With me, whenever rhetoric clashes with reality, reality always wins. Therefore when those in the Republican Party say that it is not racist, that it does not coddle racists, that it is not fueled by the mantra of white supremacy and white privilege, what I have before me is this rhetoric on the one hand and reality on another.
That reality is among many other things the reality of voter suppression, the scapegoating of young African American males as being criminals & inherently dangerous, the promotion of this falsehood that poverty is a matter of choice and is confined to our inner cities dominated by people of color; that rampant drug use, sexual promiscuity, is a black thing.
All of this reality; all of this racial stereotyping; this pandering to this latent fear that white people in this country have had from before the beginning of this Republic, is part & parcel of the Republican Party & the Far Right's agenda. It motivates its base to act on the most primal & primitive of human instincts; fear and jealousy; creating a false narrative of grievance and of being wronged.
A clear acknowledgement of this reality is seen in the Republican Party's never ending efforts to trot out people of color as its spokespersons because the reasoning of the GOP & the Far Right is simple; if they can can get people of color to support policies that are indeed racist, and grounded in white supremacy then of course they can in turn argue that their policies & practices are not racist; are not grounded in white supremacy because a person of color is defending it.
Yet the fact that the Republican Party feels compelled to recruit people of color to defend its policies is proof positive that it is indeed the Party of Racism & White Supremacy because no white person needs a black person to say that they are not racist if racist they are not. The fact that these people in the GOP & the Far Right feel compelled to use people of color to defend their policies is proof positive that they are racist & believe in white supremacy.
They have not recruited the likes of Dr. Ben Carson, Clarence Thomas, Condoleezza Rice, and Herman Cain to speak for them because of the content of their character. They have recruited them to speak for them because of the color of their skin; because they believe that the color of their skin will shield them from the charges of racism that is the reality of voter suppression, the scapegoating of young African American males as being criminals & inherently dangerous, the promotion of this falsehood that poverty is a matter of choice and is confined to our inner cities & dominated by people of color; that rampant drug use, sexual promiscuity, is a black thing.
To them these black people they have speaking for them are the political equivalent of a legitimate business set up as a front by criminal enterprises in order to shield their illegal activities. They are an attempt to hide the truth; to conceal from the public at large their racism & belief in white supremacy that is at the heart of the GOP & the Far Right's agenda.
Of course they will continue to deny this. They will continue to accuse me and anyone else who points this out of race baiting & playing the race card. Yet understand this and understand it well; whenever Republicans accuse people like me & others of race baiting and playing the race card, all it is is rhetoric and empty rhetoric at that for for the reality is that these people do promote racism; that they are believers in white supremacy. Their rhetoric of denial is what they preach. The racist reality of the people & policies they support is what they practice. What are YOU going to believe? Their rhetoric or their reality?
Wednesday, April 16, 2014
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
Understanding One's Limits. By Eric Smith
Too many people have an exaggerated sense of the power of personal persuasion; particularly their own. There is this mistaken belief on the part of too many that every problem can be talked to a solution, and that every crisis can be rationally reasoned away. There is this sense that if we say something long enough and loud enough, that eventually everyone will come to see things our way and deal with them as we would deal with them and this is true of everything from the treatment of mental illness to questions of war & peace themselves.
Yet such is not the case. It has not and never will be for while times change and technology & knowledge advances, human nature at heart remains the same and by that I mean every human being has the capacity for both great love and depraved cruelty. Every human being has within them the capacity to be violent or nonviolent, and every human being has a physical & psychological breaking point; a point past which all rational thought & logic disappears and where our most primal and basic instincts takes full and complete control of our thoughts, words, and deeds.
This is true of everybody and as such it is invariably those who are most cognizant of their potential to lose control who are most capable of always maintaining it for they more than anyone else are most alert to those warning signs that personal control is in imminent danger of being lost. We must, as Senator Robert F. Kennedy said on the afternoon of April 5, 1968 learn to "abandon the vanity of our false distinctions." We must dis-enthrall ourselves of the false belief that the power of reasoned, logical thought is absolute and again come to terms with the reality that however advanced we humans may be in regards to all other living things, that we are at heart imperfect beings; forever struggling to survive and make some sense of an often irrational, violent, and depraved world.
