When Will the Black Community Recognize that We Can’t Whine Cancer Out of Our System?

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

When Will the Black Community Recognize that We Can’t Whine Cancer Out of Our System?

IT DON'T LOOK LIKE MANHOOD TO ME
(Beggin' America to love you won't work)

I was recently involved in a "discussion" regarding the prison industrial complex with an extremely intelligent young woman by the name of Lydia. I placed the word discussion in quotes because the moment she started quoting the statistics on the Black experience with the prison industrial complex relative to the rest of society, I began to overtalk her, and I didn’t let her get a word in edgewise thereafter.  But thanks to her cool head and grace under fire, after our discussion I immediately began to question my behavior. The fact is, even though she didn’t get to say much, she outclassed me, and as a result, I’ve decided to never use that strategy again, because it’s not only rude, but it’s counterproductive. Under such circumstances neither party is listening to the other, so no useful information can be exchanged.
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But what set me off was that I’m so sick of hearing people in the Black community substituting complaints for solutions that when I hear people starting to slip into that forty year-old mantra it immediately makes my eyes roll to the back of my head. Why constantly state the obvious as though you’re saying something new? Constantly giving statistics on the fact that there’s institutional racism is like trying to prove that the Sun is hot. We know that. So what we should be discussing is what we’re going to do about it. But then, maybe that’s where she was headed and I didn’t give her a chance to express herself. So what I should have done was sat quietly and heard her out. Maybe then I could have walked away from the discussion more informed.
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In the future I intend to do just that. Not only would it provide me with the possible opportunity for growth, it would also force those who thrive on muddled communication and making a living off of anger and complaints to have to come up with rational solutions for change. But many like myself have become impatient, because so many in the Black community have been listening to people like Tavis Smiley, Cornel West, and others of their ilk for so many decades that they’ve begun to confuse whining, beggin' and finger-pointing with educating the Black community to the need of taking effective action.
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People like Malcolm and Martin Luther King - those sincere activists who these latter-day ‘saviors’ are trying to impersonate - weren’t just complaining for the sake of complaining. During their era, pointing out the abuse of the Black community was a part of the educational process. During their time, Black people were so use to being abused that Malcolm and Martin had to educate the community, and society as a whole, to the extent of the injustice toward Black people, as a prelude to taking effective action against it. And back then, that educational effort was a dangerous process, as their eventual murders clearly attests.
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But today, we have fraudulent imitators living off the legacy and words of these great men as though they too are doing something heroic. But the difference is, they're under absolutely no personal risk. In fact, the forces that promoted the deaths of both Malcolm and Martin encourage the activities of these latter-day frauds because they’re not saying anything new, revolutionary, or educational. They're simply regurgitating the words of a different era that are completely out of context with respect to the current Black condition. The fact is, the forces that led to the death of both Martin and Malcolm are actually delighted by their activities because they serve to divide the Black community, and thus, help to maintain the status quo.
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These people routinely ignore the greater good and purposely sabotage our agenda, along with all of the causes that they’re supposed to be so passionate about, for their own selfish interests. And this is not merely speculation or opinion, it can be documented. We’ve already lived through a perfect example of it during the 2000 election when Cornel West teamed up with Ralph Nader to hand the presidential election over to George W. Bush. Thus, they are all but directly responsible for the situation that we currently find ourselves in - the very situation that West is now complaining that President Obama is not fixing fast enough. As I pointed out in a previous article, "Once Again Nader and West Team to Elect a Republican President", these people don’t give a damn about either the Black community, or the poor and middle class. All they care about is their own self-interest:
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"But if you confront members of the Nader/West coalition with these facts, they’ll immediately begin to obfuscate and engage in intellectual gymnastics in an attempt to avoid responsibility for the horrific fate that they brought upon the country. They’ll say things like, "It’s not our fault that Gore lost. He just didn’t fight hard enough for a recount." But by using such arguments what they’re actually saying is, ‘Gore just didn’t work hard enough to undo the damage that we’d done.’ But the bottom line is this – Gore lost the 2000 election to Bush in Florida by 537 votes, and the Nader/West coalition peeled off 97,488 votes from Gore in Florida alone. So don’t take my word for it – you do the math."
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Thus, the activities of these frauds only serve to divide our vote to the benefit of those who seek to keep us subjugated. Then when their job is done, our continued subjugation enhances the careers and bankbooks of the frauds themselves, because much of their enrichment is based upon complaining about our misery. Therefore, it would be an economic disaster for the Smileys and Wests of the world if we ever did, in fact, find true justice.
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So it should be obvious to anyone with eyeballs and a clear head that what Tavis and West are actually engaged in is promoting themselves, their radio and television shows, their books, and Cornel’s reported $10,000 per speech speaker’s fees. Their last "Poverty Tour" just happened to coincide with Cornel West’s Memoirs (published by Tavis Smiley), and as we speak they’ve started yet another tour to promote their newest book (published by Tavis Smiley), "The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto."   On April 15th they started a tour of twelve cities. (the city of Detroit, Mich., one of the cities hardest hit by Black unemployment and poverty, was conspicuously missing from their current itinerary, since they were met with hostile demonstrations and boos on their last tour to Detroit). But what I want to know is, what do they mean by "us?" Thanks to US, they’re rich themselves, so they’re no longer a part of US. Thus, even the title of their new book is a gross deception.
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If these people were truly sincere, instead of spending their time complaining and lining their pockets, they'd be discussing what we can do to resolve the problems that we’re complaining about.  They need to be discussing ways to go about teaching young Black men that knowledge is power, and that they can’t be cool and ignorant at the same time. They also need to be teaching them that they don’t have the right to demand respect while going around referring to the very womb of their culture as bitches and whoes (sic), and that they can’t measure their manhood based on how many other Black men they can kill, or how many minds of Black children they can poison with drugs and the ignorance of disinformation. If the frauds actually cared about the Black community, those are the things they would be preaching, instead of trying to drag down the first Black president of the United States.
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But let me end by taking my own advice, and taking this opportunity to extend my sincere apology to a young woman who I disrespectfully dismissed while she was trying to express her views. I want to assure her that while my disdainful attitude was not directed toward her per se, what I did was stupid nevertheless - period. I could tell by her very first sentence that she was a very intelligent woman, so I might have benefited by listening to what she had to say. But my stupidity was a fueled by my deep frustration that the frauds in our community have even misdirected the thinking of the intelligent and insightful among us.
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I also want to assure her that I fully understand that considering the selfless and unappreciated role that Black women have played in sustaining our culture over the centuries, a Black man should ALWAYS afford a sister the utmost respect in any and all situations. She has EARNED the right to voice her opinion, whatever it is. So in order to reinforce this apology and make it more meaningful, she has my solemn word that I’m going to use the disrespect that she had to endure at my hands as a learning experience. I will never use that tactic again, toward anyone.
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So, my good sister, due to your class, wisdom, and grace under fire, you managed to teach me something in spite of my male arrogance and stupidity, and I'll never forget it.
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Thank you, Lydia.

