Showing posts with label Character. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Character. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 24, 2020

TRUMP SLOWING CORONAVIRUS TESTING IN AN ATTEMPT TO HIDE INCOMPETENCE

Beneath the Spin*Eric L. Wattree

EXCELLENCE IS THE KEY TO BLACK EQUALITY
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TRUMP SLOWING CORONAVIRUS TESTING IN AN ATTEMPT TO HIDE INCOMPETENCE


This is my opus to Donald Trump. It pretty much says it all about this man. It addresses his incompetent response to the pandemic, his failure to protect the lives of our troops from the Russians, his shady to outright criminal character, and how it negatively impacts the nation.  

We’ve never seen a President like this one before, and hopefully, we’ll never see one like him again. He’s selfish, incompetent, and completely willing to conspire with the Russians – or any other country - to promote his own interests. With Trump, America doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters for Trump, is Donald J. Trump himself.

I didn’t write this piece for any personal benefit or recognition; I wrote it to plant a seed, and in the hope that other writers will find something of value in it to build upon. So if you’re a writer, don’t worry about attribution, just take whatever you find of value and forge it into your own. There are some issues important enough to put our self-interests aside and work on as a group. I think this is one of them. So let’s make this a group effort, authored by us all. As writers, we have a responsibility to help the American people understand what we’re dealing with here. Let us do that, for the sake of the country, and for the sake of all those who died to preserve this great experiment. Let us spread the word, and educate the people.

I’ve always said that Donald Trump was a completely self-absorbed lunatic, and now he’s laid absolute proof of that fact at our feet. He recently said the following:
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"I think we put ourselves at a disadvantage. I told my people. I said we've gotten so good at testing - number one we have the best tests, number two we have the most tests - we catch much more than any other nation. So you hear about all these cases. So instead of doing 25 million cases, let's say we did 10 million tests we'd look like we're doing much better, cuz we'd have far fewer cases."
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Yeah, and it would also coverup the piss-poor and incompetent job you're doing in managing the crisis. Trump is known for avoiding responsibility. Now he's casually asking us to sacrifice our lives to help him cover up his own incompetence, and in spite of the fact that he's clearly stating - out in the open! - that optics is more important than American lives, a few idiots are showing up at his rallies to do just that.
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This is not just your garden variety ignorance we're talking about here - this is world-class stupidity. We're in the midst of a worldwide pandemic, and instead of being solely focused on saving lives, the President of the United States is focused on how finding out who has the disease, and how it's being spread, is making him  look bad. 
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With over 120,000 Americans dead, and the rate of deaths still climbing, no other politician would even think of slowing down the rate of testing, and even if they were so mindlessly self-absorbed that they did think about it, they certainly wouldn’t say it out loud on national television. But that’s one of Trump’s shortcomings, he can’t think without moving his lips. That’s why he can’t carryout a plan of any kind, because he can’t prevent himself from going on Twitter and telling the world about it. That's just his nature. He's so insecure, and so desperately in need of admiration that he wants the world to know that every thought that comes out of the administration comes from him. But unfortunately, most of them are stupid and have to be walked back immediately thereafter.
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In addition, every time he finds someone in his administration who is actually competent, he's so insecure that he fires them immediately, because he can't afford to have their excellence stand in contrast to his stupidity. Trump's gross insecurity causes him to see mere competence as an affront to him, because he sees it as an attempt to overshadow him. He considers simple competence in others as an attempt to mock him. Trump is a man who is in a constant struggle to hide his inadequacies. As a result, he has an administration full of idiots, and the only people who can possibly support such a man, or administration, are other idiots.
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Trump is also transparent. Whatever he accuses his opponent of doing, or whenever something is weighing heavily on his mind, you can bet your home on the fact that he's going to find away of spewing it all over Twitter. That allows us to always know exactly what he's thinking. That’s how we should have known that his health was deteriorating. When he accused Joe Biden of becoming old and feeble, that should have immediately told us that Trump was having some sort of health issue, long before it became clear that he couldn’t lift a glass of water or walk down a ramp.
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Any close observer of Trump knows that when Trump becomes fixated on an issue, he’s much too much of an idiot to prevent himself from telegraphing what’s weighing on his mind to the world. That's why when he started calling Hillary Clinton "Crooked Hillary", that should have alerted us that he was engaged in some kind of nefarious activity, and now that he's started accusing Barack Obama of treason, that tells us that he's worried about the revelations in John Bolton's book or something much more serious. So all we have to do is listen to Trump, and he'll tell us everything we need to know about he's up to.
Michael McFaul, a former ambassador to Russia and a professor of political science at Stanford University, said, “I hope the American people will be as outraged as I am over Trump’s complacency. After he knew about these Putin-ordered contracts to kill US soldiers, Trump invited Putin to the G7.”
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And John Weaver, a Republican political consultant who helped found the anti-Trump Lincoln Project group, also expressed outrage, tweeting, “Trump knew Russia was paying bounties on the lives of American servicemen in Afghanistan. He took no action against Putin. Instead, @realDonaldTrump REWARDED Putin by trying to insert Russia back into the G-7. And, [if that was] not enough, withdrawing 25,000 American troops from Germany.” 
In response to the accusation, Trump tweeted, "Nobody briefed or told me, @VP Pence, or Chief of Staff @MarkMeadows about the so-called attacks on our troops in Afghanistan by Russians, as reported through an 'anonymous source' by the Fake News @nytimes. Everybody is denying it & there have not been many attacks on us....."
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In response to Trump's tweet, the mere fact that he claims not to have been aware of something as threatening to our troops, and the nation, as that, is clear evidence of gross incompetence in itself. What else is going on in the world while he's playing golf that he doesn't know about?  On the other hand, if he did know about it and still cuddled up to Putin, it's treason, so either way, it's unacceptable. So there's no plausible way to lie his way out of this one.
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SO WHY WOULD TRUMP DO THESE THINGS?

