JFK & Innocence Never Lost, RFK & Real History

21 Thursday Nov 2013

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, culture, Eclectic, Movies, music, Patriotism, Politics, Pop Culture, Youth

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Activism, American Exceptionalism, Assassination, Baby Boomers, Backlash, Camelot, Gun Violence, History, Innocence, JFK, JFK Assassination, LBJ, Lee Harvey Oswald, Legend, Mythology, Neo-Conservative Movement, President John F. Kennedy, President Lyndon Baines Johnson, RFK, Robert Kennedy, Social Justice, The '60s, Violence, Violent Society

President John F. Kennedy, presidential portrait (1961-63). (Wikipedia via John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library, Boston)

President John F. Kennedy, presidential portrait (February 20, 1961). (Wikipedia via John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library, Boston). In public domain.

I’ve heard about the JFK assassination in Dallas my whole life. Only the Civil Rights Movement, World War II and the Holocaust outrank JFK’s murder at the hands of Lee Harvey Oswald (or numerous other candidates) as subjects more often discussed in pop history circles of which I’ve been a part. But with the fiftieth anniversary of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s upon us tomorrow (fifty years to both the day and date), the mythology of his presidency and the state of the nation’s soul since November 22, 1963 is well into high gear.

But of all the myths and legends — including this ridiculousness about Camelot and the Kennedys in the White House — there’s one that bothers me more than any other. The common refrain that “America lost its innocence” the day President Kennedy took three bullets to his back and head in Daley Plaza in Dallas. Really? What about Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield and William McKinley? What about slavery, the Civil War, the eradication and forced relocation of American Indians, nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Heck, what about the Cuban Missile Crisis, where JFK came within hours of jeopardizing the lives of eighty million Americans thirteen months before his murder?

Bloom off the rose, November 21, 2013. ( ).

Bloom is off the rose, November 21, 2013. (http://www.marctomarket.com).

The fact is, America has always been a violent nation, especially for those not in charge of running things here. But this bald-faced lie of a myth has been one built by those who were young when Oswald took out JFK. Teenager Baby Boomers and those only a few years older, big fans of President Kennedy, and those who loved him and lamented what could’ve been. Those are the folks that claim that the nation was young and innocent, but somehow deflowered on that dark, dark day.

I call poppycock and balderdash on this one. Like Malcolm X in the days after the JFK assassination, I say that this was an example of America’s violent chickens coming home to kill. Luckily it’s forty-nine years and 364 days later, so I won’t be setting up my own assassination at the hands of former friends and real foes. Yet there’s some truth to Malcolm X’s statement. In a country as violent as ours, where Presidents like Kennedy endure death threats day after day, where arguments and oppression lead to mass shootings, should we ever be surprised? Ever? I say that there was no innocence lost here.

No, what we should really be discussing this week in terms of what could’ve been is RFK’s assassination in June ’68 in California. For all the sorrow over JFK’s murder, one good thing came out of it. President Lyndon Baines Johnson. LBJ took the best parts of JFK’s potential legacy — civil rights, the spreading of prosperity and Vietnam — and doubled down on it. Given LBJ’s scope of influence when compared with JFK’s, it was doubtful if the slain president could’ve pushed through half of what LBJ did get done. LBJ revealed himself to be to the left of JFK, a real Cold War liberal (for better and for worse), and not a borderline centrist.

Robert Francis Kennedy, Life Magazine Cover, November 1966. (http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/)

Of course, RFK likely wouldn’t have had the chance to run in ’68 but for his brother’s assassination. Keep in mind, too, that LBJ’s successes, failures and decision to not run for re-election also made Robert F. Kennedy’s run possible. But bottom line: RFK’s assassination affected America political and culturally in ways that have been deeper and longer lasting than even JFK’s. For starters, Americans likely do not elect Richard Nixon president in ’68 if RFK’s steadying influence is present at the ’68 Democratic Convention in Chicago. That would’ve set up some real opposition to the neo-conservative movement and the ’70s and ’80s backlash against Blacks, women, gays and labor that had been brewing since JFK’s assassination in ’63.

