Most African-Americans (AAs) Will Reap The Whirlwind Once President Obama Is Out Of Office
I'm quoting a number of earlier posts and conversations in this post because the circumstances that we're collectively facing didn't come into existence overnight. These issues have been building for decades; they've come to a head over the past decade; and BWE bloggers have been discussing ways of prospering despite these trend lines since the very beginning of the BWE movement.
I would strongly urge readers to browse the archives and comment sections of the first wave BWE blogs, because a number of life-saving and life-enhancing ideas were discussed (often in detail) during these earlier conversations.
In terms of my writing, I've been discussing the problems and liabilities inherent in Crossover Black Politicians like Pres. Obama from the very beginning of his first presidential campaign. I discussed these matters even though doing so angered a significant portion of my readership (who are Obama-stans):
I believe that AAs have started to reap the whirlwind that we've collectively sown as described in Hosea 8:7 of the Bible. [I'm Muslim, but I recognize that most of the readership is Christian.]
I believe that a lot of AAs' collective problems were set in motion decades (actually, over a century) ago: by our individual and collective refusal to "do for self" and our refusal to "support self." There are a handful of exceptions (I'm an exception, some of you readers are exceptions, there are other exceptions), but I'm talking about the vast majority of AAs.
In terms of AAs reaping what we've collectively sown, I feel the last straw was AAs' collective choice to worship a false idol called Barack Obama.:
Parallel CommentariesMatthew Henry's Concise Commentary
8:5-10 They promised themselves plenty, peace, and victory, by worshipping idols, but their expectations came to nothing. What they sow has no stalk, no blade, or, if it have, the bud shall yield no fruit, there was nothing in them. The works of darkness are unfruitful; nay, the end of those things is death. The hopes of sinners will deceive them, and their gains will be snares.
Pulpit Commentary
Verse 7. - For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind. The harvest corresponds to the seed-time; their foolish and vain idolatries shall have corresponding results. This proverbial expression imports more than merely labor in vain; it denotes labor that has an injurious and destructive result. It has more than a negative significancy of lost labor; it conveys the idea of positive detriment.". . . their gains will be snares." During the very first blog post I ever wrote dated September 5, 2008, I warned y'all how this was going to play out:
Those of you who know me already know that I've been yelling the alarm about the coming financial collapse. And about how most Black folks (due to Obama-related-mania) are not doing anything to prepare. Here's a recap:
1. This economy is going to crash around our heads. This process has already begun. I strongly urge everyone to develop as many income streams as possible. ASAP. Depending on a single paycheck is courting disaster.
2. We haven't seen the full extent of the damage because the powers that be (PTB) have been hiding much of the damage. The PTB have done this to protect the image of the boy-prince, George W. Bush. The PTB won't extend the same service to Sen. Obama if he is elected president. In fact, if Obama is elected, they'll let it all fall apart to ensure that he gets the blame for the past 8 years of fiscal mismanagement.
3. In the midst of frolicking in our Obama-mania, most Black people haven't thought through the repercussions of having Sen. Obama elected.
4. For example, if Sen. Obama is elected president this means that the days of crying to Whites about racism are OVER. For real. They won't entertain that noise anymore. They will say that racism can't be that bad---after all, a Black (sort-of) man was elected president.
[For the purposes of this discussion, I won't go into detail about how in order to be the first viable "Black" presidential candidate, it seems that the candidate must be half-Other and half-foreign origin. In order to have a serious chance to be the first Black president, it helps that Sen. Obama is half-White and half-something-other-than-African-American. Politically, this is a a new "paper bag test" in operation.]
5. Black leadership (such as it is) does not have any other strategy beyond protesting racism. Collectively, Black folks don't have a back-up plan. This is a problem.
6. If elected, a Pres. Obama will feel the need to prove to Whites that he's not partial to us. He will do this by ignoring our issues and problems. There won't be any help coming from an Obama Administration. Not specifically for Black folks.
