Racism in America

Rewriting my experiences with this issue.

I came to the USA in 1965. I was excited, embraced my new country and gave it all my love. I bragged about it to those I left behind and was glad to see the Civil Rights movement succeed. I was sad about the assassinations of JFK and MLK, but I remained positive about the overall progress.

What I want to write about now is the disappointments I started to experience in recent years as Americans became very divided, very polarized and outright hostile.

One by one the great illusions I had about the American mentality started to falter. The “Melting Pot” was among the first, realizing that it was not a given at all. Discrimination, likewise ranked way at the top. Tolerance was good, but I really would rather see full acceptance. More over, I feel unconditional love toward other humans, even if they don’t agree with me, they don’t look like me and they may have a different cultural backgrounds.

I ridiculed “W”, but I did not hate him, I came to realize that it was very hard on him to be a puppet. Hence his occasional outbursts, like “…the Constitution is nothing but a goddamned piece of paper…” Revealed his frustration with his puppeteers.

With Barack Obama’s election the racists were flushed out into the open. More and more I heard statements that I have never heard before. One sports-related comment on the Red Skins tries to explain that White man, if given a choice, would root for the other White man, not, say for a Black. (You can search Huffington Post for the article around Aug. 20, 2012). This is not really so, and it is certainly unfair for the commentator to generalize instead of realizing, it is his problem.

Barack Obama would have not been even close to being elected, had this guy’s statement been true for most Whites. I watched the inaugural more than once. The second time I observed the people gathered to celebrate. And so many were White, and there were tears in their eyes. They know they experienced an historic event. I though they tried to make up for so many wrongs and also to celebrate diversity. If I would say tolerance, that would fall really short, because what I saw and felt myself, was love and victory and elation.

Not long after that a GOP backlash against this fine man, Barack Obama started, came e-rumor, organized propaganda on radio and TV and it emboldened haters of all sorts, including criminals.

There was talk of him being destroyed one way or another. From the rude interruption at State of the Union message and other forms of disrespect, some nuts have shown to believe, BO is the Anti-Christ, and either a Communist, Socialist, or Nazi. He is not a real American, he is an imposter, a secret Moslem, who is bent on destroying America and what it stands for. Never mind that you cannot be a Socialist and a Nazi all in one, never mind that Moslems don’t drink alcohol, or smoke, never mind that he did not lie when he was interrupted in public.

The truth does not seem to matter. The truth has been blocked out by the loud voices of the Extreme Right that came to control every aspect of the democratic process.

Then, just the other day I was sharing something with a friend on my tablet. My background picture was MLK along one of my favorite quotes of his. This friend, who is a Democrat, pointed at the picture and said to me: “Gee, take him off of there, he was a trouble-maker, he stirred racial hatred.” I was appalled I told her I disagreed and that I like to quote him. We dropped the subject, but from my side, at any rate, this friend has dropped in stature for sure. She does support the President, but she needs to read some real history. Oh well. From time to time I run into this and I stand up for the truth. I will never know if it makes any difference. It just makes me feel better and that counts for something.

Along with this kind of hatred other forms also re-emerged. It seems to be perfectly OK with the Extremists to roll back the progress women made and gay rights made.

Democrats, independents and Moderate Republicans have not come out strong enough to counteract. We have now an impasse and a dysfunctional Democracy. So much damage in a few decades…Sad, really sad.

We really need to look at this in a broader frame. This movement of the Extreme Right is not a real movement. It has been planned, and put to work by the elite Neocons, like Rove and his allies. It is funded and fueled by money from a small click not all of them Americans. Certainly not good American.

What was Mitt Romney doing giving a speech to wealthy Israeli donors? Why? He even praised them on their health care system, which is a universal, single payer system, only to continue his rhetoric against Obamacare, which was modeled after his (Romney’s) successful plan.

This elite wants to run the world. I kid you not. America has long stood in the way of that. America’s Middle Class, strong and affluent was the biggest obstacle to create a dictatorship here and to impose our will on other nations.

Empowered women who hold a stake in our democracy, are another obstacle. The more power they acquire, the stronger our system and the more it resists attempts to create a dictatorship.

The saying “Barefoot and pregnant” is pretty much back again. But the Genie is out of the bottle and it will not do it.

Rove’s click is bent on creating a Corpocracy. That is where the shots are called by Big Business, which are mostly multi-national corporations. They are interested in cheaper labor markets.

They want to weaken Middle America.

You may ask why? A large, financially stable Middle is also a great market for goods. I did not do the numbers, but I suspect the elite has sacrificed the market for the cheaper labor. They must have concluded that it was worth. In effect, they sold out America.