I know that many of you will vehemently disagree, shake your heads, or deliberately ignore the ideas of this post. What else is new in the land of the Baby Boomers, where a few so-called activists get to tell the rest of us how to see the 77 million of them and their growing up years? I say that this narrative is worn out, and neglects the reality that neither JFK nor America were innocent, but RFK’s evolving left-of-center integrity was a much bigger loss.

Emancipation and Compromise

01 Tuesday Jan 2013

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, culture, Eclectic, Patriotism, Politics, Pop Culture, race

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American Civil War, Compromise, Economic Inequality, Emancipation Proclamation, Fiscal Cliff, Fiscal Cliff Deal, Harry Reid, President Abraham Lincoln, President Barack Obama, President Lincoln, President Obama, Racism, Sen. Mitch McConnell, Slavery, Social Justice, social mobility, Social Safety Net, The Great Emancipator, US Civil War

Statuary by the US Capitol, Washington, DC, December 25, 2012. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP).

Today marks 150 years since President Abraham Lincoln issued an order as Commander-in-Chief that granted freedom to slaves in territories that remained in rebellion against the Union. It enabled Lincoln to become know as the Great Emancipation, and paved the road for the passage and ratification of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, outlawing slavery in the US, nearly three years later. This is a great thing to remember on this New Years Day, and yet, the Emancipation Proclamation exemplifies flaws in the political tactics of our leaders.

We seldom see real, lasting changes in our nation. Our Founding Fathers wrote our very Constitution with the expressed purpose of protecting “life, liberty, and property,” specifically the property of rich White male slaveowners and merchants. Lincoln used his office to strip the Southern one-percenters of the Civil War period of the one thing that was central to their “way of life,” the liberty of owning African slaves, of treating humans as property.

But even Lincoln’s proclamation was as much political posturing as it was an order on the road to emancipation and abolition. It would take the bulk of 1863, 1864 and 1865 to bring enough of the Confederate states under Union Army control to make emancipation a reality for three out of four million slaves. Border states and areas already under Union Army would only be forced to free the other one million slaves with the ratification of the 13th Amendment on December 6, 1865. This wasn’t exactly a great compromise, especially for the slaves and for abolitionists.

Fast-forward a century and a half to our tumultuous Congress and jelly boned White House. They’re fighting over tax cuts that should’ve never been enacted in ’01, or expanded in ’03. The cuts should’ve expired two years ago instead of fourteen hours ago. The compromise that the Senate passed at 2 am today is weaker than the Emancipation Proclamation. At least Lincoln knew that he had an Army and Navy that could enforce it over time. In the case of President Barack Obama, Senators Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell, the compromise deal is worth about as much as Neville Chamberlain’s “peace in our time” Munich Agreement with Hitler in September 1938, and led indirectly to World War II less than a year later.

“Kicking the can down the road” cartoon, September 23, 2012. (Clay Bennett/ Chattanooga Times Free Press).

The media loves to say that “both sides need to compromise to make a deal.” President Obama loves to say that “no side can get a hundred percent of what they want.” Let’s follow this line of thought by looking at the compromises that led to the Civil War and Lincoln’s proclamation. Here’s seventy-six years of compromise (starting with the US Constitution):

Kicking can of end of US participation in international slave trade to 1808;
African slaves (not term used) equated to three-fifths of a person for political representation purposes;
Missouri Compromise of 1819 (creating distinction between slave and free states at the 36°30′ parallel);
Gag Resolution (forbade Congress from debating anti-slavery bills on the floor of the House and (essentially) the Senate between 1836 and 1844);
The Compromise of 1850, which tore up the Missouri Compromise, opening up new territories for slavery’s expansion, while allowing California into the Union as a free state; and
Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) officially declared policy of “popular sovereignty,” that each territory in its petition for statehood could determine to be a state that allowed or did not allow slavery.

Years of compromise led to increasing violence to protect or destroy slavery (including “Bleeding Kansas” and John Brown’s Harper’s Ferry raid in 1859), and of course, to the Civil War. So while Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was itself a compromise, it might as well have been an ultimatum compared to the previous seven decades of inaction and negotiation.

Emancipation Proclamation reproduction, National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, Cincinnati, OH, (photo taken November 15, 2009). (Wikipedia). In public domain.