7. Because Black folks are addicted to symbol over substance, most of us will continue to support a Pres. Obama no matter what he does. Even while he literally ignores us to death. After all, we "gotta support a brother." We love seeing Black faces in high places. Even when these Black-skinned folks do a great deal of damage to our interests. [For examples, see Black folks' continued expressions of support and admiration for Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice, etc.]
On February 8, 2009, during the For Your Own Survival, You Must Become a Sovereign Individual Instead of a “Typical” Employee post, I told folks how this would go down:
Don’t Stake Your Survival on Pres. ObamaDon’t stake your (and your loved ones’) survival on anything that Pres. Obama might do. First of all, there’s no way of knowing whether or not his economic proposals will actually work. Second, there are MANY other parties that don’t want any of his proposals to succeed. Including many individuals that are nominally on his “side.”Pres. Obama Does NOT Have His Own Posse. Nobody is Watching His Back. This Means That Anything He Does WILL Be Sabotaged. From the Inside-Out.I can see that the masses of our people will be devastated (in many different ways) when various factions from within as well as outside the Democratic Party finally pull down the Obama-ssiah.It doesn’t matter how much Pres. Obama tries to appease these factions. The problem is that these various factions cannot be appeased. This is because they don’t want to be appeased. What they want is to make sure that whatever efforts the Obama-ssiah makes fail, and he gets ALL of the blame, while they position themselves to reign. . . err, rule. . . err, govern. . . once he’s been politically destroyed.This illustrates another problem with most Black folks’ concept of politics. We don’t understand that the “ruler” is only as strong as his infrastructure (aka “posse”). In Chicago terms, his political “machine.” Does Pres. Obama actually have a loyal, faithful, strong posse of his own? Or is he somebody who was loaned the use of other people’s posses? We know the answer to this.It looks like he didn’t understand that these various “retainers” are only loyal to the people who actually own and created them. They are loyal to the individuals who loaned them to him. NOT to him. He didn’t create any of these people. This is one of the unspoken consequences of Pres. Obama being a crossover candidate who did not come from any sort of organized Black movement or infrastructure.Black voters simply hopped on the Obama-ssiah bandwagon after they saw that Whites in Iowa were willing to vote for him. Pres. Obama did not come from us. Not that our infrastructure or organizations are particularly solid, but Pres. Obama has NOTHING but thin air under his feet.Pres. Obama’s recent blindsided stumbles with several cabinet nominees should be a signal to you. The manner in which all of that went down made it quite apparent to me that he doesn’t have anybody who is actually watching his back. He doesn’t even have an old-school, Chicago political “machine” to watch his back. That’s his own fault for being naive.Machiavelli warned about the dangers of a prince being dependent upon mercenaries. Especially foreign ones. They have a nasty habit of abruptly abandoning the prince (at the worst possible moment) in favor of the highest bidder, and/or their previous employers.For the love of God, don’t rely on this one (naive) man for your survival.