Our time among the living is invariably short. We are all condemned to be consigned to memory far sooner than we think and in most cases even desire. So as each passing second brings us ever closer to that moment of our final departure it would seem to me that our dwindling time alive would be far better spent spending more of our remaining hours spending less time trying to make sense of the world and more time trying to make more sense of our own individual lives.
It is great and noble to try to improve the lives of others but it makes no sense to ignore ourselves in the process; to condemn ourselves to the twilight of perpetual anger and personal distress as we fret over the problems facing the world; most of which we have zero power to control or solve to our liking. Do what you feel you must do to help improve the lives of others in any way possible but remember always that it is not an exercise in selfishness to seek whatever joy & personal satisfaction for your own lives that you can; it is merely exercising basic common sense for what is the point of even being alive if one cannot find some pleasure in the very act of living?
In the final analysis we are all born alone and we will all die alone. No one else has ever experienced birth as we ourselves have experienced it and no one else ever has and ever will, experience dying as we are all destined to experience death. We are all ultimately defined not by our limitations but by what degree we have transcended them according to our natural abilities, motivations, and desires, and life ultimately being about the art of the personal, in the end it will be ourselves and ourselves alone who will make the final determination as to whether or not the life we have lived has been a success or a failure.
Yet such is not the case. It has not and never will be for while times change and technology & knowledge advances, human nature at heart remains the same and by that I mean every human being has the capacity for both great love and depraved cruelty. Every human being has within them the capacity to be violent or nonviolent, and every human being has a physical & psychological breaking point; a point past which all rational thought & logic disappears and where our most primal and basic instincts takes full and complete control of our thoughts, words, and deeds.
This is true of everybody and as such it is invariably those who are most cognizant of their potential to lose control who are most capable of always maintaining it for they more than anyone else are most alert to those warning signs that personal control is in imminent danger of being lost. We must, as Senator Robert F. Kennedy said on the afternoon of April 5, 1968 learn to "abandon the vanity of our false distinctions." We must dis-enthrall ourselves of the false belief that the power of reasoned, logical thought is absolute and again come to terms with the reality that however advanced we humans may be in regards to all other living things, that we are at heart imperfect beings; forever struggling to survive and make some sense of an often irrational, violent, and depraved world.
Our time among the living is invariably short. We are all condemned to be consigned to memory far sooner than we think and in most cases even desire. So as each passing second brings us ever closer to that moment of our final departure it would seem to me that our dwindling time alive would be far better spent spending more of our remaining hours spending less time trying to make sense of the world and more time trying to make more sense of our own individual lives.
It is great and noble to try to improve the lives of others but it makes no sense to ignore ourselves in the process; to condemn ourselves to the twilight of perpetual anger and personal distress as we fret over the problems facing the world; most of which we have zero power to control or solve to our liking. Do what you feel you must do to help improve the lives of others in any way possible but remember always that it is not an exercise in selfishness to seek whatever joy & personal satisfaction for your own lives that you can; it is merely exercising basic common sense for what is the point of even being alive if one cannot find some pleasure in the very act of living?
In the final analysis we are all born alone and we will all die alone. No one else has ever experienced birth as we ourselves have experienced it and no one else ever has and ever will, experience dying as we are all destined to experience death. We are all ultimately defined not by our limitations but by what degree we have transcended them according to our natural abilities, motivations, and desires, and life ultimately being about the art of the personal, in the end it will be ourselves and ourselves alone who will make the final determination as to whether or not the life we have lived has been a success or a failure.
Friday, March 14, 2014
The Sin of Starvation. By Eric Smith
When people, for whatever rhyme or reason, are unable to acquire food to eat; when they become hungry & malnourished, their immune systems weaken, thus making them weaker and more susceptible to disease and as a result of this they inevitably become sick and they die; if not from starvation itself, then from the inevitable illnesses arising out of being malnourished. These are the facts; they are beyond dispute and not open for debate and therefore to willfully deprive people of their ability to eat as the Republican Party is doing now with its slashing of food assistance to the poor and the most needy; is not only committing a moral crime in the fact that the Republicans are actually killing people; they are also violating both our nation's Declaration of Independence and its Constitution which states that we are all "endowed with certain unalienable rights; among which are life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
When one is denied the ability to eat they are denied all three for there can be no "life, Liberty, and pursuit of happiness" when one is forced to go through life hungry. This country throws away more food in a day than many nations in the world produces to feed their citizens over the course of a year. To deny the hungry food to eat is no different than denying a person in an emergency room life saving care because of an inability to pay. If we ever started doing this; if children died because they were turned away from a hospital's ER because their parents or guardians couldn't pay the hospital bill on the spot, these same Republicans who are so gleefully denying food assistance to the most needy among us, would be among those who raised the loudest of protests over the cruelty of such a practice.
