A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Dr. Jared A. Ball
The same Americans that claim to empathize with the mass revolt in Egypt support police terror against Blacks in the United States. The same corporate media that pretend to cherish democratic rights for Egyptians make a demigod of Ronald Reagan, the president who sealed the deal with the Mubarak dictatorship, and became "the first to sign an Executive Order allowing the CIA to operate domestically." And will Obama supporters hold him accountable for extending the Patriot Act on Election Day in 2012?
"It is wholly false to be critical of a Hosni Mubarak while not being critical of the fact that it is our tax dollars that fund his police and military as a subsidy to U.S. military contractors and weapons manufacturers."
Would the Left in this country really support a Black American uprising like the one they are supporting in Egypt? I am doubtful. As I see it two persistent hypocritical stories seem unavoidable lately and each speak to the weakness of progressive politics in the United States and to a hypocrisy I suspect would be the case regarding equal support for a domestic uprising of that kind. I don't mean a one-day march where everyone goes home. I mean a sustained uprising that challenged the normal flow of daily business or that threatened to overthrow someone the political elite of this country supports.
For one example, and to my point, neither of those two stories I mentioned are the continuing violence against Black people by the police or the anti-police violence which apparently his spiked in this country so much so that the police themselves are suggesting there is a "war on cops going on." Around the country eleven police officers were killed in a 24 hour period late last month. No, it is the mainstream and liberal focus recently on the protests in Egypt and the birthday of Ronald Reagan that demonstrate this country's hypocrisy and which explains the lack of focus on domestic hostilities resulting from unchecked battles of race and class.
On the one hand the tendency is to be supportive of uprisings around the world which call for democracy, freedom and independence. And it is easy to say we don't want violent and repressive dictators to be in power. And, of course, it is equally and wholly false to be critical of a Hosni Mubarak while not being critical of the fact that it is our tax dollars that fund his police and military as a subsidy to U.S. military contractors and weapons manufacturers. But it is most false to raise even that criticism while not being willing to break from the conventions that result in precisely that kind of business as usual U.S. foreign policy. How can those who support Obama, be that support blind or critical, not feel their guilt and hypocrisy as they swoon over the Egyptian people now? Because they are also largely incapable of acknowledging their complicity in the tax subsidies that go into precisely that kind of state repression right here at home.
"Obama's extension of the Patriot Act, today's Counter Intelligence Program, seems eerily familiar."
It is precisely the same as when those on the political Left use the Reagan birthday to critique the former actor, governor and president and his political buddies calling them, as one did recently, "predators and crooks" who intentionally wrecked the economy to reduce the rest of us to "a lifetime of debt peonage." They may also remind us of Reagan's horrible track record of supporting the worst regimes abroad from South Africa to El Salvador. But rarely if ever do we hear of the Reagan who worked so steadfastly to prevent movements domestically from becoming powerful enough to prevent this nation's support of those international evils.
So was an end to the support of this monster in Egypt on anyone's platform to determine support for Obama in 2008? Would there be support for this uprising if it demanded that of Obama as much as it demands Mubarak's removal? Will Obama supporters make it a platform item for 2012? And who among those who today decry Reagan's treatment of the rest of the world or this nation's economy say anything of his attacks on radical movements in this country? Did they say anything when Reagan was "characterizing {The Black Panther Party} as the essence of violence, chaos and evil" while governor of California? And why is there no discussion of how as president in 1980 Reagan pardoned two of only four FBI agents ever convicted of "COINTELPRO-related-offenses" before either would spend a minute in prison? And we are even less likely to hear discussion of Reagan being the first to sign an Executive Order allowing the CIA to operate domestically.
Perhaps all the silence relates back to Obama's continued Reagan-like behavior and what this means for the Left in this country. If Obama is only slightly better than Reagan on foreign policy but just as bad as Reagan domestically then all of his supporters have a real river of hypocrisy to cross. His policies on education, taxes, war and the poor look a lot like the Ronnie Ray-Gun policies we once knew were no good. His extension of the Patriot Act, today's Counter Intelligence Program, seems eerily familiar too. And until he does so Obama is like Reagan in having pardoned no political prisoner. Maybe that is the dilemma. Having to discuss the real Ronald Reagan might also mean having to discuss the real Barack Obama.
So would the Left in this country truly support an uprising here, one that also called for the removal of an undemocratically imposed representative of military and banking power? Perhaps the better question is should we care?
