White people are so scared of black people.
They bulldoze out to the country, and put up houses on little loop-d-loop streets.
And while America gets its heart cut right out of its chest
the Berlin wall still runs down main street separating east side from west.
And nothing is stirring, not even a mouse, in the boarded up stores
and the broken down houses
So they hang colorful banners off all the street lamps
just to prove they got no manners, no mercy, and no sense.
And I wonder then what it will take for my city to rise.
First we admit our mistakes and then we open our eyes.
The ghosts of old buildings are haunting parking lots
in the city of good neighbors that history forgot.
I remember the first time I saw someone lying on the cold street
I thought, “I can’t just walk past you, this can’t just be true.”
But I learned by example to just keep moving my feet.
It’s amazing the things that we all learn to do.
So we’re led by denial like lambs to the slaughter
serving empires of style and carbonated sugar water
And the old farmroad’s a four-lane
that leads to the mall and my dreams are all guillotines waiting to fall
And I wonder then what it will take for my country to rise.
First we admit our mistakes and then we open our eyes.
‘til nation’s last taker succumbs to one last dumb decision
And America the beautiful is just one big subdivision.

–Ani Difranco

Yesterday afternoon, something very significant occured that totally changed our country. Not sure what it was, but evidence is everywhere. The republicans staged a slowdown. Hollywood worked anyways. What you see now on tv is actors working in spite of the network slowdowns. Awesome.

In a previous post, I lauded what I was so sure would be a sweeping sea change via Obama’s rise to power based on a few assumptions, the greatest of which I believed was his inevitable good-will-driven momentum. Unfortunately there are a few factors blocking his mandate, and they’re all republican.

It’s too bad, because Obama has been far more post-partisan than most liberals would have liked. Republicans could have had it much, much worse; with any other party-line Democrat steamrolling through with a stimulus package minus ANY tax cuts or ANY other Right-wing appeasements. I’ve been hearing some rhetoric from the moment Obama’s victory seemed inevitable that points to either an underestimation of Obama’s toughness or, frankly, hubristic racism. Republicans seem either unable or unwilling to hear their white-male fraternity’s swansong. I guess we have to just wait for them to die, or 2010, whichever comes first, to get a damned thing done in this country.

Did anyone else hear the whole “wait-and-see” commentary applied to Obama during the campaign? Considering his intelligence, education, character, and yes, community organization, such drivel as “let’s give him a chance” is not only exceedingly condescending, it ignores our country’s sad recent history of electing the largest dumbass idiot of the Earth TWICE.

And now, with this man’s awesome presence in office, the douchebags-on-diapers with their perma-frowns carved with poorly-worn age into the sides of their mouths treat Obam-adonis (and any other rationally-minded commentator, for that matter) like an ignorant child. Did these geriatrical has-beens SEE the throngs of people who froze their ass off to see Obama be tasked with whipping old white Metamucilians like them into shape? Do they ever look in a mirror?

I hope the recent Republican block of Obama’s proposed DTV delay doesn’t keep too many disadvantaged Americans from watching this display of arrogance play out live. These old blobs need to realize who’s boss. Their worst fears have come true: the young, the quick, and the black now reign over their sorry old pasty souls. They’d better suck up their sloppy jowls and get used to it, because misogyny, et. al. doesn’t look good on YouTube.

The consumer class has become exhausted at all levels. This is the freezing of the credit markets: people don’t want to consume anymore.

The fact is the money that our economy functions with has no underlying value. It’s completely imaginary. This is why the monetarist theory is failing. We can of course always print more, can’t we? I used to be a Monetarist when I worked in the securities industry. There is something very appealing to the Monetarist mindset; we can control and stablize the economy by controlling the money in the marketplace. When this money does not represent real value (be it work gold etc.) and all value is derivative we get in the situation where we are today, with a working class that wants to work and build for the future, not consume today with no future tomorrow.

Our system has failed us when we have work to be done, and people to do it, but the system actively keeps the workers from work.

Nobody wants to let go of their stack of cash, for fear that it will be worthless. It is worthless.

I’m calling on all my friends to end the consumer class. What will be the currency of our post consumer era?
 

doubleplusthanks to my sexy editor

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In the words of David Walker, a free black man writing in 1829:

“Not indeed, to show me a colored President, a Governor, a Legislator, a Senator, a Mayor, or an Attorney at the Bar. But to show me a man of color, who holds the low office of a Constable, or one who sits in a Juror Box, even on a case of one of his wretched brethren, throughout this great Republic!!”

I find it interesting to see how the bar has changed. 

