The Clash Of Civilizations..

Not long after the events of September 11, 2001 I remember hearing about the "Clash Of Civilizations", and that "we have to fight the battle there so we don't have to fight them here."

Well, it seems that battle will be fought here, but the combatants will not be the ones we expected.

This debate over Health Care Reform is just the opening salvo in a war that began the second Barack Obama received his 270th electoral vote last year. Will we commit to building an America for this century or we will retrench in old thinking, stagnate and decline.

The "teabaggers", in typical conservative fashion, want to "take their country back". That is a very accurate and telling statement. They think they are discussing possession when they are fighting for people who say the same thing, but they see "back" as a direction.

Its a subtle, but powerful distinction. Subtlety is lost on "tea party protesters" and that has many very wealthy corporate laughing all the way to the bank because they realize that people who can pick up on that subtle distinction are the people they fear the most.

It takes curiousity, thought and study to pick that distinction up, and that is something our adversaries disdain greatly. This is where the clash intersects.

The man we put in office, whether you agree with his performance or not, is a thinker. I am confident that President Barack Obama has put some study into the pressing problems. To me I think in his attempts to try a broker a bipartisan deal, he needs to remember that he is dealing with people who pride themselves on fostering a lockstep ignorance. They count on that ignorance. He is trying to cast a pearl to better America before swine who are prepared to stick the nation in their own private trough.

I look at the picture of one lone man with the big sign saying "PUBLIC OPTION NOW" and I ask, Where is our collective national wake up call against the wave of ignorance? Where is a mass movement to tell both the ignorant of the conservative right, and well-meaning but timid left in Washington that we want forward-thinking solutions and we are willing to chest-up to you to get them. They know-nothing, they are proud of it and they are at the city gates.

Who among us will take up shield for civilization?
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When it comes to that Race thing, sometimes you just have to ask a Black Dude.
And as a black man with nearly four decades experience with this particular pre-existing condition I can say it with a good deal of certainty that 99.99% of the anti-Obama sentiment out there coming from the right is about that fact that the family in residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave in Washington, DC is black.

This shouldn't even a darn question anymore. You knew what the deal was going to be the very second President Obama got elected and so did our adversary and among the tea biscuits, its open and naked. I've gone to a few of these tea-party protest and I heard "nigra", "boy" and "coon" more in one afternoon than I have in the last couple decades.

And a note to some of you who feel the need to make fun of the south, the tea parties I went to where in Massachusetts and Connecticut. Hmm, I don't think Massachusetts or Connecticut voted to join the Confederacy, although you'd be surprise how many New England Confederates you'll find between Bangor and Hartford.

Joe Wilson's outburst was a dang good example of it. In my grandfather's day, when a white man stands in front of the black man, the white man would almost always put on a stance of the right foot ahead of the left. That was social cue for the black man to stare down at the shoe as he addressed the white man. If the black man looks the white man in the eye, it is perceived as "uppity"

To the Wilsons and Glen Becks and the Rush Limbaughs, Barack Obama's very presence at that podium. His very residence in that White House, the respect he engenders from civilized people (Remember, this is a clash of civilizations we are in), is an uppity affront to them.

His wife Michelle is an affront to them. Her style. Her candor. An intellectual capability that is as great as her husband. She is a civilized, smart human being of color. To civilized people, that isn't a threat. Our adversaries are not civilized people.

I'm sure that a white centrist president would draw their ire. Bill Clinton surely did. I'm willing to even agree that a President Dennis Kucinich would get a greater volume of these people's disdain than Clinton would have. But both would pale in comparison to the venom spat towards President Obama.

Tim Wise has a real point in that we need referring to the GOP as "Afrikaners", for they are acting in a manner befitting the old South African regimes of Malan and Botha. The race-baiting is naked, open and real with these people.

Again, I ask...who among us will take up a shield for civilization?

Seems to me, they're more like the Zealots who brought ruin on Judea....

The civil rights movenent didn't fear from standing up to great adversity. This is the struggle al of us now face on the left against corporate power who are using underhand politics. This is the ultimate stuggle between the people and big business and using the right as their puppets. Where "Billioniares for wealthcare" really point this out.