Thursday, March 22, 2012

TRAYVON MARTIN

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree
TRAYVON MARTIN
(February 5, 1995 – February 26, 2012)
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MURDERED FOR THE UNLAWFUL POSSESSION OF BLACK SKIN

Eric L. Wattree
Http://wattree.blogspot.com
Ewattree@Gmail.com
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)
Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Is President Obama a Slave to Wall Street?

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree
Is President Obama a Slave to Wall Street?
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Whenever I hear a person claim that President Obama is a slave to the corporatist Wall Street culture, I know immediately that he’s one of three things - he’s either ignorant, blind to reality, or he’s promoting his own agenda. Of course Obama is a slave to Wall Street - we all are.
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You can’t live in this society without being a slave to Wall Street. But there are two kinds of slaves. There are slaves who are subservient and content to simply do what they’re told, and then there are slaves who engage in a constant struggle to free themselves and their people. So, while I’m not always happy with some of the day-to-day decisions that President Obama makes to promote our cause, I’m convinced that Obama is one of the latter. If he wasn’t, they wouldn’t be trying so hard to get rid of him.
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The fact is, if you’re a casual observer sitting at home and keeping score based purely on your attitudes, prejudices, and feelings, it’s easy to pass your uninformed judgment on every decision that any politician makes. But the reality is, anyone who decides to go into politics has to be practical, and a huge part of that practicality entails recognizing the fact that you’re going to have to dance to the music that’s being played, and it’s Wall Street that leads the band. So regardless to who we elect, they’re going to have to have, at the very least, a working relationship with the corporate establishment - and ironically, it’s our own fault.
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The primary reason that every politician in this country is forced to play footsy with the corporate establishment is because we, the people, are so lazy, undereducated, and disengaged from our own political well being that we allow the corporations to use money to control our minds. So the only way that a politician like Obama can even get through to us is by way of the corporate establishment.
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The reason that money has such a large influence on our political system is because it’s used to tell us what, and how, to think. From the time that most of us get up in the morning until the time we go to bed at night, we spend most of our free time with corporate voices whispering in our ear. It could be the radio, television, or even the billboards that we don’t think we’re noticing as we’re driving in to work, but the fact is, they are all having a profound subliminal effect on our thinking and attitudes. They’re conditioning us to think, and to do, what they tell us to. Corporations spend billions of dollars a year to convince wimps with severe cases of acne and horrendous body odors that if they buy a certain kind of car, the beautiful model that’s sensuously stroking its hood, or someone just like her, is going to fall in love with them - and they influence out vote in exactly the same way. Thus, every politician must remain cogizant of that fact. 
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My personal favorite is the National Rent-A-Car commercial. They have a businessman walking through the air port in slow motion with dramatic music playing in the background. Then when he gets to the counter, they have the lady behind the counter making goo-goo eyes at him like she can barely restrain herself from jumping over the counter and attacking him. Then the clincher is, at the end of the commercial they have a deep, authoritative voice saying, "YOU DESERVE THIS!"
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That commercial servers two purposes. First, it entices the traveling businessman to believe that using National Rent-A-Car makes him seem more important. But it also sends a message to the public - that big business is powerful, and that’s a good thing, so the concept of big business should be seen in a positive light because, "THEY DESERVE THIS!"
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Since the public is manipulated like this 24 hours a day, any politician who doesn’t have a working relationship with corporations can’t survive. The reason for that is simple. The very same corporation that runs commercials on Monday that convinces an unthinking electorate that "Obama is a big-government socialist who’s trying to put a bureaucrat between you and your doctor," can turn around on Tuesday and convince that very same unthinking electorate that it’s appropriate to create a government small enough to crawl up a woman’s uterus. That explains why we have people walking around saying things like, "Obama is un-American - he’s engaged in a socialist plot to insure my family’s healthcare and send my kids to college." It sounds like hyperbole, but as we see on a daily basis, people are actually that brainwashed.
