If Only Congress Had a Friend Like Jim Brown Maybe It Could Get Off Of The Austerity Sequester Crack Rock

I have graded 75 papers. I have 25 to go. Me thinks I need a drink and a laugh.

The trillion dollars in mandatory cuts to the federal budget over the next ten years begins tomorrow. These imprecise "cuts"--in many cases just reductions in the growth of certain budget items--are a manufactured crisis. It was made by political actors. It can be undone by political actors...if they so chose. Manufactured crises are designed to exhaust the American people and to make them even more passive, hostile towards the idea that government can be made to function properly, and is one more step towards inverted totalitarianism.

In all, this charade is one more play towards check and mate for corporate democracy where the realm of "the public" is so atrophied that in a generation or less, the social safety net will look nothing like it did even ten years ago (never mind in the 1960s or 1940s). Young people who come of age in that moment will have never known a government that enhanced positive liberty by guaranteeing basic economic or social securities.

Obama and his advisers decided some time ago to pursue an austerity-lite plan. The Republicans want to destroy the federal government and radically renegotiate the social contract. Government must be drowned in the bathtub. There can be no significant taxes on the rich. The sequester allows the Right to advance their goal of killing the State via a death of a thousand cuts. If the sequester goes forward, and the government then "shuts down" in March, the Tea Party GOP will be seen by the American people--quite correctly--as the group most responsible for this mess. This will further damage their brand name. 

This pleases me. 

But, while I am happy to see the Tea Party GOP weakened further, I would much rather have a responsible Republican Party that is working with the Democrats to fix the economy. 

[Many in the public do not realize that the Great Recession could be reasonably described as the Great Depression 2.0. Moreover, most also do not know that during the Great Depression there was a period of several years where it seemed that the economy was going to turn around and then the federal government made a series of horrible judgments which truly pushed the world economy over the edge.]

As I wrote here, it is fun to watch the train wreck on the Right until it results in serious harm to the American people. We are all sad clowns come tomorrow. Congress has abdicated its most basic responsibility to intelligently exercise "the power of the purse." They will not be held accountable.

Too bad our political leadership class does not have a friend like Jim Brown who can put his hand around their shoulder, get the partisan crack pipe out of their hands, and ask them "so what's it gonna be?" in the interest of the Common Good and a We The People democracy.

More Echoes of Nihilism: The Black Superpublic and Chicago Youthocracy Go Wilding at the Ford City Mall

One of my favorite books in recent memory is Richard Iton's book In Search of the Black Fantastic. It is a formidable text which ties together basic questions about black cultural politics, political theory, notions of how the public sphere has changed, and its consequences, for the long Black Freedom Struggle.

The news coverage of the black lumpen youthocracy run amok at the Ford City mall signals directly to Iton's sharp claims that:

More broadly, we must also think of how the increased availability of these pictures troubles the relationship between citizen expectations an the narrative developed by the marginalized in terms beyond the narrowly racial.

To what extent and how are members of the black middle and upper classes disturbed by imaged designed to (geo)graphically contain and specify, and naturalize supposed black lower income disorder? How do black elites respond to and, and engage with, the spectre of the nigger?

Documenting these outbreaks of thuggish ignorance by young black folks in Chicago is painful for me. Albeit, once committed we must soldier on. I write not about black nihilism to participate in the spectatorship, of what is for all intents and purposes, a human zoo. Rather, I comment on these matters because om my deep commitment (both intellectually and morally) to truth-seeking.

I love black people; as such, I call out black foolishness without apology or regret. I also place black foolishness in a broader context.

America is a nihilistic and amoral society both at home and abroad. The violence perpetrated in other countries, and normalized by the mass media domestically, does, as Brother Malcolm famously said, come home to roost. Ultimately, if whole communities are marginalized economically, socially, politically, philosophically, materially, and morally then their children will behave in anti-social, aberrant, and violent ways. Garbage in more often than not equals garbage out.

In watching the the video of this most recent black flashmob brigand street pirate riot at Chicago's Ford City mall, I immediately fall back on three questions.

First, where were/are the parents?

Two, if a good civilian shot and killed one of these hoodlums, what would the narrative of "victimization" and "injustice" be among community activist types and others?

Three, when one of these youth highwaymen is inevitably shot and killed either by a peer or the police, how will he or she be valorized, and a hagiography summoned up about them, at their funeral?

The role of video technology, cell phones, and the Internet often goes uncommented upon in an era of viral videos and sites like World Star Hip Hop. The Internet and social media have allowed what were once local incidents, known to only a few, to became international stories.

Historically, the mass media is one of the key technologies of race. Radio and newspapers, TV, and other mediums have facilitated the mass circulation of images. In turn, these images have supported white supremacy while also unsettling and disrupting it.

Richard Iton's observations about the power of images to do the work of regressive politics is extremely relevant in the context of the Ford City riot. Images can be liberating. They can also reinforce racial and social marginalization.

Although all representations--whether musical, literary, visual, or political--have the potential to short-circuit, depress, or displace (by replacing) more intimate forms of engagement and communication, visual forms are particularly effective in this regards...

Reinforced in this context would be the notion that some bodies cannot be thought of, at least for long, as genuinely suffering or capable of substantive feeling: they are in the end just bodies, objects, things that at best enable others to feel more deeply within and about themselves while and by denying the nonwhite sufferer that capacity.

There is another, related tangent that might be pursued here. These narratives, especially in visual form, might also function as a source of pleasure--like pornography--and reinforce citizen attachments to the security state as a means through which to monitor, incapacitate, control, and disappear the highlighted and hypervisible. The visual accessibility of black life, then, rather than humanizing African Americans in the eyes of others...might simply underscore citizen expectations and imaginings regarding the proper disposition of these marginal constituencies (i.e. blacks)...

Indeed, in their double effects and ambivalent impact, they are as likely to produce disidentification, in a manner that suggests the impossibility of blackness ever being seen as separate and apart from some larger narrative of disturbance, abnormality, and pathology and, in general, the futility of merely speaking--or showing--truth to power.

What do we do when a not insignificant cohort of our young people have taken it upon themselves to project the worst, an image that is taken by both outsiders and insiders, as some type of "authentic" "blackness?"

Found Wisdom: Martin Booth's "Real Talk" on Being a Badman

I occasionally share found wisdom and bits of goodness when I come across them. My last post on the realpolitik of race and economic self-interest was necessarily a bit long. Allow me to balance that with something short and sweet.

I have read Martin Booth's book A Very Private Gentlemen (what was a movie called The American in the States and starred Mr. George Clooney) several times. His prose is beautiful; the tale of an American assassin and gunsmith in Italy even more so. And Clara, oh how she reminds me of my own Iberian fantasies and hedonistic joys. Dreams. Memories.

Sometimes you read a book and a particular passage sneaks by you, to jump out later, when your mind is properly aligned with the themes and energy offered therein.

Who knows? Maybe it was the good beer.

Perhaps, it was more likely the result of eating a late night dinner when a random high stakes poker player wandered into the local Fridays (yes, I do slum...oh the pleasures) with 50 grand in his pocket after winning a tournament out at the boats--and he spread that money around via drinks and yummies for his fellow denizens--as last night I was inspired to think a dream of being a badman in a life I had not lived.

Confident. A trained killer who avoided conflict whenever possible. A man of quiet accomplishment, loved by women, and deadly with a gun. Self-aware and wise.

And what follows below is just masterful writing.

What wisdom, thoughts, random musings, or found prose do you have to share? What badman or badwoman flights of fantasy or dreaming keep you sane as you deal with the drudgery of the day-to-day?

And the brutalities of law: people accept violence if it is legitimised by authority, accept it as a way of doling out justice. Certain people, certain classes of people, the niggers and the wops and the kafirs and the chinks and the trash, may be dealt violence rightfully, no matter who governs it, who dispenses it. It has always been like this. It always will be.  

