Just Crack a Joke, Mr. President! Represent Our Resistance By Dr. Lenore J. Daniels, PhD BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board

We shall not cease from our exploration And at the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. -T. S. Eliot, “Little Gidding” What black men [and women] here have always known is now beginning to be clear all over the world. Whatever it is that white Americans want, it is not freedom - neither for themselves nor for others. -James Baldwin, “Dark Days,” James Baldwin: Collected Essays Our government’s allegiance to Wall Street has closed its ears to its people. When the latter asked for an honest government and an honest president, they received another corporatist rogue, selected and nurtured by the Daley Machine and Wall Street to further its dream of global domination. Pleading for a Single-Payer Health Care Program, activist-citizens, handcuffed and dragged from the halls of the peoples’ government, received a chilling message from the man who declared himself change: The pharmaceutical and medical insurance companies, guys, know what’s best! And hours before Obama’s State of the Union Speech on January 25, 2011, the guests on NPR suggest that the president needed to joke! Just crack a joke, Mr. President! The people asked for an end to the spending of trillions in the pursuit of death for the many and profits for the few, and troop numbers increased, killing continued, and schools, libraries, social services, wages and jobs disappeared. There is Arizona, its schools stripped of the history of its indigenous origins, its indigenous culture, who violenty murders, again, the potential of not only its Latino/a population but all of its children to seek justice and freedom. There is Haiti and its people asking the U.S. (why should a sovereign state ask another to be allowed to exercise democracy?) to embrace the dreams of its democratically-elected president, Aristide, and killer Baby Doc Duvalier, hoisted on the shoulders of French and U.S. powers, arrives in Haiti: He wants to assist in the recovery of his people! Obama’s joke - well ahead of any State of the Union Speech? The people say “no more” to Wall Street CEOs earning unthinkable bonuses, while they are asked to accept austerity measures for the corrupt shenanigans of bankers. But JP Morgan Chase’s profits brags of a windfall $17.4 billion for 2011 and its executives earned in bonuses anywhere between $4 to $9 million. Goldman Sachs executives did well too. Each received bonuses of $9 million each. Give them a tax break! But America has a great future ahead of her! Another Obama joke - well ahead of any State of the Union Speech! Under the Obama regime, the U.S. continuing to spend $6-10 trillion dollars maintaining the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, expanding on the already 800 U.S. military bases, and adding names of American citizens to the “shoot-to-kill” lists suggests Obama’s willingness to captain the imperialist ship without shame and to further the future of a police state at home. There was no mention of a future without the incarceration of large numbers of Reds, Blacks, and Brown people, but then we are all familiar with Obama’s and the corporatist’s selling of post-racial America. On January 18, I received my friend’s email, his contribution to the Struggle. Like many, I eagerly await Roland Sheppard’s Digest. In honor of Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday, Roland Sheppard included the 6 Massey Lectures King presented inCanada. I encourage you to listen to these audio tapes. (CD available from CBC.ca, Canadian Radio Online Shop.) In the first lecture, King recalls the efforts of the young Blacks who abandoned middle class values to contribute to the Struggle, in part, by challenging white youth to emulate them. The white establishment, King said, worked hard to encourage Black youth to adopt middle class values, but those young people did not follow orders! They came to the Movement to challenge the powers intent on spreading darkness. “They were constructive school drops outs,” King proclaimed. Today, the U.S. educational institutions seem to excel, and with deliberation, in producing unconstructive drops outs, suitable to take their place among our brightest minds, many of whom have been locked away in prison holes for over 20 or 30 years. Political prisons or otherwise - put them away - out of sight, out of mind! That Obama and his corporatist buddies seized the energy and the minds of our young people to further enfold us in darkness is criminal! No, the people did not elect Superman, Colin Powell, but neither did the peopleelect the man Barack Obama! The American people only think they did! And then there are those bright liberals in the media still stunned, so stunned that they continue 2 years into this current regime to speak of a betrayal. Obama betrayed them, the liberal, the progressive, the socialist! But the liberals are not without hope. It is like saying - okay I voted for Hitler because I thought he would end all conflicts and we’d see economic and social progress. Didn’t know he would wage violence against Jewish and other people throughout Europe. But I hope he ends this nonsense soon. Hope he speaks out against fascism and ends the violence. Hope he returns to his base - the peace movement - and asks for help! In the 3rd Massey tape, Dr. King said this: “the guilty one is not he who commits the sin but he who causes the darkness.” After quoting Victor Hugo’s “If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed,” King exclaimed for his time that “the policy-makers of the white society have caused the darkness.” Dr. King would not be able to see in the daylight of our time! In the peoples’ house, there is a unity of corporations (Goldman Sachs, BP, J.P. Morgan Chase and others) regardless of whether or not a group calling itself Republicans and another calling itself Democrats sits on opposite sides of an aisle, down which walks the one the corporations hoisted above their shoulders. And, as if on cue, Obama appeases the NPR guest. He offers a joke. It is all joke! America’s hopes set it apart from other nations? America is the light of the world? Americans paychecks are a little bigger today? Twenty-five million Americans are unemployed in the U.S. But, get this joke - Obama offers to continue tax cuts for the corporations! His friends! He says our food is safe to eat? Our water is safe to drink? BP has contaminated a sea of seafood and 31 cities in the U.S. are contaminated with hexavalent chromium (Environmental Working Group, December 20, 2010). Heard him once, heard him a million times. Americans need to buckle up! Take responsibility for the economic crisis his corporatist friends spread across the global! What a joke! In the old days, we would call this jive talk from someone who could never have believed in the change - certainly not the change that we believe in! Obama’s speech reflects the emptiness of its speaker who, devoid of substance, can only articulate the dreams of his corporate masters. The U.S. does what it does best, that is, it supplies the world with a narrative of aggression and the weaponry to kill. And Obama has no problem with that! He never did! Here is the real joke Obama articulated in his State of the Union Speech: 1.4 million jobs went overseas last year, according to The Economic Policy Institute, and they are not coming back. Jobs are developing elsewhere! For example, Coca-Cola assisted millions in Africa, China, and India rise to the middle class. Caterpillar Inc hired 15,000 - outside the U.S.! But, Americans, America is getting better and better everyday! Citizens, just keep your eyes closed! BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, Lenore Jean Daniels, PhD, has a Doctorate in Modern American Literature/Cultural Theory. Click here to contact Dr. Daniels.