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Thus, the problem in this country is not the amount of money flowing through the system, that’s only secondary; the primary problem is the apathy, selfishness, and ignorance of the people. Money is merely a tool used to feed that apathy, selfishness, and ignorance to our severe disadvantage, and to make sure that we remain that way - both ignorant, and disadvantaged.
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While the corporations can’t use their money to literally buy a political office, they can, and do, use it to convince us to GIVE it to them by repeatedly reelecting those politicians who are willing to promote corporate interests. Their primary method of doing that is by playing on our ignorance and selfishness through the use of conflation. That keeps the poor and middle class so angry and divided that we fail to come together to protect our mutual interest.
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The corporate manipulators will conflate liberalism with socialism, communism, and un-Americanism, then tell everyone else who doesn’t subscribe to liberal philosophy that the liberals are trying to take away their way of life. Then they’ll target Blacks and initiate a campaign to convince everyone else that Blacks want to rob and steal from them, murder their sons and rape their daughters. Thereafter, they target every segment of the poor and middle class, one by one, and associate them with some threat to everyone else. That keeps the poor and middle class in turmoil. It causes them to be so angry, fearful, and divided among themselves that they fail to recognize that they’re being manipulated, while all their throats are being cut by a common foe - corporate greed.
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But corporate greed is not the only foe. We must also add the misery leeches and poverty pimps who also have a vested interest in keeping the people angry and divided. These are the self-appointed "defenders of the poor and put-upon" who make a fortune by manipulating the people’s anger. Tavis Smiley and Dr. Cornel West immediately come to mind in that regard. Every time Smiley has a book to promote, wants a boost in his television ratings, or has any other snake oil to promote, he tours the country stirring up the very division that keeps the people impoverished. And West, who has teamed up with Smiley - just as he did with Ralph Nader during the 2000 election that gave us George Bush - also has a vested interest in the peoples’ misery. He reportedly pulls in $10,000 a speech complaining about our misery, while at the same time promoting the division that keep us that way. Thus, if the people ever did "overcome," it would be economically devastating to both of these hustlers.
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The only remedy for this situation is education, and through education, enlightenment. Because through a true education and its attendant enlightenment - as oppose to mere literacy - we’re more prone to become independent thinkers. As a result, we wouldn’t be nearly as susceptible to the unsubstantiated claims of snake oil salesmen. We would examine what we were being told, and we would consider the motives of those who were going out of their way to spread negative generalizations about others. Then, and only then, will we be able to defend our individual interests, and come together to defend the nation against the widespread and rampant corruption that’s currently dragging this country under the bus.
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Thus, if we want to save this nation for the benefit of our children, and their children, it is incumbent upon the American people to wake up to reality - and in a hurry. The world is changing faster than it ever has before, so we may not have but one or two elections left before the damage to this country is irreversible.
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We’ve got to start thinking of this country like it’s a business, we’re the owners, and the politicians are our employees. Only then will we begin to recognize the importance of our full engagement in running that business. Because the fact is, if the United States was a business, and as owners, we simply lounged around at home watching BET, MTV, and ESPN while allowing our employees (the politicians) to run it in the ground by giving themselves unwarranted raises in the middle of the night, and squandering and away our profits, it wouldn’t be the employees’ fault. It would be ours.
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So again, is President Obama a slave to Wall Street? Of course he is. We all are, and it’s way past time to correct that situation. But any president, regardless to who we elect, is going to need our help in that regard.

