UConn SSDP had a really cool (and under-reported) pre-conference to SSDP’s Northeast Regional Conference in April.

Several of “the usual suspects,” including myself, spoke. There’s no doubt, though, that Eric Sterling stole the show. I have seen him speak 10+ times, and he is one of the best and most engaging public speakers I have ever been exposed to. Fortunately my camera was rolling:

(This is a response to the wildly popular “Dear Republicans, Fuck You” letter.)

Dear Republican Haters,

To quote your own diatribe, “Fuck you. No, I’m not joking. I’m sick of this bullshit.”

I’m sick of the way you have perpetuated the tired, childish, brain-dead notion that there are two and only two polar opposite ideologies in the politics of the USA and that every person must determine their position along the line that connects them.

I’m sick of the way you have pigeon-holed every person who is the least bit inspired by the Republican ideals of limited and enumerated government enshrined in our founding documents into a behemoth straw-man.  You pretend that every Republican favors war, torture, greed, prisons, homophobia, and environmental destruction.  This is the only way that you feel comfortable responding to our thoughts, because it allows you to feel self-righteous about your various causes.

I’m sick of the pretense that the worst parts of the United States Government, particularly 1) the propensity for worldwide military conquest, 2) the disastrous “war on drugs,” and 3) the regulatory structures that have enabled mega-corporate dominance over nearly every facet of human life, are the fault of Republicans.  Democrats, and the democrat philosophical tradition, are at least as much to blame for these evils, and it’s going to take a trans-spectrum collaborative effort to fix them.

I’m sick of the blind, zealotic fervor with which you embrace every policy that comes out of the mouth of the god-king Obama.  Like everybody else, he has some good ideas and some bad ideas.  I think it’s notable that most of his good ideas became taboo once he became President, while his bad ideas have been given front-burner status.

I’m sick of the outrageously and transparently partisan selectivity with which you pass moral judgment on the legitimate role of government.  When George W. Bush turned out to be a jackass and mass murderer, we turned on him (actually, many of us never supported him in the first place!) and joined your chorus of contempt for the bloating of the size of the federal government under his regime.  Now, when we point to the same exact tendencies under Obama, suddenly big government is OK with you.

I’m sick of the ludicrous yet omni-present claim that government is the only solution for providing quality health care for all.  I’m also sick of your comparisons to the health care systems of nations that are 1% the size of ours.  I’m sorry, but no government, much less one infested with decades-worth of pure evil from both parties, can provide health care for every person from the Atlantic to the Pacific and make it work well.

I’m sick of the myth that corporatism is our burden to bear.  Whose side are the big corporations on now?  The biggest, most fucking wretched pharma companies are falling over themselves to support your health care takeover.

I’m sick of the twisted, sadistic legal justifications given for torture and extraordinary rendition.  Yes, I’m talking about those coming directly from the Obama Administration.  Your so-called “anti-war candidate” has taken the art of making excuses for doing evil to an entirely new level.  On top of that, you have the unmitigated gall to refer to this stuff as “centrism!”

I’m particularly sick of you blaming us for the war on drugs.  While some Republicans have said some stupid things about drugs (particularly Nixon and Reagan), none have ever done even a fraction of the damage that your previous messiah, Bill Clinton, did.  He was, by any reasonable empirical measure, the worst drug warrior in the history of the world. Your abhorrently self-styled “first black President” put more people in prison – and in a more racially disparate fashion – than any other leader ever, anywhere.  So yeah, fuck you on that one.

I’m sick of you holding up the worst fringe lunatics of the Republican party and pretending that they represent the mainstream.  Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, and Ann Coulter are not mainstream Republicans.  They are media-whoring nutjobs.  For once, try responding to our real thinkers like Peter Schiff, Radley Balko, Ron Paul, Jacob Sullum, Ayn Rand, Adam Kokesh, or really just about any everyday Republican you meet on the street.

I’m sick of you pretending that the media favors Republican ideas.  I mean this is really just outrageous.  Look at the idiotic characters the media puts up to represent our corner!  In media-speak, anyone who is paranoid, deranged, and misinformed is a Republican.   Never are thoughtful, open-minded Republicans given an opportunity to participate in the dialogue.  But then, the job of the media is to maintain the notion that everybody belongs on the one-dimensional political spectrum.  Simple.  They make you look stupid and they make us look stupid.  They certainly do not win us any friends, so stop pretending they are in our pocket.

I’m sick of your refusal to talk about spying, wiretapping, and surveillance of US citizens, which your top dogs support enthusiastically.

I’m sick of you pinning of every fear-driven prejudice, from racial bigotry to homophobia to xenophobia and beyond, to some kind of byproduct of Republican ideals.  Just so we’re clear about our respective political traditions:  We always wanted to free the slaves.  You resisted.  We had to go to fucking war against you to get you to admit that slavery is, well, wrong.  We wanted open borders and a welcome environment for immigrants.  You insisted on a federal minimum wage and controls on the economy that make immigration a far more complicated issue than it needs to be.  We never wanted government to be involved in marriage at all, and now you are upset because government marriage led to bigoted regulations on who can and cannot get married.  Imagine that.

