Since treachery comes in every shade, who can I trust?
Well, what do I stand for? What vision do I have for myself, for my community, for the world around me?
One could ask: Do I have a community of people who SHARE my vision? Or am I a lone wolf?
I am a lone wolf. There is no black or other community to unite with. Haven’t found them yet at this late date and it doesn’t seem likely. The black folks I know – who love Obama, who vote, who want their piece of the rotting American pie – are not my tribe. And I know no others.
I am also not willing to unite with labels of any sort: liberals, progressives, libertarians. These people, like most others, are married to doctrine, narrow, limited, dead. The same holds for democratic and republican party apologists. They are blind and lazy and ignorant and not worth the time of day.
So the idea of uniting on the basis of skin or ethnicity or common land mass, on the basis of a shared history is false and ultimately, destructive. These are merely labels, but are not signs of life, or aliveness. While some of us have gone through similar or the same thing, our choices vary as much as our number. And on that alone, a unity cannot be built.
It is as limiting as the loyal democrat who refuses to see how torture under Obama is no different than the torture under Bush. The person who accepts an unconstitutional “kill list” in Obama’s hands, yet, kicked and screamed about Bush’s illegal activities, is a hypocrite of the first order. Blinders of any kind won’t do; in fact, they are deadly.
The person of a darker, colonized hue, is no more likely to be on the same page with me, as the neo-Nazi, fascist. Though they have dissimilar views, they cannot see their common humanity nor the common enemy.
I have no solution, other than, it ain’t about color when it really comes down to it. Its about the power of an idea that transcends. Duke Ellington called certain music “beyond category.” And the truth is certainly that. Too much of humanity and too much of truth are murdered by category, stunted by category.
Though so passe in this world, listening, reading, opening, learning is vital food. And this meal can only absorbed by being free of and from labels and shoeboxes that block the stomach, the mind, the spirit. This inner freedom is the only way to truly assimilate information. The more open I am, the more I hear. The more I take in.
The same ole dried up, dualistic rhetoric that passes for conversation or debate is wonder bread.
So, I seek the truth that I don’t have, the vision that is in accord with the reality that I can barely see, but feel. And if someone along the way shares that vision, that feeling, so be it. Maybe we can collaborate, maybe not. The goal is not to unify, but to live as much as possible in truth and follow it where it takes me.
“The goal is not to unify, but to live as much possible in truth and follow it where it takes me”.
Maybe when we “live as much possible in truth and follow it where it takes…”, then we somehow position ourselves toward unity.
There’s value in alliances. Strength in numbers. Advantages to working together. Labels are only dangerous when they are used to limit and marginalize. But labels in and of themselves, categories are not a uniquely bad thing.
There’s no shame in being a democrat or a republican provided you’re willing to hold both parties to the ideals they claim to champion. Ripping Obama for the sake of playing the “he’s no better than Bush” game with no regard for context of what genuinely hypocritical and obstructionistic foes the republicans have been and with even less regard for the military industrial complex that FDR himself and later Jimmy Carter both warned against in national addresses does a diservice to conscious dissent.
With all that said, continuous seeking of truth is bound to allow for alliances of like-minded folk.
To be a member or follower of the Democratic or Republican Party is to be a plutocrat or utterly blind. They are both gangster parties and the only people who believe in them are the fox and the sheep. The fox knows how criminal they are and profits from that criminality. And the sheep believe the lullaby that the party weaves – and then becomes their meal.
Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report (an amazing info source) calls Obama, not the lesser evil, but, “the more effective evil.” If one judges him by what he does, there is no question that he is smoother and more efficient in serving Wall Street and fomenting violence for the profit of a few, all over the world.
If you judge Obama by what his PR team says, or what he says about himself, he is the second coming of Jesus Christ.
That so many of us think ‘inside the box’, is perhaps understandable. But I’m not one of those people. I am not willing to stay blind. I am not willing to support war crimes and violations of international law by a Nobel Peace prize winning, constitutional law scholar no matter what color he is.
With that pretzel logic, concentration camps and ovens will be A OK, as long as its a black Democrat who fires them up. If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything; I find it difficult to ‘unite’ with people who embrace evil with the cry, “the Republicans made him do it.”
He IS a Republican in Dems clothing. Walks like, talks like and acts like a brown eyed Republican.
Being brown doesn’t make you more right than white – when you do wrong. Obama loves brown votes; but he has no love for brown people. But of course, I’m being unrealistic. But then, I don’t give a fuck.
It is for purpose that one seeks unity. Find a purpose then unity will follow.