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Eric L. Wattree
Http://wattree.blogspot.com
Ewattree@Gmail.com
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)
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Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

Dr. Cornel West: Public Intellectual, or Entertainer?

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

Dr. Cornel West: Public Intellectual, or Entertainer?
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Ghetto Wisdom 101:
"Never choose a ‘crime partner’ who tries to be too cool. First, they're only trying to be cool to mask their insecurity. Second, they're using so much of their brain power trying to maintain their image that there's nothing left to think with. So always remember, young brother, super cool brothers are bad news. They have diarrhea at the mouth, they lack character, they’re always the scariest ones in the crowd, and they’re unfailingly the first to cave under pressure. In short, they can't be trusted." - Sweet Willie
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INTRODUCING DR. CORNEL WEST
A MAN WHO TAKES A VERY LONG TIME TO SAY VERY LITTLE


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Eric L. Wattree
Http://wattree.blogspot.com
Ewattree@Gmail.com
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)

Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.
 

 

Sunday, March 18, 2012

Well, Mr. President, I warned You Over Two Years Ago

BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE

Well, Mr. President, I warned you over two years ago - on November 2, 2009, to be specific - about allowing the Dick Cheney and the GOP to goad you into Afghanistan. Now, with the 2012 election coming up, they don't look so bad, because you've allowed them to entice you into getting the very same kind of uselss death and destruction on your hands as they had in Iraq, and in the end, you're going to have to do exactly what I suggested back then - simply pull back, and assist Pakistan in defending their nuclear weapons. So maybe you need to trade in your advisors for my crystal ball.
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Could Obama Fall Victim to a Change We Can't Believe in?

At this point Obama's presidency could go either way - he can either become one of the greatest presidents this country has ever known, or go down as an exciting experiment that went bad. It's all up to how he handles the expectations of Independents.
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The biggest problem that Obama currently faces is becoming a victim of his own effectiveness. During the campaign he raised the nation's expectation so high that just being a good president won't do. He promised a change that we can believe in, which led many of us to believe that he intended to trash the way business is done in Washington, but that promise seems to be totally inconsistent with what seems to be his irrepressible desire to hold hands and sing Kumbaya with the very Republican leaders from which we wanted a change.
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This has fueled the growing suspicion by many that both parties are beholding to the same cabal of power, and only feign having differing philosophies toward governance. That suspicion lies very close to the surface for many Independents - after all, that's why they're Independents in the first place.
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And President Obama hasn't helped himself in that regard. For a man who is ordinarily so politically astute, even before he became president he did a curious flip-flop on the FISA issue. According to Greenchange.org, on October 24, 2007, Bill Burton of the Obama campaign indicated, "To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies." But by June 20, 2008, Obama issued a statement reversing his position, indicating that our national security needs were more important than his objections.
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That deeply disappointed many Independents, since a citizen's right to sue a telecommunications company for invading his or her privacy in violation of the law has nothing to do with national security. Those are the very constitutional rights that we're trying to keep secure. But while many Independents have kept that in mind, at least Obama had the integrity to take that stand prior to our making the decision on whether or not to vote for him.
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But then once he was elected President, Obama made another curious statement with regard to the criminal activities and alleged war crimes committed by the Bush administration. In spite of the fact that there are strong allegations and prima facie evidence of torture, and some of the most unconscionable violations of the Geneva Convention since the Nuremberg trials, President Obama stated that he wanted to move the nation forward, and not look back.