Not that taxes, spending and the social safety net are the same as slavery. But after nearly four decades of declining social mobility, expanding economic inequality and every conceivable break in favor of the wealthy and corporations, isn’t it time to stop compromising our lives and our children’s lives?

Unless we consider the reality that Congress is only doing what its greedy Civil War-era predecessors did a century and a half ago. That the White House is too beholden to moneyed interests to stand for anything that truly helps ordinary Americans. That it will take something far more serious than the Great Recession (or even something potentially as violent as the Civil War) to make this group finally find religion.

Holes in Foundation Shield of Education Funding

03 Thursday Nov 2011

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, Boy @ The Window, Eclectic, Politics, race

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Academia, Bill Gates. Makin' It Rain, Collaboration, Early College High Schools, Education, Education Reform. K-16 Education, Foundations, Funding, Higher Education, K-12 Education, K-8 Schools, Linkages, P-20 Education, Race, Real Reform. Overhaul of P-20 Education, Social Justice, Synergy

Leather knight shield with holes, November 2, 2011. (http://paulssupplies.com)

As an educator and someone who has worked in the nonprofit world on education reform issues for slightly less than half of my life (I turn forty-two next month), it’s curious and disappointing to continue to see a scatter-shot and tweaking approach to education reform. An approach that often gets the bulk of the funding from private and corporate foundations.

If what Bill Gates said at the National Education Summit in Washington, DC in February 2005 is correct, that “American high schools are obsolete in their current form” — and I believe he is — then why does his foundation and others fund mostly small-scale projects? Especially ones that have few, if any, possibilities for replication or for making American high school more relevant to the twenty-first century?

But let me not pick on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as being neglectful of seeing the big, panoramic picture on K-12, K-16 or even P-20 education. Below, in general, are the parts of education process the big foundations have tended to fund over the past five to ten years:

Preschool, Pre-K Education = Annie E. Casey Foundation, Pew Trusts

K-12 Education = Gates Foundation, Hewlett Foundation

Higher Education, Education Research = Spencer Foundation (most $$$ now via AERA/NAE), Mellon Foundation

Higher Education Access/Success = Lumina Foundation for Education, Ford Foundation, Gates Foundation, Jack Kent Cooke Foundation

Student Financial Aid = Lumina Foundation for Education, Gates Foundation

Teacher Effectiveness = Gates Foundation, Hewlett Foundation, Ford Foundation

Poverty, Community Development, Race = W.K. Kellogg Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, Pew Trusts, Ford Foundation, Annie E. Casey Foundation, Gates Foundation.

They have funded and still do fund everything from early childhood education programming, credentials for early childhood educators, small schools, research for curriculum realignment, online education options for K-12, leadership programs for principals and school superintendents, to student and teacher incentive programs, fiscal and human resources allocation, early and middle college high schools, and assessments for teacher effectiveness. (By the way, that is the longest sentence I’ve ever written, at least without editing into

Ed Harris as Jackson Pollock in Pollock (2000), spreading and throwing paint, August 6, 2009. (http://www.totalfilm.com).

smaller sentences).

Seems like everything in the P-20 education universe is covered, right? Except, I’d defy anyone in or out of the education field to try to add all of this up into a comprehensive overhaul of early childhood and K-12 education that would then force reform in higher education.

The reason that we can’t assume that all of this adds up to real reform is simple. A dozen or so foundations pouring billions of dollars into a quarter-trillion dollar a year system through tens of thousands of grants, each working on a separate problem? By definition, a comprehensive overhaul isn’t possible. It’s as unlikely as Wall Street disengaging itself from American politics without a decade of Occupy Wall Street.

We could start, conceivably, with the idea of early and middle college high schools. One where school districts and the colleges and universities adopting these high schools collaborate on creating a system that would leave high school graduates with the equivalent of two years of college training or an associate’s degree. Or in the case of students who made plans to not go to college, two years of training that would make them employable in the twenty-first century workforce.

