It’s one thing to discuss the pros and cons of the
various Democratic candidates, but yet another to engage in slander. We must stop
the political slander of fellow Democrats. I’ve seen posts in liberal groups that
could have been posted by "United Fascists For Trump", and you can be
assured that such groups will be posting tons of such material as imposters as
the election grows closer. But if progressives follow a simple rule of thumb – never
slander another progressive – we’ll be able to recognize such posts immediately,
because they’ll stick out as divisive and exactly the kind of thing that we
would expect Trump supporters - and Russia – to post online.
So, let’s not help the fascists by slandering our own.
Stop posting material that divides the progressive coalition and focus on
getting Republican fascists out of office. We should allow progressives to make
up their own minds about which Democrat they want to support. That way when we come
to a consensus, a third of us won’t be so upset that we’ll refuse to vote.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with Joe Biden, or
any of the other Democratic candidates, when you compare them to Trump.Yes, every politician has shortcomings, but stop
hanging on to their every word or gaffe to try to find fault. That's the way
they started doing Obama. Then when they found that he was too articulate for
them to attack him using gaffes, they started claiming he was a Muslim, or
wasn't born in America. So when you hear such nonsense – and you will - your
first thought should be, "Who has the most to gain from spreading such
slander?"
Now, I don’t intend to imply that being accused of
being a Muslim is slanderous, but in the current political environment that’s
the intent of the allegation, and we’ve got to learn to live above such bigotry,
it’s un-American. True Americans believe in freedom of speech, thought, and religion.
The failure to understand that fact is the province of the current GOP, because
they can’t survive without hatred and division to prop them up, and that’s
exactly why it’s so important to get them out of office.
We have over a year before the next election. So, listen
to the candidates and make up your own minds on who you want to support, and base
your decision on common sense, not nonsense. In the 2008 election I didn’t
agree with everything Obama said, and as President I was livid over his failure
to prosecute Bush and Cheney for war crimes, but Obama turned out to be one of
the greatest presidents in American history in spite of those shortcomings.
On the other hand, during the 2016 election many
Democrats (including myself) were fighting one another more fiercely than we
were fighting the Republicans over who was going to be the Democratic nominee,
and look at what we ended up with, and what ended up happening in the end. So, let's not make that mistake again. We
should take great pains not to get caught up in personality cults, because that
causes us to dig-in and fight with one another over our respective choices.That's division, and division
leads to defeat.
So, let us be smart this time. We should remain calm
and united, come to a general consensus, and then all come together and support the
nominee of choice. We claim that Trump supporters are idiots. Let's prove it.
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.
Are Your Religious Beliefs Simply An Accident of Birth?
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A friend of mine, who's a Christian and a very insightful writer, recently wrote an article that started me thinking about both Christianity and organized religion in general. In his article he asked a pivotal question that I believe goes right to the core of Christianity - "What if Jesus was merely the teacher of a social gospel and moral philosophy . . .?" . In my opinion, that question captured the essence of what Jesus was all about. Jesus wasn't a superhuman; he was simply a very intelligent and insightful human being, a philosopher. But after he espoused his philosophy, ignorant, self-serving, and superstitious people - people who believed in talking snakes - took his words out of context and turned him into some kind of superhuman being, and gave him powers that contradicted the laws of nature, the universe, common sense, and God. .
If we hadn't been conditioned all our lives to believe in this counterintuitive nonsense it would be clear to us that the Christian belief system holds just about as much validity as voodoo. Take a moment to ask yourself, how does your religion (regardless to what it is) make any more sense than voodoo? An honest answer to that question is, it doesn't. The only difference between what you believe and voodoo is you've chosen to believe it. That's why Christians talk more about having "faith," than they do loving their fellow man. Even as Christian racists were lynching Black people, they were preaching the need to have "faith" in God. The only problem was, as their behavior clearly demonstrated, their faith wasn't in God, it was in what other men TOLD them about God. That's why their God said "Okay" when they decided to lynch men who were unlike themselves.