I am one of that class, one of those who may be gunned down in the name of peace. I am the bounty. I am the visitor whom I am to meet again in a few days. 

Violence is the monopoly of the state, like the post office and the revenue department. We buy violence with our taxes, live under its protection.

Or most due. I do not. I pay no taxes. No-one knows me. I have no long, sleek yachts moored in the best marinas.   

I live by the rule of Malcolm X: I am peaceful, I am courteous, I obey the law, I respect the world. Yet if someone put his hand on me, I send him to the cemetery.  

I shall expand this a little for you will otherwise call me a liar. The law I obey is that of natural justice. The peace to which I adhere is that of quietude.

Moral Appeals are Nice, But Material Realities May be Even More Compelling: Racism and Sexism are Net Drains on the U.S. Economy

Discrimination isn’t just an insult to our most basic notions of fairness. It also costs us money, because those who are discriminated against are unable to make the best use of their talents. This not only hurts them, it hurts us all, as some of our best and brightest players are, in essence, sidelined, unable to make their full contributions to our economy. 

Over the past half century, America has made considerable strides in reducing discrimination against women and racial minorities. But recent research suggests that we still have a long way to go. What’s even worse: Progress against discrimination – particularly racial discrimination — seems to have largely stalled out. And there are signs that other forms of discrimination are getting worse.

The struggle against social injustice is fueled by a narrative of moral appeals. The logic of good guys vs bad guys, and how the long arc of justice inevitably bends true is compelling and beautiful. In appealing to the heart, the hope is that the mind, and the body politic, will inevitably be moved in the direction of the Common Good, and towards a set of forward thinking and evolved public policies

My thinking about the nature of the Racial State, white supremacy, and social change has evolved over the years. In college during my black nationalist phase, I was compelled by a narrative of "justice" and how certain groups were inherently and deeply tied to various social evils that for reasons of selfishness and self-interest they could not abandon or overcome.

As I have gotten older, read more, learned how much I do not know, and read some more again, I now see how elite actors, working both against and with people on the ground can either serve Power, massage its reach, or change the terms of the social and political consensus.

The New Racism of the post civil rights colorblind era works through impersonal forces. Of course, the ugly hangovers of inter-personal violence and old school racism still exist in such manifestations as police brutality, hate crimes, stop and frisk, and a deep cultural hostility to black people which links us to apes and animals in the American collective subconscious--and which legitimates our murder by either street vigilante bigots such as George Zimmerman or juries that are more likely to give black defendants the death penalty.

The power of implicit bias and the deep veins of anti-black bigotry are topics which remain little discussed in "post racial" America:

Eberhardt described a number of other studies with similar findings. Instead of faces, participants saw a list of stereotypically White or Black names. Then they viewed a video with a gorilla in it. Only 45% of the participants exposed to the White names noticed the gorilla. But 70% of the participants who saw the Black names noticed the gorilla. “This idea of Blacks as apes pulls the gorilla out of darkness,” Eberhardt said. 

Given the findings of these studies—people exhibit a clear association between Blacks and apes—what are the social and political consequences? Eberhardt described an experiment based on the Rodney King case. Participants viewed a video of police officers beating a Black suspect. Participants who saw words associated with apes before watching the video believed the officers’ actions were more justified, compared to participants who did not see the animal imagery.

In a separate study, Eberhardt found that people are more likely to consider animal language (such as “barbaric,” “animalistic,” etc.) appropriate and necessary in court cases of Black defendants compared to White defendants. News articles describing Black defendants are more likely to use animal language than articles about White defendants. 

In addition, news articles of Blacks who received a death sentence contain more animal language than the articles of those with life sentences. “So not only are Blacks associated with apes, but this association is linked to justifications of violence and death,” Eberhardt concluded. “It’s almost as though the rules for what moral treatment is get shifted for Black suspects and defendants.”

Because the inequalities of race (and gender) work impersonally and structurally in neoliberal, 21st century, corporate-democracy "multicultural" America, the most powerful way of overcoming them, is by appealing to a basic, material calculus of shared self-interest in the service of realpolitik.

For example, Dr. King and the other brave Freedom Soldiers he struggled and died with, "won" the Civil Rights Movement because of their pressure on the United States government in the context of the Cold War. Elite interests were served by making some concessions--some basic, others radical--and dismantling formal Jim and Jane Crow.

Thus one must ask, without the Cold War, would the Civil Rights Movement have been successful? The counterfactual scares me.

While not surrendering to a crude materialism, I have long been telling folks that racism's (and sexism's) greatest social evil is how it generates a net loss on the economic and material productivity of the United States. This economic inefficiency has a direct impact (both positively and negatively) on the life chances of all Americans.

What if Barack Obama Sent Out an Email Focusing Not on the Victims of Gun Violence, But Instead on the Shooters?

How many of you received an email last week from the Obama Administration about Sami Rahamim and how his father Reuven was killed by gun violence?

The story is so very moving and puts a human face on serious matters of public policy.

As evocative as Sami Rahamim's story about his father is, I was left wondering about the shooter. This is not to minimize the human loss, the destroyed families, and the sheer wantonness of the crimes committed by the street pirates in America's central cities such as Chicago, or mass murderers like Adam Lanza.

There are victims; there are perpetrators. The good social scientist and secular humanist in me understands that there are structural forces which drive social pathology. Individuals are not just born criminals or social deviants: their behavior is a result of complex forces that include both nature and nurture.

The Black Pragmatist in me also knows that the vast majority of people in the same horrible situations do not resort to crime. Nor, do they decide to act like highwaymen brigands who prey on their neighbors.

A question. Is this another entry for the "Black Nihilism files?"

A counterfactual. What if Barack Obama sent out an email which read as follows?

Gun violence is a public health problem. While the government can do many things to help solve this problem, we need individuals to pursue creative solutions to this problem in their own communities. Many of our communities are overrun by street brigands. Mass shooters have also taken too many lives. 

What are you prepared to do about it? My administration is assembling a group of the leading researchers, including criminologists, sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, mental health professionals, and experts in public health to come up with a list of solutions to the plague of gun violence in America. 

And what if the email added one more sentence:

Given recent advances in neuroscience, cognitive research, and other related fields, we will also be adding biologists and geneticists to this blue ribbon panel. We must use all of the knowledge at our disposal to solve this national problem. 

How do you think the public would respond?

How Zeb Colter and Jack Swagger's Promo on Glenn Beck is a Damning Indictment of American Politics

Politics is professional wrestling. Professional wrestling is politics. As I wrote here, Glenn Beck's "feud" with the Tea Party GOP inspired heel characters Zeb Colter and Jack Swagger is not priceless per se--all parties involved would have a nice payday if the angle moves forward--but the show is a great example of how professional wrestling is a more honest spectacle than what counts as "politics" in the 24/7 news cycle.

There are rare moments when the veil is pulled down and the fourth wall is broken. Colter and Swagger's newest promo against Glenn Beck, where they quite literally erase the boundaries between the business of professional wrestling and politics, is one such instance.

Using simple language, Colter explains that he and his fellow workers are performers. They are not "real people." But, as most professional wrestling fans know, the ability to adopt a dramatic persona and to sell it to the public through physical storytelling is what separates the greats from the also rans.

When the green screen background is dropped, the promo ends, and Swagger and Colter speak as their "real" selves to the viewer, they are indicting a public which believes in the "truth-telling" prowess of political entertainers such as Glenn Beck, talk radio, the talking heads on the TV, or engage in hero worship of elected officials such as President Barack Obama.

Professional wrestling fans, we who are "smart marks" especially, are in many ways more sophisticated than the political junkies who populate political blogs and web sites (what are really fan boy and fan girl mark hangouts) like the Free Republic or The Daily Kos.

