A GENTLEMAN’S MUSINGS ON THE HISTORY AND IMPORTANCE OF THE WOMEN'S RIGHTS MOVEMENT IN THE EVOLUTION OF AMERICAN CULTURE

ON A TIME… A GENTLEMAN’S MUSINGS ON THE STATE OF WOMEN’S RIGHTS

What has happened to the women’s rights movement in America and why would it matter to a gentleman as compared to so many issues of the day? A man can only devote so much time to the gentlemanly arts, his toilette, his cigars, his automobile and his favorite sport. A worldly man should be equally intrigued by the world around him and he would understand that on occasion he must contemplate phenomenon other than the classic manly ones to which he is used. Enter the world of women and specifically their socio-political aspirations. After all men do share this world with women and one must agree in the past that relationship had been far from equitable to which is owed the reason for a woman’s rights movement…

Women’s suffrage is an ancient phenomenon but our age has been fortunate to have resolved millinea of struggle in only a few decades.

The 1850’s saw a miraculous surge of power not only for abolition but for women’s suffrage… Both causes found themselves married in the mid nineteenth century through a common need for exposure and patronage. The wealthy benefactors of abolition were almost always sympathetic to suffrage and so the two causes traveled the civilised world together converting indifference and massaging the faithful. At the end of the day it was all for a magnificently important humanitarian cause.

During those enchanted times mid-century luminaries such as Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth, Lucretia Coffin Mott and Harriet Tubman travelled in the same circles galvanized by lecture tours that travel the U.S., England, New Zealand, France and the rest of Europe. Lincoln and Douglass were similarly self-made and I do not doubt that the prospect of The Declaration of Independence was not often debated between the two gentlemen indirectly as it is almost certain that Lincoln would have read Douglass and Douglass would have read Lincoln.

During the heyday of the nineteenth-century American civil rights movement and specifically within its ranks the strict rules of Victorian society were often completely abandoned. It was a time of cultural experimentation and evolution and it’s leaders were literally re-writing the book. I do not intend to steal the importance of the movements by interjecting a bit of human nature but boys will be boys…

There was a well-managed scandal involving the Honorable and then married Frederick Douglass and his young, beautiful and unwed British secretary who traveled with him o’er land and sea. The liberal and unchapheroned minglings and lodgings, traveling and such between men and women to whom they were not wed and of women roaming the globe without a care for hearth and home certainly rustled the petticoats of Victorian society on both sides of the Atlantic.

What I find most fascinating about this time and this social laboratory was that the voices of women were being heard in ways they never had been before.

Remembering the hayday of the women’s rights movement in the 1970’s causes me to cleary visualize the National Organization of Women’s  national headquarters at 13th and Pennsylvania Ave. N.W. in Washington, D.C. it’s huge white and black banner hung wrapped around the buildings upper façade at least into the 1990’s. It was a landmark,  an incontrovertible sign that women having been disenfranchised for millenia were now on the scene as a force to be reckoned with! What on earth happened to such powerful and determined momentum?

In stark contrast to those gilded times the cause of women’s rights appears to have expired. I cannot help but ask myself this question, “Did every woman step up to the plate to change the face of history by electing the first woman president”?

At age 54 I’ve come to realize certain things really don’t matter at all and consequently they are not remembered. What matters is the image of a thing or its symbol… that is the hallmark which defines history and the figures wwho populate it more than any other varable… That being said I must confess that I had hoped to see the first woman president not necessarily because the woman who ran was any more extraordinary than any other woman… It is time… it is long overdue… let us establish the image of a woman leader because it is a symbol of a far larger purpose… The details can easily be worked out along the way. Now as it happens Hilary Clinton is an extraordinary woman but that does not appear to have moved the American people to change history…

America has seen 200 years worth of the same brand of President with a refreshing digression to elect the first Black American president. Now that we have finally broken away from the trend let us not stop what is certainly a fateful, inevitable evolution. It is time for a woman president, it is far overdue!

Who might the first woman president be and who might she have been had history been more creative? Might she have been Oprah Winfrey, Madeline Allbright, Erin Brockovitch, Shirley Chisolm or Angela Davis? Could she have been Eleanor Roosevelt, Harriet Tubman, Emily Dickenson or Phyllis Wheatley? The all would have made amazing presidents but their talent to wield the reigns of the presidency was never realized. As a man of both intelligence and conscience it grieves me that my country continues to squander such obvious leadership potential. As a man I am able to say that I believe women to be my equal in every respect, that I am profoundly disappointed given the brilliant history of women’s suffrage that America was unable to rise to the occasion of greatness to elect a strong and highly capable woman to the office of President of these United States.

In the aftermath so many theories have been offered to explain the meaning of America’s political choice. I say to hell with divining a logical meaning from such a dis-unified and desperate outcome. Rather I would focus on the singular question,

“What is the state of the women’s rights movement in America today?”

And attempt to piece together a sense of direction based on quantifiable data. Could it be that after only a few decades in the workplace some women have jumped on the bandwagon forgetting that others might continue to visualize them in the traditional role of domestic homemaker deeming them unfit for certain roles?

I discussed this topic with a female friend who is also a prominent member of The League of Women Voters and she suggested that the agenda of feminism may have been too extreme for many women and as a result the movement may have failed to attract modern women who still embrace traditional female values. She believes such women could have failed to appreciate the symbolic importance of a female president as well as it’s ability to leverage ratification of critical policies relating to women’s rights that have been ignored in the past.

On a time if such an opportunity were to present itself women galvanized under common advocacy leadership would not have hesitated to contribute in the only way they could by voting for a candidate that represented their interests, their struggle and their undocumented power to serve a nation that has historically denied them the ultimate seat of the presidency. In my heart I preserve hope that during my life I will call a woman president…. It can still happen on a time…

BIGDADDY BLUES

REDISCOVERING TWO SKILLED ARCHITECT- CARPENTERS  ENSLAVED ON AN 18TH CENTURY VIRGINIA PLANTATION BY GEORGE MASON 260 YEARS AGO.

When I walked into the ornately carved rooms of Gunston Hall Plantation I saw there what stood out as the distinctly fluid style of West African craftsmanship. Anyone who has studied African art would be able to recognize these familiar hallmarks wherever they appear. That day I identified a patently West African mannerism in the execution of the  architectural embellishments. It was an indelible sign left over 260 years ago by slaves interpreting mid-eighteenth century rococo motifs. Their enslaved creativity spoke across the ages. The story it told revealed the manufacture of a grandly conceived edifice with richly carven appointments. The owner of these brilliant men was non other than George Mason who refused to sign of the Constitution. Mason personally hired an inexperienced man to supervise  the construction of Gunston Hall by his slaves who were far more experienced and skilled architects and carpenters by comparison. Gunston Hall was intended to impress the landed gentry of Colonial Fairfax County Virginia by upscaling the existing residences. It would establish Mason as a man of refinement and impeccable taste, signifying that he had socially arrived at the top of the social food chain of landed gentry such as it existed in the bucolic hinterlands of Virginia in the mid-eighteenth century. At that time no credit would ever have been lavished on a slave as having been an architect or a creative force behind the buildings he constructed from foundation to finial. Mason imported a carpenter from England to make it seem as if the edifice had been the total concept of a man his slave owning peers could respect, it would not have been considered chic for such a pretentious undertaking to have been the product of a slave. In America, especially during the colonial period when the cities we now know were dense forests slave labor was the invisible force behind the transformation of wilderness into civilization, slaves felled the forests to clear acreage for farming the large plantations and opened streets for the towns that grew up around plantation life; no one understood this better than men who owned slaves like George Mason.