Only, these early and middle college high schools would be without the additional burden of providing remediation to ninth graders not ready for what we now call high school. Bottom line: we need a single-track college/career ready system that begins its work in preschool and pre-K programs, one in which these programs are tied to elementary schools, so that it doesn’t take the poorest of students three years to catch up. We need linkages between elementary and middle schools — or as many researchers suggest, K-8 schools — where the work to make students ready for algebra, critical thinking through writing and the arts could take shape in a more supportive and coherent environment.

More direct linkages between schools and community organizations and services — health clinics, psychological services, nonprofit organizations focused on the arts, writing, sports, science and math — are

Crane removing part of Berlin Wall at Brandenburg Gate, December 21, 1989. (SSGT F. Lee Corkran/US Dept of Defense). In public domain.

necessity to build communities that are committed to large-scale education reform. For if these organizations and systems continue to work in parallel series rather than in collaboration, all these attempts at reform are for naught.

But foundations have always been leery to link their work, to fund for the long-term, to think in ways that encourage collaboration — kind of like corporations, Wall Street bankers and the GOP. They also tend not to hire deep thinkers on issues like education. Or at least, the linkages between education, race, class, gender, community and the workforce.

Though they are doing a better job these days, especially in the case of the Kellogg Foundation on race, we need a more solid shield. One that is truly about transforming P-20 education, and not just tweak it with data and pilot programs. Funding programs without a grander vision might as well be a “make it rain” party at a strip club.

Faces At The Top Of The Well

08 Saturday Oct 2011

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, Mount Vernon High School, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Religion

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Baby Boomers, Capitalism, Civil Rights, Cultural Eclectic-ness, Cultural Relevance, Derrick Bell, Faces at the Bottom of the Well, Fred Shuttlesworth, Heroes, Leadership, Legacy, Media Coverage, Post-Civil Rights Generation, Professor Derrick Bell, Race, Racial Preference Licensing Act, Racism, Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, RIP, Social Justice, Steve Jobs, Taking Risks

Signed Copy of Faces at the Bottom of the Well, October 8, 2011. (Donald Earl Collins).

In a twenty-four hour span on Wednesday, three American giants died. The Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, the ultimate Civil Rights activist, had been reported dead first by mid-afternoon on the fifth. Then, in quick succession the media reported two other deaths. Apple co-founder, two-time CEO and 300+ patents Steve Jobs passed around 7 pm. While Civil Rights activist, law professor, critical race theorist and best-selling author Derrick Bell also passed that evening, very quietly.

The media — social, cable and otherwise — dutifully dedicated itself to rolling out every author and person connected to Jobs the Visionary, Jobs the Thomas Edison of the Information Age, Jobs the Innovative Entrepreneur. By 9:30 pm, even my ambivalence about Jobs the Capitalist (as tweeted @decollins1969) would’ve been seen as heretical by the folks whom Jobs had fired over the years, or had their jobs outsourced to China in the past ten years.

No doubt that Steve Jobs, my he rest in peace, was a sort-of Wizard of Menlo Park, California (really, Silicon Valley, but taking poetic license here). But, as much as I love my MacBook, iPod, iTunes, iMovie and iPhoto, and other Apple products I’ve used since I wrote an AP English paper on an Apple IIe my senior year at Mount Vernon High School in ’87. I didn’t get this outpouring of love and sorrow two days ago.

Then it occurred to me that I was watching two stories. One story was of a generation that saw Jobs as the man who fused technological innovation with cultural relevancy, the folks who grew up while Jobs was in the midst of his second coming at Apple. As he remade the niche company into the largest corporation (more or less) in the world. The other story is the media story, the Baby Boomer story of a cultural rebel who made good as an Information Age capitalist while maintaining his Zen-ness, an ultimate cultural outsider-corporate insider.

Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth at Ohio Civil Rights Commission Hall of Fall Dinner, October 2009. In public domain.

As much as I think people should admire the late Steve Jobs — and there’s quite a bit to admire about his life — there’s so much more to admire about Shuttlesworth and Bell. Shuttlesworth survived multiple attempts on his life, was threatened too many times to count, co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957 (along with MLK and others) and helped lead the campaign to integrate Birmingham, Alabama in the early 1960s, among many accomplishments. Rev. Shuttlesworth literally gave his blood, sweat and tears for civil rights and equality, but I didn’t see anyone put a candle on an iPad for him Wednesday night.

