The Shepard & The Flock

Film I'm currently doing the knowledge to - The Weatherman

Peace,

America's an interesting place when observing its contradictions. Walk with me:

- A country that claims to hold free & fair elections, yet holds presidential elections with only 2 choices, and doesn't allow proper recounts. Meanwhile, when other countries have free & fair elections (Palestine), if the desired persons don't win, they don't recognize the new government.

- A country that was built on the backs of free & cheap labor rejects men & women who come to this land to build a better life for themselves (and provide services to meet the ever growing demands of our populace).

- A country that has the best Colleges & Universities in the world has high schools with no books.

- Amazing contradictions, aren't they? Now, how do you keep everything stable in a world like this? A steady diet of social control through obvious as well as subtle means, which leads me to the subject of my post today: Karl Rove. Simply put, Karl Rove is the most powerful man in America. He has orchestrated & maintained republican control throughout a variety of events: 9/11, The unsuccessful duck hunt for Osama, The Iraq (Vietnam) war, the downward spiraling of the economy, etc.

How does he do this you ask? Well, lets start with developing effective wedge issues (homosexuality) that distract the masses from the issues that directly impact one's quality of life (Economics, Crime, etc.). Think about it: get people to vote based on sexual orientation vs. things that affect you on a daily basis. By playing off of the fears of millions of people, you can push your agenda on the entire country.

Next, you create a “boogeyman”. Throughout this country’s history, we have had a number of boogeymen: Niggas, Spics, Japs, Russians, etc.. Our present-day b.m. takes it to another level: Islamo-Facists who would like nothing more than to destroy our way of life, take our land and our ability to drink beer at sports events! Where is our b.m. (and not baby mama) from you ask? Everywhere where there’s sand! Do we make any distinction between different sects of Islam? Hell no! In fact, they all are on the same side and want us dead, regardless of the hundreds of years of sunni-shia conflict!

The result? A populace that will defend the indefensible in the name of “security” and “freedom”.

Add-on: You buy all of the dream-pushers (Black Mega-Church Ministers) with federal faith-based money so that they’ll sell their congregation the following story: Democrats have been taking your vote for granted for too long! Why don’t we play the field and see what options are out there? Plus, it’s time for us to get paid, and we can’t do that on liberal handouts! (To me, the story sounds like a woman whose man isn’t treating her right, and that’s for another blog)

Is this yet another hate fest designed to inspire you to move to action? Nah. We’ve had one too many of those, and look at where we are. In all actuality, what we should extract from this is that to achieve your goals, strategy is needed (and not “vote for me cause I’m black” either). Rove is a masterful strategist who employs all available tools to identify voting blocs and their preferences so that he can market his product (candidates) to them. (Small aside: did ya know that most gin drinkers are republicans, and most bourbon drinkers are democrats? Karl Rove does)

What “progressives” need is more strategy and less emotion. Rove crafts strategy that is relative and relevant to the demographic that he targets. One disappointing thing that I saw at the Hip-Hop convention was that too many demos are painted with a broad-brush stroke, as far as outreach.

Father Allah, The founder of the NGE, instructed us that America was our country, and that we should make it strong. For many years, I grappled with that concept, b.u.t. as I get older I see that we are to make this country what it should be, and not necessarily what it has been made into. People from all over the world look to the U.S. for inspiration, and we truly owe it to ourselves and those who came before us to fight and struggle to make this land work for all who inhabit it’s borders. One way to do it is to make our message applicable and easy to digest for the masses of people so that they can truly do what is in their best interest.