What needs to be done

 History certainly is a blueprint of change, but it is also documentation of how some things have not changed as much as we would like to think. In the post-Reconstruction period, during the establishment of the First Jim Crow period, it was deemed a social necessity by Whites to use violence and socioeconomic pressure to "teach niggers their place", and during the height of the nascent revolution that was the Civil Rights Movement, television allowed us to document the violence used by police and others against us and our allies. We find ourselves at yet another moment in history, so I humbly suggest we learn from the path behind us, so as to walk a different path forward. We need to educate OURSELVES, as the American Educational system falls further from relevance. We need to work together and EMPLOY EACH OTHER, as the larger economy demonstrates it only exists as a tool for capital accumulation for a few, not a "rising tide" lifting all ships. We need to ACTIVATE POLITICAL POWER. as politics is a game of power, and there is no way to win begging for mercy from those who don't value compassion. This will also force the national discourse BACK TO THE CENTER LEFT, and away from the right-wing edge of xenophobic, misogynistic, tribalized oligarchy and neoconservatism. Lastly, we need to arm ourselves, both literally and metaphorically, with the tools necessary to engage in a long, vicious fight with a remorseless enemy. WE NEED TO BE A COMMUNITY AGAIN. If we can do that, there are those who will flock to our cause as naturally as birds migrating towards warmer, more hospitable climes. The lines are being drawn, the drums of war are beating in the streets of America again...

For the record: Modern progressives do not want to take what "rightfully belongs" to the haves and give it to the have-nots. That is what plantation owners did during the several hundred years of American chattel slavery. That is what payday and title loan sharks do to financially unstable people today. That is what funds and banks who gamble their constituents funds in markets and inscrutable financial instruments do. That is what purveyors of cheap "non-insurance" insurance plans do.

Progressives want structural changes in a system designed to keep the rich filthy and the rest of the pyramid clean as vulture-picked bone. Progressives want to create an environment of opportunity and egalitarianism under tax policy and enforcement of the law.

Nobody (read reasonable and intelligent person) believes government can solve ALL problems, just as nobody believes government cannot solve ANY problems.

I worry about spending (we spend too much, let's invade less), government overreach (thank you for your service to the private citizenry of the world, Edward Snowden, damn these so-called-liberal-media shills who take every opportunity to defend Big Brother aka the NSA), and inefficient bureaucracy as much as the next guy. Probably more, actually.

However, I am a fan of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution. I am a fan of the Civil Rights Act, and of federal intervention into states that had every intention of making Jim Crow into a new slave code for the nation. It took Federal power to make things happen on that level.

So please, stop using "progressive" and "liberal" as if they are inherently pejorative terms. In return, I will stop praying to your Big Kahuna (read The God of Abraham, Yahweh, J. Hova - whatever he calls himself on his next album) to remove you from this earth before you complete the damage your political and social forerunners began.

Validation is requisite for normative psychic functioning. Too many people internalize their marginalization and the stigma attached to them by society, making them unable to view themselves as fully operative human beings. They come to believe that the things they cherish don't matter, that the people and things they love have no value.

Do the economic injustices inflicted by the world make you angry? You don't have the right to be angry, especially if you are Black in America. Others have that right, but not you.

Do you smoke pot? Sorry, this is not California or Colorado, and that is not an acceptable alternative. Have a Newport and a shot of Ciroc. Then piss in this cup, let's see if you get this cubicle job.

Do you perceive misogyny, homophobia, racism and class discrimination. You should not be seeing those things, because they don't really exist in America anymore. And if you talk about the privileges associated with being a financially secure, educated, heterosexual White male of Christian faith, you are a reverse racist and your perceptions are not relevant.

Why do you think people join street gangs, fraternities and legislative bodies? To be a part of something, to belong to something, to have their thoughts, feelings and perceptions validated.

Why do you think unstable individuals pick up firearms and open fire on strangers? They are disconnected, internally stigmatized and feel invalidated by the societies that created them.

Namaste means "I bow to your form", it is a traditional greeting derived from Sanskrit widely used throughout India and certain spiritual communities. It is similar to the Navi (yes, from Avatar) "I see you"; it is a recognition of the valid existence of the person you are talking to.

Ralph Ellison wrote of the opposite phenomenon, the utter lack of recognition and validation experienced by an ethnic minority surrounded by casually accepted structural racism and prejudice, in his classic "Invisible Man".

If we want to solve the problems facing us as individuals, as families, as congregations of faith, as citizens of this country and denizens of this planet...we must learn to see each other.

The alternative is simple disintegration of human progress.

Namaste. I see you, my friends. And to those who disagree with everything I say and count me among their enemies...

I see you too.

Election Day

As I read about the armed robbery of a fast food spot in Portsmouth last night, a crime that resulted in a female employee being shot, I wanted to make a relevant comment. You know, something insightful about the relationship between prolonged economic depression, the perennial lack of opportunity perceived by so many in the hood, and the psychological reality experienced by street youth in general - and how all of this ties into occurrences of violence and crime.

Instead, I find myself thinking of my youth in New York City, and especially of my mother, a Black woman herself widowed by street crime, who slogged through all kinds of weather and personal ailments to make it to the post office job she held my entire life. The streets were still reeling from the nuclear-level impact of crack cocaine and the fast money it injected into the hood, not to mention the rapid militarization of the police force and attendant targeting of black and brown boys. Her desire to get my grandparents out of the daily pressures of that life is what eventually led her to move them to Virginia Beach during the 1990's.