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The fact is, dead men don't walk, no man can walk on water, no man can tell the Red Sea to scoot over, and if Adam and Eve were the first people on Earth and they only had two boys, who did they mate with, and where did the people come from that Cain went to live with after he slew Abel? Hmmmm . . . So what Christians believe is just as much nonsense as voodoo, or any other cult - and you can take that to the bank. .
Take a moment to consider the following. All of your religious beliefs are merely an accident of birth? If you'd been born in Israel, chances are you'd be a Jew; if you'd been born in Iran you'd be a Muslim, or in China, a Buddhist. So your religion isn't so much God-inspired as it is a result of the environment that you were raised in. You were SOCIALIZED into believing what you believe. Thus, if you truly believe that a person born in Israel, Iran, or China is going to Hell because they weren't socialized to believe what you believe, you're delusional. And if you believe that God sent a White Scandinavian with Blond hair and blue eyes to be born in the desert so he could tell people of color how they should live their lives, you're not only delusional, but you're stupid. God doesn't work like that. How do I know? Because God demonstrates his will by what he has done, and you'll never see a talking snake. God instructs through common sense, and if you believe in talking snakes, you're not using the portion of common sense that you were allocated. Yet, you look down your nose at voodoo. .
This is a serious problem, because people are doing more "believing" than thinking. Hoards of people are taking MAN'S word for the fact that the Bible is "the word of God." So they're placing all of their "faith" in MAN, not God - and a very evil man, at that. On the other hand, we KNOW that God gave us our minds (and by "God," I mean whatever force is responsible for the existence of the universe and what we consider reality), so we need to start using it, because it makes absolutely no sense to place more "faith" in what man TELLS us about God than what is obvious that God has done. And man has clearly shown that he has more faith in the words of other men, than he does in the actual deeds of God. . Take Black people for example. African Americans are some of the most devout Christians in the world, even though they were taught Christianity while they were tied up next to the mules - and every rule, law, and tenet of Christianity was being brutally violated while they were being indoctrinated. Yet, they still believe it - that a blond haired, blue eyed Scandinavian was born in the desert with supernatural powers. God forbid that they would point out that if Jesus was born in the desert that chances are he was a man of color; and since they're inclined to lie to us about what the man even looked like, how can we even begin to believe what they claim he said? .
No wonder so many Black people are finding it so hard to get their act together. They're walking around in a state of zombie-like somnambulism, and it seems that the worse they're treated, the more they cling to that ridiculous myth - "Oh dear Lord, please forgive the White boy who walked into our church and blew nine of our church member's brains out. He simply doesn't understand your word." What kind of insanity is that!!!? . That racist cracker shouldn't have gotten out of there alive, house of worship or not. But the reason he did is very simple. Black people have been conditioned to believe that no matter how bad they're treated, they shouldn't worry about it, because God is going to take care of them when they die. OH, REALLY!!!? Then why is everybody else killing one another trying to get theirs now - including the preachers? So it's no accident that everyone who is willing to believe that nonsense are victims, at the bottom of the social chain, and unless they're very lucky, suffering. Because they're victims of the perfect hustle, where the hustlers (Black and White) don't have to worry about nobody ever coming back to say they're lying. How sweet is that!!!? .
Here's another thing that should be considered. If God HAD decided to put religion on Earth to guide man, don't you think he'd have had sense enough to create just ONE religion so religious dogma wouldn't be the most hate-inspiring, murderous, and destructive forces on Earth? Look around you - here in America, in the Middle East, and literally all over the world - organized religion is THE primary source of most of the agony, pain, and misery on the planet. Thus, organized religion isn't a blessing, it's a curse. Would a loving God place a curse like that on mankind? I don't think so. God gave us spirituality, which is found within. It's a state if existence that's only between you, God, and the universe. Man has absolutely nothing to do with it, because everything man touches, he corrupts. God made birds to fly, fish to swim, and man to THINK, not to follow a users guide written by other men. .