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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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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Once Again Nader and West Team to Elect a Republican President

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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TRAYVON MARTIN

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

TRAYVON MARTIN

(February 5, 1995 – February 26, 2012)

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MURDERED FOR THE UNLAWFUL POSSESSION OF BLACK SKIN

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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Is President Obama a Slave to Wall Street?

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

Is President Obama a Slave to Wall Street?

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Whenever I hear a person claim that President Obama is a slave to the corporatist Wall Street culture, I know immediately that he’s one of three things - he’s either ignorant, blind to reality, or he’s promoting his own agenda. Of course Obama is a slave to Wall Street - we all are.
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You can’t live in this society without being a slave to Wall Street. But there are two kinds of slaves. There are slaves who are subservient and content to simply do what they’re told, and then there are slaves who engage in a constant struggle to free themselves and their people. So, while I’m not always happy with some of the day-to-day decisions that President Obama makes to promote our cause, I’m convinced that Obama is one of the latter. If he wasn’t, they wouldn’t be trying so hard to get rid of him.

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The fact is, if you’re a casual observer sitting at home and keeping score based purely on your attitudes, prejudices, and feelings, it’s easy to pass your uninformed judgment on every decision that any politician makes. But the reality is, anyone who decides to go into politics has to be practical, and a huge part of that practicality entails recognizing the fact that you’re going to have to dance to the music that’s being played, and it’s Wall Street that leads the band. So regardless to who we elect, they’re going to have to have, at the very least, a working relationship with the corporate establishment - and ironically, it’s our own fault.

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The primary reason that every politician in this country is forced to play footsy with the corporate establishment is because we, the people, are so lazy, undereducated, and disengaged from our own political well being that we allow the corporations to use money to control our minds. So the only way that a politician like Obama can even get through to us is by way of the corporate establishment.

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The reason that money has such a large influence on our political system is because it’s used to tell us what, and how, to think. From the time that most of us get up in the morning until the time we go to bed at night, we spend most of our free time with corporate voices whispering in our ear. It could be the radio, television, or even the billboards that we don’t think we’re noticing as we’re driving in to work, but the fact is, they are all having a profound subliminal effect on our thinking and attitudes. They’re conditioning us to think, and to do, what they tell us to. Corporations spend billions of dollars a year to convince wimps with severe cases of acne and horrendous body odors that if they buy a certain kind of car, the beautiful model that’s sensuously stroking its hood, or someone just like her, is going to fall in love with them - and they influence out vote in exactly the same way. Thus, every politician must remain cogizant of that fact. 

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My personal favorite is the National Rent-A-Car commercial. They have a businessman walking through the air port in slow motion with dramatic music playing in the background. Then when he gets to the counter, they have the lady behind the counter making goo-goo eyes at him like she can barely restrain herself from jumping over the counter and attacking him. Then the clincher is, at the end of the commercial they have a deep, authoritative voice saying, "YOU DESERVE THIS!"

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That commercial servers two purposes. First, it entices the traveling businessman to believe that using National Rent-A-Car makes him seem more important. But it also sends a message to the public - that big business is powerful, and that’s a good thing, so the concept of big business should be seen in a positive light because, "THEY DESERVE THIS!"

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Since the public is manipulated like this 24 hours a day, any politician who doesn’t have a working relationship with corporations can’t survive. The reason for that is simple. The very same corporation that runs commercials on Monday that convinces an unthinking electorate that "Obama is a big-government socialist who’s trying to put a bureaucrat between you and your doctor," can turn around on Tuesday and convince that very same unthinking electorate that it’s appropriate to create a government small enough to crawl up a woman’s uterus. That explains why we have people walking around saying things like, "Obama is un-American - he’s engaged in a socialist plot to insure my family’s healthcare and send my kids to college." It sounds like hyperbole, but as we see on a daily basis, people are actually that brainwashed.

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Thus, the problem in this country is not the amount of money flowing through the system, that’s only secondary; the primary problem is the apathy, selfishness, and ignorance of the people. Money is merely a tool used to feed that apathy, selfishness, and ignorance to our severe disadvantage, and to make sure that we remain that way - both ignorant, and disadvantaged.

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While the corporations can’t use their money to literally buy a political office, they can, and do, use it to convince us to GIVE it to them by repeatedly reelecting those politicians who are willing to promote corporate interests. Their primary method of doing that is by playing on our ignorance and selfishness through the use of conflation. That keeps the poor and middle class so angry and divided that we fail to come together to protect our mutual interest.

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The corporate manipulators will conflate liberalism with socialism, communism, and un-Americanism, then tell everyone else who doesn’t subscribe to liberal philosophy that the liberals are trying to take away their way of life. Then they’ll target Blacks and initiate a campaign to convince everyone else that Blacks want to rob and steal from them, murder their sons and rape their daughters. Thereafter, they target every segment of the poor and middle class, one by one, and associate them with some threat to everyone else. That keeps the poor and middle class in turmoil. It causes them to be so angry, fearful, and divided among themselves that they fail to recognize that they’re being manipulated, while all their throats are being cut by a common foe - corporate greed.
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But corporate greed is not the only foe. We must also add the misery leeches and poverty pimps who also have a vested interest in keeping the people angry and divided. These are the self-appointed "defenders of the poor and put-upon" who make a fortune by manipulating the people’s anger. Tavis Smiley and Dr. Cornel West immediately come to mind in that regard. Every time Smiley has a book to promote, wants a boost in his television ratings, or has any other snake oil to promote, he tours the country stirring up the very division that keeps the people impoverished. And West, who has teamed up with Smiley - just as he did with Ralph Nader during the 2000 election that gave us George Bush - also has a vested interest in the peoples’ misery. He reportedly pulls in $10,000 a speech complaining about our misery, while at the same time promoting the division that keep us that way. Thus, if the people ever did "overcome," it would be economically devastating to both of these hustlers.