Bell, well, I’m a bit more biased about Professor Bell. I met him two years before he published Faces at the Bottom of the Well. Bell gave a talk at the University of Pittsburgh Law School (his JD alma mater) in October ’90 on his essay “The Racial Preference Licensing Act,” one that would end up in the book. The idea that racist businesses could opt out of an integrated America by buying a license and paying a race tax in order to deliberately bar Blacks and others of color from their services and jobs, I thought that was truly radical. The slightly older Pitt Law students, Black and White, were up in arms. One went so far as to suggest that Bell was somehow now working for the other side, those who’d like to turn back the clock to the days of Jim Crow.

Through it all, Professor Bell just smiled and joked, and most of all, explained. His story about this Act was a way of getting ahead of the tide of politicians and judges that had been eroding Black gains since the mid-1970s, of moving beyond the crucible of the Civil Rights era — integration at any cost. Bell wasn’t suggesting self-segregation. He was hoping to provoke a larger discussion of the kind of equality Blacks and progressives should hope to achieve in a post-Civil Rights era. One in which all deny racism and racial inequality, but put it in practice in their words and actions every day.

Derrick Bell by David Shankbone, August 2007. Permission granted via GNU Free Documentation License.

Bell’s ambivalence about the achievements of his generation, about the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement, about desegregation, made him the target of traditional Civil Rights royalty — the “How dare you!” crowd. But it made me and many others from the generation that actually remembers the Steve Jobs as the guy that co-built the world’s first personal computer in his garage big fans of Professor Bell.

To turn your back on three decades’ worth of struggle and success because you foresaw the coming storm around race. To bridge the divide between Baby Boomers/ the Civil Rights generation and us post-Civil Rights folks by turning complex legal theories into allegorical stories. To take a stand that costs you your job at Harvard Law to ensure that the next Asian American female candidate would be given a real chance at a job. Bell’s my hero, and I don’t have a lot of people I’d call a hero.

The media might have put Bell and Shuttlesworth at the bottom of their news cycle well — no doubt, race and the media’s consistent attempt to ignore race was a factor here — but it’s up to all of us that they are winched out of that well to the top. And I think that Jobs would agree with that. May they all RIP.

Apple logo, Think Different, 1997. (Source/TBWA\Chiat\Day). In public domain

When Politicians Say, “The American People…”

15 Monday Aug 2011

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, culture, Eclectic, High Rise Buildings, Patriotism, Politics, race, Work

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Class Politics, Class Warfare, Comcast Center, Corporate Interests, Corporations, economic rights, Entitlements, environmental rights, Human Rights, Koch Brothers, Lobbyists, New Deal, President Barack Obama, Rep. John Boehner, Social Justice, social mobility, Social Welfare, Supreme Court, The American People, Wall Street, Wealthy

Elephant, as image of Republican Party, bowing to their "American people," the CEOs of Goldman Sachs ans Exxon Mobil, August 13, 2011. (Source/Donald Earl Collins)

Wall Street banker poses on his new rug, February 3, 2009. (Source/JD Crowe, Alabama Press Register). Qualifies as fair use under US copyright laws, as cartoon is of low resolution and is used for illustrative purposes only.

We should all roll our eyes, pick up a snowball we’ve stashed in our freezers since the middle of February, and hit the politician in his forehead whenever we hear one of them start a statement with, “The American people.” Because as many of us have realized for years, they’re not talking about us. As we discovered with the Supreme Court decision about corporate and foreign contributions to campaigns last year, corporations and the wealthy define whom most of our leaders think of when they’re saying “The American people.” Especially since Goldman Sachs, Exxon Mobil and NBC Comcast collectively count as “American people.”

When Speaker John Boehner says, “The American people don’t want us to raise taxes,” as he did on June 24 during the debt ceiling-blackmail meetings, who is he talking about? Not me. And not most Americans, I’d assume. But, in Boehner’s mind and actual life experience, “most Americans” are people whose last concern is “job creation” or “economic growth.” In fact, they’re the ones who want “government off our backs,” who seem to think “entitlement reform” is good for the country, because it saves them money for another yacht.

