The Black Commentator: An independent weekly internet magazine dedicated to the movement for economic justice, social justice and peace - Providing commentary, analysis and investigations on issues affecting African Americans and the African world. www.BlackCommentator.com
 
Nov 5, 2010 - Issue 400
 
 

A 2010 Election Thought: More of the Same - Only Worse
Keeping it Real
By Larry Pinkney
B
lackCommentator.com Editorial Board

 

 
“What better way to enslave a man than to give him the vote and tell him he’s free.”
- Albert Camus (Philosopher & Writer)
“But don’t depend on the train from Washington. It’s one hundred years overdue.”
- Gil Scott-Heron (Musician / Poet / Philosopher)

The bold timidity, corporate complicity & collaboration, and arrogant disdain on the part of the Obama / Biden administration and their Democratic Party cohorts, for the pain and suffering of this nation’s everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people have facilitated the roaring resurgence of the opportunistic right-wing in the recent November 2, 2010, national midterm ‘elections’ in corporate-dominated bourgeois U.S. politics.

The results of this so-called election came as no surprise whatsoever. It’s simply business as usual, with a heavy dose of “hope and change” hypocrisy coming home to roost. The fact is that without systemic change, there is only chump change - which is systemically - no change at all.

Barack Obama’s back room deals with giant pharmaceutical corporations, etc., the continued corporate ‘outsourcing’ of millions of jobs abroad, the gutting of the U.S. Constitution through extending and broadening both the ‘Patriot Act’ and ‘Extraordinary Rendition,’ coupled with the continued bloody U.S. wars of aggression in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan, represent the continuation of the economic and political emaciation of everyday people in this nation and around the world. The right-wingers of the Republican Party and their Tea Party counterparts have shrewdly (but not unexpectedly) manipulated the extraordinarily real pain, fear, prejudices, and anguish of the ‘American’ people themselves against we ourselves. However, it was and remains the spineless and hypocritical actions of the Democratic Party which have consistently and consciously paved the way for this blatant right-wing resurgence. Thus, the people of this nation remain locked in the cynical clutches of the Democratic and Republican Parties; as perpetual ping pong balls in the bowels of a political system whose body politic is rotten to its very core.

As well-paid corporately-sponsored media pundits spew forth a stream of utter nonsense regarding the supposed meaning of this midterm election, everyday women, men, and children of this nation continue to suffer horribly, and the U.S. wars abroad rage on, while political repression grows and becomes legally codified at home. This is the essential meaning of this midterm election - business as usual at the ongoing expense of everyday people.

I am reminded of the telling words of in a recent article by political science professor David Michael Green titled, ‘Yes, Of course They’re Brown Shirts. What The Hell Did You Expect?’ In relevant part, professor Green put it this way: “I regret to say that I think history will show the crimes of Barack Obama to be of incalculable damage…George W. Bush was indisputably the worst president in American history, but now Obama is remarkably giving him a run for it…In Obama’s case, the indictment is worse, however. First because, like Bush, he is owned by the oligarchy and serves their interests far above anyone else’s. Let’s please start calling this what it is: This is a case of treason, pure and simple. Second, because, unlike Clinton perhaps, he had every reason to foresee the viciousness of the last two years coming from a thousand miles away, and yet he acted like the Republican Party of Atwater and Rove and Gingrich and Limbaugh and Beck was something that could be reasoned with, something with which to negotiate. And third, because he campaigned on the premise of the audacity of hope, but instead delivered the duplicity of despair. He would be far less culpable had he not raised people’s expectations so dramatically. “Yes we can!” Can what? Govern as George W. Bush’s third term?” Indeed. (Reference http://www.opednews.com/articles/Yes-Of-Course-They-re-Bro-by-David-Michael-Gree-101030-138.html).

Notwithstanding the cynically raised “expectations” of so many people by Barack Obama and the Democratic Party in 2008, there can in fact be no substantive, meaningful change without real systemic change. This means corporate hegemony and U.S. military adventurism must be radically [i.e. at its roots] eliminated. This also means that the Democratic Party foxes and the Republican Party wolves must be relegated, once and for all, to the dustbins of history. This will only be accomplished when progressives and the Left in this nation truly become ‘progressives’ and the Left, and stop pandering to those who drink from the sickening troughs of the corporate and military oligarchy of this nation. It’s sure as hell not easy, but then nobody ever said it would be.

And what of the recent midterm elections! What elections?! That election was more of the same - only much, much worse. It was, as Gil Scott-Heron so aptly said it many years ago in his cut titled, ‘B Movie;’ “This ain’t really your life. Ain’t really nothing but a movie.” More than ever, it’s time for everyday people to ‘make it real,’ remembering the words of Frederick Douglass when he said “there can be no progress without struggle!”

And Joe Hill summed it up in his immortal words, “Don’t Mourn! Organize!” The times are perilous. Onward my sisters and brothers! Onward!

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board Member, Larry Pinkney, is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, the former Minister of Interior of the Republic of New Africa, a former political prisoner and the only American to have successfully self-authored his civil/political rights case to the United Nations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In connection with his political organizing activities in opposition to voter suppression, etc., Pinkney was interviewed in 1988 on the nationally televised PBS NewsHour, formerly known as TheMacNeil/LehrerNewsHour. For more about Larry Pinkney see the book, Saying No to Power: Autobiography of a 20th Century Activist and Thinker, by William Mandel [Introduction by Howard Zinn]. (Click here to read excerpts from the book). Click here to contact Mr. Pinkney.