Comments of the Week: On American Exceptionalism, Malcolm X and That Infamous Las Vegas Convention

Last Sunday marked the launch of Truthdig’s weekly feature highlighting just a few of the comments out of many that caught our editors’ attention on a number of topics — from hard news to opinion to cultural coverage.

We thought we’d present a handful of comments we spot each week, in the interest of making the posting process more of a two-way street, keeping lively conversations going, and taking note of ideas and reactions that have come up in response to stories.

This week’s roundup kicks off with Tussah’s comment addressing author Kaitlin Crowley, who wrote a first-hand account about the controversy over last weekend’s Democratic convention in Las Vegas:

You say: “…we threaten to drive away the voters that Sanders’ drew into this process, leaving them once again disillusioned, disenfranchised and disgusted by our political system.”

Whatever happens, and I hope it is all a positive experience for young voters, I disagree that they will be driven out of working toward a viable future for themselves as the stakes are just too high.

It’s possible that the “political process” is just too corrupt at this point and other options of citizen involvement will have to be employed.

I really appreciate your and other involvement in this particular election…but it can be very much like the experience of being in a war zone. It’s a hell of a way to learn things that a person needs to know.

On the same subject, Jack Strawb offers both an effective on-the-fly critique of the mainstream media and a great idea for an investigative reporting assignment:

It’s interesting how numerous opponents of Sanders all somehow came up with the “violence” theme even though nothing resembling violence occurred at the convention. Wasserman-Schulz, Harry Reid, Barbara Boxer (“I was afraid for my safety” but was nonetheless video’d blowing sarcastic kisses to the crowd as she walked offstage), notorious “reporter” Jon Ralston, the usual suspects at CNN, the very pro-Clinton NYTimes within the hour running headlines claiming death threats from Sanders supporters had been issued… not allegations, mind you, but reported as fact.

And where did that phalanx of police come from? There had not been any violence, none, yet a dozen cops showed up–who called them, and under what pretext? A good reporter should find out.

It’s almost as if this gang of Clinton supporters had agreed ahead of time to take any opportunity to claim there had been violence, and they jumped the gun. I mean, how does it happen that all these people and these sophisticated news outlets all go with the “violence” story even though no violence occurred?

Finally, there was immediately talk of how this would affect the Comcast Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, as if this crew was creating an excuse to shut Sanders and his “violent” supporters out…

Next comes dieter heymann’s straight-up reality check about how the U.S. actually figures into the global scheme of things, despite certain enduring myths about our nationhood. This comment appeared in the post that displayed our weekly Facebook Live discussion with Truthdig Editor in Chief Robert Scheer (another new weekly feature that takes place on Friday afternoons):

The future of our nation will not be determined in California or Washington but in the former colonial nations of Africa and Asia whose total populations far outstrip ours. The belief that California and Washington are somehow in the saddle is supreme American arrogance. We have never been a shining something on some hillock.

A shift of focus to this long, thoughtful delineation by Kalen of ideological differences (later bridged) between Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., in response to the A/V Booth item “The U.S. Remains Unequal 50 Years After Malcolm X’s ‘Ballot or the Bullet’ Speech (Audio)”:

American society was always class and cast society openly before, and after 1789 partially hidden among white landowners and British colonial aristocracy while raging among poor and colored slaves and later among so-called emancipated and working class.

When US oligarchs in 1950-ties faced existential nuclear threat from anti-colonial, anti- apartheid and anti- discrimination Soviet Union policies, minorities, attracted to ideas of class liberation had to be pacified if US regime were to survive and win the cold war of people’s minds. They needed young leaders that would assume control over their own communities and weaken or diminish power of such a message of freedom and equality under the law as well as in socioeconomic context.

MLK fit the bill, since he was deeply rooted and respected in his community, while exposed and even adopted some western educational cannons enabling him to respond positively and be manipulated by the US regime politicians via common colonial social constructs such as authority of God-given government, supremacy of white law, unalterable right to petition (begging) of the racist authority, all methods of peaceful actions, not disturbing existing abhorrent social order, an approach alien to minority population who saw reality for what it was, namely brutal suppression of basic human and civic rights and extermination of minorities communities, that must be, also violently, self-defended as a matter of existential threat to their survival.

Malcolm X from the beginning understood what his people understood, what white oligarchic regime is all about and rejected their supremacy, supremacy of their western culture and western social and economic order. He instead adopted leftist anti-colonial stance that, unalienable rights to liberation and freedom, rights to free people social organizations, equal legal norms, don’t … require negotiations since those are basic human rights afforded at birth.

Hence he was labeled a revolutionary while in fact he was a believer that human dignity and social equality of all peoples in the US is a nonnegotiable prerequisite for farther political negotiations to rectify socioeconomic discrimination of minorities rather than be their subject. In other words he was not asking to be equal and free but he declared it.

No wonder why he was killed first as more dangerous, calling for self-defense as an unalienable right.

It took two years after Malcolm X death when MLK realized that he was being conned and no foundational changes will be ever possible peacefully.

He realized that white oligarchy will allow only for a cruel charade performed by a troop of new black elites paying lip service to hurting communities, a clique hired to covering up the truth and continuing the same oppression and incarceration, if this abhorrent militaristic regime that wages wars against ordinary people home and abroad is not defeated and dismantled, as he posits in his faithful speech.

Few months later he was dead but his prophecies were fulfilled. Minority cliques are oppressing their peoples for money and a shiny city on the hill turned out to be horrendous Clinton crime bill that re-enslaved his people.

A lesson you can beg for but not demand your rights in this regime.

Finally, here’s another wide-ranging analysis about a different “-ism”: capitalism, by “Boston Harbor,” posted under this report about income inequality:

The next few decades under capitalism, American style especially, are going to be very interesting. My best guess is that with wages (Main Street/working class) being stagnant, the already wealthy grabbing a perpetually increasing share of national income (GDP), automation, robotics, advancements taking place of human labor (not necessarily a bad thing), something will have to give.

When new technologies come to the forefront, and new sectors of the economy emerge over time, unless the working class, Main street, and less educated, are able to share proportionally in the economic pie, capitalism could crater upon itself. Many have prophesied claims like this for a long time, and still capitalism, somehow, someway, lives on.

The best case scenario, in my opinion, is that future workers unite, globally would be supreme, and force change through their united strength. The speculators who so benefit from this style of top down crony capitalism, are not going to give up their gravy train without a fight.

Thanks for all your contributions — we’ll look forward to reading them over the coming days and revisiting them for this feature next weekend.

–Posted by Kasia Anderson