Yet what they are doing now in cutting food assistance to the most needy among us is no different and is in many ways it is far worse for to perish from hunger is to die a most slow and painful death; especially if one is a child. Now if America did not and/or was incapable of producing enough food to ensure several times over that every last one of its 300 million plus citizens could be properly nourished, then the policies they pursue in cutting food assistance while no less cruel, could conceivably be slightly justified as a cost saving measure.
Yet that is not the case. On farms all across the land unused grain is rotting, unsold livestock is being being butchered & sold to feed other livestock and hungry people in other nations. Restaurants make the rats & other vermin fat off the food they daily discard while in many of those very same back alleys where the rodents feast, men, women, and children, sleep and go hungry for lack of a roof over their heads and their inability to buy that very food which the nearby vermin feast on for free.
This is the Republican Reality; this is the Republican Party's version of an ideal America, and it is a sick, twisted version indeed; one that is totally undeserving of a nation of savages, let alone that of the greatest, most prosperous nation in the history of the world. A child can't learn if its hungry and a man and woman can't work to their full potential if they are malnourished; that is true of any living thing.
It is therefore in our vested national interests to ensure that every last one of our citizens is afforded the chance to eat; to take in proper nourishment regardless of economic status or race. This is what we must do or we must stop pretending being what we are not; a nation that cares, that believes in the sanctity of human life, for our acts of charity abroad mean absolutely nothing if we do not first act charitably on behalf of those who are most needy here at home. Feed Americans first Republicans for your fellow Americans are your first priority as they are the priority of us all.
Think less of Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Timbuktu for a minute and more of your fellow Americans in need. Share some of your compassion with the poor, oppressed, and downtrodden in New York, Chicago, Baltimore, and Detroit to name but a few. Stop doing the right things for people abroad for all the wrong reasons and start doing the right thing for the right reasons for your fellow citizens here at home. A nation that is well nourished and well fed is a nation that is truly strong and so when people support policies that starve their fellow citizens; especially for partisan purposes; they are not being patriotic; they are acting as terrorists for deliberately starving someone is an act of terrorism against that person for to force that person to endure hunger is to force them to face terror, endure suffering, and face the terrible prospect of a long and painful death.
This is your reality Republicans. This is what you are now doing to your fellow citizens and yet you still have the gall to call yourselves patriotic Americans who are compassionate? Sorry, but your words are worthless at this point. If you think that denying food to the hungry is acceptable in any way shape or form then you are not patriotic, you are not truly American, and you are certainly not compassionate. That's just the way it is and that's just the way you are and there's not a damn thing you can say at this point that will change that.
When one is denied the ability to eat they are denied all three for there can be no "life, Liberty, and pursuit of happiness" when one is forced to go through life hungry. This country throws away more food in a day than many nations in the world produces to feed their citizens over the course of a year. To deny the hungry food to eat is no different than denying a person in an emergency room life saving care because of an inability to pay. If we ever started doing this; if children died because they were turned away from a hospital's ER because their parents or guardians couldn't pay the hospital bill on the spot, these same Republicans who are so gleefully denying food assistance to the most needy among us, would be among those who raised the loudest of protests over the cruelty of such a practice.
Yet what they are doing now in cutting food assistance to the most needy among us is no different and is in many ways it is far worse for to perish from hunger is to die a most slow and painful death; especially if one is a child. Now if America did not and/or was incapable of producing enough food to ensure several times over that every last one of its 300 million plus citizens could be properly nourished, then the policies they pursue in cutting food assistance while no less cruel, could conceivably be slightly justified as a cost saving measure.
Yet that is not the case. On farms all across the land unused grain is rotting, unsold livestock is being being butchered & sold to feed other livestock and hungry people in other nations. Restaurants make the rats & other vermin fat off the food they daily discard while in many of those very same back alleys where the rodents feast, men, women, and children, sleep and go hungry for lack of a roof over their heads and their inability to buy that very food which the nearby vermin feast on for free.