The visual connection between the technical imprint of Africa and the thematic adaptation of European design was unmistakable. The struggle to realise a unique architectural footprint in the new world defining the hybrid iconography of its sociopolitical soul would evolve into the Federal Style so eloquently charactarized by the architectural stylists Jefferson and Latrobe. The development of this new architectonic vocabulary was pioneered by plantations such as Gunston Hall that rejected the opulence of European taste if not more by necessity than artifice establishing a simplified standard for the American home.

These early and middle colonial period buildings were conceived in a world that was was technically incapable of replicating the scale of contemporary European architecture because there were no resources available to devote to their painstaking execution. The new colonies were busied with the basic tasks of building the first footholds of development and in response the architecture of that period was functional. The urban and agricultural infrastructure was built upon the backs of slaves simply because it was the least desirable work and slavery rendered it virtually cost-free! European colonials supervised the clearing of forests, the draining of swamps, the building of roads and the construction of the simple structures of the times all accomplished by slave labor. In the thousands of history books written on North America not one has ever honestly told revealed this true story of how America was built.

In struggling colonial America, on the frontiers of European settlement during the eighteenth-century there was little time to lavish on capricious beauty. In the major east coast port towns we find architecture that is truly style conscious and sophisticated.  Interestingly, the farther one is removed from cosmopolitan cities such as Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston and New Orleans the more clearly one recognizes the softening of architectural sensibility to a more improvised, homemade brand informed by the natural design instincts of slaves. One might say the architecture begins to become more fascinating there. Slaves ultimately interpreted culturally unfamiliar classical motifs for the ordinary buildings used by colonial peoples. The deeper we delve into the prolific construction boom that took place between the early 1600’s when the first slaves began to be imported to North America in significant numbers and the mid nineteenth-century preceding the American Civil War the more magnanimous a picture we get regarding just how much of this nation was actually built by slaves, the concept alone is simply mind-boggling.

I already knew that wealthy colonial plantation owners considered skilled African slaves especially architects and construction experts to be highly valuable personnel in rural environments where such professionals were absolutely otherwise unavailable.  If you plan to visit this or any other plantation I recommend that you study period wood carvings, pottery and metal castings from mid-eighteenth century West Africa. Equipped with this practical knowledge it should be easy to connect the cultural dots… one, two, three, four….. a masterpiece!

We cannot continue to learn the story of the construction of Gunston Hall or any other structure built in America from the colonial period through the antebellum period without taking a candid look at the world that created it for they are intimately married. The people who ultimately realized the building of these edifices were typically slaves, they were the labor force of the seventeenth and eighteenth century. A contemporary example might be the importation of laborers for the construction boom of the early twenty-first century but comparatively the importation of African slaves represented a much larger scale with billions of workers being enslaved over a duration of several centuries. When slavers stole entire families from their homes in Africa for sale in the slave markets of the Americas and the Caribbean  they kept an eye out for highly skilled craftsmen, mathematicians, physicians, engineers, artisans, statesmen and other professionals already possessing skills that would fetch a high price in the marketplace. Had these captives actually been completely unskilled they would hardly have been considered worth the effort. The myth that these men and women were ignorant, unskilled savages equal in stature to farm animals was manufactured by European and American slavers as propaganda to justify the brutal rape, murder and dehumanization of billions of people over the course of over three violent centuries. The conceptual buy-in of those who participated in and accepted  slavery including its premise of racial supremacy cannot be ignored today. We must reevaluate the character of those who saw fit to participate in the slave trade and not pretend they did not fully understand its implications. The men and women who owned slaves like George Mason, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson knew it was morally wrong but chose to justify it based on economics. We cannot idolize and celebrate such men and women any longer as icons of freedom and egalitarianism any more than Germans can place an olive Branch on the brow of Hitler. The practise of racial supremacy today is based on a technically bankrupt mythology originally manufactured then to bamboozle the poorer masses who, unaffected by the negative consequences of its inequities and too destitute to participate in its vast economic profits accepted the trend they were powerless to change.  In truth European peasants who had been enslaved in feudal serfdom for over a thousand years were all to eager to trade-off their enslavement if only conceptually because it appeared to give them the hope and appearance of socioeconomic advancement. The moral and humanitarian obligation that the slave trade rejected and villainously turned it’s back on over 300 hundred years ago has never ceased to be a current social issue. 

But something that had not occurred in all human history precipitated a universal abhorrence of slavery presaging it’s historical end in spite of its economic attraction. By the summer of July 4th 1776 most of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence realized the awful mistake they had made by not clearly outlining a legally structured end to slavery. Although it is rumored that George Mason was sympathetic with the abolition of slavery but a slave owner himself, he made no effort to free his own slaves in life or even upon his death. It can be concluded that nay sense of abolition possessed by him was purely romantical since it was never evinced by a single action of his. It should therefore be assumed that he since he never left any tangible measurement of abolitionism he was in fact not the shining American figure we should hold in esteem, he was part of the problem.

Ironically, the only real good served, the only merit history can lay upon the brow of George Mason is that during his life he and his ancestors left us well documented evidence of the extraordinary skills many slaves possessed but we’re never credited for. We’re it not for their dutiful journal keeping which had every other intention but to preserve the legacy of their servants we might know nothing of the people who really made a plantation such as Gunston Hall successful.

On another front we must differentiate between whether we are alright considering a slave owner a hero, or a proper role model for the American way of life.  Following to the social movement occurring in our culture whereby the lives and actions of public and popular figures are being held under a powerful ethical and moral microscope we must now not fail to revisit history for the purpose of separating good men from bad ones. If we can arrest and convict a man for dogfighting surely we can remove undue honors from men who contributed to the brutal murder enslavement of billions of innocent men women and children in the culturally malevolent slave trade.

In the past and present it has sufficed to mention that a slave owner treated his slaves well to assuage the inevitable onslaught of ethical and moral criticism. Those times have changed!

HISTORY CANNOT ESCAPE THE SCRUTINY UNDER THE HUMAN RIGHTS STANDARDS WE UPHOLD TODAY!

Today as then we realize the vast wealth of knowledge owned by slaves that was usurped literally for free. We also know these slaves were not given any credit for their contributions, no acknowledgement has ever been made to affirm their ingenuity without which the America we know today could have come to be… Nearly every historian that has published data on American history has been unpardonably ignorant or deliberately negligent of the contribution black peoples have made especially during the colonial era. These charlatans have failed us and cheated us of the richness and complexity of the American experience.

I was at first overtaken by the absence of Black American visitors at this historic site naked Gunston Hall; I alone had come to pay homage to the ingenuity of my ancestors on that day. Though the legacy of slavery is painful revisiting sites where it played out is a healing soulful pilgrimage. 

