Race Matters, Left or Right Doesn’t.
I’m a millennial libertarian, I believe in human rights, privacy, property rights & free market capitalism. I lean left on social issues and I lean right on fiscal issues.
That just means that I support equal rights for all, and I think we should keep the government a lot more accountable with how they spend our money.
Anyone should be able to do what they want as long as it’s not hurting anyone else, and I also think federal income tax is more of a system of control than a way to fund the building of roads, garbage collection & police.
If they can print 6 Trillion dollars with a few keystrokes in 2020 to keep wall st from crashing, why do they need our tax money?
Libertarians tend to actually believe “all lives matter,” not as a trite response to Black Lives Matter, but as a fundamental belief in human rights for all.
I was firmly in the anti-war / all lives matter camp until I started expanding my consciousness by listening to the Joe Rogan podcast 7–8 years ago.
As time went on, I continued learning just how predatory & racist the criminal justice system is.
When I saw the film 13th a few years ago and realized that while America only has 5% of the world’s population, it has 25% of the world’s prisoners (with a huge disparity between whites & minorities) it woke me up to the systemic racism problem in America.
When I discovered Cornel West on Joe Rogan’s podcast in 2019, I was very impressed. I’m not a religious person, but he spoke my language. He is a philosopher and an activist for civil rights. He understands that there’s a racism problem, but also that you can’t pick & choose which lives to value.
Dr. West also educates people on the tectonic corruption of a political system where our elected officials on both sides of the aisle are in bed with Wall St.
The hidden secret is that politicians are obfuscating & propping up a hidden oppressive financial system that has looted the future of an entire generation, printing money to keep poor people in debt, punish savers & literally kill people.
I’m one of those friends of yours that plays devil’s advocate on social media. Sometimes I’m defending a point that I don’t agree with because I really want the other person to get out of the echo chamber & see the facts from an unbiased perspective … usually that doesn’t work well for my reputation & I end up looking like a Donald Trump supporter.
It wasn’t until recently, after watching 13th & going through more material like Race Matters, that I realized this devil’s advocate approach should not apply to the concept of Black Lives Matter.
Black Lives Matter is a civil rights movement that I support.
However, at least consider this: when the Black Lives Matter movement has accomplished it’s mission of reforming the for-profit prison system, tearing down the racist drug laws & ending police brutality, we need to work towards a fundamental belief that all lives matter, not just American lives, and that’s where Dr West can help bring us all together.
Injustice is injustice. If we take away their money, we take away their ability to enforce unjust policies.
To people like me (the silent majority) it feels like the left doesn’t seem to actually be concerned with the lives of the hundreds of thousands of people dying in the world from preventable causes right now.
If you post global warming articles & support Black Lives Matter but you don’t speak out against unconstitutional wars, or even advocate for work like Bill Gates’s mission to help people in Africa get into the 21st century, then how can you balance the scales of equality in your mind?
Call me crazy, but I don’t think American tax payers should be funding the dropping of thousands of bombs & drone strikes of black & brown people overseas in undeclared unconstitutional wars.
I don’t think your tax money should be going to putting thousands of immigrants in cages on the US/Mexico border.
I don’t think tens of billions of dollars in tax money should be spent on mass incarceration & harvesting inner city black youths to work as modern day slaves for 22c/hour making products in for-profit prisons.
I wasn’t being hyperbolic with the phrase “modern day slave.”
Young black men disproportionately get arrested for non-violent drug crimes, can’t afford bail, get sent to prison to work for free making products, and when they are release, they can’t vote anymore!
It’s a consciously constructed treadmill of injustice designed to destroy poor families & strip constitutional rights from young black men.
Portugal decriminalized all drugs. They treat addictions. People with drug problems are treated like humans, not forced to make products for slave wages. All of the metrics I could find showed that the Portugal model was a success, leading to less crime & less deaths.
There’s entire swaths of young black men that get imprisoned for something that should not be a crime! The drug war has destroyed communities & created a viscous cycle of systemic racial disparity and distrust of authority, as well as disillusionment with government.
What did Joe Biden have to say about this? Zero empathy. He tried to pull the racist “us vs them” narrative and made young black men to seem like predators. In 1994 Biden sounded more like Trump advocating to “lock them up.”