This is the Republican Reality; this is the Republican Party's version of an ideal America, and it is a sick, twisted version indeed; one that is totally undeserving of a nation of savages, let alone that of the greatest, most prosperous nation in the history of the world. A child can't learn if its hungry and a man and woman can't work to their full potential if they are malnourished; that is true of any living thing.
It is therefore in our vested national interests to ensure that every last one of our citizens is afforded the chance to eat; to take in proper nourishment regardless of economic status or race. This is what we must do or we must stop pretending being what we are not; a nation that cares, that believes in the sanctity of human life, for our acts of charity abroad mean absolutely nothing if we do not first act charitably on behalf of those who are most needy here at home. Feed Americans first Republicans for your fellow Americans are your first priority as they are the priority of us all.
Think less of Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Timbuktu for a minute and more of your fellow Americans in need. Share some of your compassion with the poor, oppressed, and downtrodden in New York, Chicago, Baltimore, and Detroit to name but a few. Stop doing the right things for people abroad for all the wrong reasons and start doing the right thing for the right reasons for your fellow citizens here at home. A nation that is well nourished and well fed is a nation that is truly strong and so when people support policies that starve their fellow citizens; especially for partisan purposes; they are not being patriotic; they are acting as terrorists for deliberately starving someone is an act of terrorism against that person for to force that person to endure hunger is to force them to face terror, endure suffering, and face the terrible prospect of a long and painful death.
This is your reality Republicans. This is what you are now doing to your fellow citizens and yet you still have the gall to call yourselves patriotic Americans who are compassionate? Sorry, but your words are worthless at this point. If you think that denying food to the hungry is acceptable in any way shape or form then you are not patriotic, you are not truly American, and you are certainly not compassionate. That's just the way it is and that's just the way you are and there's not a damn thing you can say at this point that will change that.
Sunday, March 2, 2014
America's dilemma. By Eric Smith
For those now fretting over the apparent weakness of President Obama in the face of Russian aggression in Ukraine ask yourself this question. Is this particular conflict worth the very real risk of seeing a mushroom cloud rise over New York City for make no mistake any armed conflict with Russia (or China for that matter) will eventually lead to a nuclear exchange. That's just how it is and we need to keep this in mind; especially now.
Now there's a another thing we need to keep in mind here. Ukraine is on the Russian border whereas Iraq is nowhere near ours. Our moral standing in calling for nations to respect the sovereignty of other nations and refrain from unilateral military aggression ended permanently when President George W. Bush went against over two hundred years of American precedent and not only invaded the sovereign nation of Iraq but did so under false pretenses.
As horrible as the Russian military aggression is Ukraine is, it doesn't come close to rising to the level in terms of being a violation of international law that was America's 2003 invasion of Iraq. The Russians can make, however dubious, a claim that instability in Ukraine poses a clear and present danger to the security of Russia itself. Never in a million years could America make such a claim against Iraq.
Before invading that country America could at least take the moral high ground and claim that such acts of unilateral aggression against a sovereign nation was morally wrong and a blatant violation of international law. President Bush forever destroyed this country's moral standing to make such a claim in 2003 and in so doing forever handicapped & compromised future presidents ability to properly address the very kind of aggressive conduct now being practiced by Russia's President Putin without being willing to go to general war and wiping out the whole world in a nuclear Armageddon.
That is precisely where this country is now because of the jingoistic policies of the Bush Administration a decade ago. As is the case with individuals so too is it with nations; if one wants to be taken seriously then one must practice what they preach and not preach what they don't practice. For over two hundred years America refrained from the practice of unilaterally invading a sovereign nation. It was part of our national DNA not to partake in preemptive war and as such we were on firm moral footing to call out the very kind of aggressive conduct the Russians are engaging in Ukraine.
We do not have that footing, that moral standing, now and we do not have it because an American president by the name of George W. Bush launched a preemptive war against a sovereign nation not to protect American lives and interests but solely to satisfy a personal vendetta. So if you want to blame anyone for this current state of affairs blame Bush because it was his decision to invade Iraq in 2003 without cause or justification that forever ruined America's moral standing to call out other nations for unprovoked aggression that put President Obama and American prestige in the untenable position it is today.
