1 March 2024, @mariannewest's Freewrite Writing Prompt Day 2298: the rise of nationalism
“Look, I live in Virginia. I don't worry about the rise of nationalism. That's always been a thing here. I worry about the rise of stupidity.”
“Gosh, I love your grandmother,” eleven-year-old Eleanor Ludlow said to her best friend eleven-year-old Velma Trent. “She's like Papa – straight on, but with her own unique no-nonsense flair to it!”
“People can believe whatever they want to believe – but when they start acting like there isn't a God in Heaven that isn't done taking everything they think they own away from them, when there's a plague going on right now, I worry about the rise of stupidity. I worry that because some of y'all ain't getting it yet, we're going to have to live with worse than Covid-19 down the road, because y'all haven't figured out yet that this supremacy stuff is getting beat back in every century.”
“James Brown didn't know it,” Velma said, “but he really meant to write 'Grandma don't take no mess' as well as 'Papa don't take no mess,' because even my grandfather found out: you don't mess with Velma Stepforth. That's just something you don't do.”
“I understand what you told me about your parents, kinda,” Eleanor said. “I'm not sure I understand about your grandparents.”
“I don't either because I was about a year old when it all went down,” Velma said, “but Melvin and Vanna my big siblings talk about it sometimes. It seems that Grandma was just not going to be coming second fiddle to a stack of green paper, so she left Pop-Pop until he got his life together. Grandma doesn't care if the stack is a billion high; she's just not going to be treated any kind of way.”
“I feel like my grandmother is the same,” Eleanor said, “but the difference is, Papa is so dangerous the only time we ever see that side of her is on his behalf if he is tired enough to take a midday rest.”
“Pop-Pop is pretty mellow when not at work,” Velma said, “but don't be on the wrong side of a business negotiation from him. And of course, being a billionaire and all, generally he doesn't have to get frustrated with most people. There are people including lawyers who take care of all kinds of things. He wouldn't even have to put up with the way the country is – he can live well anywhere in the world – but his thing is, his grandchildren are here, so, what are you going to do?”
“We gotta fight for the right, is what we gotta do,” Eleanor said, “because the rise of stupidity seems to be really strong, and it's not just on one side, either.”
“And there's no Olympics this year to cut it down a bit, either,” Velma said. “I don't remember it being like this at age seven, but then again, what do you remember from being seven?”
“Yeah, that first decade is getting to be a bit of a blur – we're getting old, Velma.”
“Yeah, I know – and we still have so far to go,” she said.