I wanted to see if the tour guide had done his homework, if he knew that the planks which bore our weight were cut, dressed, polished and joined by black slaves so I asked him if he knew who the carpenters were. By his gesture I knew he didn’t. I surmised that he understood where I was going with my query. He responded that George Mason hired and imported Italian craftsmen a fabrication even he realised was embarrassingly unbelievable. For one thing the distinctly English brand of chinoiserie, and Gothic revival motifs were definitely not in vogue in aristocratic Italian homes of the time . A skilled and stylistically eloquent Italian craftsman of the 1750’s would have favored neoclassical motifs along the lines of Andrea Palladio. By 1750 French and Italian architecture was seriously neoclassical evoking eloquent interpretations  of Roman, Etruscan, Greek and Egyptian temples. In mid-eighteenth century colonial America the landed aristocracy of the Potomac river valley and Chesapeake region were, for the most part, out of the loop with regard to mainstream architectural trends in Europe. Thomas Jefferson was a rare exception and it is quite clear that his fashionable instinct attracted him to the neoclassical styles trending in France and Italy when he built Montpellier in 1764. It might be a stretch to include Mount Vernon built by George Washington in 1758 as an early example of neoclassical expressionism adding a second to the list. Without a doubt Gunston Hall was intended to evoke the spirit of a small English country house that would have been in vogue in the early 1700’s. It was conceived as a romantic but visually effusive English cottage evoking the feel of Gothic abbeys and parishes of the English countryside.

I set out thereafter to prove that the intricate woodwork had been hand-crafted by African slaves. So I began to thoroughly research the matter proving or disproving my theory. As you have read my research proved my instinct in full.

In 1755 George Mason indentured a young Englishman named William Buckland importing him across the sea from England to America to oversee the construction and embellishment of his Potomac river plantation known as Gunston Hall. The original contract still exists but the concept of indenturement has changed over the past 261 years. There were two very different types of indenturement in the American colonies. The classic indentureship ivolved criminals and other incarcerated Persons including the poor being sold into temporary slavery as a way to repay their debts. However based on the paperwork it is clear that  Buckland was a free man at the time he was hired so the term indenture in this instance would have had the same meaning in 1755 as the modern word, contractor. William Buckland was a contractor but it is also clear he was considered to be an indentured servant bound to a term of 4 years. At the time the carpentry and joining arts were a broadly defined trade and certainly could  have included the particular design and construction skills expected of an architect.

According to contemporary diaries and inventories of Masons son two slaves were already owned by Mason working as skilled carpenters. These black men were named Tom and Liberty. Tom and Liberty lived on a section of the plantation known as “Log Town” an encampment of log cabins and other structures in what was called the Occoquan Quarter of the plantation grounds. Log Town had a black overseer named Nace and the entire Occoquan Quarter had relative autonomy it was populated by other skilled slave craftsmen such as blacksmiths and tanners and their families. This should not serve to suggest that slavery was anywhere close to an idyllic existence at Gunston Hall the reality is that it was brutal and dehumanizing consistent with  slavery as a whole.

Masons son confidently praised the professional skills possessed by Liberty and Tom indicating that they were certainly more skilled and experienced at carpentry, and building construction than their indentured supervisor when he arrived on American soil. It can be safely assumed they were the architects and contractors for all the extant structures about the plantation. This leaves us to wonder why, given their superior skills, was a young contractor hired to supervise men with many times his skills and experience.

George Mason was a social climber. His residence at Gunston Hall was intended as a showplace to secure and affirm his status in colonial Virginia society. He avoided incurring the expense of hiring and importing an established, popular English architect, (I am certain it would have been an impossible task), and to be honest the bucolic farmers and plantation owners at the time would not have recognized the difference. It was a political keeping up of appearances at best implying that Mason had achieved a social status enabling him to “import” an English architect. To that end he was undoubtedly the “Hyacinth” of his sleepy agrarian community and a reminder that pretension is as old as time itself.

To add more realness to this diorama let’s examine the practical dynamics. Liberty and Tom were experienced contractor/builders and architects who certainly could have supervised and built Gunston Hall from the ground up by themselves. We do not know much about their education but the certainly had the ability to work from architectural plans and one must surmise they already possessed the skill to draw them. Based on written documents itvis quite clear that Liberty and Tom not only built the many domestic and agricultural structures on the plantation but that their skills were so high and demand so compelling in the region that they were given virtual autonomy in their own section of the plantation to oversee the daily maintenance of the entire plantation in addition to being contracted out to other plantations and work sites for maintenance and groundout architectural services. They were a complete design-build team.  During the eighteenth century it was quite common for plantation owners to purchase architectural plans and treatises published in Europe and have their skilled slaves transform them into buildings. Because the design coordination was often supervised by a white carpenter or architect such as Buckland the slaves who certainly became adept at copying and manufacturing architectural details were never given due credit for their work. As we begin to delve deeper into the socioeconomic and political structures of slavery these deliberate exceptions of black men from the history of our country will be uncovered.

I uncovered the actual 1775 contract of indenturement for William Buckland and this rare document told me virtually everything I needed to know. The question was who actually executed the physical carpentry work at Gunston Hall and specifically the delicate wood carving of the crown mouldings and finestral details such as the fiery chinoiserie valences. The endorsement made by Jorge Mason at the completion of the work stated that Buckland and I quote that he,

“Had the entire direction of the carpenters and joiners work”.

Translated into 21st century English this means that he acted in the capacity of a supervisor but given the social realities of the time it is doubtful that Buckland actually, physically carved any of the fine interior and exterior embellishments because he already had a team of skilled carpenters at his disposal. It is more probable that he drew or provided exemplary plans from which the slaves worked and that he provided printed generic architectural patterns allowing them to extrapolate the execution. Even during his four-year indenture Buckland could not and would not have single handedly manufactured all of the marvelously intricate woodwork we marvel at today. It was carved by slaves… so who gets the credit for actually  building Gunston Hall?

It’s is customary to attribute the building of a notable house to its owner because they were it’s financier, hence we say Gunston Hall was built by George Mason although he never contributed to its physical realization. Similarly, Buckland who went on to become a prominent architect in colonial Virginia was, like Thomas Jefferson a creative manager but one who left the messy, hard-core details of construction to the skilled expertise of slaves. This disparity in the transparency of the creative process has served to prevent skilled, enslaved artists from getting credit for their genius. This is one of the primary reasons why American history must be revised to reflect the contributions of black peoples.

Whilst reassigning due credit we must also revisit the “Hero-Srtucture” of this nation to reevaluate who should inherit the esteem of history moving forward from a platform of truth and fairness. When this has been judiciously managed black slaves will be resurrected from the abyss of ignorance and focused racism to assume their due status as builders of this nation…

FIN

Written by BIGDADDY BLUES

WHY I WRITE ABOUT SLAVERY/ WHY I WRITE ABOUT RACISM: The Importance Of Preserving The History Of Slavery In America

WHY I WRITE ABOUT SLAVERY

The subject of the enslavement of black men, women and children in America should not insult or disturb you unless you are either ashamed of the realities of its legacy or defensive of your position of support for what is universally considered a crime against humanity. In America, regardless of your race you cannot escape having a position on slavery!

The bottom line is that you either despise or are in agreement with America's past justification of slavery and the vicious institution of racism that it continues to represent today!

The residual fallout of slavery affects every aspect of modern life in America. Every major corporation that has ever proliferated here owes it’s success to the economic boom made possible by the federally condoned slave trade.

The American government enforced legalized slavery for the first 85 years of all 240 years or 35% of its existence. But the racist policies and structure behind slavery  continued to be enforced by our government until 1969 or for 80% of the existence of this nation. The concomitant practise of racially motivated disenfranchisement and violence originally invented to enforce slavery has never stopped!

Racism is more American than apple pie! Remember that hose legendary pies were cooked by slaves who were forced to pick them under the most barbaric conditions imaginable and all absolutely free! Think about them the next time you taste an apple pie…

The corporate structure of America was made possible by unfettered profits made possible by free slave labor. Just imagine if you could create a company without having to pay employees or provide Healthcare or any other employee benefits?

