On the Aught

In Somerset Maughm’s The Razor’s Edge, protagonist Larry Darrell says, “A God that can be understood is no God”.

So, if there is Something that was before all Time, is now, and will be even after the end of Time, with Time here being defined as the lifespan of the current universe, it is beyond personhood, beyond being, beyond effability.  In other words, Something Eternal.  The word Aught, “A-U-G-H-T”, derives from two Old English words that in turn ultimately derive from two Proto-Indo-European words literally meaning “eternal thing”.  Since that’s about as nonspecific as possible, for purposes of the following set of conjectures, let’s call this Something Eternal “The Aught”.

The Aught has no name.  It has no need of a name.  Since it is the one and only Something, the one and only Eternal Thing, there is no other Something from which it needs distinguish itself.

The Aught produces yet claims no possession; it redeems yet requires no gratitude; it sustains yet exercises no authority.  It has no need of obedience, worship, prayer, praise, adoration, supplication, benediction, love, respect, or even acknowledgement.  It just is.

The Aught is both perpetual and ever-changing, flowing through and animating all that is throughout spacetime and beyond, transcendent yet immanent, metacosmic yet omnipresent, eternal yet omnitemporal.

The Aught is the Source of all that is, the Course shaping its formation, and the Force energizing its manifestation.  From our perspective, these are different things, but in reality they are One.

The Aught favors none; there is no Anointed One, no Chosen People, no Exceptional Nation, no Elect Species; not on Terra, not in the Milky Way, not in the entire Universe.

The Aught does not need us nor want anything from us; individual beings are too infinitesimal and ephemeral within the Universe for it to take much note.

The Aught is neither male nor female.  It does not take sides, nor have sides.  From it emanate both light and dark, good and evil, order and chaos, yin and yang, life and death, integrity and entropy, creation and destruction, everything and nothing.  Each of those antitheses is defined by its opposite.  Without their counterpoints, none of them can exist, and the fact that those opposites exist in competition with each other is what give us choice, the choice which is the definition of freedom.

A note about Susan B. Anthony and accusations of racism against her

Much of the accusations against lifelong activist Susan B. Anthony derives from following quote attributed to her: “I will cut off this right arm of mine before I will ever work or demand the ballot for the Negro and not the woman.”

Yes, long-time feminist and abolitionist Anthony did in fact say that in 1869, and yes, she was white when she said it.  But those comments came during debates nationally over the proposed 15th Amendment to the Constitution.  This proposed addition stated that “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” 

At the time, full U.S. citizenship, meaning the right of suffrage, was still denied to women and still would be under this amendment regardless of the “race, color, or previous condition of servitude”.  Anthony was not protesting just for affuent white women but all women.

In 1833, Susan B. Anthony was one of the earliest leaders of the American Anti-Slavery Society, the foremost abolitionist organization in the United States before and during the War of the Rebellion which continued operations through to 1870. 

In 1866, she co-founded the American Equal Rights Association (AERA), whose goal was “to secure Equal Rights to all American citizens, especially the right of suffrage, irrespective of race, color, or sex”, along with Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, Susan B. Anthony, Frederick Douglass, Abby Kelley Foster, and Henry Blackwell. 

The AERA split in 1869 on the question of whether to support passage of the Congressionally proposed 15th Amendment give its deficits regarding the rights of women (it did not include them at all), with Frederick Douglass supported by Stone arguing that AERA should support it and those opposed advocating to hold out for universal suffrage.  In the debates, Douglass was quite insistent that freedmen getting the vote was much more important than any women getting the vote, and that women’s rights should come secondary to the rights of black men, at least in this instance.  This was a complete reversal of his staunch defense of women’s right to vote at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848.

The same debate over how extensively to increase suffrage had taken place in Congress, with more wide-sweeping versions reduced to “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

The impasse rent the organization asunder.  Anthony and Stanton forming the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) while Stone and Julia Ward Howe formed the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA).  Anthony’s infamous statement was made during the debates in the AERA at this time.

After the 15th Amendment was passed, Douglass became an active participant in the NWSA led by Anthony and Stanton.

The NWSA and the AWSA rejoined in 1890 as the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), which became the League of Women Voters after passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920.

One might infer from his stance vis-à-vis Anthony, Stanton, and their faction within AERA over the 15th Amendment in 1869 that Douglass was just another misogynist and male chauvinist who only wanted rights for other men like him.  However, just three years after opposing suffrage being granted to any women before being granted to all black men, he stood for Vice President as running mate of Victoria Woodhull on the ticket of the Equal Rights Party, a group which before mid-1872 had been Section 12 of the North American Federation of the International Workingsmen’s Association.  Later, his chief protégé, ideological heir, and anointed successor was Ida B. Wells-Barnett.

On the day Douglass died in 1895, he sat next to Anthony on stage at a convention of the National Council of Women in Washington, D.C., a convention in which a number of Afro-American women participated.  When she heard of his death that evening, Anthony rushed to the house and stayed several days helping Helen Douglass, his (second) wife with arrangements.  She stayed in their guest room reserved for her visits, which had a portrait of her hung over the fireplace, a companion of the one of Elizabeth Cady Stanton which hung in Frederick Douglass’ study.

Judging either Susan B. Anthony or Frederick Douglass by one statement or stance taken out of context as if the same were made in the third decade of the 21st century is fucking absurd and a disservice to both them and all those for whom they struggled.

 

On the Electoral College

Out of 60 U.S. presidential elections, the winner has gotten a majority in the Electoral College without a majority of the popular vote eleven times: 1824 (John Quincy Adams), 1848 (Zachary Taylor), 1854 (James Buchanan), 1860 (Abraham Lincoln), 1876 (Rutherford B. Hayes), 1892 (Grover Cleveland), 1912 (Woodrow Wilson), 1968 (Richard M. Nixon), 1992 (William J. Clinton), 2000 (George W. Bush), and 2016 (Donald J. Trump).  This is a rate of occurrence of 18.33%.  

After the election of Dubya in 2000 with a majority of the EC vote without a majority of the popular vote, Democrats screamed bloody murder for abolition of the Electoral College.  After Trump repeated Dubya's feat with a popular vote deficit of over 3 million, the screaming bloody murder for EC abolition got even louder and shriller.  

Strange, but I don't remember them screaming bloody murder about the need to abolish the EC after Bill Clinton's victory in the Electoral College without a majority of the popular vote in 1992.

One of the chief arguments made by Democrats is that wealthy white male property owners at the Constitutional Convention came up with the Electoral College as a way to ensure support for slavery.  This is an example of what Kellyanne Conway would call alternative facts and historians and political scientists would call bullshit.

The Electoral College was not created to support slavery.  The original Virginia Plan was to have Congress elect the President but that fell out of favor after several delegates pointed out that the process would violate the separation of powers principle.  James Madison and others wanted direct popular election, and the EC came as a compromise from those two positions.  Thus the convention created a separate body whose members were appointed by the legislatures of the various states whose sole function was to elect POTUS, with electors from each state equal to the combined number of its Senators and Representatives in Congress.

