tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post5560345167084408721..comments2024-03-28T16:08:29.578-04:00Comments on Sardonicky: The Propaganda of Identity PoliticsKaren Garciahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15612731479365562803noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-83371863300401650882014-08-23T12:27:30.923-04:002014-08-23T12:27:30.923-04:00Denis--
I agree with David Simon's analysis t...Denis--<br /><br />I agree with David Simon's analysis that legalization of marijuana use and possession would be an inadequate solution.<br /><br />I'm talking about legalization of ALL recrecrational drugs: heroin, cocaine, opium, meth, ecstasy, EVERYTHING.Zeenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-33061337184444509682014-08-23T10:15:53.109-04:002014-08-23T10:15:53.109-04:00Speaking of identity, if not politics, is anyone e...Speaking of identity, if not politics, is anyone else wondering about what Obama said about Jim Foley's tragic beheading, particularly this:<br /><br />"No just God would stand for what they did yesterday and what they do every single day."<br /><br />Is he saying there is no just God??? Or that as Emperor of Earth he will not stand for what they did and enact some Old Testament revenge, therefore he is more just than God? <br /><br />ISIS has just successfully pushed Obama's Messianic button by laying the blame on him when they stated that he was personally responsible - bargain or beheading. Nothing is more dangerous than ego, and everyone knows that Warlord Obama's is giant sized which makes him a prime target for psychological warfare - the specialty of terrorists. Unlike missiles, drones, and bombs, that type of warfare is free of cost and limitless. <br /><br />It's interesting that the Obama regime has rebranded Al Qaeda as ISIS so they wouldn't have to admit (defeat) that they made them bigger and badder than ever, another lame attempt at ego defense. This is getting to be a very precarious situation.annenigmanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-55591231157178894312014-08-22T22:56:23.108-04:002014-08-22T22:56:23.108-04:00Legalize each and every recreational drug?
David ...Legalize each and every recreational drug?<br /><br />David Simon writes:<br /><br />“For many white families, marijuana remains the singular and most obvious point of vulnerability to America’s obsession with drug prohibition. Marijuana is the most basic and fundamental place where white, middle-class and affluent America intersects with the drug war. It is the place where many, many white families of economic means and political relevance encounter even the most moderate risk to their status and future. For the majority of that cohort, it is the only place where the drug war’s rubber actually hits any stretch of suburban blacktop.<br /><br />Marijuana is not the core reason for our crowded prisons, and the reform of marijuana laws is, at best, triage for a failed and dystopic system that will be given another lease on life once the politically relevant portion of white America is given a pass. Eliminate the drug war’s most fundamental perceived threat to the white middle class and the air is going to rush out of the growing national opposition with the drug war so fast that our heads will spin. <br /><br />Having removed much of the white, middle-class interaction with drug enforcement from the equation, those who are championing marijuana reform and ignoring the overall disaster of the drug war will be perpetuating the fundamental and continuing injustice, consigning increasingly-isolated poor people of color to the brutalities of the drug war for the foreseeable future. The game will still be the game for them, and a cruel and rigged game it will remain.”<br /><br />“When traffickers realize that sentencing guidelines demand twenty- and thirty-year prison terms, what results? Deterrence? Never. Given the penalties, greater violence against witnesses and underlings is rationalized, and juveniles – less vulnerable to draconian sentences – are recruited at younger and younger ages to man the corners. For our every war-like action in this dystopic prohibition, the corresponding escalation is certain and immutable.<br /><br />No longer content to merely blood and jail our own urban poor at record rates, we are now devouring the poor and desperate of a neighboring country, Mexico. Because it’s no surprise that Americans would brutalize and isolate our own poor, jail even the least violent of them in record numbers, deny them parole, destroy families and fill prisons and wreck state and federal budgets if we thought it even marginally possible that somewhere a middle-class or upper-class kid might not ever be handed a joint. And given that much, it’s even less remarkable that we are willing to support and fund such butchery among the poor and desperate of another nation altogether. After all, if we are willing to fight our drug war to the last inner-city American – if we are willing to turn our own ghettoes into no man’s lands and devour the men and women, children and families who live there in the process – why would we hestitate before fighting that same war to the last Mexican?”Denis Nevillenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-11271378090760406222014-08-22T22:48:29.193-04:002014-08-22T22:48:29.193-04:00Pentagon Hands Lucrative Guantanamo Bay Deal to No...Pentagon Hands Lucrative Guantanamo Bay Deal to Notorious Private Security <br />Company - <br />http://www.commondreams.org/news/2014/08/14/pentagon-hands-lucrative-guantanamo-bay-deal-notorious-private-security-company<br /><br />Another notch in their belts.Pearlnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-77827626445968982432014-08-22T21:06:57.284-04:002014-08-22T21:06:57.284-04:00Here, here Jay. well stated.Here, here Jay. well stated.Katnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-68483250958875644452014-08-22T18:57:14.983-04:002014-08-22T18:57:14.983-04:00Curb drugs? Or pass out money? Which solution is...Curb drugs? Or pass out money? Which solution is more likely to improve the landscape?<br /><br />We’ve seen so many decades of street violence, institutional corruption, caging and the murder (by both sides) of thousands upon thousands in the drug war. Still the trade expands; the war expands. <br /><br />I agree, legalization is an attractive option –– but only on chat clouds in the blue sky and as a diversion from the heart of the matter. Legalization is about as politically likely in the US and as remote in time as that blessed day when society converts to the vegan credo.