Proud to be a N*gga

My cousin Kenny is proud to be a n*gga, because he's told me that more than once, even singing it to me like this: "...bee-cause I'm proud to be a niggggaaaah!" His cellphone used to have a recording of him singsonging "Kennndaahhhl!" every friggin' time it went to voicemail, which drove my ex-boyfriend crazy, because John would need help at the yard and "Ken Doll" couldn't be bothered; exactly what we'd come to expect from a fat, bald, 6'1, Celtic-Jewish-Indian like him.

He never wanted to fit in with the 9-5 crowd, and for years, he struggled to find work that was inoffensive to his cocktail party persona, before he finally settled on joining a pipe-and-drum band near the beach. He's good at it, too! He and his then-girlfriend (now wife) played together at the biggest parades 'round the way, turning their alcoholism into a somewhat respectable McOpportunity. It wasn't what I'd want for him, but he's made a life from the broken shards of his rough Brooklyn upbringing that's left most of his family dead, and he's not even 50, yet.

I just hope someday he'll realize he doesn't have to jettison parts of his identity that he feels he needs to hide in order to fit in with typical American society, because I personally know of a clan that would dearly love to have a musician with the heart of an Irishman, the beat of an Indian, with the soul of the faithful play at their tartan-clad family gatherings on a certain New Scotland beach. We pay with real money, too. My father always used to tell us as kids that we should be proud of who we are, because it's not like we had a say in the matter, and he's right. We don't. It's already happened.

Remember, my Americans: the freedoms you take for granted have not been equally extended. Some of us can't even walk on ancestral lands and feel proud about it, without someone else looking to take it away to sell it back for a fee. Think about that while you bitch about the line at the polls, or your simple black-and-white racism, or any of the other issues that you think take precedence over basic human rights like dignity and equality. We're not there, yet with this country, but some of us would really like it to be. They're colored, too, just not like you.

Without Prejudice

Much like a confused America wrongly divided itself into two incorrectly opposed factions of "black" and "white", the saying that mental illness (like cancer) doesn't discriminate is dubious and suspect in the extreme. When I heard the verdict for the O.J. Simpson trial live on t.v along with millions of other people, I knew that the corruption of our court system now extended to wealthy African-Americans, too, and if you think that's "equality" in the eyes of the law, then you need to go back to school immediately. In fact, that's what I said for many years after the court case, whenever I was asked about my impression of it: "Well, African-Americans are now just as corrupt as 'rich white men', because they can buy their way to an innocent verdict like they do."

It's like pretending that you are less complicit in a crime because you just stood there while someone else hacked to death a woman in her kitchen for being brave enough to divorce her abuser/attacker. I mean, it's not like you swung the ax yourself, right? Right?! Wrong! And that's exactly where many murder cases wind up while under examination in a courtroom setting; the bystanders who did not stop the crime, or report it, or try to deter it in any way are in some cases just as culpable as the actual murderer for participation in a crime, especially if the attacker is seriously mentally ill. If you knew better and you did nothing about it (hence the cover-up and subsequent silence, post-crime), then you are charged with criminal acts along with the actual murderer. Get it?

This heady climate of celebrity culture has become just another stage for performing, for the criminally insane acting out who use their crimes to gain access to the public's attention. You are O.J. Simpson, regardless of melanin*. Look, I like black-and-white cookies from the deli just as much as any other hardcore New Yorker, but what happens when you can't break it clean in half anymore, because most Americans today are "colored" and mixed ethnically, too? There is no privilege of bias based on "racism" (and there is just one modern human race living today, as far as I know), or skin tone. 

If you are severely mentally ill with violently psychotic tendencies that have been easily observed and often remarked upon in public spaces (like, say, offices and large football fields), then there really isn't anywhere to hide anymore, nor should you continue to do so. Your healthcare claims will be denied, like a car insurer denies coverage to a serial negligent driver, as with a D.U.I. No compliance with our laws = no insurance coverage. Now, if you want to pretend that you need dental coverage but not medical treatment for your personality disorder, then fine. You can pay for it out-of-pocket the next time you wind up in an E.R. for an accident caused by your mental illness. Welcome to "The New America". It's way better than the last version.


* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanin

Free the Internet

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Douglass

In typical twist of fate, today is the anniversary of Frederick Douglass' birthday. It made sense to me when I explored the graphic on Google's search engine, because I created the title for today's piece last week, in another bit of fortuitous timing that marks vocational life. It's the type of head-space that has no quirky coincidences for us, only excellence. We live our lives deeply through intelligent design, the harmony that thrums through the universe or, in the words of the now-immortal Carl Sagan, “... the nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.” 

We are all made of the same stuff, so it makes sense to me that we would align ourselves accordingly, in harmony and perfect agreement. Mr. Sagan also noted the necessity of variation among life as essential to our shared successes: “Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos 

Did we not at times share living spaces with humans so vastly different in perspective that we fought our most heart-wrenching, bloodiest war over it, so much do we believe that all men are born free as a manifestation of G-d's will that His children live together well? In fact, He tells us that if you do not fight hard enough for the lives of your women and children, then it is also your fate to accept gladly your rightful enslavement at the hands of your victors, because you have not properly defended what is yours by rights, and that is also what I ask of you today: to give more, because it's not enough. 