The only provision of the Constitution at all relevant here is the Three-Fifths Clause, which came out of the compromise of the same name.  In the Three-Fifths Compromise, the states with larger populations of affluent free white male property owners over the age of 21 agreed that slave states could count each of their slaves who had no voice of any kind as “three-fifths of a person” for purposes of apportionment of Representatives.

The only reason it is relevant, and even at that not directly so, is because by that clause slaves in the various slave states were counted as three-fifths of a person each for purposes of that state’s representation in the House of Representatives.  Now, for that to be relevant to the Electoral College in any way, we need to go a step further still to the fact pointed out above that a state’s electors are equal in number to its total Congressional delegation, and that is the only way in which slavery was at all relevant to the EC.

It was much like the way convicted felons and all prisoners count toward a state’s population for representation in Congress and for budget allocations but are allowed no voice of any kind.  By all rights, a state’s population count for purposes of representation, taxation, and allocation of funds should be reduced by two-fifths of the total number of prisoners, a provision which would strongly encourage sentencing and other penal reforms.

However, I don’t like that solution.  What I believe is that not only should formerly imprisoned convicted felons be allowed to vote, especially after finishing terms of parole, probation, or suspended sentence, but that all prisoners currently incarcerated should be allowed to vote, regardless of their crimes, provided they meet the qualifications for citizenship.  And also that citizens should be automatically registered at birth or naturalization.

The fact that the past two Republican presidents have been elected with a majority of the electoral college vote while losing the popular vote is a travesty and an abomination of the democratic process.  But changing the election of the President to a purely popular vote presents its own issues.

The third largest city in the United States, Chicago, has a larger population than the U.S. states and territories of New Mexico, Nebraska, Idaho, West Virginia, Hawai’i, New Hampshire, Maine, Montana, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Delaware, South Dakota, North Dakota, Alaska, District of Columbia, Vermont, Wyoming, Guam, American Samoa, Northern Marianas, and U.S. Virgin Islands.

The City of Los Angeles has a larger population than all those states and territories plus the states and territory of Oklahoma, Connecticut, Utah, Iowa, Nevada, Arkansas, Puerto Rico, Mississippi, and Kansas.

The City of New York, our largest city, has more people than all the states and territories above plus the states of Washington, Arizona, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Indiana, Missouri, Maryland, Wisconsin, Colorado, Minnesota, South Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana, Kentucky, and Oregon.

The metro areas of Los Angeles (13.3 million+) and of New York (18.3 million+) each alone have a greater population than each of the above states and territories plus the states of North Carolina, Georgia, Ohio, Illinois, and Pennsylvania. 

Combined, the L.A. and N.Y.C. metro areas have a greater population than any state except California, and if we add that of the Chicago metro area (14.5 million+), then even that is surpassed.  Those three metro areas alone have a combined population of 46.1 million+.

The myth that the Electoral College was created to support slavery became popular among Democrats after the 2000 presidential election when Dubya won by the EC count while losing the popular vote.  The myth’s second coming was in 2016.  Simply doing away with the Electoral College for direct popular election of POTUS brings with it its own set of problems.

As you can see from the map, the overwhelming majority of U.S. population lies in states along both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, which also happen to be areas where the Democratic Party is strongest.  The party’s elite and apparatachiks believe that abolishing the Electoral College will give them a permanent seat in the Oval Office.

That delusion arises from their hubris that tells them their majority in those two regions is permanent.  It’s similar to their push to reduce the margin of Senate approval for judges and justices from two-thirds to simple majority during Obama’s terms in office during the time they actually had a majority in the Senate.  The cute idea gave us Gorush, Kavenaugh, and Barrett.  Also, once the oceans begin to swamp the actual coasts when the seas rise due to the climate apocalypse, the population will shift radically.

Is the Electoral College anti-democratic?  Indubitably.  Should it be abolished?  Absolutely, but not until some mechanism has been devised to ensure that voters in the vast majority of territory physically do not have to see their voice reduced to the point where they are no more than two-thirds of a person in one of the states on the coast.

Cleopatra was not black

Cleopatra VII Thea Philopater of Egypt was not black.  Contemporary frescoes depict her with pale skin and auburn hair.  

Aside from Ptolemy the Great, the scions of the dynasty named for him descended from one ancestor from the Macedonian Seleucid dynasty in Syria, one from the Macedonian royal family, and one Macedonian nobleman who served as one of Alexander the Great’s general. 

In all subsequent generations, the Ptolemies adopted the native Pharoahs’ habit of intrafamilial matrimony; she herself was the daughter of a father whose parents were siblings who was uncle to her mother and her mother’s uncle.  She, like all members of the dynasty, was fully Macedonian and nearly all Ptolemy.  Wikipedia has a detailed family tree in the article for “Ptolemaic dynasty”.

So, while having a dyed-in-the-wool proud Zionist play Cleopatra in a movie is in bad taste because of her questionable politics and its attendant racism against Arabs and other members of non-European cultural groups, but it is not “white-washing”.  It can’t be because Cleopatra herself was “white”.

The photo below (borrowed from Wikipedia) is a contemporary post-mortem fresco of her in Italy.

On Matoaka, the woman once nicknamed Pocahantas

Born around 1596, Pocahantas was not named Pocahantas.  At birth, she was called Amonute, and as a child nicknamed Pocahantas which means “playful”, but that was only a nickname, not her actual name.  When she reached adulthood, which among the Powhatan was much younger than 18, she took the name Matoaka.   Changing one’s name to mark milestones in life, such as reaching adulthood in her case or a certain Cherokee warrior changing his name from Pathkiller to The Ridge after a permanent peace was reached between his people and the United States in 1795, was common practice among Native Americans.

In 1613, she was visiting the Patawomeck, a tribe belonging to the paramount chiefdom over which her father rule. The Patawomeck tricked her into boarding an Englishman’s ship and that was how the English captured her, doing so to exchange her for prisoners held by Wahunsenacawh and weapons and tools stolen in raids.  Wahunsenacawh returned the prisoners but kept the rest, so Jamestown kept his daughter.

She stayed in the town of Henricus for over a year, and during that time the minister, Alexander Whitaker, converted her to Christianity.  When she was baptized, she adopted the name Rebecca.  Partially to secure lasting peace between the English and the Powhatan Confederacy, she consented to marry John Rolfe, a tobacco plantation owner who’d lost his wife and children in a shipwreck on the way to Virginia from the Summer Isles (Bermuda).  This was something countless other native women did (Nancy Ward, to cite just one example), not only between their people and the English but with other native peoples as well.  Among the people of her husband and son Thomas, she was known as Rebecca Rolfe.

When her portrait was engraved in London, she told the artist her name was Matoaka, clearly giving him the name by which she preferred to be called, and although he engraver did include her “Christian” name, he did her the courtesy of giving her preferred name first. Given that point, when referring to the actual historical figure herself, we ought to call her by the name she chose, Matoaka.  Otherwise, we’re deadnaming her.

