Slogging through the blogging

I was reading something the other day (or maybe I was listening to the radio) when I came across a description of people who set up blogs and are not consceintious about posting regularly and frequently as "sloggers." I guess that means they do not meet the criteria for being considered a 'blogger' and through their slothful, irresponsible or cavalier attitude are giving the hard working blokes and wonks a bad name.

Well, tut - tut to those who feel that way. There are those of us who use blogging as a means of self-expression. We are not connected to a commercial enterprise where we are compensated by the word, post or article. So we may not have the sign of the blogger embedded in our forehead. Does that make us bad, insincere or unappreciated and unwanted? I suppose for the hardcore maybe. But I would hope that there are those similar to me who think that such an attitude is just a hissy fit.

Since last posting the world has spun wildly on its axis tilting towards the sun and circling the moon. Both domestic and international politics have given those of us who pay attention to such things quite a start. I was reading an internet article just this morning about a Pakistani legislator who justified "honor killings" as honorable and appropriate based on tradition and culture. That sounds like the rationale used by Russia to invade or maybe just annex part of Georgia. I mean afterall the part annexed was by tradition and culture as least as much if not more Russian than Georgian.

With the success of Barak Obama attacking both tradition and (Washington insider) culture and having smashing success doing it, his antagonist, John McCain, must have been reading his mail as evidenced by the Republican vice-presidential pick. A woman. A young woman. An outsider who has already done to a few good ol' boy insiders what the Right Reverend Jesse Jackson was caught suggesting he would like to do to Obama. Will it shake-up the race? Will it blunt McCain's attack against Obama as being too new and inexperienced or will Obama's camp give new life to that particular analysis by trotting it out as a weapon against the new Republican V.P.?

I am telling you the world is a ghetto of ideas and opinions. The American public are aware that the ills of the economy are beyond the borders of this country and stem from transnational corporate capital. None of the candidates are suggesting they can or want to do anything about that. But there are those who hold their breath and hope. They are doing such a good job keeping hope alive that common sense may be dead on arrival. We say what happened to the closest thing recently to Obama's mad dash to the Presidency. That was Gov. Deval Patrick's stand against the forces of evil in his triumphant battle for the Massachusetts governor's office. Those who backed him and humped to help him rise have been deflated, dejected and disappointed. The point is not that either should not do what they can or be where they can but rather we need to be a little sober about the potential benefits and impact of a Gov. Deval Patrick or a Pres. Barack Obama.

The African experience is embedded in American culture through the long twisted, sick history of human trafficking, murder and treachery we collquially refer to as "the slave trade" rather than the horrible, cruel, unimaginable grotesque and horrible experience that it was. Our souls sick and our character crippled from the degradation required of both parties in the evil enterprise of dehumanization that still resonates in the international and American political economy today. So what is the big deal? What can't a Black man represent the interests of American society just as well as a white guy? Well, the concern and doubt stems from the foul, decaying odor of white supremacy that still permates that halls of American life. We don't want to trade a White slave driver for a Black one.

But the terms of the discussion are such that we have lost the opportunity to bring wholeness and health to the conversation when we accede to the idea of race! Of course people look different from different parts of the world. Culture and tradition probably results in some people having more exposure and experience in a certain areas or with a certain thing than others. But none of that establishes a scientific basis for the spurious notion of race. Why are we holding to this idea. Me thinks it smacks of White supremacy. While there are those who get the crumbs from the masters table because they live in the big house of White supremacy and grin and shuffle their feet or dance a jig every now and then, that is not enough. We have to slowly back away from the feast laid before us and shake off the hangover that hangs over us from imbibing a little too much and lot too often from the jug of White supremacy. Like white lightening (or just about anything and eveything white that we consume) it provides a heady effect but in the long run affects our head.

This means that unless our fellow Americans can get to the point where it is O.K. that Obama is Black (or not) and that he believes that America has sinned (or not) we are not better off and possibly worse for wear regardless of the elections outcome. White supremacy is embedded in American life and European culture. It is a dominator culture that is based on power over. The economic marvels that European culture represents is based on their major technological innovations, killing machines. It is a losing game to seek to be the head man of a tribe of thieves and murderers. We have to take a look around and in the mirror. We can't do good by doing bad.




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China - Human Rights and American delusions

While our fearless leader George Bush is settling in for his retirement as President of the United States he is going around lecturing people to do as he says and not as he has done. We hear this loudest as people talk about China and its sweatshop human rights abuses that include denying non-Han ethnicities the right to their cultural heritage and tradition. Imagine that!

First, in terms of sweat shop economics we have only to look in the mirror as a nation to recognize the capitalist ideology that says "Greed is good" and the only good worker is an exploited worker. Isn't that the ethos of capitalism? While the Chinese factory workers are being exploited for their labor American workers are unemployed and have no access to the paltry crumbs being tossed to the Chinese workers. In fact, while the Chinese are paid a pittance for their labor, American workers are denied the opportunity to work and forced into peonage as they borrow against future earnings that they won't have and run up a debt burden on credit cards and borrow against the equity in the one (or two) assets they have. Home refinancing to pull out what little equity remains or car title loans to trade the tools required for future earnings for a crust of bread today. It is a joke to talk about slave labor in Chinese factories when the majority of Americans are indebted to whoever will extend them credit. Help! American workers have fallen into debt and they can't get out!

The capitalist owners of the factors of production are looking for the cheapest deal. They fund the Chinese capitalist labor extraction camps and hide their hand. Cheap foreign labor means no jobs in the U.S. economy but cheaper imports of consumer goods. It is stupid to think that the American economy can keep chugging along as it did for the first 20 years after World War 2 when the conditions of workers at home have been degraded to the point where they can not afford basic living needs.

Then the baloney about the Chinese repressing the identity of different ethnicities in China. What a bunch of hogwash. For those of us who have been paying attention it is clear that the United States was a forerunner in the creation of "whiteness" due to the need for suppressing the enslaved African labor force who powered its early economy. In fact, it was the melting pot idea that cleverly disguised the American cultural identity excision process. This same approach was adopted by Europeans around the world. We hear reports of the boarding schools for Native Americans in Canada. The boarding schools for the aboriginal people of Australia. American society was structured to indoctrinate all who fell under its sway to the superiority of the "White" race and the corresponding inferiority of all others based on the level of melanin content in their skin. So there were schools where the Native American was taught, taunted and trained to not be Native American. There was all of society that damned and degraded the African ancestry of the formerly enslaved Africans and their descendants and everybody else fell into a continuum from bright white to damned Black. How does Bush and his fellow ideologues (yes, I am talking about you and all the others who have internalized the white supremacist ideations or its corresponding Black inferiority degradations of American social thought and political economy) so smugly wag their finger at those who would be White? The concept of whiteness is similar to the concept of Blackness where it is more than a phenotypical feature. It is a culture, an ideology, a worldview, a manifesto that is shouted from the printed page, the electronic screen and the melanin deficient posturing of the savage beasts who have left a trail of blood and cultural destruction in their wake.

I am not pointing fingers. Externalized white supremacy through the workings of European institutions. Internalized Black inferiority through the suppression of dignity and the degradation of pride. But come on, who needs to point fingers when you know who you are!




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