March 3, 2009
A wise and thoughtful young attorney recently commented on one of my blogs. I am eternally grateful not only because he took the time to share but because his keen insights and counterpoints helped focus my attention on what I believe the world should look like.
Common said, “…if you believe in heaven, why is your choice hell?”
I say Heaven on Earth is as good a goal as any…
To paraphrase, my colleague cautioned against vapid patriotism fueled by race pride and hyper-emotionalism related to President Obama’s ascension. A student of history, he further counseled that an Obama-Era world view that forgets the Middle Passage, the Trail of Tears and Operation Condor would be a front for the old world colonial oligarchy. His words were like iron sharpening iron.
After considering his sober analysis the first thing I did was run out and buy a throwback “Stars & Stripes” with the thirteen stars in a circle.
Without African people (here from before its foundation) the United States would not be the military, technological and cultural superpower that it is today.
Crispus Attucks is the first martyr of the American Revolution. Salute to all Tuskegee Airmen massive.
Benjamin Banneker was the first astronomer to posit the currently held theory that the universe consists of solar systems which in turn comprise galaxies like our Milky Way. Garret Morgan, Lewis Latimer and Dr. Charles Drew know Nikola Tesla better than he knows himself.
All American music is traced to African roots — big up Muddy Waters, Louis Armstrong and Jimi Hendrix…
So what does heaven look like in a world where Barack Hussein Obama is President and African-Americans, only 12% of the United States population, are a shamefully conspiratorial 44% of all prisoners in the United States?
The public schools across this land would be cathedrals of higher learning with a laptop for each child; loving, supportive and handsomely compensated teachers at the head of every class; and comprehensive curriculums that offer advanced math and sciences along with American history, world history, world literature and a minimum of two foreign languages.
The criminal justice system would get a good scrubbing with every police officer, prosecutor and judge required to live in the neigborhoods where they dispense justice. A wise man once told me that people do what you inspect not what you expect. The Department of Justice would expand its vaunted Civil Rights Division to thoroughly investigate and prosecute every single alleged case of abuse and misconduct. All of the men and women doing time for non-violent crimes related to drug addiction would transition from prison to treatment and counseling. Police officers who shoot unarmed black men in the back would get put under the jail, period. The term “white collar crime” would be abolished because a crook by any other name still stinks.
The banking system would be laid bare for the whole world to examine and restructure. All of the secret transactions between the rich and powerful, all of the clever instruments that allow the wealthy to leverage capital and maintain position would be made public. If the banking system truly is a house of cards, we will all, prince and pauper, deal with the consequences of creating a new system together, on equal footing and with full disclosure. Knowledge is power and it is high time that the gate keepers give up the keys and let the masses inspect the palaces that have been built with their blood, sweat and tears. Cream rises to the top so there should be no need to rig the game.
Yes, a true meritocracy based on hard work, thrift, ingenuity and a little luck…
Heaven looks like America trough the eyes of Americans who know that this country is not perfect; Americans who know that this country has done horrific and damnable things in our name. Americans who know that the promise of America can not be hijacked by the wicked who share our birthright but must be defended and perfected daily with the perspective of Americans who know what heaven looks like.
Americans like Crispus Attucks and Benjamin Banneker and Jimi Hendrix and Barack H. Obama and Kenneth Montgomery, Esq. representing this country every day and in every way looks like a good start.
A. Baraka Scott (…brother from another)
I am sure that there are quite a few folk who would be happy to just assume the throne of world domination and oppression that others have occupied before. If it ain’t broke??? All the more reason for men and women of conscience to think and act big. To step up and make themselves heard on the global questions of the day. To grab the mic as it were and not let it go until the crow has been sufficiently rocked. If the horrors visited upon us and our ancestors are visited upon our grandchildren whose fault is that? I am here now, I have breath in my body and the mind of god flows through me. If I can not figure this out and at least set into motion circumstances that porten a more equitable world I should curl up in a ball and die… and I don’t plan on going anywhere for a long time Bro.
I hope we get to see at least a little bit of this heaven. It sure would be a nice change of pace!!
forgot…….might heaven be lost to globalism?…or will we move on to be part of the elite state of Americans in a global nation?
We seem to be at a point where a decision needs to be made regarding the direction of our current economic and governmental system; to be u interchangeably.
We are facing the first stages of complete globalization, (NWO)…what ever… we have lost our economic sovereignty to the international banking system, in that our economy will not run without credit. Credit that is issued by banks who have unobstructed international affiliation.
It is disconcerting to me that the line being called out by all is fixing the current banking system, without mention of the notion that this credit based economy is destine to fail. A system that takes the power of living a stable life away from the populis of a country as well as its elected officials.
Nationalization of the banking system is a good step in taking back the power from outside sources, however I think without considerable change in the morality of the culture this will still not help to correct the inequity of the overall system.
People who have less (not enough) money will be more likely to have poor credit, and because of the need to have credit to buy a home any many other staples of Our American life. They will still not become included in the dream of American heaven.
My brutha from another mutha is correct in his assertion that heaven looks like America through the eyes of those who know it.
Those of us who know it, need to be particularly aware of the systematic injustice that wore the cloak of racism in the past has not gone away, it has just changed its clothes. In our “Post Racist” country. We will still find the minorities and poor holding rank at the bottom.
And we need to be sure to point this out in politics as well as to the those who “don’t know” the clothes that are worn to disguise the current oligarchy that holds sway over our well being.
With all that said, I think that our current trajectory toward globalization will make it close to impossible to make some of these necessary changes. Power will move away from the nations and in that even further away from the people of that nation, and subsequently not even in sight of the poor and unfortunate of that nation.
I don’t know if the 14 states that are currently asserting their sovereignty from the federal government under the constitution, are doing it as a political ploy or truly want to be severing.
But the federalist in me would like to see it happen. I think that there is some hope in a nation of states.
Thoughts?……..