WHO WILL SAVE US FROM OURSELVES?
As you wring your hands about the state of politics in America, many things are evolving that indicate it may get worse before it gets better ...if it ever does. We are losing the United States of America, and we have no clue how bad and how deep things are in this regard. Not only are we losing our democracy to greed, we are losing the very essence of our culture in the process. And our brains are blank about it all.
It is difficult to express this dilemma in the few words of a blog, but I shall give it a try here. The following is but a small example of the magnitude of the problem.
The dominant white, male society in America has found ways to demean and belittle minorities here. This has been especially true of the schemes to put down African-Americans. Bringing them here and abusing them as slaves, as our property, was the early and obvious case. Since then the dominant race and gender has become more devious in its ways. And these schemes are carried out without the general public realizing it.
As black men in America began to fight for something approaching equal rights, the demeaning schemes have become more contrived. Some years ago gay clothing designers developed lines of clothing that large manufacturers and marketers presented as "cool" and "in" and "hip" to African-Americans. And they were marketed as cheaper than white, more sophisticated, more subtle clothing. Marketing took advantage of this, and big business sold this idea to the black male community. And as black males bought into these gaudy clothing lines, white males laughed quietly and not-so-quietly at the garish black males who were wearing "lady-like" clothing. Demeaning black male strength and sexuality was a clandestine ploy of white males. White males have always been psychologically fearful of black male viritilty and strength. Having black men buy into the feminism of their clothing was delightful to fearful white males.
One of the major reasons that rhythm and blues and rock music had such a difficult time breaking through to acceptance by white adults was because it was seen as evolving from "Negro music." This brought fear to adult whites. How could this be happening in white America? How could our precious white youngsters fall prey to those hungry animals in Black America?
Now we are in the midst of omnipresent rap music that emanated from African-American society. The top black rap artists are making big money at it. This rankles some in White America, especially the bigots who are always in denial about white prejudice. Heavens, even our black President knows about rap! All the more reason to hate Obama. What is this country coming to? Rap isn't music! Rap is black trap! And so goes bigotry in America. However this time it has one very-very big difference.
Greed and bigotry have been wedded together to form a powerful control over our politics. What cannot be garnered with intellect, logic, and debate, is thus changed and bought with huge sums of money that can buy and sell any politician in Washington, and thus control who gets on the Supreme Court. A devious, unscrupulous, greedy, bigoted concoction has been forged. And money to promote and protect this cabal is no object. There are tremendous profits to feed the support machine. It comes from huge and profitable corporations and lobbying groups that are involved in the war industries, healthcare, oil and gas, insurance, ad infinitum.
So greedy are these operations that they have found ways to add to their profits by not paying taxes, and when they are forced to pay some taxes they resort to cutting tax-supported programs that primarity effect education, help the underserved, etc. Support for some science and math is OK, but we don't need money for the arts.
I'm reminded of something that happened during the darkest days in England in World War II. London was being leveled by the blitz of Nazi planes. Yet during all this devastation to the British economy, Winston Churchill, Prime Minister, said not to cut the arts in the budget. "Now more than ever do we need the arts to sustain us." Now more than ever we need someone or something to rescue us from the greed and bigotry that surrounds us in America today.