Man is much too ignorant, self-serving, and greedy to write anything sacred. Yes, man says the Bible was "inspired" by God, but he also said that God told him in the Manifest Destiny to slaughter the Native Americans and take their land, and Zionists are saying the very same thing with regard to the Palestinians today. Do you actually believe that God is telling them to kill children? And what about Boko Haram, do you really believe God is telling them to kidnap young women and sell them into sexual slavery because he doesn't want women to get an education? That's not God saying that; that's self-serving men placing their words and beliefs in God's mouth, and the exact same thing is happening here in this country. Organized religion is man-made nonsense designed to manipulate the ignorance of the masses and promote the prejudice and greed of the elite. You can trace virtually any form of bigotry in a straight line right back to some form of religious dogma. So again, organized religion is a curse on man, that's been created by man, and it's ultimately going to lead to our destruction - even global warming is being defended in the name of God. .
About the Bible
. The Bible that Christians Worship today was compiled and “bless” by the Catholic Church, not God. Any book that disagreed with the Catholic Church was banned. What Christians call "The Holy Bible," and what these preachers run around thumping, wasn’t even put together until almost 400 years after the death of Jesus. So everything in it is hearsay. In terms of years, at the time the Bible was complied, they were twice as far away from the life and times of Jesus Christ as we are away from George Washington today. So in reality, they didn’t know fact from fiction, any more than we know whether or not George Washington really chopped down a cherry tree: . "For the first 300 years of Christianity, there was no Bible as we know it today. Christians had the Old Testament Septuagint, and literally hundreds of other books from which to choose. The Catholic Church realized early on that it had to decide which of these books were inspired and which ones weren't. The debates raged between theologians, Bishops, and Church Fathers for several centuries as to which books were inspired and which ones weren't. In the meantime, several Church Councils or Synods, were convened to deal with the matter, notably, Rome in 382, Hippo in 393, and Carthage in 397 and 419. The debates sometimes became bitter on both sides. One of the most famous was between St. Jerome, who felt the seven books were not canonical, and St. Augustine who said they were. Protestants who write about this will invariably mention St. Jerome and his opposition, and conveniently omit the support of St. Augustine. I must point out here that Church Father's writings are not infallible statements, and their arguments are merely reflections of their own private opinions. When some say St. Jerome was against the inclusion of the seven books, they are merely showing his personal opinion of them. Everyone is entitled to his own opinion. However, A PERSONS PRIVATE OPINION DOES NOT CHANGE THE TRUTH AT ALL. There are always three sides to every story, this side, that side, and the side of truth. Whether Jerome's position, or Augustine's position was the correct position, had to be settled by a third party, and that third party was the Catholic Church. . "Now the story had a dramatic change, as the Pope stepped in to settle the matter. In concurrence with the opinion of St. Augustine, and being prompted by the Holy Spirit, Pope St. Damasus I, at the Council of Rome in 382, issued a decree appropriately called, "The Decree of Damasus", in which he listed the canonical books of both the Old and New Testaments. He then asked St. Jerome to use this canon and to write a new Bible translation which included an Old Testament of 46 books, which were all in the Septuagint, and a New Testament of 27 books" (http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080928064041AATOZUD). . SO THE POPE HAD SPOKEN, AND THE ISSUE WAS SETTLED. THUS, WHAT CHRISTIANS REFER TO AS "THE HOLY BIBLE" IS NOT THE WORD OF GOD, IT'S THE WORD OF POPE DAMASUS I. .
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The Conversion
"Come here nigga and let me teach yo crazy, animal ass about the Lord. The first thing you got to learn is to Love thy Neighbor . . . especially me."
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"Yes sir, Massa. Why would anybody not love you, Sir? You so good to me, Massa. Anybody don't love you needs to have dey ass beat real good, Massa."
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"Shut up, nigga. I'm talkin'."
