With 7 days to go, a friend wants to know why he is so angry

I'm gonna have to go with lies. Not spin. Lies. And hate begets hate. It has a root, and I believe one can find it in Columbus's and other "explorers'" diaries. And the fact that you can't find it any of it in US public school history books is what makes me angry. They teach us all that racism and its effects are some sort of unfortunate accident, when it is well-documented (by the perpetraitors!) that genocide and/or long-term disenfranchisement (whichever was deemed more profitable at the time) of certain populations were the intent of racist acts. That propagandist ish leads to things like: saying affirmative action is unfair to White males; to White kids who can count the number of minority people they know on one hand explaining to me how racism (and just about everything else) works, thus perfectly illustrating and perpetuating the the ism itself.

Another example you might relate to: What do White (and other) classical musicians think of Jazz musicians? Lazy, ignorant, "talented"- meaning they didn't work for it a day in their lives, the virtuosity is something that magically happened- which sounds like a compliment to some people, but notice how by implication in includes the first two negative stereotypes. But the truth is, last time music evolved it was jazz, and every one of those founding jazz musicians (and every single one I know) was classically trained and knows a hell of a lot more theory than your average classical musician and practices at least as much (because if you don't know your gd chords, intervals and progressions, you can't very well improvise on them, can you??) But jazz musicians are treated like some sort of remedial idiot savants.

Those stereotypes can only have their root in racism. But everything has become so polished and underground that nobody believes it anymore. They just either accept the stereotypes as truth or they label that kind of thinking as "elitism." (If it were elitism, wouldn't it be the jazz musicians who were classing themselves off, considering they can use more knowledge and invention in a single album than most classical artists use in an entire career? That they don't has more to do with cultural codes than anything else) Whereas, if the founding jazz musicians were white...? exactly.

My problem with that is that if everyone blames an institutional problem on a "small" bunch of "cuckoos" nothing gets done. But no one is willing to examine the fact that deep down they believe: me (meaning those in power)= good, everyone else= bad( or, ="danger" or, ="danger to me" is really how it's panning out these days- it just gets more and more insidious) is a fundamental problem with our society and until those in power are willing to address it, we will ALL keep going in circles.

Politically though, at this point the middle ground, not so much going to get new votes for McCain. I keep saying this: he was always too dem for the right wing so they wouldn't vote for him, and what do the dems need with a dem-lite, especially when they have a majority? He just ran at the wrong time. He should have run instead of GWB. Now he's screwed; enter Palin.
http://btryback.blogspot.com/2008/10/7-days-to-go.html

Best Commercial Ever

I am not endorsing the lazy-ass US Auto Industry, but:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PNUy9wrfM0

On AfterEllen: In Response to chismes

"I'm sorry...
Submitted by
chismes (130 posts)on October 16, 2008 - 10:19pm.
I totally get your anger -- it's justified. But I think we shouldn't worry about race until we have more GAY representation first. I'm not white (at all), but I would rather see a gay white woman on TV than a straight Filipino one. Maybe it's different for you, but I live in a place where gays get more flak than non-whites. Also (again, it may be different for you), being gay is a much, much larger part of my life than my race/ethnicity. So I'd rather see more gays on TV before I see more non-whites. But that's just my life and opinion. Just wanted to say that.

What kind of poop is that? Historically repeated poop, that's what. The white feminists said the same thing to women of color and then they f-ed off once they got most of what they wanted and left women of color in the dust b/c whatever they wanted next was more "significant" and more "feminist" than the concerns of women color. They claimed that they didn't want to bog down the "Women's Movement" with "distractions." Why would you want to be a part of that kind of thinking?
Does your pride parade go through a minority neighborhood or a White one? Think about it. Just saying a 'gay neighborhood' is a cop-out and intentionally ignores all the gay minorities who don't feel like they belong there. Or can't get in b/c the rent's too high because it's gentrified or they can't find gay activities that don't revolve around White culture.
Realize that the bs dichotomy doesn't have to exist and for us, it doesn't. It is entirely created by people who don't have to deal with a perfectly legitimate reality that the rest of us deal with and see on a regular basis, though not on network TV. I think it's unhealthy to even put that kind of reinforcing sentiment out there, to say "it's okay if hollywood finds one part of me more lucrative (or safer, or more interesting, or more believable) than the other; it's okay if the rest of me remains invisible." Don't negate yourself b/c it makes others feel less uncomfortable. That's in part why systems stay the same, we allow one myth (in this case, the non-existence of X), to remain in operation, while exploding another (in this case, the non-existence of Y), b/c everyone's too chicken shit to mention that the definition of all myths is that they are untrue. Everyone's too afraid of retaliation to mention that it's the whole system that's bogus, so we play the grateful servant, happy with the crumbs.
I refuse to be happy with crumbs, especially considering there are plenty of real portions to go around. In this case, because someone is making them up: primetime is rarely a historical reinactment of anything.
http://www.feminist-reprise.org/docs/fw2.htm
http://www.apa.udel.edu/apa/archive/newsletters/v98n2/lawblack/hall.asp
http://webs.wofford.edu/hitchmoughsa/Toward.html
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Indoctrinating young people into the underground pink pistol packing group of lower socioeconomic status in order to cause harm since 2008.