They know that professional wrestling is a work and a game.

Do the Obamabots, Tea Party zealots, and true believers on either the Right or the Left realize that politics is much the same thing?

In reality, American politics is fought over issues that occupy a very narrow issue space. While a radicalized Tea Party GOP is willing to destroy the post World War 2 consensus model of governance in the service of hyper-conservatism, both the Republicans and Democrats as institutionalized political parties, by definition, agree on most basic issues.

Because there is so much agreement, our opinion leaders have to turn the volume way up in order to highlight their differences from one another. In professional wrestling, the goal is to put butts in the seats. Politics and the news media work by the same logic.  The former is just much more honest about that fact.

Thus, I have a few questions.

What would American politics look like if our elected officials and members of the commentariat class broke "kayfabe" like Jack Swagger and Zeb Colter? Would the American people be able to accept this reality? What if Obama (or any other President) dropped their character and talked truthfully and directly to the American people?

Glenn Beck is a master showman and carnival barker. His audience believes his shtick. Beck does not. Beck even admitted this fact to Forbes magazine when he told them:

With a deadpan, Beck insists that he is not political: "I could give a flying crap about the political process." Making money, on the other hand, is to be taken very seriously, and controversy is its own coinage. "We're an entertainment company," Beck says.

Could Glenn Beck's "fight" with the WWE be a "worked shoot?" Are all parties simply playing along to make a buck? He certainly does not have Andy Kaufman's intelligence or artistic genius, but I would love to see Beck work an angle where he finds out this fake real wrestling stuff is far more real than he would like to admit.

In total, and once more, professional wrestling and politics are more alike than different. And we, the American people, are all participants in the big show.

A Black History Month Conspiracy! Anti-White, Evil Liberal Hollywood Pro Obama Movie Django Unchained Cleans Up at the 2013 Oscars

I like to get ahead of the Right-wing rage machine whenever possible. Tonight, Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained won Oscars for best supporting actor and original screenplay.

Let the conspiracy theories begin.

It is Black History Month. A work of speculative fiction written by a white man about a black slave working with a German bounty hunter to go kill the white slavers who hold the title character's wife as their human property, and where the face of white villainy is aided and abetted by Sam Jackson, the "Uncle Tom of all Uncle Toms," is feted at the Oscars in an moment when a President who happens to be black wins reelection over the Tea Party GOP candidate in a landslide.

Could you have made that scenario up on your best night?

Depending on which wing one occupies in the Tea Party GOP conspiranoid bubble of epistemic closure/metaphorical/literal nuthouse, I suggest three possible explanations for "The Django Effect" as understood by the faux populist Tea Bagger White Right political imagination.

And we cannot overlook how Michelle Obama announced the best picture nominees at the 2013 Oscars...the fix must have been in, right?

Some options:

1. Evil liberal "Big Hollywood" hates white people!

2. It's a Jewish plot!

3. Obama has used his black army to rig the Oscar vote just like they did the 2012 Presidential Election!

What is your conspiracy theory? We haven't had a poll in some time, do chime in over at the right sidebar.

The Human Centipede or Ouroboros? Watching the Tea Party GOP Cannibalize Itself is Such Great Sport

I just did an interview with the very kind and gracious Nica Noelle. She is a real "porn intellectual," great both behind as well as in front of the camera, and an accomplished entrepreneur. We covered lots of bases about the adult industry, as well as the politics of pleasure, race, gender, and sexuality in our chat which will be online next week. Do look out for it.

A quick thought for the weekend.

Which car accident clown car explosion was more entertaining? Did McCain get his comeuppance from the deal he made with the White Right Tea Party devil in order to be the party's nominee in 2008? Or is Ann Coulter, a bigoted professional bloviating shrew, the more entertaining fail as the disciples of Ayn Rand and Jim Stossel try to make stew from her bones?

The Tea Party GOP is imploding before our very eyes. This is all a great show, but it indicates how dysfunctional our national politics have become. Repeatedly, the Right-wing has made itself a source of national embarrassment, a laughing stock, a comedy routine of dumb and dumber, whose participants do not realize that they are the butt of the joke.

In a country with only two major institutional political parties, it is actually "we the people" who lose when the federal government is made impotent and ineffective by this foolishness. Moreover, while we laugh at the Tea Party GOP's antics, backpedaling on "Obamacare," silly sharia law crazy talk, and neo Confederate Jim Crow political masturbatory dreaming--what is in total a dance of self-destruction--forced austerity is hanging over the social safety net, the economy teeters on the edge of (returning to) a second Great Depression.

Let us laugh now; tomorrow, we may all be the sad clown.

White, Male, Privileged, and Not Racially Marked: NOVA Explores the Mind of the (White) Rampage Killer

NOVA's "Mind of a Rampage Killer" offered a very thorough exploration of the relationship between the brain, biochemistry, and male violence. It is also part of a very necessary conversation about the relationship between politics, guns, and public health. Mind of a Rampage Killer was also an example of the problematic phenomenon where Whiteness, and in particular White Masculinity, remains unmarked, invisible, and unnamed.

We have have talked about the relationship between White Masculinity and mass shootings here on We Are Respectable Negroes a great deal. In the aftermath of the Aurora and Newtown massacres, the challenging (for some) observation that white men are grossly over-represented among spree shooters--yet, this obvious fact goes little discussed--was also picked up by the national media.

While the Nova special does some good work, it is also a rich and profound example of the white racial frame in practice.

The Tea Party People Are Unhappy (Again): The Politics of Pro Wrestling, Jack Swagger, and the Very Necessary Zeb Colter

The WWE is firing on all cylinders right now. They never fail to deliver in the run up to Wrestlemania.

The Elimination Chamber was great fun. The Rock and CM Punk put on a nice show, and the stipulation which indicated the the former could lose by count out or disqualification was a nice touch that enhanced the match. Both men really worked hard and told a great story. True, it would have been nice to see the Undertaker appear to prevent a Lesnar or Shield run-in. But, the championship match delivered nonetheless.

Speaking of The Shield, they were elevated by their victory in the Elimination Chamber PPV. The superhero combo of Cena, Ryback, and Sheamus is so over that there was nothing to be gained by their winning the match. The clean win by The Shield was a great move and a pleasant surprise that helped all parties involved.

I reserve my greatest praise for the writers of the WWE in their having the necessary courage to allow Jack Swagger to win the Elimination Chamber match. I love Mark Henry's King Kong black walking stereotype gimmick--and yes, the politics of pleasure are complicated. But, Swagger was the smart choice, as next to Ziggler, Bryan, and Punk, he is the future of the company.

I have developed a theme here on WARN where I reflect on the relationship between professional wrestling and politics. I love those posts because they allow me to write about two things I care about a great deal.

Swagger is also worthy of special praise, because with his manager Zeb Colter, both are quite literally, money in the bank.

The old is always new for the next generation of professional wrestling fans. I grew up watching great managers in professional wrestling. Zeb Colter (known previously as Dutch Mantel)--a not so subtle dig at Ann Coulter--is a wonderful addition to the WWE roster. While present norms of political correctness may not allow for the blatant racism of Colonel DeBeers, Colter is the closest we have to a weekly reminder of the herrenvolk "real America" racism of the Tea Party GOP.

[The Tea Party people are apparently upset at the WWE for its "unfair" depiction of them as "racists" and "anti-immigrant." What irony! An AstroTurf group funded by the Koch brothers has a case of the sads because they are being accurately depicted by the soap opera that is professional wrestling. Barthes must be smiling as this is all so very post modern.]

Colter's partnership with Jack Swagger works because it is topical, consistent, and relevant. Most importantly, Colter adds another dimension to his "client's" repertoire in the ring.

Zeb does not have to get physical; however, if he chose to do so--saving such an intervention for the right moment--it would be believable if he gave Swagger some brass knucks or otherwise interfered in a match.

