{"id":4056,"date":"2010-10-14T16:29:01","date_gmt":"2010-10-14T22:29:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blackactivistwg.org\/blog\/?p=4056"},"modified":"2015-05-17T19:35:18","modified_gmt":"2015-05-18T01:35:18","slug":"democrat-or-republican-the-choice-to-be-drowned-or-hanged","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.blackactivistwg.org\/blog\/democrat-or-republican-the-choice-to-be-drowned-or-hanged\/","title":{"rendered":"DEMOCRAT OR REPUBLICAN: The Choice To Be Drowned or Hanged"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Published in Issue 397 of The Black Commentator on <a title=\"Democrat or Republican: The choice to be drowned or hanged\" href=\"http:\/\/www.blackcommentator.com\/397\/397_kir_dem_or_gop_share.html\" target=\"_blank\">October 14, 2010<\/a><br \/>\nRepublished in Online Journal (Intrepid Report) on <a title=\"Democrat or Republican: The choice to be drowned or hanged\" href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20101018161024\/http:\/\/onlinejournal.com\/artman\/publish\/article_6458.shtml\" target=\"_blank\">October 15, 2010<\/a><br \/>\nRepublished in Socialist Viewpoint, Vol 10, No. 6, <a title=\"Democrat or Republican: The Choice To Be Drowned or Hanged\" href=\"http:\/\/www.socialistviewpoint.org\/novdec_10\/novdec_10_17.html\" target=\"_blank\">Nov\/Dec 2010<\/a><br \/>\nParagraph 4 is quoted on Page 27 of the book, &#8216;The Falsification of History: Our Distorted Reality,&#8217; by John Hamer,\u00a0Rossendale Books (UK), <a title=\"The Falsification of History: Our Distorted Reality [Kindle Edition]\" href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/B007OXJBYC\/ref=rdr_kindle_ext_tmb\" target=\"_blank\">March 25, 2012<\/a> (Kindle Edition) and lulu.com, <a title=\"The Falsification of History: Our Distorted Reality\" href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/1291419438\/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&amp;me=\" target=\"_blank\">May 14, 2013<\/a> (paperback).<\/p>\n<p><strong>By Larry Pinkney<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The opportunity to choose is utterly meaningless and irrelevant when the supposed choices that are offered are <em>fundamentally<\/em> the same ones with different packaging.<\/p>\n<p>In the 21st Century, <em>different packaging<\/em> is in this instance essentially what is known as <em>corporate branding, <\/em>which means that messages, images, and imagery target a mass (and often undiscerning) audience. These messages, images, and imagery rarely have anything whatsoever to do with reality. The objective of corporate branding is of course massive manipulation,<em> not<\/em> the dissemination of truth or the positing of reality.<\/p>\n<p>No genuine democracy can survive or function in the absence of a <em>well<\/em> informed populace. The United States of America holds fake elections, with fake choices, manipulated by a well entrenched corporate plutocracy designed to ensure that the process of democracy is hollow and but a cruel fake. Such is the present political and economic state of affairs in this nation.<\/p>\n<p>The Democratic<em> and<\/em> Republican parties offer the masses of everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people the de facto <em>non-<\/em>choice of either euphemistic <em>death by drowning or death by hanging.<\/em> Thus, no real choice is offered at all. As the politicos of the Democratic Party foxes and the Republican Party wolves feed, like swine, from the bottomless blood-drenched\u00a0 financial trough of the corporate \/ military elite, <em>democracy is rendered null and void.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Ultimately, nothing short of a total break with and from the corporate Democratic and Republican parties can offer any viable possibility of attaining a genuine people\u2019s democracy in this nation. The notion that these corporate politicians can be pushed to serve the interests of everyday people is absurd. Money (and lots of it) is the common denominator to which these politicians swarm and which greases their palms, <em>at the repeated expense of everyday people and democracy itself.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Greed and the lust for power have no color or gender boundaries. It\u2019s time for people in this nation to <em>grow up and smell reality<\/em>. It\u2019s time to reject and disconnect from the <em>entire<\/em> corporate-stream media, <em>including<\/em> the corporately sponsored Public Broadcasting System (PBS). (Remember how proudly PBS touted its corporate sponsorship by the so-called \u201cgreen\u201d giant British Petroleum (BP), <em>prior<\/em> to the horrific\u00a0oil volcano and ongoing ecological disaster emanating from the Gulf of Mexico?!) Even now, the corporate-stream media, the Obama \/ Biden administration, and the rest of the corporate suckling piglets of the Democratic and Republican parties pretend that the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has somehow been fundamentally fixed, when in fact its immeasurably terrible consequences have only just begun and will continue for decades if not centuries.\u00a0 Of course, the same can be said with respect to the <em>continued<\/em> U.S. bloodletting in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan (to name but a few) while civilians in those countries are murdered and many U.S. troops continue to return in body bags or deeply psychologically scarred. But it\u2019s basically okay, or so the corporate stream media would lead us to believe. It\u2019s <em>not<\/em> okay!<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, the \u201chope and change\u201d of Barack Obama and his wily \u201cDemocrats\u201d is a fool\u2019s gold. And the antics of the Republicans is ridiculous, cruel, and just more of the same. It is time for everyday people to take democracy back, out of the hands of the corporate snakes and bandits and their surrogates!<\/p>\n<p>Corporations are ruling supreme while the so-called <em>\u2018Patriot Act,\u2019 \u2018Extraordinary Rendition,\u2019 FBI and other assorted government raids<\/em> (against the people of this nation who legitimately dissent this government\u2019s horrible and misguided policies) have rendered the U.S. Constitution as nothing more than a <em>gutted, tattered,<\/em> document&#8212;in practical terms&#8212; not even worth the paper it is inscribed upon.<\/p>\n<p>Take a stand and make a real choice. The <em>non<\/em>-choice of death by drowning or by hanging offered by the Democratic Party and the Republican Party wolves is unacceptable. Cease being lethargic and don\u2019t be fooled again!<\/p>\n<p>Recognize the Democratic and Republican Parties for who and what they really are&#8212;enemies of everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people. Notwithstanding corporate-government subterfuge and repression, we must keep working to form a <em>broad united front for a people\u2019s democracy throughout this nation<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>It cannot be over-emphasized that literally <em>everything<\/em> is at stake in this people\u2019s struggle for justice, human rights, and democracy.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s so much work to be done!!! Onward then my sisters and brothers. Onward!<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.blackactivistwg.org\/Larry%20Pinkney\/bio.htm\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\" width=\"640\" height=\"400px\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Published in Issue 397 of The Black Commentator on <a title=\"Democrat or Republican: The choice to be drowned or hanged\" href=\"http:\/\/www.blackcommentator.com\/397\/397_kir_dem_or_gop_share.html\" target=\"_blank\">October 14, 2010<\/a><br \/> Republished in Online Journal (Intrepid Report) on <a title=\"Democrat or Republican: The choice to be drowned or hanged\" href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20101018161024\/http:\/\/onlinejournal.com\/artman\/publish\/article_6458.shtml\" target=\"_blank\">October 15, 2010<\/a><br \/> Republished in Socialist Viewpoint, Vol 10, No. [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[28,5,11,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.blackactivistwg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4056"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.blackactivistwg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.blackactivistwg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.blackactivistwg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.blackactivistwg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4056"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.blackactivistwg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4067,"href":"http:\/\/www.blackactivistwg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4056\/revisions\/4067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.blackactivistwg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.blackactivistwg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.blackactivistwg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}