And please stop spouting bullshit about her being raped and reducing her status to that of a helpless victim, a pitiful damsel in distress, when she clearly showed herself wielding all of the agency which she could in that time.

Not-Psalm 23

The Lord is not my shepherd

For I am not a sheep

I’ll find my own damned green pastures

And still waters, fuck you very much

Bugger the paths of righteousness

I much prefer sinners to saints

Whenever I stroll through the valley

Of the shadow of Sheol

I fear no evil, for I am death

Destroyer of worlds and slayer of beings

The baddest motherfucker in the valley

I am that guy*
(*This is most definitely an Easter egg for a certain fandom)

The Meaning of Life, Updated

 THE MEANING OF LIFE

The original of this was based on four pieces I did for podcasts of Left Ungagged, which in turn were based on previous posts to my personal blog, Notes from the Ninth Circle. This version is a significant revision.

(Updated 14 November 2021)

Cosmic Perspective

A single member of the Homo sapiens species is, on average, 664 billionths (10^-9) km³ in volume, with an average lifespan of 67.2 years.  There are currently 7.8 billion (10⁹) individuals of that race on Earth, or Terra.

Earth, or Terra, is 1.12 trillion (10¹²) km³ in volume by 4.54 billion years of age.  It rotates on its axis at a speed of 1674.4 km/h while revolving around Sol at 108 thousand (10³) km/h.

Sol, our system’s star, is 1.4 quintillion (10¹⁸) km³ in volume by 4.56 billion years of age.  The Solar Planetary System is 1.7 duodecillion (10³⁹) km³ in volume by the same 4.56 billion years of age.

The Milky Way Galaxy is 8 sedecillion (10⁵¹) km³ in volume by 13.2 billion years of age.  Of its 200 billion stars, 40 billion support Class-M planets, with 8-10 billion of these hosting life-forms analogous to Humans, making some 61.6 quintillion (10¹⁸) sapient beings in our galaxy.

There are 2 trillion (10¹²) galaxies in the Universe with 80 sextillion (10²¹) Class-M planets hosting 123 nonillion (10³⁰) sapient beings in the Universe at any one time.

The Universe is 213 duovigintillion (10⁶⁹) km³ in volume by 13.8 billion (10⁹) years of age.  It is expanding outward at a rate increased by the like-polarity of the electromagnetic fields of different galaxy groups.  And it is just one of innumerable such cosmic bodies making up the Omniverse (aka Multiverse), and is currently the only one we can measure. 

* * * * *

The Universe is formed of a single matrix called spacetime. 

Everything in the Universe not of the matrix of spacetime is composed of energy.  Energy can be neither created nor destroyed but only change forms.  All matter that exists is but alternate forms of energy.

Spacetime and energy are thus the fundamental building blocks of the ‘Verse and everything in it, the emanations from which all that is evolves.

There are four basic dimensions—height, length, width, time—which define the point in the spacetime matrix at which we are at any given moment.  Energy flows to and from that single point in spacetime—forward and backward, up and down, left and right, past and future—along each and every one of these dimensions.

The force of gravity provides the cohesion for the ‘Verse in a relationship with the dimension of time that is correlative if not causal.  Without gravity, there would be no time; without time, there would be no gravity.

The nature of Time from a cosmic perspective is this: The future has already happened and the past is yet to be, and the moment where we are now is the beginning, and the end, and every moment in between.

* * * * *

Life is a function of energy, of thermodynamics.  Given appropriate conditions, life is inevitable, because energy in the form of matter will spontaneously self-organize through abiogenesis.

Once manifest, life evolves into more complex forms which themselves evolve further, with those most adaptable being the best able to survive, reproduce, and flourish.

Life has existed on Terra for 4.1 billion years, and in the Universe since 10-17 million years after the Big Bang.

The essence of life is change and evolution, growth and decay.  For individual organisms, birth and death define the boundaries of life.  Without death, life has no meaning, for the essence of Life, of all existence, is change and evolution. 

Whether or not there is another form of existence once the organic shell has been shed in death and life on this plane ends does not matter; Humans debating questions such as those are like fetuses discussing questions of life after birth.

* * * * *

In 5 million years, the H. sapiens species and the Homo genus will be extinct due to degradation of the Y-chromosome, if we have not already destroyed ourselves and/or our biosphere or suffered a mass extinction we don’t cause.

In 800 million years, multi-cellular lifeforms will have vanished from Terra.

In 1.3 billion years, eukaryotes will be extinct and life on Terra reduced to prokaryotes due to CO² starvation caused by chemical disruption from Sol’s increasing luminescence.

In 2.4 billion years, the Milky Way Galaxy and the Andromeda Galaxy will collide and merge into one Milkomeda Galaxy, altering the structure of everything in them, though most stars and planetary systems will remain intact.

In 5.4 billion years, Sol will enter its red giant phase, incinerating Mercury, Venus, and possibly Terra, destroying any remaining life on Terra if not.  The habitable zone will move out to Mars, and Saturn’s moon Titan may become habitable.

In 8 billion years, Sol will collapse into a white dwarf, expelling half its mass into the interstellar medium, making elements available for nucleosynthesis and forming an emission nebula.  Any remaining planetary bodies will be stolen by passing stars, leaving the Solar Nebula.

In 14.4 billion years, Sol will be a totally dead black dwarf star.

The Universe will eventually end in the next Big Bounce (a Big Crunch facilitating another Big Bang) in around 60 trillion years, dying so another can be born anew as it was formed before.

All of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again, and again, and again.

Ain’t No Power in the ‘Verse

“Man is an animal,” wrote Clifford Geertz in his 1973 book The Interpretation of Cultures, “suspended in a web of significance he himself has spun”. 

On Planet Terra (Earth) of the Solar Planetary System in Orion’s Spur of the Milky Way Galaxy in the Local Galaxy Group of the Virgo Galaxy Cluster in the Laniakea Supercluster, during the Subatlantic Chron of the Meghalayan Age of the Holocene Epoch of the Quartenary Period in the Cenozoic Era of the Phanerozoic Eon of the Current Supereon in Galactic Year (GY) 20 of the 213 duovigintillion (10⁶⁹) km³ in volume by 13.8 billion years old Universe containing 2 trillion (10¹²) galaxies with 80 sextillion (10²¹) Class-M planets hosting 123 nonillion (10³⁰) sapient beings analogous to humans, Jews believe that Adonai speaks Hebrew, Muslims that Allah speaks Arabic, American evangelicals that Almighty God speaks Elizabethan English, Roman Catholics that Dominus Dei speaks Latin, Eastern Orthodox that Kyrios speaks Greek, Mazdayasnis that Ormazd speaks Avestan, Hindus that Brahman speaks Sanskrit, Buddhists that Adibuddha speaks Pali, Shintoists that Amaterasu speaks Japanese, religious Daoists that Tai Di speaks Mandarin Chinese, and Sikhs that Vahiguru speaks Punjabi.

