By: Eric Wattree
Those of you who like to go around saying that there’s no difference between the Democratic and Republican Parties should pause a moment to take note.
The Republican led United States Supreme Court is currently poised to give you some of that good old-fashion Republican love. They’re currently considering whether they can get away with taking away your healthcare, just as they all but disenfranchised you by declaring that corporations are people in their ‘Citizens United’ decision, and completely overruled your vote by appointing George Bush President in the 2000 election after you clearly voted for Al Gore.
The Republican Party’s only platform and sole purpose in life is to make absolutely sure that the American people hate one another more passionately than they love themselves. That’s why Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and other Republicans are defending George Zimmerman after he killed Trayvon Martin. But that’s not surprising, since they created the environment that led to Zimmerman killing Trayvon in the first place.
They’ve done that by convincing many undereducated and weak-minded Whites that all Black men are out to kill their sons, steal their possessions, and rape their daughters. So for all of you who claim that Democrats are no different from Republicans, take a moment to ask yourself, “Who’s disseminating that message, Democrats or Republicans?”
The Republican leadership benefits from the Black, public outrage over this atrocity. That’s why conservative pundits eagerly fan the flames of the anger in the Black community over the obvious injustice of this incident. The case is clear. Zimmerman, a full grown man, arm with a 9 mm pistol and weighing, reportedly, a hundred pounds more than his victim, stalked and killed a Black child armed only with a bag of Skittles. And that was AFTER being instructed by the police to remain in his vehicle. Thereafter, Zimmerman, the son of a retired judge, was routinely released as though he’d been picked up for a traffic ticket. It should have been an open and shut case, but they didn’t even bother to collect a shred of evidence. Imagine what the consequences would have been for Trayvon if the situation was exactly reversed – in fact, under the given circumstances, Trayvon would have undoubtedly been jailed if he had managed to kill Zimmerman even in self-defense after being stalked.
But by continually inserting red herring defenses and other justifications for Zimmerman’s deadly assault on Trayvon – the fact that Trayvon was wearing a hoodie, he had been suspended from school, showing a picture of Trayvon wearing a gold tooth, etc. – conservative pundits are purposely further enraging the Black community, and thereby, planting the seed in the White community’s mind that Black people are being both racist toward Zimmerman and unreasonably hateful toward White people in general. That serves to drive a wedge between the Black and White communities and distract them away from the recognition that the throats of both communities are being cut by Republican policies.
If the middle class, and indeed this nation, is to survive, it is incumbent upon us to realized that we are now engaged in a class war, in which race is merely a tool to drive a wedge between us to keep us divided – and anyone who perpetuates that effort, including Tavis Smiley and Cornel West, is the enemy. Sure there are poor and middle-class racists in both communities. Racism has been built-in and carefully nurtured into our society, but we’ve been conditioned to be racist and divided by the social manipulation pointed out above. Thus, the only way that the poor and middle class are going to save themselves is for them to start doing more thinking, and stop allowing the social manipulators to control their thoughts through manipulating them into caving in to knee-jerk reactionism.