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The only remedy for this situation is education, and through education, enlightenment. Because through a true education and its attendant enlightenment - as oppose to mere literacy - we’re more prone to become independent thinkers. As a result, we wouldn’t be nearly as susceptible to the unsubstantiated claims of snake oil salesmen. We would examine what we were being told, and we would consider the motives of those who were going out of their way to spread negative generalizations about others. Then, and only then, will we be able to defend our individual interests, and come together to defend the nation against the widespread and rampant corruption that’s currently dragging this country under the bus.

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Thus, if we want to save this nation for the benefit of our children, and their children, it is incumbent upon the American people to wake up to reality - and in a hurry. The world is changing faster than it ever has before, so we may not have but one or two elections left before the damage to this country is irreversible.

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We’ve got to start thinking of this country like it’s a business, we’re the owners, and the politicians are our employees. Only then will we begin to recognize the importance of our full engagement in running that business. Because the fact is, if the United States was a business, and as owners, we simply lounged around at home watching BET, MTV, and ESPN while allowing our employees (the politicians) to run it in the ground by giving themselves unwarranted raises in the middle of the night, and squandering and away our profits, it wouldn’t be the employees’ fault. It would be ours.

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So again, is President Obama a slave to Wall Street? Of course he is. We all are, and it’s way past time to correct that situation. But any president, regardless to who we elect, is going to need our help in that regard.

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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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Dr. Cornel West: Public Intellectual, or Entertainer?

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

Dr. Cornel West: Public Intellectual, or Entertainer?
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Ghetto Wisdom 101:

"Never choose a ‘crime partner’ who tries to be too cool. First, they're only trying to be cool to mask their insecurity. Second, they're using so much of their brain power trying to maintain their image that there's nothing left to think with. So always remember, young brother, super cool brothers are bad news. They have diarrhea at the mouth, they lack character, they’re always the scariest ones in the crowd, and they’re unfailingly the first to cave under pressure. In short, they can't be trusted." - Sweet Willie

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INTRODUCING DR. CORNEL WEST
A MAN WHO TAKES A VERY LONG TIME TO SAY VERY LITTLE

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Dr. Cornel West and Intellectual Rice Cake

Eric L. Wattree
Http://wattree.blogspot.comEwattree@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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Well, Mr. President, I warned You Over Two Years Ago

BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE

Well, Mr. President, I warned you over two years ago - on November 2, 2009, to be specific - about allowing the Dick Cheney and the GOP to goad you into Afghanistan. Now, with the 2012 election coming up, they don't look so bad, because you've allowed them to entice you into getting the very same kind of uselss death and destruction on your hands as they had in Iraq, and in the end, you're going to have to do exactly what I suggested back then - simply pull back, and assist Pakistan in defending their nuclear weapons. So maybe you need to trade in your advisors for my crystal ball.

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Could Obama Fall Victim to a Change We Can't Believe in?

At this point Obama's presidency could go either way - he can either become one of the greatest presidents this country has ever known, or go down as an exciting experiment that went bad. It's all up to how he handles the expectations of Independents.

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The biggest problem that Obama currently faces is becoming a victim of his own effectiveness. During the campaign he raised the nation's expectation so high that just being a good president won't do. He promised a change that we can believe in, which led many of us to believe that he intended to trash the way business is done in Washington, but that promise seems to be totally inconsistent with what seems to be his irrepressible desire to hold hands and sing Kumbaya with the very Republican leaders from which we wanted a change.
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This has fueled the growing suspicion by many that both parties are beholding to the same cabal of power, and only feign having differing philosophies toward governance. That suspicion lies very close to the surface for many Independents - after all, that's why they're Independents in the first place.
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And President Obama hasn't helped himself in that regard. For a man who is ordinarily so politically astute, even before he became president he did a curious flip-flop on the FISA issue. According to Greenchange.org, on October 24, 2007, Bill Burton of the Obama campaign indicated, "To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies." But by June 20, 2008, Obama issued a statement reversing his position, indicating that our national security needs were more important than his objections.
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That deeply disappointed many Independents, since a citizen's right to sue a telecommunications company for invading his or her privacy in violation of the law has nothing to do with national security. Those are the very constitutional rights that we're trying to keep secure. But while many Independents have kept that in mind, at least Obama had the integrity to take that stand prior to our making the decision on whether or not to vote for him.
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But then once he was elected President, Obama made another curious statement with regard to the criminal activities and alleged war crimes committed by the Bush administration. In spite of the fact that there are strong allegations and prima facie evidence of torture, and some of the most unconscionable violations of the Geneva Convention since the Nuremberg trials, President Obama stated that he wanted to move the nation forward, and not look back.
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Many Independents have two problems with that. First of all, President Obama seems much too willing to move forward with regard to the fat cats, while lower-ranking personnel are rotting in prison. That's in direct conflict with the American ideal of equal justice under the law. And secondly, since most of these atrocities were committed against the citizens of other nations, it is the height of arrogance for us to be "the deciders" of whether or not those responsible should be held accountable. That also runs contrary to American ideals, and the concept of "a shining city on the hill."
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And now we're talking about sending thousands of more troops to Afghanistan. The question is, why? The nation has yet to be provided with a reasonable explanation of why we should be meddling, once again, in another country's internal affairs. One would think we would have learned something about the futility of that by now. It's a recipe for disaster.
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There's only two legitimate reasons to have our troops in that part of the world. The first is obvious - to make damn sure the nuclear missiles in Pakistan don't fall into the hands of Al Qaeda. The second reason is to bring Osama Bin Laden to justice. So why can't we simply pull out of Afghanistan and deploy enough troops in Pakistan to protect the missiles, then let the CIA and law enforcement deal with Osama? That way we save both treasure and lives, and we're not creating more enemies for the United States by killing innocent people.
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But many Independents suspect that there's another agenda afoot. Actually, Cheney's giving it away. Independents recognize that Dick Cheney has absolutely no integrity, so when he gets passionate over an issue we know to follow either the money or power. Thus, many Independents suspect that what's actually behind Cheney's insistence that we go recklessly rushing into Afghanistan has much more to do with Halliburton's bottom line than it does America's best interest. And while Obama has shown himself to be an excellent president in many ways, his one shortcoming - and a shortcoming that may very well bring him down in the end - is his tendency to try to appease the stupidity and greed of the GOP.
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The President needs to recognize that there is nothing he can do that's going to make him acceptable to the GOP - that is, unless he agrees to appoint a Republican vice president, then resign. By now it should be clear that even while he's asleep, the GOP is trying to hatch plans to destroy him. So by spending more time thinking about them than he is his base, he's playing right into their hands.
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I mentioned power as one of the reasons that Cheney's trying to rush the president into Afghanistan. I wonder if the president has considered the fact that Cheney just might be trying to get him to make the same kind of mistake in Afghanistan that the Bush Administration made in Iraq in order to take the Iraq issue off the table for the 2012 election? If during the 2012 campaign America is bogged down in Afghanistan with the useless death of thousands of U.S. troops, all of a sudden, Bush, Cheney, and the GOP won't look all that bad. The president should think about that possibility, since the mechinations of Dick Cheney makes Machiavelli look like a trainee.
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On the other hand, if the president would have the CIA go after Osama Bin Laden (through the use of intelligence, instead of blindly shooting at rocks), then pull out of Afghanistan, and make an agreement with the government of Pakistan to help them protect their nuclear arsenal, he'll be looking pretty good in 2012, and he won't have the deaths of thousands of U.S. troops to have to justify.
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And he'd look even better if he allowed Attorney General Holder to do his job with respect to the Bush administration's war crimes. First, he'd firm up his base by restoring their confidence that he stands for the rule of law, and he would also allay the fear that he might be a puppet, controlled by some powerful cabal.
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Another upside to that is that once Holder begins his investigation into the Bush administration, there's absolutely no doubt that he's going to find criminality, cronyism, and corruption seeping so deep within the GOP that Republicans will be so busy snitching on one another, and covering their own asses, that they won't have the time to plot against either him, or the American people.
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Now, THAT, would be a change that we could believe in.

