A Retrospective on George W. Bush: Am I a Prophet, or Did America Ignore Reality?

BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE

A Retrospective on George W. Bush:

Am I a Prophet, or Did America Ignore Reality?

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On September 15, 2002–six months and four days prior to the Iraqi invasion--I published an article entitled "Would Bush's Saber Rattle as Loudly Against China?" in the Portland Independent Media Center http://Portland.indymedia.org/en/2002/09/21292.shtml –no one else would publish it at the time–that said the following:

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WOULD BUSH'S SABER RATTLE AS LOUDLY AGAINST CHINA?

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Now that we've reached the anniversary of 9-11, I am consumed by one thought--in light of what I've seen over the past year I find myself much more afraid of Bush, Cheney, and Ashcroft than I am the Al Qaeda. While I understand that terrorists strike without warning to destroy life and property to promote their own agenda, it has become increasingly clear that Bush and his cohorts threaten to be even more destructive by attacking life, liberty, and the very foundation of this nation in the promotion of theirs.
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Over the past year these conservative war mongers have been playing the American people like a fiddle. Now they want to sacrifice American lives for nothing more than their own political advantage. Just ask yourself, what does Saddam Hussein have to do with 9-11? Absolutely nothing. Evidence of that can be found in the fact that if Saddam had been involved in 9-11 the administration would have gone after him initially.
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So why is it suddenly so imperative that we invade Iraq now? I'll tell you why. Since Bush was unable to produce the head of Osama Bin Laden, he now needs another villain to take Bin Laden's place in order to keep his numbers up in the polls-- and if that means having to sacrifice a few American lives and ignite even more terrorist activity on American soil in the process, so be it.
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It is a well known political fact that the American people tend to rally around the president when the country's at war. That's why the Bush Administration fell all over themselves after 9-11 to declare "a war against terrorism." And the American people reacted just as planed-Bush's numbers immediately went up in the polls. But now with the mystery surrounding the fate of Osama Bin Laden, the administration has found itself without a war to sustain those numbers, so now they have to create one.
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While I'm not prepared to say that the Bush Administration allowed 9-11 to take place, it is clear that the timing of the 9-11 tragedy was without a doubt the best thing that could ever happened to Bush's presidency.
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Bush was a lame duck the minute he was sworn in. It seems that as soon as Bush entered The Oval Office the stock market began to falter and the economy started to weaken. And whenever he spoke, the next day's news was not so much what he said, but whether or not he got through the speech without falling on his face. In addition, his big tax cut that was touted as the key to boosting the economy turned out to be a bust, and he was so inept in dealing with congress that a Republican senator changed parties costing Bush control of the senate. As a result, when 9-11 took place, it was embraced by conservatives more like it was a football rally than the sober occasion that it was--thus, all the flag waving, ceremonies, and strutting about.
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But where was all that bluster prior to 9-11? ABC News reported on May 16th of this year [2002] that the Bush Administration acknowledged that U.S. Intelligence officials informed President Bush weeks before 9-11 that Osama Bin Laden's terrorists might try to hijack a plane. It was also reported that Bush privately alerted transportation officials and security agencies, but other than that, simply sat on the information.
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The administration claims that the information they received was non-specific, but one would think that even if they couldn't determine exactly when and where the attack was going to take place, at the very least they could have warned the American people. If they had, maybe some of the people who died would have chosen not to fly-or possibly, chosen to leave their children behind. But no, this president who now claims to be so concerned with protecting our welfare that he feels compelled to launch an unprovoked attack against Iraq, was at that time more interested in the impact that warning us would have on the airline industry.
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What the American people needs to understand is that the power elite in this country doesn't view the United States in the same way as its citizens. They see the United States as a huge corporation, with its various industries as its subsidiaries. They see American citizens, particularly the lower and middle class, as simply pawns to be cajoled and manipulated in whatever way is necessary to meet the goals of the corporation. Therefore, they didn't view the tragedy of 9-11 in the same patriotic way as the average American citizen. After the initial shock, they saw 9-11 in terms of dollars and cents. Ultimately, it was viewed as an assault on their corporate superstructure. Later they recognized that the incident could be used as a distraction for the American people, and still later, an opportunity to move on Middle Eastern oil interests.
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So let there be no doubt, all of the flag waving, ceremonies, and patriotic speeches have nothing to do with 9-11; they are designed to whip the American people into such a frenzy that they're blinded to Bush's actual agenda. And that agenda includes the following:
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1). Committing America (and American lives) to a war in order to get
himself re-elected.
2). Taking control of Iraqi oil fields to benefit his friends in big business.
3). Keeping the American voter distracted from considering the ramifications of the recent corporate scandals.
4). Keeping the American people from recognizing how inept he is as president.
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The rest of the world sees Bush's agenda for what it is, and the American people would too if they'd stop waving their flags long enough to consider the flag's true meaning. The American flag represents freedom and justice, not trying to dictate who should lead other countries. It represents the open debate of issues, not intolerance to any and everyone who disagrees with your point of view. It represents the guarantee of personal freedom, not the suspension of the Bill of Rights.
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If the American people would just stop to consider these facts, it would become clear that even while Bush and his conservative cohorts are frantically waving our flag, they are simultaneously waging war against the very values that the flag and this great country represent.
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These issues can, and will, be debated ad nauseam, but the American people need only ask themselves two questions to put all of the administration's nonsense into perspective. First, would the administration be so anxious to go to war if we were talking about China as opposed to Iraq? And secondly, do we think that invading Iraq will make us more, or less safe from terrorist attacks? If we answer those questions honestly, it becomes clear that the administration is being disingenuous at best.
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So what I'd like to know is this--if a shade tree "journalist" sitting up in his den in the heart of a Los Angeles ghetto could see what was going on, why couldn't the New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, CNN and all of the networks; Harvard, Yale, and the various and sundry Ph.D.s from the other great institutions of learning; the nation's think tanks, all of the nation's political scientists, the United States Congress and Hillary Clinton couldn't figure it out?
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It kinda makes you wanna go, hmmmmmmm.
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Eric L. Wattree