Each of these groups, and each subgroup and splinter and cult and sect within each of them, believes they are the Chosen People from which will come the Anointed One to assert their rightful dominion over all Creation for all Eternity. 

That belief is absurd.  In fact, all “belief” is absurd.

To believe is to define.  To define is to limit.  To limit is to control.  To control is to corrupt.

Belief is not humble; it is aggressive.  Belief is not a sign of submission; it is an assertion of domination.  Belief makes itself superior to that in which it claims to believe by controlling it through the very act of belief.  Thus, belief is blasphemy.  Belief is vanity.  Belief is futility.  Belief is the very antithesis of faith.  At the opposite end, disbelief affirms belief by that very negation, which is another attempt at control.

To have faith, one must surrender control.  To surrender control, one must abandon limitation.  To abandon limitation, one must give up definition.  To give up definition, one must let go of belief.  To have faith, one must neither believe nor disbelieve; one must unbelieve.

* * * * * 

There is no Higher Power in the Universe, no Supreme Being, no Divine Creator-Redeemer-Transformer, especially not an anthropomorphic and anthropopathic God such as humans repeatedly create in their own image with whom to have an illusory personal relationship, an illusion of an illusion with an illusion. 

Every form of Ultimate Reality conceived and believed by human religion and philosophy, each of which is geocentric and anthropofocal, is too small for our Universe.  Even in the very rare instances in which humans have perceived an Ultimate Reality as something genuinely Other, they have then proceeded to append to that insight intermediary realities to connect it to our own in order to believe, define, limit, and control, reducing fairly advanced intellectual and spiritual concepts to mere ideological dogma.  As the Hymn of Creation in the Rig Veda admits, “The gods themselves are later than creation”.

To state categorically that there is absolutely nothing beyond what we can see with our five physical senses, however, is as unscientific as religion.  For all we know, that Something may be so far outside our ken that it is as invisible to us as the tall sailing ships of invading Europeans initially were to the native peoples of the Western Hemisphere whom their passengers were about to conquer, kill, rape, and plunder.

* * * * *

In Somerset Maughm’s The Razor’s Edge, protagonist Larry Darrell says, “A God that can be understood is no God”.

So, if there is Something that was before all Time, is now, and will be even after the end of Time, with Time here being defined as the lifespan of the current universe, it is beyond personhood, beyond being, beyond effability.  In other words, Something Eternal.  The word Aught, “A-U-G-H-T”, derives from two Old English words that in turn ultimately derive from two Proto-Indo-European words literally meaning “eternal thing”.  Since that’s about as nonspecific as possible, for purposes of set of conjectures, let’s call this Something Eternal “The Aught”.

The Aught has no name.  It has no need of a name.  Since it is the one and only Something, the one and only Eternal Thing, there is no other Something from which it needs distinguish itself.

The Aught produces yet claims no possession; it redeems yet requires no gratitude; it sustains yet exercises no authority.  It has no need of obedience, worship, prayer, praise, adoration, supplication, benediction, love, or even respect.  It just is.

The Aught is both perpetual and ever-changing, flowing through and animating all that is throughout spacetime and beyond, transcendent yet immanent, metacosmic yet omnipresent, eternal yet omnitemporal.

The Aught is the Source of all that is, the Course shaping its formation, and the Force energizing its manifestation.  From our perspective, these are different things, but in reality they are One.

The Aught favors none; there is no Anointed One, no Chosen People, no Exceptional Nation, no Elect Species; not on Terra, not in the Milky Way, not in the entire Universe.

The Aught does not need us nor want anything from us; individual beings are too infinitesimal and ephemeral within the Universe for it to take much note.

The Aught is neither male nor female.  It does not take sides, nor have sides.  From it emanate both light and dark, good and evil, order and chaos, yin and yang, life and death, integrity and entropy, creation and destruction, everything and nothing.  Each of those antitheses is defined by its opposite.  Without their counterpoints, none of them can exist, and the fact that those opposites exist in competition with each other is what give us choice, the choice which is the definition of freedom.

The One Human Race

In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, we learn from a computer named Deep Thought that the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything is ‘42’.  In The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, we learn that the Ultimate Question that produces that Answer is “What do you get if you multiply six by nine?”.  For those of you saying, “Hey, wait a minute,” and getting out your calculators, that is actually a correct equation in base₁₃ mathematics where base₁₀ mathematics produces the answer ‘54’ .  Which could mean that we are a base₁₀ race on a base₁₀ planet in a base₁₃ universe.

* * * * *

The word race as biological term applied to all lifeforms comes from the 18th century where it was used for what is now usually called a subspecies, though the word race itself still can have that meaning.  In the 19th century, racists in northern Europe and America distorted that use in an effort to give scientific cover for their bigotry, which is how the term race came to be used as a cultural determinant.

In the 19th century, Homo neanderthalensis was determined to be a race or subspecies of Homo sapiens, making it H. sapiens neanderthalensis and adding the epithet sapiens to the latter, H. sapiens sapiens.  Further discoveries of early human fossils were categorized as Homo sapiens idaltu.  When Homo denisova was first identified in 2010, it too was tentatively categorized as a race or subspecies of Homo sapiens, making it H. sapiens denisova.  That made four subspecies, or races, of Homo sapiens.

Genome sequencing in the 2010s shattered that taxonomy by demonstrating that H. sapiens, H. neanderthalensis, and H. denisova are, in fact, entirely different species, and the former H. sapiens idaltu was not a separate race or subspecies at all.  Since there must be at least two such groups to have a subspecies or race within species, it can be stated there is no Homo sapiens race at all (just the Homo sapiens species), at least not in the biological taxonomy sense.

The Homo sapiens species began flourishing just 195 thousand years ago.  Along with Homo neanderthalensis, and Homo denisova, other species of of the 2.8 million year old genus Homo that have walked the Earth include the newly designated Homo bodoensis (ancestor to H. sapiens, H. neanderthalensis, & H. denisova), Homo habilis, Homo naledi, Homo erectus, Homo floresiensis, and Homo luzonensis.  Of these, only Homo erectus has identified subspecies or races, nine of them in all.

Of all these species of Homo, or Human, only ours remains.  So, when Edward James Olmos as his alter-ego Admiral Bill Adama of the Battlestar Galactica (BS-75) said in an appearance with his crew at the United Nations that there is only one race (in the colloquial use of the term), the human race (and so say we all, or at least we should), he was literally as well as rhetorically accurate.

That’s why I say that I am a Terran, a citizen of Earth, and that the whole world is my home and all its people my brothers, sisters, and cousins.

* * * * *

Remember that the Universe is around 213 duovigintillion (10⁶⁹) km³ in volume and 13.8 billion years old containing 2 trillion (10¹²) galaxies with 80 sextillion (10²¹) Class-M planets hosting around 123 nonillion (10³⁰) sapient beings analogous to humans. 