. 

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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A Message to the Hood

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

A Message to the Hood

(Knowledge is the Key)

.

Some people take umbrage with my defining myself as a hood rat. They say that by doing so, I’m not only demeaning myself, but I’m also demeaning other Black people in the process. But people who think like that are violating one of the most important principles in life - that we should always seek to be independent thinkers. That entails being self-defining, never giving the thoughts of others priority over your own, and never allowing others to define your terms.

.
Thus, people who see the phrase "hood rat" as demeaning have been brainwashed. They no longer think for themselves. They've allowed the attitude of others to take priority over their own, and they've also allowed society to define their terms. As a result, they've embraced the belief that people with their background are somehow less than others.
.
I take pride in challenging that contention because the fact is, I grew up in the hood, so that's what makes me who I am, and since God made birds to fly, fish to swim, and man think, in order for anybody to contend that I'm less than human, they're going to have to demonstrate that they can out-think me. You see, it's not enough to merely SAY, "I'm Black and I'm proud." We must put enough work into our intellectual development to say it, and mean it. Therefore, I proudly embrace the phrase hood rat as symbolic of my challenge to society to come SHOW me that I'm inferior, since it's my contention that it's society that's guilty of flawed thinking, not I.
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A perfect example of the flaw in society's thinking can be found in the fact that attendant to the negativity that society assigns to the term "rat" is the false assumption that a rat is something nasty, and therefore, beneath man. But the fact is, man himself is the nastiest animal on Earth. While a rat may leave droppings in his environment, and one might consider that nasty, man is so prolific with his own droppings - in the ocean, in the air, in space, and within the Earth itself - that he threatens the very survival of everything on the planet. So what’s nastier, a rat, or man?
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That illustrates why it’s so important to clean man’s droppings from our minds, and become independent thinkers. Because much of what we think of as true, is actually the corruption of truth that we’ve been taught by other men in order to promote their own self-interest.
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So while others are scrambling among themselves in an attempt to service their corruption and greed, it presents the Black community with the perfect opportunity to spend that same time becoming independent thinkers, and reassessing the mores that we've inherited from this corrupt society. Thereafter, we should replace the meaningless pursuit of the "American Dream" (bling), with the pursuit of character, wisdom, and knowledge. Because since knowledge is power, one invariably leads to the other, and much, much more.
.
I’ve been fortunate enough to obtain a small measure of the American dream, but it was certainly not as a result of any kind of pursuit. I only stumbled upon it while on a mission to educate myself, because along with education comes skills. But also during my educational process, I found that what I was actually looking for was not so much the American dream, but happiness and self-fulfillment. Yes, I wanted to live a comfortable life, but along with a TRUE education, you tend to develop a new definition of what that entails. And one of the things that I learned was that the American dream is only the illusion of happiness, since the mere acquisition of "things" can bring you neither happiness, nor fulfillment. True happiness and fulfillment can only be found in becoming the best that you can be. Our failure to understand that is the primary problem that we have as a nation - we're in much hotter pursuit of riches than we are of character.
.
I wasted literally all of my teenage years - those years between 12 and 19 years of age, when I should have been educating myself - running the street. I spent that time dropping out of school, going in and out of various institutions, and using any kind of drug that I could get my hands on.
.
But fortunately, I was arrested as an adult (at 19 years-old), and an insightful cop and a benevolent judge joined forces to get me to agree to go into the military (the army, I thought) in return for not being sent to prison, and the promise of expunging my record if I came out with an honorable discharge. Naturally, I eagerly agreed. But it was only later, to my complete shock and horror, did I learn that they had also managed to get the Marine Corps to ignore all of its regulations against accepting an illiterate delinquent. But once I got in there I found out why - they needed a warm body to use as a close combat dummy in order to train the "REAL MARINES."
.
But once the marines finished showing me what a gangster REALLY was, they had me take the GED, and to everybody's amazement, I did really well on it. Although I did a lot of guessing, I scored much higher than anyone expected, especially myself (I'm still convinced it was a fluke). So they sent me to the Army/Navy Academy to get an actual diploma and further my educational development (I'll be eternally grateful to them for that).
.
But fluke or not, that's where I learned a couple of very valuable lessons - you are what you think, and that knowledge is power. Instead of being called dummy, I was making a fortune writing love letters for other marines, and later I started working for the battalion commander. I did all of his writing, including the officers' fitness reports, which gave me a tremendous amount of clout ("Come on, Wattree! Why be so formal? There's no one around, so spare me the Captain crap. Just call me Larry."). Later, it was arranged for me to get out 90 days early to attend college - which, by that time, was just a matter of staying awake and filling in the dots.
.
But during that process I fell in love with knowledge, and I also began to realize that since what I loved most was free, it couldn’t be denied me. And as I became increasingly more independent of thought, a couple of other things also began to come into focus. First, contrary to our national values, the only mature and productive form of competition is to compete against the person that you were the day before. And secondly, I learned that the only true road to perfect happiness and fulfillment is to dedicate your life to becoming your own hero.
.
That’s the knowledge that I would like to pass along to my brothers in the hood. Because our failure to understand those two very fundamental facts are not only the source of most of our misery, but to 99% of all of our problems in general. We rightly complain that we’re deprived of a level playing field, so why not dedicate ourselves to the acquisition of knowledge to equalize that situation? And by the way, that's the message that Tavis Smiley and Cornel West should be preaching, instead of helping to elect Republicans by attacking our first Black president.
.
So yes, I’m a hood rat, and I never let myself forget it. But I’m a hood rat with the understanding that the White man's water is no wetter than our own, and his knowledge is no more knowledgeable. In addition, since every experience in life is a source of knowledge, the experience of overcoming the adversity that we’ve endured as hood rats makes us more, rather than less. It's that very knowledge that Obama is killing them with in Washington as we speak. They could probably handle him if he was dealing with them using the knowledge that he pick up at Harvard, because many of them went there too, but he's whippin' 'em with a source of knowledge that they know absolutely nothing about - the knowledge he picked up trying to survive as a Black man in America. That's a knowledge that's unique to us.
.
Thus, the bottom line is this - with very few exceptions, we cannot depend on others to help us, Black or White. We're engaged in a class war, and it's everybody for themselves. So we've got to combine the unique knowledge that we've gained in the hood, with the education and wisdom that we obtain thereafter, to become the masters of our own fate. Thus, knowledge, is the key to our survival. Period.
.
Think about that.