Because of people like Boehner, it’s hard to believe President Obama when he claims that eighty percent of “American people want higher taxes” on the wealthy. Why? Not because Obama might not be telling the truth via multiple polls. It’s more because his actions of capitulation let the rest of us know who’s really in charge – lobbyists and wealthy people who are as patriotic as Judas was loyal to Jesus. And corporations who as people might be as evil as Stalin and Pol Pot put together.

My question is, does the Comcast Center in Philadelphia now get the right to vote under the 14th

Comcast Center, tallest building in Philadelphia (58 stories), and physical representation of an American person, January 3, 2011. (Source/Smallbones/Wikipedia Commons).

Amendment, as well as the right to pay federal income tax, as under the 16th Amendment? Really, what is the end game here? Do we each have to incorporate ourselves in order for a politician or some leader beholden to the wealthy notices the rest of us?

No, the end game is a pre-New Deal America. One where the majority of us work the way our grandparents and great-grandparents did in the 1910s, 1920s and 1930s. Where there wasn’t anything close to a guarantee of social mobility. Where the average person’s income was $1,500 a year ($15,000 a year in today’s dollars). With no unemployment insurance, retirement, health care system or insurance. Without unions, or government regulation curtailing corporate monopolies or excess, environmental damage or employee abuse.

Ultimately, the wealthy and the greedy corporations want to beat 300 million people here into subservience and submission. They want to do what they as people accuse the federal government of doing — controlling every aspect of our lives. Including every breathe we take. And make no mistake. The Supreme Court, most of the Congress, many a state and local politician and leader, maybe even the President himself, represents the interests of those “American people.” We may have to move to a more progressive nation for our interests as human beings to be fully represented. Because even as foreigners, we’ll be better off in the UK or China than here.

Boehner Shares Stage With David Koch At Wall Street Club, May 9, 2011. (Source/AP/ThinkProgress.org).

The Ultimate Satan Sandwich

03 Wednesday Aug 2011

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, culture, Eclectic, Patriotism, Politics

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Capitol Hill, Capitulation, Cassini spacecraft, Cassini-Huygens, Climate Change, Compromise, Congress, Conservatives, Corporate Interests, Corporations, Debt Ceiling, Debt Ceiling Deal, Democrats, Economic Pressures, Ecosystem, Environment, environmental pollution, Exxon Mobil, Global Warming, Halliburton, Liberals, Liquid Methane, NASA, Peak Oil, Progressives, Rep. Emanual Cleaver, Republicans, Satan Sandwich, Saturn, Sen. Mitch McConnell, Shell, Social Justice, Speaker John Boehner, Tea Baggers, Tea Party, Titan (moon), Washington DC

Titan in natural color, Cassini spacecraft, April 16, 2005. (Source/http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA06230) - In public domain.

With the passage of the debt ceiling/budget cuts deal that Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO) called a “a sugar-coated Satan sandwich” on Monday, it became clear that conservative politicians are only patriotic when they can make money off of misery. We know that the conservative/reactionary/Tea Party agenda is to ensure that the legacy of the New Deal and liberal America is as charred as the dinosaurs were 65 million years ago. And with it, our futures and the future of kids like my eight-year-old son.

But how will we get to a future with no future, you ask? How will this capitulation — oops, I mean compromise — between President Obama, House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell lead us into the event horizon of a black hole? It will be because the reactionary Republicans and the diffident Democrats will make one big effort to save the US and world economy, to create jobs and wealth. All while breaking treaties, threatening world peace and destroying the environment in the process.

Forget about “drill, baby, drill” and the ANWR (Arctic National Wildlife Refuge) issue. Think bigger. Think fictitiously big. Think Saturn’s biggest moon, Titan. It’s not only the second largest moon in the solar system (after Jupiter’s largest moon Ganymede), and double the size of Earth’s moon. It’s the only moon in the solar system with a dense atmosphere, about ten times as dense as our own. It also has a huge reservoir of organic molecules and hydrocarbons in its atmosphere, and liquid methane and ethane all over its surface, at least as verified via the Cassini spacecraft and its unmanned fly-bys since 2004. Some scientists believe that there’s enough liquid methane and other hydrocarbons under and on the surface and in the atmosphere to power the current world economy for the next fifty million years.

