[img]583|left|||no_popup[/img]First of two parts
Many who say President Obama hasn't done anything for the poor and middle class generally break into two categories:
• Self-serving demagogues out to mislead people for their own gain, and
• Victims of the demagogues who are basing their opinion on what they've been told since most obviously haven't read anything beyond the sports page in 20 years.
While the former are disgusting, at least they’re trying to better their condition. The latter are sad and disgusting. They are too lazy-minded to keep sufficiently informed enough to protect their own families.
What is so disappointing is that they are highly educated. They can tell you the name and birthdate of the batboy who cleaned the bat used to score the winning run in the 1936 World Series. Yet they can't or won't spare a couple minutes to gather the necessary information to make sure their families aren't victimized by demagogues.
They don't understand that corporate fascists are poised to take away everything we've worked all of our lives. The GOP has rigged the system to allow international corporations to pour unlimited amounts of money into buying the people who are to protect us. They have mounted a brutal assault on our educational system to render us too uninformed to understand what's going on. ,They have organized a campaign to obstruct our right to vote. They are trying to abolish the Fair Labor Standards Act to destroy our labor unions. Finally, they are campaigning to end Social Security and Medicare. In short, the Republican party is seeking to undermine our lives from cradle to grave. So-called “defenders of the poor” only can focus on attacking Obama, and implying on sites like BlackBlueDog.com that black people are intellectually challenged for feeling obliged to vote Democratic. Really? Are these people idiots, or do they think we are?
Something is terribly wrong. The American people should look closely since the so-called intellectuals profess to be black “scholars.” The black community should be curious about what is going on.
One Explanation
Maybe, though, these people aren't malevolent, just not as bright as their hype has led us to believe, simply wannabes who, while being educated, were actually being indoctrinated out of their connection with reality. That used to happen so routinely that the old folks had a name for such people, “educated fools.” Such people were so toxic the old folks were always on the look out for them.
When I went to college, my grandparents were proud of me. The first thing my grandmother said was, “Eric, don't let them educate the I wouldn't. It has been a struggle. Nonsense and the worship of talking dead folks are so pervasive in our educational system that the propensity for independent thought has been all but abandoned. That is what has happened to Prof. Cornel West and his followers. They believe that since West is a product of Harvard and Princeton, privy to the thoughts of dead white folks, his water is wetter than our own. It is not. Dr. West is just as capable of being a damned fool as anyone else. On this case, he is.
Perhaps it would be more effective if, instead of trying to re-educate these people into understanding that corporate fascists are trying to enslave our families, we should tell them that the fascists are poised to abolish ESPN and the Soul Train Awards. Then they would have an incentive to become the true political scholars they profess to be. They don’t have to be brilliant to recapture reality. Look it up on Google under “Wake up, fool!”
What has Obama done for the poor? The short list:
1). He stopped the nation from hemorrhaging 800,000 jobs a month under President Bush.
2). He stopped the nation from going into a second Great Depression.
3). He saved the American auto industry.
4). He was the first president to pass healthcare reform in 70 years.
5). He created more jobs in 27 months than Bush did in seven years.
6). While he was doing all of the things above, he managed to get Osama Bin Laden in his spare time.
Bush spent seven years, upward of a trillion dollars, and killed or maimed thousands of American troops in that effort. Obama pulled it off with two helicopters and a handful of men.
George W. Bush and Dick Cheney’s incompetence and greed in this matter destroyed or disrupted thousands of poor and middle class families, while the rich had to look at their ever-swelling war profits just to know that the nation was involved in conflict. The war had no impact on them because the rich no longer send their kids to die for this country. That is a job for poor folks. Now they want us to pay for the war as well.
Bush and Cheney's mismanagement of the economy and the war in Iraq played a major role in what got us into this economic quagmire in the first place. We didn’t hear a word from critics like Tavis Smiley and Cornel West during George W. Bush’s fiasco. Where were they?
Obama didn’t complain about that at all. He didn’t have time to complain, to respond to the ridiculous charges of envious black-on-black racists. The president is an adult, with adult concerns. He was, and is, too busy cleaning up the mess left behind by the r ear-splitting silence during the Bush administration of those who suddenly have discovered a newfound concern for “the least of these.”
(To be continued on Thanksgiving Day)
Eric L. Wattree is a writer, poet and musician, born in Los Angeles. A columnist for the Los Angeles Sentinel, the Black Star News, a staff writer for Veterans Today, he is a contributing writer to Your Black World, the Huffington Post, ePluribus Media and other online sites and publications. He also is the author of “A Message From the Hood.”
Mr. Wattree may be contacted at wattree.blogspot.com or Ewattree@Gmail.com
