Racism, Arthur Blank and the Atlanta Falcons

Arthur Blank the Atlanta Falcons football team owner in response to a question on the December 10th, 2007; Monday night football game made one of the classic racist off-color jokes about Black people and fried chicken. Arthur Blank said If Michael Vick, the imprisoned Atlanta Falcons Quarter Back, didn't eat too much fried chicken while in prison, blah,blah,blah------The reality is Arthur Blank said it.

Arthur blank has been white and American long enough to know that fried chicken and black people jokes is part of the racist wink and nod. To imply otherwise, as a statement released by the Atlanta Falcons Team in damage control, that it's preposterous for any one to note the bigotry of Blank's off-color remark, considering Blank does a lot for black causes, not only adds insult to injury but it highlights how the Blank's of the world don't get it. What is preposterous is Arthur Blank is so accustomed to off-color and racist jokes that the inanity of one was his only metaphor, an inept and bumbling attempt at gallows humor at the expense of one's misfortune and his purported gentility.

Racist jokes albeit jokes continue the dehumanization process material racism pursues.

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Apropos

Competition, The Human Condition and Irrationality

The competitive imperative within Political-Economical Theorization implies that the means through which life recreates itself, is not uniformly distributed, hence, the human condition in pursuit of recreating the necessary and vital means for existence and survival, must compete for that which is available.

Competition thus, then exist in the realm of the impelled, an irrational response to the lack of uniformity or better put, the inability of the human condition to attain uniform availability of condition requisite for existence and survival.

This state of nature anticipates that ability to recreate uniformly that which in nature is non-uniform--- and this refutes the mantra of competition as political tendency.

By Apropos

Sleight of Hand, Bush, The C.I.A., One-upmanship and the Democrats

Are we expected to accept it's coincidental the significant disclosures that Iran discontinued the weaponization of it's nuclear program back in 2003 and the destruction of video tapes of C.I.A. interrogations dating back to 2005, just normally and naturally occurred in the course of the daily affairs of the Republic in the altruistic logic of governance.

Were it not for the fact the altruistic insidiousness of governance has been quite revealed over the course of human history and the United States in it's brief existence has assiduously contributed it's share. Nothing then would be amiss were we the populace to stand in Rockwellian Profile bowled over applauding governance and it's functionality.

But that is not the case. We stand on a construct which from it's inception with defiance "All men are created equal" mocked the obscene truth that the stench of slavery, black people held in chattel slavery were the foundation for the pursuit of happiness, the prosperity requisite to once again cut off the nose to spite the face of redemptive sapience from the alienation of idealism.

The Bush Administration, Neo-Conservatism and it's Evangelical-Christian hypocrisy had been chomping at the bit till it was disclosed that it's claims against the Iranian Nuclear Program was propaganda. An oppositionary impetus for whatever reason reversed earlier held views and the specter of World War III which Bush had with straight face claimed the Iranian Ayatollahs had designed for the world fizzled and morphed into the strange and peculiar revelation that the C.I.A. had destroyed tapes of it's interrogation of suspects, strangely enough attention was diverted from the Bush propaganda of a nuclearized Iran by the C.I.A. tapes, torture disclosures.

By Apropos

Neo-Conservatism and Islamic Imperialism, A Dialectic

It's always laughable when Al Qaeda is propped up as being past masters of Terrorism in the context of political action. Are they even talking about the same Al Qaeda who we are told in daily taps blowing news reels that Sunnis in parts of Iraq have run aground? Is this the same Al Qaeda that cannot even seize and hold territory? Is this the same Al Qaeda whose Ideological contradictions is so buffoonish that the substance of it's Political-Economy, it's value comes from it's enemies?

How real is the Caliphate specter, Islamic Imperialism painted by Bush and Co. in the recent edition of The Boy Who Cried Wolf one too many times, when the Islamicist enemy cannot even hold down a neighborhood in Baghdad. Yet if Neo-Conservatism is to be believed Islamic Imperialism is a strategic equal to it's Free-Enterprise Dictatorship sibling.