Let me interject a personal story: One of my uncles, a devout Republican, built a factory and outsourced most of the work to China. He made lots of money and is now very old. We argue by email back and forth. I brought up the outsourcing to him as a selling out of America. Interestingly, I will quote his answer:  “That is not something I am proud of now.” And with that he grew in my eyes.

Some talk about One-World –Government: I am not sure of details on that, but I would speculate that if that’s what the goal is, then Rove and accomplices are the ones who will make it happen.

However, other things are happening in the world that might retard that process. The Arab Spring and the Occupy movement and main stream Republicans abandoning the GOP ( including lawmakers).  The democrats too are realizing how important is to fight back.

That is why this 2012 election has such high stakes. It will determine is we end up a puppet dictatorship, or remain a Democracy that will need a lot of repair, but will have survived.

Now a word about Mr. Romney and his choice of VP. First I will quote something Romney said during an interview that I heard on TV.

Then here is this verifiable truth:

“Rep. Todd Akin's comments about “legitimate rape” and pregnancy have prompted a justified level of outrage, but few have noted how at home his extremist views are within the GOP platform, or the fact that Republican VP nominee Paul Ryan co-sponsored a bill with Akin to redefine rape in 2011”.

The examples are endless, but I drown my own frustration into poetry. This poem written earlier during the Obama presidency is my way of expressing how I feel about this subject. I found it perfectly fit to close with it

This essay. To add insult to injury, Paul Ryan had the thick skin to tell the media, he was for individualism. Really? If you don’t recite the Extreme Mantra and you deviate from it even a little, you’re out. This is how dictatorships start. That is exactly what the end of my poem says. The GOP has given up individualism in favor of group thinking and block formation.

Can you even remotely imagine what a Romney presidency would look like? I can, I lived in a dictatorship until I was 25. Believe me, you don’t want it.

GOP to the Prez:

Hey, You, That There…

Don’t you get it?

You get no credit.

No matter!

 If you’re right,

If you fight,

If you stop,

If you hop

If the sky

Opens up

And you’re

Touched by God.

We speak to you

In One Voice

We formed a Block!

Oh, but wait,

Aren’t we for

Individualism?

Did we give that up?

Making the case against Corpocracy and its exponents.

Reverend Al Sharpton says in an ad on MSNBC: …”A lot of things are acceptable, until we stop accepting them.” This has really put me to think and encouraged me to write this essay. Indeed, we all too often accept all sorts of actions, statements, procedures, traditions and decisions, when they may be outdated, counter-productive, unfair, or just plain stupid!

At some schools where I taught, final (written) exams were administered as many as three on the same day. I asked my principal once, why put so much stress on the students and why not spread them over more days? He said, this is how it has been done ever since he remembers and he gestured that it was the end of the conversation.

When you watch TV, be it the news, a sitcom, a talk show, anything, you will be captive audience for 10- 15 minutes for about every hour to “commercials”. Most of those are trying to sell you goods and services and you know the words and music to them by heart. They become very annoying, even if you mute the set. We accept them, but I think these are some of the most heartless intrusions into our privacy right in our home.

The invasion and abuse of our mail box is another of those examples. The environment is screaming to stop the junk, but the junk just gets thicker and thicker. I estimate that more than 90% is immediately becoming trash, the rest a bit later and oh, about 5% is looked at and about 1% is acted upon. This process has a huge “carbon footprint”.  It must be one of the most wasteful endeavors of our time. But we accept this unpleasant intrusion and labor at sending it off in recycle bins.

Enough? No way! The Internet is doing the same. They have junk mail, spam, pop-ups and lately (what I call) “left-behinds”. These left-behinds are not halves of asses, but graphics that remain hanging on your screen after you exit the Internet. You do not have a choice, you must close those windows yourself. You don’t have a setting to automate it either. Many apps don’t work if you don’t allow pop-ups. One champion of the “left-behinds” is Netflix. You just can’t get rid of them!!!!! They want your business.

OK, I think you had enough examples. But wait, you get sticky address labels that you don’t need, from countless non-profits and from businesses that thank you for whatever business you did. Sheets upon sheets of sticky labels that your shredder chokes on. Notice, I did not even touch the political ads. Not yet. It’s coming though, but for now I am focusing on Business invading (and infesting) the individual all the way to saturation.

So, you see, my friend, Business is using some of the cruelest and most despicable ways to penetrate our lives. They hope to make us memorize their mottos and slogans, their phone numbers and their websites. Even if you ignore it all, you are forced to take action. You will mute your TV, you will close an ad before the video you wish to watch (if you can) and you will have to close the pop-up that blurs what you really wanted to see. Getting angry yet? 

