If I wish to compose or write or pray or preach well, I must be angry. Then all the blood in my veins is stirred, and my understanding is sharpened.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
I'm angry. Always angry. Have been for years and for many reasons. Here is me in 2013:
Why do you feel the need? (29+ / 0-)
I'm just curious.
The people you are condemning deserve it.
The people that will understand, understand.
I'm a white male and I can bash my fellow white males like the best of 'em.
To be honest, I'm so ashamed I want a hostile relationship. This is not a touchy-feely situation. Look at the Senate! A bunch of rich white
males faking they give a damn. The silence after the elections in 2000 and 2004 when untold African-American votes were not even cast or counted is telling.
The continued economic policies that benefit the rich white in America while condemning the poor to poverty is not a mistake. It is easy for the lazy Senators to point fingers at others. It is hard to write laws to stop the corrupting influence of money THEY ALL TAKE. The Republicans blame the poor blacks. The Democrats blame the poor whites.
Social ladders? They give you the George Burns logic.
George Burns smoked cigars and lived to be a hundred. Colin Powell rose up to be a powerful member of society. Smoking doesn't kill, being black is not an obstacle.
I prefer anger. Disdain.
by mickT on Mon Jul 15, 2013 at 07:58:05 PM PDT
I'm retired Air Force. The Air Force has a program called social actions to enlighten the force on social issues. During one of the sessions they brought in a SSgt who hailed from New York. He talked about how one day the police the showed up while they were playing basketball and one of the cops said "I'm going to shoot the slowest n****. He then showed the bullet mark. I posted that here about 10 years ago.
I am not a newbie to the problem.
The principle of self defense, even involving weapons and bloodshed, has never been condemned, even by Gandhi.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
A riot is the language of the unheard.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
I hear I-70 is shut down. Good. That is civil disobedience. When people in power start losing money, they take notice.
The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be... The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
When Martin Luther King, Jr. started, he was battling severe abuse of the African-American community. Far worse than even the appalling debacles we see on a daily basis today. Yet he realized that it wasn't just a single issue. He knew that to help the African-American community meant helping humanity.
Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Yet he knew that society had to have a basis of law and order to survive. But when they failed, it was important they be fixed.
An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
This is what rose him to the level of greatness. And it is no where near the same as 'all lives matter.' It is the realization that societies around the world have a way of creating a lower class. And this is what needs fought.
Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
This is one thing that always got me in trouble here. I always mocked the 'Save Darfur' groupee crowd. They had no idea that the whole 'Save Darfur' project was nothing more than a way to split Sudan so the West could get all the oil in southern Sudan. Not one cent of the 'Save Darfur' money went beyond Washington DC. Well now Sudan is split and southern Sudan is in a constant civil war. The White Liberal Supramist (and here I will use the phrase) have turned Sudan into almost a big a shithole as they have Libya. Kind of like when Bill Clinton, being the all knowing white rich guy dumped a bunch of rice into Haiti...killing the only market in the country.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
'The 2014 hostilities saw a huge increase in firepower used in Gaza, with more than 6,000 airstrikes by Israel and approximately 50,000 tank and artillery shells fired. In the 51 day operation, 1,462 Palestinian civilians were killed, a third of them children. Palestinian armed groups fired 4,881 rockets and 1,753 mortars towards Israel in July and August 2014, killing 6 civilians and injuring at least 1,600.'
link
"the Iraq Body Count project found 174,000 Iraqis reported killed between 2003 and 2013, with between 112,000-123,000 of those killed being civilian noncombatants. These numbers are all estimates."
Clinton voted for that. An illegal war. Tony Blair is actually facing the prospects of legal liability. Obama watched as 2014 happened and said nothing. Obama said nothing in 2008 when Israel 'mowed the lawn' in Gaza. Condi Rice gave excuse for Israel when they leveled an entire neighborhood in Beirut in 2006 killing over thousand civilians and said it was nothing more than the 'Birthing Pangs' of a new nation. And during the end of the war, Israel dropped a bunch of gifts in the form of cluster bombs all over southern Lebanon that to this day still kill children. Our callous view of Arab lives has not gone unnoticed. Civilian deaths in the thousands. And the silence is deafening. Hell, people today even support the people that supported these deaths.
It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
I see nothing of this in the current movement. I see hate. Hate thrown in all directions without reason.
Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend.
Martin Luther King,
Here is where the movement is woefully lacking. Anger alone is not movement. I am angry about a lot of things, I am pissed every day that our government sells arms to dictators that then stifle their citizens, yet our politicians spew out the 'spreading Democracy' mantra. Tell that to the majority of the people in Bahrain..or the bloggers getting lashes in Saudi Arabia.
My friend just got back from Kuwait. One of the fun things he did was try to arrange body parts of Shi'tes blown up by a racist Wahhabi Salafist so all the body parts could be accounted for.
Almost as much fun as when used to have to watch a video to hear the background noise as one of our Saudi Salafists friends slits the throat of someone so I could find out who all the people were. See in U.S. logic, the actual throat-slitter are bad, but the princes that fund them are good. If you have never listened to someone getting beheaded, don't. That noise sticks with you forever.
That is my life. And when I hear an asshole in Washington tell me that Saudi Arabia is progressing (amazing what Saudi money can do) I want to vomit. I get to hear the gurgles of the people being slaughtered.
And now I'm told the only damn thing that matters is BLM and if I don't agree, I should go to hell.
I just look at the Middle East. Others can tell you of the massive humanity disaster looming if we don't deal with our environment. Again, death tolls in the hundreds of thousand if not millions.
Water is running out in many regions. People fight over that as much as they do oil.
Famine would be a good thing to concern oneself over if they cared about humanity. Millions of starving people in the world. A lot of people dedicate their life trying to help them. They not good enough?
I'm just trying to understand why in this world of massive problems with many people trying to bring attention to many serious issues that only one matters.
.