How else besides slavery can you explain how a struggling young nation of poor farmers pulled 13 raggedy colonies into a nation after nearly losing a war with England and in only 60 years managed to become a world power player in the industrial revolution?

The piece, the missing piece, the unspoken piece, the downplayed piece, the guilty piece and the piece that has never been rectified politically, socially or economically is of course, “SLAVERY!”.

Some Black Americans are shamed by their history others are ignorant of it. The fact that the legacy of slavery has unique consequences for people’s of color necessitates our understanding of its dynamics as a tool to reverse and curtail it’s continued effects upon us. This horrific game had played out too long and I am absolutely appalled that so many Black Americans continue to fail to understand its significance or take action to put it in check. I will continue to write about slavery until they are awakened!

I will continue to write about slavery because the struggle, disappointment  and pain of my ancestors still burns and aches hot within my soul. I still cry for them. I still hurt for them. Through my writing I embrace and metaphorically become them... I become a voice telling the terrible and beautiful truths they died unable to speak! I am their voice! Because of their struggle and not in spite of it this country belongs to their descendants but we must be awakened from the trance of slavery that still cripples us in order to claim it! You have only to listen to the voices of your ancestors… Their voices are locked in the untold history of this nation. Study, research, explore this rich untold story and you too will be awakened!

In a long-failed and hideously transparent attempt to save domestic and global face America has made an unholy covenant with its guilt and it’s fiercely burning hatred to ignore and cultivate the cancer of racism. America refuses to purge itself from the one obstacle preventing it from becoming the land of freedom and opportunity it pretends to be.  Racism is treated as a social taboo because of its diabolical spirit and much like another taboo, sexuality a closer look at what Americans are doing ultimately exposes them in blatant contradiction to ideals they do not have any intention of living up to. The disparity in racial equality is something that should serve as platform to bring this nation together as an instrument of survival in the twenty-first century realm of economic viability but it is clear that old habits are difficult to change. When we bring up the topic of racism whether in mixed company or as a unified group it is often perceived as an angry, aggressive, radical or dissenting topic. This is because people mistakenly perceive the cure with the same fear and apprehension as they do the cancer.

After so long there really should be no question about what is right and what is wrong about racism in fact it should be the meaningful and soulful platform that brings all races together, right? Black and white Americans are so intimately bound by the legacy of racism that it is such a disappointment they have not  yet found a way to overcome it and begin to cultivate a real, working brotherhood.

Racism has a dark and violent past that has never been easy to digest. This is why it has been avoided and swept under the rug. But there has always been a group of Americans who have never abandoned the aggressive perpetuation of racism. These people perceive progressive social progress as a negative phenomenon. They exist in an anachronistic world of primitive barbarism and social malcontentedness. The inspiration for the evil they breed is a disgusting heap of failed attempts to smother the human spirit with lies. Racists worship evil it is their raison d’etre! That is why racism must be exposed, confronted, and eradicated! But those who take on the crusade to defeat racism must be careful they do not themselves become corrupted by the bile of racist thought! Their goal should be to neutralize racism today ensuring it’s cancer cannot infect future generations. 

Many black people understand there will always be Americans who will hate them just because of their race but that has never prevented them from striving to heal racial scars among all races.

In the crusade against racism Black Americans have assumed the role of the healer because they have been compelled to understand intimately the pain of its whip!

Of course the nature of social diversity is that not everyone will agree. Americans want to pretend everything is alright. The cost of this charade has been that millions of men, women and children are forced to accept poverty, ignorance and violence simply because of their race. For the most part Americans have been conditioned to accept racial disparities and they endure them without challenge as a consequence of dysfunctional survival behaviors that were crafted and evolved during slavery. Under the shackles of slavery and in the present black people have survived by ignoring racial violence lest it turn it’s fury toward them. Whether they condoned racism or not many nonblack Americans have survived by going along with the program. But to the rest of the world the spectre of racism in America is a glaring disparity. Given Americas claim to be a soldier of egalitarianism it’s racist soul stands out as a comedic lie but for its vicious assaults on the human dignity of the very peoples who built the nation. Because America has lied about who built the nation it has felt the need to justify it through racial degradation.

The human characteristic of aggression be it racial, physical, verbal, economic or otherwise is typified by its unwillingness to retreat. We find that putrefying characteristic in modern America. Fear redoubled by guilt are the mechanisms that convince the aggressor that they must maintain a foothold least they become the oppressed. But racism in America is not only motivated by the fear of “cummupins” it is a lethal, pathological cancer passed down to each generation keeping the ugly nightmare alive. Racism in America is lustfully cultivated and worshiped as a religion.

So I write not only about but against racism because it is my birthright as the great, great grandson of slaves to continue their struggle for freedom. I am bound to this mission by virtue of my race but it is a soulful duty transcending race. I serve as a guardian of truth and light. I live a meditative life taking care that my mission does not become corrupted by the evil against which I fight. Ii accept my imperfection but pray for divine guidance.

Those who profess to fight against racism must not themselves become racists. They must always remember that human beings no matter how deeply corrupted by the cancer of racism are still humans and must therefore be loved as brothers. But like children who require redirection their misguided actions must be checked and corrected. I write about racism as a humble servant of humanity and my position is neither black or white is is the position of truth.

I write what I see removing filters designed to distract men from taking positive action by giving them an excuse to ignore the urgency of humanitarian intervention. I write about racism because I live to see humanity happy and free!


Written by: BIGDADDY BLUES

IT'S TIME TO DEMILITARIZE THE POLICE IN AMERICA

DEMILITARIZATION OF US POLICE:
Reinventing Police As A Community-Based Organization for Peace. Is This The Future For Police In America?

Police violence in America began when the first African slaves were bought to North America in the 1600's and has continued to this day in 2016 nearly 400 years of continous cold-blooded murders. Black men have been the the target of  focused police violence through an unholy relationship between them and white supremacist organizations to the extent that there is hardly any distinction between the two any longer when viewed from the perspective of its victims, their families and community. Because this evil truth has been supported on every level of government for several centuries modern American culture is also mired in profound denial and continues to ignore the obvious as if it will cure itself. The police force in America has become a haven for sociopaths and social misfits who find a convenient outlet for racism and other pathologies in the ranks of our nation's most intimately woven echelon of law enforcement.  If this is not overwhelming, bloody evidence that the police cannot handle firearms responsibly what is? In our liberal culture it is customary to remove power from those who abuse it! Removing the right to carry firearms and to use deadly force is centuries overdue for the police in America. It is past time to remove all vestiges of police association with the Klan and other racist organizations by literally reinventing them as a 100% peaceful entity.

Policemen are not intended to be militia they are not an extention of the federal armed forces. Militarization of the police on the state and local levels is tantamount to treason and sedition implying that states have the right to generate armies and militia that might have the ability to resist or challenge federal laws and the federal troops intended to enforce them. We are looking at the potential ingreduents for a focused rebellion against U.S. law precipitated by dissident states who have already entertained traitorous ideas of secession. It is time for the Supreme Court to eliminate militarized police and revise their status by replacing the term "Police" with the more humanitarian term, "Community Infrastructure Moderators". Their role would change to enforcers of peace in the diverse communities they serve. The police in America must be completely demilitarized and reorganized as a peaceful community-based structure.