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Many Independents have two problems with that. First of all, President Obama seems much too willing to move forward with regard to the fat cats, while lower-ranking personnel are rotting in prison. That's in direct conflict with the American ideal of equal justice under the law. And secondly, since most of these atrocities were committed against the citizens of other nations, it is the height of arrogance for us to be "the deciders" of whether or not those responsible should be held accountable. That also runs contrary to American ideals, and the concept of "a shining city on the hill."
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And now we're talking about sending thousands of more troops to Afghanistan. The question is, why? The nation has yet to be provided with a reasonable explanation of why we should be meddling, once again, in another country's internal affairs. One would think we would have learned something about the futility of that by now. It's a recipe for disaster.
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There's only two legitimate reasons to have our troops in that part of the world. The first is obvious - to make damn sure the nuclear missiles in Pakistan don't fall into the hands of Al Qaeda. The second reason is to bring Osama Bin Laden to justice. So why can't we simply pull out of Afghanistan and deploy enough troops in Pakistan to protect the missiles, then let the CIA and law enforcement deal with Osama? That way we save both treasure and lives, and we're not creating more enemies for the United States by killing innocent people.
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But many Independents suspect that there's another agenda afoot. Actually, Cheney's giving it away. Independents recognize that Dick Cheney has absolutely no integrity, so when he gets passionate over an issue we know to follow either the money or power. Thus, many Independents suspect that what's actually behind Cheney's insistence that we go recklessly rushing into Afghanistan has much more to do with Halliburton's bottom line than it does America's best interest. And while Obama has shown himself to be an excellent president in many ways, his one shortcoming - and a shortcoming that may very well bring him down in the end - is his tendency to try to appease the stupidity and greed of the GOP.
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The President needs to recognize that there is nothing he can do that's going to make him acceptable to the GOP - that is, unless he agrees to appoint a Republican vice president, then resign. By now it should be clear that even while he's asleep, the GOP is trying to hatch plans to destroy him. So by spending more time thinking about them than he is his base, he's playing right into their hands.
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I mentioned power as one of the reasons that Cheney's trying to rush the president into Afghanistan. I wonder if the president has considered the fact that Cheney just might be trying to get him to make the same kind of mistake in Afghanistan that the Bush Administration made in Iraq in order to take the Iraq issue off the table for the 2012 election? If during the 2012 campaign America is bogged down in Afghanistan with the useless death of thousands of U.S. troops, all of a sudden, Bush, Cheney, and the GOP won't look all that bad. The president should think about that possibility, since the mechinations of Dick Cheney makes Machiavelli look like a trainee.
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On the other hand, if the president would have the CIA go after Osama Bin Laden (through the use of intelligence, instead of blindly shooting at rocks), then pull out of Afghanistan, and make an agreement with the government of Pakistan to help them protect their nuclear arsenal, he'll be looking pretty good in 2012, and he won't have the deaths of thousands of U.S. troops to have to justify.
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And he'd look even better if he allowed Attorney General Holder to do his job with respect to the Bush administration's war crimes. First, he'd firm up his base by restoring their confidence that he stands for the rule of law, and he would also allay the fear that he might be a puppet, controlled by some powerful cabal.
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Another upside to that is that once Holder begins his investigation into the Bush administration, there's absolutely no doubt that he's going to find criminality, cronyism, and corruption seeping so deep within the GOP that Republicans will be so busy snitching on one another, and covering their own asses, that they won't have the time to plot against either him, or the American people.
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Now, THAT, would be a change that we could believe in.
Eric L. Wattree
Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

