NOSTALGIA FOR JELLYBEANS
The addiction behind the Supreme Court's gutting of the Voting Rights Act
Jellybean are small, sugar coated candies with chewy Jellybean like like Center made from processed sugar, corn syrup and scratch, flavored and colored to mimic various tastes like fruit or licorice. Some jelly beams are black. Some Jellybeans are white. Most are the colors of the rainbow and as artificial as the bonds that connect our citizens.
Nostalgia is a yearning for an idealized past.
A feeling things were better back then.
Life was fair.
Things were comfortable.
People knew where they stood.
Or else.
There is no drug quite like Nostalgia.
It erases guilt.
It alters reality.
It bends history to its will.
America is addicted to nostalgia.
It’s a drug often injected through the eyes.
Movies starring but not limited to Sylvester Stallone, Mel Gibson, Mark Wahlberg, and John Wayne fed viewers a vision of benevolent, righteous, Christian warriors of manifest destiny who dramatized the ultra nostalgic idea that everything he saw belonged to them, including the people who were there before them.
Those mainlining nostalgia love the old names - Negro, colored, jungle bunny, spear checker and nigger with the hardest ER they can find. In fact words to nostalgia addicts are the heart and soul of what infects them.
In Louisiana vs Callais circa 2026 six members of the Supreme Court- four white men, one white woman and this nation’s reigning Uncle Thomas - used the phrase “color blind” to decide that the historically oppressed and the disenfranchised were given an unfair advantage over white folks in voting since 1965.
N-O-S-T-A-L-G-I-A. A yearning for a past of fairness as illustionary as a document that says all men were created equal and thinks women aren’t worth mentioning.
Jellybean. Small, sugar coated candies with a chewy jelly like Center composed of corn syrup, and starch. Some Jellybeans are black. Some Jellybeans are white. Most are colors of the rainbow.
Ronald Reagan’s favorite treat was Jellybeans. No record exist of which was his favorite. But we can guest.
The Gripper was born in 1911. He became a movie star and worked many years in motion pictures before he starred in a Western, the ultimate delivery system for the drug that still animates the white Supremacist and their brown skinned lackeys as they ingest nostalgia in protein drinks, Budweiser, bourbon and branch water and baby formula.
Make America Great Again. Nostalgia. Great again? Again? Great? Nostalgia and MAGA go together like Law and Order, like Crime and Punishment, like Ice and dead Americans.
In Dolphin, Alabama the grandmother of Alfred Charles Sharpton tried to vote. Like hundreds, like thousands, like millions of black people prior to 1965. She walked to city hall with her deed and her dignity. She was an American citizen. She paid taxes. The white man behind the desk told her in all seems in order. We just have a test. He placed a jar of Jellybeans on the desk.
Nostalgia. A yearning for an idealized past.
A feeling that things were better.
Life was fair.
Things were comfortable.
People knew where they stood.
Or else. Just like now.
Louisiana vs Callais. John Roberts. Samuel Alito. Neil Gorsuch. Brett Kavanaugh. Amy Coney Barrett. Clarence Thomas. Colorblind. Nostalgia.
In the jar on the table in Alabama on that election day long ago -- and yesterday-- a lone black woman stood before a white city official ans was asked a question: how many Jellybeans in this jar?
It was a question asked when things were fair. Before the Civil rights act of 1964. Before the voting rights act of 1965. Before dog bit marchers. Before water hoses blasted water on protesters. Before MLK, Malcolm X and Obama.
A fundamental right came down to a frivolous question asked generations. It was a cosmic joke, a humiliating act of disrespect, an unserious query about the most serious right a democracy offers.
Under the colorblind ruling of 2026 this fair and comfortable country can reinstate, revive and gerrymander itself back to the 1950s.
Which always the high the nostalgia addicted have been chasing.
You want a Jellybean?
There’s a jar in the oval office.
There’s a jar at the U.S. Capitol.
There’s a jar on the desk in every corner of the United States where nostalgia rules.
How many do you think are in your jar?