After WWI Europeans recovering from the SS, the Gestapo and other fascist uber-militarized police removed weapons from their policemen. Now Americans are at point where their lives and freedoms are being threatened by an armed and hostile aggression upon the civilian population from over-militarized police. The obsolete laws enabling these perversely aberrant officers to violate human rights must be overwritten in a clear legal manner from the Supreme Court that effectively nullifies antiquated laws and loopholes null and void without any vesting or grandfathering. In this way the tedious task of seeking out centuries old legal needles in a haystack will be remedied in one fell stroke of justice!

So here is an example of how our new Community Infrastructure Moderators would work. When issues involving violence occur responding, demilitarized police now called Cummunity Infrastructure Moderators will contact the appropriate branches of the military such as the National Guard to intervene. This is a totally logical and timely way to usher the old and culturally caustic police into obsolescence while creating a culturally relevant and vivacious network of grass-roots support that will be equipped to assist troubled communities heal and grow by acting as a facilitator of peaceful coexistence rather than a brutal enforcer of minutiae, arbitrary and culturally irrelevant laws that have never worked to empower the community. This means a completely new direction for police enforcement where curfew laws intended to allow children to study and experience family life while keeping the neighborhood streets clear of vice could yield remarkable results generation after generation. Having Cummunity Infrastructure Moderators or CIM on every corner would also help to reduce recidivism in communities where this phenomenon has been keeping sociocultural and economic progress behind.

Men and women who have joined the police as a way to manifest their lust for violence and murder need to check into a local insane asylum or join somebodies army for overseas combat. Becoming a pathologically sadistic police officer who gets their jollies off by preying on poor, disadvantaged and racially/ethnically different American citizens will be a thing of the past one way or another. Better to make this critical refinement in a peaceful way than to find ourselves there after a terrible legal debacle between taxpaying Americans and flabouyantly decadent and unethical police organizations attempting to cling to the socially immoral and pathologically barbaric traditions of an evil practice whose time has come to an end. And it will surely end!

Let's purge our police force of sociopaths and racists by eliminating the one thing that attracts them to policing... that is the ability to bear firearms and to use them to inflict unjustified, violent, aggressive and racialky motivated lethal force! Let's do it now! Let put an end to this sick madness today!

Written by: BIGDADDY BLUES

THE ROLE AND CONSEQUENCE OF RACISM AND VIOLENCE IN TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY AMERICAN CULTURE

THE ROLE AND CONSEQUENCE OF RACISM & VIOLENCE IN TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY AMERICAN  CULTURE

It was during the G.W. Bush administration that America began to lose its strength and tenacity having once stood as a nation of fearless pioneers for freedom and reason.  For the first time in over 200 years Americans allowed apprehension of the unknown to cripple and render them helpless. As sure as a monument stands at Plymouth rock Massachusetts the nation took its fateful leap from a veritable mountain of confidence and dove hook, line and sinker into the abyss which has become the fear/terror bandwagon of our times. America’s cocky, short-lived confidence was actually a hard-earned prize gleaned from our involvement in both world wars including a few earlier victories from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. In hindsight many of these earlier debacles were no more than vicious manifestations of a misguided sense of manifest destiny driven by a faulty philosophy of racial superiority. They left massive genocides and human scarring that has not healed to this day.

America has evolved somewhat from a nation that embraced the barbarism of slavery but has continued the dark practise of racism rooted in a culture of sociopathic violence and fear. Racism and racially motivated violence in America has always been about the fear that black men, given the ability to compete fairly would pose a formidable threat to the bankrupt concept of racial supremacy. This was evinced in the 1936 Summer Olympics when Jesse Owens demolished the absurd Nazi tower of racial superiority.

WWII allowed Americans to objectively witness the horrific mirror image of its own antebellum shame. We were justifiably proud of the brave rescue of our Jewish brothers and sisters in Europe and God bless them for surviving their struggle. Our humanitarianism paid the high cost exacted by a violent, unavoidable war but the cause of freedom is always justified whatever the means. Like the American Civil War the defeat of the Third Reich ended a terrible season of racially motivated violence that entombed all of Europe. It was a resident evil that had to end. The negative side of our confidence came from our involvement in unwise policies beginning during WWI revising the borders and leadership of ancient nations in the middle east and in eastern Europe. America profited from its political tampering while inheriting eternal enemies through its economic association with the Allies. Germany lay crippled by the implosion of the Nazi menace, Japan still reeled from Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the other Axis powers who fell with Hitler all temporarily removed from global economic competition after the fall of the Axis machine. This gave America a false and brief sense of economic strength and confidence. America was suddenly  “In like Flint” but rested overlong upon its laurels. It grew lazy, greedy and failed to anticipate the insatiable hunger for economic revitalization which inspired those nations who did not come out of WWI or WWII on top. These nations admired, resented and envied Americas prosperity. America became a loud and voluminous red white and blue target for revenge.

America was then a truly great nation still young and curiously innocent. But it’s blind naivete would ultimately set about the task of composing its own eulogy. Throughout its short history those peoples who migrated to  America after Columbus’ folly had survived through a lethal combination of luck and wit barbarity and pure brutality. Between the early colonial era and Pearl Harbor America had demonstrated a promise envied by the world. But that is only if the story is told from a Eurocentric view. The story if told from aboriginal Americans, enslaved Africans, imported Asian and Latino laborers would frame a different perspective of the evolution of freedom in the Americas. It was and in many cases remains a freedom jealously protected by the privileged few. I will still say optimistically that America has been and could once again become a great nation with a brilliant promise. Regardless of the parallax and seemingly in spite of it more than 500 years after Columbus managed the most ridiculous navigation error in all human history things have radically changed. Many Americans seem to have become transformed into a pitiable scream of scary, introverted, sociopathic time-bombs hoarding weapons and swaddling them in a bloody, impotent rebel flag, living vicariously through the violent and foreboding transmissions of the internet as if waiting for some inevitable slash of violence to sever them from the mirage of a safe and civilized America that ironically has not existed for decades. What better climate for the sale of products marketed to give the shivering American consumer a sense of security as inflated as its failing domestic economy.
Americans have got too soft, they have given up on truth, they no longer comprehend the extreme impossibility with which this nation was built and rebuilt many times over. In the face of difficult times Americans appear to have chosen to pack up, step back, disconnect and grab a big, virtual stick in the event the realness they fear happens to knock on the front door. There are many Americans who can see through the smokescreens concealing truth and they are not outnumbered only temporarily frozen with fear of the unknown…
Ronald Regan scorched the skies of late nineteenth century American futurism and optimism by introducing a magnificently impossible apocalypse-engine for which he plagiarized the name “Star Wars” from a 1970’s cinematic icon. The concept of the Star Wars anti-warhead missile he presaged was as primitive as a Johnny Sokko re-run but was a keenly graphic way of saying, “DON’T MESS WITH AMERICA OR ELSE YOU WILL BE VAPORIZED!”. From that moment there was no turning back… or was there?

In the interim the growing enemies of America opted to pull from a far less dramatic and “Hollywood-esque” cache of reprisals. They chose an in-your-face, up-close and personal, mom and pops, cottage-industry brand of terrorism over Star Wars.

Exploiting the already overstuffed bandwagon of commercialized violence and fear in our country foreign terrorists have managed mesmerize the American peoples beneath a pall of dread stealing recruits from our ranks to add to the despair… Their sarcastic but caustic answer to the buffonery of the Star Wars project is epitomized by the same guerrilla-war-tactics used in Asia during the 1960’s and 1970’s when America struggled in the bloody and horrifically violent Korean and Vietnam wars.

