by Randy Shields
Barack Obama calls the murder of Trayvon Martin an incident of gun violence, as if the victim “was caught in some random crossfire of bullets instead of being caught in hundreds of years of calculated racist state-sanctioned murder.” The courts have spoken, and so has the president: “Forget about justice, you fucking slaves.”
Racist Verdicts Are About the Future Not the Past: A Perfect Symmetry
by Randy Shields
This article previously appeared in Counterpunch.
“Obama is just not into you, black America.”
Can’t we all just get along, whites and blacks, and agree that Barack Obama is a racist? Not that he hates white people like the Tea Partiers say — it’s black people that he can’t stand. Whether he’s trashing black males on Father’s Day or softening them up with body blows for the worldwide economic race to the bottom at a Morehouse College speech or indifferently presiding over the greatest destruction of black wealth in 100 years or simply singing a tune of betrayal of a longtime friendship (“Jeremiah Wright was a bullfrog – and no friend of mine!”), Obama is just not into you, black America. And now we have his statement on the Trayvon Martin verdict.
“The death of Trayvon Martin was a tragedy,” says Obama in his cliched, bloodless, pacifying, bullshit, don’t-give-a-fucking-damn truth-betraying statement. An armed racist not merely looking for trouble but causing it is not a tragedy — it’s an atrocity. It’s a crime. “I know this case has elicited strong passions.” He doesn’t feel these strong passions himself but he has heard tell of them. Figuratively, he doesn’t really know what all the shooting’s about. Literally, he kills innocent people like Trayvon Martin every week. BFD. Obama and George Zimmerman are both vigilantes — they just have different budgets.
“We are a nation of laws and the jury has spoken,” so STFU uppity black America (or what’s left of it) says the judge, jury and executioner who sits down every Tuesday with his crime family and decides who they’re going to murder next, including American citizens. Says the man who will let no jury speak for the people thrown into the hole of Gitmo for years without charge or trial. Says the man who won’t make restitution to these innocent men or let them go even when they are cleared for release. Says the man who won’t prosecute CIA torturers or Wall Street fraudsters. Says the man who illegally spies on the entire world to supposedly protect Americans — but he didn’t protect Trayvon Martin or any of the other black people who are gunned down every 28 hours in America by racist police, security guards and peckerhead vigilantes like Zimmerman, according to the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement.
“Obama and George Zimmerman are both vigilantes — they just have different budgets.”
“We should ask ourselves if we’re doing all we can to widen the circle of compassion and understanding in our own communities.” What the fuck are you talking about, Obama? “Widen the circle of compassion”? That’s the way we animal activists talk when we’re trying to get speciesist bigots to treat chickens and squirrels better. These non-humans don’t have their laws yet, unfortunately. Human beings do have laws on the books which are supposed to protect us. White racists don’t have to “widen the circle” of their “compassion” — they have to abide by laws and not take them into their cold death-dealing hands. And when they violate those laws they should have the book thrown at them the way Trayvon Martin most assuredly would have had he killed Zimmerman.
All that this “little man” racist had to do was follow the police dispatcher’s directive to stop following Trayvon Martin — and Martin would still be alive. The majority of white gun owners I’ve known have always been on the edge of their seat, eagerly waiting for some black male to color outside the lines so they could blow his fucking head off. That’s the racist reality of America. But we have to pretend — with the exquisite guidance of this half-assed, half-black, half-baked Democrat — that America is a post-racial society and we’re past all of that. The world calls bullshit on you, Obama. The most gratifying protests of the verdict were Americans burning the American flag in the streets of Oakland just to make absolutely clear the complete break with this wretched murderous government and the solidarity with people in other countries who are also victims of it. They’re not our enemies, Obama. You and Bush and Nancy Pelousy and Feinstein and McCain and Lindsey Graham cracker and James Reinhard Heydrich Clapper — all of you are our enemies. It’s so perfectly symmetrical now. It’s the American government versus every person in the world.
“The most gratifying protests of the verdict were Americans burning the American flag in the streets of Oakland.”
“We should ask ourselves if we’re doing all we can to stem the tide of gun violence that claims too many lives across this country on a daily basis.” (See the the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement above for who’s causing a good bit of this violence.) This crime wasn’t about “gun violence.” Trayvon Martin didn’t have a gun or kill anyone. A racist vigilante did — and the state gave its blessing. The coward Obama won’t address the killing directly. Instead, his meaningless disembodied statement is in keeping with his tendency lately to refer to himself in the third person when he’s discussing his own crimes of drone murder and eavesdropping. Shredded scorched Muslim bodies are now just airy debating points. He implies that Trayvon Martin was part of some unfortunate unpreventable situation, as if Martin was caught in some random crossfire of bullets instead of being caught in hundreds of years of calculated racist state-sanctioned murder. Barackus Obombus Caesar has spoken: forget about justice, you fucking slaves.
These routine racist verdicts aren’t about the past — they’re looking ahead to the future, to keep giving Amerikaners permission to keep on firing as they become a minority in “their” country. We’re gonna go down bravely slaughtering unarmed people of color whether it’s in Florida or Yemen or New York or Afghanistan or Cincinnati or Somalia or Detroit or Pakistan or Oakland, right to the bitter end. And an obsfucating black American president will always be ready to blow the hopium of excuses and stasis and surrender right into our faces.
Lastly, we’ll know when the American working class starts to get well, whether it’s about racist violence or totalitarian surveillance: we won’t all go to work the next day like nothing ever happened. We may burn the fucking country to the ground and start over or we may do something else. But we won’t go to work. We will bring this ridiculous inequitable invasive violent criminal illegitimate shithouse to a standstill.
Randy Shields can be reached at [email protected].
His writings and art are collected at innagoddadadamdavegan.blogspot.com.
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