[News] Obama and the Pyshic Auto-Shrink-Wrapping Called Race in America

[Anti-Imperialist News]

March 20, 2008
http://www.counterpunch.org/garcia03202008.html


When Reality is Too Much


Obama and the Pyshic Auto-Shrink-Wrapping Called Race in America

By MANUEL GARCIA, Jr.

A truly good man is not aware of his goodness,
And is therefore good.
A foolish man tries to be be good,
And is therefore not good.

A truly good man does nothing,
Yet leaves nothing undone.
A foolish man is always doing,
Yet much remains to be done.

When a truly kind man does something, he leaves nothing undone.
When a just man does something, he leaves a great deal to be done.
When a disciplinarian does something and no one responds,
He rolls up his sleeves in an attempt to enforce order.

Therefore when Tao is lost, there is goodness.
When goodness is lost, there is kindness.
When kindness is lost, there is justice.
When justice is lost, there is ritual.
Now ritual is the husk of faith and loyalty, the beginning of confusion.
Knowledge of the future is only a flowery trapping of Tao.
It is the beginning of folly.

Therefore the truly great man dwells on what is real
and not what is on the surface,
On the fruit and not the flower.
Therefore accept the one and reject the other.

Lao Tsu (6th century B. C.), #38, Tao Te Ching (translation by Gia-Fu 
Feng and Jane English; Vintage, 1972)



Barack Obama has delivered a speech on race in the United States that 
was both anxiously anticipated and now widely proclaimed as a major 
event not just of the current presidential campaign season, but of 
American politics generally and thus presumably of American history.

The tactical purpose of the speech was to distance Obama from Pastor 
Jeremiah Wright, of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, which 
Obama has attended. Pastor Wright had made comments in the past, 
which were recorded, about Black history and Black sentiments about 
this history. These homilies were unvarnished and factually accurate, 
hence unflattering about the role of White society in Black history. 
Naturally, the political opponents of Barack Obama fanned the racist 
flames of White fear by publicizing these supposedly intemperate 
rantings of an angry Black man (note my use of triggering code words) 
in an effort to discredit Obama in the eyes of his potential White 
voters; guilt by association. As an aside on a point of logic, note 
how political dirty tricksters rush (race?) to insult the 
intelligence of their target audience as an integral part of their 
underhanded methodology to woo them.

Tim Wise at <http://www.counterpunch.org/wise03182008.html>Counter 
Punch and Glen Ford at 
<http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=559&Itemid=1>Black 
Agenda Report each wrote clearly about the essential reality of this 
incident. What follows is a gloss on these articles, written as a 
response to correspondence from a Black brother of mine overseas.

The only thing Bill Clinton ever got right was stolen from Marx: 
"It's the economy, stupid." And so it is with the Great White 
Religion, the racism is part and parcel of an exclusionary economic 
policy. Israel mirrors this with its supposedly Jewish-only, 
Jewish-first policies as masks for its naked genocide of 
Palestinians. My definition of genocide is the attempted permanent 
removal of a victimized racially-labeled population from real estate 
being stolen by an aggressor of different racial-label 
identification. We might be close to this in post-Katrina New 
Orleans. It is always a real estate swindle masked as 'culturicide.'

I find many Blacks to be so resentful (with complete justification) 
of our joint history, that they are not always clear and rational 
about the nature of the existing situation. Yes, there is 
White-on-Black racism (along with many other forms), but its root is 
not primarily simple emotional hatred, rather it is both fear (of two 
kinds: xenophobia and the historical guilt over slavery that Thomas 
Jefferson admitted to) and greed. The mania for control is driven by 
greed, and the essential fear is the anxiety over the loss of that 
control. Ascribing White-on-Black racism to simple emotional hatred 
is the most comfortable overt explanation, as is clear from its 
prominence in the depictions of racism in popular culture (e.g., 
movies). The dominant culture finds it comforting to imagine that 
racism is confined to people with ungovernable hatreds and 
undisciplined minds. This relieves the majority who are comfortable 
with inequitable economic arrangements from any responsibility for 
the inevitable consequences of those arrangements; and even from any 
reproach in the eyes of recognized public opinion.

Racism is an instinctive tool to capture resources and deny them to 
competitor "species." This is why Obama is backed by the Wall Street 
bankers. To them, he is a tool to safeguard their fortunes against 
the rising tide of public resentment. They are excellent 
psychologists, and psychic abusers of the popular Black mind. They 
know, through their experts in PR (advertising and the management of 
the public mind), how the popular Black mind pines for symbols of 
"hope," for action heros on basketball courts and on the big screen 
-- Will Smith saving the fantasy worlds Hollywood conjures with smoke 
and mirrors. Any hero in any arena can be produced to distract and 
quell the masses, so long as it is not an actual hero in any arena of 
actual power.