By Apropos

Compassionate Conservatism and Steroids

Whats wrong with this.

George Bush had the temerity in two accounts. First as owner of a baseball team and secondly as a President in declaring the indictment of Barry Bonds a "sad day for baseball."

The pronouncement accomplished one thing, reinforcing human idiocy in the context of hypocrisy on a Texas sized grand scale. George Bush first as an owner of a baseball team, the Texas Rangers, was part of the steroid producing fabric which by the way created the entertaining spectacle Bush now derides as a sad day for baseball. Secondly as President, Bush abridged the will of the people in the matter of U.S. vs Scooter Libby which was all about perjury.

Scooter Libby was convicted in a matter of national security, specifically putting a C.I.A. agent in harms way.

Whats further unwholesome about the Scooter Libby incident is Men, privileged men without any hesitation decided a woman, Valerie Plame was fair game.

Bush never pronounced that was a sad day in U.S. affairs, he didn't tongue in cheek declare it a sad day for the human condition. Bush instead, by decree decided Scooter Libby's felonious malfeasance was excusable.

Should the issue of steroids even be a Bush Administration social policy concern and priority when 2 million human-beings fill up U.S. jails and prisons? It causes one to wonder, besides reactionary demagoguery what world view Bush and Co. truly have.

By Apropos

Hugging banned by schools.

It makes you wonder how anyone born pre late 1980's and kid-proof homes, physical exercise cut from schools and all the other you get an A+ for self esteem nonsense survived.

Is there any yarn unwound retracing the way out of this labyrinth? In this age where cultural differences among people is explained away as genetic fact by delusional elitist on
Charlie Rose---Schools across the 50's now ban hugging among students.

Sam McGowan the superintendent at Mascoutah Middle School after suspending 8th grader Megan Coulter for hugging her classmates, defended the policy and action with the conclusion "Hugging can lead to something else."

I wonder if this is Solomonic Wisdom or Philistine reaction?

Nah!! Philistine Reaction!

By Apropos

Aw shucks naivete and Musharraf's Pakistan

A few weeks ago, scampering Benazir Bhutto, big business anointee to play the role of opposition in Pakistan politics returned to Pakistan after what had obviously been a brokered experiment, to the welcoming violence of an assassins bomb. Which narrowly missed her but accomplished another possibility the evidence of a topical imperative that had nothing to do with suppositions of business as usual and sphere of influence politics.

The conventional wisdom then among self-proclaimed experts real politick past masters, was the usual hapless bogeyman, Al Qaeda was behind the blast and attempted assassination. The probability that the Cabal of Musharraf, the current Pakistan Military Dictator could have been behind the convenience of the bombing was not explored in any serious manner. Whether this failure was deliberate disinformation of mere analytical liberalism is left to be seen. What is known is the babble tweaking ears of apathy is, Pakistan is a U.S. ally in the global war on terrorism so analysis of events must be reduced to basic Aw Shucks Naivete.

Developments of the past days, bus loads of Pakistani intelligentsia Judge, Lawyers, Journalist being driven off to detention and torture centers, in response to the imposition of Martial Law by Musharraf and his Cabal is now revealing that it fits. if Musharraf is willing to go down the draconian and tumultuous route of Martial Law then the inference comes easy that the bombing which welcomed Bhutto was the easy logic and Al Qaeda fulfilling it's Oswaldian role easy to blame.

By Apropos

Mile High Club and the A380

Didn't the puritans on their wretched Mayflowers have carnal knowledge of their wives during the miserable passage of their sailings to Plymouth Rock? So why should the possibility of passengers on the A380, the world's largest commercial plane, in the privacy of cubicles having sex arouse so much ire, huffing, puffing and denouncements of immorality.

Or is this just another example of critical jealousy , the idea of competitor airlines losing out.

Singapore Airlines is being criticized for having private cubicles on A380's it operates. Critics claim passengers will have sex. So? And if access to the Mile High Club is made so convenient only hypocrites and jealous competitor airline executives who didn't think of the idea can have the gall to express outrage. This criticism against Singapore Airlines is tantamount to Victoria Secret being blamed for adultery.

