Friday, November 30, 2018

"...Against Threats Foreign & Domestic (but ESPECIALLY domestic)"

Cartoon depicting the critical need for protecting all
citizens' Right to Bear Arms, to prevent a tyranny-by-terror
from unfairly advantaged groups.

Muhammad Rasheed - You know what happens when we are not actively engaged in the high-stakes chess match of the political process? Our rivals and enemies position themselves to advantage, rule over us, and create a new normal for our lives.

The historic record demonstrates that isn’t good.

If you aren’t actively involved in your own community, doing your part to ensure your special interest group and the similarly-minded groups within your party’s collective receive what you need from your government bodies, then you’ve put yourself in danger. For any of the swarming piglets pushing & shoving to latch onto the sow’s teat to decide to opt out of the process, it will mean death. Either through starvation, or one of the rapidly growing gluttonous siblings will simply eat the piglet. The new normal for the piglet switched from being elbow-to-elbow within the active fight to nigh-hopelessly weakened, exploitable snack.

When the frustrated Black American makes such comments as “The 2nd Amendment was never meant for us!” it means that we’ve accepted the new normal created for us by the traditionally hostile special interest political group who has seized power. It isn’t true. We’ve endangered ourselves by accepting our rival’s programming—using the force of our own creative narrative to interpret his message for him to us and our descendants—and now we are demoralized and cynical. Disinterested in the political machine because we believed our enemy’s narrative that it wasn’t for us anyway, we seek only to find our own corner somewhere so we can ‘do us’ and hope that the dominant power’s goons will find something else to do rather than harass us for that day.

Of course this is what it was like to be Black during both the chattel slave era and jim crow, so where’s the progress? Progress doesn’t come through magic and wishing, it comes from consistently staying in the active battle. Fortitude, patience, courage are all tools that come with that kit and it is our job to push and shove and latch onto a dripping sow’s teat, too (I’m Muslim, so I’m really grossing myself out with that analogy, but I’m pushing through it for you. You’re welcome.). The Constitution guaranteed me this right, and in defending my right I am by default defending the scope of what the Constitution says I get to have as recognized under the Republic’s Law.

“But the Constitution wasn’t for Black folks!” Nonsense. There were powerful Black people at the beginning of the nation’s founding who helped draft the Constitution, who helped define the high-ideals that we all have the right to reach for. There were always strong and determined Black people along the way who’ve used the laws themselves to score major milestone victories for Black people. Did many of the white founding fathers own slaves? Yes. Some were downright despicable in numerous ways, but the issue wasn’t so much one of hypocrisy, but of raw greed. They created a United States of America that was designed to be flexible, designed to be amended by more enlightened future citizens. They KNEW slavery was wrong—conflicting as it did with both their religious principles and with the “land of the free” rhetoric—but were determined to use the racist economic institution to ensure their own family fortunes and pass the filthy and immoral buck of anti-Black systemic racism onto the next generations to solve.

And solve it we must. We have to be engaged. We HAVE to be in it and acting like U.S. citizens, acting like we belong and in fact, built this great nation, too. When your right to life, liberty and  property are threatened by domestic terror then you play the Right to Bear Arms card and protect hearth & home from barbarity just like every other U. S. American citizen has a right to, and you do so unflinchingly. Recognize that anyone at all telling you it is wrong to defend yourself from the unreasonable savagery of unreasonable men is an enemy. Use your energy, use your fire to actively engage in the political process ALL THE WAY, and fill your belly with the portion of rich, over-thick, fatty sow’s milk that belongs to you.

Kelly Erickson - The cartoon is good, but whooo, the post is SO good. Yes and yes.

Tom Deyoung - Who were the black Americans to help draft the constitution?

Muhammad Rasheed - Not literally helped write the document itself necessarily, but free Blacks who were part of the discussions—like in Benjamin Banneker’s letter to Thomas Jefferson—who helped shaped the tone, force & scope into what it was to become.

Tom Deyoung - I think you mean Declaration of Independence. Jefferson was in France for the constitution.

Muhammad Rasheed - I mean the discussion had by the intellectuals of the day, from both races, who contributed to the greater discourse that was drawn upon to build the founding documents of the nation. This is very important for the progress of race relations, since it’s not only rarely discussed, but the dominant powers have a history of hiding/downplaying stuff like that to protect the anti-Black economic system.

Tom Deyoung - when it comes to race relation I completely agree with you, I believe we must recognize the path taken to get here, and respect each other instead of assuming. I honestly believe it is in human nature to notice patterns then label those patterns to groups of people. To combat racism we must all fight our instinct to look for patterns in differing races.

Muhammad Rasheed - The historic record is definitely full of real patterns of behavior, by all groups and for multiple reasons. I don’t think it’s healthy to pretend that’s not a real thing under the name of progressive race relations, when to deny the phenomenon and pretend it isn’t real would serve only to benefit the dominant group at the expense of the traditionally disenfranchised.

Fenris Lyulf - More Than Slaves: Black Founders, Benjamin Banneker, and Critical Intellectual Agency by LaGarrett J. King | Clemson University

Tom Deyoung - Yes, I did look up Banneker to get a better understanding.

Kristen Greenberg - I'm confused, is this Republican or Democrat? It's on the War Donkey, but pro gun and pro constitution and pro equality

Steve Marck - All Americans should be pro-gun rights, pro-constitution, and pro-equality. Unfortunately, neither party lives up to that very well.

Kristen Greenberg - I agree :) I was surprised to see this on TWD as most liberals are not pro those things normally though.

Steve Marck - True, and they should be called out for it when it happens.

But neither are conservatives. Conservatives often conflict with the first amendment, the fourth, fifth, heck, mostly they like the constitution when it suits their pre-conceived idea of what they’d like the resultant policy to be.

And both parties struggle with equality. Affirmative action is inherently racist, sure, but conservatives aren’t angels on issues of race (quite the opposite), and actively seek to suppress minority rights from the voting booth to a laundry list of others. Plus the rhetoric we’ve heard recently, well, it’s disgusting.

These new “spaces” in Quora could result in more echo chambers, or we could push to hold the wings on both sides accountable to the center so that Quora works to help put the country back together instead of helps tear it apart. I like that they let independents into both, and even those of the opposite side. I just hope we see constructive rhetoric instead of the pettiness of the first few months. Trolling, strawmen, graffiti, I hope we can find a way to raise the bar.

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