As
the corporate/military U.S. Empire, headed by the nominally
black Barack Obama, with the complicity of his Democrat[ic]
and Republican party political pimps, rumbles along, crushing
the economic needs, human rights, and aspirations of everyday
Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people in this
nation and around the world, conditions for just plain
ordinary people are worsening and deteriorating at lightning
speed. Only the avaricious, blood-sucking, bloated rich
are financially benefiting from the increasing
misery of the masses of ordinary people.
Meanwhile,
the propaganda arm of the U.S. Government, i.e. the corporate-stream
media, continues incessantly to peddle and parrot
the distractions, distortions, omissions, and outright
lies of its corporate masters to the enormous detriment
of everyday people. At all costs, this corporate-stream
media seeks to ignore, marginalize, or discredit those
persons who are critical thinkers and who see the
need for real systemic change.
The
first casualties in this corporate/military government’s
persistent war against everyday people are critical
thought and political dissent. This nation
has a president and other politicians whose de facto contempt
for the pain and the common sense of everyday people is
surpassed only by their arrogance, wars abroad, double-speak,
and lies. Their actions repeatedly belie their
phony and misleading rhetoric. They, like their corporate
masters, are nothing more than political pimps and
economic blood-suckers of the people, whom they
treat as perpetual ping-pong balls and caged
hamsters endlessly running on the spinning wheel to
oblivion.
The
U.S.
corporate/military government is generally feared
by the people of this nation, not held accountable
by them. Until this fear is replaced by a collective,
actualized, and unflinching demand on the part of
everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people for
transparency in government, full accountability, and
economic parity, real change will not be forthcoming.
Everyday people will remain as helpless, hapless pawns
only as long as they/we allow ourselves to be.
Notwithstanding
the odious genocide of indigenous people and the slavery
of Black people that accompanied the founding of this
nation, the U.S. Declaration of Independence pulled no
punches when it correctly and explicitly stated that governments
must derive “...their just powers from the consent
of the governed,” and “That whenever any
form of government becomes destructive of these
ends, it is the right of the people to alter
or abolish it, and institute new government...”
Undeniably implicit in the requirement that the “power[s]”
of government be derived “from the consent of the
governed” is the right of political dissent. Moreover,
it is the explicit “right” of the people to “alter
or abolish” any “form of government” that is not
what the Declaration of Independence refers to as “just.”
The
cynical and callous manipulation and domination
of everyday people by the 1 or 2 percent corporate/military
elite of this nation is by no means “just,” and
it is an utter mockery and subversion of
anything even near to deriving its powers to govern “from
the consent of the governed.” Additionally, this corporate-government’s
perpetual wars of empire, the ‘Patriot Act,’ ‘Extraordinary
Rendition,’ trillion dollar give-aways to the multi-national
Wall Street robber barons, the shredding of any meaningful
constitutional rights, attacks on Medicare and Social
Security, and other increasing economic austerity measures
against everyday people, are further examples of
precisely how the “consent of the governed” has been brazenly
subverted by the corporate/military elite
of this nation.
Inevitably,
an increasing collective loathing for the dishonest
and hypocritical internal and external policies and practices
of this U.S. corporate-government
may yet very well come to replace lethargy and
the fear of said government. For the moment however, this
corporate-government is relying upon its formidable ability
to manipulate the masses of everyday people by using fear,
lies, and constant subterfuge. Also. for the moment,
so many people of all colors in this nation remain,
in actual terms, the economic slaves, pawns, and cannon
fodder of the U.S. Empire.
Whether
it is the police throughout this country the FBI, CIA,
NSA, TSA, etc., this nation’s corporate-government uses
fear, subterfuge, and the suppression of political dissent
as a means to perpetuate this political theatre of
the absurd in order to manipulate, quash, and subvert
the “consent” and will of everyday people. As a long time
reader of The Black Commentator recently wrote
concerning the present overwhelmingly insane and lethargic
state of affairs in this nation: “The police have now
niggerized any and everybody through fear! This
may explain the theatre of the absurd that we are witnessing.”
In
due course however, even fear must take a back seat to
the increasing joblessness, homelessness, despair, and
hunger, etc. of everyday people in this nation. And even
the double-speak rhetoric of the wily Barack
Obama and his Republicrat [i.e. Democrat and Republican]
cohorts will prove to be of no avail in soothing the legitimate
rage of the people. For in the words of Langston Hughes:
“What happens to a dream deferred?”
Clearly,
the entire U.S.
government, its corporate-stream “news” media, and most
other institutions of the United
States of America are inextricably
beholden to the dictates of the tiny, blood-sucking
corporate elite of this nation. U.S. wars and military
occupations and/or interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan,
Pakistan, Libya, and elsewhere have nothing whatsoever
to do with the championing of so-called ‘democracy;’ and
they invariably mean more pain and more death
to everyday people both at home and abroad, while
serving to enrich the bottomless, blood-drenched coffers
of the corporate elite. The
United States is a corporate plutocracy whose
alleged political ‘leaders’ are the conscienceless
bane of this nation and of humanity as a whole.
Hypocrisy,
lies, and subterfuge continue to be the mainstays of this
U.S. Empire, but only for as long as we, the people,
allow it. Despite constant acts of subversion, distortion
and subterfuge by the world-wide octopus-like tentacles
of the U.S. corporate/military Empire to manipulate and
subvert the legitimate needs and aspirations of everyday
people around the world, our sisters and brothers in Haiti,
Palestine, Egypt, Yemen, Tunisia, Mexico, Greece, Spain,
Portugal, Ireland, and so many other places on
Mother Earth are resisting corporate and/or military hegemony
in ‘body and soul,’ and they are rising up as a part of
the human family.
Perpetual
wars, corporate hegemony & greed, and austerity for
the masses of everyday people are absolutely unacceptable.
The pillage of our precious planet Mother Earth is also
totally unacceptable. It is time to make the people’s
history. It is time to reclaim the narrative of everyday
Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people collectively.
Whether we like it or not our futures on this planet
are irreversibly bound together. The people’s struggle
for freedom, justice, and systemic change, irrespective
of color, whether it in this nation or anywhere else in
the world, is a protracted one and cannot successfully
exist and grow in a vacuum.
In
the words of Malcolm X [el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz], “Any
kind of movement for freedom of Black people based solely
within the confines of America is absolutely doomed to fail.” Ours must
be an international struggle for justice and human
rights. Nevertheless, we must begin it right here
in this nation, and link it to our sisters and brothers
planet-wide. It’s certainly not easy nor
is it short, but then, no serious and effective struggle
ever is. As Frederick Douglass said, “Power concedes nothing
without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
Onward
then my sisters and brothers! Onward!
BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board Member, Larry Pinkney,
is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, the former Minister
of Interior of the Republic of New Africa, a former political
prisoner and the only American to have successfully self-authored
his civil/political rights case to the United Nations
under the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights. In connection with his political organizing activities
in opposition to voter suppression, etc., Pinkney was
interviewed in 1988 on the nationally televised PBS News
Hour, formerly known as The MacNeil / Lehrer
News Hour. For more about Larry Pinkney see the book,
Saying No to Power: Autobiography of a 20th Century Activist and
Thinker,
by William Mandel [Introduction by Howard Zinn]. (Click
here
to read excerpts from the book.) Click here to contact Mr. Pinkney.