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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This Poem of Yours

BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE

THIS POEM OF YOURS

This poem of yours,
it represents
more truth than I can bear.
So please stop speaking of horror and death,
I don't want to hear it no more.
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I want to see an evil enemy,
not babies crushed and torn;
I want to see pictures of angry infidels,
not of mothers as they mourn.
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How do you expect me to support
our troops if you keep talking
to me this way?
Now whenever I sing
America the Beautiful
decaying corpses get in my way.
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Stop this!
It's un-American,
to bring on this brutal truth.
Please don’t tell me justice
is just a myth;
You wouldn’t do that,
Would you?

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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An Irrefutable Truth About the GOP

BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE

An Irrefutable Truth About the GOP
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A gentleman by the name of James W. Lewis recently commented on my article, "Who’s In the ‘Dark,’ the Black Community, or Dr. Ben Carson?" In his comment he posed a question which under ordinary circumstances would seem to be very reasonable, and one that seems to currently be on the mind of a surprising number of younger Black people. He asked the following:
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"There’s one thing that has always bothered me about black folks. We constantly battle trying to prove we’re not all the same, especially what’s portrayed on television. We come from a variety of backgrounds, and our unique upbringings shape our beliefs, including political beliefs. If that’s the case, why do we ALL have to be Democrat (or even Independent)? The Democratic Party was once pro-slavery with obviously no, to very little African American support. The shift began in the 1940s with FDR’s New Deal. African Americans have been generally pro-Democrat ever since. If African Americans can change the face of the Democratic party, can’t the same be said for the Republican party?"
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James, in a word, no.
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People often suggest that I tend to advocate for the Democratic Party over the GOP.   In response to that, first, I'd like to make it clear that I'm not a Democrat, and I haven’t been since my early twenties. I’m a independent progressive thinker, as oppose to a liberal or conservative. There is a difference.
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Liberals and conservatives are both ideologues, and as such, tend to be different sides of the same coin. They both have a propensity to give ideology priority over unadulterated truth. So when truth fails to conform to their particular ideological position, they both have a tendency to try to bend and contort the truth in order to mold it into a more comfortable fit within their political philosophy.
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Progressives, on the other hand, are non-ideological. We believe in following truth wherever it leads and regardless to who’s ox it gores. Truth is our only constituent, so we tend to look upon the political landscape as though we’re observing an ant farm, rather than from a partisan perspective.
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At this point it must be granted, however, that progressives do generally come down on the liberal side of the ledger, but there’s a reason for that, and since we believe in truth, that reason should be obvious. The current Republican Party has become a refuge for scoundrels for some, and a refuge from reality for many others. So while I’m not advocating FOR the Democratic Party, I routinely and vociferously advocate AGAINST the Republican Party with my every keystroke, because the current GOP is filled to the brim with some of the most dangerously malevolent people in this country.
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Simply ask yourself, when was the last time a party had to, literally, hide their last president and vice president during an election? Granted, I’m not a historian, but I can’t think of another time in our history. But the Republican Party had to do it twice - in both the 2008 and 2012 elections - and with good reason.
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George W. Bush and Dick Cheney spent their entire eight-year reign enriching their cronies. In addition, during their time in office they didn’t do one solitary thing to help America, or the American people, and that’s been the Republican record for nearly ONE HUNDRED YEARS. The GOP has a clear and irrefutable one hundred year record of swindling the American people, which I clearly lay out in the following link. (http://wattree.blogspot.com/2010/10/gop-one-hundred-year-record-of.html).

