PAT BUCHANAN: TWO AMERICAS?

PAT BUCHANAN: TWO AMERICAS?

Divide and conquer is a stratagem that deserves a timely and well deserved death. At this crucial time in our history, when we as a nation can come together to regain our moral and economic standing in this world; some are trying, as John Kerry warned in 2004, to take us back “to two Americas – separate and unequal.”

Kerry’s warning echoed the Cassandra-esque prediction of the Kerner Commission. Tragically, like Cassandra’s exhortations, both prescient admonishments seem to have fallen on some deaf and deluded ears.

In a country where the socially constructed partition, better known as race, trumps class, sexuality, and gender; this stratagem is being used to the hilt by anachronisms like Pat Buchanan, “Southern Strategy Republicans”, and sadly, some within the Democratic Party. Even worse, many in the media are complicit and willing co-conspirators, abandoning their responsibility.

The attempt of some to paint all African Americans with the same “black brush” is having some effect. However, most forward minded people are not falling for the “okie doke”.

The attempt to link Barack Obama to others via “guilt by association” is an embarrassment to those who are doing so. Never in our history has one man been linked to another as in the case of Obama and his former Pastor Jeremiah Wright. Moreover, this stratagem’s blatant one handed usage is galling. This double-standard, which renders McCain and Rodham-Clinton immune, disgusts most fair minded folk.

In addition, Pat Buchanan’s recent “ungrateful blacks” spiel said in light of the Obama/Wright fiasco has gone mostly unrebutted by the complicit media. His postulations that:

"First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.

Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans. Untold trillions have been spent since the 60s on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring the African-American community into the mainstream."

Buchanan's comments obscure the fact that African Americans and their allies have had to fight for whatever freedoms have been gained. The many programs he mentions have helped ALL AMERICANS, especially European Americans. Are his words to go unchallenged? Will MSNBC denounce his "post slavery syndrome" mentality?

Furthermore, such statements play into the “ungrateful blacks”/”grateful immigrant” faulty syllogism. As demonstrated in California’s primary, many Asian and Latino new arrivals did not vote for Obama due to the effectiveness of divide and conquer propaganda and institutionalized racism.

Also, such statements play into the “lazy blacks”/”hardworking blue collar” faulty syllogism; obfuscating the fact that many African Americans, until recently, held most blue collar jobs. And that the reduction of black and white participation in such jobs is due partly to Corporate America’s love affair with exploitable illegal workers and outsourcing to cheaper labor markets.

The propaganda machine urges people to vote their aspirations and not their interests. The propaganda machine plays on people’s fears, prejudices, and resentments. The propaganda machine creates and reinforces “two Americas” and pits “us” against them”…black” vs. “everybody else”. As if black people can’t be and aren’t anything else; i.e., women, working class, rich, poor, college educated and as if these other aspects of their personhood bear no impact on how they vote. Now is not the time for such chicanery. The “fierce urgency of now” necessitates that we discard such outmoded behavior and embrace change.

In conclusion, in the two Americas, historically, only one has gotten to own and broadcast its point of view. Luckily for us, our media is not monolithic and neither are we as a people. Effective media presents various points of view and from it, people are free to come to their own determinations.

This election season is proving that the two Americas syndrome still exists but it is also showing that it is going the way of the dinosaur and we have the opportunity to evolve into ONE AMERICA. Will we?Paul PorterIndustry Ears