Saturday, March 10, 2012

A Message to the Hood

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree
A Message to the Hood
(Knowledge is the Key)
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Some people take umbrage with my defining myself as a hood rat. They say that by doing so, I’m not only demeaning myself, but I’m also demeaning other Black people in the process. But people who think like that are violating one of the most important principles in life - that we should always seek to be independent thinkers. That entails being self-defining, never giving the thoughts of others priority over your own, and never allowing others to define your terms.
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Thus, people who see the phrase "hood rat" as demeaning have been brainwashed. They no longer think for themselves. They've allowed the attitude of others to take priority over their own, and they've also allowed society to define their terms. As a result, they've embraced the belief that people with their background are somehow less than others.
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I take pride in challenging that contention because the fact is, I grew up in the hood, so that's what makes me who I am, and since God made birds to fly, fish to swim, and man think, in order for anybody to contend that I'm less than human, they're going to have to demonstrate that they can out-think me. You see, it's not enough to merely SAY, "I'm Black and I'm proud." We must put enough work into our intellectual development to say it, and mean it. Therefore, I proudly embrace the phrase hood rat as symbolic of my challenge to society to come SHOW me that I'm inferior, since it's my contention that it's society that's guilty of flawed thinking, not I.
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A perfect example of the flaw in society's thinking can be found in the fact that attendant to the negativity that society assigns to the term "rat" is the false assumption that a rat is something nasty, and therefore, beneath man. But the fact is, man himself is the nastiest animal on Earth. While a rat may leave droppings in his environment, and one might consider that nasty, man is so prolific with his own droppings - in the ocean, in the air, in space, and within the Earth itself - that he threatens the very survival of everything on the planet. So what’s nastier, a rat, or man?
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That illustrates why it’s so important to clean man’s droppings from our minds, and become independent thinkers. Because much of what we think of as true, is actually the corruption of truth that we’ve been taught by other men in order to promote their own self-interest.
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So while others are scrambling among themselves in an attempt to service their corruption and greed, it presents the Black community with the perfect opportunity to spend that same time becoming independent thinkers, and reassessing the mores that we've inherited from this corrupt society. Thereafter, we should replace the meaningless pursuit of the "American Dream" (bling), with the pursuit of character, wisdom, and knowledge. Because since knowledge is power, one invariably leads to the other, and much, much more.
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I’ve been fortunate enough to obtain a small measure of the American dream, but it was certainly not as a result of any kind of pursuit. I only stumbled upon it while on a mission to educate myself, because along with education comes skills. But also during my educational process, I found that what I was actually looking for was not so much the American dream, but happiness and self-fulfillment. Yes, I wanted to live a comfortable life, but along with a TRUE education, you tend to develop a new definition of what that entails. And one of the things that I learned was that the American dream is only the illusion of happiness, since the mere acquisition of "things" can bring you neither happiness, nor fulfillment. True happiness and fulfillment can only be found in becoming the best that you can be. Our failure to understand that is the primary problem that we have as a nation - we're in much hotter pursuit of riches than we are of character.
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I wasted literally all of my teenage years - those years between 12 and 19 years of age, when I should have been educating myself - running the street. I spent that time dropping out of school, going in and out of various institutions, and using any kind of drug that I could get my hands on.
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But fortunately, I was arrested as an adult (at 19 years-old), and an insightful cop and a benevolent judge joined forces to get me to agree to go into the military (the army, I thought) in return for not being sent to prison, and the promise of expunging my record if I came out with an honorable discharge. Naturally, I eagerly agreed. But it was only later, to my complete shock and horror, did I learn that they had also managed to get the Marine Corps to ignore all of its regulations against accepting an illiterate delinquent. But once I got in there I found out why - they needed a warm body to use as a close combat dummy in order to train the "REAL MARINES."
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But once the marines finished showing me what a gangster REALLY was, they had me take the GED, and to everybody's amazement, I did really well on it. Although I did a lot of guessing, I scored much higher than anyone expected, especially myself (I'm still convinced it was a fluke). So they sent me to the Army/Navy Academy to get an actual diploma and further my educational development (I'll be eternally grateful to them for that).
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But fluke or not, that's where I learned a couple of very valuable lessons - you are what you think, and that knowledge is power. Instead of being called dummy, I was making a fortune writing love letters for other marines, and later I started working for the battalion commander. I did all of his writing, including the officers' fitness reports, which gave me a tremendous amount of clout ("Come on, Wattree! Why be so formal? There's no one around, so spare me the Captain crap. Just call me Larry."). Later, it was arranged for me to get out 90 days early to attend college - which, by that time, was just a matter of staying awake and filling in the dots.
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But during that process I fell in love with knowledge, and I also began to realize that since what I loved most was free, it couldn’t be denied me. And as I became increasingly more independent of thought, a couple of other things also began to come into focus. First, contrary to our national values, the only mature and productive form of competition is to compete against the person that you were the day before. And secondly, I learned that the only true road to perfect happiness and fulfillment is to dedicate your life to becoming your own hero.
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That’s the knowledge that I would like to pass along to my brothers in the hood. Because our failure to understand those two very fundamental facts are not only the source of most of our misery, but to 99% of all of our problems in general. We rightly complain that we’re deprived of a level playing field, so why not dedicate ourselves to the acquisition of knowledge to equalize that situation? And by the way, that's the message that Tavis Smiley and Cornel West should be preaching, instead of helping to elect Republicans by attacking our first Black president.
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So yes, I’m a hood rat, and I never let myself forget it. But I’m a hood rat with the understanding that the White man's water is no wetter than our own, and his knowledge is no more knowledgeable. In addition, since every experience in life is a source of knowledge, the experience of overcoming the adversity that we’ve endured as hood rats makes us more, rather than less. It's that very knowledge that Obama is killing them with in Washington as we speak. They could probably handle him if he was dealing with them using the knowledge that he pick up at Harvard, because many of them went there too, but he's whippin' 'em with a source of knowledge that they know absolutely nothing about - the knowledge he picked up trying to survive as a Black man in America. That's a knowledge that's unique to us.
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Thus, the bottom line is this - with very few exceptions, we cannot depend on others to help us, Black or White. We're engaged in a class war, and it's everybody for themselves. So we've got to combine the unique knowledge that we've gained in the hood, with the education and wisdom that we obtain thereafter, to become the masters of our own fate. Thus, knowledge, is the key to our survival. Period.
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Think about that.