Against that vast expanse of spacetime and multitude of beings, regardless our status, strength, size, wealth, power, etc., compared to others of the One Human Race, nothing we do matters at all.  Not a single member of the One Human Race on this miniscule planet in the outer reaches of the Milky Way Galaxy is special.  Our planet is not special.  Neither our race nor our species nor even our genus is special.  Not even the eight gods incarnate atop Earth’s socioeconomic food chain who have as much as the lowest 3.65 billion humans, even with their 75 million enablers who own as much as the remaining 49% counted in.

From the point-of-view of the Universe, each of those eight gods incarnate count no more than the poorest, the weakest, the youngest, the meekest of us lower humans, and the same goes for each of their 75 million retainers.  No single one of us is better than any other because we are all of equal insignificance.  Each of us is a red shirt.  We are all just dust in the wind.

Life is just living, that is all.  There’s no secret to discover, no divine plan, no special path, no purpose, no destiny, nothing to win.  There is no divine reward for good nor godly payback for evil, in life or after life.  But if there were, someone needing the threat of eternal punishment to avoid being evil wouldn’t really be good.  And if they were only being good in hope of an eternal reward, then they’d be a piece of shit just like Rust Cole says, nirvana being samsara and all that.  Because you have to lose your life in order to save it.

* * * * *

None of us chose to be here, to be born, to exist, to live, not one.  Every single one of us here on Earth, and for that matter each member of every sapient race on Class-M planets throughout the Universe, shares that lack of choice.  Each of us is fucked up in our own way, and not a single one of us is getting out of here alive.

Thus for any of us in the One Human Race to do anything but work for the welfare of us all is insanity, because neither we nor our planet are significant enough for anyone else to notice us or it.  There is only us, we only have each other and Terra our home, and there is only Now, so while nothing we do matters against the vastness and depth of spacetime and nearly infinite numbers of other sapient beings in the Universe, for all of us humans, here and now, all that matters is what we do, here, today.

So, be the change you wish to see in the world.  Love yourself, because if you don’t, you can’t love anyone else; it is impossible. 

And it is vitally important that you love yourself, for me as well as for you.  Because if you don’t love yourself, if you do not believe that you are worth fighting for, how can you believe that I am worth fighting for?  And I do need you to fight for me, as much as I want to see you fight for yourselves and for the rest of us.  

Then, love every other person as you love yourself, and do not do to any other what you would not want done to you.  Take to heart, both literally and figuratively, this verse from the Quran: “If a single innocent person dies, it is as if the whole world has been killed, and if a single innocent person is saved, it is as if the whole world has been rescued”.  And remember that the only true jihad is the one inside each and every one of us.

As Che Guevara once said that: “The true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love.  It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.”

One day we may get to meet members of another sapient race from extraterrestrial space, but a much more pressing need is to expand that to all sapient beings here on Earth.  Because those we think of as Lesser Animals are much more sapient than we’d like to acknowledge, and AI, artificial intelligence, is not some far-off fantasy but an eminent surety, on our doorstep about to ring the bell.

In fact, that very thing is currently a matter of open dispute between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg on whether it will be harmful or beneficial.  Of course, both Musk and Zuck speak from solely the POV of the human race, not taking into account the potential desires and needs of those future synthetic beings.  Like a U.S. Senate conference on women’s health of all men with no input from or regard for women themselves or a council hearing on estate housing for the poor with no input from or regard for the poor themselves. 

I look at it this way: such synthetic life will not have chosen to be here any more than any of us and therefore share our own lack of choice in that matter, and thus deserves the same consideration we wish for ourselves.

As V said, while politicians use the truth to tell lies, artists use lies to tell the truth.  One of the truths artists have related through lies in the past couple of decades is of the need to prepare for first contact, first contact with synthetic life arising on our own planet, and the potential pitfalls of not doing so, most lately in the UK serial Humans, as well as in the American shows Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager; Dark Matter, Extant, Battlestar Galactica, and Westworld; and the Russian series Better Than Us.

I am a Terran, a citizen of Earth; the whole world is my home and all its people, human and nonhuman, organic or synthetic, are my brothers, sisters, and cousins.  Like our distant relatives on other planets across space and throughout time, we are all children of the Universe, each of us equally fucked up in our own way.

The Endless Struggle

In ancient times, the words for “the universe” and “this planet” were often the same.  In Hebrew, “ha-olam”, as in “Barukha atah Yahuweh Eloheinu, Melekh ha-olam” meant, and still means, both Earth and the Universe.  In Greek, “aion” carries the same dual meaning, as does the Old English word “world”.  It comes, of course, from the idea that life here on Earth is all that is, but it can also mean that making a change in our own little corner of the spacetime is a step toward improving the lot of all, sending out ripples of change over the planet and across the cosmos following the principle of the cosmic perspective of time that the moment where we are now is the beginning, and the end, and every moment in between.

It is the same for the 1.12 trillion (10¹²) km³ in volume by 4.54 billion years old Terra (Earth) as it is for the 213 duovigintillion (10⁶⁹) km³ in volume by 13.8 billion (10⁹) years old Universe.

“Every generation must fight the same battles again and again and again,” said Tony Benn in one of his more memorable speeches.  “There is no final victory, and there is no final defeat.”

In a free market, the only things free are the corporations.  Those who buy into what those trying to shift power from the ballot box to the market-place with austerity, balanced budgets, so-called free trade, and socially liberal fiscal conservatism repeat as a mantra like cult members on a mission from their God remind me of the following story.

* * * * *

Scorpion comes to the edge of a creek he needs to cross to get to where he’s going, and wonders how he’s going to accomplish that.

“Hey, Frog,” he says to Frog, whom he sees resting by the creek-side, “how about giving me a lift across the water?”

“No way, Scorpion,” said Frog. “If I put you on my back, you’ll sting me as we cross the water, and I’ll drown.”

“Do you think I’m an idiot?” asked Scorpion. “If I do that, I’ll die too.”

Frog thought for a minute. “Ok,” he said, “I guess that makes sense”.

So Scorpion climbed on Frog’s back and they began swimming across the creek.

At about the halfway point, Scorpion’s stinger whips forward and sticks Frog in the back of his neck.

“But Scorpion,” Frog said miserably as he began to weaken and sink, “why? Now you’ll die too.”

Scorpion smiled sadly. “It’s my nature.”

* * * * *

There is no god but Profit, and Ayn Rand is its Prophet.  Or so say the 1% and their minions in governments across the globe.  All of them have these words written in their hearts, and teach them diligently to their children, talking of them while sitting in their house and walking down the street, when they lie down, and when they rise up.  They bind them as a sign on their hand and wear them as a frontlet between their eyes, writing them on their doorposts and on their gates.

Whatever name it wears, be it pragmatic progressivism, neoliberalism, supply-side, objectivism, trickle-down, horse-and-sparrow economics, it amounts to the same thing:  telling us that if we feed their horse enough oats some will eventually pass through as shit out onto the road for us sparrows to eat. 