THE HOOD RAT

I’m sure you know that I love you;

You’re everything I need.

You fit the bill of all my desires,

a perfect match for all my dreams.

You’re everything I’ve always craved,

that luscious vision from across the tracks;

that delicate flower, just beyond my grasp,
and here you are at last.

*

But what you ask is foreign to me;

You need something that I'm not.

You said, if I'd tweak my nature, just a bit,

you’ll give everything you’ve got.

*

But that "tweak" you need is who I am;

It's my essence, can't you see?

You want to abolish the hood rat from my life,

the very thing that makes me, me.

*

While a hood rat may seem trite to you,

a hood rat’s what you see;

So forget about what the other’s say -

here’s what it means to me:

*

I’ve been brutally dragged through the pits of Hell,

yet, managed to survive,

well educated and fully functional,

when I came out the other side.

*

I scrounged the lessons taught at Harvard,

because knowledge, I found, was free;

But Harvard can't teach the lessons I've learn -

that knowledge is unique to me.

*

While they've heard the sounds of a mournful Trane,
and Miles moaning in the night,

not against the backdrop of hunger and pain,

or injustice, hatred, and blight.

*

Yet, these are the things you want me to purge,

and spurn the life I’ve led.

Well, I’m sorry sweet thing, as much as I love you,

the soul of a hood rat is my edge.

*

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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In Defense of My Stance Against Cornel West

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

In Defense of My Stance Against Cornel West

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In response to my last column, Dr. Boyce Watkins Announces His Withdrawal from Cornel West Controversy , one reader said the following:
.
"Wattree – you should stop kissing President Obama’s ass without thinking about your political decisions. He hasn’t done anything for you, but you talk about him like you work for him."
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Such comments are so typical of Cornel West supporters that they’ve become a mantra. They invariably accuse anyone who dares to point out that West’s blatant public slander of the President of the United States was counterproductive, unsubstantiated, and frankly, stupid, as only being interested in defending President Obama. They try to avoid the issue of West’s grossly unprofessional behavior by accusing his critics of being Obama cheerleaders. So let me dispose of that allegation at the outset.
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As I’ve mentioned many times before, I’ve written several articles that are highly critical of President Obama - one, long before Obama was even sworn into office. In the article, A Journalist’s First Responsibility, written on July 8, 2008, I point out unequivocally that it’s not a journalist’s responsibility to try to protect a favored candidate:
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"On June 20th Senator Barack Obama announced that he was supporting the current FISA bill before the senate. That bill gives retroactive immunity to all telecommunications companies against all private law suits for cooperating with the Bush administration's program of spying on the American people without a court order, as currently required by current law . . .
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"I've been roundly criticized by fellow Obama supporters for bringing this issue out. They say that ‘I'm hurting our candidate’, and ‘I'm not seeing the big picture.’ But in response I suggest, when truth becomes a hindrance to a candidate's viability, it's not truth that's the problem–it's the candidate. And when the "greater good" involves journalists keeping the people in the dark, it becomes the nation's problem. Thus, it's not up to journalists to keep Obama's candidacy viable--it's up to Obama."
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Thus, my strident criticism of Cornel West has nothing to do with trying to protect Obama. I’m speaking out against West’s unmitigated stupidity. Period.
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Any Black person who doesn’t recognize the importance of, at the very least, respecting the first Black President of the United States is an idiot. While that doesn’t preclude one from criticizing Obama’s policies, just like any other president, West criticized him as a Black man, which is an exercise in self-hatred, and betrays his true attitude toward Black people in general. So West didn’t merely make himself look stupid, he made the Black community look stupid as well. First, West clearly demonstrated that many of us don’t have any self-respect. And secondly, since his high profile sends the false impression that West is one of the best and brightest in the Black community, his reckless and unprofessional assertions and behavior reinforces the racist belief that Black professionals are something less than their White counterparts.
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To this day, there are many racists who claim that Black professionals are professionals in name only. They contend that due to Affirmative Action, Black professionals didn’t have to pay the dues to obtain their credentials that their White counterparts had to pay. Therefore, they’re less qualified. As a direct result of that attitude, many highly qualified Black professionals are being passed over for upward mobility in their chosen professions.
.
But Black professionals have been slowly proving that contention is a lie. People like Johnnie Cochran and Colin Powell have stepped up to the plate to demonstrate that they were not only as good as their White counterparts, but in many cases, much better. That accounts for why so many White folks hated O.J. Simpson. While many simply wanted to see justice prevail, there were others who hated O.J. for much more than the fact that they thought he was a murderer. The primary reason they hated O.J. so intensely was because he brought Johnnie Cochran to the world’s stage, and Johnnie proved beyond a doubt that the racist contention that Black professionals were inferior was, and is, a lie.
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Think about it. At the very height of the affirmative action controversy Johnnie Cochran walked into the courtroom from, essentially, out of nowhere. He then told some of the most celebrated attorneys in the world to scoot over, and then proceeded to play the legal system like a fiddle. Thereafter, for the very first time, instead of racists saying that a Black man was inferior, they claimed that O.J. got away with murder because he could afford to hire the very best - Johnnie Cochran, a Black man. And now, the very same is true of President Obama with respect to our political system, regardless to what you think of his politics. It's no accident, therefore, that people like Cornel West, Tavis smiley, and many rabid conservatives hate President Obama as well - and, ironically, for the very same reason.
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Thus, we were well on our way to proving our point regarding the competence and intellect of Black professionals. Then a jealous, self-serving, 19th Century-thinking idiot like Cornel West comes along whose words and behavior essentially says, Naw, naw, White folks,  y’all right about this dude. Obama ain’t nothing but another Black pickaninny. I’m the genius! I’m the one you should be listening to! I was at Harvard long before he was. He butted in line. It’s suppose to be my turn now!  He’s just "a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats." And further, "I think my dear brother Barack Obama has a certain fear of free black men" (The latter statement seems to have been designed to trigger a knee-jerk response from the few unthinking, reactionary Black people in the community).
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But that latter statement was also just enough for racists to point to as confirmation of their contention that Black "intellectuals" are inferior thinkers. As a scholar, West should have known better than anyone else that you should never make an assertion that you can’t substantiate in the very next sentence, or no later than the following paragraph. Yet, he states, among other things, that due to Barack Obama’s background, he has "a certain fear of free Black men." What evidence does he have of that? Absolutely none. So he’s guilty of reckless, unscholarly, and frankly, ridiculous thinking.
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I mean, I could say that because Cornel West - this so-called passionate lover of Black people - married a White woman and never taught at a school that more than a lucky few Black people could even get into, that he’s afraid of free Black women and has no respect for Black scholarship. But unlike West, I wouldn’t dare make such an idiotic assertion. Why? Because I can’t crawl into his head to substantiate my facts. In addition, I wouldn’t want to embarrass the Black community with such stupidity. But the most important reason that I wouldn't make such a reckless assertion is because I - this unabashed and unrepentant hood rat - understand the importance of disciplined thought.
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Once Again Nader and West Team to Elect a Republican President