THE HOOD RAT

I’m sure you know that I love you;
You’re everything I need.
You fit the bill of all my desires,
a perfect match for all my dreams.
You’re everything I’ve always craved,
that luscious vision from across the tracks;
that delicate flower, just beyond my grasp,
and here you are at last.
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But what you ask is foreign to me;
You need something that I'm not.
You said, if I'd tweak my nature, just a bit,
you’ll give everything you’ve got.
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But that "tweak" you need is who I am;
It's my essence, can't you see?
You want to abolish the hood rat from my life,
the very thing that makes me, me.
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While a hood rat may seem trite to you,
a hood rat’s what you see;
So forget about what the other’s say -
here’s what it means to me:
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I’ve been brutally dragged through the pits of Hell,
yet, managed to survive,
well educated and fully functional,
when I came out the other side.
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I scrounged the lessons taught at Harvard,
because knowledge, I found, was free;
But Harvard can't teach the lessons I've learn -
that knowledge is unique to me.
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While they've heard the sounds of a mournful Trane,
and Miles moaning in the night,
not against the backdrop of hunger and pain,
or injustice, hatred, and blight.
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Yet, these are the things you want me to purge,
and spurn the life I’ve led.
Well, I’m sorry sweet thing, as much as I love you,
the soul of a hood rat is my edge.
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Eric L. Wattree
Http://wattree.blogspot.com
Ewattree@Gmail.com
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)
Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does. 

