STATE OF THE UNION

I realize that the President gave his State of The Union speech several days ago, and initially I was going to write about what he had to say followed by some views on what those giving rebuttals to his speech had to say.  However after letting it marinate for a couple of days, I’ve decided to give my own view of the State of Our Union, so here goes.

First, to all of those folks who are so shook up by the fact that a black man occupies the office of President of The United States, I say to you that there have been 43 presidents before Barak Obama, and never once did black people start showing up at political rallies with guns.  No one formed a Tea Party to help rile up the ignorant and absolutely no one went out with racist signs, and supported any of the aforementioned idiotic stunts.  If black people could live through the 43  white presidents, it won’t kill you to live through at best 4 years, and worse case 8 years of a black president.

The State of the Union is such that those in power use that power to divide us along racial and social lines, using any means necessary to ensure that we stay divided so that they can hold onto power.  Don’t believe me?  Think about some of the following:

·         Why do people spend millions to get jobs that pay $180K per year? The answer is simply for money and power.  No, not that $180K salary, but all of the money that their receiving from lobbyist who are mostly working against the public interest.

·         Look at all of the people making money off of race.  Jackson, Limbaugh, Sharpton, Beck, Hannity and the list goes on and on.  These people don’t care about the poor and middle class, they are in it for the money.  And please, let’s not forget about all of those in our congress who should be trying to bring us together, but instead use race and class to keep us divided.

·         In America  we have people who  need Health Insurance, but have been convinced that it will help someone who doesn’t look like them, so they would rather do without than help a poor person or someone of another race.  That is the height of ignorance and stupidity.

·         How did we get to a state where we bail out big banks, corporations and insurance companies, but leave the common man and woman to out in the cold.  The strange thing is that black people think that all white people are all crooks who contributed to the financial meltdown, and white people seem to think that only blacks are losing their homes to foreclosure.  Both are false assumptions, and believe it or not, we have all been taken for a ride by those holding power.

So how do we improve the State of this Union?  For starters, if you don’t have a friend who doesn’t look like you, try to seek one or two out.  Now just remember that for this purpose, Asian’s are considered white, and yes, so are rich Hispanics.  Now, once you’ve got these new friends, remember how friends treat one another.  I not only work with my friends, we know one another’s families, we eat at one another’s homes, hang out during non work hours together.  We also treat one another with dignity and respect as well as respecting each other’s views.  Sometimes, that means that we have to agree to disagree, but our differences are not permitted to affect our friendship, after all, if that were the case, what kind of friends would we be?  In 1972, I met a young man from Alabama who became one of my closest friends in Army Basic Training.  He was a white guy, who after we got to know one another told me that at 21, he had never had a meaningful conversation with a black person until he met me.  while I found that unfortunate, I couldn’t hold that against him, as that was the environment in the south during that time, fortunately for me, I grew up in a place where such was not the case.  I haven’t seen James in over 30 years, but I would hope that the lessons that we learned from one another during those 8 weeks are still with him today, I know they are still with me!  When it comes down to it, people are just people.  You would be surprised how much we have in common if you just strike up a conversation with that person that you don’t know and who doesn’t look like you.

People this is the greatest country in the history of the world, and only we can destroy it from within.  If we don’t learn to live together with regard to Race, Class, or Religion we will do to ourselves, what no outside enemy is capable of.