Sometimes I have a hard time understanding liberals. Most everyone on the left will agree that what’s happening in Iraq is wrong, Afghanistan is falling apart, we shouldn’t go into Pakistan, torture is wrong, everyone is equal and so on. I talk to these people and we agree for the most part; I get looks for my criticisms of Obama or for hoping the Empire collapses, but besides that we are almost always in agreement. Then I do something silly and bring up the humanitarian crisis that’s happening in the Middle East. Israel is slowly and methodically starving their neighbors to death. They are blocking all borders; making sure that the Palestinians do not get food, water, gasoline, or medicine. The same people who were almost systematically destroyed sixty-five years ago are turning around and murdering thousands of people per year- including children and many, many innocent civilians. It’s obvious – it’s in the news if you look for it – that Israel has bigger and better weapons, a stronger army, and the backing of the Western world for the most part. A Palestinian child throws a rock and he or she is shot in the head by an adult Israeli in a tank; how is this justified? I try to be nonviolent and think of solutions for the Palestinians; obviously firing shitty little rockets at one of the most armed countries in the world is pretty damn asinine. However, how can a people nonviolently resist when they are running out of food, electricity, and medical supplies? When they are being tortured in front of the world but no one is coming to help? When the world police have just elected a new president who is supposed to restore equality on the world, but then goes and names Rahm Israel Emanuel to his staff and fights for Joe “Kill Everyone Who Looks at Israel Wrong” Lieberman to keep his position as Chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security. These people need our help; we need to stop blindly supporting Israel for whatever reason. I am Jewish, my grandparents survived the Holocaust, some in my family didn’t, I understand the reasons behind the state of Israel, but there is no way I can purposely shut my eyes to what’s going on today. If anything, it is people like me who have a responsibility to stop my people from committing genocide on another group of human beings. It’s that time of year when school is getting overwhelming, so I’ll leave it at this.
Archive for November, 2008
Racists and Obama
I am still not an Obama supporter; if the elections were held again today I still wouldn’t vote for him because I still think he represents the system, which needs to change. I will be listing yet another reason why now is the time – assuming we don’t want the next four years to be very similar to the past eight – to start pressuring Mr. Obama, but there is something I need to talk about first. I am not an idiot; I know that this country is based on racism. The settlers killed anyone who wasn’t like them because they believed they were better than anyone with different colored skin or strange beliefs. There was slavery for a long time, followed by Jim Crow laws, and there still remains a huge amount of unfairness toward non straight, white, males. Almost every war the US has fought in has been based on racism. I even understand that there is a lot more racism alive in the hearts of people (especially older and southern people) than it appears. I knew that when Obama got elected it would upset a great amount of people. What has happened over the past couple weeks has – despite knowing everything mentioned above – truly shocked the living shit out of me. The, not only racism, but violent hatred that has risen to the surface since Mr. Obama has been elected has really made me feel unsafe and has depleted some of the amazing pride I felt two Tuesdays ago. The fact that massive amounts of people – more than 9/11, more than when we invaded Iraq, more than when Bill Clinton was elected – flocked to stores to by guns freaked me out a little bit. I was able to push it to the side though because there wasn’t much (if any) evidence that these people were buying weapons for anything but protection, which we technically still have the right to do. The scattered incidents of extreme racism – the two scariest to me are the school bus full of little children chanting ‘assassinate Obama’ and the store in Maine taking bets as to when the assassination will occur – cannot be rationalized. The things that are going on throughout our ‘progressive’ country, a month and a half from 2009, are sickening. Read the article that I linked to, stop and think about each incident, and then do something. At the very least, forward this article to everyone you know and tell them to do the same. If you want to do something more, it’s easy as well; if you hear anyone even talking about something that could lead to something bigger, do you job and call them out. Things like this – and possibly, probably worse – will continue to happen until the vast majority of people learn that it is not acceptable.