Monday, March 05, 2012

In Defense of My Stance Against Cornel West

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree
In Defense of My Stance Against Cornel West
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In response to my last column, Dr. Boyce Watkins Announces His Withdrawal from Cornel West Controversy , one reader said the following:
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"Wattree – you should stop kissing President Obama’s ass without thinking about your political decisions. He hasn’t done anything for you, but you talk about him like you work for him."
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Such comments are so typical of Cornel West supporters that they’ve become a mantra. They invariably accuse anyone who dares to point out that West’s blatant public slander of the President of the United States was counterproductive, unsubstantiated, and frankly, stupid, as only being interested in defending President Obama. They try to avoid the issue of West’s grossly unprofessional behavior by accusing his critics of being Obama cheerleaders. So let me dispose of that allegation at the outset.
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As I’ve mentioned many times before, I’ve written several articles that are highly critical of President Obama - one, long before Obama was even sworn into office. In the article, A Journalist’s First Responsibility, written on July 8, 2008, I point out unequivocally that it’s not a journalist’s responsibility to try to protect a favored candidate:
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"On June 20th Senator Barack Obama announced that he was supporting the current FISA bill before the senate. That bill gives retroactive immunity to all telecommunications companies against all private law suits for cooperating with the Bush administration's program of spying on the American people without a court order, as currently required by current law . . .
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"I've been roundly criticized by fellow Obama supporters for bringing this issue out. They say that ‘I'm hurting our candidate’, and ‘I'm not seeing the big picture.’ But in response I suggest, when truth becomes a hindrance to a candidate's viability, it's not truth that's the problem–it's the candidate. And when the "greater good" involves journalists keeping the people in the dark, it becomes the nation's problem. Thus, it's not up to journalists to keep Obama's candidacy viable--it's up to Obama."
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Thus, my strident criticism of Cornel West has nothing to do with trying to protect Obama. I’m speaking out against West’s unmitigated stupidity. Period.
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Any Black person who doesn’t recognize the importance of, at the very least, respecting the first Black President of the United States is an idiot. While that doesn’t preclude one from criticizing Obama’s policies, just like any other president, West criticized him as a Black man, which is an exercise in self-hatred, and betrays his true attitude toward Black people in general. So West didn’t merely make himself look stupid, he made the Black community look stupid as well. First, West clearly demonstrated that many of us don’t have any self-respect. And secondly, since his high profile sends the false impression that West is one of the best and brightest in the Black community, his reckless and unprofessional assertions and behavior reinforces the racist belief that Black professionals are something less than their White counterparts.
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To this day, there are many racists who claim that Black professionals are professionals in name only. They contend that due to Affirmative Action, Black professionals didn’t have to pay the dues to obtain their credentials that their White counterparts had to pay. Therefore, they’re less qualified. As a direct result of that attitude, many highly qualified Black professionals are being passed over for upward mobility in their chosen professions.
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But Black professionals have been slowly proving that contention is a lie. People like Johnnie Cochran and Colin Powell have stepped up to the plate to demonstrate that they were not only as good as their White counterparts, but in many cases, much better. That accounts for why so many White folks hated O.J. Simpson. While many simply wanted to see justice prevail, there were others who hated O.J. for much more than the fact that they thought he was a murderer. The primary reason they hated O.J. so intensely was because he brought Johnnie Cochran to the world’s stage, and Johnnie proved beyond a doubt that the racist contention that Black professionals were inferior was, and is, a lie.
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Think about it. At the very height of the affirmative action controversy Johnnie Cochran walked into the courtroom from, essentially, out of nowhere. He then told some of the most celebrated attorneys in the world to scoot over, and then proceeded to play the legal system like a fiddle. Thereafter, for the very first time, instead of racists saying that a Black man was inferior, they claimed that O.J. got away with murder because he could afford to hire the very best - Johnnie Cochran, a Black man. And now, the very same is true of President Obama with respect to our political system, regardless to what you think of his politics. It's no accident, therefore, that people like Cornel West, Tavis smiley, and many rabid conservatives hate President Obama as well - and, ironically, for the very same reason.
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Thus, we were well on our way to proving our point regarding the competence and intellect of Black professionals. Then a jealous, self-serving, 19th Century-thinking idiot like Cornel West comes along whose words and behavior essentially says, Naw, naw, White folks,  y’all right about this dude. Obama ain’t nothing but another Black pickaninny. I’m the genius! I’m the one you should be listening to! I was at Harvard long before he was. He butted in line. It’s suppose to be my turn now!  He’s just "a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats." And further, "I think my dear brother Barack Obama has a certain fear of free black men" (The latter statement seems to have been designed to trigger a knee-jerk response from the few unthinking, reactionary Black people in the community).
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But that latter statement was also just enough for racists to point to as confirmation of their contention that Black "intellectuals" are inferior thinkers. As a scholar, West should have known better than anyone else that you should never make an assertion that you can’t substantiate in the very next sentence, or no later than the following paragraph. Yet, he states, among other things, that due to Barack Obama’s background, he has "a certain fear of free Black men." What evidence does he have of that? Absolutely none. So he’s guilty of reckless, unscholarly, and frankly, ridiculous thinking.
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I mean, I could say that because Cornel West - this so-called passionate lover of Black people - married a White woman and never taught at a school that more than a lucky few Black people could even get into, that he’s afraid of free Black women and has no respect for Black scholarship. But unlike West, I wouldn’t dare make such an idiotic assertion. Why? Because I can’t crawl into his head to substantiate my facts. In addition, I wouldn’t want to embarrass the Black community with such stupidity. But the most important reason that I wouldn't make such a reckless assertion is because I - this unabashed and unrepentant hood rat - understand the importance of disciplined thought.
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Eric L. Wattree
Http://wattree.blogspot.com
Ewattree@Gmail.com
Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.