Nappy Headed Candidate

PSST!!!  Barak Obama is a Muslim, terrorist, uppity Nigger!

Since when aren't progressives used to being called Communists, Terrorist Sympathizers, and Atheist, Secular Humanists -- simply because we hold deeply rooted, objectively legitimate criticisms of America, it's history, which includes both Slavery and Genocide, and its often exploitative and always Morally Hazardous Capitalist economic system?

Thus I find the current charges against Barak Obama, or more correctly, against his apparently angry Black preacher, in a phrase, all too Politics Incorporated!

Unfortunately, I am compelled to first digress, to remind that it’s not fair to have it both ways.  If America cannot tolerate Don Imus' tasteless racist jokes or Geraldine Ferraro's "ridiculous, wrong headed" political analysis, then it cannot tolerate Race Anger either, legitimate though it may be.  Thus Barak Obama has just been de-legitimized as a Presidential candidate -- for even risking listening to such a sermon.

This is the surreal state of Political Correctness in America, where if you so much as challenge the corporate, focus-group, think-thank sludge broadcast 24x7x365 over every channel and Internet connection, then there is obviously something wrong with you!  If you think the War On Drugs is as absurd as the War On Terror, or that the rules on Wall Street favor the biggest firms and the largest accounts, and attempt to actually do something about it, as Elliot Spitzer did, then rest assured, you will be wire tapped -- and if any enforceable transgression is found, severely punished -- unless you are lucky enough to be Client1 through Client8 or Client10 through Client[N] -- and the opposing political party's administration has no witch hunt pending against you...

For the record, I am not endorsing prostitution.  Though one can argue I think that, on the scale of human transgressions, in light of basic human genetic determinism, it is relatively harmless within a larger social context in a progressive society.

But America is no progressive society! America is a self-righteous, hypocritical, corporate oligarchy, where challenging or offensive words like pricks and pussies and poverty and homelessness and taxes and regulation are simply not tolerated.  America is self reliant, except when it comes to oil importation or Wall Street bailouts.  America is pure -- as pure as the fake, squeaky clean, White plastic Jesus behind the pulpit of virtually every tax-exempt church within its borders.  Fat.  Stupid.  Happy.  That's how Government Incorporated wants us.  So far so good.

But then someone even a tiny bit different comes along -- a political candidate that stands out, literally, amid the older, Whiter and more cynical landscape -- a candidate that, simply through the pigment of his skin and the hope and politically all-too-rare intelligence of his rhetoric, challenges Politics Inc.  He is Black.  Can you imagine that -- America with a pretty Black man out front?  Right up there in front of Jesus' American flag and everything!  Red, White, Blue -- and Black.  That's just asking too much I guess.  A sold-out, old, White lady that can drop her g's when necessary to win a primary in Ohio -- workin[g], fixin[g], manipulatin[g] -- a woman with the Washington and Wall Street connections we're all taught to aspire to -- she's just fine with the Corporation.  But an uppity Black?!  Round up the camera trucks, boys.  Let's get to work undoing the Democratic process!

I wish I could live in a country that could learn to tolerate it all: Don Imus' and Geraldine Ferraro's stupid racism, harmless drugs like marijuana, essentially victim-less crimes like prostitution, even the justifiable but angry denouncements of a Black preacher.  In fact I believe there's a word in the English language for tolerating essentially harmless diversity -- pluralism.

I think we can all use a reminder that words, powerful as they are, are not lynch mobs or daggers or bombs or hunger or cancer; That legalized marijuana won't hurt anyone except excessive users and maybe their loved ones; That prostitution is the oldest profession on record -- and seems unlikely to disappear -- unless we do; That a planet without racism -- forward, reverse or otherwise -- is a more perfect world, but one that I or anyone reading this I fear is unlikely to behold.

But I am naive enough to hope for mere improvement.  To live to see progressives, be they Democrats, Republicans, Socialists or Anarchists -- whatever silly brands we organize behind -- admit that individually and perhaps collectively we all basically want the same things: MORE life, MORE liberty and GREATER pursuit of happiness -- but in a rational and sustainable world that holds these truths self evident for every living thing, including future generations. 

But Government Incorporated, government of, by and for corporations, mass producing a focus-group society that rejects all unmarketable forms of expression and behavior, be they subversive, angry, challenging or even legitimately dissent-ful, yields none of the above.  Orwell was right.  We are cattle now, plodding our way to the killing floor, unless of course a forklift is required. 

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