Colin
Kaepernick and Donald Trump are both guilty of the same sin, but only one
has lost his job for it. Their sin? In completely opposite ways, they both have
exposed the American Matrix. The American
Matrix has been in existence since before the United States of America was even
born. It is difficult to imagine Crispus Attucks
giving his life in a cause that he knew would brutalize and dehumanize his
people for the next couple of centuries.
Of course, the ultimate expression of the Matrix came when
slave holder, Thomas
Jefferson, wrote that “all men are created equal.” I’ve said many times that the more untenable
the position, the greater the lie, the more preposterous the position; the
greater the commitment and the more Herculean
the effort to maintain that position.
Conceptually, we can see that effort in place as Vice President Mike
Pence struggles to utter pure unadulterated, unmitigated nonsense/lies to
support his boss, and in doing so, defend the indefensible.
The American Matrix maintains that the United States is the
model of freedom, democracy and equal opportunity for the rest of the world to
emulate. (If conspiracy theorists understood this, they would realize that our
votes do count. Why else would the forces
of darkness fight so hard to keep us from voting when allowing meaningless
votes would represent the greatest propaganda in the history of the world. Inexorably, I have digressed). Ostensibly
the president should personify those ideals. On many levels, the presidency
represents the nexus of the American Matrix and the American reality. He represents both white supremacy and
“liberty and justice for all.” The racism he exudes must be tactful. Richard Nixon harnessed the power of racism
with his, “Southern
Strategy” that involved targeting white folks whom he dubbed, “The Silent
Majority.” Everyone knew it was racist,
but it was acceptable because it was just ambiguous enough to allow for
deniability.
No one in the modern era handled the racial contradiction
more adroitly than Ronald Reagan. He earned the endorsement of the
KKK by kicking off his campaign with a speech on State’s Rights (code for what
we do with our nigras is our business). He delivered that speech in
Philadelphia Ms., a tiny town known only for killing Civil Rights workers. He went on to blame all of America’s economic
woes on imaginary lazy black folks who cheated on welfare. He, along with Britain’s Margaret
Thatcher, was one of the only major leaders who supported the racist
apartheid regime in South Africa. He
signed the King Holiday under duress, praising racist Jesse Helms as
he did so.
Despite his utilization of racism as a political tool,
Reagan, unlike Trump, at least had enough sense to denounce the Klan when they
endorsed him. By speaking forcefully
against overt racism, he protected the Matrix.
When Trump defended the Klan, he struck a blow against the Matrix.
Another tenet on which the matrix rests is that people of
color are just happy to serve it. If the guardians of the matrix have the
unmitigated gall to state that slaves were happy and well fed (a la Bill
O’Reilly) one can only imagine their ire when a person of color,
professional athlete (who makes more money than a whole bunch of white folks)
demands to be seen as a fully functioning human being with a sense of justice. The NFL can forgive domestic
violence, obstruction
of justice in a murder case, dog fighting and any myriad of offenses, so
long as they in no way endanger the Matrix!
Kaepernick and Trump:
both chinks in the armor of the matrix.
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