Wednesday, September 23, 2009

The Emergence of Racial Apologists in America

The appearance of Racist Apologists has been expected now that the national discussion on racism has been joined. Racial Apologists differ from their less articulate brethren in they attempt to offer extended convoluted loquacious polemics to remove the obviousness of racist behavior from any conflict exacerbated by race. It should be noted that Racial Apologists in the American publishing world is well over a century old, harkening back to the antebellum period of American history. In later years the debating opposition that Frederick Douglass faced were all highly articulate Racial Apologists (RA). Recently, I have become uncomfortably aware of the increasing presence of RA's in the commentary sections of published articles involving racial conflict or postings of reports covering organizations espousing racial hatred. More on the modern re-emergence of the RA phenomena below the fold.


Even though the appearance of RA's in the commentaries sections of articles or posts covering race is a new tactic, RA’s have already adopted a "party Line" argument that often appears quite prominently in their commentary. This RA argument is essentially political in nature and states the following, “If you disagree with anything that Obama says, the liberals will call you a racist!" The goal of the RA's is to flood the commentary section with long winded theoretical discussions top heavy with irrelevant rebuttals to any post or article dealing with the race problem in America. This has a depressive effect on those readers who are interested in reading the thoughts and ideas of people who have experienced racism in their daily lives or people who sincerely want to remove the curse of racism from American society.

One website I recently visited had a very long in-depth post concerning the impact of race on the proliferation of sub prime mortgages that ultimately contributed to the collapse of the housing market. The commentary section for this article had been invaded by one individual RA whose postings accounted for over one third of the commentaries appearing in the section. The current increase of RA activity over different liberal/progressive websites is a harbinger that signals extremely difficult times ahead for progressive/liberal use of the internet as an organizing tool for the upcoming 2010 elections.

Thus far the RA's cannot prevent articles whose topics address the racial issue in America from being published on the internet. However, as described above, they have found that they can flood the commentary sections of such posts with their regressive views. I have called these tactics DOD commentaries, where DOD stands for “Denial of Discussion”.
(In many respects the function of DOD is similar to the denial of service (DOS) attacks that hackers use to shut down internet websites.)


What is the overall effect of these DOD tactics? Each author of a post, yes even those who publish rants, is looking for meaningful feedback from his/her readers. Feedback is very important enriching and learning experience for any author. DOD tactics discourage this exchange between reader and author, as the source of feedback, the commentary section has been effectively commandeered by persons (RA's in the case of racial posts) with radically different ideological agendas.

It is important to note that the use of this tactic need not be confined to posts/articles concerning race. Obviously DOD tactics could be used to prevent discussion of any controversial subject, such as Apartheid in the Israel - Palestinian lands of the Middle East, or Genocide and Rape in Darfur, etc. Whereas the internet covers the globe, one should not expect that input to commentaries can only originate here in the United States. Progressives have a history of demonstrating that once riled up, Progressives can get going and deliver the goods. But Progressives also have a history of falling asleep again once they have secured their victory. We caught the right wing conservatives off guard in the Presidential campaign with our unique use of the internet as an organizing tool. Now the right wing conservatives are back on the job, working on ways to disorganize our websites and frustrate communication in our portion of the blogesphere.

At this point, I would like to go off topic just for a moment…...
Years ago, before the advent of the internet, online communication was limited exclusively to point to point operations with dialup modems. The majority of these modems were 300 bit per second (37.5 characters per second) acoustic coupled modems. To use these acoustic coupled modems, you had to manually dial the phone number of the trunk line to the target server, and wait for the modem whistle to indicate that the target server had picked up the phone. Once the server answered and sent out its high pitched whistle, then you had to manually place the telephone headset onto the modem in the correct position to allow the communication exchange to proceed.