<br /><br />The root problem is not drugs. It’s money. Money readily obtainable through jobs. The poor need paychecks coming in on a regular basis and sufficient to support a life far from the scary edge of the poor and near poor.<br /><br />I recall Jimmy Breslin saying years ago that you could tell at fifty yards which guy coming down the street has a job. The working man, in overhauls, avoids the jiving dudes on the corners. The working man isn’t looking for fun. On Friday afternoons he keeps a pay envelope deep in his pocket and he’s on the way home. The unemployed, on the other hand, wear uniforms not meant for work. They’re heading nowhere in particular and gravitate to mischief. What else is there if you don’t have a job? (Jimmy said it a lot better than that, but I can’t find his words.)<br /><br />There’s so much work to be done in this land. More training is not needed. Willing workers will cue up tomorrow in lines without end. Just work up a plan and start hiring. Get the flow of paychecks moving again to the bottom.<br /><br />Poverty is the problem; the solution is money. In the hands of the right people. <br /><br />Another thing Breslin used to say was that Rage was the only thing that kept him going in his line of work. Bootstrappers Obama and Holder lack that fire in their souls, and as the nation's top administrators their priorities are ass backwards.Jay–Ottawahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10360356126450612113noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-44442897834108263462014-08-22T12:07:01.942-04:002014-08-22T12:07:01.942-04:00I still think that the best way to empty America&#...I still think that the best way to empty America's prisons would be to legalize each and every recreational drug and make their production, sale and taxation the sole province of the federal government.<br /><br />This would put an end to the well-documented disproportionate sentencing of minorities for drug offences (<i> vis-à-vis</i> sentences meted out to white offenders)—as there would no longer <i> be </i> any “drug offences”—and largely destroy the criminal syndicates that are turning life in Mexico and Central America into hell for their citizens.<br /><br />Taxes from drug sales would be used for drug rehabilitation for those who want it, and for treatment of mental illnesses that contribute to the desire to use drugs in the first place.<br /><br />My guess is that our domestic property and violent crime rates would plummet, as well.<br /><br />Sadly, America will never become smart enough to understand that the best way to “win” the war on drugs would be to admit defeat and surrender.Zeenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-67292861197268518372014-08-22T10:03:43.142-04:002014-08-22T10:03:43.142-04:00I wish everyone in the world would read this excel...I wish everyone in the world would read this excellent piece By Karen.<br /><br />I loved the Kareem article in Time. Kareem is a brilliant and kind man who, due to his shy personality, is generally misunderstood.<br /><br />"The U.S. Census Report finds that 50 million Americans are poor. Fifty million voters is a powerful block if they ever organized in an effort to pursue their common economic goals. So, it’s crucial that those in the wealthiest One Percent keep the poor fractured by distracting them with emotional issues like immigration, abortion and gun control so they never stop to wonder how they got so screwed over for so long." ~ Abdul-Jabbar<br /><br />Thank you Karen for sharing your brilliant writing.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13885335230151254931noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-7376344666748139422014-08-22T10:03:10.962-04:002014-08-22T10:03:10.962-04:00Adolph Reed saw the propaganda of identity politic...Adolph Reed saw the propaganda of identity politics coming as far back as the mid-90′s:<br /><br />“In Chicago, for instance, we’ve gotten a foretaste of the new breed of foundation-hatched black communitarian voices; one of them, a smooth Harvard lawyer with impeccable do-good credentials and vacuous-to-repressive neoliberal politics, has won a state senate seat on a base mainly in the liberal foundation and development worlds. His fundamentally bootstrap line was softened by a patina of the rhetoric of authentic community, talk about meeting in kitchens, small-scale solutions to social problems, and the predictable elevation of process over program -- the point where identity politics converges with old-fashioned middle-class reform in favoring form over substance. I suspect that his ilk is the wave of the future in U.S. black politics, as in Haiti and wherever else the International Monetary Fund has sway. So far the black activist response hasn’t been up to the challenge. We have to do better.” <br /><br />- Adolph Reed’s 1996 assessment of Obama, shortly after Obama won his first Illinois state senate race, “The Curse of Community,” Village Voice, January 16, 1996Denis Nevillenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-14273357703305485172014-08-22T08:14:56.367-04:002014-08-22T08:14:56.367-04:00Denis,
White people will talk about racism in the ...Denis,<br />White people will talk about racism in the <i>proper context</i>. The proper context is when discussing the "obstacles" that Obama faces.<br />Paul Krugman passed the baton to some academics from Princeton that threw some numbers and words into a blender and came up with the NYT op ed "Obama cares. Just look at the numbers." The complacency and tone deafness of the op ed is matched only by that of the commenters. What I get from the whole mess is the important points are that 1)Obama has not effectively blown his horn or is too modest to do so(I replied that Obama is quite willing to blow his horn-- "I'm really good at killing people. But that hasn't been printed)<br />2)That the most important thing for the readers is that their choice or vote or whatever has been "vindicated".<br />Lives actually affected by poverty seems like an afterthought (or perhaps not even a thought) to many of the commenters.<br />Katnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-9233543277697800482014-08-21T22:25:33.783-04:002014-08-21T22:25:33.783-04:00Eric Holder as the next Dim candidate for Presiden...Eric Holder as the next Dim candidate for President?<br /><br />About the same as Obama.<br /><br />Start rounding up the voters!Cirzehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07070125217972397204noreply@blogger.com