By Apropos

Ode to Navy, Midshipmen win.

For 43 years of defeat the Midshipmen of Navy Gnashed their teeth and spat out turf in their bows from the cleats of those insufferable Northerners! The fighting Irish of Notre Dame.

Till Saturday 11/3/07; a triple over-time classic even with a late questionable and inexcusable call by a zebra attempting to hyper warp destiny, the 2007 Navy team prevailed. Giving Notre Dame a taste of turf flavored with navy cleats, winning 46-44 over the haughty Irish whom even in defeat had a hard time acknowledging the iconic event it was.

Charlie Weis, Note Dame's coach in true petty fashion understated what had become a rite of passage for Notre Dame teams a win over Navy, when he stated during his post gave interview that he didn't even acknowledge Notre Dame's 43 year old winning streak over Navy. A Backhanded attempt at ridiculing Navy's historic accomplishment.

Navy! Give charlie another post game squirm, when you hand him his face in 2008 win!

By Apropos

Bill Richardson, The Vice-Presidency and the end game gambit.

Come on Bill Richardson, you haven't conceded in your quest for the Democratic nomination for President. But sucking up to Hillary during the 10/30/o7; debates at Philadelphia when she was rightfully and correctly being attacked was your Gerber moment. Sucking up to Hillary and the Clinton machine whose zeal for the Presidency is simply Office for the sake of Office, because if Bill Clinton, the husband couldn't realize whatever ideas they had in 8 years as President, Why then should anyone think Hillary has any real direction of which way forward through the morass of this albatross strangle of archaic Colonial and Neo-Colonial Political-Economy foisted the Walmart way? Bill Richardson can calculate all he wants to for the Vice-Presidential slot, but his characterization of the sort of political-action displayed by Obama, Edwards, and Dodd against Hillary during the debate as mud slinging or negative politics is preposterous, and pathetic. But then it's his end-game gambit. By Apropos

Denzel Washington: American Gangster The Movie and sanctimonious sermonizing.

On 10/28/07; Denzel Washington made a point on the Matt Lauer hosted plug in on NBC for the biopic American Gangster, that he wasn't glorifying the life of the drug dealer Frank Lucas whose life was portraying in the movie.

What sanctimonious sermonizing . Who is Denzel Washington kidding? Or is it that historical onus, that when the issue is the Black Experience , ( American Gangster is about A Black drug dealer) The human condition Has to be examined from the perspective of misery loves company, so all the enfeebled minds who have no idea of the contradictions defining the progress of the Human Condition, can engorge on the senseless satisfaction that I'm morally good and they are basely wrong. But the Consequence of this reality is as it's always been, the status quo irrespective of mask maintain the alienation necessary for their survival.

If Denzel Washington feels that strongly about his affiliation with a movie, which I'm quite sure he's being well compensated for--- What are his plans for his take?

By Apropos

Jack Croddy's Lament: Assignment Baghdad, A death sentence.

Where is the Republican outcry, where is the Conservative outrage??

Why is the land so quiet with the din from all those who equated any sort of critique of the Republican led, Bush Iraq War fiasco --- I can't hear you---Over this bizarre spectacle, State Department employees squealing protest, wetting and pissing in their foggy bottom diapers in opposition to the proposed policy that they can be ordered to Iraq.

At a meeting on 10/31/07; Jack Croddy a State Department official had the temerity to squeal that an assignment to Baghdad was a "Potential Death Sentence".

Why should Jack Croddy's life be any more relevant than all those 19,20 and 21 year old lives sweating in their tin can Humvees on patrol, not in the barricaded luxurious coffins of the Green Zone but on the duty streets of Baghdad.

"Some are more equal"

By Apropos

Standard Operating Procedure and Police Accountability

During the Nuremberg Trials for Nazi War Criminals, the victorious allies brushed aside the defense protestations that orders were simply being followed with the rejoinder, that certain orders are beyond the pale.