.

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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Dr. Boyce Watkins Announces His Withdrawal from Cornel West Controversy

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree 

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Dr. Boyce Watkins Announces His Withdrawal from Cornel West Controversy

DR. BOYCE WATKINS

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In the recent video, "Dr. Boyce: My Two Cents on Michael Eric Dyson," released on Black Like Moi!, Dr. Boyce Watkins of Syracuse University announced his retirement from the Dr. Cornel West controversies. In the announcement Boyce indicated that "this battle between black scholars was not productive" - a point that I disagree with, by the way.

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But even as Watkins was walking away, it was clear that he just didn’t get it. Watkins indicated that the criticism of Cornel West based on his "critique" of President Obama was unfair, and everyone was jumping on West without examining the validity of West’s criticism.
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In response, what Watkins is clearly not getting is that the piling on directed at West is his own fault. Contrary to the claims by most of West’s defenders, the outrage directed toward West had nothing to do with his so-called critique of President Obama. On the contrary, West is being criticized because his comments toward Obama wasn’t a disciplined and scholarly critique.
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Cornel West is the victim of his own serious miscalculation. Being the publicity whore that he is, West thought that he was going to be greeted with a standing ovation for his courageous willingness to stand up to power. But he made the serious error of engaging in a gross, street-level slander of the first Black President of the United States, and then repeated the offense in his comments toward a high-profile Black female scholar, Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry. That didn’t constitute standing up to power -what it actually was, was an arrogant grandstand play and selfish attempt to manipulate the Black community that seriously backfired.

.

If West had been a White man with the audacity to called the president a Black mascot and puppet, and Dr. Harris-Perry a liar and a fraud, we would have called him a virulent racist who was grossly disrespecting the Black community - and in spite of the fact that West is Black, that’s exactly what we did in this case. After all, since Black people are a product of the very same racist environment as White people, many of us are just as racist toward other Blacks as any Hillbilly, and West’s behavior clearly demonstrates that fact.

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So again, what brought many of us into the conversation wasn’t just a scholarly critique of President Obama. We were enraged by the hypocrisy and blatant disrespect embedded in what amounted to Cornel West’s racist slander of the first Black President of the United States. Even though West has made a career of telling anyone who will listen how much he "loves his people" - in fact, he generally prefaces his virulent comments with the hypocritical endearment of "my good brother" - but he then went on to say things that were so disrespectful of President Obama, and later, Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry, that it carried the obvious implication that it’s alright to disrespect these people because, after all, beneath their titles they’re just two more insignificant Pickaninnies. I don't recall West ever showing such blatant disrespect toward Bush or Cheney.
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Thus, it’s my personal opinion that both Tavis Smiley and Cornel West (I mention them both since they seem to be attached at the hip) are two petty, self-serving egomaniacs who specialize in putting their own personal agendas ahead of what’s in the best interest of both the Black community, and the nation.
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Clear evidence of that is the fact that they both know full well that the GOP used the Iraq War to ravage the U.S. Treasury in order to justify attacking the entitlement programs put in place by the New Deal. Abolishing the New Deal has been the GOP’s main reason for being for over 70 years now. But the programs that they’d like to abolish - such as Social security, Medicare, and the Fair Labor standards Act - are much too popular among the American people to attack head on. So they purposely tried to bankrupt the nation as a pretext to preclude the funding, and/or, support of these programs. That agenda, along with regaining power, gives the GOP a vested interest in keeping America miserable, angry, and poor. So if Tavis and West were really concerned about the poor, minorities, and middle class, that’s what they’d be ranting about instead of helping the GOP bad-mouth Obama.
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They’re out there constantly criticizing Obama in spite of the fact that the GOP is clearly out to destroy the poor, minorities, and middle class in this country. So the obvious question is, if Obama’s so bad, who do they suggest that we vote for, Romney - a man who enjoys firing people, and think of families being put out of their homes as simply collateral damage in the further enrichment of Wall Street? Santorum - Who wants to abolish public education, thinks higher education is snobbish, and wants a government small enough to crawl up a woman’s uterus? Or maybe West thinks we should vote for Gingrich, who wants to fire the heads of households and put their kids to work for slave wages.
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But instead of fighting these domestic enemies of the American way of life, and educating the public to their agenda, Tavis and West are going around telling any and everybody who’ll listen that we should be so disenchanted with Obama - who they portray as the Bogeyman - that we should elect the Devil. West did the very same thing when he teamed up with Ralph Nader in the 2000 election and helped get George Bush elected. How did that help either the poor, middle class, or Black community? It didn’t. In fact, it’s the very reason that we’re in the situation that we’re in today, and that West is now trying to blame Barack Obama for not correcting fast enough.
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But if you bring up that point to the Nader/West supporters, they’ll immediately begin to obfuscate and engage in intellectual gymnastics in an attempt to avoid responsibility for the horrific fate that they brought upon this country. They’ll say things like, "It’s not our fault that Gore lost. He just didn’t fight hard enough for a recount." But by using such arguments what they’re actually saying is, "Gore just didn’t fight hard enough to undo the damage that we’d done." Because the bottom line is this – Gore lost the 2000 election to Bush in Florida by 537 votes, and the Nader/West coalition peeled off 97,488 votes from Gore in Florida alone. So don’t take my word for it – you do the math. And the unbelievable thing is, West is currently trying to team up with Nader again to undermine the people in this election!
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But before West supporters try to characterize me as an Obama cheerleader, I’d like to point out that just a cursory Google search will show that I’ve written several articles critical of Obama. But when I’m critical of the president, I make it issue-specific, I'm always respectful, and I never lodge a blanket attack against the president’s overall character. Thus, I only have one agenda, and that’s to promote truth, common sense, and logical, independent thinking. And in that regard, I think that it is incumbent upon everyone with common sense to do everything they can to keep the GOP out of office. Because, entrusting our nation and economy to the Republican Party would be like entrusting our children to convicted child molesters.
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So in closing, I’d like to say to Dr. Watkins that I am indeed gratified to see him extricate himself from this debate, because while I don’t always agree with him, I’ve always seen him as a sincere advocate of the people. But I’d also like to point out to him how important it is not to confuse the public rant that West lodged against President Obama with a critique. You can’t simply call a person a hypocritic, egomaniacal, lunatic, and call that a critique. In a critique you have to explain why you’re call him a lunatic. Thus, with respect to my good brother, Dr. Cornel West, this, is a critique.

