Class and politics

This is an open letter to white people, to poor people, to working stiffs, and everyone in between. This is not directed at those whose conditions are extremely comfortable.

I have a number of friends who have confided in me their fear that if Barack Obama gets elected, he will work to ensure that blacks thrive and whites suffer, or something to that stupid effect. This is something i simply do not understand, and i hesitate to call those people ignorant buffoons – but it’s difficult not to.

I believe that one of the biggest social problems in America today is that minorities feel disenfranchised. I know from experience that it’s hard not to wallow in misery when you’re depressed beyond the will to live. Maybe i’m completely wrong, but i think that minority groups are overflowing with people who feel that there is no real hope – and the natural fringe elements that are set to negative action, either in abject hopeless despairing nihilism, simple apathy, or as a means to an end. It’s sad to see this happen in the colorful but hopeless ghettos across America (just as it is sad to see it happen in salt-white Appalachia, etc., only perhaps more so within minority communities, due to the fact that it almost certainly could have been prevented generations beforehand).

Can you imagine the positive potential of having a President who is not white, inspiring people of all colors, all over America, with the idea, realized, that anyone truly can be what they want to be, do what they want to do, and become who they most wish they could be? Can you imagine people – of all stripes – actually living up to their full potential, or at the very least, earnestly trying to do so? I don’t know, it just sounds like a promising idea to me.

“But I feel disenfranchised,” whines the white friend, in mock-misery, either not realizing or not caring that they sound as if they truly believe themselves to be somehow more important than anyone else.

And of course you do – there’s no need for the belligerent, dramatic moaning. But you are not just an angry white male. Of course you feel disenfranchised – you are; you make less than half what your boss makes, while doing more than twice as much actual work! (Should your boss pay more taxes than you? Perhaps we might ask: should you, who makes far less than your boss does, pay less taxes than your boss pays?)

You are a member of the largest single group in America today: the working poor. You are a member of the majority. If you are a white male, you are a member of multiple majorities. What can the largest group of people do if they pool their efforts?

What can the majority do?

You are not without power. You can affect change. We can change the world. And we will, but we have to do it together.

The real minority in this nation is the wealthy. But they are not without tremendous power! The power that the rich have been enjoying for centuries dwarfs the kind of power that you and i can ever even imagine yielding. And yet, we are the majority.

I have heard many claim that the United States is a meritocracy; it is no more a meritocracy than it is a magical wonderland of lollipop-cities filled with rainbow-riding unicorns. The United States is currently a plutocracy; an oligarchy; an aristocracy, ruled over by a minority of the extremely wealthy.

It’s time to take our country back from the hands of the merciless, the pitiless, the rich plutarchs who tell the rest of us what to do and hold us down so they can continue to sit on our breaking backs with their sacks of pilfered riches. Stand up, you workers, and let those riders fall where they may!

Compelling anti-war video

Former U.S. soldier droppin’ some Truth about this bullshit war in Iraq. Do your self and your conscience and your country and your fellow human beings a favor by watching this and then doing something about it.

The Highest Cost of War

If i were living in a video game, i would probably do video game things: senseless slaughter, reckless driving, and generally causing mayhem. It’s sure as hell fun in a video game.

I’d probably have a real itchy trigger finger; blowing character’s heads clean off would cause me to ceaselessly cackle as i wheel about looking for more victims, and more nastiness to get into.

Soldiers, however, do not live in video games. They kill real people. Actual human beings, with lives and families and friends and day jobs – be they evildoers or just innocent civilians, caught in the line of fire. Sometimes, though, things go wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong.

Frankly, it’s getting a little tedious, hearing and reading about all the civilian deaths in Iraq. It has been going on for a long time, after all.

That’s why i put off reading this The Nation piece (alt.link.print) for about a week before i got around to reading it.

The Iraq War is a vast and complicated enterprise… Fighting in densely populated urban areas has led to the indiscriminate use of force and the deaths at the hands of occupation troops of thousands of innocents.

I can not and will not blame soldiers en masse or individually. It’s a real bad situation over there, and we need to get those guys out of there as quickly as we possibly can, before more soldiers crack under pressure and bring the whole damn thing down.

It’s ok to be against the war and NOT spit on returning soldiers. That kind of folly is for idiot hippies with misguided frustration. These guys need a lot of help, from many different angles. War does terrible things to a man’s soul. But we must have hope that these inner demons can be defeated, every last one of them, for every last soldier who was there and saw bad things happen.

The bottom line: we’ve gotta get out of that place.

In the four long years of the war, the mounting civilian casualties have already taken a heavy toll–both on the Iraqi people and on the US servicemembers who have witnessed, or caused, their suffering. Iraqi physicians… published a study late last year… that estimated that 601,000 civilians have died since the March 2003 invasion… [They] found that coalition forces were responsible for 31 percent of these violent deaths, an estimate they said could be “conservative,” since “deaths were not classified as being due to coalition forces if households had any uncertainty about the responsible party.”

“Just the carnage, all the blown-up civilians, blown-up bodies that I saw,” Specialist [Jeff] Englehart said. “I just–I started thinking, like, Why? What was this for?”

“It just gets frustrating,” Specialist [Garett] Reppenhagen said. “Instead of blaming your own command for putting you there in that situation, you start blaming the Iraqi people…. So it’s a constant psychological battle to try to, you know, keep–to stay humane.”

Keith Olbermann vs. George W. Bush

Check out this angrily passionate editorial by the great Keith Olbermann re: the new, absolutely diabolical Military Commissions Act. (Read up on it and know that this is terrible and insane.)

[youtube]uqxmPjB0WSs[/youtube]

Foley’s follies

Foley’s Alleged Priest Molester Named

Mark Foley, Pointing the Finger in HellSo… I suppose this makes it… okay now?

Just like a Republican to turn around when he’s being accused of some heinous act and suddenly point the finger at somebody else. Poor priest probably never even touched the bastard. Maybe.

I can hear his voice, lo, across the great digital expanse:

“Well, yeah, I guess I did sort of do the wrong thing, kind of. But he’s the one who really did it! He made me! If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t have done anything wrong at all, ever! It’s all his fault! I didn’t really do anything, really!”