Showing posts with label Divide. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Divide. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 04, 2012

Are the Democratic and Republican Parties One and the Same?

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

Are the Democratic and Republican Parties One and the Same?
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Those of you who like to go around saying that there’s no difference between the Democratic and Republican Parties should pause a moment to take note. The Republican led United States Supreme Court is currently poised to give you some of that good old-fashion Republican love. They’re currently considering whether they can get away with taking away your healthcare, just as they all but disenfranchised you by declaring that corporations are people in their ‘Citizens United’ decision, and completely overruled your vote by appointing George Bush President in the 2000 election after you clearly voted for Al Gore.
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The Republican Party’s only platform and sole purpose in life is to make absolutely sure that the American people hate one another more passionately than they love themselves. That’s why Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and other Republicans are defending George Zimmerman after he killed Trayvon Martin. But that’s not surprising, since they created the environment that led to Zimmerman killing Trayvon in the first place. They’ve done that by convincing many undereducated and weak-minded Whites that ALL Black men are out to kill their sons, steal their possessions, and rape their daughters. So for all of you who claim that Democrats are no different from Republicans, take a moment to ask yourself, "Who’s disseminating that message, Democrats or Republicans?"
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The Republican leadership benefits from the Black, public outrage over this atrocity. That’s why conservative pundits eagerly fan the flames of the anger in the Black community over the obvious injustice of this incident. The case is clear. Zimmerman, a full grown man, arm with a 9 mm pistol and weighing, reportedly, a hundred pounds more than his victim, stalked and killed a Black child armed only with a bag of Skittles. And that was AFTER being instructed by the police to remain in his vehicle. Thereafter, Zimmerman, the son of a retired judge, was routinely released as though he’d been picked up for a traffic ticket. It should have been an open and shut case, but they didn’t even bother to collect a shred of evidence. Imagine what the consequences would have been for Trayvon if the situation was exactly reversed - in fact, under the given circumstances, Trayvon would have undoubtedly been jailed if he had managed to kill Zimmerman even in self-defense after being stalked.
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But by continually inserting red herring defenses and other justifications for Zimmerman’s deadly assault on Trayvon - the fact that Trayvon was wearing a hoodie, he had been suspended from school, showing a picture of Trayvon wearing a gold tooth, etc. - conservative pundits are purposely further enraging the Black community, and thereby, planting the seed in the White community’s mind that Black people are being both racist toward Zimmerman and unreasonably hateful toward White people in general. That serves to drive a wedge between the Black and White communities and distract them away from the recognition that the throats of both communities are being cut by Republican policies.
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If the middle class, and indeed this nation, is to survive, it is incumbent upon us to realized that we are now engaged in a class war, in which race is merely a tool to drive a wedge between us to keep us divided - and anyone who perpetuates that effort, including Tavis Smiley and Cornel West, is the enemy.
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Sure there are poor and middle-class racists in both communities. Racism has been built-in and carefully nurtured into our society, but we’ve been conditioned to be racist and divided by the social manipulation pointed out above. Thus, the only way that the poor and middle class are going to save themselves is for them to start doing more thinking, and stop allowing the social manipulators to control their thoughts through manipulating them into caving in to knee-jerk reactionism.
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The fact is, the corporate powers that be don’t care any more about White people than they do Black people. The attack on Social Security, Medicare, and organized labor isn’t race specific. It’s an assault on the poor and middle class of all races. Of the millions of people across this land who were thrown out of their homes, they weren’t just Black. They were people of every race, creed, and color. And when Bush and Cheney sent our troops to Iraq without the necessary equipment to protect their lives, neither was that race specific. That was a direct assault on poor and middle class America as a whole. In fact, the children of the rich are no longer even expected to defend this country. Dying for America has now become the job of the "little people." Thus, the Republican Party is trying to drag America back into a social structure that our founding fathers left Europe to get away from - one based on class and social status.
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As a result, our government institutions have now morphed into facades designed to give us the ILLUSION of justice. Anyone who doubts that should try suing any major corporation. So in order to save ourselves we must ban together to FORCE American institutions to function as they are suppose to, and a huge part of that effort is coming together and learning to recognize demagoguery.
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A prime example of the demagoguery that we must be on the alert against comes in the form of idiots running around claiming that there’s no difference between the Democratic and Republican parties. That’s a flat-out lie that benefits no one but the social manipulators themselves. Granted, there are problems within the Democratic Party and there are more than a few Democrats that need to be thrown out of office, but that's a result of a combination of factors, including human greed, selfishness, and the public’s tendency to be inattentive and apathetic. By allowing ourselves to become solely preoccupied with our own self-interests we've allowed politicians to become a class within themselves, a class that’s become a subset of the class that we’re fighting. That’s an issue that we must address through taking another look at political salaries and perks. So it's more a problem of the emergence of a new political class than it is the philosophy of the Democratic Party itself.
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The primary reason that the Democratic Party has moved farther to the right is because that's where the votes are. Idiots like Ralph Nader, Tavis Smiley, and Cornel West have confused the left so badly that politicians can't depend on our votes. Then once the left suffers the resulting loses attendent to our confusion, the people mentioned above simply go back to their lucrative hustles of complaining about the peoples’ misery until the next election - completely ignoring the fact that they are a major cause of that misery.
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The bottom line is, the more the poor and middle class are abused, the more people like Nader, Tavis and West are paid to complain about it. So if the poor and middle class ever did achieved true justice, it would be West's worst nightmare, because he’s reportedly paid $30,000 a speech to complain about our condition.
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So we, the people, are just not getting it. We're being blinded by West’s woolly hair and carefully nurtured persona. We're suffering from a superficial view of reality - "If he looks that Black and the White folks at Harvard says he's brilliant, he must be the man!" That’s a bunch of crap! Cornel is the one who’s the puppet. He and Tavis are not the darling of the corporate establishment for nothing - they play an indispensable role in maintaining the status quo by keeping us divided.
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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.

