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Thanks to Sean Blackmon and Jacqueline Luqman for hosting this discussion of Malcolm X, Netflix and Black Buying Power on By Any Means Necessary.
The NH Primary results are in: Bernie wins as expected [@ 26%], but Mayor Pete.B comes in a close 2nd [@ 24%]. Amy.K comes in a surprisingly strong 3rd place [@ 20%], w Liz Warren coming in w a weak 4th place showing that failed to even crack the 10% mark, & ‘Ole Joe ‘Record-Player’ Biden’ takes a gut-punching 5th place behind Warren.
– I admit to being a bit surprised that US Senator from Mass St Liz.W failed to do better in her neighboring state of NH, I’d thought she’d come in 2nd place behind Bernie, or at-least a strong 3rd place. IMO she may well be in real trouble, even more so the ‘Ole Joe’ ‘Record-Player’, because Liz.W like Mayor Pete.B & Amy.K have weak support w Black & Latino voters & the next Dim primaries are in Nevada & NC, & then on to ‘Super-Tuesday’ [which Liz.W might not even make it to Super-Tuesday]. The fact that Liz Warren whose name has been on the national stage since before 2012, has been up-staged by not just 1 but 2 unknowns [I’ve never even heard of Mayor Pete.B or Amy.K before last yr], & neither of them are strong among Black & Latino voters, is bad-news for Liz.W. But IMO that’s the price she’s paid for presenting herself as a kinda-sorta female [alternative] version of ‘Bernie Lite’.
– Thus from Nevada to NC, thru to ‘Super-Tuesday’ things are shaping-up to be a horse-race between Bernie & ‘Ole ‘Record-Player’ Joe’, w billionaire Mike Bloomberg lying in the cut w his Big-Bucks. So how long can ‘Ole Joe.B’ ride on Obama’s VP coat-tails? Blacks [& Latinos, too] have got multiple reasons to drop ‘Ole ‘Record-Player’ Joe’ like a hot-rock, so how long will their nostalgia for Obama keep ‘Ole-Joe’s’ POTUS hopes alive? And IMO Mayor 0.01% billionaire ‘Wall-St Mike.B’s’ track-record as NYC ‘stop & frisk’ Mayor is just as bad if not worse vis-à-vis Blacks & Hispanics. IMO he like ‘Ole Joe’, Mayor Pete.B, Amy.K, & even Liz Warren are all in it to block Bernie from the Dims’ nomination as much [or even more so] than they are for blocking Repug Trump from a 2nd term.
– Speaking of Mayor Pete.B & Amy.K, there’s more reasons for Blacks [& Latinos too] to not vote for them, than the fact they’re basically unknown to most Black & Latino voters. It turns out [like the Billary Clintons], the more I know about Mayor Pete.B & Amy.K the more I don’t like them, despite the [phony] smiles & Mr / Ms ‘Clean’ Imaging. It’s bad enough they’re so-called ‘moderate-centrists’ [ala the Clintons, Obama & Al Gore] w Mayor Pete.B’s being funded by at-least 40 – 50 billionaires [clearly indicating he’s a Wall St candidate], & despite his young fresh ‘gay’-face, dude’s an ex-military intel officer- So he’s likely a military industrial intel surveillance-state complex candidate to-boot. Then there’s Mayor Pete.B’s quite problematic firing of South-Bend’s 1st & only Black top-cop, at the behest of some white cops who apparently were caught on tape making racially-charged comments, which the Black police-chief was looking into at the time.
– And now it’s come to light that Amy.K as Minneapolis MN DA, likely helped railroad a young Black teen into a life-sentence for a murder he almost certainly did not commit. No wonder Amy.K quickly returned a campaign contribution from ex NYC DA Linda {un}Fairstein of Central Park-5 infamy, who also helped rail-road 5 young Black & Latino youth into serving yrs in jail for a brutal rape that none of them were guilty of [Note in Amy.G’s case the young man Myon Burrell has been locked-up for 17 yrs now & counting].
IMO out of the whole lot of Dim POTUS candidates, the only 2 I’d even give any serious consideration of voting for are Bernie & Tulsi Gabbard [some might say why not Liz.W, but IMO there’re some ‘issues’ w her too].
