Do You Trust the Republicans to Show You Christian Charity?

BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE

Do You Trust the Republicans to Show You Christian Charity?

Let me ask you the above question again. Do You Trust the Republicans to show you Christian Charity? Many of you need to think about that, because when you hear those Teabaggers out there screaming that they want their country back, their corporate masters are depending on the fact that they've done enough damage to our educational system where many of you won't know what that really means. In fact, many of the Teabaggers don't know what it means.  If they did, they wouldn't be out there.

What many Teabaggers don't seem to realize is that corporate conservatives are using them like pawns to promote their own enslavement.  They're using the bigotry of many of the social conservatives to carry out an agenda that they've been embarked upon since the end of the Great Depression - to undo the New Deal, which brought about all of the safety nets that serve to protect the economic lives of the poor and middle class.

These corporate slave masters are intent upon the destruction of social security, medicare, The Fair Labor Standards Act, and every other program that was designed to protect the people's interest. Then, in their own words, they want to "make government small enough to drown in a bathtub" - or in plain language, too small to protect the interest of the American people.

Admittedly, their thirty-year program to take control over the lives of the American people has been ingenious. First, they destroyed the unions, then they destroyed the American educational system, and now we're left with an emerging political class that is easily control, because they're so dumb that even if they wanted to do the right thing, they're so undereducated that they know absolutely nothing about the principles that this nation was founded upon.

In a debate at Widener Law School, Christine O'Donnell, Tea Party candidate for the United States Senate from Delaware, gave the law students a big laugh when she denied, then asked her opponent where the separation of church and state could be found in the U.S. Constitution. Ms. O'Donnell has also made other remarks that have betrayed the astonishing breadth of her ignorance.  She claimed, for example, that scientists have cloned mice that have human brains.

The Tea Party is running people like O'Donnell all across the country, people who have made such ridiculous statements that they've had to literally run from the press to avoid having to explain themselves.  Are these the kind of people that we can trust to protect our interest against the corporate encroachment on our rights in the United States Senate? I don't think so.

So our corporate slave masters are already in the process of enslaving the Teabaggers right along with the rest of us by pouring millions of dollars into the campaigns of easily controlled politicians like Christine O'Donnell and others.  But many of the Teabaggers are either too dumb or too blinded by bigotry to understand that this time our enslavement is going to be by class rather than simply race, and by the time they realize what's going on, it's going to be too late.

But is it really possible that it could happen in America?  Wake up people - it already has:

“Come here fool and let me teach yo crazy, animal butt about the Lord. The first thing you got to learn is to Love thy Neighbor - especially me.”

“Yas sir, Massa.

“Shut up, fool. I’m talkin’."

We're just a tea bag away from that kind of "American exceptionalism."  Maybe not to that extent, but you can never be sure, because the atrocities  of the Bush administration makes it clear that these are people without limits.

That "shining light on the hill" that they're always bragging about was actually a plantation, and Black people could still be living under those conditions today if it were not for the many good people who decided that it was worth sacrificing their lives in the bloodiest war in this nation's history to stamp it out. But it's up to us to remain free, so what's so important in your life that you can't even sacrifice a few minutes to vote?

Do you get on your knees every month and pray that God stop the utility company from cutting off your lights? No you don't - you don't have to, because God answered your prayers in advance by blessing you with the common sense to go pay the light bill.

The same is true of your freedom. It's not going to do a bit of good to get on your knees and beg God to protect your civil rights if you don't vote. God helps those who help themselves. So if you don't use the common sense that he gave you and vote to protect your rights, the lights of this free society are going to be shut off just as surely as the lights in your home will be shut off if you don't pay the light bill.

Thus, all of our childrens' tomorrows may be directly dependent upon our gettin' up off our asses today.

Eric L. Wattree

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.

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A Fourth of July Message to America: The Lady Wears Shackles

BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE

A Fourth of July Message to America: The Lady Wears Shackles

For over a hundred and twenty years the Statue of Liberty has greeted immigrants to these shores with open arms and the promise of the kind of freedom that they had never known. As a result, that towering, stately, and majestic lady has come to represent the quintessential symbol of freedom, liberty, and justice for people all over the world. Just the sight of her brought hope and inspiration to millions of European immigrants as they entered New York Harbor, and that initial vision sustained them as they started their new lives in America.

The scene must have seemed surreal as their boats slowly moved past her in the harbor. Oceans of tears must have flowed as the immigrants stared in awe at this magnificent lady. In her right hand she held the burning flame of passion and enlightenment - outstretched and high, as though reaching for the very face of God. In her left arm she held the tablet that represents the rule of law, and the guarantee of equal justice for all, and on her right foot, the broken shackle of a freed slave. That's right - millions of European immigrants were welcomed to America by the statue of a freed slave.