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"Listen, you been blessed already, and you don't even know the Lord. The Lord made it where you don't have to worry 'bout a thing. I feed you, I put clothes on yo nasty ass, and I give you a shed to sleep in, and all you have to do is whatever the hell I tell you to. Do you know how blessed you are?"
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"Oh, indeed I do, Massa. You take good care of me. I's so happy."
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"Now, listen real good 'cause dis impotant. God said, thou shalt not steal from me, thou shalt not kill (unless I tell you to), thou shalt not stick another coon's wife (unless we tryin' to make some mo niggas), and nigga, whatever you do, thou shalt not even look like you want to stick a white woman, or we gon lynch yo black ass. You here me, nigga?"
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"Oh yes, Massa. We know dat! But Massa, I thought you said thou shalt not kill?"
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"Dat means people, fool - real people! Dat don't go for niggas. God wants us to keep you in yo place."
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"Dat's right, Massa. We sho gotta keep niggas in dey place. No tellin' what a happen if we let dese niggas git loose. God so smart."
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"I said shut up, nigga, and listen to the word."
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"The next thing you got to learn is, whatever happens on this plantation is God's will bein' done. And if you listen to me, you'll get to live like I do when you die and go to Heaven."
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"Live like you, massa? A nigga ain't got no business livin' dat good. What a Po nigga like me gon do with all this? You know I ain't got sense enough to run nothin' like this."
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"Just shut up, nigga!" When you dead you gon get some sense - the lord gon give it to you. The Lord can do anything, even give sense to a nigga. And he gon give you all the other niggas you gon need to help you in the fields, too."
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"Massa, you so good to me! Thank you for tellin' me all dis. I'm gon be a good nigga - the best nigga you ever seened. Look, I'm gon pray for you right now, and thank the Lord for givin' me so good a massa."
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"Shut up and get up off your knees, ya dumb nigga! The fields need tendin'! You pray to the Lord on your own time. God don't won't you talkin' to him when you s'pose to be workin'."
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"A couse, Massa. What I been thinkin'? I's so dumb. I don't know why you put up with me, Sir."
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"How many times I got to tell you to shut the hell up, nigga?"
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"Yes Sir, I's a shuttin', Massa. I's a shuttin', right now."
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"Now get yo ass out there in that field and let's get some work done around here . . . Oh, and Toby, have yo woman meet me in the barn. I need to tell her 'bout the Lord too."
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"Yes sir, Massa."
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"And another thing, Toby, if my momma come a lookin', tell her I'm playin' in my tree house."
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"Why you gon go fibbin' to yo momma, Mr. Tommy? She knows you like to sit wit Lou Ann."
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"Just shut up, nigga, and do what I said! And tell Lou Ann to wear that pretty dress I like, cause we gon be talkin' 'bout the Lord, so it's gon be like chuch."
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"Yes Sir, Mr. Tommy." . . . "Whaaaaaaat a friend we have in Jeeeeesus . . ."
The American propaganda machine tells us that Muslims are a hostile people who hate American freedom. The most cursory examination of that claim reveals that the evidence the claim is based upon is highly flawed, yet the American people have been persuaded that it's true. That suggests that the American people have learned nothing from our experience with the Nazis, and it also suggests that the biggest threat to America is the propaganda machine itself.
The primary argument against the claim that Muslims are inherently hostile toward America is the fact that we had absolutely no problem with Muslims at all until we, Western "Christians" and "Jews," began our imperialistic excursion into the Middle East. Prior to that time Muslims were content to be left alone to practice their religion in their own lands.
So when we consider Muslim hostility towards America we must keep two things in mind. First, we need to consider all the hell we're raising over the loss of 3000 citizens during 9/11. If we've been impacted to our core over the loss of 3000 Americans, how do you think Muslims feel over the loss of hundreds of thousands of their people resulting from the unjust and illegal invasion of Iraq? And secondly, we must remember that while we're quick to call Muslims aggressors, we're invading their countries, they're not invading ours.