The problem I have with most liberal influencers & activists is that they come across as hypocrites. They think all of this is a right wing policy. A Donald Trump problem.
Those 3 things I mentioned above; starting unconstitutional wars, locking immigrants in cages & the racist drug war? Those are democrat problems just as much as they are republican problems.
Who do you think built the ICE detention cages used to separate immigrant children from their families? The Obama administration built them. Where was the outrage then?
Yes we have a Donald Trump problem.
This is also a Bush problem, an Obama problem & a Clinton problem.
The intolerant minority of the vocal left rage against the machine whenever a Republican is in power, but they turn the other cheek when it involves a Democrat.
A current example is the sexual assault allegations against Joe Biden. There’s a mainstream news blackout on this story. Nobody is talking about it. What happened to the #metoo movement? What happened to Believe Women?
This appears to be an obvious double standard to those of us who are not in the hard left camp. The left seems to be showing, by their actions “when there’s a sexual assault allegation against a republican, you should believe the woman…but when there’s a sexual assault allegation against a democrat, you need to give the man the benefit of the doubt and do a full investigation to make sure it’s credible before believing her.”
Why is this the case? You shouldn’t believe the women accusing the Democrat of sexual assault, because if you believe her then it means it’s more likely that Trump is re-elected?
This is hypocritical. Left vs Right is theater. Democrat vs Republican is just another game to distract you from looking behind the curtain. Just like sports & entertainment, you are being satiated.
Cornel West has been a civil rights activist for 50 years.
He sees the folly in this left vs right tribalism. That’s what I like about him and his book Race Matters.
He talks not only about the history of white supremacy in America, and the history of the civil rights activists, but also the plight of poor people and the corruption of the elites.
Most people on the left feel like they are fighting for justice by fighting against the perceived enemy, who’s often a republican or conservative.
The unfortunate reality is that nothing really ever changes no matter who is in charge. The Democrats were responsible for the militarization of the police under Bill Clinton, and Joe Biden helped.
Under both republicans & democrats, the racist policies of the War on Drugs & “tough on crime” have continued. Even with a black president, this didn’t change.
At the end of his term, Obama did a token pardoning of a few hundred non-violent drug criminals.
Even though Bill Clinton regrets his 3 strikes law, Obama did not do anything meaningful to rectify the situation. 330 pardons when there are 200,000+ in prison for non-violent drug crimes is a slap in the face to anyone who really cares about racism & human suffering.
If you only get angry when you see a news headline about Trump, but you stay silent when a Democrat is accused of the same thing, you are either:
- Stuck in the echo chamber…follow Cornel West.
- Virtue Signalling for social credit…delete your account.
There’s over 1 million drug possession arrests per year. 200,000+ are imprisoned for non-violent drug crimes according to prisonpolicy.org.
Whether it’s police brutality, a systemically racist criminal justice system, or unconstitutional war killing thousands — all of these injustices have been supported by both parties.
You are being pandered to.
Wearing an African Kente cloth scarf. Perfectly social distanced & wearing a mask. Taking a knee, head down to show respect. Perfect color saturation & just the right focus. Picture taken at the perfect angle to highlight all the black people which must mean solidarity.
This comes across to a centrist like me as insensitive photo op. Clout farming. It feels like Nancy Pelosi & Joe Biden are using black people & the murder of George Floyd as props for political points.
Nancy Pelosi is a warmonger. She is worth over $100 million dollars. She went on TV joking about how she eats exotic ice creams from her $30,000 fridge set while people are losing their jobs at record rates, lining up at foodbanks.
She doesn’t fight for medicare for all. She is the kind of establishment politician who will say that Donald Trump is a lunatic that should not have access to nukes, but then she will actually approve $100 billion more than he asked for in his military budget.
Pelosi will do nothing to end mass surveillance, she was instrumental in extending the patriot act. She knew Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction and went along with the Iraq war which killed countless civilians … yet she will pander for a pandemic photo op?
Give me a break. Follow Cornel West & read Race Matters.
Unless your democratic candidate is willing to immediately put an end to mass incarceration & issue pardons for the heartbreaking amount of prisoners, many unconvicted, in prison for non-violent drug crimes...they are part of the problem.