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Thus, the GOP has clearly become the domestic enemy of the United States. So to even try to be nonpartisan with this group would constitute colluding with the enemy against the American people.
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Am I engaging in a hyperbolic rant? I don’t think so. Let me prove it: Who was the last Republican president who didn’t drag America under a bus? That’s a real brain teaser isn’t it? Now try to name one good thing that the GOP has done for the American people in the last 30 years. Let me answer that for you - Absolutely nothing.
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Rush Limbaugh was foolish enough to make his feelings known out loud - "I don’t want Obama to be successful" - and as everyone knows, Rush speaks for the Republican Party.
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 Thus, Rush gave the Republican Party their marching orders at the very beginning of President Obama’s administration - that the GOP should do everything in its power to prevent America from succeeding, regardless to the level of suffering that the American people may have to endure, and they've stood steadfast to that agenda.
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In yesterday's vote on gun control, in spite of the fact that a majority of 54 senators voted to approve the measure, the Republicans used the threat of filibuster to block true democracy and thumbed their nose at nearly 90% of the American people in favor of their corporate cronies. That, is the literal definition of a domestic enemy.
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The History of the Republican Party
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One of the founding fathers of conservative thought was Alexander Hamilton. He was an aristocrat who advocated that poor and middle-class Americans should be relegated to second-class citizenship, and the GOP has fully embraced his agenda. Hamilton said the following:
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“All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and wellborn, the other the mass of the people.... The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share in government. They will check the unsteadiness of the second, and as they cannot receive any advantage by a change, they therefore will ever maintain good government.” (Debates of the Federalist Convention, May 14-September 17, 1787).
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The founding fathers rejected Hamilton's position in laying out the blueprint for this nation, but the arrogance of Hamilton's philosophy continues to exist, even to this day, in our politics - and it was exactly that arrogance that we witnessed in the Republican Party in yesterday's vote on gun control - "To Hell with the people; we're talking about my reelection here!"
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The modern Republican Party is a coalition between fiscal conservatives, or big business, and social conservatives, or social bigots. Even though these two factions don’t even like each other, they have one thing in common – they both have a vested interest in undermining Black people.

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Big business has a vested interest in not only lowering the standard of living of Black people, but the entire American Middle class in order to become more competitive in the global market against countries who pay their workers less per week, than the average middle-class American spends on lunch per day. And the great American bigot simply hates Black people in general. The most benevolent of them think that Black people should be relegated to shining his shoes.