The end of the territory system in professional wrestling meant that most talent did not get the seasoning and training that their predecessors received up till the 1970s and early to mid 1980s. Of course, this generation of professional wrestlers has a physical look that the older generation lacked. But, the modern generation of professional wrestlers (generally) lack mic skills. Moreover, those who are weak on the mic do not have a manager to compensate for this shortcoming (and to help train them in this most necessary of skills).

Ultimately, I hope that Zeb Colter--and in a different way Paul Heyman--heralds a return of the great managers of yesteryear. I can think of a number of great workers who could use a capable mouthpiece.

Would the imminently returning Shelton Benjamin fit that mold? And what are your feelings about Wrestlemania? The Rock has to drop the belt. How should that happen? Are you pleased with his short run so far?

Are Black Youth in Chicago More at Risk Than Military Personnel in Afghanistan or Iraq?

18-year-old Janay Mcfarlane, a mother of a 3-month-old boy, was shot in the head and killed in a Chicago suburb just hours after her sister sat behind President Obama as he advocated for tighter gun regulations on Friday. 

January was one of the deadliest in Chicago in more than a decade, with more than 40 people killed in homicides. “Last year, there were  443 murders with a firearm in this city, and 65 of them were 18 and under,” Obama said in his speech. “That’s the equivalent of a Newtown every four months. That’s precisely why the overwhelming majority of Americans are asking for some common sense proposals to make it harder for criminals to get their hands on a gun.” Obama also remembered Hadiya Pendleton, a 15-year-old who was killed in a South Side park days after performing at his inauguration.

The madness must stop.

I recall a claim from my readings about the dynamics of public opinion which suggests that the public turns against a conflict when a threshold number is reached wherein a given number of people know someone from their high school class who have been killed there.

We have a good range of readers here on We Are Respectable Negroes. Perhaps, we can crowd source the following question? Is someone on military duty in either Iraq or Afghanistan safer than a young black person in urban Chicago? How does service in the "combat arms" (i.e. infantry, special forces, etc) complicate the risk metric?

Of course, one could do some crude calculations based on the number of black youth killed in Chicago during X time period and then compare it to the American casualty rates in Iraq or Afghanistan. This would give you a rough estimate. However, it would not capture the expected casualty rates in a war zone versus those in day-to-day civilian life. This same calculation would also not get us a sense of the real probabilities at work in comparing one's relative chances of being killed by gun violence (or other criminal means) in Chicago versus death in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Also, how do we count the wounded? And what of the ability of military surgeons to save the lives of those who suffer horrific traumas that (again, just guessing here) the average hospital in a major city may not possess?

I am sure there are metrics and models for computing the probability functions of these dark matters. Hopefully, some folks can teach a brother a thing or two on these matters so I can comment on them in a more informed manner.

Wouldn't it be a hell of a thing if going to Iraq or Afghanistan were safer for black youth in Chicago than staying in their own hyper-segregated, crime-ridden, gang infested, nihilistic, broken youthocracy, neighborhoods?

The Real 3/5th's Compromise: The President of Emory Simply Doesn't Care About People Like You

We have not had a "real talk" moment in quite some time. James Wagner, the President of Emory University's suggestion that the 3/5th's compromise was noble, necessary, and an example of good governance to be admired, is an appropriate moment to share some uncomfortable truths.

Wagner's comments have attracted a good amount of attention. For many, it is shocking that an accomplished man of letters would so unapologetically "white wash" the history of slavery in the United States.

Yes, those of us who are are students of American history should be offended by a flattening of the historical record, and a very sympathetic view of the nobility of white elites in counting black slaves as less than a full person in the service of maintaining an ignoble institution.

I understand all of those sentiments.

Here is the painful reality that many of those in the out-group, the less than privileged, the Other, the marginalized, and the like have not yet figured out: James Wagner does not care about you. His comments on slavery were not a personal dig, stab, or barb. Black folks, our legacy, personhood, and the like are quite simply not choices on the cognitive decision tree of men like him.

You/we/us are footnotes and outliers.

People of color--and likely women, gays and lesbians, the "disabled", and other folks who are not "normal" by the narrow definitions of hetero-normative, able-bodied, Whiteness--are also non-factors in the worlds of the truly race and class privileged in American society.

You/we/us spend much energy on these matters; They spend little to none at all.

I know that hurts. Privilege has, well for lack of a better turn of phrase, its own privileges.

It is best to accept such facts if you are to wage battle effectively on their terrain.

I will double down. The real damage done by colorblind and institutional racism in the post civil rights era is that seemingly race neutral decisions about policy and related matters are done with a calculi which ignores how said decisions will impact the life chances of people of color.

Here, the White Supremacists, the caricatures who make convenient bogeymen and women, are easy targets.

Why? Because they actually think about black and brown people a great deal. Moreover, those who are classic bigots are oddly obsessed with non-whites. There is a certain deep intimacy that comes with racism. It is love, fascination, and hate all rolled up into one ball.

The movers and shakers, the shot callers who have the ability to impact policy in ways that hurt the Other, do not usually care one iota about the latter. The privileged are not bad people, per se. The Other is simply not on their radar. For this reason, the elite--the top tier of the in-group--are so dangerous precisely because of an ability to sleep well at night because said agents can tell themselves that they are race neutral and good people, despite how their decision-making hurts those not in their circle.

Trust me, James Wagner is legitimately surprised by the reaction to his comments. In his eyes, he made a self-evident and obvious observation about American history. The apology is necessary for reasons of realpolitik and professional peace.

If you want to start playing that 3d Star Trek chess on these matters of race, politics, and justice in the Age Obama, it is essential that you start thinking about the agents who do the work of impersonal and institutional inequality not as demons or villains, but as self-interested actors.

Again, they are not "bad people." They simply do not care about about people like you. The privileged classes are possessed of narcissism. The disadvantaged are also possessed of narcissism too, as they think that the broader world ought to take them into account. Sadly, it does not.

Cyber Racism 101: Have You Played the New Christopher Dorner Video Game?

Christopher Dorner is dead. Depending on one's political, cultural, and racial perspective he can be viewed as a radical resister, symbol of the LAPD's racism, "badman" or "bad nigger," anti-hero, "despicable" murderer, or vigilante who was driven by personal hurt to engage in acts of cathartic violence (for himself).

Dorner can also be read as a mix of all or none of those things.

Ultimately, Christopher Dorner exists as a cultural object which various members of the public will invest with meaning depending on their own value system and life experiences. By implication, as a type of cultural object, the meaning attached to Dorner literally (through his racialized and gendered body as a black man) and symbolically (as a rogue cop who dared to call attention to the LAPD's long history of racism) will be circulated throughout (global) society by various types of technology.

This is not new. Historically, television, radio, TV, film, and print were used to teach lessons about political and social identity. For example, the Racial State in its various forms such as Jim and Jane Crow, contemporary colorblind racism, the slaveocracy, Colonialism, and Imperialism, were reinforced and legitimated through the use of various types of media.

These systems were/are also subverted by the "technologies of race" as well. Cyber racism is the next iteration of how technology, in this case the Internet, social media, and video games, can be used to circulate, legitimate, and reinforce racist ideologies.

To point. Only several days after his "suicide," Christopher Dorner's last stand against the LAPD has been transformed into a crude video game. It is both an excellent example of cyber racism in practice, as well as a broader demonstration of how modern technology can facilitate white supremacy.

As a textual object, the Christopher Dorner video game is a fascinating mix of elements, which if viewed as individual parts, would not not necessarily "cohere" semiotically, i.e. a superficial read of "the system of meaning" created by the various elements in the game could seemingly contradict its overall political and ideological message(s).

The narrative of the Christopher Dorner video game consists of locating him as the protagonist who fights the police which are attacking his cabin redoubt. This is accomplished though the game's first person shooter style of play.