Land of liquid methane lakes, as radar mapped with false color mosaic, North Polar Region, Titan, October 11, 2007. (Source/ http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/?IDNumber=PIA10008) - In public domain.

Because many of our fearless conservative leaders don’t believe in global warming/climate change — but do believe in making money — they would see the recent discovery of the stuff on Titan not as a place to explore the possibility of life. Instead, it would be a grand opportunity to solve the world’s energy crisis. Of course, they’d have to admit that there is such a thing as peak oil, and then have ample evidence that the world has reached peak production to boot.

So, say it’s 2014, and everyone from OPEC to the UN to Exxon Mobil has reported that we’ve reached the outer edge of peak oil. If the neo-con/Tea Party types are still in control of the House of Representatives, or worse, in control of the Senate and the White House, there wouldn’t even be a debate. They’d put together a bill to push through a $100 billion package for NASA to work with Exxon Mobil, Shell and Halliburton in sending a team of scientists, petrochemical engineers and drillers to figure out how to pump Titan’s frigid air and hydrocarbon lakes into massive tanks to return to Earth for our consumption. The companies would have to match the $100 billion package dollar for dollar, which they would do, of course.

If Obama’s in his second term with a divided government, though there would be more protests from environmental groups, climatologists, and grassroots organizations than even with a President Mitt Romney, it wouldn’t matter. With the promise of as many as five million new jobs in three years, and 150,000 jobs to support the Titan “Oil” Pumping mission within the first six months, the majority of anxious Americans would endorse this plan.

Obama would talk about “honoring America’s commitments” to space as exploration. He’d complain about the need to protect the Earth from even more disastrous and accelerated climate change, not to mention the wasting of financial and scientific resources that could leave Titan a moon-sized example of an EPA Superfund site if the mission somehow set the moon’s atmosphere on fire. Obama would even bring up green alternatives for using the Sun and solar system to supply the world’s energy needs. Then he’d fold like a warped desk of cards.

This would violate the Outer Space Treaty, signed by the United States, the former Soviet Union and the United Kingdom in 1967, and by half of the countries of the world in the forty-four years since. Not only are we not suppose to have nuclear weapons in space, the more immediate intent of the treaty, but we’re also prohibited from claiming any part of outer space as an individual nation, as they are the “common heritage of mankind.” The act to drain Titan as a petrochemical resource unilaterally would break the treaty, and leave other space-faring nations into a new and potentially dangerous space race.

So, whether Obama or a semi-fictitious Republican president, the world would compromise with the US government, allowing this cockamamie scheme to move forward without the threat of war if they could receive a twenty-five percent share in whatever hydrocarbons are recovered from Titan. In exchange, a new treaty is signed promising a thirty percent reduction in fossil fuel consumption by 2040, made up for by a twenty percent increase in green energy over the same quarter-century.

McDonald's McGriddle breakfast sandwich, the ultimate Satan sandwich, at 420 calories, September 27, 2006. (Source/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/u-suke/253343509/Yusuke Kawasaki). In public domain under the terms of the cc-by-2.0.

All a great idea. The ultimate Satan sandwich, because if such a mission to Titan succeeds, the new Kyoto Accords wouldn’t mean a damn thing. We’ll be burning methane until we all have to buy oxygen tanks in order to breathe.

Though this is a fictitious scenario, it’s based on a reality that has been unfolding in our country for decades. The unfortunate truth is, between the lustful servants of money and corporations and capitulating national leadership, this Satan-sandwich-story is more of a possibility than us seeing a human being walk on Mars. At least in my lifetime.

How People of Color Should Re-Interpret the Rules of Race

05 Tuesday Oct 2010

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Eclectic, Politics, Pop Culture, race

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CNN, Derrick A. Bell, Derrick Bell, Faces at the Bottom of the Well, Hype, LeBron James, Media, Minorities, People of Color, Race, Racism, Rick Sanchez, Rules of Racial Standing, Social Justice, Soledad O'Brien

LeBron CNN Interview Screen Shot, September 29, 2010. Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvQhaCIa8lM

Soledad O’Brien, LeBron James (and his foot-in-mouth manager) and Rick Sanchez all have something in common. They are persons of color whose understanding of the rules of race — or the “Rules of Racial Standing,” as law professor Derrick Bell describes them — is about as sophisticated as an amoeba’s. If you ask me, they all played “the race doesn’t matter, even if it does” game, and they all got burned in some way as a result.