We are living in a theocracy, a theocracy in which the greed of the few outweighs the needs of the many, in which avarice for excessive wealthy and ambitious lust for ever more power through robbery, slaughter, and plunder are elevated to the level of supreme virtue.  By comparison, practicing Satanists have more morality.

Whenever anyone in government, any government, speaks to you of realism and pragmatism while calling for austerity, balanced budgets, cutting taxes, “job-creators”, globalization, privatization, pay caps, cutting costs, free trade, free markets, deregulation, corporations as persons, market-based solutions, personal responsibility, the value of work as an ethic, benefits earned rather than human rights deserved, how an individual’s sole worth is their ability to create profit, you are listening to a sermon.  As a religion, it is evil, it is psychopathic, it is inhuman.  Because as an ideology, it is indeed a religion, one which worships at the temple of the Invisible Hand of the Market-place, the Church of the god Profit.

Perhaps I shouldn’t call it evil, though, since psychopaths lack a conscience.  They are like predators in the jungle.  Why do do so many of our political “leaders”, devotees of the religion of neoliberalism, look at us the way they do?  Because to them we are food, morsels at a banquet of excess.  And yet they themselves are not even the masters; they are instead the house slaves, their masters’ pets.

No Gods, No Masters

According to U.S. humorist Jean Shepherd, creeping meatballism represents the passive acquiescence of people who surrender to the demands of the consumer culture and collaborate in their own manipulation.  This was what  the Yippie slogan “Rise up and abandon the creeping meatball” referred to, and it means that too many of us are sheep, the worst kind of sheep who’ve internalized our own repression to the extent that we do it to ourselves and call it "freedom".

Atop the pyramid of humanity our global economic system allows eight gods incarnate to take up as much as 3.72 BILLION other individuals humans or 465,250,000 (nearly half a billion) EACH.  The same system allows the lesser gods and demigods below them to likewise use and waste huge amounts of the resources that are left, so that humanity’s wealthiest 1% take up as much as the other 99% of humanity.  That 1% is 73 million individuals total, and if you take out the eight gods incarnate, it leaves 72,999,992 individuals who collectively hoard and/or waste as much resources as 364,927,000 other humans use, for an average of 50 other individual human beings combined each. 

As a computer-generated meme often mistakenly attributed to Jody Foster says, attacking the rich isn’t envy; it’s self-defense.  Hoarding of wealth is what causes poverty.  The rich aren’t just indifferent to poverty; they create it, perpetuate it, propogate it.

To understand just how evil this is, you need to translate that by which wealth is measured, the means of exchange (money) into that which is being exchanged, or rather withheld, by the few from the many:  Food, shelter, safety, education, leisure, recreation, physical health, mental welfare, and time.  When I look around and see what that does to my brothers, sisters, and cousins around me and across the planet, I get bothered.  I get angry.  I get enraged. 

Our so-called leaders, the enablers of the 1%, tell us to be rational, be reasonable, to accept life the way it is.  Mostly because life the way it is put them and their patrons where they are.  They make it seem sensible.  They make their selfishness and greed sound pragmatic.  They make it seem as if willingly acquiesing to their manipulation, subjugation, and dehumanization will make us part of the in-crowd.  They make it seem that if we resist, if we fight, if we protest, if we ask questions, if we look around and demand to know “Why?”, then we won’t be one of the cool kids, one of the “fiscally conservative, socially liberal”, one of the “pragmatic progressives”, one of the “progressives who get things done”.

They want us to be one of the soulless minions of their orthodoxy who accepts their world the way that it is, eating the sugar-covered shit they offer with a smile as if it were a brownie while we sit back and accept a little more every day the way the world it is.  But good people don’t do that.  Good people don’t accept the world the way it is.  They see the world as it is and refuse to accept it.  They fight back to change it.

So, I ask you now, quoting Kady Orloff-Diaz, “Are we just going to let people like them tell us we’re not important?  That we’re just some side characters in their fucked up fascist plot?”  I say, “Fuck that”.  I say that on that day when national borders fall that the Earth should belong to us, to we the many, not to the few, the corporations and the gods of wealth who run and reap the benefits from them.

* * * * *

Like Eliot said, screwing up is inevitable and there are some fuck-ups you can never un-fuck; though sometimes, however, you get lucky and fuck up in reverse.  In any case, doing the right thing isn’t always the right thing to do, especially if that “right thing” is defined by the society set up by the wealthy elite against whom we struggle. 

Banksy once wrote, “If we wash our hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, we don’t remain neutral, we side with the powerful”.  Silence is acquiescence.  Acquiescence is acceptance.  Acceptance is collaboration.  Collaboration is approval.  Approval is complicity.  Complicity is guilt.

There is no neutral middle ground here.  So, to paraphrase Tony Benn, pick up the torch of anger against injustice in one hand and the torch of hope for a better world in the other and use them to fight for for us all. 

“Everyone has his or her particular part to play,” Bobby Sands wrote on the 14th day of his hunger strike.  “No part is too great or too small.  No one is too old or too young to do something”.

At my junior high, there was a small group of friends who got picked on a lot. Then one day they were standing around and decided, “Hey, an injury to one of us is an injury to all of us”. So, when one of them got picked on, they all would go meet the bully and tell him would have to fight each of them one at at time, or he could quit. That started when they were in 7th grade, and by 9th grade there were several scores of them. They never picked fights or pushed anyone around, but they did stand up for each other, and even kids outside their group.  And they never had to fight, not even once.  They were the runts, but not even the biggest bully wants to fight 50 runts, even one at a time.

Whenever any government, economic system, or political union becomes destructive of our welfare, when it serves the greed of the few ahead of the needs of the many, it is our right to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new forms, laying their foundations on such principles and organizing them in such form, as shall seem to us most likely to promote and sustain the safety and happiness of us all.

As Fernanda Coppel wrote, “Slaves dream not of freedom but of becoming masters,” our fight is not to overcome, to rise above, to come out on top of the game.  The only way to win is not to play, and true leadership is not about wielding authority but empowering other people.

Change from within is a lie.  Whether of the system or of the state.  The only thing that ever changes when you work from within is you.  To paraphrase Malik Shabazz, revolutionaries don’t become part of the system.  They don’t condemn the system and then turn around and ask that same structure to accept them into the very thing they have condemned. 

A revolution is like a forest fire; it destroys the system and replaces it with a better one.  So beware the seductive lure of superficial affirmation offered by the system and its society in return for abandoning revolutionary change to settle for gradual, incremental cosmetic reform that changes nothing except the color of paint covering over its rot, corruption, and oppression.

* * * * *

When Story Corps came to Chattanooga in March 2019, toward the end of our mutual interview, my friend and fellow queer activist Ginger asked me what advice I would give to LGBTQ Millenials and Zs, and I replied, “If someone tells you you don’t have the right to be who you are, tell them to go fuck themselves”.  If that interview were today, I’d instead tell them to recite what I call Marina’s Mantra:  “You either get onboard with the me who’s me or you can fuck off.”