With a little help from Wikipedia, this helps me gain some perspective:

2009: Barack Obama, first Black President
1990: Douglas Wilder, first elected Black Governor
1870: Hiram Rhodes Revels, first black Senator
1870: Joseph Rainey, first black Representative to the US House
1966: Robert C. Henry, first black Mayor
1845: Macon Allen, first black man to sit the Bar
1891: Wiley Overton, first black police officer in NYC
(I found no statistics on black jurors.)

We are looking at massive change, not just in the past ~200+ years, but within my lifetime. Equality is the promise of our nation, all men (and women) created equally. I keep seeing folks in the cafeteria coming to a stop to watch this event on TV. We have come such a long way in this country. And we still have so far to go. Never in my lifetime did I expect to see a day such as this. But it is so nice to see.

Today, many of us witnessed the inauguration of our 44th President, Barack Obama. As a nation, we have cried out in rejoice for the changes to come; what we perceive to be the end to our eight-year-long nightmare of being lied to, deceived and oppressed. We are embracing the thought of a new regime, a new voice to lead the masses to brighter days than these. We have tasked this man with the burden of an entire world: economic crises, war, poverty, rising unemployment, increasing foreclosures, and amidst all that, restoring our place as a world power and leader.

There is nothing wrong with hope. It is the fuel that drives us and the target upon which we set our sights. It is every rung on the ladder that we climb to achieve greater heights. It is in our very nature to want to grow, to expand, to exceed, to become greater than our ancestors, to become more than what we’ve been told we can be. We need hope in our lives. 

But, with hope, there must also be caution.

While we hope that President Obama can right our ships and stop the hemorrhaging, we must also realize that, while we have charged him with that task, he has also charged us with one: to take action in our own lives to change our own world. 

We must remember that things will not change overnight. There is much work to be done. We must remain hopeful that things will, indeed, get better if we have the resolve to withstand the hardest times. We must keep an eye on the past and remember what has been done to put us here, and to not repeat those mistakes. We must realize that, even as the President has said, things will get worse before they get better.

I’ve heard many today criticize his inaugural address in that there was no “we will march” call to action or specific demands asked of the people. I would argue the opposite. While President Obama may not have stated the methods in which we can change our world, he has instead left an open-ended invitation to us all to find our own way to change the world around us in the ways in which we are able to do so.

To me, this is where our hope lies. Not in one man, but in many. In us all. 

We cannot burden this man with the task of saving the world without doing something in our own lives to aid his cause. We must remember that he is but one man. He can do many things with his power, but his mission has been to return the power to us. To you. To me. That is our charge. We have been given hope that we can make a difference in a world that we once saw as unchangeable. We have been given the inspiration to evolve ourselves into greater people—people that will make up a greater nation. We have been given the initiative to do what is within our own reach to change this country and this world for the better. 

This administration may not succeed in all that it hopes to achieve, but it will exist as a symbol: a symbol of hope to those who have no hope; of peace to those that know no peace; of power to those who have never had power. That is what this election and this inauguration has been about to me: a symbol of a new day for all of us. We remember now all that is possible when we stand together as a country.

Maybe you don’t agree with his policies, or don’t like him as a person, or don’t want him to succeed. But, maybe you’re also missing the point of what many of us see in President Obama. He has reminded us of what this country was meant to be: a nation governed by the people, where we have the power to influence our own destiny. He gives us hope of what is possible and what can be achieved. We are optimistic again because of what he stands for, and to me, that is more important right now than anything else.

We needed hope. And now we have it. Let’s make the most of it.

Congressional Republicans say Mr. Obama’s stimulus will cost too much, and that over time the economy will cure itself. When critics raised the same objections to F.D.R.’s programs, his relief administrator, Harry Hopkins, had a ready answer: “People don’t eat in the long run. They eat every day.”

—ADAM COHEN, New York Times Editorial Observer

…or are our celebrities presidents?

The broader question being: Have we become obsessed with celebrities because we haven’t had adequate leadership? (end: central leadership. Contemporarily, Obama)

…or has our desire for central leadership diminished slowly since the advent of the printing press, our attentions instead focused on an ever-growing celebrity network? (end: individual leadership, or bubble-up).

The internet has begun to blur the line between celebrity (star) and layperson. It allows us immediate biographical information, revealing that they’re “just like us”. That knowledge begins to empower the individual to stop looking outward for guidance. The emergence of Obama confirms this for us, through his embrace of technology (use of viral campaign media) and his belief in human rights (ending poverty, torture, etc.) and our constitution (one president-at-a-time). He’s a star in a different sense. His fame circulated throughout the world very quickly.

We can look to him, or look inward, to analyze ourselves and our motives.