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Tuesday, June 16, 2009

The Republican Vision for America - Divide and Conquer

BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE

The Republican Vision for America - Divide and Conquer

The current situation in Iran is perfectly analogous to what's going on here in the United States. The vast majority of the people want a common-sense approach to domestic and world politics, while the old guard, stuck in the blind animosities of the past, are determined to promote and exploit those animosities for their own end, and at any cost - including the misery and death of their own people. In Iran the old guard is represented by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; in the U.S., Dick Cheney and Rush Limbaugh. In Iran they are called jihadist, while in the U.S. we refer to them as the Republican Party.

Like the jihadist in the Middle East, Republican wing-nuts claim to be acting on a mission from God. Also like their counterparts in the Middle East, these GOP leaders believe that the end justifies the means, which leaves them free to lie, cheat, steal, torture, and kill innocent people. Their primary method of operation is to take a germ of truth, then infuse it with false conclusions and lies to poison and inflame the minds of the people to act against their own interest. Just like the jihadist, they specialize in using the people's own ignorance against them in order to divide and conquer.

But it seems that the people of both cultures have said enough is enough. Due to unprecedented corruption during the Republican administration, and the belief by many Americans that they'd been robbed of both the 2000 and 2004 elections, in the 2006 election the people voted Republicans out of office by the largest numbers in a generation. Then in a more graphic break with the past, in 2008 Barack Obama was voted into office as the first African American president of the United States. The people of Iran are currently in a struggle with their old guard as well. They too believe that a desperate and corrupt old guard has attempted to steal their vote.

It's still too early to determine the outcome of the struggle between the will of the people and the jihadists in Iran, since as we speak there's rioting in the street, and Iran's Guardian Council (the old guard) has agreed to recount the votes. But here in the United States, the Republican Party has embarked upon a scorched Earth policy, and a strategy of divide and conquer. Their primary goal seems to be to sabotage the nation's recovery by keeping the people divided. Thereafter, if they're successful, they intend to regain power by simply saying, we told you so. Thus, they've dedicated their existence to making America suffer for the next four years.

