Social Engineering

The words “social engineering” has become something dirty and awful and avoidable at all cost, at least to many social, economic, and/or political conservatives these days.  Ask hard line conservatives if social engineering has a place in our social makeup and more than likely you’ll get something along the lines of how dreadful it is that the United States government does anything that promotes or discourages our behavior as a collective.  In fact, a long time staunch conservative tried to argue the idea that any change in America’s healthcare arrangement, be it a requirement that everyone who’s capable gets some kind of medical insurance or be penalized, or changing the Medicare agreement so that individuals under 55 years of age pay a substantially higher contribution to their medical care, would be a form of social engineering.

But on the flip side of the coin, keeping things the way they are, with healthcare availability for the average American becoming more and more prohibitively expensive is a form of social engineering in itself.  In fact, it is social engineering if you do anything to control it, it is also social engineering if nothing is done to influence it.  The fact of the matter is that we are damned if we do and we are damned if we don’t.  They are both will have a powerful influence on whatever happens to the populace.

If the government participates in the social engineering in a way that helps to assure the vast majority of people in the country has medical coverage that has got to be a good thing.  Medical coverage could very well be considered a form of prosperity.  And we all like to sell the idea of America being a land of opportunity like no other where everyone will have a chance for prosperity.  We just don’t want the government to actually create such an environment of prosperity for everyone.  That would be a form of the horrible social engineering that we have to avoid at all cost regardless of the benefit to the people.  Such avoidance for the sake of avoidance makes about as much sense as shooting one’s self in the foot for the sake of shooting one’s self in the foot.

There’s little doubt that social engineering with a negative outcome should be avoided.  That would be considered a no-brainer.  Promoting social ideas that reinforce ideas of racial discrimination is social engineering run amok.  That’s the kind of social engineering that people should be avoiding at all cost but somehow we constantly see evidence that this kind of influence is alive and well and the government has been, is, and more than likely will be front and center of its development.  Such social development is akin to shooting one’s self in the foot.  It’s truly unfortunate that so many people don’t have a problem with this form of social engineering.  Disparity along racial lines has become such a fact of life in America that not only do most of us are willing participants, we are willing to defend it to our very bitter end.  To change our racial status quo now would be reverse discrimination and that would be a form of social engineering that would be too unfair to the descendents of people who benefitted from the grossly unfair social engineering that has drained so much from the black community.

To be honest, we don’t force our federal government to avoid social engineering at all cost.  In fact, as a collective we embrace our government’s participation in social engineering like a mother embraces her child to her bosom.  We eat it up.  The social engineering along racial lines has already been mentioned.  To that, we have used our government to keep gays and lesbians from serving openly in our military.  We use the government to define what the social contract of marriage should be.  Our government tells us that corporations and global conglomerates operating within the United States have the same rights as individuals and deserve the same opportunities to influence our politics as the next guy.  Social engineering is used to influence who we think should be running our government from the oval office for four years at a time, so that person can hire the next Supreme Court Justice for life with views on what should be the makeup of our social engineering.

But now that some of us want to do something good, provide healthcare in a way to even out some of the lumps of discrepancy in our social order, we want to pretend we have to run away from social engineering in the form of healthcare as if it is something new and dangerous to the American way of life.  The idea that people are trying to convince us that social engineering is something that needs to be avoided is in itself a form of social engineering to influence our thinking to cause a specific outcome.  The idea that we should not have any kind of social engineering goes against everything that America has become.  Providing a form of healthcare that benefits the masses is social engineering, and so is just about everything else our government does.

Protesting The Elimination Of Osama bin Laden

Before we get to the meat of the matter let me say that I wouldn’t give anything close to a frog’s fat ass if the so called master mind of terrorism Osama bin Laden was denied his basic human right to a trial by the United States Navy SEAL team that put him out of his, and ours, misery.  Mr. bin Laden went on record to say that he did it, not once but over and over again each and every time he released a video, and to give the people of the United States his middle finger.  He patted himself on the back for killing thousands of people and did his best to cause the destruction of the United States.  I may have issues with the racially disparate culture of the United States, but this man would no more care if I was one of those poor souls that just so happened to be in the World Trade Center that fateful September day.  As far as I’m concerned, the man got what was coming.  If you’re going to live by the sword then be prepared to be disemboweled.  It’s an open and shut case.