Finally, I’m sick of you blaming us for the current state of affairs of our country.  You control both houses of congress and the white house, don’t you?  Or maybe you are finally realizing that no matter what fancy title and political affiliation a power-holder has, he or she will nearly always act in a way that preserves their power, to the exclusion of doing the good for good’s sake.  If you are so convinced that government is the solution, well, 70 million people just handed you the keys to the government.   Don’t whine to us because shit is going terribly wrong.

(Note to commenters: I realize that this post uses divisive language that I don’t usually use or condone.  However, I wanted to respond “in kind” to the original letter, using the same style and some of the same language, although I toned it down from a nearly constant stream of “fuck you” to only two uses of the phrase.  )

UPDATE – I thought of some more:

I’m sick of being made to feel like I’m not allowed to talk about or care about poor people.  Look, the government has done a bang up fucking job taking care of poor people right?  There are homeless in every major city – come to New York in the winter and ask a freezing homeless person if the expansion of the welfare state over the course of the past century has helped them.  There are over 2 million people in our prison system, most of whom, at least at the federal level, are there for non-violent offenses and most of whom are poor.  And then there’s the biggest elephant in the room: the federal reserve system, which you constantly pretend is a non-issue, fucks poor people really really hard.  So yeah, from now on, you don’t get to be the party of compassion.

I’m sick of hearing about “the Government’s lack of response to Hurricane Katrina” and other disasters.  Lack of a response?!  Oh, they responded.  They responded the way governments always do:  by shooting at poor fucking dying people trying to flee New Orleans.  More government was not the solution to this problem.  In fact, paramedics who were on the ground will tell you that the terror there would have been far less if the government had just stayed out and let charities saturate the area with food and fresh water.

I’m very, very sick of brain-sucking references to the status quo as the “free market.” As in the following exchange:

“I believe that the free market can create quality health care for everyone.”

“What, like we have right now?!”

No, not like we have right now.  There are so many laws, regulations, regulatory agencies, trade restrictions, and other bullshit that a person can spend their entire lives studying them and still not be sure if they are allowed to sell a fucking toothpick much less an innovative health care system.  When we advocate market solutions, please don’t say, “but it’s not working now!”  Of course it’s not working now, because your contorted efforts to make the market more safe have predictably resulted in it becoming less non free.

Politics is the art of making people believe that they are in power when in fact, they have none. It is a measure of how dire is the hour that they’ve passed the keys to the kingdom to a Black man. As in many American cities, Black Mayors were let in when the treasuries were almost barren, and tax bases were almost at rock-bottom. With the nation’s manufacturing base also a thing of history, amidst the socioeconomic wreckage of globalization, with foreign affairs in shambles, the rulers reach for a pretty, brown face to front for the Empire. ‘Real change that you could believe in’ would be an end to Empire, and an end to wars for corporate greed, not just a change of the shade of the political managers. That change, I’m afraid, is still to come. - Mumia Abu Jamal

I suppose we’ve all heard this news about Chip Saltsman’s song called “Barack the Magic Negro” (first played, of course, on the Rush Limbaugh radio show)?

Before you jump to conclusions:  The song is not aimed at Obama, but instead at this Los Angeles Times column by David Ehrenstein, although the song is brainless and utterly unfunny anyway.  The column, in a nutshell, warns that the election of Barack Obama might serve to alleviate “white guilt” without white people having to lift a finger to alleviate the actual ongoing suffering of people of color.

Now the good part: The media coverage, without exception as far as I am aware, pits the champion idiot Saltsman in one corner against (usually black) people who almost equally idiotically argue that the song itself is bigoted. Nowhere mentioned are people who actually agree with the underlying message in Ehrenstein’s column, nor has Saltsman been made to defend his childish ‘criticism’ of this most important of issues facing the USA. Ever.

Of course, the media coverage never includes any of the chorus of activists who have been saying for YEARS now that indeed to elect Barack Obama as POTUS might serve to overshadow the prison industry, the war on drugs, the disproportionate toll of the “Global war on terror” on people of color, and the abysmal treatment of the continent of Africa in general and the traditions of African culture in the United States in particular.

There is no mention in this dialog of the thousands of black or brown people who have expressed and continue to express skepticism regarding Barack Obama and didn’t need some juvenile song by some irrelevant wannabe radio personality to know it was time to speak their mind.

None of the three balloted Presidential candidates who echoed some form of Ehrenstein’s warning (Cynthia McKinney, Ralph Nader, Ron Paul) have come up in any corporate media coverage of this controversy.

Instead, it’s just another chance to obfuscate racism by pretending the argument is between (ostensibly) good-natured but ignorant white people and wholly misinformed black masses.