The Emperor Doesn't Want My Vote, He Wants My Blood

Thoughts from a colonized American living in the 21st century...

I’m 32 years old now, and it’s only fitting to finally acknowledge my rapid descent into dad jokes and dystopian political punchlines. Here we go.

Highway Unicorn (Road to Love)

It’s been about a decade since one of my teachers read something about Lady Gaga, where I postured that she’d masterfully tapped into the zeitgeist of 2007-2013. Gaga transformed music, politics, and pop culture by rewriting the rules to fit an evolving digital archetype, where she’d be the first artist to garner one billion views on YouTube.

And let’s be real: In 2012, only 2.4 billion people had access to the internet. Overnight, Gaga sidelined MTV and VH1 and loosened their grip on music videos and pop culture. Overnight, she made YouTube, Twitter, and any digital media her scalpel for change.

Her speeches about injustice, equity, freedom, and love drew me to her message. I wrote about the U.S. military’s cruel Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy that blocked LGBTQ+ families from federal programs and benefits. I wrote those speeches to challenge the thought processes of my classmates. Especially the homophobic ones who had stage fright.

Without Gaga and President Barack Obama’s speeches, I would not be who I am today. As a young adult, consuming both of their messages influenced my presentations in high school. I stopped focusing on my grades and instead channeled my experience as a Black queer teen with a few goals; to disrupt the senses of my classmates and teachers with loaded emotional demonstrations, to disrupt an authoritarian regime at Ivanna Eudora Kean High School, and inspire all forms of peaceful protests advocating for better treatment.

We wanted the freedom to express ourselves and shared equity in our educational framework to keep pace with a changing world.

But that was an uphill battle, given that most of our experience as young millennials (in the maturing digital era) involved troubleshooting Prometheus Boards, projectors, and slow computers when our teachers couldn’t figure it out.

Students kept the lessons going!

Sadly, we were asking for the moon at a time when flat earthers were stretching their phalanges, readying an assault on our frontal cortex.

Unpacking America’s Global Empire

If you’re an American citizen and you reside in one of the 50 states, you can sleep easy at night knowing you have a president.

If you’re an American citizen living on a United States base in a foreign nation, relax; you have a president.

If you’re a citizen or a tourist in a NATO nation, take a deep breath. You have the firepower of an American president. After all, an attack on one is an attack on all.

If you’re a Democrat or a Republican and you once said, “He’s not my president,” you can kick and scream all you want, but you have a president.

If you’re a service member who enlisted from a U.S. territory, a Veteran living in a U.S. territory, or one of the three million civilians born in American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands, or Puerto Rico, I’m sorry, friends, you serve at the pleasure of the Emperor.

The emperor doesn’t need your vote to win; he wants your blood.

In 2015, the United States controlled over eight hundred military bases. A report by Vox found that if you combined the bases of other nations with military bases outside of their borders, the number of bases is less than forty.

The Days of Conquest Return (2019-2024)

Back in August 2019, President Donald Trump called off a planned presidential visit to Europe after the prime minister of Denmark, Mette Frederiksen, publicly rejected his request for the United States to purchase Greenland.

Denmark rejected Trump’s request with a statement, "We're open for business, not for sale," Greenland's foreign ministry tweeted at the time.

Hmmm. I suppose buying entire islands and the people inhabiting them went out of style a century ago. Good to know.

IDK, but when I worked for Governor Bryan, I thought the best way to troll Trump after his tweet would be to draft a satiric press release requesting that he sell the U.S. Virgin Islands to Wakanda.

His staff would likely advise him not to engage because we’re trolling, but my hope was that he’d disregard everything they said, hop on Twitter, and start the bidding process anyway.

Then, maybe, we’d laugh and cry together as we watched our experiences as colonized people evolve into memes.

Biden Continues to Flex the Territories He Controls

For the trolls, political hacks, and Oligarchs reading, I support Biden’s strategy to contain an increasingly expansionist Russia. I support a righteous outcome where the Ukrainian people are victorious and Russia retreats.

But there are glaring cracks in Biden’s strategy to defend an imperial democracy three times his age as he seeks a second term in the White House.

Biden’s need to flex on his adversaries comes in many forms. But a power play that goes unnoticed involves his two visits to Saint Croix during the island’s Crucian Christmas Festival.

Saint Croix is the most easterly point of the United States. Biden knows the U.S. Virgin Islands has never participated in a Presidential Election, and no U.S. territory has a seat or a vote in the U.S. Senate.

Think about it. Why would he travel the country giving speeches about democracy, only to stop giving speeches about democracy and voting rights when he visits the U.S. Virgin Islands?

Biden and his team know it’s bad optics for the United States as it continues to spend billions to help other countries with their fight for democracy.

Biden, the Secret Service, and the Pentagon know the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico don’t have any land-based missile defense systems.

With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and as U.S.-Chinese relations frayed, new reporting hints that Pentagon officials believe that in a global conflict (unlike past World Wars), the Caribbean could be contested territory for the first time.

Biden’s presence in Saint Croix every two years is no fluke. He’s reminding U.S. adversaries that his red line extends far beyond the 50 states. He’s reminding would-be conquerers that some lands and people have already been conquered.

Biden’s reminding us—the three million Americans without a seat in the Senate, WE who’ve never participated in a Presidential Election—that if we demand freedom or fair access to the nation’s democratic institutions, Virgin Islanders and her sister territories would be jeopardizing the global world order with our nEediNeSs!

Oh, and in the 118th Congress, Congresswoman Stacey Plaskett, who serves the U.S. Virgin Islands, is a House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence member. She’s also the ranking member of the Subcommittee on National Intelligence Enterprise and a member of the Subcommittee on Defense Intelligence and Overhead Architecture.

I would imagine Plaskett and other delegates serving U.S. territories offer Washington invaluable information about the Caribbean archipelago and the Pacific Islands.

When we talk about military threats to the continental United States, we’re talking about a massive continent sheltered by vast oceans. Relax!

The U.S. territories, Hawai'i and Alaska, stand on the front lines.