I think about how street crime is an ever-present reality in poor neighborhoods, like a damned Uroboros, the snake eating itself which symbolizes eternity, in this case symbolic of a community devouring itself. The perpetrators and victims of street crime are usually from the same community, creating a sort of predatory microcosm in which certain citizens are forced to form the buffer between street-level criminality and the rest of the society.

These are the same neighborhoods populated with check cashing spots, payday loan storefronts, greasy-spoon Chinese food joints and neighborhood stores that exist mostly to sell blunts, beer and lottery tickets. Rarely is there a real supermarket in walking distance, and eating anything other than garbage requires a deliberate effort.

It is not easy being poor in America. It is not easy being a single mother. It is not fun being Black, and it is no joy to live in a concrete jungle filled with all manner of hungry creatures. Put all this together and then add atop it a bureaucratic system seemingly designed to extort money from the poorest among us by any means possible. Add a vicious political current that attacks the poor for the crime of poverty and seeks to gut the social safety net whose tenuous strands keep so many from falling completely through the growing cracks in our social foundation. Do the math when you add a society that sees the victims and criminals as part and parcel of the same problem, and treats the entire community accordingly (stop and frisk, driving while black, sentencing disparities, et al and ad infinitum), and a popular culture so bleached of soul that it becomes a delivery vehicle for nihilism and self-degradation.

Then I think about the other side of criminality - the fat cat hedge fund managers, the bank execs with their multi-million dollar golden parachutes, the predator capitalists who would sell gasoline undies to their auntie in Hell if it would help their margins, the corrupt and for-sale professional politicians who exist to serve the oligarchs and assist in sucking the lifeblood from the poor.

I think of all these things, and then remember that today is election day, albeit an off-year contest, which ostensibly idealizes the bloodless change of power in this country...and I wonder...how would we be different, as a nation, if there was no buffer...if more people were forced to live the life of a second-class citizen, if the illusion was more fully ripped away.

As above,
so below.

I see the agenda being pushed by political elites in this country, the future being engineered, the dog-tiredness of the lower classes and gadget-induced apathy of the diminishing middle. There is a vastness to our capacity for violence as a nation, a military, a police force, and individuals.
And I cannot help but think...

Soon we will find out.

I'm so glad to live in a nation founded on the principles of social equality and judeochristian values. As I read about the push to develop smart body armor for our soldiers, I think about the parallel push to cut food stamps and SNAP benefits, and I think, thank god! What we need is the capacity to wage global war at a moment's notice, not children with full bellies. Why can't liberals understand this?

Similarly, as we allow our public education infrastructure to erode, while simultaneously hanging a debtor's noose around those lucky, determined and talented enough to make it through higher education, I think - yes, this is what Jesus would do! If God wanted poor brown children to read, he would have made them rich and white!

As for the push to prevent millions of Americans from having access to health insurance for the first time, this is so obviously based in scripture that I don't even need to defend it. Blessed are the meek, it is said. The economic and social pressures being applied to the lives of most Americans are simply designed to ensure their meekness until the Lord returns.

If people could stop trying to eek out a meager existence in this world and just focus on their reward in the kingdom which is to follow, things would be much easier for the corrupt politicians and Objectivist billionaires to finish the establishment of dystopia.

Get with the program people. Stop telling people to read, vote and think. Allow them to sink further into economic quicksand. Ignore the cries of your neighbor's children. Attack the poor for the crime of their poverty. Close your eyes, throw a dart at a map of the Middle East, and prepare to invade randomly.

You know, learn to be a 'Murican.

Treason is like a box of chocolates.

To Cable News Hosts:

Stop calling Edward Snowden a traitor. Treason is a crime defined in Article III of the U.S. Constitution and Snowden's actions have not been judged to meet that standard. While you are at it, stop defending America's "need" to illegally spy on THE ENTIRE WORLD in order to be "safe"...whatever that even means. Stop calling yourself a journalist when all you are doing is repeating the crap the political elites spout as gospel and helping to brain-scrub the masses into unwitting complicity. Stop selling out the free press so damned hard for your comfortable cable news seat. Take the member of corporate America from your lips long enough breathe the free air while it is still free, then use that breath to speak something closer to the truth of lived reality. 

 Stop hurting America.

On the Supposed Freedoms We Enjoy

So the supposedly liberal hosts of a supposedly liberal cable news show on a supposedly liberal network just finished what amounted to a near-blanket defense of the rights of the United States government to commit espionage trumping anything like transparency and privacy rights. One of the hosts did make a distinction between domestic spying on Americans and foreign espionage. I am not taking a specific stance on the Edward Snowden leaks at this time, but I will take a swing at answering the question "Who have these leaks benefited besides Edward Snowden?" that was posed by one of the hosts.

My answer as to "who benefited" is simple: the fundamental concept of free information in a free society benefited; every American benefited by the NSA being scrutinized under the rule of law we purport to cherish; the global community benefited by being brought into the loop on American activity that is antithetical to the idea of us being a fair player on the global stage.

 You know who has not benefited tremendously? One Edward Snowden. He is an exile, a fugitive, a man without a country, held at the mercy of nations with a human rights record we decry...and all this instead of the benefits he could have garnered from anonymous sale of the information. Shame on the supposedly liberal media for their supposed journalism on the actions of this supposed traitor.

Expecting anything less than functional support of the Big Brother State by commercial media was, I suppose, foolish on my part.