Obama.... O-BA-MA

Hey, so it was nice to watch the tvone's coverage of the inauguration. sure, it was low budget, but it was also BLACK. There was no telling what the commentators were going to say.. and that's because the Black perspective is so repressed, that you just don't know what the current state of Black science will be.

One interesting thing I heard on the broadcast was when they were contrasting the "founding father's" with the Bush administrations actions.

One of the commentators talked about how when the Declaration of Independence was written, the United States was a revolutionary nation. At war with the most powerful nation on Earth, fighting for their very existence and, as it turned out, future world supremacy.

But what did the founding fathers do? what did they write? did they restrict the rights of it's citizenry? No, in the years preceeding the revolution, the years of the revolution and the constitution, they forged a document which has endured to this very day. They stressed the equality of men, the right to pursue happiness, the right to free speech, to bear arms, freedom from a peace time standing army (fascism, military state, repression), from unusual punishments, unnecessary taxation and due process (fines or forfeitures without trial).

And what did we get? we got the world's first and most enduring democracy.

Surely it's a bit more easy to understand the necessity of a "Smithian" free market, with Darwinian natural selection of those that are most strong an prepared... this evil/necessity is the reason for our current prosperity.. but the larger point is that in the Bush years, in the Bush response to the threat of global terrorism, they circumvented, attacked, degraded and cut the very heart out of the bill of rights, virtually on every front.

Two different times, two different threats, two different responses.

One, responded to the threat, by turning to the people, empowering the people and giving the power for the nascent nation to govern, police and endure, to the very same people who had come to this land, toiled on the land and recently defeated the enemy.

At certain times, and frequently, this nation has turned against future generations of migrants and those that were already here.

The tribes and nations of the original inhabitants, Blacks, Chinese, Latinos', Cubans, Koreans, Vietnamese, Iranians, Iraqians, Somalians.... .. each have been at different times seen as the enemy, in stark contrast with those who were of the revolution.

Obama, stands in stark contrast to the policies of Bush (uh, in case you didn't get the memo).
His philosophy is that of the forefathers. Bush.. a legacy of fear, ignorance, ineptitude, pretentiousness and superficiality.

Kudo's to Soledad O'Brien for her copious recitation of Black history factoids.

We are in a new age where to know that which is Black, to understand that which is Black, to be able to speak upon that which is Black, has become the new lingua franca of the United States America.