So why is that same dynamic alive and well in police departments across the nation. People are being killed and brutally beaten by police officers across the nation and after every incident, a police spokesperson is paraded across national jumbotrons uttering Standard Operating Procedure was used by the Siegfried in Question.

If Lessons learnt from all these episodes of the human condition are not to be seen simply within the dicta, organized violence makes the rules and human aspirations, redeemed from environmental- antagonisms affirms the dialectic of accountability, then accountability should not be relative.

Police officers have their responsibilities and summary-executions and assaults upon suspects isn't a part of it.

By Apropos

A toast to Reagan Democrats

The term, Reagan Democrats, was coined in Michigan to describe the phenomenon of Blue Collar Union Workers voting against their interest.

Is it any surprise and wonder that Michigan and Detroit more than any other state and city have negative population and job growth.

Most of whats nihilistic about big business asserted itself during the Reagan years and administration. So here is a toast to those Reagan Democrats who by cutting their noses off to spite their faces can now reminisce about their swoon--- now they rant against the consequence of the seduction.

By Apropos

Bush and Ahmadinejad, Labeling Genocide

Isn't it ironic after all the hue and cry over Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's revisionist position over the holocaust, the Bush administration's position on the Armenian Genocide now mirrors the Iranians.

On 10/10/07; President Bush, Secretary of State Rice, Secretary of Defense Gates, Senior elements at the Pentagon and certain Republican opportunist came out in strident opposition to the passage by the House Foreign Affairs Committee, a resolution that the 1915 killings of Armenians in what was then the Ottoman Empire, but is now Turkey, was Genocide.

The Bush and pentagon position is based on the shameful argument that contemporary Turkey is a U.S. Ally in it's adventurism, the war in Iraq and as such Turkey should not be offended and this is the wrong time for the U.S. Congress to be declaring critical resolutions of Ally's, even if the Ally's in question have 90 year old genocidal blood on their hands.

By Apropos

One Day Short, too many too long. The Incident of the Minnesota National Guard and the 729 Days.

The Minnesota National Guard which goes by the moniker Red Bull, found itself on the short end of the real meaning of the support the troops slogan, which as the history of the Iraq War teaches has only been a diversion from the absence of material for the Republican led Bush War in Iraq.

Certain well earned benefits, for example educational benefits are being denied members of the Guard unit in question. Because some one with authority to do so, insidiously and with utter disdain for their service terminated their tour of duty One day before they would have been eligible for benefits.

The Minnesota troops would have been eligible for benefits on the 730 Th day of their duty, but orders terminating their duty named 729 Th day as official termination.

Spokespeople for the army are as usual characterizing and describing this misdeed as a simple snafu, an administrative bungle and it's being corrected. But that is not the issue. The issue is this institutionalized disdain now rife in all branches of Government, locally and nationally. Regardless of the reasons, the result and consequence as experienced is mediocrity, incompetence and an exercise in reinventing the wheel, that bespeaks colossal stupidity.

By Apropos

Where is Whoopi, Who is Whoopi Goldberg?

English: Whoopi Goldberg at the Cannes film festival. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Domestication of Whoopi Goldberg. Are you kidding me? Has anyone seen whats happening to her on "The View"? Is this what happens when you are point in a Barbara Walters model that's taking in water from the wake of the Oprah juggernaut?

I'm wondering who or what is being redeemed, rediscovered, Phoenix like rising from the ashes. Is it, "The View" from the inferno that was Rosie-Hasselbeck or is it Whoopi positioned to stir askant interest in the editorial skew of Barbara "I have hobnobbed with the puppets of history, so who is Oprah" Walters.


By Apropos

Apec, George Bush, Security and the Clowns Down Under

Isn't it typical of incompetence to find blame every where else but itself.

Eleven good old down under chaps from an Australian T.V. comedy show are in police custody, because of a prank they pulled on the security at the APEC meeting at good old down under Australia.