This choice by the game designer creates a sense of emotional investment in the game by showing the events from the player's point of view, thus limiting the distance between the participant and the events which occur in this crude virtual simulation of "reality."

The soundtrack is provided by a rap parody song from the "movie" Gangsta Rap "The Glockumetary," and is used to negatively mark Christopher Dorner as a human being--in keeping with the video game as a work of cyber racism, he, and by implication black people, more generally, are "niggers" within the game's universe and its most extreme, chauvinistic, reactionary version of the white racial frame.

The white supremacist frame of the Christopher Dorner video game is also advanced through subtle interventions in the conventions governing first person shooters. Instead of "health boxes" or hearts, Dorner is "recharged" by racially stereotypical buckets of fried chicken. As a complement to the crude racism of the game, the difficulty options are listed from easiest to most difficult and include: Virgin White Ass; Live Free of Die Nigger; Nigger Ops; Gorilla Warrior; and Ghetto Holy Warrior.

The game allows a perverse white racial fantasy to play out, one that is not new: see the historical examples of race minstrelsy, yellow face, "white Negroes" and "wiggers."

Facilitated by the first-person perspective, the player can become a "black character," one that is really a "nigger" who fights the police (coded as the White establishment, White Authority, and White Power). But in the meta-narrative of the Christopher Dorner video game, the player is actually hoping that the police will kill the black character: here, suicide by cop becomes a means of reinforcing white supremacy.

In total, Christopher Dorner's defeat in the game is a White supremacist commentary and type of wish fulfillment for the political and social impotence of black people (men in particular, both literally and metaphorically). In the context of the video game, the "protagonist's" resistance is defeated by the inevitability of White triumph, and a return to a "natural" order of things in a White supremacist dreamworld wherein people of color are dominated, controlled, murdered, objectified, and submissive.

Play does political work. Pleasure, as derived from popular culture, is not politically neutral. Cyber racism, especially in video games, is especially potent because of the genre's interactive nature, and the ways that many young people across the colorline uncritically consume and enjoy it.

Mass media is not value neutral. The various technologies of race share that same quality: both advance a normative and specific understanding of the power relationship between whites and non-whites in society.

As I suggested here, Christopher Dorner's story will exist long past his time in this world. I was surprised at how fast this observation would come to be made real. In the virtual world, cyber racism has already made Christopher Dorner immortal.

We Are Superstitious: I Have 666 Followers on Google Friend Connect, Could You Help A Brother Out?

*** Thank you my friends. I am now saved from curses. But do keep joining as 700 is even better. I appreciate every member of the WARN family. Be strong. Do good by each other. ***

I have been watching the TV series A Haunting. I come from suspicious folks who are sensitive to paranormal energy. For example, my father was the subject of a series of attacks by his ex-wife who used a voodoo doll to disrupt his digestive system. My mother believes that he ate some bad goat; my instincts tell me that the dark arts were responsible.

If one of you would "join" WARN via Google Friend Connect over at the right sidebar I would be at peace.

I am going back to reading these chicken bones as I try to divine my future. I am then going to the local spot to watch a bunch of black folks cheer on the million dollar slaves in the NBA All-Star Saturday Night human zoo.

Ultimately, I would sleep much better tonight if we moved the odometer forward from "666." Can you help a brother out?

Obama Goes to Chicago; Is Joburg Coming to Detroit and Other U.S. Cities?

Barack Obama is in Chicago today to give a speech about the plague of gun violence and murder in the city.

His visit, and that of the First Lady to Hadiya Pendleton's funeral, were the result of public shaming, and pressure put on the White House from a petition sponsored by The Black Youth Project. 

Citizen activism can work.

However, beyond the symbolic gesture of the country's first black president visiting a community where black and brown young people are killing each other for sport, what will Obama's visit accomplish substantively? Symbolism matters; however, do symbolic gestures translate into changes in the quotidian, the day-to-day lived realities of people in these violence plagued neighborhoods?

[This is also an empirical question. Is there any research on if elites through symbolic gestures (speeches, outreach programs, public condemnation of offenders) can actually impact local crime rates or other types of social disorganization?]

In thinking through questions of crime and violence in America's central cities, I keep returning to a worrisome coincidence of trends and values that have been developing since the rise of Post-Fordism in the 1960s and the acceptance of Ronald Reagan's "common sense" claim that government is the problem and not the solution.

Once more, neoliberalism hyper-conservatism wins as the American people are unable to disentangle the spurious belief that capitalism, the corporation, and democracy are one and the same.

Austerity is going to be a way of life in the United States. As such, Barack Obama shows no signs of substantively engaging income and wealth inequality. With his bargain to modify the Bush era tax cuts, he actually protected the very rich. There are also no signs that either the carried interest loophole will be closed or a financial transactions tax will be enacted--basic steps that could help to rebuild the country's infrastructure, help to pay down the national debt, and shore up a frayed and broken social safety net.

Major American cities are going broke. Detroit, as an object lesson in this crisis, is abandoning its basic responsibilities to the people of that once great city: police no longer immediately respond to calls for assistance in response to murder and other violent crimes. Chicago police are no longer immediately responding to calls about property crimes. Thus, in both cases, the taxpayer is left to fend for him or herself. 

The result is a creeping state of nature where the basic social contract has been broken. People then have no choice but to form posses, arm themselves, or hire private security forces for protection. The militarization of our communities becomes a de facto state of affairs. And the corporation is left to fill the gaps created by a retraction of State responsibility. 

Grover Norquist must be smiling at these developments. Sheldon Wolin and Henry Giroux must be shaking their heads in how their observations about inverted democracy, biopolitics, and the Age of Disposability have/are coming true.

The rich do not care about the destruction of the public commons, and breaking of the social contract because elites (Congress and other professional bureaucrats are part of this cohort as well) have the resources to hire private security guards, their own fire departments, and send their children to private school. 

Moreover, the destruction of the public good is an opportunity to increase the maldistribution of resources in favor of the top income earners because those monies saved on basic services can then be returned to elites in the form of tax cuts and other subsidies.

Ultimately, if citizens actually believe that "freedom from" is a more important imperative than "freedom to", how can the State ever be given sufficient resources to successfully intervene in basic matters of public safety and health?

The BBC's Louis Theroux is an indispensable TV host and documentarian. He is also very entertaining and skilled, using his nebbish, self-effacing personality to encourage his subjects to let down their guard, and to "be real." 

His investigation of crime, privatization, and hyper-conservatism run amok in Johannesburg is eerily prescient as we look at the condition of America's central cities today. The world is a "world of slums." The challenge: how do we keep America from joining it?

I Am a Bad Boy: Rush Limbaugh Does Not Like Chauncey DeVega's Observations About Christopher Dorner Very Much

Hosted by Kiwi6 file hosting. Download mp3 - Free Music Hosting.

I would like to thank Sapporo beer, Star Wars, Crom, and my friends and family for this award, without their encouragement it would not have been possible...

I guess I did a bad thing in my reflecting upon Christopher Dorner's depictions as a hero/anti-hero/villain for some in the American public.

The Herman Cain Saga was great fun. Rush Limbaugh's acknowledgement of humble old me is a nice touch and complement. Moreover, being on Rush Limbaugh's radio program and going a few rounds with someone whose skill I admire--even as I detest his politics--is on my bucket list. Who knows? Maybe I will be able to follow through on the wish some day...it is a small world, perhaps one of Limbaugh's folks would like to set up a gentlemen's dialogue. It would be more than entertaining for all parties involved.

Would the god of right-wing media humble himself so much as to reach down and throw a few punches from heaven at little old me? I can dream.

