Since it seems there’s a bit of interest in exactly what I think and who I dislike, I thought the time is ripe to let er rip about some things that have been on my mind for a very, very long time.

The popular pundit William F. Buckley once said that he had more faith in the ability of the first 400 people taken at random from the Boston phonebook to run the country, than the entirety of Harvard U’s faculty.

As far as I’m concerned, Buckley was right.

I cite Buckely, not just because I agree with him, but also because, it is our way as human beings to attack or otherwise attempt to discredit the messenger, instead of grapping with the merit of the message itself. Let’s face it, there are those who will say, Obsidian’s only crying sour grapes because he’s a lowly prole, or some such nonsense.

Yet, the sustained trail of evidence as we have it of a solid decade-and counting-says quite convincingly, that the argument swings in my favor. Consider the following:

Enron
Worldcom
Sep 11/Iraq War/Afghan War
Major League Sports AND Olympics
Catholic Church
Wall Street
Upper Big Branch Coalmine
BP

And that’s just to name a scant few. In EVERY instance, high-powered “elites”, charged with the power to make smart decisions, screwed up royally.

And in every instance, who picked up the tab?

Guys like me.

Our love affair with the Elite has been figuratively and in so many ways, literally, the death of us. They have destroyed our communities, destroyed our way of life, destroyed our economy, destroyed our sense of fair play, destroyed political system, destroyed our faith…and right before our eyes, they’ve destroyed the very environment we all rely upon to survive. And please don’t get me wrong. I am by no means a rabid tree hugger, a shill for the Sierra Club. But I can just see, by using simple commonsense, that we can’t go on doing business this way any longer. It is literally killing us.

I try real hard not to romanticize the past-being Black makes that task not at all that hard to do-but I gotta tell ya, I really don’t know if we got it any better than our parents. Depending on the eggheads you believe, the current and next generations will be the first in a century to have it WORSE than their parents, on a whole host of life measures. The Baby Boomers will be the last to enjoy Social Security. It won’t happen for me, nor will a pension, since that too has gone extinct over the past few decades.

My dad could support a family working with his hands-true, he also faced in-your-face racism too-nevertheless, he could and did, support a family relying on his homebuilding skills. That’s all but a thing of the past now, except in a few places. Other Black Men, and for that matter millions of White Men, could work in factories or plants and send their own kids to college. Buy a home. Get married. And retire with dignity. That’s all gone now.

The disparity between rich and poor, between haves and have nots, is obscene. It really is. And how can any of us, turnaround and say to a young person that if they only work hard and play by the rules, they too not only can, but will, “make it”? I don’t know about all of you, but I feel like Rand Paul saying some pie in the sky crap like that.

In just every way, the system is broken, the game rigged, to benefit a few at the expense of the many. And its not even done in smoke-filled backrooms anymore-now the “elites” are flagrant with it. Goldman-Sachs TELLS YOU, to your face, that they’re not gonna apologize because they’ve done nothing wrong. Even when we know for a fact that THEY knew for a fact that they were selling crap deals.

And the War on the Working Class is a true travesty. I listen, watch, read, how our ostensible betters talk about them/us, its as if they/we’re lepers or something. What the hell did they/we do to elicit such contempt, hatred even? Last time I checked, Joe Sixpack, if he was a danger and a problem to anyone, it was to himself. For most such Joes, most of their time and brainpower is devoted to making it through the day, through the week, keeping the lights on and food on the table. Yet, to let our “betters” tell it, the “Proles” are the Devil Incarnate.

It’s like we don’t exist, and if and when we are brought up in the media, its either with the aforementioned scorn or with the kind of ridicule reserved for Archie Bunker. We’re stupid, not sophisticated, backward and most of all, not cool. We can’t possibly have a clue as to what’s going on in the world around us, and we should bow on bended knees in gratitude for the elites to tell us how to think, to live, to act.

We spend ridiculous amounts of money either to attend university ourselves, and/or to send our kids there, and we all know the real reason why we do it-because we don’t want to be associated with “them”. It’s the unspoken rule in the “great debate” about “education” and we all know it. I have always said that there was a powerful attitudinal component to the debate, and one in my view, that explains why we see, what we see. At least in large part.

Well, for my part, I am glad-yes, that’s right-GLAD-things are going the way they are. Why? Because it tramples all over the ASSumptions these so-called “elites” had-and that they are now being consumed by the very monster they unleashed on the rest of us. The people who are suppoed to be our “best and brightest” all too often turn out to be little more than fakin’ the funk with a nasty dunk, if that. They’ve mastered the art of posture, nothing more. And it is only fitting that they be devoured by the very forces they’ve sicced on the rest of us.

When you piss and shat all over the people who actually make it possible for a society to exist and continue, you not only cut off your nose to spite your face, but you get exactly what you deserve.

Burn, baby burn…
The Obsidian