The Australian Government and it's super gung ho leader showcasing it's Ultra Security which so far seems only good at keeping at bay protest and dissent, has been which seems to be the trend in these times, where competence is an afterthought, showed up by pranksters whose only motive was to show how conditional and farcical State Security against terrorism is.

Eleven pranksters, one with Osama Bin Laden like whiskers around his chin, in broad day light breached not one but two security points in an area that can easily be argued as being for the duration of the APEC Summit the most secure on earth--- coming within feet of posing strategic threat.

Instead of the Australian Security Official acknowledging their security short comings, they had the gall to spin it! Claiming their security worked!

What is to be made of this, that John Edwards is right, and the Global War on Terrorism is a bumper sticker, a talking point for Ann Coulter Paramours? Or incompetence is really that pervasive, from the Israeli humiliation at the hands of Hezbollah, through the spectacle of American War Generals beseeching and imploring, screeching that the Rebels in Iraq are not playing fair because they won't stand still for Smart Bombs to kill them, to an Osama Bin Laden dress alike penetrating security defenses of a policy so strident in it's support of the mother of all incompetence's, Yeah! bagging that dad in Iraq. But then in an epoch where the triple negative, a Rumsfeldian contribution to grammar is Oohed and Ahhed, what else is new?

By Apropos

Value, understood evenless than God

Whose analysis of political-economy is valid and what standard is it's legitimacy measured by? These past days have seen what has been spoon fed to the political-economy illiterate masses as chaos in the above ground economy. We have been told that instability in the real-estate sector of the economy is the epi-center. First of all what sort of anomaly is devaluation in something as ethereal and relative as value? Techo-cratic economists, love the spectacle of Germans pushing wheel barrow loads of inflated marks for the purpose of buying a loaf of bread at the turn of the last century as illustration of the nastiness of relative economical distortions.

What is peculiar is people expect and pursue progress and deeper understanding in all other facets of life besides paradigms of political-economy and speculation of religion that the matrix of the human condition itself is understood even less than what is God. Money is understood with as much clarity than the fact it's a piece of paper intended to reflect and be the means of transferring value which isn't even understood that it's the value of human life condition.

The human condition, since the marginalization of aristocracy and the emergency of colonialism as political-economy paradigm has accepted as divine fiat the speculation of value which was agreed upon in European drawing rooms and studys as the construct of a New World Order that yawned upon history when whole nationalities and land were reduced to Colonial company-charters.

Speculative value and it's accumulation is not an absolute static, as the paradigm of Colonialism would suggest so why isn't it questioned?

By Apropos

The populace response "Its Fright!"

On the 8-15-07; Today Show Al Roker, the weather personality was doing his usual, on the Plaza, interacting with the spectator audience. He noticed a little girl with a sign proclaiming the day was her birthday. What caught my attention was this: Al Roker asked the girl where was she from, and the child's response was so cagey it spoke volumes.

Is this the meaning of prosperity, progress, civilization? Is this advancement after millenia of evolution, after the passing of tens of thousands of laws, after the imprisonment of millions, the execution of thousands. Life and the human-condition is still at an impasse where a little child cannot even speak freely of where she's from? Nonetheless in this age of Amber
alerts it's not surprising.

What I find ironic is even though people claim to be so devoutly religious that religion based conflicts, politically and socially dominate all practical facets of contemporary life. The hypocrisy and deviancy of humanness mocks such public displays of religiosity, so thoroughly that the only critique left such devoutness is that of Apocalyptic sanctimonious global destruction.

By Apropos

Made in China and The Opportunism of Mollification

Made in China. Another recall and so the litany goes, as if the entire nation is a Norman Rockwell illustration come alive in indignation. There is opportunism at work here. The narrative is being done one-dimensional and that always squeal political opportunity. As if there isn't complicity and the Chinese Communist Party is a unilateral actor of dangerous and unmitigated crimes.

Whatever happened to the multinational corporations, American, British, Dutch e.t.c. who contract the cheap labor of China and all those out-sourced to places with their lax and non-existent quality standards?