Look at our Black "symbols" in those real arenas today: Clarence 
Thomas, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell; they've done precious little 
for Blacks in America, and have cashed in handsomely for precisely 
that reason. Most blacks are "supporting" (deluding themselves over) 
Obama for the same reason that older spoiled whiney white women are 
"supporting" Hillary: identification, they want what they see in the 
mirror to be honored, to be loved, to get attention, to be in control.

Obama may have some decent intentions beyond his blatant careerism, 
but clearly the careerism is primary, and for that he must reassure 
his sponsors that he can quell the public. The job he is applying for 
is to keep public affairs calm enough so the same select businesses 
and the same select gamesters can continue to make the same 
government-backed mega-profits. In business circles, this is called 
"maintaining a stable business environment." Obama says "change" but 
his sponsors know this to mean "stability." "Change" is what we'll 
get from the billions we are forced to pay into taxes and inflated 
prices that profit all too few.

Populations that have histories of being oppressed are easily duped, 
because they are so desperate for "relief," for "salvation." This is 
why I labeled the PR machinery behind White power, including the 
White power with the Obama nameplate, as "abusers." They are preying 
on Black prayers, they are hooking many desperate fish with baitless 
flashy lures. Someone like Wright states the plain facts, and it 
messes up the con-job of the PR hucksters luring the wanting masses. 
It also messes up the pleasurable delusions of those self-same 
wanting masses, having psychic orgasms they don't want stopped and 
which are based on the swallowing of political placebos.

Reality can be too much for many people, especially when they have 
gaping holes of unfulfilled wants leaking psychological vitality and 
robust rationality out of their psyches. For every type of victim 
there is a highly specialized predator, especially when the prey form 
in vast herds. So it is in America, which worships in the faith of 
mega-profits from mono-culture, at the Church of Ford, as Aldous 
Huxley penned for Brave New World, where the continent-wide herds of 
the wanting are vaster than ever were those of the buffalo, and where 
the profits to be gained by directing this herd are vaster than the 
dreams of Croesus. Who better than Barack Obama to galvanize that 
attention of the wanting public mind? The genius of the American 
psychological predation industry is that it herds its prey in as a 
mass rather then chasing it down individually. Our Croesusian 
aristocrats will probably discipline themselves sufficiently to give 
the public the lure it has favored because he resonates and reflects 
so many of its fondest fantasies. The people have spoken, and our 
gods will guide us accordingly.

True believers in the Obama campaign may find this analysis 
repellant, because those gripped by an irrational faith do not like 
to see the dissection of their fantasies. Obama, they might say, is 
better than McCain, and we should back Obama to overturn 
Bush-Cheney-McCainist control of the Empire. But if so, we still have 
the Empire, and Obama has come to prominence precisely because of a 
demonstrated loyalty to that Empire, not because of a revolutionary 
fervor to topple it. The lesser evil is still no good for far too 
many people and, empire being intrinsically racist, it will 
disproportionately injure disfavored minorities.

So Obama is "change," Obama is "hope" when we shrink-wrap our minds 
with elastic and impenetrable delusions. Obama is not Thurgood 
Marshall, nor Martin Luther King, Jr., nor Malcolm X, which is why 
you see him in our televised Pantheon. This is also why Jeremiah 
Wright must be dispatched with contempt from public consideration, 
and why Barack Obama must elevate himself stratospherically from his 
once upon a time pastor, and once upon a time flock.

I think commentary on racism is most incisive when it keeps its focus 
on the economic dimension -- which I believe is central -- rather 
than the emotionalism about "hate" wallowed in to excess by 
infotainment for the unthinking. It is better to focus on the intent 
and the purposes of the racism, which are to create and maintain 
economic disparities. From such focal points, one can advance policy 
and law enforcement arguments to eliminate these imbalances. Then, 
you are speaking about the here and now in a clear, unvarnished and 
rational manner. This can be extremely hard-hitting without being 
pitiful and cloying. This is in the spirit of Malcolm X and Frantz 
Fanon, and that is momentum, that is self-respect, that is pride. If 
we got enough of this, it might also be revolution.

Manuel Garcia, Jr. retired from a nuclear weapons and physics job, 
and is writing an engineering textbook about solar energy. His email 
is <mailto:mango at idiom.com>mango at idiom.com.




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