On the pedestal upon which she stood, were the words that had inspired their journey. It says... "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse to your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door."

As a child in school I was taught that the idea of the Statue of Liberty was conceived by a Frenchman, Edouard Laboulaye, as a monument to the collaboration and friendship of the United States and France during the Revolutionary war, and that it was sculpted by sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi. But at the urging of one of our readers I revisited the issue, and did a little research. As a result, I found that Laboulaye did indeed conceive of the Statue of Liberty, but not as a monument to the Revolutionary War. The Statue of Liberty was conceived as a monument to the end of slavery, and to honor those men, women and children who had been enslaved.

Laboulaye conceived of the Statue of Liberty in 1865. That was a hundred years after the Revolutionary War, but it just happened to be the very year that the Civil War came to an end. And it also turns out that Laboulaye wasn't just any Frenchman - he was not only an abolitionist who had dedicated his entire life to the abolishment of slavery, he was a leader of the French abolitionist movement. In addition, the sculptor who actually created the Statue of Liberty, Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, was connected with the abolitionist movement as well.

In an Associated Press interview, Richard Newman, a research officer at Harvard University's W.E.B. DuBois Institute for Afro-American Research is quoted as saying, "It is widely believed in academic circles that Laboulaye meant for the statue to honor the slaves, as well as mark the recent Union victory in the Civil War and the life of Abraham Lincoln."

The Statue of Liberty wasn't actually completed until 1886, but there's a 21 inch replica of the statue that was completed in 1870 on display at the Museum of the City of New York. That replica, or, original, is not white, it's terra cotta (brownish-orange), and it is said to have been designed in the likeness of a Black woman. In addition, the replica has a broken shackle around her left hand. The 151 foot statue in New York Harbor has a more . . . Discrete shackle around her foot.

The words at the base of the Statue of Liberty from the poem, "The New Colossus", by Emma Lazarus wasn't added to the statue until 1903, during a time when there was a huge surge in European immigration, and that's when the fiction began. During an interview with the Associated Press, Rebecca M. Joseph, a Boston-based Park service anthropologist is quoted as saying, "There is wide agreement that Liberty's now-familiar association with immigration was not planned by the statue's creators."

Nevertheless the thoroughly ironic scene of European immigrants weeping as they passed the Lady's flame must have played out thousands of times. It's the stuff that movies are made of - and just like most movies, the irony of a magnificent subplot churned discretely beneath the surface. One of the ironies is that now, many the grandchildren of some of those very same immigrants - those indigent immigrants that Lady Liberty welcomed into this country with open arms - have used voting fraud, unfair labor practices, redlining, blatant discrimination, and every other device, in an attempt to undermine the very people that we now know the Lady was originally created to embrace.

So irony is the operative word in this piece, and exquisite in its irony is the deplorable state of ingratitude of many of the people that this magnificent symbol of Black liberation welcomed to the country. It is all but a complete indictment on human nature that some of the very same people that Lady Liberty served as a symbol of hope, and who she welcomed to this country as literal vagrants, would now attempt to slam the door of hope and justice on the very people that she was created to enshrine.

Considering that ironic twist brought a tear to my eye as I researched this issue, because as a kid, I couldn't help but be awed by the majesty of that Lady - and that was in spite of the fact that I thought she was created for everybody but people like me. But now to find that she was created specifically for me, and even that was stolen, is almost too much to bear. Just think of how many young Black lives might have been salvaged by just the simple nudge to their self-esteem that something so grand and majestic could have provided had they known what it was created to represent. Just that knowledge alone could have given them the sense of pride, dignity, and purpose that might very well have sustained them throughout their lives.

But in spite of that, or maybe because of it, the Lady continues to hold her flame high as a tantalizing subplot silently plays itself out beneath the surface. For even as pernicious ingrates continued to indulged in their evil machinations, yet another immigrant quietly sailed passed the Lady's burning flame. He was a solitary young man from Kenya who presented papers in the name of Barack Obama.

I'm sure the immigration official laughed as he examined the papers and said, "Who?" But little did he know that it wouldn't be long before the entire world would provide him with a resounding answer to his question.

Eric L. Wattree
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.

