you're black, fiscal conservative, social moderate, and you don't want the chance for a liberal black man to be president?
well, that's exactly why.
for the reasons why, i want to quote two sources, which pretty much sum up my feelings on the whole matter.
one is from an unlikely source, and i'll start with that one.
for those who don't know, mumia abu jamal is on death row in pennsylvania, where he's been for the last couple of decades for having shot a policeman. he's all but confessed to the crime, yet somehow he evades execution.
anyway, i read something he said about obama getting the nomination and it has stuck with me.... here's the most pertinent part:
It is a measure of how dire is the hour that they’ve passed the keys to the kingdom to a Black man.
As in many American cities, Black mayors were let in when the treasuries were almost barren, and tax bases were almost at rock-bottom.
With the nation’s manufacturing base also a thing of history, amidst the socioeconomic wreckage of globalization, with foreign affairs in shambles, the rulers reach for a pretty, brown face to front for the Empire.
this has just stuck with me. i mean deep inside and won't come out and lingers and threatens to consume me. because he's right. with the exception of charlotte and denver, every major city that has had a black mayor got its first black mayor when, as mumia points out, the city was in really bad shape. does anyone remember new york in the dinkins years, philadelphia when goode got to be mayor, los angeles when bradley made it, or chicago when washington became mayor? even dallas was in real bad shape when ron kirk got the nod.
america is befok.
of course, that the polls numbers are even this close means that this election is all about race. at least the good people of the commonwealth of pennsylvania [where high taxes helped pay for my very expensive education] were man and woman enough to say "i don't think i can vote for a black man." of course, the still-strong, granular, ingrained racism that i have personally encountered as recently as 2003 [the last time i was forced to go there to pay lipservice to the lady that gave birth to me] is the reason that i am glad that i have gotten the hell out of that place.
...and this brings me to the second quote.
a lot of people have been teasing, laughing, talking about "bring the pain" by chris rock. the presidential bits they talked about during the primary "ooh, a black president" and led to the tossed salad man and all that.
but that's not the part of bring the pain that worries me about an obama presidency.
this is the part (yes, it's from ni**as versus black people):
i got two jobs, can't you get one? i would give you one of mine, but then you'll fuck up and get laid off and then they won't hire another ni**a for 20 years.
this presidency, this election coming up. it's a poisoned chalice. whoever wins will be a one-term president. it's the 1976 election all over again. do you honestly think there will be another black man in our lifetime that would get this close to the presidency? no. because as the way things are looking globally right now, it is going to get worse before it gets better. i'm bankrupting myself staying *out* of the united states because i don't want to be stuck *in* it when the shit really hits the fan.
let me have a chance to have a black president during a time of feast instead of a time of famine, and perhaps i might feel differently. but, honestly, that isn't going to happen. okay, it *might* happen. but it definitely won't ever happen if obama wins this election, because it's about to get much, much worse, and he will be blamed for not being able to fix george bush's mess.
to be honest, i think the republican national committee thinks that this is a lost cause. or rather, they thought so before mccain picked palin. palin might just make this thing winnable for mccain. if she does, and has the mantle of incumbency in 4 years' time, hillary will have to make a choice: hold the seat or run for president. hopefully by that time the united states will not be in the place of another wannabe theocracy where two women ran for president against each other. (that would be bangladesh, for those keeping score.)
i'm out.
let me know what you think about this....
1 comment:
I've worried about the poisoned chalice thing, too. I am starting to formulate a theory that goes something like this: we may escape the crash through moderately paced, steady, long term devaluation and the transfer of ownership of the commanding heights of our economy to foreign capital. Essentially, in two generations, we go from being the major economic power in the world to being a commodity exporting, basic goods manufacturing third world economy. The question mark there is energy. Perhaps the "Pickens Plan" solves that...
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