More Lament Regarding Democracy

Have you stopped to think, at any time during this terrible period of verbal political debasement and debauch of Congress and various Legislatures, what must some – if not all – of the rest of humankind feel about America now?

Have you stopped to think, at any time during this terrible period of verbal political debasement and debauch of Congress and various Legislatures, what must some – if not all – of the rest of humankind feel about America now?

Do you think that most of the world’s peoples actually believe this thingamajig Americans call “democracy” is something vital, even desirable, for their existence? Do you think it’s not clear everywhere that a plutocracy (the super-rich) is poised to complete the retaking of America under the guise of “democracy”?

I say “retaking America” because my periscopic view of American history clearly shows the vaunted “founding fathers” as mostly privileged plutocrats who owned African slaves, organized and/or carried out the massacre of native peoples and devised a constitution that rendered black people part property and part human being. And then they said that America was a “democracy.”

With all the un-American doings of America’s white nationalists through the political process, including defaming the so-called first multi-ethnic president and the presidency, mass media outlets are mum on how these activities affect our country’s posture abroad. “Un-American” means engaging in any and all activities – verbal or otherwise – that are deemed injurious to American interests internally and around the world.  

In year 2012, America’s white nationalists have cobbled together a 21st century poll tax via voter-suppression laws and/or fiat across 37 states, while one percent of Americans have been fighting, dying and being maimed in the Muslim world, ostensibly to bring “democracy” to that part of Planet Earth. Major mass media concerns will not focus on essential contradictions because their ownership is in the hands of the American plutocracy.

The new American dilemma is how to nationalize fascism through a neo-conservative white nationalist takeover with Mitt Romney as president and sell it to America and the world as an improved “democracy.” And, of course, the other part of that dilemma is how can an ever-dimming thrust of moderation and compromise halt the spawning.

Unfortunately, the Civil Rights period actually doomed subsequent black masses, due, in large part, to the branding of that movement’s emergent leadership. So, narrowly educated ministers, educators and social workers who became poverty program administrators were consistently called upon to “lead.” Strategists also included black lawyers who offered little or no interest in economic development.

Added to which, that leadership fraternity was all in on celebrating the vision and work of Dr. W.E.B. DuBois and his “Talented Tenth” theory while ignoring the essential and proven programs put in place by Booker T. Washington at Tuskeegee Institute. White nationalists came to understand that Washington’s economic development thrust was about black self-sufficiency and destroyed it.

Enthralled with Washington’s direction, Jamaican Marcus Garvey came to America and preached economic development for black people the world over. Garvey became the greatest mass organizer of black people in modern times, with branches of his movement in the United States, the Caribbean, Central America and South America, Africa and
Europe.

A combination of external and internal forces (the politics of containment) ultimately decimated the Garvey movement.

By not including black leadership from economics, finance and the entrepreneurial sectors, black history, anthropology, archeology, etc, black development beyond the moral struggle for basic so-called “democratic” or civil rights became predictably stymied.

As a result of not becoming a self-sufficient group of people due to ignorance and a psychology of dependency, black Americans, who could have become market leaders wherever black people are in the world, for example, are back to begging at the trough for the right to vote.

It is high time for black people to realize that a change in type and quality of leadership is at hand. We cannot go forward, begging, being disrespected and stepped on. We cannot prosper by taking one step forward and two steps backward. That is not progress. 

Black so-called leaders have been virtually absent on this new poll tax situation. You want real democracy? Then you must spend whatever time, dollars and effort to defeat white nationalism come Nov. 6, Election Day.