President Barack Obama and a majority of people feel that justice was served.  Maybe that’s true.  But some people feel very differently.  Some people are disappointed that the SEAL team didn’t try harder to capture the master of disaster and bring him back to the United States for a very public trial.  Some people feel that denying Mr. bin Laden his day in court is akin to the United States turning its back on due process and true justice and such.  These people feel like we need to reexamine ourselves and determine exactly what’s important.  And while many political conservatives will line up to cry boo-fucking-hoo for poor Mr. bin Laden, people who have a lot to gain by criticizing Mr. Obama for anything that can be construed as poor judgment, there are a lot of people who criticize the decision to kill the terrorism king pin on sight.

But if American due process was so important to so many people why is it so many people continue to die at the hands of law enforcement without due process and these people don’t say jack?  Where are these people when some black man is gunned down by police without due process?  Where were these people when Sean Bell was killed on his way home from a bachelor party on his wedding day?  Where were these people when Martin Anderson was killed in a Florida boot camp?  Where were these people when Tarika Wilson was killed by a police officer while holding her one year old son who was also shot but survived?  Where are these people when black people are shot and killed by cops on a daily basis?

Conservatives may point to Mr. Obama and say his leadership is lacking because he was able to find Mr. bin Laden and snuff him out without the assistance of making such a decision without the benefit of a judge, jury, prosecutor, defense, and a public spectacle that could keep the news media drooling for months or even years until the end only to arrive at the inevitable verdict of guilty.  The same people that argued that it would be a travesty of justice to give the Guantanamo Bay prisoners a trail in anything other than a military court may risk a guarantee guilty verdict now claim that Mr. bin Laden deserves an opportunity to fight his punishment.  But that’s nothing more than the most sour of grapes because their team represented by George Bush Jr. couldn’t pull it off.  And it should also be pointed out that by snuffing him out quick in a Jack Bauer’s 24 Hours style the Navy SEALs saved the tax payers a huge chunk of change.  If these protesting conservatives were honest they would put aside the phony outrage.  Just goes to show some people will do anything to score political points when the other team is riding a wave of popularity.

But what’s the point of people who really think that justice was somehow disregarded when two bullets entered Mr. bin Laden’s skull or wherever they struck his meat bag?  Why in the world would they protest the death of a man who gives praise to the chaos he sowed on an international scale and don’t say a single thing when a black woman holding her baby is murdered by police?  They will protest the death of a terrorist and won’t say a thing when police actually shoot through the baby to kill the woman who was actually innocent, going to school and trying to make a life for herself and for her family.

If people honestly wanted to protest the lack of justice, they didn’t have to wait for the horse and pony show that is the death of Osama bin Laden.  Anyone who protests this man’s passing sans some high profile trial is just somebody taking an opportunity to bring attention to his or her self.  If they really cared about justice they would protest the fact that the cop who shot Oscar Grant got a two year sentence while seventeen year old Genarlow Wilson got a ten year sentence for having oral sex performed on him by a fifteen year old girl.  If people were so concerned about America’s lack of justice, they would realize that we don’t have to go half way around the world to protest the death of a master criminal.  The injustice that is part and parcel of the American way of life happens every day somewhere in America’s black community because quite frankly people simply do not care.  People protesting the elimination of Osama bin Laden as some form of injustice are doing nothing but reminding us how little we think of black people.

Just Stopping Doesn’t Stop It

It was John F. Kennedy that said, victory has a thousand fathers but defeat is an orphan.  A lot of people are patting President Barack Obama on his back for achieving that which never happened after two terms with the previous administration.  Despite all the rhetoric dripping with bravado and promises to chase the man to the fiery gates of hell, despite all the torture that wasn’t torture because somebody said it wasn’t, and banners covering aircraft carriers proclaiming mission accomplished, Osama bin Laden was able to evade capture by President George Bush, Jr.’s administration.  But barely twenty five months into his successor’s turn at the wheel, Mr. bin Laden has finally met what many might consider his just desserts.

However, this doesn’t mean Mr. Bush’s supporters, who coincidentally serve double duty as Mr. Obama’s most fervent detractors, don’t have something to crow about.  Some of these people insist that it was only the continuation of policies and procedures initiated by Mr. Bush and continued under Mr. Obama that led to Mr. bin Laden’s demise.  The baseless assumption, as if any of their perceptions have a foundation of logic, is that Mr. Obama couldn’t or didn’t or wouldn’t think of changing anything because he felt that the policies that couldn’t find the master of disasters for just about eight years were working just fine.  Why mess with failure?

But to be honest, it is quite possible that the Bush supporters might have somewhat of a point.  After all, the people that were looking for Osama bin Laden under Mr. Obama’s watch could have started their search right where the people who did the same job under Mr. Bush left off.  It’s possible that they could discount a lot of leads that have already been discounted.  It’s possible that they could have operated off of tips obtained after that one hundred eightieth trip to the water-boarding lounge by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed at the hotel Guantanamo.