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But it is true that most Black people used to be Republicans immediately after the Civil War up through the Civil Rights Era – Martin Luther King was a Republican. But the Republican Party was different back then. They represented the business community of the North, and the Democrats, or Dixiecrats, represented the farmers of the South. That was one of the reasons for the Civil War. The Civil War wasn't actually about freeing the slaves; it was actually a dispute between the big business Republicans of the North, and the Southern Democrats that represented the farming interests. Black people just happened to benefit from the dispute, and during the industrial revolution big business could use the additional manpower.
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But during the Great Depression the two parties began to change their alliances dramatically. After Democrat president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, turned on big business to help the poor and middle class with his "New Deal" for the American people during the Great Depression, working-class people began to gravitate to the Democratic Party. Then during the Civil Rights Era of the sixties when John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson began to support Black civil rights, many more Black people migrated to the Democratic Party, and southern racists began to move to the Republican Party. So, essentially, a complete shift took place in party alliances.
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So when you hear someone from the Republican Party saying that it was the Democrats who kept Black people in slavery and formed the Klan, they’re trying to play on your ignorance of history. A much better way of keeping track of those who victimized Black people is by following political philosophy. It was conservatives who victimized Black people, and those conservatives currently reside in the Republican Party - and as we speak, they’re desperately trying to obstruct our right to vote.
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But the Republican Party is currently in a state of turmoil. Every since social conservatives sought out refuge in the GOP subsequent to the Civil Rights Era, there’s been an uneasy alliance between the corporatist conservatives like Mitt Romney, and social bigots like Rick Santorum.
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So once again there’s a dispute between the interest of fiscal conservatives, or big business, who benefit from a more practical approach to social policies - and who would love to bring in as many undocumented workers as possible as potential customers, and to lower the cost of wages; and social conservatives, the social bigots - who, if they had their way would send all undocumented workers back to their respective homelands. So a second Civil War is brewing, but this time it’s going on within the Republican Party itself, and it’ll be interesting to see how it turns out.
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But the bottom line is this - the bigots within the Republican Party hate Black people even more than they do undocumented workers, liberals, and gays; and the corporatists hate the entire poor and middle-class population. You heard Mitt Romney talking to his homies – he thinks nearly half of the American people are scum – Black and White.
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Thus, any Black person, regardless to who he or she is, who think that Black people can find a comfortable fit in the churning cauldron of Republican hatred, bigotry, and self-interest, has got to be a fool - a damn fool.

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THE GOP HAS BECOME DANGEROUSLY
UN-AMERICAN
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RELATED ARTICLE
Herman Cain: Black People Are Brainwashed? Please!
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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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President Obama: Let Us Not Forget

BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE

A MESSAGE TO BUSHLAND

(July 11, 2006)

It’s scary how easily the American people can be manipulated to the point that they find the death of entire families a hoot; How we can sit in front of the tv set with chili dogs and fries and cheer on the death of others like we’re watching the Super Bowl. And it’s a tribute to psychosis how America can unleash mass destruction in "an attempt to prevent mass destruction," in the name of God.

Can’t you see that many of "those towel-heads" are children just like your own? You didn’t really think the U.S. could unleash destruction like we saw and not kill children did you? Rumsfeld said, "Well, [shit] happens." But shit doesn’t just happen--you allowed it to happen. You made it happen. You cheered it on! Consider that as the children bleed and you're admiring the beauty of "Shock and Awe."

Think about your own children as "collateral damage." Think about them screaming in horror while you're helplessly watching their limbs being blown off. Think about them desperately reaching out to you for comfort as life slowly drains from their tiny bodies. Think about foreign boots kicking down your front door, and strangers walking through your home systematically killing every man, woman and child. Imagine the last sight you ever see on this Earth is of your loving child with her brains spilling from her tiny little head. Think about that picture, America--then ask yourself, who's really the terrorist?

Where has America gone? Who’s left to standup for justice and humanity? You say, God Bless America? You'd have to be a fool to think God is gonna bless America after what we’ve done--for choosing Standard Oil over Justice, and Exxon over God himself. In God we trust? How dare you blame this atrocity on God! It is in Bush you trust:

You trust Bush that God has entrusted you to blow off Iraqi arms and wrap them around you to enable them to embrace your benevolence. And you trust Bush that you must lovingly pluck out Iraqi eyes to enable them to see the wisdom of viewing the world through your own. And you trust Bush that in the name of all that is good you must slaughter their children in a desperate attempt to provide them with a better future. You also trust Bush that you must rape their land and steal their wealth in order to allow them to choose the government of their choosing-- (so long as they choose the government that Bush chooses for them to choose). And you trust Bush that you do all this in the name of American charity.

You also trust Bush that God will bless America--but this Ain’t America. America is the land of the free, and home of the brave, the land of just souls who freed their slaves. No, this is not America, this is Bushland–the land of small pox infected blankets; the land of public lynchings and church–place bombings; the land of imprisoned Japanese-Americans, and corporate murderers.

