazza on JFK, 9/11, and Suppression of
Speech (24 March 2010)

TRUMAN PASSING BY
Jerry Mazza / 22 March 2010

The night that Truman rode by
with Bess in the open car
and motorcycle escort
down Grand Street, Williamsburg,
Brooklyn, seeking office
post-FDR, the working
class crowds cheering him on,
myself and Che Che, my best friend
waving our baseball caps
in the cold November night,
the smell of fried fish hanging
in the air from the fish store
that touched the Trumans’ noses,
one among a million smells
of working America,
another smell, corruption
like the garbage rising
from the OSS
to CIA, a shadow
government beyond
the shouts and love and votes
of all these Americans,
somewhere a photo of Dewey
claiming victory, V-fingered
in the Daily News,
and history rolling before
our eyes and all the money
and misery it would bring us
long after Harry passed
to victory and his maker,
and the shots rang out
in Dealey Plaza, killing
the Prince of Camelot
15 years later in the
shadow of Vietnam
that deepened into a night
of knives and magic bullets
killing the truth for our age.