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The Teabaggers Want their Country Back - Preferably, Circa 1860

BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE The Teabaggers Want their Country Back - Preferably, Circa 1860 I just saw another one of those videos. You know the kind - the ones that Fox "News" love to show of the clueless teabagger with tears in her eyes, complaining that she wants her country back. These sound bites are designed to tug at our heartstrings, but they have just the opposite effect on me. What I see is a social bigot who thinks the world is about to come to an end because Barack Obama is the president instead of the White House butler. The complete irony of that clip is the fact that, that very Black man that she's complaining about is actually the one who's trying to give her a country that she can call her own, while the Republican that she's crying to secretly looks upon her, and her kind, as ignorant trailer trash that's only good for contributing to their wealth and power, pumping out babies that they can grind up in their war machine, and making a fool of herself in their staged videos. The man can barely disguise his disgust as he's looking at her. I find myself making the very same point article after article, but what else can I do when such a large part of the population has been so thoroughly brainwashed that they can't see what's right before their eyes? Let me amend that. I think they can see it, but they refuse to recognize a reality that they don't want to accept. Not all, but many of these people know that it's driving them crazy that a Black man is in the White House. But since it's no longer socially acceptable for them to be blatantly racist, they have to disguise their racist attitudes by couching them in other issues with a wink. "It's not that I hate that Black man in the White House, it's just that I hate everything he represents, even if what he represents directly benefits my family." These people are indulging in a classic example of cutting off their nose to spite their face. One might argue that many people were also against health-care reform under President Clinton, and he was White. That is true, but they hated Bill Clinton, liberalism, and the Democratic Party almost as much as they hate Obama, because all three advocated the "slippery slope" that led to Obama. The GOP is very good at marketing, and they mounted a brilliant campaign to demonized the word "liberal" in the political lexicon. During the sixties they mounted a campaign against liberalism by equating it with the push for civil rights, being "soft on crime," and promoting welfare - which was politispeech for coddling Black people. Then by repeatedly combining these concepts, the word liberal became associated, at least, in the uneducated mind, with "those who coddle Black people, who are criminal, lazy, and want to take your money while they sit on welfare and take drugs." Through the use of that tactic the GOP successfully turn the word liberal into now, what is essentially, a racial slur. So it's no wonder the Teabaggers are up in arms. As far as they're concerned, the country is being run by a criminal (who's probably taking drugs in the White House), who wants to take their money so he can set up lazy Black people to lay-up on welfare and have babies at their expense. Many of these people have been programed all of their lives to believe that propaganda, so that Mindset is as much a part of them as their religion - and the Republican Party is continuing to reinforce that belief with every sound bite. So in short, with every teabag rally, the GOP is purposely trying to incite insurrection. Am I overstating my case? Is it possible that the GOP is legitimately concerned about the plight of the American people? I don't think so. The Republicans have become so blatant in their attempt to manipulate the people that they've become predictable. I did an experiment. Right after I heard about the Fort Hood shooting I rushed to Twitter to record my prediction that GOP supporters were going to find a way to twist the facts to involve President Obama as part of their demonization campaign: Twitter: Let's see how long it takes for the Republicans to try to twist the Fort Hood Shootings into a political attack on Obama. 12:39 PM Nov 5th from web. The next day's entry: Yesterday I said let's see how long before wingnuts blame [the fort Hood] shooting on Obama. Well... http://bit.ly/uLhxS, 6:31 PM Nov 6th from web. Just as I predicted an article was published in the WorldNet Daily, a publication founded by arch conservative, Joseph Farah, claiming that the shooter, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, was an advisor on President Obama's transition team. But of course, it was a lie. Nidal simply attended a conference hosted by George Washington University. He had absolutely nothing to do with the Obama transition team. And Farah's not just some blogger who didn't get his facts straight. He's a life long "journalist" and long time conservative operative. Prior to founding WorldNet Daily, Farah was executive editor of the now defunct Los Angeles Herald Examiner, and later, the editor of the Sacramento Union. While at the Union, he persuaded Rush Limbaugh to write a daily front page column. He also collaborated with Limbaugh on the book, See, I told You So, in 1994. Farah is also a prominent birther, who's quoted as saying, regarding the birther's claim that President Obama wasn't born in the United States, that "It'll plague Obama through out his presidency. It'll be a nagging issue and a sore on his administration, much like Monica Lewinsky was on Bill Clinton's presidency," and, "It's not going to go away, and it will drive a wedge in an already divided public." So there you have it - not in my words, but in the words of a prominent conservative operative. The Republicans' primary agenda is not to pull the people of this country together in order to weather two wars, the loss of homes and jobs, and the deepest recession since the Great Depression, but to "drive a wedge in an already divided public." What a fine bunch of patriots, these Republicans. Every time the word "America" comes out of their mouths, it makes me want to throw up.   Eric L. Wattree wattree.blogspot.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.

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