The answer as to why Trump would be so forgiving of Russian aggression is quite simple –
after going into bankruptcy 6 times, the Russians came to Trump's rescue when American banks wouldn't touch him, and chances are, even now he's only keeping his head above water because Russian oligarchs are using his name and businesses to launder stolen money. That explains why he's so desperate to keep his finances hidden.
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Foreign Policy Magazine (fp.com) reported, “Rep. Adam Schiff indicated that ‘We’re going to be looking at the issue of possible money laundering by the Trump Organization, and Deutsche Bank is one obvious place to start,’ he said. A 2017 report by Reuters, citing public documents, interviews and corporate records, also found that at least 63 Russians or people with Russian addresses bought nearly $100 million worth of property in seven Trump-branded Florida luxury buildings.”

In addition, Trump repeatedly lied to the American people all through the 2016 election campaign. He repeatedly claimed that, "I have no business dealings in Russia." But we now know that all while he was making that claim to the American people, he was in deep negotiations with the Russians to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. He even offered Vladimir Putin a $50 million penthouse apartment in the tower. But there was a problem - the Russian bank, VTB, that was lined up to finance the deal was under U.S. sanctions, which blocked them from taking part in the deal. Could that be why Trump has gone out of his way to remove Russian sanctions? 
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It is now clear that everything Trump does or says is designed to promote his own private interests and provide comfort to Vladimir Putin and the Russians, and Rudy Giuliani, his own attorney, knows it. That’s why when Trump’s own staff and American foreign service professionals started spilling the beans in the Congressional Impeachment Hearings, Giuliani said, “If I disappear I have an insurance policy. All of the documents on the Bidens are going to be released”. That seems to indicate that Giuliani is not only in fear of legal exposure, but for his very life, and he has good reason to be concerned.

TRUMP KNEW PUTIN PLACED BOUNTY ON THE  HEADS OF UNITED STATES TROOPS AND INVITED PUTIN TO G7

Michael McFaul, a former ambassador to Russia and a professor of political science at Stanford University, said: “I hope the American people will be as outraged as I am over Trump’s complacency. After he knew about these Putin-ordered contracts to kill US soldiers, Trump invited Putin to the G7.” 