Here is the transcript:

Not only is it accepted, the killer is made, essentially, a national hero and his claims are unquestioned. They are totally accepted by this professor who's supposed to be teaching this high-minded stuff, inquiry: Inspection, curiosity. All this stuff supposedly happens on campus, when all it really is is indoctrination anymore. An important public...? Meanwhile, Marco Rubio may not be qualified for the Senate 'cause he took a sip of water. 

Meanwhile, Herman Cain and Clarence Thomas and any number of black conservatives, they're not qualified for anything and they gotta be drummed out of public life because... Because... "Well, we just disagree with them. We don't like 'em." This guy, look at who these left people come up with as their heroes. There's a website out there called the AlterNet, and I'm familiar with this. When I started this program before the Internet really became mainstream, a bunch of agitated left-wingers hung out at the AlterNet. 

That's where a lot of the original, slanderous, libelous criticism of me began, and it was among ostensible professors, so-called educators and so forth. AlterNet now is an online leftist magazine. They ran a story by somebody names Chauncey DeVega arguing that Dorner could be transformed through popular culture and storytelling into a figure talked about for decades, for centuries to come, with multiple versions of his stories and exploits. 

"Christopher Dorner dared to tell his version of the truth regarding the LAPD's history of corruption and racism," writes Chauncey DeVega. "They do not like tattle tales (sic) and 'snitches.' Dorner is a threat because of his violent actions and the symbolic power of his words and deeds." We're talking about a mass murderer here who is being exalted, glorified, held up, and turned into a national hero for a left-wing cause.

Hidden History: Before Christopher Dorner There Was Mark Essex, the New Orleans Sniper

If we keep our eyes and ears open we can learn something new every day. I was reading an essay by Mike Davis (the great historian who has written such essential books as City of Quartz; Planet of Slums; and Ecology of Fear) about Christopher Dorner's relationship to the American cultural scene.

There, Davis hit on some of the same points we have developed here on WARN. Consequently, I was pleased to be in such good company:

Mike Davis then separated the amateurs from the pros with his exploration of how Christopher Dorner's war against the LAPD was/is evocative of an earlier moment of black male vigilantism. To point. In 1972 New Orleans, a former member of the U.S. Navy, who like Dorner, was African-American and experienced racism while in the service, also decided to fight back against the system.

In his crusade Mark Essex killed innocent black folks, white folks, police, and any others who got in his way:

A young Black navy veteran with almost no formal weapons training, Essex boldly attacked the headquarters of the New Orleans Police Department on New Year’s Eve, 1972. After killing a black police cadet and wounding a white lieutenant, Essex escaped to a nearby warehouse where he ambushed a K-9 unit and killed another cop. For a week he eluded a vast manhunt before suddenly reappearing in the Howard Johnson Hotel across the street from City Hall. Going floor to floor, always warning the housekeepers to flee, he shot down hotel managers and white guests, setting rooms afire as he climbed toward the roof. 

The New Orleans police rushed the hotel, but Essex with uncanny accuracy shot cops off fire ladders, mowed them down in stairwells and killed them as they stepped out of elevators or got out of their cars in the streets below. By nightfall on 7 January 1973, Essex – now bunkered on the roof of Howard Johnson – had militarily defeated the entire New Orleans Police Department. He had shot ten police officers (five dead, including a deputy chief) and eleven white civilians (four dead) while withstanding thousands of rounds of police fire without a wound. Ultimately a marine helicopter was brought in and after taking numerous hits from Essex in three runs at the hotel, a police sharpshooter killed the one-man black liberation army. When the coroner received what remained of Essex he counted 200 bullet wounds.

As a ghetto nerd, I would like to believe that I have a good grasp of hidden history. Perhaps, because I was not born in New Orleans, I had never heard of Mark Essex. And just as I learned from some brothers here in Chicago about Jeff Fort, there are apparently many "street legends," local heroes, anti-heroes, and folk figures that most people--if they are not privy to them by region or social network--will never learn about.

[Do teach us all something. Are there any local legends who defied power and fought "The Man" that folks in your neck of the woods know about, but who have been denied a national platform?]

As we discussed here, I am fascinated by the hostility to the suggestion that Chris Dorner is a folk hero for some segments of the mass public.

In meditating on your comments here, and those of folks over at Alternet, I am reminded that there is a deep belief held by many in the public--especially those identified with the "in-group" and who count themselves among the "mainstream"--that our experiences in the public sphere, and society, more generally, are uniform and the same.

The idea that there are multiple publics, that Power impacts people in diverse ways, and how American experience is not one thing, but rather something diverse (and at times divergent), is often in conflict with other conceptions of it. The public is not a natural or organic concept. It is constructed and not unitary. These attributes are unsettling to no small number of people.

Moreover, "normal" is one of the ugliest words in the English language. Nevertheless, many people are desperate to be it. In that obsession and desire they forget that there are many experiences of normalcy and day-to-day lived reality. Ultimately, how one views Christopher Dorner is filtered through that cognitive map.

To understand the simultaneous appeal and hostility to Christopher Dorner begins with that most basic of understandings.

Christopher Dorner is Dead: Is He Your Hero or Anti-Hero? Is He Your Villain? Why?

Is Christopher Dorner dead? If so did he beat "The Man?" Alternatively, in his "defeat" by "The Man" will Dorner actually "triumph" in the long-term?

Alternet has my essay on Christopher Dorner as an archetypal figure in American (black) popular culture on the front page. I thank them for that gesture.

I shared said piece here on We Are Respectable Negroes a few days ago to a mixed response. Some "got" my curiosity about locating Dorner in a broader cultural mythos; a few other folks simply keyed in on his deviant behavior. As such, they could not go beyond that characterization.

Likewise, at The Daily Kos, two hundred or so comments later, a good number of folks were open to thinking critically about the cultural figure that is Christopher Dorner, what he symbolizes, and how some could see him as a hero. Other commenters simply defaulted to the fact that he killed several innocent people. Consequently, that makes any critical inquiry unnecessary and a type of excuse-making for a murderer.

I am legitimately confused. Do help me work through my thoughts about the varied and dichotomous reactions towards Christopher Dorner if you would be so patient.

I will state without qualification that he is a murder. Christopher Dorner killed several people. Because of that fact, he should have been subject to the maximum punishment under the law. However, Dorner's choice to kill several people in keeping with his crusade of vengeance does not eliminate difficult questions about the evils he identified in the LAPD. His tactics and strategy may be very questionable to some; nevertheless, the truth telling of his manifesto remains a quite accurate representation of how the LAPD has historically functioned as an organization.

With that obligatory statement aside, let us move forward.

Are those who are uncomfortable with critically interrogating Dorner's behavior, and the motivations for it, just very deferent to authority by nature? Are these folks especially prone to accepting the master frame without asking hard questions about Power and its motivations? Are they authoritarians?

Consequently, do Dorner's most impulsive detractors naturally see a man, one whose race may not be coincidental as an element in their rage towards him, as an existential threat?

Are those who see Chris Dorner as a hero simply elevating a man, one who they know little about, simply because of their own negative experiences with the police, the criminal "justice" system, racism, classism, or social inequality, more generally?

Is the idea of what Chris Dorner represents more compelling to his supporters in the abstract, than if he were actually operating in their communities? Is love for Dorner an example of "not in my back yard, but okay in theory" as applied to a vigilante?

Ultimately, is the answer more simple: could Dorner be a fantasy figure for every person stopped and harassed by the police, but who simply did not have the guts and the tradecraft to respond in kind?

I stand by my original read of Christopher Dorner. He is an anti-hero for no small number of people. His exploits will be talked about for many years. I have little to no faith in the mass media's version of Dorner's manifesto, nor of his career and its end. Professional liars in the corporate media do what they are paid to do: they dissemble, and by doing so, serve the master frame.

In response, some will point to the bureaucracy and how it deemed Dorner "guilty" and "irresponsible." The bureaucracy is an organ of State power. It is not neutral. More often than not, chosen outcomes are preordained; the machine is neither fair nor righteous. I have seen this first hand.