Whatever happened to the stock investors of all those companies who benefit from the profit maximized cheap labor and poor quality standards of China and it's misanthropy?

These recent disclosures of Chinese made shoddy products seem to be political shell games, throw back, intended to mollify middle class America and the blue collar electorate with ire at made in China minus the complicity of the multinationals and stock investors who are the real violators and who are the primary beneficiaries of the exploitation of labor and lax quality standards in China. Lest it's forgotten capital in pursuit of cheap labor and production also requires the lowering of quality and environmental standards.

Elections are upon us and the rallying cry of indignation, Made in China, as if Made in China just some how fantastically appeared on the shelves at Walmart, Targets and all the other cathedrals is the fist shaken in the air, the subtle nudge away from the obvious: Bill Clinton perfected it with the condescension "I feel you pain" As if Crocodilian tears of empathy excused the material injustice. So why shouldn't the empathy, indignation gambit be once again played?

By Apropos

AL Qaeda, Gut-Feelings and the Politics of Fear

Isn't it disingenuous for the Bush administration and it's apologist lackeys to on the one hand opportunistically exploit people's fears with hydra-like Al Qaeda sprouting all over the planet. No let me have a "gut-feeling" rather all over the universe and it's alleged summer block buster attack just in time to make up for weak Hollywood fare, or is it weak Republican inroads. Then on the other , proclaim it's tactics for the war in Iraq is bearing fruit because some rag tag wretches have purportedly run Al Qaeda aground in certain provinces and areas in Iraq.

This begs this: It behooves the imagination, that the strongest fighting force to legion like move upon human history could not run Al Qaeda aground and it had to out source as a lot of things are done these days to groups who in earlier State of the Union Addresses were referred to as thugs, murders and the killers for them to heel Al Qaeda.

It makes one wonder what was all that transformational headiness about anyway, or Al Qaeda is the doppelganger of opportunity for the Republican party that's having a hard time whipping up reactionary frenzy in a national policy that sees no economical incentive in reactionary politics.

By Apropos

Giuliani, Teflon politics and The Republican

Reactionary politics whether the reform-liberal or conservative hood-wink, is always about opportunity. How any individual seizes and at times creates opportunity speaks more about their character than sense of deduction.

So what does this one after another domino effect, oops! say about Rudy Giuliani's character? The colloquial adage, If you lie with dogs you'll catch the fleas is empirical wisdom.

Scandal revolves around Giuliani, who were it not for John" The Teflon Don" Gotti, would be just another red tie blue suit wearing faceless Mr. Smith in a sea of Smith's lawyering hamster like on the social-contract tread wheel.

At least Nixon was able to conceal his character flaws till his Water-Gate over reach. Giuliani is an old dog and cannot be taught new tricks, his affinity for hypocrisy has propelled him high enough and if human consciousness is to be spared the spectacle of President Giuliani's cabinet pleading guilty to corruption charges, being indicted on cocaine charges and confessions to very serious sins, then let that wheezing Bronx cheer be Giuliani's cue that yes it took a while but as his rise was built on the backs of "Wise-Guys" so has the polity wised up to him.

By Apropos

Hillary, Obama and the politics of "Bush-Cheney Lite"

This criticism being leveled at presidential hopeful Barack Obama, because of his jab at another presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, calling her "Bush-Cheney Lite" is ridiculous and it's effrontery indicates the contempt mass discourse is held by pundits who seem not to have out grown their fresh-men hazing years.

Why shouldn't contenders duke it out? Where were these critics when George Bush and Co. felt it was fair game to attack a detractors wife, to out her is a profession which in some quarters practices unspeakable brutality on outed agents.

Barack Obama responded, not merely truthfully but practically and that's the operative here, that yes he would meet tyrants and despots out in the open as opposed to the cloak room secrecy of the business as usual nuance politics.

