Chrystul Blue Persuasion

Look over yonder
What do you see?
The sun is a-rising
Most definitely
A new day is coming (whoo-hoo!)
People are changing
Ain’t it beautiful? (whoo-hoo!)
Crystal Blue Persuasion

Better get ready
Gonna see the light
Love, love is the answer (whoo-hoo!)
And that’s alright
So don’t you give up now (whoo-hoo!)
So easy to find
Just look to your soul (look to your soul!)
And open your mind

Tommy James and the Shondells wrote and performed that song, which became a hit, rising to the Number 2 position on Billboard’s Hot 100 pop singles chart for 3 weeks in June 1969. And more recently, it enjoyed a resurgence in popularity as thematic music for the phenomenally popular multi-year teevee serial drama “Breaking Bad.”

Tommy explained the song this way:

“First of all, I was becoming a Christian at that time, and we never thought a thing about it. We never thought that doing something semi-religious was any big deal. We didn’t think of it as being politically incorrect or anything like that. We just did what felt right. I wrote ‘Crystal Blue Persuasion’ with Eddie Gray and Mike Vale. Eddie came up with the little guitar riff, and Mike and I did the lyrics. And it just felt very right as a sort of semi-religious poetic song, but it turned out to be one of the hardest records I’ve ever made.”

The past couple weeks, the nation’s eyes have been upon Kenosha, Wisconsin. Now, they’re turned to Brunswick, Georgia, a tiny town of 15,210 with a 55.1% Black population, and a 33.1% White population.

It was almost difficult — and perhaps still is — to go a day without seeing, hearing, or reading something about the Kyle Rittenhouse trial. The talking heads, pundits, prognosticators, and their ilk were all a twitter about whether this, that, or the other, would happen, and in the process whipped their followers — whichever side of the fence they sat upon — into a frenzy.

It’s good for their ratings and corporate earnings, you see. So, yeah… it’s all about the money, and the media ~does~ have a dog in that fight. I’ll spare you the details of the matter, because by now, if you’ve been paying attention, you know it all. The media made sure of that.

That’s what the mass media these days does to us all — force feeds us a steady stream of bad news like geese fed by gavage, then harvested for their artificially enlarged fatty liver. That French delicacy is called foie gras. However, the only thing that’s changed about us, is our hearts. They become artificially hardened, calloused and insensate to the suffering of others.

But maybe you’re not affected.

Kyle Rittenhouse draws numbers randomly to select jurors in his case (L), and Chrystul Kizer (R); both cases are in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

So let me tell you about another 17-year old child, also in Kenosha, Wisconsin, who’s charged with

Domestic Terror Tourist

Selma-to-Montgomery Civil Rights march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, Selma, AL, on “Bloody Sunday,” March 7, 1965

By now, if you pay any attention to any news from anywhere – radio, teevee, Internet, etc. – you’ve heard the disheartening news of a 17-year-old young man from Antioch, Illinois who has been accused of shooting and killing 2 individuals who were apparently no threat to him, and seriously wounding a third – 26-year old Gaige Grosskreutz – in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

There are numerous videos of Kyle Rittenhouse, seen throughout the events wearing a green short-sleeved tee-shirt, sporting a baseball-style cap turned backwards, and brandishing an AR-15 type assault rifle as he cavorted in the streets of Kenosha concurrent with the events unfolding after law enforcement authorities there shot Jacob Blake 7 times in the back at arm’s length range.

U.S. Representative John Lewis (1940-2020) (D-GA,5) stands in front of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, Selma, Alabama – a pivotal site for the Civil Rights Movement.

Jacob Blake was an apparently unarmed 29-year old Black man, and father of three young children, aged 8, 5, and 3, who sat in the car and watched the tragedy unfold, as their father was Tazed, then shot 7 times in the back with a pistol – paralyzed from the waist down as a consequence – by a 7-year veteran law enforcement Officer Rusten Sheskey, a White man.

Young Mr. Rittenhouse, who will be tried as an adult under Wisconsin state law, is described as