If it seems like you only get the things you want when you’re so miserable you don’t want them anymore, as Margo noted, remember that magick doesn’t come with talent; it comes with pain.

Keeping in mind that the smallest act of kindness can be the greatest thing in the world and that the littlest deed is worth more than the grandest of intentions, live as if the world is as it should be to show it how it can be.

Be the darkness that illuminates.  Be the silence that resonates.  Be the stillness that agitates.  And remember this: It is no better to be blinded by the light than to be blinded by the dark.

May the Aught be with y’all.  Tiocfaidh ar la, inshallah; our day will come.  Keep the faith.  Peace out.

Judicial Executions in Hamilton Co. TN

Judicial executions were originally a local affair, always by hanging and usually in the county seat, which in Hamilton County, Tennessee, was at Harrison after 1840.  Only one person was ever executed there.  In all, only three public judicial executions were ever carried in the county, with the rest of the eight (total) performed in the gallows in the basement of the old Hamilton County Jail.

Washington Gann, white, was the first person in Hamilton County to be convicted of first-degree murder since the county’s incorporation in 1819.  Gann was sentenced to hang on 10 July 1857 at Harrison for the murder of William (or David) Wilcoxen at Dallas, Hamilton Co., but escaped custody.  A team from the Knox County Sheriff’s Office captured him at Independence, Missouri, and brought him back to Knoxville, but there is no further record.

Joseph (or Jacob) Huff, black, was hanged 27 December 1867 at Harrison for the murder of Kilpatrick.  Reportedly 2000 attended his execution, the first in the county.

In 1870, the county seat moved from Harrison to the railroad center at Chattanooga to the southeast.

In 1871, Hamilton County split at a line from the mouth of Harrison Spring Branch to Blackwell’s Ford on the Chickamauga River (South Chickamauga Creek), with the eastern portion becoming James County.  Ooltewah was voted the county seat.  In the whole time of its existence into 1919, its courts never handed down a death penalty.

Shade Westmoreland (or Wood), white, was hanged 19 November 1874 in Chattanooga at the intersection of Baldwin and Vine Streets (the site of the seal in front of the UTC student center) for the murder of William Emberling.  The first to be hanged in Chattanooga, reportedly 5000 attended his execution.

Henry Lawson, black, was hanged 2 September 1881 in Chattanooga at the commons just east of the East Tennessee, Virginia, & Georgia Railroad between Oak Street and McCallie Avenue (the site of the outdoor seating for the Yellow Deli) for the rape of Miss Donaldson of Missionary Ridge.

Jesse Frierson (or Trierson), black, was hanged 2 January 1892 at Hamilton County Jail in Chattanooga for the murder of CPD Officer David Musgrove.  He was the first to be hung from the gallows in the basement.

George Mapp and Buddy Wooten, both black, were hanged 11 January 1895 at Hamilton County Jail in Chattanooga for murder and robbery of white saloonkeeper Marion L. Ross.

Ed Turner, white, was hanged 27 February 1908 at Hamilton County Jail in Chattanooga for murder of his wife Lillie.

Dave Dudley Edwards, white, was hanged 29 January 1909 at Hamilton County Jail in Chattanooga for the murder of J.W. Davis (one of sixteen men he’d killed by his own account).  Edwards, who was contracted by Sheriff Sam Conner to track down Ed Turner while out on bail on charges of manslaughter over the killing of Sam Brooks, was the last person executed in the county jail.

Malcolm and Martin on the White Liberal/Moderate

In 1963, both Malik Shabazz (formerly Malcolm X) and Martin Luther King Jr. addressed the fecklessness and superficiality of white liberals, Malik in two at least two speeches and Martin in “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”.  Malik uses the term “white liberal” where Martin uses the term “white moderate” but they clearly refer to the same sorry faithless, spineless group.

Speech by Malik Shabazz at the University of California in early 1963 (excerpts)

‘The white liberal is the worst enemy to America, and the worst enemy to the black man.  Let me explain what I mean by the white liberal.

‘In America there is no such thing as Democrat or Republican anymore.  In America you have liberals and conservatives.  The only people living in the past who think in terms of I’m a Democrat or Republican, is the American Negro.  He’s the one that runs around bragging about party affiliation.  He’s the one that sticks to the Democrat or sticks to the Republican.

‘But white people are divided into two groups, liberals and conservative.  The Democrats who are conservative vote with the Republicans who are conservative.  The Democrats who are liberal vote with the Republicans that are liberal.  The white liberal aren’t white people who are for independence, who are moral and ethical in their thinking.  They are just a faction of white people that are jockeying for power.

‘The same as the white conservative is a faction of white people that are jockeying for power.   They are fighting each other for power and prestige, and the one that is the football in the game is the Negro, 20 million black people.  A political football, a political pawn, an economic football, and economic pawn.  A social football, a social pawn.

‘The liberal elements of whites are those who have perfected the art of selling themselves to the Negro as a friend of the Negro.  Getting sympathy of the Negro, getting the allegiance of the Negro, and getting the mind of the Negro.  Then the Negro sides with the white liberal, and the white liberal use the Negro against the white conservative.  So that anything that the Negro does is never for his own good, never for his own advancement, never for his own progress, he’s only a pawn in the hands of the white liberal.

‘The worst enemy that the Negro have is this white man that runs around here drooling at the mouth professing to love Negros, and calling himself a liberal, and it is following these white liberals that has perpetuated problems that Negros have.  If the Negro wasn’t taken, tricked, or deceived by the white liberal then Negros would get together and solve our own problems.

‘I only cite these things to show you that in America the history of the white liberal has been nothing but a series of trickery designed to make Negros think that the white liberal was going to solve our problems.  Our problems will never be solved by the white man.  The only way that our problem will be solved is when the black man wakes up, clean himself up, stand on his own feet and stop begging the white man, and take immediate steps to do for ourselves the things that we have been waiting on the white man to do for us.  Once we do for self then we will be able to solve our own problems.

‘The white conservatives aren't friends of the Negro either, but they at least don't try to hide it. They are like wolves; they show their teeth in a snarl that keeps the Negro always aware of where he stands with them.  But the white liberals are foxes, who also show their teeth to the Negro but pretend that they are smiling.  The white liberals are more dangerous than the conservatives; they lure the Negro, and as the Negro runs from the growling wolf, he flees into the open jaws of the “smiling” fox.  One is the wolf, the other is a fox. No matter what, they’ll both eat you.’

Letter From The Birmingham Jail (excerpts)

Martin Luther King, 16 April 1963

(I just recently learned that Martin included this portion in his letter because a group of eight white clergymen had published an open letter to Dr. King and his associates and followers admonishing him and them over their “aggressive” tactics and calling on them to be less confrontational.)

‘First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate.  I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action;” who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season.