John Weaver, a Republican political consultant who helped found the anti-Trump Lincoln Project group, also expressed outrage, tweeting, “Trump knew Russia was paying bounties on the lives of American servicemen in Afghanistan. He took no action against Putin. Instead, @realDonaldTrump REWARDED Putin by trying to insert Russia back into the G-7. And, not enough, withdrawing 25,000 American troops from Germany.” Donald Trump doesn't care anything about our troops. He's just using our troops as props just like he used the Bible in front of the church. If Trump cared anything about either our troops, or the military, he wouldn't have dodged the draft when he had a chance to serve. Dodging the military is a Trump family tradition. 
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/27/russia-offered-bounties-afghanistan-militants-killing-us-soldiers-report-outrage
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Donald's problem dates back to the way he was raised. As the son of a multi-millionaire he was always given everything, and he never had to struggle to maintain his place in line. As a result, it was never necessary for Donald to have to develop any character or intellect like most of us. In order for the average person to survive they have to cultivate their character which enables them to get along with others, and also develop their intellectual resources which allows them to survive in a competitive world. But not Trump. Since Donald was given everything, he never had to develop those resources, and as a result, he’s become a geriatric child with the inner resources of an 8-year-old.
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So the knowledge that most of us take for granted - or what most of us refer to as common sense - is completely foreign to Trump. That’s why we don’t understand him. Many of us  assume that he’s different due to some esoteric billionaire's knowledge that he possesses that the rest of us are not privy to. But that’s not it at all. He’s just stupid, and he's very easy to understand. All you have to do to understand Donald's behavior is to assess his actions like you would the behavior of an 8-year-old. If you do that, his motivations become crystal clear.
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Vox.com reported Yuval Levin, director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, as saying of Donald Trump that “Governing has been so little on the mind of this administration from the very beginning that it’s created a bizarre, extraordinary situation. The president thinks so much about what he’s doing in terms of the show he’s putting on that there’s been very little attention paid to how the government is functioning.”
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And Vox goes on to point out that "
Trump has spent the past three years and 158 days playing president on TV and social media. But he has not spent that time doing the job of the president. A strong economy that carried over from Barack Obama’s presidency hid Trump’s dereliction of duties. But then a crisis came, and presidential leadership was needed, and the American people saw there was no plan, and functionally no president."
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Take the comment Trump made concerning the Coronavirus testing, for example. Based on his thinking, if we stop testing for the virus we won’t have as many cases – thus, out of sight, out of mind. That’s the simplistic thinking of a child. He’s not considering the consequences of allowing the virus to roar through the population unchecked, all he’s thinking about is the solution that suits his purpose for the moment – and Trump only lives from moment to moment, so he never considers consequences. It is exactly ignorance, cluelessness, and his total irresponsibility that makes Trump the most dangerous man who has ever stepped into the White House.
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And further, Trump doesn’t give a damn about either America, democracy, or the American people, as he’s clearly demonstrating by placing his re-election above thousands of American lives. In fact, he’s placing his bet on the fact that his base is more bigoted than they are patriotic. The fact is, it's only their bigotry and hatred that makes them of value to him. That's why he's constantly stirring them up. But with the exception of their bigotry, trump doesn't share any of their political ideals. The fact is, he detests his undereducated base. He thinks of them as the great unwashed, as ignorant trailer trash - it's just that they're useful trailer trash.
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Trump’s only political philosophy is helping Trump. He cares more about Russia than he does his supporters, because Russia can do more for him. He’s just using his supporters to give himself a political power base, because that's what he does, use people. That's what allows him to turn on his former allies on a dime the minute they're no longer useful to him.
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 According to Wikipedia, “Trump registered as a Republican in Manhattan in 1987 and since that time has changed his party affiliation five times. In 1999, Trump changed his party affiliation to the Independence Party of New York. In August 2001, Trump changed his party affiliation to Democratic. In September 2009, Trump changed his party affiliation back to the Republican Party. In December 2011, Trump changed to "no party affiliation" (independent). In April 2012, Trump again returned to the Republican Party.” 
So the bottom line is, Trump is willing to align himself with anyone who's of use to him, and at this point that means ANYONE, including the Russians.
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Trump is losing over a million dollars a day in his personal businesses due to the national shutdown, and the shutdown is also having a negative impact on the overall economy, which he was depending on for re-election in November. And since being President is the only thing keeping him out of prison, Trump doesn't give not one bit of a damn about America. All he’s concerned about is opening the country back up, regardless of how many people have to die.

Trump is proving with his every act that he's only concerned about one thing - what he’s always been concerned about – Donald Trump. That’s why he’s so desperate that he’s trying to get America to ingest Lysol. That alone represents the desperation of an absolute lunatic. But Trump's willingness to do ANYTHING to improve his personal situation, including killing a few thousand American citizens, makes him a very dangerous man. And clear evidence that those are the facts was made clear when - even though he was a  draft dodger - he made the disgustingly self-serving decision to place the lives of West Point graduates in needless jeopardy just so he could give a speech and get a photo op with the military. 
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But just as horrifying as the acts themselves is the fact that he seems to have lost the simple judgment to even try to hide his blatant hypocrisy and lack of concern for the American people. That speaks directly to his mental stability. What might he do in desperation if he loses the November election? I just hope our military and intelligence services have a contingency plan in place to handle such an eventuality.