O’Brien to many — mostly Black and Latino — came off as a race-baiter, while James looked overly sensitive in his understated response to O’Brien’s “Do you think there’s a role that race plays…?” question. Sanchez was the worst of all, calling Daily Show host Jon Stewart a “bigot” and insinuating that CNN and shows like The Daily Show are controlled by Jews, liberal Jews of course, but Jews nevertheless. All while scoffing at the idea that Jews are an oppressed minority in the US.

It all points to one simple problem. That many, if not most, persons of color in the public eye don’t understand — or care to understand — the rules of race in the media. This is important. For people of color cannot re-interpret these rules without understanding them first.

Faces at the Bottom of the Well Book Cover, October 5, 2010 (Donald Earl Collins)

Derrick Bell‘s “Rules of Racial Standing,” from his bestselling Faces at the Bottom of the Well (1992), is a guidepost for why independent voices on issues of race are difficult to come by, in law and in the media. But as a person of color, there are ways to re-interpret these rules to make them work in unintended ways, at least, unintended by those in the media. The five rules (and their re-interpretations) are:

First Rule

(“Rule of Illegitimate Standing”) …No matter their experience or expertise, Blacks’ statements involving race are deemed “special pleading” and thus not entitled to serious consideration.

Translation: when in the public idea and asked a question on race, give an unexpected answer, one that is thought-provoking, even controversial, to at least push a more lengthy and serious discussion of race.

Second Rule
(“Rule of Legitimate Standing”) Not only are Blacks’ complaints discounted, but Black victims of racism are less effective witnesses than are Whites, who are members of the oppressor class. This phenomenon reflects a widespread assumption that…cannot be objective on racial issues…

Translation: While even having a DVD or an iPhone filming racist behavior or actions in progress may be ignored, having a multicultural group in support of a complaint will receive much more attention than striking out alone.

Third Rule

(“Rule of Enhanced Standing”) …The usual exception…is the Black person who publicly disparages or criticizes other Blacks who are speaking or acting in ways that upset Whites. Instantly, such statements are granted “enhanced standing” even when the speaker has no special expertise or experience in the subject he or she is criticizing.

Translation: Let the Tara Wall’s, Anna Holmes’, John McWhorter’s and Dinesh D’Souza’s of this world know that their opinions will not go unchallenged, that their alleged expertise on race is nothing more than an opinion sanitized for center-right consumption. That’s what blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and Huffington Post are for.

Fourth Rule
(“Rule of Superenhanced Standing”) When a Black person or group makes a statement or takes an action that the White community or vocal opponents thereof deem “outrageous,” the latter will actively recruit Blacks willing to refute the statement or condemn the action. Blacks who respond to the call for condemnation will receive superstanding status…

Translation: See the re-interpretation of the Second Rule, especially in the case of Fox (or Faux ) News. One Alan Keyes or Alex Castellanos does not equal a group of progressives using their numbers, media savvy and social media as an antidote to the “one sane person of color” rule.

Fifth Rule
(“Rule of Prophetic Understanding”) …Using this knowledge, one gains the gift of prophecy about racism, its essence, its goals, even its remedies. The price of this knowledge is the frustration that…that no amount of public prophecy, no matter its accuracy, can either repeal the Rules of Racial Standing or prevent their operation.

Translation: This may be true, but there are still millions of Americans who would prefer to hear people of color and truly progressive Whites make better use of the media to dilute the piss and vinegar that is pseudo-liberalism and mainstream news these day.

There are exceptions to these rules, such as when someone White or of legitimate standing vouch for his or her otherwise controversial views. But people of color need to bend these rules, break them when necessary. All so that the answer to the question “Was race a factor in…?” isn’t, “No,” or “No, this is a colorblind society,” or “Yes,” without a sophisticated answer. This is what the media wants, not necessarily out of racism, but out of making money. In order to get what Americans need, the media it needs, people of color must resist giving the media the hype that it wants.