The naivete, Hillary Clinton accuses Barack Obama of not knowing the way of the world is ludicrous. Obama is black and regardless of what sort of black he is the historical condition of blackness has been marginalization and oppression, and that is, the circumstance of tyranny.
So what nature of despotism and dictatorship is Obama naive to? The shrill of Hillary Clinton that Obama's willingness to meet despots, will diminish the stature of the Presidency, now that is naivete. The stature of the U.S. is diminished and being mocked when the world sees how cheap explosive devices in Iraq thwart the strategy of "Shock and Awe".

By Apropos

Culture, Language, and Priorities

A ridiculous amount of Black men and Women, young men and women are held behind bars in American jails and prisons. If this was happening in the Nineteenth and early twentieth century to European Jewry the cries of Pogroms! Would rent the silence of apathy. But that's not the issue. In the July 2007 edition of Essence Magazine, Susan Taylor, The Editorial Director, as her contribution to move the purported Dialogue on usage of deemed offensive language forward in the wake of Don Imus, presented "apology" as a platform for action.

Now what is wrong with this Sisyphean indulgence?

First of all words of respect and atonement will not mean squat in the material condition of injustice and the seeming impotence to take meaningful action in arresting a slide which has the start of it's slope in the 1400's.

The cultural petri dish which produces attitudes about male and female for male and female has nothing to do with the variegated modes of it's expression. The Black American experience has an intractable nihilistic vein that is symptomatic of not specific injustice but historic injustice. So how practical is it for a well-fed member of Black intelligentsia to decree that the journey begins with "Apology."

Again, I close with: A Ridiculous amount of Black men and women, young men and women are held behind bars in American jails and prisons. If this was happening in the nineteenth and early twentieth century to European Jewry the cries of Pogrom! would rent the silence of apathy. But that's not the issue?

By Apropos

Comments Political-Economy "A Rigor"

Tomes have been written on how one culture is vastly superior to another, how Europe's civilization, particularly the industrial revolution has been for the greater good of humanity and the human condition, how cultures not holding the same aspirations and instincts compatible with Europe's are backwards, ignorant, barbaric, etcetera.

Volumes fill shelves dusty with optimistic realization of pessimism that qualifies the human condition.

The fact and the truth is creature comforts and technological advancement do not in any priori form fashion or manner qualify as a greater good as the sages of each milieu trumpet.

The human being per virtue of it's mental ability, that specificity to learn and apply such learning qualitatively rose up from amongst the midst of beast by extension of it's technology, the human condition derived, as it is experienced, is simply the quality of that primal technology and it's specific and particular refinement.

But the essence of human culture, it's conscience remains the same. It has remained the same, an inability of human conscience to come to terms with that objectivity it's technology has created. The senseless destruction and chaos in the wake of such technological progress makes a fraud of any claim man lays to progress---that standard, the ideal of sanctity of the human experience has surreally and idealistically under the guise of practicality been co-oped by the infantality of man's mind is the face of the mysterious and unforgiven principles man's technology has uncovered--- to the extent, that technology as it empowered and was that motive for humanity's ancestral brain development has now simply become the stagnancy of mere refinement, holding prisoner the mind that brought it forth.

By Apropos

The Prisoner's Wife by Asha Bandele: A Review

The book is supposedly a love story. But I don't know what to make of it--- it's too full of recriminations, regrets, resentments, and condescension to be a result of love, as love is understood by human condition.


The setting for this "Love" is prison, not any prison for that matter but the insidious and Machiavellian enterprise of an American prison, The Department of Corrections of the United State of New York. The story is a reflection of the tumultuous State of America cultural expression and it's subjective, American hearts and minds, because if the cultural and emotional expression of the human is simply a sum of character, then love as the ultimate value of emotion and it's medium culture will reflect the state and nature of its subjective. Emotion in the most sublime of conditions and environment is still a strange and mysterious beast, add the ingredient of the most alienative and perverted environmental condition known to humanity, Prison and what will you have? What you should have is the sum value of human character, that baptism by fire through adversity, that qualitative redemption from the disjointedness of chaotic quantity but Ms. Bandele fails to even have an inkling of the maxim "I'm Solitude Made Man"--- Solitude which in this context is anguish, the accomplice of love, love which she claims.