AMERICA'S CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS IS AT HAND

Trump is losing it. He’s threatening to unleash violence against peaceful demonstrators. He knows that he’s losing the country, so he’s resorting to his natural tendency to be nasty, petty, and vindictive. He’s angry because he thought America belonged to him. He’s finding out the hard way that it doesn’t, and it’s humiliating his fragile and immature ego.

http://wattree.blogspot.com/2018/11/americas-constitutional-crisis-is-at.html

And just in case some of you think this is exaggeration or an exercise in hyperbole, here’s what Trump had to say in a private conference call with the nation's governors:
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Trump told the nation’s governors during a recent teleconference that they should ‘seriously consider’ reopening their schools and CONFIRM his suggestion at the evening news conference, noting the virus doesn't impact young people as badly. . . “I think it would be a good thing. Because as you see coming in terms of what this vicious virus goes after, young people seem to do very well. Young people seem to do very well. So, I know that there are some governors that aren't necessarily ready to open up states, but they may be ready to open up school systems."
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IN OTHER WORDS, HE WANTS TO USE OUR CHILDREN AS GUINEA PIGS!!!
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The bottom line is, Donald Trump is one of the gravest threats this nation has ever faced, so we need to wake up and treat him as such. He’s not just eccentric, he’s dumb, greedy, and a raving lunatic.
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Eric L. Wattree
Ewattree@Gmail.com
BLACK WRITERS, INTELLECTUALS, AND INDEPENDENT THINKERS
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Religion: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does. 

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Monday, May 21, 2018

OBAMA DRAGGING TRUMP THROUGH THE MUD

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

OBAMA DRAGGING TRUMP THROUGH THE MUD

Knowledge and character
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We’ve got to stop chasing the carrot and start working on self-development. The money game is how this White supremacist society tries to convince themselves, and us, that White people are superior. They use the dollar to measure our relative worth as a people, and if you buy into that game, since the cards are stack against you it’ll have a negative impact on your self-image.
There are many more important things in life than just trying to be rich. Is Donald Trump more valuable to humanity than was Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Langston Hughes, or Martin Luther King?  Of course not. If Donald Trump had never been born this world wouldn’t have even skipped a beat, but that’s not true of the ones mentioned above.
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So all we need is enough money to satisfy our primary needs in life. After that, money can't do a damn thing to increase our happiness or personal value. Proof of that point is, in spite of the fact that Donald Trump is filthy rich, he seems to be one of the most miserable people on the planet, and of next to no value to humanity. Yet, he wants to be loved and admired so badly he’s become delusional, saying things like, “At my inauguration I had the biggest crowds in American history; or, “In my first year in office I’ve accomplished more than any other president in American history.” - Pure bullshit. The man would trade in every penny he's ever made to get the love, honor, and respect of Barack Obama. That's why he's so fixated on him, but it's not going to happen, because Trump lacks the character, intelligence, and class of Barack Obama.
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Trump’s only value as a human being is he clearly demonstrates the fact that no matter how much money you have you can't buy the admiration and respect of others, and that's what we all want most. People respect those with the most intelligence, talent, knowledge, and character. We only want money, and a big house and car, because it's suppose to represent those things, but it doesn't. It takes a personal effort to attain knowledge and character, but all that’s necessary to become rich is the willingness to be a crook, as Donald Trump or any drug dealer clearly demonstrates.
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Below is Barack Obama proving that point with his customary knowledge, elegance, and grace.  On this very night President Obama captured Osama Bin Laden, but he didn't say a word. Trump would have turned the entire night into a celebration of his greatness, or an exercise in the desperation of a wannabe.


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Eric L. Wattree
wattree.blogspot.com
Ewattree@Gmail.com
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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.
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Sunday, December 22, 2013