It’s a safe bet that the people who successfully found the world’s most wanted man didn’t start at ground zero when Mr. Obama took office.  And it’s a safe bet that although there were a number of policies and procedures that were rejected, a totally different set of policies and procedures did survive.  In essence, just because Mr. Bush didn’t have the follow through to see the job done doesn’t mean he didn’t influence the people who continued the job.  Just because Mr. Bush stopped doesn’t mean his policies stopped as well.  It would be impossible to separate what from what.  There is little doubt that what happened in the beginning had an impact on the outcome.

This is a wonderfully appropriate analogy for the institutionalized racism that has become part and parcel of America’s history, of America’s current existence, and of America’s foreseeable future and beyond.  The most complete and most encompassing affirmative action program ever known to this country, America’s enslavement of the descendents from Africa in order to give white people every undeserved advantage, the programs designed to give black people a sense of inferiority as only 3/5ths human as written in the United States Constitution, the laws of segregation that allowed blatant and open racial discrimination and hostility in the black community, did much to set the tone for race relations here in America.

We’ve made changes in the laws.  The Constitution no longer says that black people are only sixty percent the value of a white person.  We’ve passed laws that say discrimination is illegal and that racism is wrong.  For a while there, this country was able to use the courts to correct the damage done by America’s pervasive “white only” affirmative action program.

But the racial discrimination that this country was founded on didn’t stop just because somebody passed a law.  Yes, President Lincoln freed the slaves, but that did little to correct the fact that black people worked in this country for generations without compensation or without humanity.  Black people were still denied an education, justice, government representation, and protection under the law.  Black people fought hard for the legal right to vote.  But that didn’t mean some white bureaucrat could not implement nonsensical regulations to deny black people their legal right at the voting booth.  Yes we passed civil rights laws, but black people are still being discriminated against to this day.  How else could one explain why with every single measure of our social performance, as a group black people continue to lag behind white people?

The answer is that just like almost any and everything else, just because a person stops doesn’t mean the policies and procedures that were initially instituted stopped along with it.  America’s institutionalized racial discrimination didn’t stop simply because somebody stopped their blatant racism.  America’s racism runs deep and it runs long.  It permeates our social arrangement like the stars permeate the milky way.  So after so many generations of black people being discriminated against as if white people simply had the right to have every advantage, who really thinks that thinking, that way of life, simply stopped one day because somebody stopped?  If we really want to stop racial discrimination, we will have to work on it.  We will have to work hard and we will have to work for a very long time.  But that’s only if we could change the thinking that has become the foundation of who we are ever since the Africans were brought to America against their will.

Part Of The Problem

“I came across this article in a web browser because I was hopeing for some infinate responses/ reasoning for some issues. It really annoys me that the mentality some people take of white people are indebited to them for things that there ancestors were put through without it being something directly happening to them now and knowing nothing of my lineage wonder how they can single me out. I am respectful of all people, the world and cultures of vast variety fascinate me. I have lived in multiculture ghettos/projects and as i watch some people tear up things I wonder how can they complain about where they live because there making it tht way for themselves. It seems like respect and pride for the few things you have are not taught which leaves me to wonder why you make such an issue about situations which are in your control. I also look at the issues that the black communities home country is facing now and wonder how can you not appreciate your history more. There suffering ended yours, if you were in africa all you would have to look forward to is murder, rape, and famin. No food or clean water, your babies stolen from you and trained to kill your people. Surely you can find some relief in your ancestors suffering in america to realize this is a fate your family has escaped now in present day times. I never suggest that what happened to your ancestors was right, but the hatred that comes from this piece of history is what gets to me. If you want to lead the world into better opportunity for your people you need to come across as someone dignified who doesn’t teach hate in order to overcome, but love and forgiveness. Most of ancestors were poor, didn’t have slaves and some worked in the fields with the black slaves so when someone tries to tell me what my ancestors did my response is oh really did you meet them? you never know what a persons history is, where they came from, but all you should care about is where there going. My favorite black american in history is martin luther king because he had a dream of equality, he never wanted to berate people despite the way he was treated in the past he just wanted to move forward. It would be nice if we could move forward because together without hate we could accomplish so much more.” – Courtnee

Thanks for the feedback Courtnee,

A great deal of what you write might hold some relevance if we lived in Africa, or if any of it was true. But we live here in America. While we may share an ancestry with the people in Africa, those people are not the black community’s closest peers. In many respects, our closest peers are the other racial communities here in America. We share neighborhoods, a country, schools, a justice system, employment opportunities, etcetera. The black community shouldn’t have to look half way around the world to find somebody to compare our living condition with. White people in America don’t compare themselves to the white people in the former Soviet country of Georgia where better than half the population lives below the poverty line. Why black people seem to find solace for their living conditions by comparing themselves to the stereotyped plight of black people in Africa is beyond me.