Now there's a another thing we need to keep in mind here. Ukraine is on the Russian border whereas Iraq is nowhere near ours. Our moral standing in calling for nations to respect the sovereignty of other nations and refrain from unilateral military aggression ended permanently when President George W. Bush went against over two hundred years of American precedent and not only invaded the sovereign nation of Iraq but did so under false pretenses.
As horrible as the Russian military aggression is Ukraine is, it doesn't come close to rising to the level in terms of being a violation of international law that was America's 2003 invasion of Iraq. The Russians can make, however dubious, a claim that instability in Ukraine poses a clear and present danger to the security of Russia itself. Never in a million years could America make such a claim against Iraq.
Before invading that country America could at least take the moral high ground and claim that such acts of unilateral aggression against a sovereign nation was morally wrong and a blatant violation of international law. President Bush forever destroyed this country's moral standing to make such a claim in 2003 and in so doing forever handicapped & compromised future presidents ability to properly address the very kind of aggressive conduct now being practiced by Russia's President Putin without being willing to go to general war and wiping out the whole world in a nuclear Armageddon.
That is precisely where this country is now because of the jingoistic policies of the Bush Administration a decade ago. As is the case with individuals so too is it with nations; if one wants to be taken seriously then one must practice what they preach and not preach what they don't practice. For over two hundred years America refrained from the practice of unilaterally invading a sovereign nation. It was part of our national DNA not to partake in preemptive war and as such we were on firm moral footing to call out the very kind of aggressive conduct the Russians are engaging in Ukraine.
We do not have that footing, that moral standing, now and we do not have it because an American president by the name of George W. Bush launched a preemptive war against a sovereign nation not to protect American lives and interests but solely to satisfy a personal vendetta. So if you want to blame anyone for this current state of affairs blame Bush because it was his decision to invade Iraq in 2003 without cause or justification that forever ruined America's moral standing to call out other nations for unprovoked aggression that put President Obama and American prestige in the untenable position it is today.
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
The Need for a New Militancy. By Eric Smith
What is the reason for today's Conservatives belated embrace of the life & legacy of the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr? If anyone is even remotely knowledgeable of Conservatives (of whatever political party) long history of rejecting Dr. King's message of love of humanity & his unconditional embrace of diversity & equal rights and justice for all they will understand that their current embrace of Dr. King's life & legacy has absolutely nothing to do with admiration and everything to do with fear.
Like their ideological forebears of slavery and the segregated South, the biggest fear that Conservatives have; that they have always have since seeking to oppress we people of color, is that from the ranks of those they oppress and continue to oppress, will emerge another avenging angel of color along the lines of Nat Turner. This is what keeps Conservatives up at night and along with racism is a key reason for their advocacy of modern Lynch Law in the form of Stand Your Ground.
Like the old southern slave owners who used the benign and relatively well treated house Negroes & like the Southern segregationists who used the bought off ministers of the black church, they seek to promote members of the African American community who are non threatening; who do not believe in self defense and for whom turn the other cheek will forever be their Gospel.
What better symbol to stave the colored hand of vengeance in the face of Conservatives continued assault of the rights & dignified treatment of African Americans than Dr. King himself but not the real Dr. King mind you but rather their bleached, sanitized, and homogenized remaking of the man? "We will assail you violently without reason or cause & strip away your right to vote and be treated as equals" say Conservatives to we African Americans "yet you will never be justified in defending yourselves against our attacks because Dr. King, was all for nonviolence, for turning the other cheek, and Dr. King was a great man!"
Yet the gross miscalculation Conservatives are making is their assumption that we African Americans do not see right through their attempts to whore out the memory of Dr. King. With each passing year, as Dr. King's contemporaries die out and Dr. King himself retreats further into history, Dr. King's message becomes less and less relevant; not because he was wrong but because modern Conservatives seek more and more to use his life's example in the same way a bully puts on a pair of glasses in order to avoid being hit after he's beaten up somebody. There is but so long that a cowardly retreat behind those standards that the aggressive parties themselves refuse to live by will work.
The time is coming when new Nat Turners will emerge and these avenging angels will replace the Angel of Love that was Dr. King even while knowing that doing so may well indeed result in the extinction of the African American community as a whole. Dr. King himself said many times something to the effect that a person who is not willing to die for something has no real reason to live.
