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Daily Kos: Race and racism: barriers and bridges (via notime4yourshit
The truth of the USA is ugly.
(via digitalmeowmix)
Here’s another one to file under No Shit, Sherlock.
Seriously, go buy yourself a copy of “A People’s History of the United States of America, 1492-Present” by Howard Zinn, because if you haven’t read it, you’re just not smart enough.
Every year on this day I feel compelled to do one of two things:
1) have fun and watch things explode.
2) stop ignoring all the blatant hypocrisy and contradiction in celebrating an inherently corrupt, corrupting, violent, closeted-imperial nation, that is so self-centered and full of so much hubris, it is quickly falling behind in the world in every way but militarily.
Regardless of which I choose, every year on the fourth, I always have to bite my tongue to avoid lecturing people who are as blatantly pro-America as a baptist is pro-Christ on Christmas. I understand there’s a certain amount of shit-iness in the world we need to accept just to get to the end of the day, but when does it stop?
When do we stop looking only at the good and start dealing with the bad?
If we’d only focus on the bad, it might stop. But as long as we keep ignoring the bad, the list of contradictions and hypocrisies will only grow.
American history is like the little white lie that keeps getting told over and over until the truth, itself, is irrelevent.
Call it the little red, white and blue lie.
Found this via Friendly Atheist who posted the other day about how, in the Treaty of Tripoli, Thomas Jefferson wrote in Article 11:
As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,
So, yeah. Shut up, Glenn.
Many people on the street were killed almost instantly. The fingertips of those dead bodies caught fire and the fire gradually spread over their entire bodies from their fingers.
A light gray liquid dripped down their hands, scorching their fingers. I, I was so shocked to know that fingers and bodies could be burned and deformed like that. I just couldn’t believe it. It was horrible. And looking at it, it was more than painful for me to think how the fingers were burned, hands and fingers that would hold babies or turn pages, they just, they just burned away.
via gizmodo.com
Those words came from a post on Gizmodo today quoting Akiko Takakura. She was 20 years-old when she miraculously survived, just 300 feet, from where the atom bomb over Hiroshima detonated, 65 years ago, today. Read the rest of Takakura-san’s account and the accounts of other witnesses/survivors at Voice of Hibakusha (hibakusha=atomic bomb survivors).
To anyone who still maintains this action was justified, I simply say this:
With a single act, more than 50,000 people were wiped out. By the end of that year, an estimated 150,000 people had died from the bomb’s effects.
Did we need to become such efficient killers? Or could we have ended the war another way, without staining our hands with the blood of 150,000?
This isn’t about whether “they deserved it” or not. It’s about what we made ourselves on that day. It’s about what we continue to make ourselves any time we wage war. Is anything we gain worth that kind of violence, pain, destruction and loss?
Let the change begin.
After living in America for 8 years under the rule of George W. Bush, it's funny to find myself trying to be hopeful. I keep having to remind myself of the amazing thing we Americans did the other day. A great many of us were expecting a neck-and-neck battle to last for days or even weeks, but in the end, American voters really, reeeeally wanted change right now. Perhaps, once Bush has abdicated the Oval Office and Obama takes his oath, I'll have an easier time accepting that things have changed.
But what does change really mean to the US and to world?
After living in America for 8 years under the rule of George W. Bush, it's funny to find myself trying to be hopeful. I keep having to remind myself of the amazing thing we Americans did the other day. A great many of us were expecting a neck-and-neck battle to last for days or even weeks, but in the end, American voters really, reeeeally wanted change right now. Perhaps, once Bush has abdicated the Oval Office and Obama takes his oath, I'll have an easier time accepting that things have changed.
But what does change really mean to the US and to world?
Personally, I think it boils down to one simple thing. Race. No, I don't think racism is dead. No, I don't think a black man can be a better leader than a white guy and I sure as hell don't believe the other way around, either. For 232 years, the USA has been led by a white guy. In the great scheme of things, we're all supposed to believe skin color doesn't matter, but after two centuries of American presidents, I think it matters a LOT.
In one of our Founding Documents here in the US, "We the People of the United States" agree that "All Men Are Created Equal." Electing a man with dark skin finally makes this statement in our Declaration of Independence mean something. For over two hundred years it's just been words on a page written by men who, themselves, owned blacks as slaves.
Now, finally, America seems to mean what it says (at least in one way).
Barack Obama will bring a perspective to the country that no other white president could. Being raised in a white family while being black, he will know what both experiences are like. He's gone from literal rags to riches. Now, we hope, he will apply these life lessons to the job of American President.
But there will be obstacles. He still has pressures from big business and the special interests to deal with. He's also inheriting an economy that by most standards is in dire straights. If that weren't enough he's got American troops scattered around the globe leaving the American military fatigued and stretched thin. God forbid there should be another 911-style attack on American soil.
He's in a position where he'll have no choice but to work with the rest of the world to solve America's problems. George W. Bush has left us in a situation that I don't think we can fix on our own unless we withdraw completely from the rest of the planet and I seriously doubt we'd do that. Thankfully, Obama comes across as an entirely reasonable person, willing to talk, willing to understand and willing to work things out.
To me, he doesn't seem like a "with us or against us" kind of guy. Compared to the Republicans that are on their way out, his perspective will seem incredibly unique.
If the American people are right, that unique perspective will serve him well in dealing with the rest of the Earth, as well as the citizens of the United States.
We can only hope.
Oh, hey! I did it! I hoped! :)