I said the following in the comments to a November 2010 post:
Hodan and Geekgrl,I lay all of this at the feet of the extremely gullible, naive, and most of all WEAK Pres. Obama. I did several posts discussing in detail Pres. Obama’s naivete and weakness at the previous blog.To quickly sum up, Pres. Obama should have done what Bush II did: governed like someone who had won a landslide, and pushed through a bold agenda. Which is what Bush II did—even though he never won anything remotely resembling a landslide.Pres. Obama also should have taken every opportunity to remind folks that it was Bush and the other Republicans that drove the economy into the toilet during their 8-year reign. Instead of trying to reach out to Republicans who consistently and correctly interpret the Democrats’ attempts at bipartisan cooperation as a sign of their weakness.Bush II and his crew were also quite ruthless at slapping back at their opponents. And doing everything they could to delegitimize anybody who objected to their policies. Pres. Obama should have done the same thing—starting with the Republican-operative-controlled Fox News. But no, Boo-Boo The Fool-Obama allows Fox News to have continued access to White House press briefings. He should have been looking to have some of those Fox folks exposed, harassed and indicted like the Wiki-Leaks man is currently being hounded internationally by the US government.By being a weakling who foolishly sought to placate implacable opponents, Pres. Obama missed the opportunity to keep his base energized in support of him. He sold out every constituent group that was part of his base in attempts to win over people who CAN’T be won over by any Democratic politician. And certainly not by a Black(-ish) Democratic politician. Unlike silly AAs who will cling to their false Obama-ssiah to the bitter end—no matter how much he ignores our issues—other groups (such as the gays) are not going to put up with being betrayed and thrown under the bus.Since Pres. Obama was too stupid and weak to make the necessary bold moves (which are described in detail by the video I posted) at the point when he could have done so—at the very beginning of his term—he’s sealed the fate of the Demopublican party. I predict a bloodbath tomorrow for the Demopublicans. What the Demopublicans like Obama don’t understand is that whenever given a choice between real and CRAZY Republicans and Republican-Lite Democrats, these deranged White voters their chasing always pick the genuine Republican lunatics.In any event, any AA who wants to survive and thrive must immediately detach their personal abundance plan from anything that might depend on Pres. Obama and the other fools in the Demopublican Party. And also refrain from hoping or planning on sympathy OR sanity from the Republicans and their Tea Bag Lunatic contingent.Expect Success!
The Whirlwind Has Already BegunNeecy,A response before I come back to this conversation later tonight…I’m sitting out this particular election. I’m sitting this one out because I’m not going to run up into the voting booth to spend my votes on people that I haven’t thoroughly researched. Instead, I’m going to take my time researching various Green Party and other 3rd party platforms and candidates.In my research, I’m going to be on the lookout for specific 3rd party candidates throughout the country that I’ll give small, but regular financial contributions to their campaigns. Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) taught that it’s better to do small good deeds on a regular, consistent basis than rare, grand gestures.It’s going to take time and patience for those who are displeased by Tweedle Dee-Tweedle Dum politics in the US to build a viable alternative for ourselves. It’s not the sort of thing that one can run out and do on the spur of the moment.I will also add that voting is simply the final step in building a viable alternative. The Republican Juggernaut didn’t appear out of thin air. It was created by a slew of supporting infrastructures:1-the Republican-owned and operated media noise machine of countless AM talk radio shows and cable tv show;2-the Republican-owned and operated fake think tanks that churn out reams of educated-sounding books, articles, essays, op ed pieces, and policy papers in support of insanity;3-lunatic Republican candidates mobilizing at the local level who stood for election for local school boards, and so on.At its beginning, Air America was a good step toward prong #1. There are relatively small things that all of us could do help establish prongs #2 and 3.It doesn’t take that much energy to write a letter to the editor every once in a while. For those who are more energetic, they can use the new technology to do their own podcasts that they disseminate—this is a step forward toward prong #1. In her latest post, Gina at WAOD is calling for some WAOD readers to run for election in the future. This would be part of prong #3.For another example in the American Muslim context, I plan to join an AA Muslim think tank that I hope will be formed in the near future. The overall purpose would be to take back the Muslim American narrative AWAY from the Immigrant Muslim Syndicate that wants to tie American Muslims and our issues to various unsavory foreign-based agendas. I firmly believe that immigrant Muslims and their foreign-based agendas are endangering the safety of naive, gullible AA Muslims. I don’t want naive, gullible AA Muslims to end up in a concentration camp just like the Japanese-Americans during WWII because of immigrant Muslims.As things stand, foolish AA Muslims are passively sitting around. They don’t have passports. They’re not creating emergency relocation options for themselves. And they’re not doing anything to counteract immigrant Muslims from being the ONLY voice of Muslims in the US. Basically, AA Muslims are a group of sitting ducks. That’s not me.Right now, I’m feverishly busy creating relocation options for myself, if things develop to that point in this country. But I also try to do what I can to help prevent things from getting to that point. I never signed on to the things said by CAIR or any of these other immigrant-dominated Muslim groups in the US. They DON’T speak for me. And I want the sane members of the overall American public to clearly understand that these immigrants don’t speak for me, or for other AA Muslims who feel as I do.Part of creating relocation options for myself is building my various income streams. Right now, I’m totally preoccupied with furthering my income streams so that I’ll be okay no matter who gets in, no matter who controls the Congress, no matter who controls the Senate…no matter any of that.I DON’T advocate that AA women take on the burdens of any sort of crusades. I’m talking about doing the small, comfortable things that help build viable options for ourselves.Expect Success!
