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Potus in Rosa Park's seat
“It would be a good idea”
Mahatma Gandhi, when asked his opinion of western civilization.
Putting content into fine words would be the greatest of revolutions, now and always.
Cynics today might be forgiven for thinking that the words of Jesus are often only used as a cover for serial child abuse, but who could doubt that if only all those with four grandparent that called themselves Christians practiced only the following Christian precepts: to love their neighbors as themselves, to do unto others as they would have others do unto them, to never cast the first stone and forgive others their trespasses, then most of the world that even today considers itself civilized would instantly be like heaven on earth. However hypocritical Christians abound and we are as we are.
I cannot imagine that anybody would call Jesus himself a hypocrite, he certainly walked the walk, no space between his words and his actions, however hypocrites can often say memorable things too.
An example: perhaps the greatest hypocrite in America’s history, Thomas Jefferson, a brutal slave owner, a sexual exploiter of his slaves, wrote the most powerful words in the American canon, words that rival the Bible in their grandeur and echo: Jefferson wrote that line, “All men are created equal”…
Despite Jefferson’s hypocrisy, citizens trying to fill those words with some meaning brought about a revolution in my lifetime.
How hypocritical were Jefferson’s words in America’s mouth?
An example. In the segregated South, during World War Two, during America’s war against fascism, African-American GIs, wearing the uniform of the United States army, often found themselves riding in the back of public buses while German POW trustees rode up front with the local white people.
How is that for hypocrisy?
The Civil Rights movement changed that. Today, with all the endless caveats you can apply, a black man is the president of the United States. He is the Chief of State of the most powerful country in the world, sitting in the White House, the tenant of a building where during most of America’s history the only black people ever seen there were butlers and waiters.
People got lynched, went to jail, marched and sang for the photo that tops this post. J. Edgar Hoover would spin in his grave if he saw it. There are people still spinning when they see it.
So, if enough people make their minds up to change, to change themselves, then to change the world, then change is doable.
I would say that during the coming year, the next set of fine noble, words that need to be reconsecrated, refurbished and refilled with meaning are Abraham Lincoln’s from his Gettysburg Address:
“Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth”.
To do that the Citizen’s United verdict needs to be overturned and campaign financing needs to be regulated. Any meaningful change begins there.
The goal is clear, now the question is, who is going to bell the cat?
Happy New Year!
14 Comments
Oh my goodness, how bold! All the way back to 2010.
When are you going to realize that catastrophe is a crapitalist opportunity?
Bah humbug.
When you get ready to storm the Winter Palace, be sure not to forget to wear your galoshes.
What, you won’t be there, dear scribbler?
Got yer back!
More inconsistent nonsense gets you out of a pickle, eh, comrade?
Say, tell us what Sanchez Gordillo’s been up to.
Many of the biggest advances in human history came about through the actions of pretty skeevy people, who often weren’t intending their actions to have the effects that they would and did. When thieves fall out, honest men come into their own.
The example I usually like to cite is that of the Magna Carta, the foundation for English (and thus British, Indian, and American) law. King John was forced into signing this document because several dozen nobles who wanted to curb his powers made him do it. They were looking out for their own interests, but once the document was signed it became a departure point for other expansions of freedoms and rights.
It’s just a matter of a few weeks time before the New Deal is diminished– thanks to the fake confrontation looming over the debt ceiling. The right wants to do away with entitlement programs and privatize SS. I suppose Obamney will offer to raise the eligibility age to whatever his sponsors think they can get away with. They don’t want the grand betrayal pissing-off so many people that the media can’t smooth it over. The deadline-crisis/puppet-show will continue to encore not just in just a few weeks, but over and over– in some fashion or another. The proceeds are in the trillions for this gig. Who’d kill Citizens United– the cash cow?
“People got lynched, went to jail, marched and sang for the photo that tops this post.”
If that was a real black man who was elected President and sat in that bus, you might have a point. But Obama isn’t a black President. He only plays one on TV. His values are as corporatist lily-white as they come.
I think you insult the civil rights movement by in any way portraying the election and re-election of this Fascist as a triumph for it.
If you haven’t read this Barbarian, you need to. Ishmael Reed tells it like it is.
Oh please, you can cherry pick the non-objectionable things about Christianity but you can’t possibly argue that these are intrinsic to Christianity. Christianity has, for centuries been about tribalism, racism, genocide, legitimizing despotic regimes to preserve itself (like any parasite) at the expense of enlightenment and human progress (or haven’t you heard of the Dark Ages?). The hypocritical Christians are the ones who try to white wash its long, bloody sociopathic history. The child abuse scandals are not an aberration – they are the inevitable byproduct of an authoritarian, misogynistic belief system that invests its leaders with the property of infallibility. That’s not cynicism its reality.
Yep, I guess the fact that he’s a nauseating, right-wing neo-liberal prick doesn’t enter into it at all.
Once again I have to ask you the question you refuse to supply a cogent response to – would you be writing this same triumphalistic bullshit if the black president in question was Herman Cain or Allen West?
Thanks. That’s a good read. I run into some of those attitudes every day at work from other white people who think I’m crazy for living in my predominantly black neighborhood. Not a week goes by when I don’t hear somebody say something like “How can (OB) stand living around (whispered) those people?”
Well, “those people” have been FAR better neighbors than any bunch of hillbilly-assed rednecks or partying white professionals have ever been, as far as I’m concerned.
I hear ya there.
Sounds like my last apartment in Fl. Just ad a few wise assed students into the mix.
Yes, in that sense, yes. “Equal” doesn’t have to mean “wonderful”. Could Cain or West have been worse than Dubya? A lot of lilly white assholes have been president, why shouldn’t a black asshole be president too? Having a black face in the presidency has huge historical significance in the USA, one of the most historically racist countries in the world.
Obama is a very mediocre president, just another in a long line of mediocrities, but he does signify “change you can believe in”… having a black president is a huge change and you can believe he is black. It was a form of racism to believe that the color of a person’s skin is anything but the color of their skin and that the American system was electing Angela Davis when they elected Barry Obama. That a black president should be just as mediocre as the average white president is a triumph of colorblind egalitarianism.
My main point is anything but “triumphalistic“, it is simply that change is possible, if people organize they can change the country… In this case the volcano gave birth to a mouse.
Really, you’d have to ask Michelle if Barry is authentically “black” as she has access to much more data than we have. To the best of my knowledge he is a mulatto, but then most African-Americans are not of pure African decent. The color of a person’s skin indicates nothing more than the color of their skin. Like I said above, It was a form of racism to believe that the color of a person’s skin is anything but the color of their skin and that the American system was electing Angela Davis when they elected Barry Obama.