What the African American community needs today are more Nat Turners. It needs more Malcolm X's, H. Rap Browns, and Stokely Carmichaels. The rise of such figures are the only thing that will end the blood lust Conservatives & the Radical Right for these people have proven and keep proving time and time again that the word love is not part of their vocabulary; at least where their fellow citizens of color are concerned, and if we people of color have any hope of coming through this current storm intact then we must be more than willing to give what we get in whatever manner we're getting it.
We must get it through our collective skulls that we are under absolutely no obligation to be the doormats and road kill of bigots. There is nothing wrong with wanting to defend yourself, with urging your children to defend themselves. Too many of our men have been made martyrs and not nearly enough of our martyrs have lived long enough to become men. Our lives are important and our future is worth fighting for and if necessary worth dying for. The right of self defense is not the exclusive purview of any one race or culture. It is the fundamental right of all living things and as such it, life, is priceless and therefore more than worth defending at all costs.
Like their ideological forebears of slavery and the segregated South, the biggest fear that Conservatives have; that they have always have since seeking to oppress we people of color, is that from the ranks of those they oppress and continue to oppress, will emerge another avenging angel of color along the lines of Nat Turner. This is what keeps Conservatives up at night and along with racism is a key reason for their advocacy of modern Lynch Law in the form of Stand Your Ground.
Like the old southern slave owners who used the benign and relatively well treated house Negroes & like the Southern segregationists who used the bought off ministers of the black church, they seek to promote members of the African American community who are non threatening; who do not believe in self defense and for whom turn the other cheek will forever be their Gospel.
What better symbol to stave the colored hand of vengeance in the face of Conservatives continued assault of the rights & dignified treatment of African Americans than Dr. King himself but not the real Dr. King mind you but rather their bleached, sanitized, and homogenized remaking of the man? "We will assail you violently without reason or cause & strip away your right to vote and be treated as equals" say Conservatives to we African Americans "yet you will never be justified in defending yourselves against our attacks because Dr. King, was all for nonviolence, for turning the other cheek, and Dr. King was a great man!"
Yet the gross miscalculation Conservatives are making is their assumption that we African Americans do not see right through their attempts to whore out the memory of Dr. King. With each passing year, as Dr. King's contemporaries die out and Dr. King himself retreats further into history, Dr. King's message becomes less and less relevant; not because he was wrong but because modern Conservatives seek more and more to use his life's example in the same way a bully puts on a pair of glasses in order to avoid being hit after he's beaten up somebody. There is but so long that a cowardly retreat behind those standards that the aggressive parties themselves refuse to live by will work.
The time is coming when new Nat Turners will emerge and these avenging angels will replace the Angel of Love that was Dr. King even while knowing that doing so may well indeed result in the extinction of the African American community as a whole. Dr. King himself said many times something to the effect that a person who is not willing to die for something has no real reason to live.
What the African American community needs today are more Nat Turners. It needs more Malcolm X's, H. Rap Browns, and Stokely Carmichaels. The rise of such figures are the only thing that will end the blood lust Conservatives & the Radical Right for these people have proven and keep proving time and time again that the word love is not part of their vocabulary; at least where their fellow citizens of color are concerned, and if we people of color have any hope of coming through this current storm intact then we must be more than willing to give what we get in whatever manner we're getting it.
We must get it through our collective skulls that we are under absolutely no obligation to be the doormats and road kill of bigots. There is nothing wrong with wanting to defend yourself, with urging your children to defend themselves. Too many of our men have been made martyrs and not nearly enough of our martyrs have lived long enough to become men. Our lives are important and our future is worth fighting for and if necessary worth dying for. The right of self defense is not the exclusive purview of any one race or culture. It is the fundamental right of all living things and as such it, life, is priceless and therefore more than worth defending at all costs.
Friday, February 21, 2014
The root of my hostility towards the GOP. By Eric Smith
Here's the deal. The Republican Party has been catering to this racist, crazy crowd that has been calling the first African American President of the United States the "n" word in every way, shape, and form since even before he first assumed office and I'm supposed to give a rats ass about appearing uncivil, super partisan, and cruel to them? Me, an African American man is supposed to give a damn what these people think? I don't think so.
The only thing I owe the Republican Party at this point is a proverbial punch in the nose and a swift kick in the ass. You don't go where that party has gone with people who look like me in general and this president in particular and expect anything approaching civility. Until the Republican Party as a whole publicly renounces and publicly disassociates itself from this crowd it will be in no position to expect, let alone demand, anything other than open hostility from the likes of me.