Never Whine over Adversity - Because Adversity Makes Us More, Rather Than Less

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

Never Whine over Adversity - because Adversity Makes Us More, Rather Than Less
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I've been through all manner of hardship, and I've found that we often suffer needlessly over minor adversities. We should never agonize over minor setbacks or disappointments. As long as you and the ones you love have your health and well being, everything else in life is transitory and insignificant. Much like physical pain, adversity merely serves the purpose of alerting us that corrective action is necessary. 
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When I look back over my life, I now see that many of things that I thought were horrible at the time, had to happen in order for something that would have a positive impact on my life to take place. Thus, thinking that we can control every aspect of our lives is a myth. We only have limited control over our lives. Life plays itself out in the way that life plays itself out, and our control over it is limited to making the right decisions once unforeseeable events take place, good, or bad. So all we can do in life is to prepare ourselves to make the right decisions when we’re confronted with adversity, and take advantage of opportunities when opportunity presents itself. Many unforeseeable things are simply going to happen, and the course of our lives are determined by how we deal with them when they do.
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A perfect example of that is when I was exposed to drugs as a kid. My mother thought that was the most horrible thing that could ever happen in life. But her control over the situation was limited, because young people being exposed to drugs is a fact of life in the inner city. But she had done her part to help me face that challenge when she raised me, so even as I was using drugs, I knew it was stupid. But drugs did control my life long enough to cause me to go to my mother’s office begging for money when I was 16 years old. That’s where I met my late wife, Val, who my mother had hire as a young girl to address Christmas cards to the patients, and we made an immediate connection.
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So the time had come for me to face my first major bout with adversity, but it was a moment that my mother had already prepared me for. So little did I know when I walked through the door of that office to con my mother out of some money to get high, that due to the foundation that my mother had laid when she raised me regarding the horrors of drugs and a man’s responsibility to a woman, combined with the young man I saw reflected in this young girl’s eyes when she looked at me,  that I was walking out of one life, and into another. While I had no idea at the time, at that very moment the trajectory of my life had changed.
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While my exposure to, and use of drugs, was undoubtedly one of the adversities faced by many young people as a result of inner city life, the combined influence of the foundation my mother had laid for me, and the passion that I felt for this young girl (who would later become my wife), placed me in good stead to face my very first challenge in life - finding the strength to face down adversity, and the wisdom to seize the opportunity that life presented in it’s stead.
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Because the challenges of adversity invariably come hand-in-hand with the rewards of opportunity and growth, and one’s fate is invariably tied to whether one collapses in the face of adversity, or can conjure up the strength and presence of mind to embrace the opportunity that comes along with it. Then, if one does manage to conjure up the strength and good sense to beat back adversity and embrace opportunity and growth, that strength and presence of mind will remain theirs forever. So we become stronger, and wiser, with each challenge of adversity that we overcome.
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For that reason, I raised my children not to agonize over adversity. While no one welcomes adversity, when it does come into one’s life, it should be viewed as an opportunity for growth, because there’s nothing more formidable than an individual whose been dragged through the pits of Hell and then manages to come out the other side as a well-adjusted and knowledgeable adult. That’s why I take great pride in referring to myself as a hood rat. Some people tell me that I’m denigrating myself, but I wear that title with great pride, because it says that I have a PhD. I'm a Doctor of Adversity, and no institution of higher learning in the world can confer a more prestigious, or learned degree. 
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About a year later, after Val and I had become a couple, and I had decided to make some changes in my life to make sure I kept her, I was sitting down one day talking to my mother. I was telling her about my dreams for the future, and the changes that I intended to make in my life to bring those dreams into reality. I didn’t know it, but my stepfather was standing in the door behind me, listening to my every word.
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Varnell wasn’t an altogether bad guy, and we didn’t have a bad relationship. He was a hardworking man, but he was also a hard-drinking and hard-gambling man of the street with a no-nonsense demeanor. So as I was pouring my heart out to my mother he broke in, "Don’t let him bullshit you, Verlee!  Eric is just tryin' to soften you up so he can stick you for some money to get high. You, him, and I all know that he’s gonna spend the rest of his life up there on that corner dealing drugs and chasin’ women - and that’s if he’s lucky and don’t get his brains blown out first."