Yesterday I was talking to my father, a man of another generation who struggles with change before he converts to the newest technology and who was, at the onset of my career, a staunch anti-technologist made more so by his avid desire to preserve what he felt was his precious toehold over me in my work as an apprentice desktop publisher, by refusing to participate in this "New World". I could understand it, even as I worked to make the change from the hand-made to the digital easier for everyone around me, as it was not available to me, because I hadn't initially signed on for computer science, but here we are, and yesterday he (finally!) agreed with me that the Internet is the greatest advance in worldwide communications that we have ever seen, because he finally adopted the very technology I cut my teeth on as a young leader in business. Only after finally giving in to my greater expertise did he see how all the pieces fit. Aren't they beautiful?

What became his avid denial about my greater gifts became his grateful acceptance in old age, which is none too soon. Pride goeth before the fall*, and as someone who was tasked with excelling in business while learning impaired, he often made do with his challenges while he struggled to reconcile himself with the worlds I trafficked in, varied universes unto themselves that he doesn't always understand, but that's my job to bear up under. I want you to join us as an "early adapter" to a movement that's actually quite old, and free the Internet, just like you did with t.v. networks. As the astonishingly high price tag behind our superior technology initially frightened off the non-artistic layperson (as it rightfully should), then so has this initial phase of tool usage passed into worldwide acceptance. 

We will always have cheaper machines to do small tasks for minor chores done by smaller people than you and I (as is appropriate with any truly sophisticated social hierarchy), but for those of you who want to soar with us in the skies, then come along for the ride. Make the Internet free for all people, regardless of price. That's what Frederick Douglass deserves. A place where freedom reigns.

http://everyoneon.org/

“ If there is no struggle, there is no progress.

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. ”

* http://biblehub.com/proverbs/16-18.htm

 

History 3x

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selma,_Alabama

History often repeats itself, which is exactly what my father said to me over and over again. He's learning impaired (Dyslexia), so he's always liked plaques, signs, homey knitted samplers with folksy sayings, mugs, t-shirts, bumper stickers...anything that reminds him what life should be like. It's annoying, but I also remember almost everything he told me, because he's repeated it so often, too, which is irksome at times. I prefer free-form originality and evolutionary progression; he likes the solidity of comfort and the sentimentality of old routines. 

We both like productivity and early mornings when no one else is around, which is why the appearance of hipsters here in Rockland County concerns me so much: if shitheads paid by their companies to relocate to trendy neighborhoods can't afford the city anymore, we're all doomed within the tri-state area, and these are not New Yorkers you mix with. They want conformity and trends; not newness and culture. They are not from here.

It was with this sense of repetition that I saw the events in Tennessee unfold on the evening news for awhile, acting like hicks in these isolated pockets always seem to do; seemingly armed with "the truth" and a mostly white local government armed to the teeth to back her outrageous sense of entitlement. In one of the early scenes from "Selma", Oprah Winfrey's character goes to the county courthouse to register as a voter, a fairly new federal right granted to African-American citizens. She's given a verbal test that even a seasoned historian would fail, a test that does nothing to dim her spirit. That's what hard-won rights granted to free people tend to do.

Armed with the truth, she gathers her community to protest in response to this one illegal act that defies logic, only the expression of a deeply ingrained ignorance that typically signifies inbred ignorance so entrenched, it is nothing short of violent, which is also point of the part. How do you break into the minds of a better, stronger people who use the the very effective tool of passive resistance as a societal tool to create change? You use anger and hatred against them, whipping folks up into a massive mob mentality with no reason or boundaries. That's what I saw on national television: some ugly redneck denying people their civil right to marry, and you must know by now how that goes down with me. It doesn't.

I was reminded of another historical event that affected me greatly; the story of New Yorker Solomon Northup's* nasty capture and subsequent sale south of the Mason-Dixon line, because it was once legal there to buy and sell humans like they're animals. And what can you do to property? Anything you g-ddamn want, which is what a bunch of fucked up retards did, to cover up the fact that they couldn't labor under a hot sun (like an African can), or do it efficiently (like poor folk always do), or turn a profit on a land they emigrated to from another land (like every American immigrant before them has had to do). There's no talking to people that insane.

It's not that the people of the north were always so righteous. Solomon took his name from the upstate farmer who set him free. He was also the gentleman who came looking for him when word got back to his hometown and family that he'd been illegally tricked into capture, like any gentleman worth his weight in salt would. After that, it was on. The Northups convinced Solomon to write down his true account the year he returned home, while it was still fresh in his mind, but also as part of his testimony in a legal proceeding that went on for years, transcending state boundaries, because that's the mindset of the truly righteous in this world: we don't ever give up, and we don't ever give in.

We became their willing collaborators, constructing the Underground Railroad** to help families on their road to freedom, and we fought a bloody Civil War on the basis of those freedoms, rights that are the legal right for every free American citizen, which we will do again, so it is in this vein that I will write this one more time to you, Southerner: Don't tread on me. Ever. Bitch.

Your homework, fuck-up:
*    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Northup
**  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_Railroad

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gadsden_flag

The law, shithead:  

http://cnn.it/1eM7m6g