A Clear example of the Republican Party's method of operation can be seen in the activities of Rabbi Nachum Shifren. Rabbi Shifren has become a perennial Republican candidate for the 26th District of the California State Senate. I first came into contact with him when he began to contact many of us in the Black press with a message of working to improve the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Republicans always build their lies on a germ of truth - after all, who could possibly disagree that we have a dysfunctional educational system. But like many Republican wing-nuts, the hubris of his racist mindset has caused him to underestimate the intelligence of the Black community. He actually thought he could ingratiate himself with Black writers through flattery. He would never try such a ploy with a White journalist. Essentially, he came to me and said, he felt the need to approach me because of my exceptional insight. He was sure that with my keen intelligence I would be able to relay his message to those in the community who weren't bright enough to see the big picture. In other words, I'm a credit to my race.

I had long since researched the Rabbi, so I was fully aware that he was a rabid ultra-conservative who had been a strong supporter of Pat Buchanan, and had been all but banished from the Jewish community. But one should never try to out scream a fool. You listen to them carefully - very carefully. And this is what I heard:

He said, "There is nothing more corrosive to the fabric of our city than hatred based on race. But let's get real. We don't then overcompensate by hiring LAPD officers that are 4 feet, 10 inches tall! We don't go and hire officers that have rap sheets, or are otherwise unqualified. The racisim here is absolutely overt! The thinking goes like this: let's just get ANYBODY in there, as long as they're a CERTAIN skincolor..."

"Eric, I reached the boiling point when I was stopped by a woman officer that was shorter than her 9mm. I attended a Neighborhood Council meeting in W. LA in which the "captain" , a female officer, addressed the group. I looked at another officer present and remarked how this 5'6'', 150 lb woman could be the captain. He told me that many male candidates had been passed over for the position."

When I asked him to substantiate his claim he responded with opinions and anecdotes. I then pointed out to him that while diminutive female officers are not what those of our generation have come to expect, I can think of very few instances where these young women have been overpowered by thugs. On the other hand, I can think of a number of instances where physically oversized, but intellectually diminutive, thug police officers have assaulted and in some cases killed innocent citizens. So I'd rather see brains over brawn any day.

And with regard to the question that he asked the officer at the neighborhood council meeting regarding how this 5'6'', 150 lb woman could be the captain." I pointed out to him that his question alone betrayed a mindset that I found quite troubling. I then asked, how did he know the female captain wasn't twice as qualified as all of the male candidates that she competed against, to which, I never got a response. I also pointed out that he had based his assessment of the captain on purely his own opinion of what SHOULD AND SHOULD NOT BE. Thus, he'd betrayed a tendency to base his conclusions on less than informed and highly subjective opinions - the very same kind of opinions that caused many to conclude that Blacks should never be placed in positions of responsibility, or that Jews should never be trusted.

But here's where I lost patience with him. He said the following:

"But who in the corrupted Black leadership will call for a moment of silence for those African Americans murdered in racially charged ethnic cleansing by radical Hispanic gangs? Now that we need to discuss "racism" in America by those that want to Marginalize African American citizens, where is Attorney General Eric Holder? Will he step up and do his job? Or is he also in bed with the Reconquista crowd, paralyzed by political correctness."

The above statement pointed out his true colors. It was a thinly veiled use of the murder of Stephen Tyrone Johns at the Holocaust Museum to promote the Rabbi's political agenda. Black people are also being killed by Black gangs, but he wasn't concerned about that. His only intent was to slander the Obama administration, and cause a division within the Black and Hispanic coalition that's making it impossible for Republicans to be elected.

How much does Shifren really care about Black people? Listen to the poison that he's feeding the young people in a speech before the Silicon Valley Young Republican Federation: "Multi-culturalism will be the nail in the coffin for our country . . . There are a substantial number of Black and Latino educators and administrators who will stop at nothing until they have seen 'the last gasp of White America.'"

Spoken like a true jihadist.

Eric L. Wattree

Wattree.blogspot.com

If you really want to be hip, hop into a book.


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