Mind you, there are other interesting gripes I have. Why in the world do you have to take action to protect your information to be shared by inter-related businesses? You get notices about privacy practices that are cumbersome if you decide to read them, and you have to reply in a business envelope, if you want to keep your info private. Hmmmm… Are they crazy? Oh, but we came to accept this. Many of us toss those privacy notices, or postpone reading them, until too late.  This practice was instituted oh, about 10-15 years ago and is still mandatory for business to notify you.

The problem is that it is Business that has the upper hand. They send this mass mail (fine print mostly), that you must read, understand and act upon, to fend off an even more morbid invasion of your mailbox, SMS messages and junk email. It is incredible. And you get this stuff yearly, so you must renew your input, otherwise it will be gone.

On the Internet it is so easy to miss, or just give up the right to privacy. True, you are asked if, say, Facebook could share your information with another site, or app, but to not share always leads to more cumbersome tasks and sharing is always a time-saving proposition. It should always be the other way around, but you don’t pull the strings, it is BUSINESS that has the upper hand.

Add to this mixture the political ads, robocalls and junk mail that an election generates, and you can see that this is nothing short of carpet-bombing. You are being bombarded. You may not die from this, but you may lose your sanity. Most certainly, I would love to see a psychological study what happens to individuals who are bombarded with repetitious, annoying messages in every conceivable form 365/24/7. Do they go to the Funny Farm? Or does their home become the Funny Farm?

Are you surprised that imbeciles like Loughner decide to just shoot it all out? Or the Joker goes berserk? Or some old guy just kills himself, because of what his world has come to?

I say that if we don’t change the way we do things and we just keep accepting things, because that’s the way tradition dictates, we are really doomed. That’s why Albert Einstein said, he does not know how WW3 will be fought, but WW4 will be fought with stones and sticks!

We are crazy to accept all this BS weighing us down and wearing us down, when we have alternatives. For one, we have to loosen the grip Business has on our lives. Before business, come the rights of the individual. Individual freedom, the pride and joy of America are chipped away by Business. It is Business that oversteps it’s boundaries as it invades privacy, your spare time and wants to grab your attention. It’s “child” is Consumerism, not a good development either.

As I am writing this, we are just a few months from a historic election. With that in mind, even ignoring any of the most important issues that will make or break a candidate, just look at this one (quite complex) issue and think what it will mean to elect candidates who want fewer regulations, fewer restrictions, less accountability and more tax breaks for Business. You know who they are, they go under the Conservative label. The more conservative, the worse for individual freedom. Don’t let them talk from both sides of their mouth. Most of all, know that if we drop our guard, Corpocracy (dictatorship by corporations) is ready to be instituted. Mr. Romney has prostituted himself to become the very first Corporate Dictator of the world. He bought into the TEA Party’s extreme mantra and you hear him (albeit with robot-like stiffness) repeat their fact-challenged slogans.  

We, freedom-loving and defending Americans already have numerous ways to give our freedom up. We fall pray to drugs and other addictions, organized religion, sex/porn addiction and the like. We fall for fads that practically consume us and we are supposed to be the freest of all. Why on earth would we want more imposition on our freedom and our right to pursue happiness? Yeah, by Business. 

And no, I am not against Business, how could I be? It is in my family and it has been the bread and butter of my children. This outburst is mainly about the excesses of Big Business and their incessant pursuit on dominating every aspect of our lives. If the only way Business can survive is to prey on our freedom, then they are the ones who need restraint and more regulation. That is the idea behind my essay.

The Robotic Candidate

The Robotic Candidate

Every day a new sound bite

Takes off from Romney’s lips

He’s called our President

 Alien, assassin, terrorist.

 Thirsty minds soak it all up,

It’s what they want to hear

This is how they justify

Bigotry, hatred and fear.

 5/19/12

The Education Paradox

I knew, I knew
We were long overdue
For the devastation
Poor education brings:
Nobody wins!

It is two-thousand-ten
The results are in:
Audience for Glenn,
The Sharron Angle win,
The Ben Quail grin,
Ms. Sarah Palin
My patience is
Wearing thin…

Almost forgot Rush,
He too has
Quite an audience,
Their knowledge
To enhance…

Watch the news
And you will see
Fanatic views,
Absurd mentality
Absence of reason
Is this our society?



But think:
Who would have been
“W”s base?
Who would eat up
Fox’s News?
Or Palin’s tips?
Or O’Reilly’s “hits”?
Had Education Ruled.

It is clear
The Extreme Right
Could not strive
If education did.
That’s why they
Resort to pay
Lip service only
Act not accordingly.

Aug. 26 2010.

Comment: The Republican Party is giving in to its extreme elements and the extreme comes from the under-educated fringes. I think the leaders of the party don’t even like, or associate with that layer of society. They just use them. Because of the propaganda and the brainwashing, they (victims) are willing to stand up against their own best interests.