Obama ran on a policy to end war. He actually expanded America from 2 to 7 unconstitutional wars. What does the left say about this? They are silent.
Democrats under Obama have destroyed the lives of more minorities overseas with 10X more drone strikes than Bush, including the controversial droning of an American teenager.
If you are a Democrat & you haven’t given up on reading this yet due to cognitive dissonance, don’t worry, Donald Trump ran on the same promise to end war & has broken his word too.
Trump is on track to tally up more drone strikes than Obama and has expanded America’s wars just like Obama & Bush.
Trump is also a panderer as well, he uses Christianity & the bible as a prop to appeal to his base. Do these politicians think we are stupid?
Just remember.
~25% of people voted for Trump
~25% of people voted for Hillary
~50% were not motivated to vote at all.
That 50% who were disheartened by the choice between the lesser of 2 evils is the silent majority. Disillusioned by the whole political system, not hard left or hard right.
What you see on social media, the memes, the narratives — only about 2% of people make most of the conversation on social media. It tends to be tribal to the left or to the right.
The silent majority of the 50%+are not moved by these pandering photo ops by democrats or republicans.
The drug war was expanded under both Democrat & Republican controlled administrations. Systemic racism and frankly, a war against the poor, is also felt through the broken bail process. Median bail is over $10,000 — so high that barely anyone can afford it.
Poverty vs Racism, Socialism vs Capitalsm
I was born into poverty in Cape Breton, an island with the highest unemployment rate in Canada. I was taken care of by the government as a child and I escaped that life of subsisting on pogey & government handouts thanks to free market capitalism.
I’m thankful for the social safety net & I recognize the need for it. Everyone deserves a dignified life. But you should also be able to pull yourself out of your economic situation with free market capitalism.
I now recognize that even though I grew up poor, as a white Canadian I never really had to worry about police brutality, or people in my life being sent to prison for minor non-violent drug crimes. Maybe it’s an east coast Canada thing?
My step-brother was sent to a juvenile detention center a few times related to drug crimes, but he was given multiple chances. He wasn’t being preyed upon but a harsh system with a racial bias.
Cornel West talks about how Martin Luther King Jr was a champion for all poor people, he aligned with white unions.
in Race Matters, Dr West talks about how most of the black civil rights activists spoke on behalf of poor & oppressed people of all races & creeds.
There’s been a growing anti-capitalism movement which bothers me, as someone who escaped poverty through my own efforts. The problem is, we don’t live in a real capitalist system.
Just like how America should not be fighting foreign intervention wars to change overseas regimes, The Federal Reserve should not be intervening in the free markets.
The CIA showed that when America invades countries and wages regime change war, it causes blowback. That shows up as the attacks of 9/11, the tarnishing of the American brand, and the rise of ISIS.
The economic & financial problems that we are experiencing today are not caused by Covid-19. Similar to blowback, the riots are partly due to racism & partly due to the economic conditions that most Americans are facing.
The elite class of 0.1% central bankers & debt lords have been waging interventionist war on free markets for decades, artificially setting interest rates, price fixing & encouraging the big banks to take excess risk with barely any regulatory oversight.
The political & financial elites endorse & actively engage in market manipulation, crony capitalism & corporatism.
These counterfeit capitalist elite bankers actually have a license to print money, which is backed by nothing. When they get in trouble like in 2008, or now in 2020, their losses are socialized by the taxpayers via bailouts and “quantitative easing” aka “printing trillions of dollars and giving it to the banks.”
That’s not capitalism, that’s a scam.
Wealthy billionaires like Warren Buffett & Elon Musk don’t have a money printer, they have to abide by the same basic rules as the rest of us.
Billionaires aren’t the problem. The banking cartels are the problem.
Elite bankers & their fortune 500 friends in the military industrial complex & big energy companies have been breaking the rules of capitalism for decades.
It used to be illegal to do stock buybacks, but stock buybacks combined with “quantitative easing” have driven the majority of gains in the stock market since 2009. 96% of Boeing’s gains came from stock buybacks over the last 10 years. It’s not capitalism, it’s a ponzi scheme.
There’s a glimmer of hope shining brighter from independent thinkers.
If you’re like me, you’re probably turned off by pandering politicians posing for photo ops, profiteering on public outrage.
