color blind taste test

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Sunday December 16, 2012 · 7:15 AM PST

2012/12/16 · 07:15

A friend shared a post on her Facebook wall today. “When a black man kills, he's a menace to society. When a foreigner kills, he's a terrorist. When a white man kills, he's psychologically unbalanced.” It provoked some discussion. Here are my thoughts. Our US culture is suffering the psychic cost of our brutal past. I believe that one of the costliest wounds has been our blindness, as Americans, to our common humanity.

The sad proof is the hypocrisy of the benefactors or those who (or we who) might privilege from our historically white supremacist and sexist society when it comes to owning up to even just the hint of the smell of benefiting from this historically American paradigm. The paranoia is delusional. And our citizens have been acting on these delusions. Many of these beliefs are common in U.S. prevailing culture - especially that hooey about being 'blind to color'. The fact that anyone would insist that they have some sort of equanimity or right to position themselves outside the realm of constantly negotiating the racist system our country is encoded with, reveals not just a lack of vision, but a corrupted perspective on par with the violence of a lie. It ignores the suffering of many of our country's citizens. So it denies it.

And denial of suffering is ultimately an act of violence. It is evidence of the blindness that hobbles our nation's psychic growth past our violent history. ...How many of the most recent massacres in our country have been perpetrated by those who actually DO subscribe to terrorist notions, and whose mission it TRULY IS to menace our society? These massacres were 'thought out' to the extent that they were originated in HATE, and fed by a BELIEF. Examples of this type of violence keep our reputation sterling: the Klan/militias. Tim McVeigh. the cross burnt on a neighbor's lawn last summer. the Uni-bomber. the Atlanta child killer. now this massacre. the scorned ex-husband. the man with the boy sniping from the trunk of a car. the guy who shot Gabby Gifford. The shoe bomber. Charles Manson. all of them. All of them are on the dark side of the same society we all more or less live in, or are victim to, or profit from, or are somehow beholden to. They were all Americans with momentary or ideological or ethical or biological factors inspiring an appetite for destruction.

What joins our sense of "who we are" in a country so large? Is it our vision of ourselves (how we convey ourselves in our modes of entertainment or technology- i.e., how we spend our time and money)? Does the media reflect these desires in terms of its profits? Some people are under the impression that any media outlet with the word "news" in the title might be beholden to the US citizenry to also give us quantifiable information so we can optimize our situations in our private and communal lives. Meanwhile the media in our country are awash in violence. Is it celebrated? Violence is undoubtedly iconic entertainment, a pop culture commodity in the US that people gladly pay more money for, all the time.

These things are all connected, but yet it seems their hateful successes depend on NOT being seen; both a cultivated blindness and cloak of invisibility, releasing our responsibility for cultivating a hungry blood lust. This is why our present society is as close to blood thirsty as a society can be, yet the "taste-makers" and "job creators" are loathe to acknowledge responsibility in the matter, let alone any advantage they personally might have had over someone of a different race, culture or religion, during their rise to power in the dominant culture. These are the people who might insist on their blindness to "color". This denial is violence.

If we keep denying what a violent culture we truly are, and that most of the violence here is NOT based in randomness, or spectacle, then we will continue to let this go on and pretend it isn't us. The blood is on all of us now, color-blind or not. The Facebook post isn't about violence. It's about our society's racist perception of violence and how we might be implicated for contributing to the ills of society from whence this killer sprung.

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Sunday February 12, 2012 · 1:05 PM PST

2012/02/12 · 13:05

Just a little reminder of very important conversation to look back on, as we head into full-on election season mode:

http://www.youtube.com/...

Check it out: it's President Clinton ON Fox! He is discrediting Fox and trying to reveal -via the interview, ballsy as he is- the context in which Fox operates: a right-winged agenda, intent on baiting a God fearing public into actually believing that Fox is the news and that it is NOT feeding straight propaganda to its viewers, while also highly invested in helping to sway the outcome of previous and upcoming elections. Bringing fear and god into anything resembling a news report should of course put us on notice that it is not news. Perhaps it's a new way to serve up propaganda, but there is no serving up of 'news'. It isn't related to any kind of journalism beyond the color yellow. It reminds me of a more radically instructive or activist version of the televangelism we saw in the 1980s. These days, AM talk radio is more the home of evangelical market/audience, and Fox news has stepped into the "tell us what to do" breach on our t.v.

Please consider this interview - especially the words and questions Chris Wallace uses. This interview is in no way presented to find out anything. It's presented by Fox news in order to reify an agenda using Clinton's own words, but it backfires. When C.Wallace questions Richard Clarke's 'loyalty' it is a brief but powerfully cynical moment. He is so game to denigrate Clarke's storied dissent, right on cue, in order to discredit a strong voice that didn't coordinate with Fox's agenda. In the very small amount of time that Clinton gives him to speak, he is right on point with the Fox (tea)party-line.

Please folks, especially my Fox friends, try not to forget: this is NOT the news.
Do not let this machine continue to lead people to vote against their own interests (again), or make you believe that most conservatives or republicans even think this way. The goal is to divide and conquer through misinterpretation and dumbing down of issues through fear and a false sense of 'country.' It's disheartening to see it working.

Please folks, especially my ANTI-Fox friends, try not to forget: this is not all necessarily being swallowed gullibly by every Fox viewer. And yes, I'm saying that mostly because I have to believe this. I'm posting this interview to keep hopeful, to remind people that perhaps Bill Clinton broke through the 4th Fox-fire wall a little bit. I'm posting it as a reminder for us to pursue information -even just enough to see another side of the story. Let us resist the lazy path of conspiracy and cynicism that Fox is serving up. Let's also please resist the lack of faith in people, i.e. each other, that Fox capitalizes on, in order to keep churning out the Fox. As far as Fox is concerned, the most dangerous thing we can do is talk to people with very different political beliefs than our own. But we all need to help to educate each other, not just repeat what we hear on t.v., or lazily blow off steam about the radical dummies in the ill-ection. Let's please put communication above political expediency, "entertainment value," and volume. Let's talk and listen for the love of country, not fear of what 'the other side' is up to. It's on us to do more and dig deeper into what's going on. Not just respond glibbly to this side or that side when we jump on line, re-affirming our ever-more righteous opinions. We must take Fox out of the equation as a source of information. But we must also understand how Fox works and why. We need to see it simply as the threat to our democracy that it is. Its mission is to influence rather than report to us. So learn what Fox is doing and why. Then we can move forward, without it distracting either 'side' too much. Obama killed Osama and shifted the war more to Afghanistan, rather than Iraq. Bush started Iraq and tried to make it about Osama. Come On. Fox could never and will never say either of those two things in an honest comparison of the two leaders or in terms of the war, the economy or loss of lives. Both 'sides' know this, and it's important that we talk about it. Both 'sides' need to remove their reliance on and fear of this source of bad news.

http://www.youtube.com/...

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color blind taste test

Bill Clinton explains why I don't like Fox News