In those days the main facility for communications were known as bulletin boards, which supported alphanumeric ASCII text only. Bulletin boards were initially setup by individuals and some computer hardware mail order businesses who were selling components to hobbyists building their own personal home computers. For example, you could log onto a memory supplier’s bulletin board and browse the types of memory chips that were in stock and on sale. Not long after the advent of the bulletin board, computer kit builders were posting technical questions concerning either clarification of engineering specifications or the applicability of certain devices to their respective hardware. As the market for computer hardware expanded so did the informational storage capabilities of the billboards. This eventually led to a new class of billboards totally dedicated to special interests, having absolutely nothing to do whatsoever with the building of home computers. Obviously many of these new social bulletin boards were dedicated to political interests and were nicknamed BOF’s for “Birds of a Feather” boards. The conversational structures of these BOF boards were similar to the commentary sections of Blog posts appearing on the internet today.

Initially, in the bulletin board world, anyone with a computer with modem software, a modem and a phone line was free to participate in the message exchanges. However, as with all new forms of innovation, it was no time before the profane and the ugly raised the nasty side of text messaging, and soon registration became a mandatory requirement on all boards. However, registration merely required a participant to provide a “user name”, similar to the registration requirements of today’s internet sites. The next step in the evolution of the bulletin board was to include “chat rooms” where users could post and comment on anything they desired. Some chat rooms opened online on their own, totally independent of any bulletin board.

One day while browsing various chat room sites, I discovered that the John Birch Society had opened up a bulletin board with a chat room. Being a curious liberal, I visited their site and logged onto their chat room, mainly as an observer. Within a few days, their chat room exploded into controversial arguments between the Birchers and others accessing their chat room. The following week I found that although I could still access their Bulletin Board, I could no longer access the chat room. A message would come up stating, “Access to the Chat Room is now restricted. For registration please write to the Supervisor, in care of ##### #####, #### Street, #####, Massachusetts.” The information that I was able to gather concerning this restricted chat room was that the room was made available only to verified members of the John Birch Society. However, certain members of other organizations whose ideology was in strict accordance with the Birch society were granted password entry at the discretion of the supervisor. Needless to say, I never visited that particular chat room again.

Returning to the topic…..
I personally view this earlier pre-internet experience as a paradigm for the infiltration problems that are starting to show up in the liberal/progressive sector of the internet Blogesphere. The infiltration of RA’s (or any other opponents of the progressive/liberal agenda) actively onto liberal/progressive websites constitutes a serious challenge to the continuing task of providing accurate strategy information for progressive causes via these channels. Whereas the American progressive/liberal stature is virtually non-existent in the MSM, we must jealously guard these proven political channels as being crucial to our survival and influence in immediate scheme of things.

Some liberals will argue that access to our website by the general public regardless of their ideology is a 1st amendment right and should not be restricted in any fashion. Some feel so strongly in this regard, that they will champion this belief even if it eventually results in the demise of the entire liberal/progressive sector in this country. On the other hand, those who believe there must be some restriction when the presences of destructive tactics such as DOD actions are verified on the website will immediately encounter the question, “What can we do about it?” It certainly is not enough to leave recognition of such behavior to the site’s webmaster, and a complaint system designed to identify a person or persons of negative intent is bound to run into fairness issues.



At the beginning of this post I was addressing just the problem with RA infiltration of racially orientated post/article commentary sections. However, from a more general perspective once properly registered anybody can start posting Blogs. Assume that a large number of conservative opposition people register and start posting Blogs, each of which addresses a substantive matter but is written so as to sporadically interject conservative ideology/rhetoric statements in a very subtle manner into the Blog text. Will the webmaster be able to provide all of the filtering necessary to stop such posts? I raise these issues now while there is time to intelligently discuss them. We can ignore these problems only at our own risk and peril.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Presidential Myopia

A line from the Music Man…..
"Brothers and sisters here in River City we got ourselves a real problem..."
Regarding Barack Obama’s myopia, I recently read an article covering an interview with Barack Obama's sister. During the interview she attempted to answer the question as to why in the face of obvious continuing racial insults, Barack continues to cling to the argument that the public animus directed at him is not racially motivated but due to other reasons. She said that Barack attended Punahou School, a private college preparatory school as a youngster in Hawaii. According to her this school is well known among the locals for producing graduates that are highly passive and submissive when confronted with racial conflicts with white people. She said she believes it is this behavior in Barack that many white people misclassify as being "super cool".

