I WANNA GET CLEAN, BUT I GOTTA GET HIGH!!!

I was looking at my friend’s Facebook page with her and I saw that one of her cousins posted “Everyone needs to vote. This is the most important of all elections. Obama has almost fulfilled his dream for us, we can’t let the Republicans have any ground!” Oh my god (that doesn’t exist), but have we not heard this banal phrase before? You really would think the so-called “left” in this country would get imaginative, but nope they are just like Sunday church service in the ghetto “You niggas is bad! God is good! If you broke you haven’t been good enuff! Now I command you niggas to give me money!” So I was feeling pretty rambunctious, so I told my friend to reply back to her cousin and ask who she thought was more dangerous to the progressive agenda, Blue Dogs or Republicans? Guess what the response was, “I don’t know nothing about that, but I do know we died to vote. So you have to vote even if it’s the lesser of two evils. The Tea Party is taking over!”

Ok first off, not to rehash a history lesson, but “black” people didn’t die so we could vote. We struggled (and still are, some of us just are based in the real world as opposed to this Manichean worldview of good vs. evil, Jesus vs. Mohammed, Democrats vs. Republicans, or Obama Vs. The Tea Party.) to gain access to power. The vote was meant to be one tool in an arsenal to gain economic power over our own lives; it was never the end within itself. The idea of just having the right to vote and expect nothing from it but “evil” is retarded. Imagine having the right to go to the gym, but you can’t use any of the equipment, and you constantly run around saying “Your people died so you could go to the gym, but if you really expect to use the gym you are getting too uppity and not being realistic!”

Next, as most politically ignorant people inculcated with dogmatic phrases, my friend’s cousin totally omitted answering my question about the Blue Dogs. Who in the hell has been in office the past two years! It has been a Democratic majority. There was no foaming at the mouth Tea Party that prevented Obama and the Democrats from being progressive. The FBI raids of peace activists in the Midwest happened under Obama and the Democrats, not the boogie man Tea Party! Africa Command has been strengthened under Obama and the Democrats! The war in Afghanistan was escalated under Obama and the Democrats, and Obama got a damn Nobel Peace prize (the committee stated they awarded Obama the prize for what they hoped he would do in the interest of peace!). Schools being under funded to make way for publicly funded privately owned charter schools is in full swing with Obama and his Secretary of Education Arnie Duncan (who never once stepped foot in a classroom. As a former teacher myself I was personally disgusted!). I could go on and on about what Obama and the Democratic majority have been able to accomplish in two years, thank God (that doesn’t exist) for the Democrats.

I hate to lapse into phrases myself, but the lesser of two evils is…hmmmmm…still EVIL GENIUSES!!!! I think it’s important to note that “black” people didn’t vote for the right to vote, we used tactics such as agitation, civil disobedience, and violence. With a sanitizing of the historical record, we are to believe that our sole struggle was to vote and not question what is materially to be gained with this tool of voting. What’s the fucking use if we still are not in control of our communities? We must stop having this optimism of an addict who proclaims they want to get clean (free) but still has to get high. There is a line in the community that says voter apathy (“fuck voting”) is some kind of betrayal to our elders, this is incorrect. It is a betrayal to our elders to continue to vote and to know full well nothing material will change (“lesser of two evils”). To quote a line from one of my favorite Radiohead songs, There There, “Just cause you feel it, doesn’t mean it’s there!”

Oct201022

IKONOKLAST

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