Another item I wanted to talk about is the fact that Joe Lieberman just had his Chairmanship of Homeland Security Committee renewed. Never mind that this guy is only considered a Democrat because he has D next to his name; he is also completely insane when it comes to national security and helped to run a nasty campaign against Barrack Obama and for Republican John McCain. I understand that he cannot be kicked out of the Democratic Party or (even better) the Senate, but there was no need to give him such a powerful position. As this article points out, both Howard Dean and Lieberman himself admit that the reason he was able to retain his Chairmanship was because of the say so of Barrack Obama. It is a problem that Mr. Obama does not have any concerns with Lieberman having so much power, but – as Glen Greenwald makes clear – it is an even bigger problem that the Senate feels like it has to do whatever the president says.
I don’t think it is always necessary to give the opposing point of view on things. For example, if I were to write a blog condemning murder of innocent civilians or torture, I wouldn’t care enough to link to an article or blog by someone who condones this sort of thing. However, concerning the Joe Lieberman/Barrack Obama debacle, Anonymous Liberal makes a good point. Maybe Obama is Abraham Lincoln reincarnated. Probably not.
Just a Couple Thoughts
I don’t think I have much to say today, but I do want to touch on a couple topics. First of all, I just want to point out how shocked and disgusted I am that so many supposedly liberal minded, progressive people who went out and voted for Barrack Obama to be our next president, also voted for bills making marriage illegal for people who they think aren’t like them. I don’t see how some people can celebrate the fact that we have a black man in office while with the same hand oppress other people because they are ‘different’. I don’t understand how so many people can feel so strongly that two people of the same sex shouldn’t be allowed to get married, while most people do not care that the US is torturing and killing innocent people all around the globe. People watch CEO’s and politicians get rich off of war – off of their tax money – and hardly bat an eyelash, but when two people who live thousands of miles away, who they will probably never even meet, want to express their love for each other, the same people completely lose their minds. People say that if we “allow” gay people to get married, then that will lessen the meaning of heterosexual marriage. None of the people who say this ever really give an explanation on why this is so, maybe because they’re too busy cheating on their spouse, abusing their children or planning their divorce. When my roommates talk about their marriage and how much it means to have it recognized, it gives us something in common; it in no way lessens how I feel about my marriage. When I got a visit at work by a good friend of mine, telling me that she just proposed to her girlfriend, it made me extremely happy; I love having married friends, it takes away that old man feeling I get from being married. However, when my roommates tell me that they aren’t sure whether or not their marriage will be legal anymore, or my friend tells me that her fiancé may get deported because our country won’t recognize their future marriage, it makes my marriage seem meaningless. If I am allowed to get married because I love someone and want to spend the rest of my life with her, but someone who feels the same way is not allowed to, then what does my marriage mean? If my wife is allowed to visit me on my deathbed or in jail, but another couple who have been together for fifty years cannot, then is my marriage even real? This is a human rights issue and it needs to be treated like that. Until we are all equal, those of us who have privilege need to use it to try and destroy the patriarchal, sexist, racist, homophobic structure that we have set up in this supposedly progressive country of ours.
I also want to say that – while an issue of gay marriage is something I think we should be pressuring local and state leaders about – we cannot forget about Barrack Obama. He claimed on national television to be against torture, yet the man who advises him on those issues in a known supporter of all sort of torture. He has a plan to get all our troops out of Iraq, to help them get their country back, while at the same time plans to increase the murders we are committing in Afghanistan (see the same interview). That’s all I have to say right now, but I plan on pointing things like this out in every one of my future blogs. Barrack Obama is better than George W Bush or John McCain, but that doesn’t mean our jobs are done, that doesn’t mean we can put our blinders on and just accept everything that he does. We have an uphill, many faced battle on our hands, but we will win if we fight.