Assuming Barack's sister has a correct assessment of President Obama's personality, and after an extensive nine month high powered smear campaign, the right wing MSM TV Hosts (Beck, Dobbs, etc) have concluded that for some reason, they have no need to fear any repercussion from the Obama administration, then we all are in a heap of trouble!

Jimmy Carter had to say it for Barack, because those rose colored Hawaiian glasses put on Barack's young psyche has disconnected him from racial reality in America. Now I have met a lot of black men who felt and behaved exactly like Barack when it came to matters of race. But these men did not hold the responsibility of the American Presidency in their hands, so in this respect, their respective attitudes were at the most inconsequential. So as President Carter put it, "racism is once again bubbling up because some people refuse to accept the reality of a black man as President of the United States". Carter's response to a question about the surge in racism in America was essentially a clear unequivocal warning not only to the White House but to the Congress and State Houses all over the country.

When the question concerning President Carter's statement that the expanding animus toward the President was due to racism was asked at today’s White House press conference, the Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said, "the President DISAGREES with President Carter and doesn't believe he is being attacked because of his race. The President does not believe criticism comes based on the color of his skin"

Brothers and sisters here in River City we got ourselves a big problem...."
Currently the issue is one of control!! No government anywhere in the world would allow direct widespread public expressions advocating insurrection and calls for overthrow of the Federal Government to go on as long as the Obama administration has without taking strong direct suppressive action. There's a time for ice cream and there's a time for castor oil, and unfortunately for the Obama administration its castor oil time.






I realize that some after reading the foregoing will snark and leave comments of disbelief calling for tin foil hats and such. To these folks I say, pray stay a little while longer and take my short trip down memory lane.

I am old enough to recall life in the United States during the Joe McCarthy period. Congressman McCarthy turned his dedicated mission to root out communism from every aspect of American life into a blatant grab for dictatorial power. Initially, McCarthy was laughed off as another Congressional clown wasting the taxpayer’s money on another stupid crusade. However, as his power grew and people started losing their life long careers simply because of a possible association that they may have had with some person in college or elsewhere, a person now publicly branded either as a communist or a fellow traveler. In order to make his dream into a reality, McCarthy knew that he would need absolute control over the American military, so he turned his anti-communist probe onto the General Staff of the U.S. Army. At this point the entire nation was nervously watching the drama unfold down in Washington. The Army desperately needed counsel and picked Harvard Professor, Joseph Welch, to represent them before McCarthy’s committee. For a nation cowered by fear, Joe Welch’s dry wit and encyclopedic knowledge of law broke McCarthy’s threatening grip upon the nation, and in my estimation saved America from a McCarthy dictatorship. Historically, Joe Welch was the right man at the right place, at the right time and he saved the nation. I have seen absolute fear grip this nation twice in my life and the McCarthy era was one of those times, so I know that this nation is highly susceptible to fear tactics.


I am certainly aware along with most of the Nation that the President’s plate and work schedule is overloaded with high priority issues demanding attention. But in the overall scheme of things, nothing, in my opinion, outranks the peaceful preservation of domestic law and order and internal security. The right of all Americans to go about their daily lives without the fearful prospect of encountering brutal mob violence is a sacred trust guaranteed by the Constitution; and the unique priority status of that right shall not, yea must not be bargained away or abrogated no matter how temporary in the commerce of political necessity or political expediency.