If you despise Christopher Dorner, please share why...and please do so with a full explanation as your thought process is very fascinating and revealing. If your argument is that "he killed some people," do refrain from commenting until you can share and formulate a closing for that claim. I am more interested in the part of the sentence which is "...and because he did that I believe xyz about his deeds and the nature of the accusations against him."

Likewise, if you see Christopher Dorner as a hero, please share why...and do so according to the same rubric. How and why do his deeds make him "heroic?" How do you define heroism? If he is an anti-hero (what I think both the griots and cultural memory in the future will will name him as), why so?

More Magical Thinking from Professional Conservative Troglodytes: "These Wombs of Women Who Have Been on the Birth Control Pill Effectively Have Become Graveyards for Lots and Lots of Little Babies"

The personal is political...again.

Pastor Manning is entertaining with his "Mack Daddy white women in heat voting for Obama" theory of voting behavior. By contrast, this story about the alternate reality and magical thinking of the Right-wing in regards to birth control and women's reproductive rights is not in any way funny. 

Well, here’s some medical research we hadn’t heard about. Generations Radio host Kevin Swanson, who last week delved memorably into feminist theory, tells us this week that “certain doctors and certain scientists” have researched the wombs of women on the pill and found “there are these little tiny fetuses, these little babies, that are embedded into the womb…Those wombs of women who have been on the birth control pill effectively have become graveyards for lots and lots of little babies.” 

Swanson must be speaking with the same doctors as former Rep. Todd Akin. Even Kevin Peeples, whom Swanson is interviewing about his anti-contraception documentary Birth Control: How Did We Get Here?, isn’t quite sold on the evidence. 

Swanson: I’m beginning to get some evidence from certain doctors and certain scientists that have done research on women’s wombs after they’ve gone through the surgery, and they’ve compared the wombs of women who were on the birth control pill to those who were not on the birth control pill. And they have found that with women who are on the birth control pill, there are these little tiny fetuses, these little babies, that are embedded into the womb. They’re just like dead babies. They’re on the inside of the womb. And these wombs of women who have been on the birth control pill effectively have become graveyards for lots and lots of little babies. 

Peeples: We’ve actually heard on both sides of that. We’re researching that and want to make sure we speak correctly to that in our second film. But we have medical advice on both sides of the table there, so we want to make sure that we communicate that properly. 

Swanson: It would seem, and I realize that people are a little split on what are all the effects of the birth control pill, but it would seem that there’s a tremendous risk in the use of it for the life of children.

As Right-Wing Watch details, there is even the obligatory stab at "progressivism" and an obligatory mention of  Hitler:

Earlier in the interview, Peeples and Swanson discuss how birth control came to be widely used and accepted by many churches. Women, Peeples laments, “desire the men’s role” and are now missing out on “the role God put them in that he laid out in Genesis.” Before World War II, Peeples claims, “abortion, sterilization, eugenics and birth control were all tied together” until “Hitler took the fall for taking it very aggressively and dramatically.” 

Peeples: It starts with men and women fighting and not being happy with the role that God put them in that he laid out in Genesis. So whenever you seek to desire, when women seek to desire the men’s role, they lose the part and the idea of what children does, not just for the kingdom and not just does with their family, but does for their gender role. 

Swanson: Are you saying that the population control stuff, egalitarian feminism, birth control, abortion, they’re all sort of interrelated? 

Peeples: Yeah, it wasn’t until after World War II that they begin to separate them. Abortion, sterilization, eugenics and birth control were all tied together, they were all kind of a package for eugenics and population control. Hitler took the fall for taking it very aggressively and dramatically, and so they said, ‘Hey, let’s kind of take this back, let’s get rid of the negative things and let’s play on Christian liberty, let’s play on freedom, let’s play on people kind of taking this upon themselves to control population rather than forcing it on them. So, again, it’s just another effect of not researching our history to know what happened in the world alongside of the Church.

On a panoply of issues ranging from tax policy, the economy, the public health crisis caused by guns, science, and the general accepted consensus that governs empirical reality, the Right-wing in America has become drunk on magical thinking. 

We cannot come to a shared consensus to advance the Common Good because a significant portion of the public lives in a bubble of epistemic closure of Fox News and conservative talk radio. These same professional troglodytes are now rewriting school textbooks, changing school curricula, and pressuring colleges and universities to remove "offensive" and "problematic" course offerings in order to fit the White Right herrenvolk conservative Christian worldview. 

When professional anti-intellectuals possessed of magical thinking want to intrude on the life of the mind nothing good can come of it. Ever.

As I often ask: where are the responsible conservatives? Are they not ashamed of the Christian Right and how the latter is ruining their (supposedly) shared name brand? 

Birth Control: How Did We Get Here? is poised to join the Right-wing propaganda film oeuvre alongside 2016: Obama's America, Runaway Slave, Maafa 21, and other related conservative agitprop ilk.

I do not recommend seeing any of these "documentaries" except to mock them as necessary. But while some reasonable folks see the lies wrapped in the veneer of "truth," too many of our fellow citizens embrace the alternative reality presented by the Right-wing dream makers and propagandists. Possessed of a Christian Nationalism informed view of politics and society, where faith rules all things--quite literally as a belief in that which cannot be proven by ordinary means--they cannot be moved by appeals to empirical reality. 

Reasonable people can dream that generational replacement will solve this impasse in our country's political discourse and policy-making. I am less sure, as the Right-wing alternate reality machine creates new members every day. Am I just being to cynical and jaded? Or is there a light at the end of the proverbial tunnel?

Pastor Manning Speaks: If the White Man Could Get His "In Heat Wet Dream Voting Women" To Stop Supporting Obama America Could be Saved

God said that Obama was a pimp. It is true because Pastor Manning says so.

My white brothers did you know that Barack Obama is pimping all of your white women, young and old? That Barack "Jody" Obama has got your women caught up in the midst of healing paroxysms...and this explains why 67 percent of white women voted for the President?

Pastor Manning is one of the preeminent voices of our age. Little did I know that he was also a starred social scientist who specialized in voting behavior. Forget the "median voter" theory, Manning's wet dream single issue voting theory for explaining white women's political behavior will likely soon be featured in a special issue of The American Political Science Review.

Perhaps Pastor Manning has been watching too much American Pimp? Who knows. But he cuts a mean regardless of the source from which inspiration comes.

The Walking Dead Episode "The Suicide King" Reviewed: Upon Whence Tyreese Does a Mantan Moreland And Runs Away From a Crazy White Man Named Rick

The Walking Dead is back from its hiatus. The returning episode, Suicide King, was a solid return to form for the show. It featured zombies, the Governor, some shooting, a brotherly reunion, and some "father-son" time for Glenn and Hershel. In keeping with its earlier trajectory, the midseason premiere also featured the same tired treatment of black characters that has typified the show to date--a pattern against which I have repeatedly intervened.

The Walking Dead is a TV show prefaced on anxieties about white male authority. To that end, people of color are rendered either literally or symbolically mute (see T-Dog), limited by an informal quota to no more than one black male character on the show at a time (see the prisoner who was killed to make room for Tyreese), or typecast according to long-standing tropes: T-Dog was the black manservant butler and aide to the white characters; Michonne is a magical negress and near savage huntress who was introduced as a caretaker for Andrea; Tyreese appears to be the "reasonable" Morgan Freeman-like black man who is righteous and measured).

As compared to the rich source material wherein people of color are treated with respect, and have central roles in the narrative, The Walking Dead TV series is an exercise in racial and gender "heliocentrism"--this world is Rick's, and the show revolves about how white men and those in their orbit negotiate this fact.