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In Defense Of My Stance Against Cornel West

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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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The Hood Rat

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

*

THE HOOD RAT

.
Baby,
I’m sure you know that I love you.
You’re everything I need.
You fit the bill of all my desires,
a perfect match for all of my dreams.
From the moment I first laid eyes on you,
You were everything I craved -
that luscious vision from across the tracks,
that delicate flower, beyond my blade.

*
But what you ask is foreign to me.

You need something that I’m not.

You said, just tweak my nature a little bit,

and you’ll give everything you’ve got.

*

But that "tweak" you need is who I am -

it’s my essence, can’t you see?

How can you speak of loving my soul,

but, not the hood rat that makes me, me?

*

While "hood rat" may seem trite to you,

it’s the very essence of my being.

So forget about what other’s say,

here’s what it means to me:

*

I’ve been brutally dragged through the pits of hell,

yet, managed to survive,

well educated and fully functional,

when I came out the other side.

I scrounged the lessons taught at Harvard -

because knowledge, I found, was free.

But they’ll never obtain the lessons I’ve learned -

or my knowledge of adversity.

*

While the "elite" may have heard a mournful Trane,

or Miles muted on a Summer night,

not in the context of hunger and pain,

or hopelessness, hatred, and blight.

*           

So while I've lived the life of a hood rat,

I’ve reaped a knowledge that money can't buy; 

a knowledge passed on to my son and daughter,

which has greatly enhanced their lives.

* 

Thus, I wouldn't change a thing in my life -

I’ve faced hell and passed the test.

I have a PhD in adversity, and

it's made me much more,
rather than less.

*

So unlike the people at Harvard and Yale, who
try to buy intellectual clout,

they only study the genius of Miles and Trane,

while I'm who they’re talkin' about.

*

So when snobs try to slur me as "just a hood rat,"

I say, "thank you," and don’t take offense.

I take great pride in surviving the travails in my life -

That’s what gives me my confidence.

*

The Ivy League degrees of those of means

are only paper compared to mine;

they merely have a "receipt" for knowledge,

while mine is ETCHED in my mind.

*

I can TEACH philosophy to Aristotle and Plato

with the adversity that I’ve endured,

and any snob who seeks to match my wit,

will come up short, and

that’s for sure.

*

Snobs walk about quoting Socrates and such,

through their "education" they are prone;

but while they’re spewing the thoughts of various dead men,

I spend my time developing my own.

*
We should never give the thoughts of ANY man

priority over our own;

You must collect the facts, and think for yourself,

that’s where Harvard and Yale has gone wrong.
*
Whether they be preacher, politician, potentate or monk,
whatever their philosophy or point of view,
God didn't give them anything,
that he failed to also bestow upon you. 

*

And being seen as a hood rat has its advantages -
especially against racists of limited wit;

I simply quietly wait for their condescension,

then show ‘em that they ain’t shit.

*

God made birds to fly, fish to swim,

and man to think, that's the key.

So any man who claims superiority 
will have to PROVE his wit to me.
*
Thus, knowledge is the key to set us free -

it doesn’t matter what the people say,

and there’s nothing more formidable than

a knowledgeable hood rat, and

that’s what you’re looking upon today.
*

Yet, these are the things you want me to purge -

you want me to spurn the life I’ve led,

but I’m sorry, my love,
as much as I adore you,

the soul of a hood rat is my edge.

*

Wattree

*

A MESSAGE TO THE HOOD

Some people take umbrage with my defining myself as a hood rat. They say that by doing so, I’m not only demeaning myself, but I’m also demeaning other Black people in the process. But people who think like that are violating one of the most important principles in life - that we should always seek to be independent thinkers. That entails being self-defining, never giving the thoughts of others priority over your own, and never allowing others to define your terms.