Which brings me to the letter a group of so-called ‘progressives’ addressed to the Green Party, urging the GP to adopt [yet again] a so-called ‘safe-state strategy’. The letter’s signatories include the likes of Noam Chomsky, Bill Fletcher, Norman Solomon, Jeff Cohen, etc. Notably they issued this letter before even the Iowa caucuses. All of these ‘characters’ [I having a lower opinion of the lot of them, including Chomsky] consider themselves ‘leftist progressives’ who are Bernie supporters. Yet their letter not only pushes the same lame failed ‘safe-state’ ‘lesser of 2 evils’ {non}’strategy, but dredges-up the lame blame the Greens blame-game yet again. Blaming Nader for Gore’s {non}’loss’ in 2000 [conveniently forgetting that George Bush Jr & ‘lil bro’ Jeb, & Jeb’s ‘girl-friend’ hi-jacked FL from Gore in broad day-light to which the SCOTUS Court then put their stamp of approval on & handed the election to Bush- Not to speak of the fact that Gore FAILED to win either his &/or Slick Willy Clinton’s home states of TN & AR, which if Gore had not committed such a blunder & won either or both TN &/or AR, he’d been in the Oval Office regardless of FL & the SCOTUS Court!!
– Even more specious is these so-called ‘leftists’ [actually Dim apologists] then tried to Blame the GP’s 2016 POTUS candidate Jill Stein for Billary HRC’s blowing it in 2016 to such a REPUG as the Trumpster-Dumpster, resulting in his solid electoral-college victory [tho dude lost the popular vote to Billary HRC by almost 3mn], ala 2000 Redux when Bush Jr won by jus 6 EC votes even tho Gore won the popular vote by 550K. Yet apparently these faux pseudo-‘progressives’ ain’t demanding either the abolition of the EC, nor even for its reform [IE: eliminate the winner-take-all format in all states & go w each state’s EC votes being allotted proportional to the % the popular-vote won by each candidate]. No they prefer to try to scapegoat Ms Stein the same SOS way they did Nader back in 2000, even tho the stats & facts show that Billary needed to win ALL of these 3 key states Wis, Mich & Penn St [which she narrowly lost all 3 by a combined total of 75K – 80K votes], yet only 1 of those states [Mich] can anyone say w any real certainty would have likely gone to Billary had Ms Stein not run there- IE: It’s unlikely Billary HRC would have won Wis had Jill Stein not run there because at-least 72% of Ms Stein’s votes would have to have gone to Billary for her to have won Wis; & for Penn St it’s even more unlikely cause at-least 94% – 95% of those who voted for Ms Stein would have to voted for Billary instead for her to have won there [& that presumes NONE = 0% of those who voted for Ms Stein in Wis & Penn St would have voted for Trump]. Then there’s the fact that those Wikileaked DNC Emails showed that Billary’s campaign wanted & Trump in the race & even encouraged it, because they knew Billary HRC had so many negatives, they figured Trump would be easier for her to beat than say Jeb Bush or Kasich!! And those Wikileaked DNC Emails also proved what most already suspected, that the DNC actively worked to undermine Bernie’s 2016 run. Yet apparently none of that counts for these pseudo-‘progressives’, it’s far easier to blame the Green-Party for the Dims bumbling & stumbling, while letting the Repugs just hi-jack POTUS elections [in 1980, 2000, 2004 & 2016] right from under their noses.
– Also note that tho these pseudo-‘progressives’ claim to prefer Bernie [or Liz Warren as a kinda female Bernie substitute], they’ve made it clear that L2E {non}’strategy’ means voting for any Dim including ‘Ole Joe ‘Record-Player’ Biden’, or Mayor Pete.B or Amy.K [& IMO even Mayor 0.01% billionaire ‘Wall-St Mike’ Bloomberg, too], no matter how problematic their track-records are.
