Rep. Lewis Recounts His Experience To Urge Renewal Of The Voting Rights Act: "I Was Beaten, I Had A Concussion...I Almost Died"...
How many other supposedly democratic countries require its citizens to fight for protection in the voting process nearly 140 years after the right to vote was supposedly extended?
The struggle in the House could also be listed as a Racist Hate Crime story in that the only debate should have been over expansion of Voting Rights protections to all 50 states, and to make the provisions permanent.
If the Senate lets this pass (and Bush signs the bill without issuing a presidential signing statement that reinstitutes slavery), we'll have to go through this again in 25 years!
Can't you see how happy I am?
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Lewis had to go back 40 years to find a fight, back to a time where our happy Tuskeggee Airman got arrested himself in a war that has been long-won. We might as well have some WWII vetrens recounting the horrors of fighting the Nazis as an argument for imposing sanctions on Germany today. The beating taken by Lewis 40 years ago occured in a place where now blacks enjoy all the rights as everybody else, thanks to the efforts of men like Lewis. That place now has black elected officials, in that city and in the state as a whole. Lewis's revolution succeeded. Why is he still fighting a war he has already won? Why is he setting up such a straw man? The Voting Rights Act made sense in 1965, just as the invasion of Normandy made sense in 1941 and Nat Turner's rebellion made sense in 1840.
Nadir, I hope you can find a better reason for my sail-boating Tuskeggee Airman to be unhappy in 2006 USA than the potential expiration of the 1965 Voting Rights Act! Perhaps this is why no black folks immigrate from the US, and so many immigrate here every year!
Try asking our former Georgia sharecropper friend Andrew about his happiness and his ability to vote. He just returned from a week in Albany, GA. I received many phone calls from him on his trip, relaying happy on-goings with members of the black population there, all fully enfranchised, with zero threat to that right, none facing any possibility of beatings from local honkies for their attempts to pursue happiness on all fronts.
What in the hell is John Lewis talking about? Answer: His glory days as a courageous figther in the war to achieve what Andrew and his hometown family now all enjoy, and with zero risk of ever losing it. Thanks, Johwn Lewis, for your by-gone efforts. Now please relax; you've earned it.
Meanwhile, Nadir, our good friend Lee just got denied his own right to pursue happiness in his own home. Let's ask him about his happiness, moving all his belongings from his house into an apartment 40 miles away. I'm certain he's unhappy now, having to hassle with this move, and struggling to find a buyer or renter, and living now in smaller quaters, and in paying two home notes simultaneously. What is the source of his unhappiness? I'm certain that he would be "happy" to tell you: ignorant, lazy, destructive black jackasses preying on their hard working, constructive, intelligent, helpful black neighbors.
John Lewis is making a histrionical show about a complaint that no black folks have (denial of voting rights), while ignoring many other complaints issued by lots of black folks:
- high taxes
- lack of K-12 school vouchers
- lack of privatized social security
As I ponder the future of my eldest negro daughter, the possibility that she'll lose her right to vote isn't even on the list. Is she happy? Let's see:
- She's got an infant child, but no husband.
- She's dropped out of college, after earning poor grades in "physical therapy", and after fiddling around for 12 years in the nearby govt schools, proudly learning no advanced math or reading many books.
- She's living in her mom's apartment, driving a car that I purchased for her.
These factors all manifest from her decisions. The efforts of John Lewis 40 years ago have created many opportunities for my eldest daughter; she -- like many black folks -- have ignored those opportunities. That is a major problem. White folks extracting her voting rights doesn't even amount to a remote possibility. She has a better chance of hitting the lottery, or having a dropped ceiling overpass tile fall on her car.
You've just named a lot of reasons why US citizens are joyful enough for their country to be listed 150 out of 178 nations on the happiest country list. Racism and oppression aren't even a small part of the problem.
Life is so much better for blacks 40 years after the Voting Rights act that John Lewis has to remind his congressional colleagues of "ancient history" to get them to renew a policy that shouldn't have been necessary after the 15th amendment was passed in 1870.
Our friend, Lee, has to move from the home his grandparents bought because of the rampant poverty in what was once a booming US city - fleeing crackheads whose cocaine addiction was started by the CIA in their effort to fund contrarebels in Nicaragua.