Yeah, God Bless Bushland! The land of the free and home of the slave; the land of My Lai, and Calley’s mass grave. And you trust that God will bless Bushland?

Well, trust this–You are blind, my friend.

... and those who do make it home are denied a living wage

 

Eric L. WattreeHttp://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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Who’s In the ‘Dark,’ the Black Community, or Dr. Ben Carson?

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

Who’s In the ‘Dark,’ the Black Community, or Dr. Ben Carson?

Many conservatives - including a few Black accommodationists - are saying that Black people are being bamboozled into voting nearly exclusively for the Democratic Party. This is clearly a republican talking point - either that, or they believe that Black people are so stupid that they can be convinced to vote for people who have left no stone unturned to deprive them of their right to vote, and who repeatedly try to portray them as lazy criminals and dope fiends who are content to vote for anyone who will allow them to spend their lives on welfare. When placed in that context it makes one wonder, what could Black people possibly be thinking? How could they not want to vote for a group of people who portray them in that way?
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It seems to me, however, that a more pertinent question is how any Black person in America could proudly, or even quietly, declare themselves a conservative, or even think of voting for a Republican - any Republican? 
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After all, the Republican Party has clearly demonstrated themselves to be the domestic enemy of the United States, with their policies, their governmental obstructionism, and with their seeming determination to hold America hostage to accommodate their corporate cronies. They’re, literally, trying to punish America for electing President Obama under the pretext of addressing a national crisis that they created, just like every other economic crisis that the nation has experienced over the past one hundred years (The GOP: A One Hundred Year Record of Swindling the American People ).
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In addition, any Black person with even a casual understanding of the English language would recognize that "conservative," by its very definition, means that they’re aligning themselves with people who are dedicated to "conserving" the values and traditions of the past. That alone represents a malevolent agenda for all Black people. Thus, any Black man who supports that agenda is either dumb, or self-serving. Period.
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But I have a theory about those who cave-in to become Black conservatives. I think they suffer from a form of "Stockholm Syndrome." Stockholm Syndrome is 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 28^th of 1973.
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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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We saw the very same effect in Patty Hearst after she was kidnaped by the Symbionese Liberation Army, and also in Black collaborators during slavery - "Dim niggas talkin’ bout burnin’ our house down, Massa." Such people have an overwhelming need for acceptance by the people they perceive to have power over their lives.
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The Stockholm Syndrome is consistent with what we’ve suggested many times before - that since Black people are the product of the very same racist environment as White people, many Black people, of weaker character, have become just as racist towards other Black people as any mouth-foaming, sheet-wearing, White bigot. Any Black person who has ever worked for the United States Postal Service will eagerly attest to that. In addition, the epidemic of Black-on-Black crime in our inner cities and the lack of darker skinned Black women in entertainment videos will also attest to this fact.
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Further, over the years many Black people have been conditioned to believe that having "arrived" means that you live as far away from other Black people as you can get, and that you assume as many White attributes as you can accommodate without bleaching your skin - and some have even gone so far as to do that. Then there's a small minority of Black people who feel that the ultimate proof that they’ve arrived is to assume conservative values - values that are renown for looking upon Black people, and the Black culture in general, with disdain.
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There are also Black people who go conservative, even at the expense of the Black community, for personal gain. In his article, "My Republican Party has Abandoned Me," Black Republican activist, Raynard Jackson, says the following:
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"For many years, I have approached the party and its supporters about underwriting programs to bring together Blacks who are Republican or lean Republican so we can weave them into every facet of the party structure. The answer is always, no! But, twice this year some of these same people have approached me about funding for some election year tricks that they (White Republicans) have conjured up and simply need a Black face to execute the plan. On these two separate occasions, these funders were willing to spend upwards of $20 million to have me organize a national campaign to identify Blacks who would be critical of President Obama."
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Most Black people understand these facts intuitively, so no matter how many Herman Cains or Dr. Ben Carsons the Republican Party trots out, they’ll never obtain the Black vote. In fact, trotting out such people only serve to stoke the flame of their animosity even further, because it's clear to them that the GOP is not only trying to insult their intelligence, but they’re manipulating the very least among them to try to achieve that goal - even when they have to resort to the lunatic fringe:

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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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