And not everybody in Africa is out plundering their neighbor. That’s just more of the racist hype that a lot of people want to put on Africa’s shoulders. Many parts of Africa are very progressive. It is only because Africa was carved up like a slaughtered cow for Europeans to compete for colonization that Africa continues to suffer from the problems it has today. The vast majority of the world’s diamonds come from Africa, but that resource is carefully controlled by Europeans, the DeBeers corporation. I have met many Africans who exhibit intellect and compassion for their brothers and sisters who may be suffering from war and neglect in other parts of the African continent. The last thing that they would do is say that their life is better because they can point to someone else who is suffering through some kind of misery.

There is no excuse for anybody destroying their own neighborhoods or anybody else’s neighborhood for that matter. Such behavior has no place in our community. But just like the person who trashes their own neighborhood, too many blacks want to trash their own people. The trouble makers in the black community are not indicative of all black people. Like our white peers, we run the gamut of behavior. And while many of us have surrendered ourselves to the despair that comes with the black condition, others need to help raise the spirits of our brothers and sisters and do our best to instill pride in our neighborhoods and in ourselves. Standing back and pointing a condemning finger isn’t very helpful.

There are already too many non-blacks who are chomping at the bit, ready to blame the problems of the black community solely on black people. Through constant propaganda black people are told that they aren’t worth anything because black people don’t help themselves. We constantly see the image of black people playing second hand to white people in the vast majority of fictional depictions on television and in the movies. And for many, this constant downward pressure infects our thinking in a way that creates entire neighborhoods of people who develop a psychosis of self hatred that may manifest in ways that are unhealthy for the individual as well as for the community. And instead of getting the help that we need, we are more likely to get spat on and told to lift yourself up by your bootstrap while the rest of America bends over backwards to give rich people tax breaks so they can become even more wealthy.

White people don’t owe black people for what their ancestors did to black people’s ancestors. That’s a straw man argument meant to minimize the very real problems of the black community as nothing more than black people’s lack of ambition or of a strong work ethic or integrity or some other character flaw. The black people should be given the help it needs by this American culture that has taken so much from the black community since the day the first African was brought to North America in chains. When much is done to deprive an entire people of their humanity, there is much that needs to be done in order to restore that humanity.

America has never done anything to restore humanity to the black community. It’s not enough to end slavery and just tell everybody to go get jobs. The family of the people who have been enslaved should be compensated for the theft of the wealth that should have been wages for unpaid labor. It’s not enough to just end racial discrimination. Steps should be taken to restore the racial balance that would have occurred naturally if white people didn’t work so hard to make black people second class citizens in the first place. Because these steps, and other steps that were just important to correct the imbalance that was artificially forced onto the black community, were never implemented, America owes the black community the help it never received to correct the horrible crime that was fostered upon it.

And America is not just white people. It is far from that. America is a collection of a lot of people of different races. America gained a great deal with the enslavement of black people. America owes the black community a great deal. And as far as I know, black people are part of America, so we should step up to the plate to help our own just as much as anybody else. Otherwise, we are no better than the other people who point the condemning finger.  Otherwise, we are  just part of the problem.

Peace

“We must come to see that the roots of racism are very deep in our country, and there must be something positive and massive in order to get rid of all the effects of racism and the tragedies of racial injustice.” – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s book “Remaining Awake,” 1968

America’s Long Arm Of Justice

Any way you want to slice it this past weekend was a pretty good one for President Obama. When he released his long form birth certificate for the world to see, he pretty much took the wind out of the sails of those who would like to continue to make his citizenship a political issue. That happened Friday morning. On Saturday, his comedy routine at the White House Correspondents dinner was priceless. After pretty much ignoring the slams against his reputation and character by birther conspirators favorite Donald Chump, Mr. Obama put things back into perspective by reminding people that only big decisions Mr. Chump has to make was whether he was going to can Meatloaf or acting has been Gary Busey on his Celebrity Apprentice reality television show. Mr. Chump didn’t visibly react to the President’s roast which was a reaction in itself. While others could laugh at their own expense, Mr. Chump’s demeanor took on an “I’ll get you at recess” kind of tone. Dude had better invest in a thicker skin if he wants to compete for the President of the United States.

