Commentary
Ballot blues
By Frank Scott
Online Journal Contributing Writer


Oct 3, 2006, 01:10

Want to shake the jellyfish Democrats from their spineless state of being? Invite foreign leaders to the United Nations to speak truth to power, thus regaling the assembled global representatives, while reducing the leadership of America's shameful opposition to professionally patriotic rage.

After the speeches of Chavez and Ahmadinejad resonated to great applause, around the world as well as in the UN chamber, American media portrayed both in the most negative and disrespectful fashion, echoed by the usually timid toadies of the opposition party.

The future leader of the House, Nancy Pelosi, should voters make their desperate November choice the lesser evil Democrats, was grossly insulting, with language that would not be tolerated if used addressing an American leader. She was supported by a lesser toady, in a shameful example of what passes for representation among America's foremost minority.

Back in the day, when New York's Harlem was called the capital of Black America, it was represented by an outspoken fighter for social justice, Adam Clayton Powell. He incurred the wrath of the racist establishment by not behaving according to its dictates: he not only spoke his mind, but acted on both his principles and his tastes. Since the latter often ran to public partying with white women, the racists found him intolerable. The white power structure selected an obedient servant, Charles Rangel, to replace him, who has since performed with the kind of slavish service for which his ilk were dubbed modern House Negroes by Malcolm X, after their sad counterparts from our plantation slavery past.

This servant was among the loudest to chastise Chavez for daring to criticize the serial killer in the White House, and he will be rewarded, as ever, with faithful support from his white owners. But he was surpassed by an even more blatant example of how affirmative action only strengthens the social system, while changing nothing but personal privilege.

The female leader of the coward caucus was boldly outspoken on behalf of her -- formerly -- arch enemy in the White House, and stooped far lower in her denigration of Chavez than he was alleged to have done in his reference to Bush. Calling Chavez a "thug," the privileged feminist exceeded the privileged Negro in her tasteless service to the rulers who employ her.

These are foremost leaders of the opposition, and we are supposed to worry about whether the votes to elect such creatures are cast by electronic or paper ballots? We might as well vote with credit cards, most of which are backed by as little actual money as these political charlatans are grounded in actual democracy. And what was it that these foreign leaders had the gall to point out that made these well-paid servants of the corporate rich and the Israeli lobby so angry?

Chavez humorously referred to Bush as the devil, even crossing himself and waving away what he called sulfur fumes Bush had left behind. Most delegates, save for those of the global minority, laughed out loud. They also applauded, several times, at Chavez's telling points about the empire's fading days and the rising of a global majority that will no longer tolerate its abuse and suppression. How dare he.

Ahmadinejad may not seem to have the same humor or charisma, but that's only to a Latin or European audience. His words rang as clear, not only to the Islamic nations of more than a billion, but to millions more worldwide, even when he repeated his alleged blasphemy. He asks, as does most of the world, that if the holocaust was indeed perpetrated by Europeans, why are the Palestinians made to pay for it?

It is this common sense that has led to hysterical charges of his posing a genocidal threat to all Jews and a nuclear threat to all humanity. Iran doesn't even have nuclear weapons, but it does have a thriving Jewish minority. Sound familiar?

His often quoted -- always out of context -- statement that Israel should be wiped off the map is a greater claim to the threat of genocide, but no such fear was ever expressed when Palestine was really, not rhetorically, wiped off the map. Ahmadinejad says what most of the world believes; the Jewish state in Palestine is illegal, immoral and only exists because it is backed by the military power of the U.S. Israel's military once loomed large, but since Hezbollah revealed it as something less than that of a master race, it is more than ever the bankroll and bombs of the U.S. that maintains the injustice of that racial supremacist state.

When the Palestinian people chose a government led by Hamas, the unchosen people who rule them immediately canceled their election and began strangling that government and its voters. American democracy may not be that bloody, but our soft veneer of civility should not mask its corrupt foundation. The present debate over what form the balloting takes would make more sense if it aimed at the system, rather than simply moaning about satanic monsters who steal elections from angelic saints.

The Democrats have only themselves to blame for their disgraceful performance, their disreputable leadership, and the mutual responsibility they bear with Republicans for the sorry state of the empire that Chavez and Ahmadinejad clearly identified, and whose end they boldly forecast.

Come November, there may be some cosmetic changes in the look of America's Congress, but the nation's real rulers will remain the same. No near equivalent of a Chavez or Ahmadinejad will be running for office here. Politically correct speech notwithstanding, whether we are disrespectfully considered deaf, dumb and blind, or hearing impaired, verbally challenged and visually incapacitated, we will likely choose between cancer and polio, select the lesser evil, and remain terminally diseased.

Copyright � 2006 Frank Scott. All rights reserved.

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