I am likely not alone on this point: I will continue watching The Walking Dead in order to see what happens next. However, I am increasingly disappointed by the rushed plot, questionable decisions by characters, and the show's unapologetic wallowing in the white racial frame (as well as the White Gaze) in terms of how black folks are developed in the narrative. As such, I have some questions about the show that, if so inclined, you can help me work through.

Is Christopher Dorner "The Spook Who Sat by the Door?"

Christopher Dorner is a canvas onto which we can project our national anxieties and obsessions. Christopher Dorner is racialized as an African American. He is gendered as a male. Christopher Dorner represents authority, conformity, and State power, as a (former) police officer. Those identities are intersectional.

For some, Christopher Dorner is a hero who dared to speak truth to power and rode roughshod over the LAPD and those he identified as his enemies. To them, Dorner has Eric Hobsbawn's "social banditry" flowing in his veins.

For others, he is a criminal who went "crazy" and offered up a manifesto like those "liberals" have a habit of doing. As with Trayvon Martin, what you see may largely be a function of where you sit politically, ideologically, and racially. Ultimately, Dorner is the object who represents the intermixing of several long-standing American cultural and historical narratives; he is a nexus, a focal point for the birth of many memes.

Dorner is the African-American, "hulking, 270-pound former college football player" who is armed and dangerous. He is the 21st century echo of the "giant negroes" who attacked "innocent" white people as heralded in sensationalistic American newspaper headlines in the late 19th and early to mid 20th centuries. 

Some others would like to argue that he is Bigger Thomas or Tarantino's reimagined Django. 

I would suggest that Drnner has little if anything in common with the former, Richard Wright's iconic character, except for being black and male. 

Jamie Foxx's Django is more compelling. However, while the allusion is pithy and timely, Dorner is not fighting the white slaveocracy, living out a fairy tale slavery counter-factual, and willing to die (and kill) for the love of a good woman. Dorner and Django are both forces of vengeance; however, their goals are not the same. Those differences are not to be overlooked.

Is Christopher Dorner either a bad nigger or a badman, two of the classic archetypes in Black (American) literature and folklore? 

Is the LAPD's Rogue Cop Christopher Dorner "The Hate That Hate Produced?"

I’m not an aspiring rapper, I’m not a gang member, I’m not a dope dealer, I don’t have multiple babies momma’s. I am an American by choice, I am a son, I am a brother, I am a military service member, I am a man who has lost complete faith in the system, when the system betrayed, slandered, and libeled me. I lived a good life and though not a religious man I always stuck to my own personal code of ethics, ethos and always stuck to my shoreline and true North. I didn’t need the US Navy to instill Honor, Courage, and Commitment in me but I thank them for re-enforcing it. It’s in my DNA.

The story of Christopher Dorner's war against the LAPD is tragic for all parties involved. Christopher Dorner was hurt. Christopher Dorner was betrayed. Christopher Dorner was apparently let down by the system he believed in. Christopher Dorner is well-trained and dangerous.

From what I can gleam from his manifesto Christopher Dorner is also a truth-teller of sorts--he has also apparently had a psychotic break. His actions have drawn blood; he has betrayed his "tribe"; and his words are also verbally lethal.

For those reasons Christopher Dorner will most likely be killed by the LAPD officers hunting him at this very moment.

In reading Christopher Dorner's manifesto, there is so much loss and anger apparent. Nevertheless, most of the manifesto is "logical" and internally consistent when taken on its own terms.

What happens when you are the Other and buy into the system--and then realize that the system has no use for you? What happens when you take the pill to stay in the Matrix, to work with hegemonic power, and you realize that you are just like one of "them?" Racially marked and expendable? Useful until such moment that The System deems you otherwise? Donner seems to be responding to these difficult questions.

One of my favorite examples of how Power works in the real world is that of the elephant who runs amok at the circus. When elephants are babies they are chained up. At a certain point the elephant comes to accept its captivity as normal. One day the trainer removes the chain. The elephant continues to act as though it is confined and under control of its human captor. At some point, a particularly bright and self-aware elephant will realize that it is no longer chained up. In that instance, the elephant will snap. It will turn on its captors with vicious rage and anger. The elephant has realized the lie and fiction; now, it is time for payback.

At his heart, Christopher Dorner seems to be a black pragmatist, who as indicated by his manifesto, has come to realize some cold, hard, truths about the Los Angeles Police Department and the nature of (white) institutional Power.

But, Christopher Dorner also seems like a sincere and practical black conservative with a dose of Black Pragmatism added to the mix for flavor, one who thought himself special, overly identified with an abstract belief in what America should be as opposed to what it is, drank the American Exceptionalism Kool-Aid, and then realized that this "patriotic" and "real America" bonafides were insufficient to shield him and others from racism (and those folks materially and psychologically invested in it).

However, Dorner could also be a frustrated liberal egalitarian who took to heart the promise of the American creed and Doctor King's vision in the abstract. But, Dorner's hopeful vision could not be reconciled with the reality of day-to-day institutional and personal racism.

Either way, he had an epiphany, breaking the chains of "normal" behavior, deciding to lash out against his foes both real and imagined.

We cannot forget that Christopher Dorner chose to join a historically racist organization known as the Los Angeles Police Department. For that reason, I have no sympathy for him. Racism is not about skin color per se; ultimately, racism is about racialized power and those who identify with it.

Christopher Dorner is in They Live mode right now. As such he is probably telling himself that, "I got news for 'em. There's gonna be hell to pay. 'Cause I ain't Daddy's little boy no more."

Christopher Dorner's potpourri of politics, personal wisdom, invective, and raw ideology, in the form of a manifesto from a man whose mind is just pouring itself onto the page, is hard to put into one box of neatly limited and bounded themes.

However, the following few paragraphs were particularly striking. 

What did the LAPD make in Christopher Dorner? And are there other Christopher Dorners out there, waiting for their moment to strike?

Terminating officers because they expose a culture of lying, racism (from the academy), and excessive use of force will immediately change. PSB can not police their own and that has been proven. The blue line will forever be severed and a cultural change will be implanted. You have awoken a sleeping giant. 

I am here to change and make policy. The culture of LAPD versus the community and honest/good officers needs to and will change. I am here to correct and calibrate your morale compasses to true north. 

Those Caucasian officers who join South Bureau divisions (77th,SW,SE, an Harbor) with the sole intent to victimize minorities who are uneducated, and unaware of criminal law, civil law, and civil rights. You prefer the South bureau because a use of force/deadly force is likely and the individual you use UOF on will likely not report it. You are a high value target. 

Those Black officers in supervisory ranks and pay grades who stay in south bureau (even though you live in the valley or OC) for the sole intent of getting retribution toward subordinate caucasians officers for the pain and hostile work environment their elders inflicted on you as probationers (P-1′s) and novice P-2’s. You are a high value target. You perpetuated the cycle of racism in the department as well. You breed a new generation of bigoted caucasian officer when you belittle them and treat them unfairly. 

Those Hispanic officers who victimize their own ethnicity because they are new immigrants to this country and are unaware of their civil rights. You call them wetbacks to their face and demean them in front of fellow officers of different ethnicities so that you will receive some sort of acceptance from your colleagues. I’m not impressed. Most likely, your parents or grandparents were immigrants at one time, but you have forgotten that. You are a high value target. 

Those lesbian officers in supervising positions who go to work, day in day out, with the sole intent of attempting to prove your misandrist authority (not feminism) to degrade male officers. You are a high value target. 

Those Asian officers who stand by and observe everything I previously mentioned other officers participate in on a daily basis but you say nothing, stand for nothing and protect nothing. Why? Because of your usual saying, ” I……don’t like conflict”. You are a high value target as well. 

Those of you who “go along to get along” have no backbone and destroy the foundation of courage. You are the enablers of those who are guilty of misconduct. You are just as guilty as those who break the code of ethics and oath you swore.