October
9 , 2008 - Issue 294 |
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Elect
the Four Horsemen! Represent Our Resistance By Dr. Lenore J. Daniels, PhD BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board |
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The amount of poverty and suffering required for the emergence of a Rockefeller, and the amount of depravity that the accumulation of a fortune of such magnitude entails, are left out of the picture, and it is not always possible to make the people in general see this… Imperialism has been defeated in many partial battles. But it remains a considerable force in the world and we cannot expect its final defeat save through effort and sacrifice on the part of all of us… I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. The people liberate themselves.
Love the Obama! No earmarks! But earmarks and bailouts for the corporations (our friends and financial supporters from Wall Street) are all right - a patriotic duty! I agree with
the McMarverick. I agree with the McMarverick. We must defend our corrupt, murderous allies! Just love that Obama for being so forthright and progressive! Republicrats all! Imperialists all! Change would mean considering the rights of the people, considering ways to provide all of the people a decent quality life. Change would mean recognizing the need to end capitalism and thus the pursuit of Empire. Four Republicrats are running toward the White House. Four Horsemen. See them run. Hockey Mom and hubby Todd are middle class with assets over 1.2 million dollars! They are middle class. Just like you! Clap! McMarverick with his wifey beer heiress has fought for your right to buy your six-pack of beer. Clap! He’s a POW too, don’t forget! The Obama, the favorite, the front runner, we love so much, sings all out of time. False notes rise and mimic the chorus of old guard crooners. But he’s new. He’s change. Go ahead and clap! Military supremacy is not off the table. Clap yourself silly! Vote for them all - all at once - by voting just once! They are all so damn good for the country. Meanwhile, how many Blacks, Latino/as, poor whites, low-wage earners are being dumped from the polls? How many? You have to love the Obama for staying so cool and calm, so silent about this backdoor shenanigan. McMaverick, the Bid, and the Hockey Mom all silent because too busy staying focused on the race toward the White House. The hypocrisy is not the fault of these four horsemen. The bailout bill off and then on and then passed is what a child does when parents refuse to be parents and remain firm. The Four Horsemen racing toward the finish line, toward the big White House, racing to harness the power over the life and death of the planet and its people represent the inertia of the American public in general. “The chief danger of hypocrisy is that it inhibits self-understanding. The hypocrite ends up fooling mainly himself,” writes Andrew Bacevich (The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism). Don’t relinquish the right to be consumers and indulge in the desire for more and more even at the expense of your next door neighbor or family member. That’s capitalism. Shortages mean the poor, working class, and immigrants must be crushed. They deserve nothing because, as the lie is told and repeated by the general public, they have taken advantage of everything! So it is written in the great Manifest Destiny document, the only good book that really matters. The only document that supersedes even the Constitution. But sing aloud:
War by any means
is the right of Americans, so it’s no accident that the Four Horsemen
will not end the violence in It’s not the fault of the Four Horsemen. The general public herein Amerikkka sanctions their wild race to the whitest house in the land. The Four Horsemen are tripping over themselves on their way to the finish line. Corporate camera heads recording the spectacle, sprint alongside the Horsemen. Look at the White one, the Red one, the Black one, the Pale one - as if there’s distance among them, as if they bring anything but the same conquest, war, famine, and death. To credit the president alone with “culpability for our current predicament,” writes Bacevich, is to credit the president “with underserved historical significance…The impulses that have landed us in a war of no exits and no deadlines comes from within.” Foreign policy
provides “an outward manifestation of American domestic ambitions, urges,
and fears.” Bacevich continues: These “ambitions, urges, and fears”
are an “expressions of domestic dysfunction - an attempt to manage or
deter coming to terms with contradictions besetting the American way
of life.” Those contradictions, Bacevich concludes, have “found their
ultimate expression in the perpetual state of war afflicting the Oh now Katie - I’ll get back to ya' on that… Don’t laugh. You are implicated by your lack of outrage, by your resignation before the golden altar of imperialism. You are wimp before the corporate media and fail to step out of your comfort zone to challenge the deplorable pantomime of an election played out to entertain and distract you rather than engage you with any meaningful participation as a citizen. The Four Horsemen will continue the pledge to pursue imperialist conquests, wars, and bring famine and all manner of death scenes to a theatre near you. To die for imperialists is an expression of democracy? Is it freedom? Go back! Go back! Go back to your comfort zone. Watch it all unfold around you. Watch those debates on your new big HD screen. Call in your vote for debater with the cutest smile or the best one-liner - and clap. Above all clap wildly! Whirl around and clap yourself to sleep… Your Four Horsemen will be waiting there for you. BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, Lenore Jean Daniels,
PhD, has been a writer, for over thirty years of commentary, resistance
criticism and cultural theory, and short stories with a Marxist sensibility
to the impact of cultural narrative violence and its antithesis, resistance
narratives. With entrenched dedication to justice and equality, she
has served as a coordinator of student and community resistance projects
that encourage the Black Feminist idea of an equalitarian community
and facilitator of student-teacher communities behind the walls of academia
for the last twenty years. Dr. Daniels holds a PhD in Modern American
Literatures, with a specialty in Cultural Theory (race, gender, class
narratives) from |
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