I was disillusioned about the idea of political change after watching both Ron Paul & Bernie Sanders get steamrolled by the mainstream news & the establishment on both the Democrat & the Republican side.
Like me, it seems the silent majority is deeply distrustful of mainstream news & skeptical of the establishment political parties. Joe Rogan’s podcast is on equal standing with CNN & Fox when you look at the views & impressions.
This tells me that people are waking up, minds are opening up and people are leaving the echo chamber.
I’m not a civil rights activist, I am a Bitcoiner, sympathetic to the plight of any downtrodden people, and I’m vocally anti-war & pro-privacy.
However, Joe Rogan introduced millions of people, including myself, to Cornel West. They had a 3 hour conversation that had me engaged & nodding my head. Right away after the episode I bought one of his books.
On the battleground of ideas, we have to be grateful not only that we have people like Cornel West, but also that we have independent thinkers like Joe Rogan who are free from the corporate influence of the mainstream news propaganda machine.
The silent majority is craving independent thought.
When something happens in the world like the protests we saw after the murder of George Floyd, you immediately see people separate into camps.
It’s tough to comment on the issues as a centrist, because they are often a lot more nuanced than the viral social media hashtags & tribalist narratives make them out to be.
The mainstream news will immediate go to sensationalist reporting because that brings in more clicks, and more ad dollars.
Hollywood & social media influencers will overlook the nuance and say whatever gets them the most likes, and is least likely to get them cancelled.
Politicians will start pandering & clout farming. Their words are neutered by inherent conflicts of interest with their corporate donors & lobbyists.
It’s the independent thinkers like Cornel West & Joe Rogan who people have been turning to by the millions to get balanced, nuanced views.
We are so close to real lasting change…
In some ways, Race Matters feels like it was written yesterday. However, a lot of things have changed since it was written 25 years ago.
Black culture has gotten even more influential, America elected a black president & and significantly more white kids have black role models in 2020.
In 2018 a Statista pool showed the overwhelming majority of Americans disagreed with the White Supremacy movement. 2-4% agreed with it and that is still too many, but things are trending in the right direction culturally and socially.
In the 1990s, open white supremacist & KKK Grandwizard David Duke was able to convince 55% of white Louisianians to vote for him.
In 2008 America elected a black president.
In 2020, it feels like we’ve progressed towards a more tolerant world. Today’s kids are exposed to diversity in entertainment & media much earlier than kids in previous generations.
Since Race Matters was written nearly 30 years ago, black athletes, actors, artists & civil rights activists have accomplished so much from the bottom up to address and eliminate racist ideals & behavior from the collective psyche of the silent majority.
Grassroots anti-racism has naturally been permeating through North America via osmosis thanks to black culture & music, from the ground up.
On the other hand, it feels like no progress has been made from the top down to address racism. The bird’s eye view still appears systemically racist. Central bankers, economic policies, retail banks, the police state & the legal justice system & the for-profit prison system are still the root cause of most of the problems in minority communities.
I grew up in a world where peer to peer racism was not part of my life. Homophobia on the other hand was still rampant. We had not yet culturally addressed this when I was growing up.
There were barely any openly gay actors or influencers. Coming out as gay could ruin your career. A common saying was “that’s gay” when referring to something negative. I heard that constantly growing up. It was no different than saying “that’s cool” when referring to something positive.
The general social consciousness was not sensitive to homophobia until very recently. Gay people were still unable to marry, it was still a debate well into the 2000s, whether or not gay marriage should even be allowed to marry.
Only in 2015 did America finally end the ban on gay marriage at the supreme court level.
Children in the western world in 2020 are growing up in a cultural melting pot where the social consciousness is more tolerant, empathetic & aware.
In 1995, there was more overt racism in America. There was a more overt homophobia in America.
White supremacy still exists, and even though it’s still very fringe, these fringe domestic terror groups & hate groups did get more emboldened over the last 4 years.
That’s why you have to get engaged with local politics. Vote for someone who will work to end systemic racism by reigning in the police, decriminalizing drugs & reforming corrupt criminal justice practices like civil asset forfeiture.
We still have a lot of work to do, and we need to hold politicians more accountable.
I’m going to continue to follow Cornel West & read his books, I suggest you do the same.