PS: The other thing these pseudo-‘progressives’ [any damn-Dim will doers], conveniently omit as(s) they blame the GP 2016 POTUS candidate Jill Stein’s run for Billary HRC’s loss, is that 53% – 55% of white-women voters voted for that notorious ‘nookie-grabbing’ Repug Trump vs their fellow white-woman candidate Billary HRC!! Had 53% of white-women voted for Billary instead of Trump [or IMO even if she had split white-women’s vote w him 50% vs 50%], she’d been elected POTUS in 2016 & there’d be no need to even have this debate!!
PS-2: Let’s not forget that Ms Stein practically begged Bernie to join her at the top of the GP ticket in 2016 [IE: he’d run as POTUS & she’d run w him in the GP’s VP spot], after the Billary Clinton controlled DNC sabotaged Bernie in the Dim primaries -But- Bernie chose to back Billary HRC instead, urging his ‘Sandernistas’ to vote for Billary [to NO avail].
PS-3: Ms Stein practically drug Billary HRC [kicking & screaming] into backing Ms Stein’s demand for a recount in the crucial states of Mich, Wis & Penn St. Ms Stein took a lot of criticism for that, even from her VP running mate Ajamu Baraka -But- IMO it was good that she did so, so that those who voted for Dim Billary [especially Black & Brown voters] could see just how easily the Dims just roll-over & let the Repugs HI-Jack POTUS elections from them in broad-daylight. I mean it’s bad enough those sorry-ass Dims won’t even take a stand for themselves, but they also won’t take a stand for those voters who back them either!!
Bottom-Line: Nader didn’t cost Gore the Oval-Office in 2000, Ditto for Jill Stein in 2016 vis-a-vis Billary HRC. Billary ran a piss-poor campaign, failed to campaign in Mich & Wis [which obviously cost her], & even encouraged the Trumpster’s candidacy [talk about being too damn clever by half, & ultimately shooting your own self in the damn foot]. But instead of owning-up to her blunders in 2016, Billary HRC blames / scape-goats Bernie, Ms Stein, Putin, etc, etc, etc…
please excuse the crudeness of these observations or questions, but its, yet again, another feverish electoral season.
on “subsidiary” issues: (which together, collectively, are of the utmost importance in realizing their divisive properties) if humanity is appreciated as a whole, and we are to continue, to a point, a reliance on ‘collectivism’ and to a lesser degree bargaining. when after so many defeats, so much compromise, so much untruth, will we walk away? walk away from illusions of power/ illegitimate authority, from coercion… moving to the apolitical. toward/ to a cooperative existence? when will humanity realize that organizing and preparing for best outcomes in a system (rigged affair) will always have divided, or systemically favorable results?
from the highly discussion, whether it’s malcolm’s legacy or bernie’s lack there of, black buying power, to netflix/ corpoartism, to an imaginary two party system, rights movements, to revolutionary uprisings, and as another example- to seemingly purposeful base representations or interpretations of sunni, shia relations. arent these are all entirely too base a way to understand needs of people AND isnt this the intent of the our self imposed systems of control?
its that which we strive for that also destroys us? our progress always seems more a negation of ourselves, or our humanity. is this the price for a seat at ‘the table’?
isnt it important to always revisit who established this process? why has it been accepted, maintained in ever transitioning colors and different clothes and architectural styles? is the system’s seemingly constant presence part of a nature/ nurture conversation? even as we seem to request a stronger explanation and discussion of socialism, isnt this just yet another lesser of two, or three, or four evils? the most significant feature of “progress” inherent to humanity’s systems of authority/ power seem most concerned with dividing and conquering; an ever morphing mass of inoperable inequality
when do we walk away from the table? or do we just stay put and say NO. practice a bit of extinction. when do we discuss moving toward something better or intentionally not moving toward anything at all?
more narrowly, the foundations of the us republic are conquest through genocide, slavery, racialisation, and inequality: colonial, imperial, predatory capitalism. when do we all accept culpability in our participation in the fantasy of it’s reform, come to terms, stop bargaining, and move on by not participating economically/ politically in the us apartheid state? isnt it more apathetic continuing our current behavior(s) than not?
maybe the questions/ suggestions arent productive and more importantly, maybe the answer truly wont ever be televised or on a server…
thank you, Dr. Ball.
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