As long as it caters to that crowd which calls President Obama the "n" word with impunity, which calls for his lynching, which questions his legitimacy to be president, and seeks to suppress the black vote as punishment for our having voted for this first African American president in overwhelming numbers, there will be no room for compromise, no place for civility, and certainly no reason whatsoever for people like me to seek any kind of common ground.
No. As long as the Republican Party stands where it currently stands and caters to this racist crowd that is now its base, it will be rightly regarded by me and people like me for what it really is; our mortal enemy; a mortal enemy not to be accommodated with but destroyed.
The only thing I owe the Republican Party at this point is a proverbial punch in the nose and a swift kick in the ass. You don't go where that party has gone with people who look like me in general and this president in particular and expect anything approaching civility. Until the Republican Party as a whole publicly renounces and publicly disassociates itself from this crowd it will be in no position to expect, let alone demand, anything other than open hostility from the likes of me.
As long as it caters to that crowd which calls President Obama the "n" word with impunity, which calls for his lynching, which questions his legitimacy to be president, and seeks to suppress the black vote as punishment for our having voted for this first African American president in overwhelming numbers, there will be no room for compromise, no place for civility, and certainly no reason whatsoever for people like me to seek any kind of common ground.
No. As long as the Republican Party stands where it currently stands and caters to this racist crowd that is now its base, it will be rightly regarded by me and people like me for what it really is; our mortal enemy; a mortal enemy not to be accommodated with but destroyed.
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
A Most Bitter Irony. By Eric Smith
One of the great ironies I find in this ridiculous notion that to be young, black, and male is to be regarded as being threatening & violent is that the two faces universally recognized as symbolizing love, nonviolence, forgiveness, and reconciliation are the faces of two males of color by the names of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela. Each one of them was at one time a Trayvon Martin & a Jordan Davis; a young kid who happened to have dark skin struggling to survive and make a place in a world that regarded the deaths of those who looked like them as a case of addition by subtraction.
How odd indeed that these two males who's skin color alone marked them as a threat in the eyes of so many are the ones who's love of humanity made the difference between destruction and survival for not one but two nations. This irony will never escape me and I will never understand it. I am considered a threat & a symbol of violence because my skin is dark and my gender is male? Really? If that is so I ask those who think along these lines how was it possible for Fate to produce people like Dr. King & Mr. Mandela; the universal symbols of the exact opposite of what so many say people who look like me represent?
Every black male murdered either by SYG laws or by their fellow people of color has the potential of being the next Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. or Nelson Mandela. That is the potential we lost in Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis. That is what we lose every time one of our young people of color is lost to violence; a potential future symbol of hope and salvation for the world for how different & more terrible our nation and our world would be if Dr. King and Mr. Mandela had suffered the same fate as young Martin and young Davis when they were each their age. A strong case can be made that had such a thing happened there would not even be a world today at all.
So think about it. The loss of every Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis has the potential of being the end of the world at some future time for who is to say that they, like Dr. King and Mr. Mandela, would not have been the ones to save it but for a madman's bullet getting in their way long before they even had the chance to try?
How odd indeed that these two males who's skin color alone marked them as a threat in the eyes of so many are the ones who's love of humanity made the difference between destruction and survival for not one but two nations. This irony will never escape me and I will never understand it. I am considered a threat & a symbol of violence because my skin is dark and my gender is male? Really? If that is so I ask those who think along these lines how was it possible for Fate to produce people like Dr. King & Mr. Mandela; the universal symbols of the exact opposite of what so many say people who look like me represent?
Every black male murdered either by SYG laws or by their fellow people of color has the potential of being the next Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. or Nelson Mandela. That is the potential we lost in Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis. That is what we lose every time one of our young people of color is lost to violence; a potential future symbol of hope and salvation for the world for how different & more terrible our nation and our world would be if Dr. King and Mr. Mandela had suffered the same fate as young Martin and young Davis when they were each their age. A strong case can be made that had such a thing happened there would not even be a world today at all.
So think about it. The loss of every Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis has the potential of being the end of the world at some future time for who is to say that they, like Dr. King and Mr. Mandela, would not have been the ones to save it but for a madman's bullet getting in their way long before they even had the chance to try?
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