.
Thus, people who see the phrase "hood rat" as demeaning have been brainwashed. They no longer think for themselves. They've allowed the attitude of others to take priority over their own, and they've also allowed society to define their terms. As a result, they've embraced the belief that people with their background are somehow less than others.
.
I take pride in challenging that contention because the fact is, I grew up in the hood, so that's what makes me who I am, and since God made birds to fly, fish to swim, and man think, in order for anybody to contend that I'm less than human, they're going to have to demonstrate that they can out-think me. You see, it's not enough to merely SAY, "I'm Black and I'm proud." We must put enough work into our intellectual development to say it, and mean it. Therefore, I proudly embrace the phrase hood rat as symbolic of my challenge to society to come SHOW me that I'm inferior, since it's my contention that it's society that's guilty of flawed thinking, not I.
.
A perfect example of the flaw in society's thinking can be found in the fact that attendant to the negativity that society assigns to the term "rat" is the false assumption that a rat is something nasty, and therefore, beneath man. But the fact is, man himself is the nastiest animal on Earth. While a rat may leave droppings in his environment, and one might consider that nasty, man is so prolific with his own droppings - in the ocean, in the air, in space, and within the Earth itself - that he threatens the very survival of everything on the planet. So what’s nastier, a rat, or man?
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That illustrates why it’s so important to clean man’s droppings from our minds, and become independent thinkers. Because much of what we think of as true, is actually the corruption of truth that we’ve been taught by other men in order to promote their own self-interest.
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So while others are scrambling among themselves in an attempt to service their corruption and greed, it presents the Black community with the perfect opportunity to spend that same time becoming independent thinkers, and reassessing the mores that we've inherited from this corrupt society. Thereafter, we should replace the meaningless pursuit of the "American Dream" (bling), with the pursuit of character, wisdom, and knowledge. Because since knowledge is power, one invariably leads to the other, and much, much more.
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I’ve been fortunate enough to obtain a small measure of the American dream, but it was certainly not as a result of any kind of pursuit. I only stumbled upon it while on a mission to educate myself, because along with education comes skills. But also during my educational process, I found that what I was actually looking for was not so much the American dream, but happiness, and self-fulfillment. Yes, I wanted to live a comfortable life, but along with a TRUE education, you tend to develop a new definition of what that entails. And one of the things that I learned was that the American dream is only the illusion of happiness, since the mere acquisition of "things" can bring you neither happiness, nor fulfillment. True happiness and fulfillment can only be found in becoming the best that you can be. Our failure to understand that is the primary problem that we have as a nation - we're in much hotter pursuit of riches than we are of character.
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I wasted literally all of my teenage years - those years between 12 and 19 years of age, when I should have been educating myself - running the street. I spent that time dropping out of school, going in and out of various institutions, and using any kind of drug that I could get my hands on.
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But fortunately, I was arrested as an adult (at 19 years-old), and an insightful cop and a benevolent judge joined forces to get me to agree to go into the military (the army, I thought) in return for not being sent to prison, and the promise of expunging my record if I came out with an honorable discharge. Naturally, I eagerly agreed. But it was only later, to my complete shock and horror, did I learn that they had also managed to get the Marine Corps to ignore all of its regulations against accepting an illiterate delinquent. But once I got in there I found out why - they needed a warm body to use as a close combat dummy in order to train the "REAL MARINES."
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But once the marines finished showing me what a gangster REALLY was, they had me take the GED, and to everybody's amazement, I did really well on it. Although I did a lot of guessing, I scored much higher than anyone expected, especially myself (I'm still convinced it was a fluke). So they sent me to the Army/Navy Academy to get an actual diploma and further my educational development (I'll be eternally grateful to them for that).
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But fluke or not, that's where I learned a couple of very valuable lessons - you are what you think, and that knowledge is power. Instead of being called dummy, I was making a fortune writing love letters for other marines, and later I started working for my  battalion commander (who later became the commanding general of Camp Pendleton), and every word that came out of his mouth flowed from this "hood rat's" pen. I did all of his writing, including the officers' fitness reports - I was his "Radar O'Reilly."  It was the worst kept secret in the unit, that I was writing the fitness reports on my superior officers and the commander was simply reading and signing off on them. That gave me a lot of clout, a tremendous amount of clout ("Come on, Wattree! Why be so formal? There's no one around, so spare me the Captain crap. Just call me Larry.").  I used to drink Scotch at the time (I drink gin now, when my woman ain't lookin'), and between trying to squeeze information out of me, and trying to get on my good side, those officers used to keep me in Scotch. They used to come by my personal quarters at night, and every time one would come by he'd have a 5th of Scotch with him. My quarters looked like a liquor store.
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Then one night the commander showed up in my quarters - which he had allowed me to setup in one of the back offices of the battalion library - with two documents.  One, alerting the unit that they had just been redeployed overseas, for a second time; the other, was an early discharge for me. He said, "You're outta here. Go educate yourself." I was delighted, and by that time, college was just a matter of staying awake in school, and filling in the dots.
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During my time in the Marine Corps I had fallen in love with knowledge, and I also began to realize that since what I loved most was free, it couldn’t be denied me. And as I became increasingly more independent of thought, a couple of other things also began to come into focus. First, contrary to our national values, the only mature and productive form of competition is to compete against the person that you were the day before. And secondly, I learned that the only true road to perfect happiness and fulfillment is to dedicate your life to becoming your own hero.
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That’s the knowledge that I would like to pass along to my brothers and sisters in the hood. Because our failure to understand those two very fundamental facts are not only the source of most of our misery, but to 99% of all of our problems in general. We rightly complain that we’re deprived of a level playing field, so why not dedicate ourselves to the acquisition of knowledge to equalize that situation? We should make knowledge the new "soul." The very same brilliance that went into making a Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Ray Charles, and Areatha Franklin, can be redirected toward Math, Science, and technology - and by the way, that's the message that people like Tavis Smiley and Cornel West should be preaching, instead of helping to elect Republicans by attacking our first Black president.
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So yes, I’m a hood rat, and I never let myself forget it. But I’m a hood rat with the understanding that the White man's water is no wetter than our own, and his knowledge is no more knowledgeable. In addition, since every experience in life is a source of knowledge, the experience of overcoming the adversity that we’ve endured as hood rats makes us more, rather than less. It's that very knowledge that Obama is killing them with in Washington as we speak. They could probably handle him if he was dealing with them using the knowledge that he pick up at Harvard, because they went there too, but he's whipping their natural asses with a source of knowledge that they know absolutely nothing about - the knowledge he obtained trying to survive as a Black man in America. That's a knowledge that's unique to us.
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Thus, the bottom line is this - with very few exceptions, we cannot depend on others to help us, Black or White. We're engaged in a class war, and it's everybody for themselves, so we've got to combine the unique knowledge that we've gained in the hood, with the education and wisdom that we MUST obtain thereafter, to become the masters of our own fate.  In short, KNOWLEDGE, is the key to our survival. PERIOD.
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Think about that.

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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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