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So again, I was faced with adversity. It may not seem like much now, but at the tender age of seventeen that was a crushing, and very embarrassing blow to an extremely fragile ego. So that was a pivotal moment in my life. I could have caved in to adversity, lashed out at him - and my mother for failing to defend me - and stormed out the house to whatever fate awaited me.  But instead, I used that moment to strengthen my resolved. At that moment, I immediately learned two of life's great lessons - never feel sorry for yourself, and never, ever let a bout with adversity go to waste.
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When faced with the challenge of adversity, that's no time for self-pity. It's a time to marshal all of the strength and resolve at our command, so we can use the experience to hurl us forward. So instead of lashing out, I just looked at him in stony silence, and then walked into my room and made absolutely certain that I absorb all of the pain, embarrassment, and humiliation of that moment - not so I could feel sorry for myself, but so I could use the experience like a slingshot to strengthen my resolve and hurl me toward the vision that I had for my life, and away from his - because there is no motivator on the face of the Earth more potent, than the simple words, "I'll show 'em."      
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And in the end, I did manage to give up drugs and get off the street, but the challenges of adversity continue throughout one’s life. No matter who you are, how old you are, or what your status in society, life is going to continue to present you with a series of challenges and opportunities, and your fate will be directly tied to how you address those issues. This is how and why we become wiser with age. 
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My next challenge came after Val and I were married and had two small children. In that case I was laid off from my job unjustly. I was an Assistant Warehouse manager for a nationally known furniture and mattress company, and I was one of only two Blacks with the company. The other Black person was an older gentleman, and a highly skilled master upholsterer. So when the company had a minor business reversal, instead of laying off someone with lessor seniority, they decided to lay me off. At the time, I was devastated and hurt. I thought I had a future with that company, so not only was I devastated because my young family and I were already struggling, I was also hurt over the gross injustice and blatant racism that led to my layoff.  It was the first time that I had ever come face-to-face with raw and unvarnished racism.
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I was 23 years old, married less than three years, and I already had two children, so I was in a panic, because it was my first real challenge as a new father and the head of a household. So I went out looking for another job - on foot. The economy was slow, and jobs were scarce, so I decided to go from one company to the next, so I didn’t need a car. I decided upon a strategy of selecting one block each day in the industrial section of the city, and then go from one business to the next until I either found a job, or the day came to an end. I covered several miles a day for weeks, with no luck (I’ve only since found that a recent study showed that a White man with a felony conviction stands a better than equal chance of being hired on a job than a Black man with a clean record - and it must have been much worse back then).
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But one night while looking at television I saw a commercial by the Army. They were trying to recruit new enlistees, and it mention the V.A. benefits that were afforded veterans. So being a Marine Corps vet, I decided to try checking into school again to take advantage of my veterans benefits - I had checked into school immediately after I was discharged, but the benefits took so long to be processed that I ended up having to dropout and go find the job from which I had just been laid off. But this time the benefits started almost immediately, and they were great at the time. Even though my wife was working, I could have supported the family by myself on my benefits alone.
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Then shortly after I began school, my old job contacted me requesting that I return to work. But of course, I told them that I wasn’t interested. I thought that would be the end of the matter, but two weeks later they called again, and asked me if would I come and meet with them. Through pure curiosity over their hutzpa, and to see why all of a sudden they were so interested in having me return - along with the opportunity it presented for me to tell them to shove it in person - I agreed.
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It turned out that their deliveries were backed up to nearly the week that I’d been laid off. I didn’t even recognize the warehouse - it was overflowing with undelivered merchandise. My primary job was selecting merchandise to be loaded onto the trucks for delivery every morning. The company had a catalogue of the types, models, and various colors and fabrics of the furniture they produced, but having to look through the catalogue for everything before having it loaded onto the trucks was extremely time consuming. In addition, there were very small variations in the color, fabric, and styles of various items that had to be recognized to insure the right product was delivered.
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I had memorized the catalogue and every item that they produced, so that expedited delivery. It also prevented customer frustration and the costly necessity of redelivery. It seemed that the manager, who was now doing my job, obviously hadn’t taken the time to do that. When I was doing the job the crew was always ahead of schedule, so after I had them prepare merchandise for the next day’s deliveries, we spent a lot of the afternoon just sitting around, with the exception of doing will calls and stocking merchandise. Perhaps that’s why the company thought I was expendable.
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I had already told my immediate boss (the manager) and the head of the department that I wasn’t interested in returning to work when I spoke with them over the phone, so my meeting was scheduled with the Vice President of Operations - go figure it, little old me meeting with a man who wouldn’t even bother to say good morning when I was working there. But as soon as I walked into his office and sat down he said, "Let’s get right to it. Do you have another job?"