It Is Possible to Celebrate and Think Critically At the Same Time
Overall I am in a very positive mood- not just about the future of world events (or the potential of them) but also about life in general. I will talk about my optimism, but I also feel like we can’t just ignore what’s going on because something good happened. A lot of the people who I have been talking to over the past few days – people who I thought we just blind Obama supporters – are really impressing me with their talk of continuing this movement. We already have something a movement going; if all the people who have woken up over the past year would combine what they have just done with what we have been working on, real change can be made. Obama is not a god, he is not the greatest thing since sliced bread, he is not change- but he does represent something great. He represents what we – especially the young people – can do if we really put our minds to it. He is the voice and face behind the fact that the fate of the world is in our hands. If all these people can pull together and get a black man who was accused of supporting terrorism and being a socialist muslim elected in a landslide victory to the highest position in the world, imagine what else they can do. We have to hope that the movement does not get swallowed up in the administration, but instead the administration gets swallowed up in the movement. We have to take things into our own hands and make sure that Obama doesn’t stand in front of us or over us and lead, but rather joins us and lets us lead him.
Here’s the part where I fully intended to get negative, but I’m going to try to stay towards the positive side as much as possible. I love the excitement that’s going on, I have never seen people celebrating in the US (or even outside of, but about, the US) this much over something like this and it makes me feel hopeful. However, there has to be some kind of balance; the celebration should continue – we have a president with an African father, who was rumored to be Muslim and hang out with terrorists, and who won in a landslide against a white war hero – but we also need to pay attention to reality. Just because this amazing thing happened does not mean that all the bad things going on are just going to stop. I read the collection of news sources that I normally do yesterday morning and while most of them were either about Obama or Californians (you guys are fucked up) there was one guy out there willing to not get caught up in all this, and write about what’s really happening. Once again we have dropped a misguided bomb in Afghanistan, killing almost 40 people including 23 children. It is really hard to think this is fine just because we elected Obama. First of all, this is still going on and as long as little children and other innocent human beings are dying it should be seriously addressed. Second of all – for those of us who would just like to ignore this and wait for the savior to take over – Obama supports this as “the good war” and fully intends to send more troops over.
Before reading about the defenseless people who were killed in our name with our tax dollars I heard on the radio that Mr. Obama had appointed Rahm Emanuel as his Chief of Staff. Obama – this liberal, socialist, non-politician – has already smacked us in the face. The first official thing he does after getting elected is hire a guy who “was the top House recipient in the 2008 election cycle of contributions from hedge funds, private equity firms and the larger securities/investment industry”, sends dead fish to people who make him angry, and threatened to kill fellow Democrats who disagree with him. Not to mention his Zionist stand towards Israel; Israel is actually his middle name because his father – a dual Israeli/US citizen – was a gunrunner for said country. This is very alarming to me and I think it means that it is time to act. Everyone loves Obama because he understands that change comes from the bottom, was a community organizer, and has called on us to let him know when we disagree. We cannot wait until he has chosen his entire staff, taken office, and sends more troops to Afghanistan. We can be happy and proud that we elected this possibly great man to be our leader, while at the same time showing up at all his appearances and letting him know that we are unhappy with Emanuel and we want him to end the good and the bad wars.
I have never been a politician and I have no idea what is going on in the life of Barrack Obama between now and January 20th. However, I would be willing to bet that there are plenty of people whispering in his ear. There are fellow Democrats telling him what to do, there are lobbyists demanding certain things, there are people who donated to his campaign calling in favors; if he doesn’t hear the voices of the tens of millions of people who took to the streets to get him elected then he’ll think we agree with everything he’s doing. Even though our numbers are higher, we have to speak much louder in order to be heard. We don’t get to have private meetings with him, we can’t shoot him an email or a phone call, we haven’t donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to his campaign. The tools at our disposal include rallies, protests, mass letter writing to him and newspapers, and other grassroots techniques that he knows about and has promised to listen to. I don’t think I’m being negative; as of now I still have hope that he is going to do the right thing most of the time, but I know that the only way this will happen is if we demand it. The man said it himself during his speech; he basically told us that he is in the most powerful – and the most potentially corrupting – position in the world and the only way he will be able to listen to us is if we scream. Let’s start screaming before it’s too late.