In a desperate and clearly necessary response to both foreign and domestic threats Homeland Security has actually done an impressive job of keeping America safe but one wonders how long their uncanny luck will last. In addition to foreign terrorist threats America is literally being eaten from the inside-out by the startling rise of internal violence. It is fair to say that the twenty-first century has finally bought a crippling multi-front war of violence and fear to America. This is a different kind of war than the idyllically ludicrous one envisaged by Nancy Reagan and Mr. T. The autosarcophagy that emperils twenty-first century America is largely the result of its refusal to rectify it’s patent history of racism and socioeconomic bias. A country such as America can no longer afford to fake egalitarianism and the global community is clearly no longer willing to pretend it doesn’t see the grossly profound contradictions between dogma, policy and reality. So America has finally used up all of its exemption cards and can no longer assume the role as an international policeman for human rights without reconstructing it’s own troubled nest.  The process is actually playing itself out right now but the question is can we survive it?

One thing is certain, neither ADT or or our local firearms retailer is going to be of much assistance under the pathological and unpredictable weight of a large-scale terrorist attack. Kitschy security systems that blink, beep, beam and chirp in and out of our everyday lives are useful only to remind us of domestic crimes that seem to be increasing at a rate exponentially greater than foreign terrorist attacks.

We have to examine the clear relationship between a failing economy and the rise of American on American violence in America. In microcosm the phenomenon of black on black crime mirrors this national trend. Similarly the Black American community chooses to ignore this caustic and intensifying sydrome pitted against a dual front comprised of itself and the historic situation of American racism and related violence. Unemployment and underemployment, ignorance and disenfranchisement are the chief hallmarks of cultural failure resulting from racism and racially motivated violence in our world. The current problem with violence in the states may also stem from America’s weak post WWII economy diminishing the domestic job market and forcing many Americans to survive by practising  occupational banditry, Piracy, drug pushing  and a miscellaneous assortment of contraband occupations. All of these career paths require violence in order to thrive. Many Americans believe that our banking and credit systems and Wall Street are actually at the root. Some feel that corporate big business preys upon the delicate security of simple working folk and also provokes the weakness of our deteriorating economy forcing people to victimize others in order to survive. The ensuing panic is a stressor that  drives the twenty-first century American way of life. Are Americans being programmed to live in constant fear and acceptance of dynamics they are not educated to understand? They are not meant to comprehend the structure of violence or defend themselves from it through policy because they are being programmed to consume products promising to magically insulate them from it. At the same time they are programmed to accept the inherent fallibility of these products by buying into the concept of product upgrades. Are Americans being taught to buy commodities they already know are faulty? This is hardly the economic theory that launched the mid-nineteenth century industrial revolution! Keeping Americans in ignorance, fear and selling them junk is big Wall Street business in the twenty-first century and it works! But foreigners won’t touch our domestic products abroad that is except for the the one thing we make better than anyone else… weapons…

This brings us full-circle with the chain linking economics with violence and bigotry. America is still legendary for its military capabilities. But arms technology design, development and sales does not trickle down to even the average American. The one thing we do best could still represent massive overseas outsourcing taking jobs away from these purple mountains.
Homeland Security was created in 2002 immediately after the tragedy of 9-11. Then as now the threat to American security was real as all outdoors. but a great deal of overzealous hype has nurtured a billion dollar security industry in our troubled society and economy. 

Homeland Security is just fine in my book. To be more effective they need the strong, fearless American people of old. How do we get back that spirit? Americans need products that protect them from what has become a socioeconomic culture of fear, high-seas and terrestrial  piracy! America has to get its MOJO back!
Today violence is a big player in the supply/demand curve. The result is that Americans are being manipulated through the cultivation of violence to enrich Wall Street.
If Americans are sitting ducks in a boiling pond we have honestly got to ask ourselves why? There is too much violence generated by Americans against other Americans. Racism, hate crimes, drug related homicides and social disconnectedness are boiling the melting pot over without any external heat.

But is it real? Is it another conspiracy theory? Is the graphic violence which has come to typify twenty-first century American culture real or has media magnified it out of proportion making it appear more voluminous than it really is?

A rise in American violence means more prisons. Privatization of penitentiaries means Wall Street profit. Since there aren’t enough jobs anyway people who commit crimes of survival get prosecuted instantly removing them from the competitive employee-field. Prisons and the banks that finance them make money off prisoners without making them work to create a product because prisoners are the product! We can look at prisoners the way Wall Street does as “Sham-Commodities”.
Americans are being farmed like cattle to be either consumers or  sham-commodities. Most consumers work so they can afford to purchase products, services and commodities. Sham-commodities can include persons or other items that generate money by doing absolutely nothing save creating a demand for other services and products. They are raw materials society has chosen not to process into a useful product because they are sern to be more valuable in an unrefined state. When these people are detained in prison they become exponentially less marketable outside of prison. When released they become sociocultural misfits literally programmed to generate crime in order to survive. There is no intention to develop them to be competitive. The crimes they commit when released is free marketing for institutionalized fear. States and federal policies have been manipulated for centuries to ensure certain populations will not become economically viable competition. These racist policies continue to be tweaked so that the farmed and harvesters population of human sham-commodities increases. Incarcerated and imprisoned people relieve the crowded job market allowing employed taxpayers to fund the costly penitentiary system and to consume products of fear and mass hysteria, racism, etc. A bloodthirsty trend historically germaine to capitalism has been allowed to fester and ferment in America poisoning the spirit of freedom and of fair and competitive capitalism. Cheating the system of free-market competition in order to achieve economic leverage is not sustainable because it’s power is not based on actual outcomes. For example, Black Americans have been deliberately disenfranchised in America for centuries but as they gain in economic power myths fabricated to justify their oppressors violence are being exposed as false. Racists are discovering real competition from people’s they falsely marketed as inferior. The success of their victims so challenges their unjustified swagger they now fear the discontinuance of policies that historically afforded them an unfair advantage. In the not so distant past black men were lynched when they demonstrated leadership capabilities and economic savvy eliminating the possibility they might inspire a soulful awakening to challenge the stereotype! Today they are eliminated from the competition before they can ever show promise. The penitentiary system has been customized to cultivate young, black felons transforming them into sham-commodities and wasting them away until the become nothing more than embittered old men… Likewise, the black community has allowed it’s black men to fall into this trap instead of cultivating generations of young black attorneys, judges, industrialists and politicians to inundate and purge the corruption from a system of institutionalized racism.