The author's emotional consciousness is either objectively malnourished or her alienation from objectivity of her femininity is so complete that she is confused. She mistakes the adventurous inclination of her Eros with that most consuming of emotions, Love. Whether or not she wants to face up to and has the presence of mind to acknowledge it, she simply has a stimulating adventure with a prisoner, a test in that most simplistic and primitive of human urges, Self-Gratification in its motive of one-upsmanship. As the tongue in cheek, Succinctly puts it " I wanted to be important to someone again" [pp.27]

For starters ,Rashid her beloved, lover and subsequent husband is to one-dimensional and acquiescent, an emasculated corollary of collateral damage from the was between the sexes submitting disgracefully to his wife Asha's each and every undisciplined desire and infantile idealism for whatever it is and was, that was between them to be of the higher human emotion, Love. The only excusable rationalization init-self and its satisfying impact on his"..Scorched-earth" [pp.165] psyche was enough to over look the dominance of his wife and that spells eunuchism.

What is striking and revealing is at every turn of the way, their way and obstacles crop up, which in the general sense, with its solution of how the contend with it would enable their humanness to define and give credibility to the love they purportedly share both fail qualification pathetically. Rashid the prisoner and husband for being effeminate and obeisant to his wife's each and every indulgence and Asha the wife for misplacing her need for self-affirmation and it's redemptive catharsis with love.

The author presents an unstated and treacherous premise that the pursuit of emotional, mental and physical communion between the imprisoned human and the free one is utterly unrealistic, futile and its fidelity is unattainable---this premise itself raises the question of what role if any those higher sentient and sapient potentials of humanness plays in the condition of love, not as we misconstrue it to be but as we aspire it to be. If as we are wont to say that love has many facets and conditions then Rashid and Asha's rank at that, no greater than the sum of their underdeveloped psyches. What then is Ms.Bandele telling us, " That the spirit is willing but the body is weak"? Or the whole relationship was nothing more than an Academic project that is now bearing fruit with her writing a book about it.


To make a long story short "The Prisoners Wife" is a story of a relationship between a male and female and their dishonesty and inability in coming to terms with the fact that they lacked the manhood and womanhood to develop, nurture and sustain love in the most stifling of environments------Prison.

I close with, Asha Bandele invoked Assata Shakurs'
"If I know anything at all
It's that a wall is just a wall
and nothing more at all.
It can be brought down."

And for 219 pages made a mockery of it with erecting that most noxious of walls---Condescension.


Apropos

Comments Political-Economy "A Rigor"

Comments Political-Economy
"A Rigor"

Tomes have been written on how one culture is vastly superior to another, how Europe's civilization, particularly the industrial revolution has been for the greater good of humanity and the human condition, how cultures not holding the same aspirations and instincts compatible with Europe's are backwards, ignorant, barbaric, ectetera.

Volumes fill shelves dusty with the optimistic realization of pessimism that qualifies the human condition.

The fact and the truth is creature and technological advancement do not in any priori form fashion or manner qualify as a greater good as the sages of each milieu trumpet.

The human being per virtue of it's mental ability, that specificity to learn and apply such learning qualitatively rose up from amongst the midst of beast by extension of it's technology, The human condition derived, as it is experienced, is simply the quality of that primal technology and it's specific and particular refinement.

But the essence of human culture, it's conscience remains the same. It has remained the same, an inability of human conscience to come to terms with that objectivity it's technology has created. The senseless destruction and chaos in the wake of such technological progress makes a fraud of any claim man lays to progress--- that standard, the ideal of the sanctity of the human experience has surreally and idealistically under the guise of practicality been co-opted by the infantility of man's mind in the face of the mysterious and unforgiven principles man's technology has uncovered--- To the extent, that technology as it empowered and was that motive for humanity's ancestral brain development has now simply become the stagnancy of mere refinement, holding prisoner the mind that brought it forth.

By Apropos