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I made it a point not to tell him what was going on in my life, or about my returning to school, because a good rule of thumb in life is to always make sure that you have more information than the other person when involved in a serious discussion. So for the benefit of future employees, I decided to base my refusal on principle. So I told him, "No, I don’t have another job. He then asked, "Then why don’t you want to return to work? I told him that I didn’t want to return because of how unfairly I was treated when I was laid off. Without once mentioning race (I didn’t think I had to), I pointed out that all of the people who were working under me are still down there working, yet, I was laid off, and I didn’t think that was fair.
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He told me that he agreed, and if I returned to work he would find out whose decision it was to lay me off and he would see to it that they paid a price for that decision. In response, I told him that I wasn’t interested in retribution. "I was a loyal employee, and I took great pride in working for this company. I expected the same in return, but I didn't get that. The company made it clear that I wasn’t appreciated, so in spite of any hardship that I might have to endure, I’ve decided not to return."
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To that he said, "You can’t be serious. Don’t you have a family? It’s rough in this economy without a job. I’ll tell you what. I don’t want our company to be responsible for any hardship for you and your family, and somebody in this company is responsible for your being treated unfairly. So here’s what I’ll do - first, I want to apologize on behalf of the company; in addition, I will give you a raise and a promotion to manager; and I will also see to it that whoever made the decision to lay you off pays a severe price." To which I said, I accept your apology and I appreciate your offer, but no thank you. I feel that I have to move on. Then I stood up and held out my hand.
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As I was leaving he said, "Well, maybe you’ll change you’re mind later. If you do, I will stand behind my offer." I thanked him again, and left.
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Again, when those people first laid me off, it devastated me. I thought my entire world was coming to an end. But as it turned out, what I thought was a horrible event, was simply a moment of adversity that I had to endure in order to gain an opportunity to change the direction of my life. If it were not for that adversity, I probably never would have gotten an education, and I’d still be there working in their warehouse for chump change. 
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So adversity should never be look upon as something bad. It’s simply inconvenient. One should always view adversity as one of life’s challenges, and an opportunity for growth. Because adversity makes us stronger and wiser, and we wouldn’t grow without it. Body builders have such muscular bodies due to the adversity of repeatedly lifting heavy weight against the pull of gravity, and the only reason we even learn to walk and talk is because as babies we had to deal with the adversity of not being able to get around and tell people what we wanted. And chances are, the only reason that President Obama is President of the United States is due to the tools that he had to cultivate in order to deal with the adversity of always being an outsider throughout his formative years.
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So finally, after I finished college and was doing pretty well for myself, I stopped by my mother's house for a visit. I was around twenty-six years old at that time, and many of my articles were being featured in the local paper. As was my custom, before I went into the house to sit and visit with my mother, I'd go back to the garage to holler at Varnell and his crew who could always be found on the weekend in the garage playing either cards or dominos. As I walked through the door, one of Varnell's friends said, "Hey! There he is, my main man. Brother, I want to be just like you when I grow up!"  Then, without ever looking up from his dominos, Varnell told his friend, "I'm sorry, man, but you'll never grow up to be like Eric - you have to be born that way."  He then looked up from his hand and directly into my eyes for just a fleeting moment, sorta smiled, and then immediately back down to his dominos. The message was clear. After nearly ten years he hadn't forgotten. I guess that was Varnell's way of apologizing to me after all those years.
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So while adversity may hurt for a moment, if handled properly, in the long run it makes us more, rather than less, and that edge can be very satisfying. Because on those occasions when I'm forced to step on the presumption of a racist or Ivy League snob, I make it a point to let them know that they'd just been obliterated by a hood rat.
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The Hood Rat
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I’m sure you know that I love you;
You’re everything that I need.
You fit the bill of all my desires,
a perfect match for all of my dreams.
You’re everything I’ve always craved,
that luscious vision from across the tracks;
that delicate flower,
just beyond my grasp, and
now here you are at last.
*
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’d give everything you’ve got.
*
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.
*
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:
*
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.
*
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.
*
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.
*
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)
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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.     

