Eating Our Own

We in the African Diaspora in America have a problem: political (not actual) cannibalism. I will not give any racist a talking point to rant about.

We eat our own. Now, whether or not Barack Obama could afford to leave the campaign trail in Texas to sit with my frat brother in Louisiana, it doesn't matter. That Hillary can afford the side trip to show her "sisterhood" at the State of the Black Union, it doesn't matter. I really don’t care if Tavis Smiley has an inflated ego or not. We are poised, like in 2004, to snatch defeat cleanly from the “jaws of victory.”

Did I say the African Diaspora? Hillary and Barack have pilloried each other in the name of total victory. Each day, the dream ticket becomes a distant nightmare and the DNC proves itself feckless to stop the avalanche and broker a truce that can govern before the August convention.

All the while, a Vietnam veteran, prisoner of war, war hawk, Republican Senator will gain the votes necessary to continue the Iraq war 100 years (his words), make tax cuts permanent, privatize almost EVERYTHING from Social Security to Medicare and appoint a massive majority on the Supreme Court that we won't recover from for a generation - maybe two or more, IF we're still a country. Our great-great-GREAT grandchildren will pay this debt. Again, the big IF we’re still a country. When you try to project yourself the modern Roman Empire, you must inherit its inevitable lifespan to social demise from within as well. I suppose one day we’ll look good – in a museum.

In the movie, “V for Vendetta,” the news commentator kept referring to us as the “former United States,” and that we were in the throws of a full-scale twenty-first century Civil War. With the amount of guns and crazies that seem to buy them and shoot them at will: Virginia Tech, Omaha Mall, NIU, several high school nuts that revere Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold , life may yet imitate art!

Democracy - a romanticized experiment balanced on a thin, steel blade.