But the highlight for the President’s weekend has got to be his announcement to the world that what many might consider America’s number one nemesis was murdered at the hands of United States operatives. Out of the blue, after Osama bin Laden had pretty much fallen off the average American citizen’s radar, Mr. Obama announced that dude was capped in a compound in Pakistan. His body was retrieved and delivered to military examiners for verification purposes. And once it was confirmed, they immediately wrapped in a white sheet and buried Mr. bin Laden’s body at sea. When I heard the news I was flabbergasted.

I started laughing at the political implications. I laughed, not because Mr. Obama’s announcement preempted Mr. Chump’s lame television show with somebody getting fired. I laughed because unless he does something pretty asinine like holler for his bitches while slapping his dick around in a press conference, it’s a pretty safe bet that Mr. Obama is going to get back into the White House. I used to think that high gasoline prices might be his Achilles heal. But after becoming the Commander-in-Chief that can claim responsibility for the bold leadership that finally took Mr. bin Laden down, a lot of people are bound to gravitate to the man. After falling off the radar, a lot of people’s hatred for Mr. bin Laden came roaring back to life like a bionic foot fungus. And now, a lot of people that would’ve been more likely to spit in Mr. Obama’s tea are a little more likely to buy dude his favorite beer. Gasoline prices might go up, but that boy that got bin Laden might be our best chance to putting things right again.

The funny thing is that what has Mr. bin Laden’s death really changed other than giving Americans the chance to feel good about some warped form of good old fashion justice from America’s long arm of law? I saw the pictures of people cheering as if the team from their town just won the Super Bowl. People were chanting “U S A” like we just won some Olympic event from our old arch rivals the Soviets. America has finally gotten its justice? If people really think about it, the only thing those American operatives did was send the man to the grave a little ahead of schedule. The terror threat alerts won’t stop. We won’t be able to get on a plane without submitting to some kind of privacy violation. Nothing really changes. If he is indeed responsible for what happened that fateful day in September of 2001 then Mr. bin Laden truly changed the world, and not for the better. And now that he’s out of the picture, what’s next? The organizations he sowed have matured and will pick up where Mr. Obama left off. Mr. bin Laden might be gone, but his handy work will be here for many years to come.

For all his ability to survive for the much better part of ten years, Mr. bin Laden was relatively easy to eliminate. All you had to do was find him and all it would take was a single bullet to knock him off like a duck in a barrel. It’s lights out and game over. But the seeds that Mr. bin Laden has sowed will continue to bear fruit for a very long time. It’s like killing the tree after it has spawned a rainforest. Yes, it might feel good to say that you got that tree that started it all, but it’s going to take a hell of a lot of Roundup to get rid of that rainforest.

This isn’t to say that permanently putting Mr. bin Laden’s lights out was a bad or good thing. If the people in this country felt the need to exact their collective revenge on Mr. bin Laden by taking credit for sending him on his way to the next plane of existence then so be it. But now that that has been done, what’s next? All those resources that went into finding Mr. bin Laden now have to go to work to find the next set of bad guys. It might feel good to pat Mr. Obama on the back for a job well done. Quite frankly you won’t see me complaining that Mr. bin Laden is gone. But now that we can scratch his demise off our things to do list, it’s now time to set our collective sights on the next threat on the agenda.

Obama Gets Osama!!!

A little over nine and a half years after the attack that made his name known in American households from coast to coast and the entire world, President Barack Obama made the announcement that Osama Bin Laden is dead, killed by United States operatives in Pakistan.

Quick Notes 201105

Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Rumor has it that when he heard that Larry Bird is getting a statue from the Boston Celtics, basketball great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar starting feeling slighted because the Los Angeles Laker’s won’t provide him one. Is this a case of racial discrimination? Not really. Mr. Abdul-Jabbar really needs to get his ego in check. If anything, he should be happy for Mr. Bird.

Monday, May 16, 2011
Uncle Sam’s Credit

How the hell you max out a credit of more than fourteen trillion dollars? By going to war in two different countries while simultaneously giving tax cuts. Dumb!

Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Memphis Flooding

They don’t call it the mighty Mississippi for nothing. Osun pushes the river and its tributaries over their banks throughout the Memphis area. Another 100 year flood comes to a peak and is now starting to subside. I wonder how long it’ll take before we have another.

Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Osama Went For A Gun

The Navy SEAL that shot Osama bin Laden claims that he thought the unarmed mastermind of terror was going after a gun. Sounds like the typical excuse of a police officer for the murder of an unarmed suspect in the black community.

Sunday, May 1, 2011
Osama Bin Laden Is Killed!!!

Osama Bin Laden is killed!!