The role of violence in America has been to physically eliminate racial competition in every arena of this culture save the lowest echelons of servitude. By the twenty-first century this policy has crippled the potential productivity of America to the point that it has fallen behind other countries. The recent shift in population has caused the historical ruling class to fear their unjustly obtained power base will be eroded, challenged and wrested from them as the ethnic groups they imported as menials begin to build solid socioeconomic power foundations here. The cancer of racism will not allow them to see rationally. Fear of retaliation by those they have brutally oppressed inspires them to manufacture a declining civilization where imaginary and real competitors are stealthily rendered impotent. They fail to acknowledge that corporate America was historically built upon the backs of slaves which is why slavery has never been effectively incorporated in the educational curriculum at every level in America. Many Black Americans have grown bored of spurious racially biased education because it supports institutionalized racism by failing to include the cintributions of the men, women and children whose labor and inventiveness truly built the economic foundation of America. Unfortunately, as long as these lies are allowed to exist unchallenged the hate, racism and violence that has always so profoundly crippled  these United States will continue to boil while the nation sinks deeper and deeper into the irreversible abyss of cultural, economic answer ethical decline… In order to rescue America from itself we must understand the role and consequences of racism and violence in twenty-first century American culture…

FIN
WRITTEN BY: BIGDADDY BLUES

THE LAYMAN’S GUIDE TO PERFECTION

THE LAYMAN’S GUIDE TO PERFECTION

Each time I revisit the theme of perfection I am humbled and awed by the simple beauty of my humanity. Knowing and accepting that neither I nor any other man will ever be perfect is the critical milestone beyond which we become truly free to appreciate who and what we are. One might conclude that resolving our human limitations is the only way we can equip ourselves to deftly manage them. Denial on the other hand is a lugubrious portal to pointless, unnecessary frustration and disappointment. I not believe mankind is intended to punish itself simply because men were created imperfect. I think life is not about perfection or imperfection at all, it is about how we can make the best out of what God has given us.  Regardless of the brevity of our mortal self-consciousness it is the only reference point we have so all the more important that we learn to love and value ourselves as organisms defined by the physical limitations of what we know of creation. This is no argument for or against the existence of what some men believe to be a “perfect”God it is an affirmation of what men are… we are imperfect… we are not gods, we are neither equal or similar to God, he is who he is and we are whom we are…

I am certain that God has his own struggles to quell, perfection is certain to be kept busy beside imperfection. One might conclude it to be impossible for perfection and imperfection to coexist, that it is a relative scale rather than an absolute value. It may not be the simple balancing act we envisage especially when managed on the scale of all existence… I think God is not what we think he is as certainly as I know he is continually amazed at how his creative masterpieces which include men have evolved in ways he had never imagined. God is both artist and critic, men are artifices and votaries...

The first man who said humans should aspire to be perfect and godlike singlehandedly engineered the most tenacious pathology to follow man along his brief evolution. Poetic yes but fundamentally flawed this classic folly falls within the realm of impossible things such as the fountain of youth and the elixir of life. It contradicts and belies a healthy, reasonable comprehension and expectation of man’s capabilities. The idea that man could be perfect is so intoxicating that we might momentarily detach ourselves from reason to fantasize it. But we are not and will never be perfect nor shall we be gods. Perfection is an elusive and deviously beguiling  concept ironically manufactured by man as a state he can aspire to but never attain. Who in their right senses would do something like that? The answer is that it was a tragically bad idea that seemed “perfect” at the time. The challenge is how to undo it’s “bad magic”. No greater recipe for catastrophic disillusionment and depression can possibly exist it is a toxic setup for failure! Perfection is a poetic, intangible quality man has attempted to define without possessing any ability to possess or comprehend it. Perfection easily falls into the wastebasket beside similarly incredulous concepts that perpetrate a fixed, conveniently divine, stratification of existence set within a primitive cache of options that range from good to bad; from bad to ugly without any logical, empirical substantiation. It is clear that nobody has ever taken time to carefully think it out! Perfection is the microwave-caviar of the human experience! The philosopher in me questions whether perfection is not only mankind’s opposite but also his nemesis. Perfection, truly seamless, magnificent and unblemished perfection would be the absolute antithesis of mankind the reverse of the tragic, mortal and volatile environment that encompasses and inundates him. Man hovers between the nadir of genetic barbarity and some ethereal point that is ever drawing close, (but nobody knows how close), to perfection so yes, he falls just short of perfect but that does mean he is not amazing. Humanity is a brilliant artifice of nature a handsome organism brilliant but easily misguided. But in man’s eyes being created imperfect by a perfect god is a powerful engine for his boundless ego. He lusts for that which he feels has been deliberately denied him. His flaw is not being able to admit when he is wrong and then follow up with a reasonable solution to achieve a reasonable level of happiness. Men are now so ego invested in clinging to the fantasy of perfection they are blinded to the obvious reality that they are not and will never be perfect. Mankind’s bombardiering of reason has been and will continue to be the source of his corporeal and spiritual  unhappiness.

If we look at perfection as an equation with man at one side and God on the other we can instantly resolve the inequality. The equation cannot possibly balance. So we must more clearly define or redefine perfection. The dilemma is that we do not know what perfection is because we have never actually experienced it. If we believe God to be the standard of measurement this problem is easily solved or should be. God would be the ideal at one end of the pendulum swing and man would be at the other extreme of the radius. But does the pendulum come to rest? In the frictionless void of space it would not oscillate the same as on an Astral body bound to celestial gravity, it would rotate 360 degrees infinitely. Do we really need to pontificate between theoretical astrophysical models in order to comprehend what appears to have always been crystal clear? Perhaps we need to such complex grandiosities to unravel ourselves from millennia of “imperfect” brainwashing. So let us play with the model of perfection defining it in one instance as an irreversible difference between divinity and mortality. Then let us redefine perfection as it relates to each “thing” under the umbrella of creation. We might coin this as “relative-perfection” but using this model we quickly run into an insurmountable dilemma when we take into consideration that nothing operates perfectly in the universe we know except, (we think), god. So the farther we digress from the paradigm of divine perfection, in the direction of its inherently unbalanced opposite, “mortal-imperfection” the greater becomes the margin of error. This makes us wonder if the traditionally rarefied model of perfection can or should be applied to men at all. I tell you now it may not! Perfection was never breathed into man at creation so it has never been lost and therefore we cannot lament the loss of something we never possessed. We lament what we fear to be gods oversight, deliberate design or punishment. How and why would a perfect god punish what he created as imperfect for being imperfect? That is the equation that does not balance. Our anger expressed as guilt for an unjustified loss of perfection can neither restore nor heal those conditions. No mythical, romanticized pining for a lost Eden can substitute the hard truth that we are what we are. Even if Eden had once existed our reality would still leave us being just what we are, mortals who will be born, live and die imperfect in an imperfect world.

ANTITHETICAL REALITY

At the earliest point of reference the concept of antithetical reality cancels our ability to understand phenomenon which could be structured according to rules nonexistent in our own parallax of reality. Theories on alternate, opposite, divergent, realities are all grandly mythical by default. Until they can be incontrovertibly proved we must question their validity. This does not mean that divinity and supernality are not possible it only means that from our imperfect vantage they would be invisible, undetectable, unfathomable… Can the “perfect” dust that settles at the feet of a perfect being also settle upon us or would the immortal and incorruptible quality of its essence cancel us out as matter does antimatter? Does Einstein’s glimpse of relativity suggest that perfection is a point beyond light speed where “tachyonic-perfection” devoid of mass and timeliness would allow diametrically opposed particles to fuse into one reality? While this theory sounds like a compelling opportunity to escape the condition of our mortal imperfection it leaves one to wonder what existence would be like without all the imperfect “stuff” that defines our world. What is thought without “stuff” albeit imperfect stuff for men to contemplate? At the end of the day being happy with the ”stuff” all around us is the closest we may ever competently approach an understanding of anything of the dust which comprises our world. Mankind must thoughtfully extricate himself from the mythic mire of fantasy he has swallowed for most of the existence he remembers evolving away from habit with a refocused sense of practical realness. It a’int gonna be nearly as fancy as the implausible cosmological “stuff” we must ultimately recycle and discard but it could enable us to appreciate the simple, fundamental nature of everything we perceive as part of our world, a place we already know to be patently imperfect!
In the modern world men are no longer mistaken for gods. Our satirical culture roasts popular deities of the moment with a psychologically dethroning critique reducing them to pitiable, imperfect monsters  reminding them that socioeconomic privilege is a borrowed blessing. The gilt crowns artificially exalting them above other men have been refashioned to suit their likeness from the plundered booty of previously deposed nobles into corporate icons tattooed onto their very souls and operantly-brainwashed into the pliant minds of farmed consumers who are the common classes. Yesterday and in the moment we breathe these symbolic standards are still bereft of realness, they are decorative misconceptions designed only to market a structure intended to enforce an artificial hierarchy of power.  The power they wield is extracted from our minds. But only until such time as we change our minds or turn our minds off from the incessant channels of command and stimulus-response! Today as every day we are all mortals, brothers of the same blood swatches of the same cloth. We are all of us mortals doomed to die and amidst us ever more stars fall from the illumed, nimbused skies of popular culture as nature recycles itself again and again. Death the equalizer of all men proclaims our fateful imperfection.