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Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Dr. Ben Carson is revealing Himself to be an Idiot Savant

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

Dr. Ben Carson is revealing Himself to be an Idiot Savant
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Dr. Ben Carson recently said that Obamacare was the worst thing since slavery. Is he serious? Is making it possible for millions of uninsured Americans to obtain affordable healthcare worse than Jim Crow and the countless lynchings of African Americans across this country since slavery? Is Obamacare worse than blatant racism, the bombing of innocent children in church, the senseless murder of Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, or the gross murder and mutilation of a 14 year-old Emmet Till? Is this man out of his mind?
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While Dr. Carson may be a brilliant neurosurgeon, he’s far from what one would consider an intellectual. Not only does the inaccuracy of his comment on Obamacare and slavery betray a monumental level of perceptual ignorance, but the fact that he lacked the insight to anticipate the national uproar over such an assertion clearly demonstrates that his perceptual ignorance is, at the very least, tinged with more than just a little unmitigated, profound, and stark stupidity.
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And it seems that White conservatives will never learn that by trotting people like Allen West, Herman Cain, or Dr. Ben Carson out before the public, they’re doing themselves a disservice in the Black community. Black people know and understand our own people. We warned America that Herman Cain had a flawed character. Then when it came out that he was a philandering pervert, conservatives were shocked, while the Black community walked away snickering, and asked, "What else is new?"
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So you see, it’s not Black people who are out of touch. We overwhelmingly support the Democratic Party because we have sense enough not to reject the Bogeyman just to go out and support the Devil.
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Black people understand that ANY Black person who aligns him or herself with the conservative agenda has to be either an idiot or suffer from a severe character flaw. Sound crazy? Okay, well, just ask yourself, how do you feel about Americans who align themselves with Al Qaeda? Well, why is it so difficult to understand why the Black community would feel the exact same way about a group where one of its representatives, Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colorado), would say, being associated with President Obama would be similar to touching a "tar  baby" (http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/08/01/congressman-calls-obama-a-tar-baby/ ) It's the exact same rationale. 
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Black people have centuries of experience in dealing with White conservatives. We know who is grinnin' in our face during the day, and then riding around under sheets at night. So Black people have long since recognized what even many White liberals are just beginning to see - that the modern Republican Party is the domestic enemy of the United States. The recent government shutdown clearly attests to that fact. Thus, if Al Qaeda represents a rattle snake in America's garden, the current GOP represents a python in the bedroom. After all, Al Qaeda can only blowup buildings, while the current Republican Party is dedicated to destroying the very foundation upon which this nation was founded.
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So, yes, most Black people detest Black conservatives, because Black people love America, so we view Black conservatives as not only the enemy of the state, but the enemy of their own people. In short, we look upon them like we would a Jewish Nazis.
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Thus, the Black community recognizes that while Dr. Ben Carson may be a renown neurosurgeon, he’s had to swallow his pride so often, kiss so much ass, and jump through so many racist hoops to get where he did, that he’s been left with a sever case of Stockholm Syndrome. The man even LOOKS weak, beat up, and morally exhausted.
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But for the benefit of those of you who may not be familiar with the Stockholm Syndrome, it’s a psychiatric concept named to describe the psychological response of hostages who were locked in a bank vault for five days during a robbery in Stockholm, Sweden between August 23rd and 28th of 1973. Some of the hostages were so traumatized during their ordeal that they began to confuse relief from blatant abuse with an act of kindness. As a result, they began to empathize with their captors. Many became so attached to their captors, in fact, that they refused assistance and even defended the criminals after they were released.
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So, contrary to popular belief, there are hordes of Black people in the community with the intelligence to not only match, but far exceed Dr. Carson’s achievements (http://wattree.blogspot.com/2010/09/dr-richard-allen-williams-miles-ahead.html), but due to the abuse, disrespect, and disdain that we’ve had to endure over the centuries, the majority of us would rather continue to endure the struggle of the masses than to prostitute our sense of dignity and respect in order to achieve all that we may have the potential to be. Some may call that dumb; I call it character.  It clearly demonstrates that we have both the intelligence and character to recognize that we should always give WHO we are priority over WHAT we are. Thus, we recognize that when you compare the achievements of Dr. Carson - and turncoats like Clarence Thomas, Herman Cain, and Allen West - to the price that they had to pay in terms of character and self-respect, their achievements seem quite shallow and unimportant.
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In addition, these people are trading in their character and self-respect for absolutely nothing in return, because for the fiscal conservative manipulators who control the Republic Party, people like Dr. Carson are simply pawns to be used and then discarded once they’ve served their purpose. On the other hand, many White social conservatives actually take these people seriously, possibly because it allows them to believe that since they like one Black man, that proves that they aren’t racist. So they seem not to understand the true reason why they like Black conservatives.
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The primary reason that White social conservatives are so enamored with Black conservatives like Dr. Carson and Allen West is, these people allow themselves to be placed in the role that conservatives want to see ALL Black people - essentially, grinnin’ children who know their place, deferential to white people, and hostile toward all other Black people who are arrogant enough to consider themselves equal to the White population.
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But conservative planners don't seem to realize that the reason that trotting such people out on the political stage never works is because these very same Black conservatives that the GOP is so enamored with make the Black community want to throw up. The skinnin’-and-grinnin’ of such people actually hurt the Republican brand among Black people rather than help it. 
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So the bottom line is, White conservatives fail to understand that they betray their underlying racist attitudes just by the sort of Black people that they embrace. It’s ironic, isn’t it?
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RELATED CONTENT
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Eric L. Wattree
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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.

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