This whirlwind has already begun. In places like Flint, Michigan as discussed HERE. Even the so-called "mainstream," White-owned media are phasing out their few tokens of color (who have reached the end of their usefulness as window dressing now that Pres. Obama's time in office is coming to an end). See HERE, HERE and HERE.
And, really now, that's what ultimately happens to people who choose to be sharecroppers working at somebody ELSE'S job instead of creating things of their own. As discussed in the post Full Circle—Back to Sharecropping:
The Political End Of The Road For African-Americans“FULL CIRCLE”
During a recent email conversation, a friend said (she’s graciously given me permission to quote her):At the end of slavery, our former people had nothing and due to not addressing the issues stated above, our former people have managed to arrive right back where they started – to have nothing of their own.I said I wasn’t going to publish new blog posts that directly touch on these sorts of issues, but I’m making an exception in this case. The recent Wall Street Journal news story that a friend and I have been discussing, Much Ado About Straightening: Old Black Salons Face New Rivals marks the end of an era for African-Americans. This news story represents one of the last few surviving canaries dropping dead in the coal mine.The African-American (mis)leadership class is feckless and foolish. The masses of African-Americans are deluded. They’ve been riding a merry-go-round for over a century. They think they’re getting somewhere, but they’re not. They’re going around in circles. And, without realizing it, the entire merry-go-round platform is descending and moving backwards as they ride. Even as African-Americans continue our free fall into permanent underclass status, many of us believe that we’re doing just fine because there’s a Black face and family in the White House. As the Black Agenda Report story Living a Black Fantasy: The Obama Delirium Effect noted, “Majorities of African Americans told Pew pollsters Blacks were better off in 2009 than five years before, when by all economic measurements the opposite was true.”We’ve gone backwards in terms of racial and ethnic self-respect. The “paper bag test” has escalated into a “manila folder and lighter” test. The only thing that has changed is the terminology we use to describe our escalating colorism. In the modern era, we tell lies about our internal, self-imposed racial discrimination against darker-skinned Blacks. We lie and say that we’re only celebrating “all of who we are,” and so on. Nobody is fooled by this. Other people just don’t say anything to our faces about what they see us doing.
There are many prices to pay for a refusal to "do for self." One price is the collective experience of always living in fear politically. All of which leads to African-American voters being taken for granted by the political party they pray will protect them from the more rabid racists in American society. As noted in the Black Agenda Report article Vector of Fear: Blacks and the Democratic Party,
In practice, it is institutionalized group panic, a stampede every four years. Blacks are drawn into the jaws of the Democratic Party, not by ideological affinity, but in search of protection from the Republicans. This is an entirely different dynamic than an alignment based on thoughtful examination of political platforms. It’s not about picking a candidate or party that sees the world as most Black people do, from the left side of the spectrum, on matters of social justice and peace. Rather, the overarching objective is to choose a candidate from the Democratic wing of the Rich Man’s duopoly who is best equipped to defeat his or her Republican counterpart. Under these stilted circumstances, the Democratic candidate’s actual political positions become near-irrelevant to the Black primary voter, compared to the candidate’s perceived ability to win a national election. The question becomes, is the Democrat strong enough to beat back the latest offensive from the GOP? – which Black people perceive as an existential threat. In the grip of that mindset, the contestant that is richer, better connected to the party apparatus and more acceptable to masses of white voters is the better Black choice.This is in stark contrast to collectives who "do for self" and thereby position themselves to be okay no matter who gets into office, such as the Mormons, the Jews, and the Cubans in Miami.