Without direct and immediate action to shut down this racially inspired growing micro-rebellion, the administration stands to lose control over law and order in many sections of the country in the near future. The current situation is made even more precarious by the teetering economy. If the economy experiences another downward spiral and employment climbs toward 15% nationwide, the ranks of the newly resurrected militias will explode with the rush of new recruits. The Obama administration needs to read the current issue of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Report which details the return of the Militia Movement in the United States and its current explosive growth. This is serious stuff, remember the Oklahoma City bombing? Mr. President it's time to take off those rose colored glasses and take a long hard look at America's current reality.

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Thursday, September 10, 2009

Media Obfuscation of American Racism

The word racism has recently reached the unspeakable, unprintable status similar to the “N” word, and in the future may simply be referred to as the “R” word. This fact has been brought into sharp clarity by the voices in the mainstream media (MSM) as they attempt to report on the widespread (but in the minority) group of public school administrators refusing to broadcast the President’s national “back to school” message. (I shall refer to these local school administrators and principals who refuse to show the President’s speech as “refuse-nicks”.) Since three Presidents broadcast similar back to school messages, namely Kennedy, Reagan and H.W. Bush, without controversy or boycotts; the situation engenders a simple but embarrassing question, “What is it about this President that is creating such a plethora of boycotts of his speech in some states around the nation?” It is obvious to even the most casual observer that there is only one thing different about our current President and that is the color of his skin. There is no alternate interpretation of this situation. It is a situation uniquely created by American racists. More about the media’s steadfast refusal to report this as racism follows below.

We have all heard the old expression, “If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is a duck.” Webster’s definition of racism unquestionably describes the reason for the causal tension between yesterday’s Presidential national back to school message broadcast, and the attitudes of the public school refuse-nicks standing in the schoolhouse door to prevent their children from seeing and hearing this articulate black President as he delivers his message of encouragement. Never-the-less columnists, commentators, and talk show hosts in the MSM while condemning the actions of the bigoted refuse-nicks as silly, stupid, capricious, and over the top, still struggle to provide their viewers with some sort of rational reason as to what would cause these parents and administrators to so adamantly oppose the broadcast of the President’s speech to the nation’s schoolchildren. The direct quotations from these refuse-nicks have proven to be logically unintelligent, such as “It’s a waste of taxpayer’s money to have our schoolchildren sit through a speech by the President!” The other argument frequently reported is, “The President has a hidden agenda which will be used to indoctrinate our children.” These statements were still being expressed even after the entire text of the speech was published online at the White House web site.

Racism is a learned phobia and American racism has its legalized institutional roots in the American enslavement of African natives. This makes the legal codification of American racism specifically pertaining to Americans Negroes older than the American Constitution. Every American racist is Negrophobic and like many other mental illness conditions, recognition of the manifest behavior leads to conscious recognition of the disease. However, like many other mental conditions, the treatment steps can be painfully uncomfortable. Therefore, MSM’s reluctance to use the “R” word may be grounded in their own personal Negrophobic sensitivities. So the media mavens desperately struggle to find the right “code” words that will sufficiently address the situation, but at a much lower racial sensitivity level.

Many decades ago W.E. DuBois declared, “Racism is the white man’s problem”. The reaction of some school boards and administrators to the scheduled address to the nation’s school children underscores DuBois’ words in flaming gold. The Negrophobic reaction to the idea of a brown intelligent articulate President speaking from the stature of the highest governing office is more than these racist citizens can tolerate. All reason has been completely discarded as they sacrifice their own respect for the office of President of the United States simply to mollify their hatred of the color of his skin. In the blindness of their bigotry they fail to realize the psychological damage and confusion they are inflicting on those students in their charge.

It is my sincere hope that the names and locations of these schools administered by these “refuse-nicks” has been recorded and preserved for prosperity. This demographic data is important for historical tracking of the future waning tide of American racism. The election of Barack Obama has given the nation an opportunity for a serious start of the long overdue eradication of the slavery engendered scourge of American racism. However, the question remains will the American media ever become courageous enough to open a meaningful public discussion of racism that is so critical for America’s 21st century.

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