Now it's getting crazy. Last Sunday, I watched in awe as multimillionaire commentators, limousine-to-the-studio, powdered and pampered-over white men and women called Barack Obama an "elitist" when, really, all he did was report what he had learned in his travels: that there are people who are bitter, feeling unable to change a downward spiral and who cling to some anchor, a Bible or a gun to give them courage facing the unknown. I don't know how things are in small towns in Pennsylvania, but if they've got it like we do here in Brooklyn, then they have something to be bitter about, which is why they want change, which is why Obama gets stronger with each of these new tests.
The next test was the following Wednesday, when the ABC network aired a "debate" at Philadelphia's Constitution Hall, where topics such as health, foreclosures, the economy and the war in Iraq had to wait until moderators George Stephanopoulos and Charles Gibson had spent the first 45 minutes asking about the comments of Reverend Jeremiah Wright, why Obama doesn't wear a American flag pin, why did Obama say people are "bitter" and "cling" to religion and guns in hard times.
Meanwhile, Senator Clinton is counting on a very dim view of the voters. The subtext of her strategy is, "They're never going to elect the Black guy!" She makes her case by showing that given a choice of a white vs. Black candidate of similar views, a majority of voters in Pennsylvania voted their race, white or Black. However, in the general election, that is not the choice. The choice is a classic one for non-elite whites. In the same way the slaveholding planters of the Old South urged poor whites to cling to their religion, guns and, most importantly, their whiteness, to control the politics in a segregated South, those now profiting from the current system will see that strategy as tried-and-true and we can be assured it will be continued into November if Obama is the Democratic nominee.
The New York Times recently reported that we should be "shocked, shocked" that the mainstream collection of "independent" military analysts, retired generals, colonels and the like are really working for the Military Industrial Complex that President Eisenhower warned about as he left office.
In the introduction to the Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome series in the November 1999 issue of Our Time Press, we wrote about mis-education, the Civil Rights Movement and how "the mass unity of the movement produced a curious result. Gained were the right to vote and integrate, but traded off were the closed markets that segregation provided. Money began to flow out of the African-American community and businesses began to fail. Black newspapers, offering thought different from the mainstream, closed. African-American children were sent to white schools for acculturation.
At the same time, the propaganda complex of the ruling class, embedded in the advertising, public relations, publicity and mass media industries, was forging ahead. It is important to remember this component, because as early as 1928, Edward Bernays, strengthened by a Freudian understanding of the human mind, and self-promoted as "America's No. 1 Publicist", wrote in his book, Propaganda: "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country...we are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind." (Propaganda - New York, 1928 p. 9)
In 1928, the power given to this "invisible government" by computers and the Internet was beyond science fiction, and today it is the air we breathe and explains how it is possible to carry out a war that takes trillions of dollars from the masses of people and transfers it to military industrial accounts.
Studies have shown that mind manipulation works best when there has been a preceding trauma, and there are two sides to Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome and it is the emotional trauma done to white folks that makes them susceptible to their own set of emotional manipulations.
The brilliant candidacy of Barack Obama has been helping them work through that morass onto clearer ground, and the youth culture that grew up with computers in their playrooms and the Internet on their hips are giving the invisible government fits as they begin to exercise that power on Obama's behalf. If Obama wins the Democratic nomination the question will be, can the long head start of a small group of ruling elite keep their interests as center to the culture, or will communication between a critical mass of people really edge the nation on a whole new path. And personally, after this warm-up, I can't wait to see Barack Obama on stage with John McCain debating the economy, the war and health care.