Paul's eldest daughter (all of whom are negro, by the way; in South Africa they would be called "colored") isn't even aided by the "superior" genes of her highly-educated, upper middle class, capitalist cracker daddy.
Apparently the "ignorant, lazy, destructive black jackass" mother's traits are dominant, and Whitney must now suffer an existence that is all too common among poor white and black women of the same age in the US. She is a second generation single mother who now lives in that "husbandless" mother's apartment.
Meanwhile her "wifeless" father raises his other two bastard children with the unwed "baby mama" of his latest infant. This latest in a line of "ignorant, lazy, destructive black jackasses" whom the enlightened, educated, capitalist cracker has impregnated is a single mother who just graduated law school and is studying for the Michigan bar exam in between diaper changes and feedings.
This is a striking portrait of the happiness that occurs in the life of a very happy US Conservative Libertarian Capitalist's upper middle class multi-cultural family.
How much are coca farms in Columbia going for? Sounds like somebody could use a change of venue...
Forty years ago, nobody needed to remind black folks of oppression. Nor did they have to look to fellow blacks as their oppressors... and have somebody blame those oppressive acts on some mysterious white conspiracy. Today, blacks have choices, and they are the same choices that whites have, as well as immigrants of any "race". Those of any "race" who make the same choices, they get the same outcomes.
If you can blame the behavior of Lee's black Detroit neighbors on the actions of some white govt agents in Los Angeles, then why not blame the behavior of those white govt agents on somebody else, also? Or do whites belong to a master race, the only "race" of people responsible for their own actions?
As for the personal history of myself, my bastard children, and baby mamas, they prove my perspective (or, rather, they disproved my previous Nadir perspective): The black and white people I know have succeeded or failed in direct proportion to their talents and efforts, with no discernable difference that I can assign to racial catagorization. My black friends who have made better choices than me -- including not having unwed babies -- are more successful than me. I am sorry to say that they have not had more influence both on me and my eldest daughter.
Nadir bizarrely imagines that I assign my eldest daughters sorry state to genetic behaviors from her black mother, yet attributes himself the abhorrent behavior of Lee's black neighbors to the distant actions of white boogey men. But I recognize no genetic source for the shiftless, lazy behavior of my eldest daughter and her mom, nor of Lee's theiving neighbors. Nadir holds white peoeple accountable for their negative actions, but when it comes to blacks, even their negative actions he traces back to the actions of some white folks... whom he holds accountable.
Too bad for me and my eldest daughter that she did not adopt the examples of Nadir and his wife, or even the habits of me. For although I have made three bastard children, I provide formyself and them.
We are all accountable for our own actions. Outside forces may affect what we do, but ultimately each individual is responsible for her/his own life.
But are you happy? Is your daughter happy? Is Lee happy?
Racism and oppression are just obstacles that have to be overcome like a leaky faucet or a speed trap on the highway. It is just another bump in the road on the journey of life. Some countries/states have better roads than others, and we travel them accordingly.
What someone else does to us or to a people can affect us, and those people are responsible for their actions, just as we are for ours. But there are a whole lot of motherfuckers in the US that don't care about the consequences of their actions, and they fuck it up for others. The rest of us then have to deal with the consequences of their greed/racism/violence/dishonesty etc.
Hold the guilty accountable, but life must go on.
But parents are not totally blameless for a child's actions. Parents either taught or didn't teach their children the right way, though it is the child's duty to pick up what she can. If however, we see a child follow the parents' example, we shouldn't be surprised.
Those people in the government who have wronged US citizens and people around the world should also be held accountable for their actions, though the rest of us have to deal with the fallout of their insanity.
The happiness of me, my daughters, and even you derives only from our own choices. The US in 2006 is one of the few nations on earth -- or in history -- where that is true.
Nadir: It is an insane fantasy of you lefties that Bush and the republicans secretly want to re-institute white-on-black slavery in the US. If you are concerned about slavery, you don't have to fixate on slavery that no longer exists, or imaginary wishes of slavery. About a million people today on this earth live in slavery, but they do not live in the US. The live in Africa and Asia.
Opposing extention of the voting rights act in 2006 qualifies as a "racist hate crime"? Only in the mind of somebody struggling to find examples of racim... in a land where that concept has been effectively defeated.
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