Hey!

On a side note, try not to look indignant when Blacks tell you that "we don't know him" crap with Obama is racially motivated. Really? After 2 memoirs? Can people not read or they're just having trouble finding the books?? Educated Blacks get that crap constantly. People insinuate all the time that underneath my cultured 'facade,' I am hiding some inner ghetto princess or savage or other "cultural" abomination (in Obama's case, a jihadi); straight white men and women who barely know me call me 'girlfriend;' I have 2 degrees in theatre and 1 in music, but I'm not supposed to have any IDEA what I'm talking about in these areas or not enjoy anything but August Wilson, Tyler Perry and Kirk Franklin. I'm on a tear here, but the list goes on and on, though I'm young and most of these people think they're...let's just say, less prejudiced than they are in real life.

What is it that is pissing me off?

That someone is laughing at me in his mind? That those kinds of people automatically think they're better than I am just to cope with the day, when to anyone who is not blind, and I'm sure to plenty who are, it's obvious it's the other way around? That it would be more obvious if I didn't make such a habit of bending down to meet them for any reason, certainly not to help them, make them not feel bad, or to disrupt the possibility of a better self-assessment in any way. That is my fault, that they get to think what they want, simply because I passed the time of day with them, threw the dog a bone, as it were. That is my fault. I should stop speaking to: Those who are beneath me.
I'm think that my problem is that my worldview is based on the equality of all people, with (fairly) objective fundamental truths, (and outside of that, if you really want to be subjective, at least internal consistnecy within paradigms) or at least realities that are not based intirely on self-deception. I don't just buy into "that everybody's got a different perspective because XYZ (meaning they are all equally valid points of view-- Which is what WP usually mean about any opinion they have, which of course has to have no other criteria than they believe it, but not so with any contradictory opinion, even when the contradictory opinion is based on actual criteria such as data)." The trouble I'm having is that I still have trouble believeing that other views are not equally valid unless they are absolutely proved to fail in one of those categories.
The trouble is, when you're talking to people who have no moral or intellectual scrupples with pulling ideas (in this case justifications for their own actions and/or/ based on their perceptions of other people) out of their ass, it can be very difficult to prove these ideas are invalid. So I am stuck in a logical layrinth, usualy by myself, because as I said, these people have NO SCRUPPLES.

So if people tell me I'm crazy, (or stupid, or unattractive, or strange, angry- which usually comes with 'stoic' attached and from the exact same person; is it a coincidence that those are two contradtictory, yet widely held stereotypes of any group that has ever had the nomer 'savage' attatched to it??), I look at the ways in which this might be so, i.e., I try to find out if what I'm saying or doing fails to fit any of the above. That is my definition of crazy: wholly illogical, and likely unproductive and destructive.

INSTINCTS

I have to start listening more to my instinctsThey never lie or fail youI wonder often if that's just God's voice that we've lowered the volume on as the years passed.Because there was a time in the past that I know I, for one, used to hear that voice so CLEAR, they called me an INDIGO CHILD because of it.I had a certain clairvoyance that sometimes frightened even meBut as the years went onDoubt and insecurity crept inAnd made the VISION blurryBut the thing about Instincts is that...it doesn't require sightit requires heartit requires a certain connection to your feelings,when youre feeling them,And Im not talking about what your mind is thinking I'm talking about your body connected and deeply rooted somewhere insideThat it can't be explained to an outsiderInterestly enough though, They feel it too and cant find the words to describe it or define it either.INSTINCTStrying to guide the path we need to be walkingBut how often do we REALLY LISTEN?GOAL FOR THIS NEW WEEK: CONNECT DEEP AND BE ROOTED IN CERTAINTY ALLOWING THE REST OF ME TO LISTEN CLOSELY TO WHAT MY INSTINCTS TELL ME AND THEN HAVE ENOUGH COURAGE TO FOLLOW ITS LEAD.
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=27275027&blogID=440482804