Americans tend to believe that American lives are more valuable than the lives of other people. When Americans are killed we never stop talking about it. It, literally, goes down in the history books. But when we kill innocent women and children in other countries we simply say, "Oops, sorry 'bout that," then expect the people to forget about it.
Look at what Obama said about Bush and Cheney's war crimes - "We want to look forward, not back." What the hell is he talking about? Bush killed close to a million people for nothing more than corporate greed. How can we expect to dismiss the killing of a million men, women, and children by simply saying, let's let bygones be bygones? One can only wonder if Obama would have taken that position if his family had been among that million? Somehow, I doubt it.
It was that one remark that opened my eyes regarding our president. While I consider Obama the best that we've got, I also recognize that he's far from an angel. The remark served to remind me that Obama is also the product of a propaganda machine - his own. So while I continue to support Obama (mainly, because there's no viable alternative), I never allow myself to forget that even though he's an impressive man, he's also a politician, not the Messiah.
Americans need to recognize that life is not a football game. It's not good enough to just pull for our side, regardless to whether we're talking about the nation, political parties, or individual politicians. We should always pull for justice, period - regardless to whose political ox it gores. Because if we continue to allow the various propaganda machines to cloud our minds to the truth, none of us will be safe. It's Muslims who are being demonized today, but tomorrow it may be Blacks, Hispanics, Jews, activists, the entire middle class, or whatever group is convenient to meet our rulers' needs. And yes, I said rulers, because those who control our minds, control our destiny.
The propaganda machine is an insidious device, because it tells us what we want to hear, and helps us hide what we don't want to see, so it has the seductive properties of a drug. Take the issue of terrorism for example. Terrorism is defined as the killing of innocent noncombatants for political gain. Keeping that definition in mind, we must not forget that we are the ONLY country on Earth who has ever dropped an atomic bomb on not one, but two cities, killing and maiming hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women, and children indiscriminately. As horrible as 9/11 was, the horror of that atrocity makes 9/11 look insignificant.
But accepting the fact that we committed such a horrible atrocity is inconsistent with the image that we so passionately embrace of "that shining light on the hill," so our propaganda machine swung into action. It helped us to justify that action by convincing us that we only did it to save the lives of thousands of American troops. But there's a very serious flaw in that argument. By embracng that argument it affirms that we accept the fact that there are times when terrorism is justified. Thus, by our own definition the United States is, in fact, a terrorist state. So the fact is, the only difference between Muslim terrorists and American, or "Christian," terrorists is that we have a much more efficient delivery system.
Now, before someone gets upset and start shouting that I'm un-American, please remember that truth and justice is the American way - and what I've just told you is both true and just. What I've said here is not simply my opinion. Every word I've written is verifiable, and based on pure logic - and like mathematics, logic doesn't lie.
Strive To Become Your Own Hero... Then Let No One Remove Your Cape.
BIO
Eric L. Wattree is a writer, poet, and musician, born in Los Angeles. He’s been a columnist for The Los Angeles Sentinel, Black Star News, The Atlanta Post, and is a member of the Sigma Delta Chi Society of Professional Journalists (http://www.spj.org/). He’s also the author of "A Message From the Hood."
Some of the greatest minds I’ve ever known held court while sitting on empty milk crates in the parking lots of ghetto liquor stores, while some of the weakest minds I’ve ever known roamed the halls of academia in pursuit of credentials over knowledge.
Am I a hater, you ask? You're damn right I'm a hater. I hate injustice. I hate hypocrisy. I also hate demagoguery, apathy, and the stupidity that allows it to exist. Hater? Absolutely. I'm a big time hater. I hate what I see happening to this country, and I hate watching the development of a culture that embraces ignorance with a stupid sense of pride. So yes, I am indeed a hater, but not only that - I'm a hater with a very low threshold for bullshit, so step off.
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