I agree with the general gist of the BAR article listed above—that African-Americans vote in accordance with emotional arousal in general and panic-based stampedes in particular. I disagree with the notion that AAs engage in value- or ideology-based politics. AAs' mass support of Pres. Obama's choice to (1) keep Bush nominees in top posts and (2) continue most of George W. Bush's foreign policies shows that AAs will support almost any policy if it's promoted by a Black Face In A High Place.
I see the same behavior patterns at play during this election season: Many AA voters are fervently supporting Hillary Clinton primarily because they're afraid of the various Pandering To Racists And/Or Personally Racist Republican candidates. Despite the heavy damage that 1990s era Clintonism did to the AA collective. I remember how Pres. Bill Clinton used and then discarded AA voters. I remember the many "triangulations" Pres. Clinton engaged in that betrayed the AA voters who had overwhelmingly supported him.
Another set of AA voters are fervently supporting Sen. Bernie Sanders. Here's why I can't support him either: He's been in politics and elected office for decades and yet I literally had never heard of him before now. Meanwhile, during the same period of time that he's been in various offices, I had heard of other liberal or progressive politicians from other parts of the country such as Barney Frank. To me, that means that either (1) Sen. Sanders has previously never really addressed AA concerns and issues or (2) he's been utterly ineffective in doing so to the point that most of the other politically aware AAs I know had never heard of him before now.
Get Ready For The Election of Donald Trump As President
And finally, there's the Mad Cow American Sheeple Voters—who are totally irrational. Including the growing number of Black ones, like these two fools:
When I first saw a video of these two deranged
colored women, I was half-expecting to hear an announcer say, "Live from
New York, it's Saturday night!" [the intro to Saturday Night Live at the
end of the opening skit].
On one level, it's been amusing watching the Republican establishment lose control of the ignorant, enraged and now-deranged White American sheeple that they've been pimping for decades. It's been hilarious watching the National Review devote an entire issue to ragging on Trump. It's been downright delicious watching Trump and his right-wing supporters denigrate right-wing Fox News. All three of these entities have spent decades encouraging and exploiting White American sheeple racism for their own purposes. It serves them all right that it's finally blown up in their faces, and the same racist White sheeple have turned on them.
It's a mirror image of how the Democratic establishment has been pimping its various captive constituencies for decades. There's a similar anti-establishment resentment among White Democrats. Which is why Hillary Clinton is faced with a serious fight for the nomination instead of the shoo-in coronation that she expected.
The difference for AAs is that the bulk of AA sheeple will never turn on the Democratic establishment. They're too afraid to do so (for the reasons discussed above).
No other constituency feels as trapped as AAs. Other people feel free to jump ship. Many White and other nonblack Sanders supporters will stay home or even vote for Donald Trump if Hillary Clinton wins the Democratic nomination.
All of which is why I believe Donald Trump will be elected the next U.S. President.
So, yes, it'd be best to get the illegal aliens OUT of this country. But that doesn't mean it makes any sense for me to ignore the rest of Trust Fund Baby Donald Trump's stated policies (the bulk of which I find abhorrent).
The experience of voting for Pres. Obama has cured me of voting for the purported “lesser evil.” I will never do that again. Lesser evilism is a large part of what has gotten the AA collective to this politically powerless point. Rabbi Michael Lerner was quite correct about the immorality and long-term effects of lesser evilism in his essay that I republished, The Immorality of Lesser Evilism. These days, I only vote for those candidates that I actively support.
As I said in Part 1 of this series of posts, I’m not saying all of the above to scare you. I’m saying this to reiterate the core message of my book and two blogs:
You can thrive (and not just survive) during this time of collapse if you GET BACK TO BASICS.
Do what you can to position yourself to live well regardless of who is in office.
Today's Get Back To Basics Suggestion—Read the comment section and post titled “Early Retirement Extreme.”