Privilege and it’s sense of entitlement have been duly tempered by the glorious and inglorious revolutions of the past two hundred years bringing us all that much closer at least in theory. Wresting the mindfuck of divine right from the politically privileged got mankind the first real pay raise it had had in 100,000 years.  The void created after divine-mortality had been ousted was a sobering episode still playing itself out. In the absence of false human gods was opened a wary but driven sense of precipitousness in the spirit of those regimes which had been bullied  into existence by wresting away the freedoms of modern men. It is hardly a perfect world my friend when billions are still born into the same abject poverty wherein they die.  Not that enriched enslavement would be a more palatable option. Within the global vastitude of our consciousness we see the eternal struggle between mankind’s ambitions and his capabilities.
How do we measure the difference between mankind’s ambitions and his capabilities? This appears to be the dilemma defined and driven by mankind’s inexorable thirst for perfection. In ancient times we personified this passion through the manufacture of God’s. In modern times our lust for divine supernality causes us to personify our last for perfection through celebrity but has this not always been so?
Whether men are enamored of their unbridled lusts for the trappings of the gods or whether they seek a more abstract and conceptually vacant approach via divine antithetical reality all these theories are the same in their intent to serve as a layman’s guide to perfection.

Written By: BIGDADDY BLUES

DRAWING THE PARALLEL BETWEEN THE CHRISTIAN EASTER TRADITION AND THE STRUGGLE OF BLACK MEN IN AMERICA

THE TRUE SIGNIFICANCE OF EASTER

Whether you  believe that Jesus died on a Wednesday or Thursday and was reborn 3 days later on Saturday or on Easter Sunday is irrelevant to the overall power of the message this phenomenon is intended to convey. An obsession with historical accuracy will yield no fruit here as there simply were no convenient birth or death certificates then and no contemporary documents exist today from contemporary historians who might have captured the event. 2000 years ago media was quite different from the virtual documentation to which we are used. As we all know the matter of Jesus Christ’s existence and resurrection is one which must rely solely on humble faith.

Having the ability to come back fully revived from formidable adversity seems to be the theme of Christ’s resurrection. This of course was powerful medicine to Christians 2,000 years ago. Like Black Americans, early Christians were violently persecuted by the government beneath which they had become subjected to. So the murder and unexpected resurrection of their chosen leader would have the impact  of a beloved civil rights leader Such as Martin Luther King surviving his assassination. According to legend Jesus did overcome death as a physical man. The civil rights leader Martin Luther King did not  duplicate this uber-heroic feat. O how times have changed.

The early Christians were horribly oppressed, tortured, murdered and raped by the ancient Romans who considered these abuses an entertaining sport similar to the way black men have been lynched as a national American sport.  To these sociopathic oppressors then and now the spirt of human murder was a final and politically charged practise.  The outcome had always been predictable but Jesus’s extraordinary resurrection struck a fatal blow to the Roman Empire precipitating its total conversion to Christendom as the Holy Roman Empire in Constantinople. The irony and power of this single event literally changed the course of human history and cannot therefore be ignored in spite of the lack of empirical evidence to support it.

Whether or not Jesus Christ truly existed and rose from the dead the story of his assassination originally intended to subdue the Christians prophetically backfired on Rome. Instead of silencing a troublesome civil rights leader Rome decreed its own death by murdering that charismatic figure. For he was not destined to be buried and forgotten, instead Jesus’ brief, troubled but brilliant life has been preserved in history for over 2,000 years. Not bad for the son of Mary and Joseph a simple craftsman eeking out a living in the difficult economy of ancient Israel. Even a nonbeliever might call that ironic turn of fate a miracle.
Can you imagine those ancient and oppressed peoples, those prototypical Christians holding up their bruised fists to the arrogance of Rome? History had finally given them this one powerful taste of revenge for the slaughter and abuse of their kind? The blow intended to enslave them had instead freed them! What is more, by virtue of the universality of the grace afforded to all mankind through this ultimate act of sacrifice all humans were protected beneath an umbrella of sublime absolution. Aside from being a remarkable marketing model the Eucharist is a critical symbol of human social evolution. It can and will be argued by some nonbelievers and believers alike that ensuing versions of  Christianity following the resurrection perverted Jesus’s intent to suit their personal greed but that still cannot take away the power of this singular event. I like to say in this case, “It is what it is y’all”. Whether it be truth or myth the power of Christ’s resurrection has set a benchmark for the ultimate application of civil disobedience. To be assassinated by your oppressor and rise from the dead to defy them is a feat no bigot can outdo!

That is why Easter is so important,  why it is essential for Black Americans to understand the example and lesson it teaches. Black Americans are still an oppressed people and Christ’s resurrection is a powerful metaphor for their resilience in the face of bigotry and racism, it symbolizes hope and personifies a promise that the evil which oppresses them today will be the very soil that will transform racism from its crude, irrational state into the very bricks of the foundation and tower of the temple of freedom.

Written By  BIGDADDY BLUES

THE SKILL OF SELF-COUNSELLING: A GENTLEMAN'S BEST TOOL

EXCUSE ME, I'M IN A CONFERENCE CALL WITH MYSELF! I'LL CONTACT YOU WHEN I'M DONE.

Before his day ends a gentleman should set aside time to have a meeting with himself to review the many twists and turns of the day. The purpose of this meeting is of course to go over the fine details regarding how you handled the day's situations complementing yourself and also counselling yourself when you've not handled something as effectively as you would have liked. You'll ask yourself questions like, "how could I have made myself more clear" ordinary did a great job communicating my point but how can I brainstorm effective strategies  to be applied to other situations I my encounter"? The possibilities of this kind of self-management are limitless and powerful.

In addition to helping you honey communications skills self-counselling can empower you to identify and set about acomplishing critical life goals. One of the most important features of self-counselling is that it helps bring mentally healing closure to the many issues we do not have time to manage during our hectic day.

Self-counselling does require a great deal of honesty so It can build a person's quality of self-awareness. Look at it this way, you spend an inordinate amount of time managing other people's baggage so why not set aside 15 minutes or more to handle your own. You more than owe it to yourself and what's more, it's 100% free! You might forget sometimes but setting your self-evaluation as a daily goal is essential to your mental health. So just pick a time that's best for you. Otherwise could even be early the following morning or at midday next day.

BIG DADDY BLUES