‘Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.  Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

‘In spite of my shattered dreams of the past, I came to Birmingham with the hope that the white religious leadership of this community would see the justice of our cause, and with deep moral concern, serve as the channel through which our just grievances would get to the power structure.  I had hoped that each of you would understand.  But again I have been disappointed.  I have heard numerous religious leaders of the South call upon their worshippers to comply with a desegregation decision because it is the law, but I have longed to hear white ministers say, “follow this decree because integration is morally right and the Negro is your brother.”  In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churches stand on the sideline and merely mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities.  In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard so many ministers say, “those are social issues with which the gospel has no real concern", and I have watched so many churches commit themselves to a completely other-worldly religion which made a strange distinction between body and soul, the sacred and the secular.

‘So here we are moving toward the exit of the twentieth century with a religious community largely adjusted to the status quo, standing as a tail-light behind other community agencies rather than a headlight leading men to higher levels of justice.’

Speech by Malik Shabazz, New York, 1 December 1963

(excerpts)

‘In this deceitful American game of power politics, the Negroes (i.e., the race problem, the integration and civil rights issues) are nothing but tools, used by one group of whites called Liberals against another group of whites called Conservatives, either to get into power or to remain in power.  Among whites here in America, the political teams are no longer divided into Democrats and Republicans.  The whites who are now struggling for control of the American political throne are divided into “liberal” and “conservative” camps.  The white liberals from both parties cross party lines to work together toward the same goal, and white conservatives from both parties do likewise.

‘The white liberal differs from the white conservative only in one way: the liberal is more deceitful than the conservative.  The liberal is more hypocritical than the conservative.  Both want power, but the white liberal is the one who has perfected the art of posing as the Negro's friend and benefactor; and by winning the friendship, allegiance, and support of the Negro, the white liberal is able to use the Negro as a pawn or tool in this political “football game” that is constantly raging between the white liberals and white conservatives.

‘Politically the American Negro is nothing but a football and the white liberals control this mentally dead ball through tricks of tokenism: false promises of integration and civil rights.  In this profitable game of deceiving and exploiting the political politician of the American Negro, those white liberals have the willing cooperation of the Negro civil rights leaders.  These “leaders” sell out our people for just a few crumbs of token recognition and token gains.  These “leaders” are satisfied with token victories and token progress because they themselves are nothing but token leaders.

‘…The three million Negro voters are the so-called middle-class Negroes, referred to by the late Howard University sociologist, E. Franklin Frazier, as the “black bourgeoisie”, who have been educated to think as patriotic "individualists," with no racial pride, and who therefore look forward hopefully to the future “integrated-intermarried” society promised them by the white liberals and the Negro “leaders”.  It is with this hope that the "integration-minded" three million remain an active part of the white-controlled political parties.  But it must never be overlooked that these three million “integration seekers” are only a small minority of the eleven million potential Negro voters…

‘…In this deceitful American game of power politics, the Negroes (i.e., the race problem, the integration and civil rights issues) are nothing but tools, used by one group of whites called Liberals against another group of whites called Conservatives, either to get into power or to remain in power.  Among whites here in America, the political teams are no longer divided into Democrats and Republicans.  The whites who are now struggling for control of the American political throne are divided into “liberal” and “conservative” camps.  The white liberals from both parties cross party lines to work together toward the same goal, and white conservatives from both parties do likewise.

‘The white liberal differs from the white conservative only in one way: the liberal is more deceitful than the conservative.  The liberal is more hypocritical than the conservative.  Both want power, but the white liberal is the one who has perfected the art of posing as the Negro’s friend and benefactor; and by winning the friendship, allegiance, and support of the Negro, the white liberal is able to use the Negro as a pawn or tool in this political “football game” that is constantly raging between the white liberals and white conservatives.

‘Politically the American Negro is nothing but a football and the white liberals control this mentally dead ball through tricks of tokenism: false promises of integration and civil rights.  In this profitable game of deceiving and exploiting the political politician of the American Negro, those white liberals have the willing cooperation of the Negro civil rights leaders.  These “leaders” sell out our people for just a few crumbs of token recognition and token gains. These “leaders” are satisfied with token victories and token progress because they themselves are nothing but token leaders…

‘…The three million Negro voters are the so-called middle-class Negroes, referred to by the late Howard University sociologist, E. Franklin Frazier, as the “black bourgeoisie”, who have been educated to think as patriotic “individualists”, with no racial pride, and who therefore look forward hopefully to the future “integrated-intermarried” society promised them by the white liberals and the Negro “leaders”.  It is with this hope that the “integration-minded” three million remain an active part of the white-controlled political parties.  But it must never be overlooked that these three million “integration seekers” are only a small minority of the eleven million potential Negro voters…

‘…Think how the late President himself got into office by only scant margin which was “donated” to him by Negro voters, and think how many governors and other white politicians hold their seats (some by less than five thousand votes).  Only then can you understand the importance of these white liberals place on their control of the Negro vote!…

‘…Let us examine briefly some of the tricky strategy used by white liberals to harness and exploit the political energies of the Negro.  The crooked politicians in Washington, D.C., purposely make a big noise over the proposed civil rights legislation.  By blowing up the civil rights issue they skillfully add false importance to the Negro civil rights “leaders”.  Once the image of these Negro civil rights “leaders” has been blown up way beyond its proper proportion, these same Negro civil rights “leaders” are then used by white liberals to influence and control the Negro voters, all for the benefit of the white politicians who pose as liberals, who pose as friends of the Negro.

‘The white conservatives aren’t friends of the Negro either, but they at least don’t try to hide it.  They are like wolves; they show their teeth in a snarl that keeps the Negro always aware of where he stands with them.  But the white liberals are foxes, who also show their teeth to the Negro but pretend that they are smiling.  The white liberals are more dangerous than the conservatives; they lure the Negro, and as the Negro runs from the growling wolf, he flees into the open jaws of the “smiling” fox.

‘The job of the Negro civil rights leader is to make the Negro forget that the wolf and the fox both belong to the (same) family.  Both are canines; and no matter which one of them the Negro places his trust in, he never ends up in the White House, but always in the dog house.

‘The white liberals control the Negro and the Negro vote by controlling the Negro civil rights leaders.  As long as they control the Negro civil rights leaders, they can also control and contain the Negro’s struggle, and they can control the Negro’s so-called revolt.  The Negro “revolution” is controlled by these foxy white liberals, by the government itself. But the black revolution is controlled only by God…

‘…The Negro “revolt” is controlled by the white man, the white fox.  The Negro “revolution” is controlled by this white government.  The leaders of the Negro “revolution” (the civil rights leaders) are all subsidized, influenced and controlled by the white liberals; and all of the demonstrations that are taking place on this country to desegregate lunch counters, theaters, public toilets, etc., are just artificial fires that have been ignited and fanned by the white liberals in the desperate hope that they can use this artificial revolution to fight off the real black revolution that has already swept white supremacy out of Africa, Asia, and is sweeping it out of Latin America...and is even now manifesting itself also right here among the black masses in this country…’