I live in "Red" State, AZ, where Education has been repeatedly shortchanged by the dominating Republican Party. My theory should be tested as far as a correlation between the quality and level of the public's education and the strength of the local GOP. I believe, as I say in my poem that the new GOP can only strive where the population is either uneducated or under-educated.

When science is depicted as a challenge to God instead of the means to get to know God (and a gift to humanity), we get shortchanged on critical thinking, reasoning and other skills that are necessary for Democracy to work.

If the GOP can only win by spreading lies and half truths, they have lost their integrity. As things stand, their vast special interest-related funds are spent shamelessly on misleading propaganda. The obscene amounts spent on shady candidates could eliminate poverty here at a time of need. But they are not in this to solve any problems, no. They are in this to enhance their power and the coffers of the Corpocracy they represent.

Sleaze Machine

The Internet has indeed revolutionized the way we interact. It is in many ways the biggest “miracle” of our time. The good it does on multiple levels is indisputable. The ever-evolving face of it is fascinating. Unfortunately, the Internet is also used to spread false information, distortions, exaggerations and blatant lies.

The Internet makes it much easier and much faster to communicate, and that is great. But we as humans have a new and important responsibility. We have to be very selective and very careful about the validity of the information we spread. This is a moral and a practical responsibility. It is the moral part that my post is concerned with.

Let me illustrate this with an example. A neighbor of mine, who is a staunch Republican has been sending me (and others) “Forwards” that depict President Obama as an unpatriotic, elitist impostor who is out to crash our Constitution and institute either a Communist, or a Fascist dictatorship, depending on the author’s choice of (conflicting) terms. This lady and her husband are known as God-fearing, religious, patriotic Pro-Lifers. They were fans of George Bush, now are fans of McCain, pro-war and anti-Obama. Having known them for a decade, they seem warm hearted, honest and compassionate people. That is on a personal level.

Somehow I regard them as victims of Right Wing propaganda, but they seem to be willing participants in the machinery that produces Obama-sleaze. This machinery works by spreading e-rumors. Most e-rumors use very clever combinations of true and false statements to seem credible to the unwitting, but always arriving to bizarre conclusions about our President. The neighbors who have been forwarding e-rumors to me believed them, until one day I got on their case and proved them wrong on several counts.

I no longer get those e-rumors from her, but I know from others that the lady is still sending them around. So I had an opportunity to have a sincere talk about this subject. I asked: If you knew for a fact that you are spreading lies, would you continue? As a devout Catholic, would you spread a lie? What could she say to that? No. Then I said, if you knew that an e-rumor is most likely a lie (as I showed it to her many times), would you send it on without checking your facts? No.

But then these people are also fans of FOX News and (probably) Rush Limbaugh. The “fair and balanced” broadcasters tend to reinforce the content of these emails. Unbelievably, they repeat lies even if proven wrong.
They provoke and agitate their audience. Depending on whose show, they might even instigate violence. It is a big, coordinated, systematic machinery of propaganda.

Because Barack Obama is an excellent president, a great leader, a family man and a modern intellectual, all the sleaze machine can do is produce falsities and repeat them until their audience think they are true.

The latest rumor is that the Obama Administration has been refusing foreign offers for help in the Gulf disaster. This is being repeated even though it is entirely false. Foreign technology and help has been employed almost since the beginning and it is participating. The only help that was not accepted was some that would not have been of use at this time.

In closing let me address those Republicans who feel that by demeaning Obama they are some sort of patriotic freedom fighters. They are not. If the only way they see to win is to lie, then they are giving up their moral principles. They are giving up their integrity. And I do love my country more than to let a bunch of liars take it over.

One day I came across this lady who was in her mid 80s. The meeting was accidental, but then it turned into a friendship.

She is living the life of a (still) independent elderly, who was severely hurt in a hit-and-run accident only a year before we've met. She was left for dead, but saved by someone who called 911. She still walks, albeit nowadays she uses a cane. She reads and sorts through her memorabilia and papers. I had to introduce her here, because of something she has said that inspired me to create this blog.

My friend exclaimed during our first visit: "I am thirsty for intelligent conversation". Her choice of words and the emphasis on "thirsty" still resounds in my head.

We had many visits since that first one and I found out that she has traveled the world, has done important work as a historian and that her world-view is quite similar to mine. I learned a great deal from her. Yes, she talks relentlessly, but does not repeat herself. Yes, she gets carried away, but never really boring. If it weren't for lack of time on my part (after all the Internet takes up a lot of my time), I would spend even more time with her. It is so rare that one can do some good and learn so much in the process.

I have to admit though that I am thirsty for intelligent conversation as well. About many subjects, including science, technology, mathematics, education and the like. My hope is that this blog will attract people who wish to share their views, thoughts and vision.

Thank you.