The Hypocrisy of American Democracy

By Solomon Comissiong

"I'm not going to sit at your table and watch you eat, with nothing on my plate, and call myself a diner. Sitting at the table doesn't make you a diner, unless you eat some of what's on that plate. Being here in America doesn't make you an American.... No I'm not an American; I'm one of the 22 million black people who are the victims of Americanism. One of the 22 million black people who are the victims of democracy, nothing but disguised hypocrisy.... I'm speaking as a victim of this American system. And I see America through the eyes of a victim. I don't see any American dream; I see an American nightmare."—Malcolm X
There are numerous blatant symbolic hypocrisies riddled throughout the fabric of American society. Most of them are so ingrained within the tapestry that if you were to mention them to the “average” US citizen they would react in a rather bellicose manner to your announcement. One of these symbols of hypocrisy is the annual celebration of the 4th of July and the signing of the Declaration of Independence. At this particular juncture in life I am much more interested in being myself and being honest than I am in perpetuating some ridiculous lie that America is the gold standard (for all) when it comes to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I am pretty certain that when the signers of the Declaration of Independence placed their “John Hancock” on that superficial piece of paper that the rights of enslaved Africans was the furthest thing from their narrowly focused minds. I don’t know about you but when I think of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness I don’t think that being enslaved fits within that category. Being stolen from your native land, forcibly worked to death, placed into chattel slavery, beaten, murdered, raped, and the stripping away of one’s culture does not seem like life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in any shape, form or fashion. If it did, to the signers of that hypocritical document, I certainly did not read about too many white men signing up for that “good ole American form of slavery”. Why not? There is a simple answer to what should be a rhetorical question---the founders of this nation (America) never had the liberating interests of Africans in mind when they drafted documents like the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers, or the Constitution. And as we approach the 4th of July this 2009 we should all be reminded by the mere presence of this “holiday” of how utterly hypocritical this nation’s policies, so-called values, holidays, and sacred documents are.In all honesty, if most history, civics, and social studies classes were doing a good job, most sincere “Americans” would know what a hypocritical country they truly live in. If the corporate mainstream media was worth anything, most “Americans” would know of the hypocrisy of American “Democracy”. However, due to the fact that the corporate mainstream media and public educational system are supposed to program the masses, they are doing their jobs quite well. They are two of the most effective tools of pro-American propaganda. While people whose homes, communities, and families were destroyed by US military drone airstrikes are mourning, most of us will be whistling sweet Dixie this 4th of July. And while scores of black and brown skinned men & women sit within the bowels of a vastly racist and unjust criminal “justice” system, many of us will be grilling up hot dogs and hamburgers laden with chemically engineered growth hormones brought to you by Monsanto and Cargill. Where is the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness for the families of Sean Bell, Oscar Grant, Timothy Stansbury and so many more black men who perished at the hands of an unrepentant and pernicious white supremacist police institution? How often does America, collectively, really ask itself these questions? How often have these extremely important issues been brought up, in context, by the corporate media? Never! If they did, white America, and this nation in general, would have to face up to some very despicable truths. And if they face up to the truths about what has really been going on within its “house”, and why, they would probably be forced to repair it. After all, if the US did not clean up its issues after airing its dirty laundry in front of the entire world, it would be guilty of showing purposeful malice and complicity in the knowledge of willful evil that exists within the so-called “Land of the Free”. Scary thing is---many American elected officials know very well of the various forms of evil, through injustice, that linger within its’ borders, as well as the malevolence America perpetuates outside its’ artificial borders. Unfortunately this evil is sustained by American apathy, white supremacy, and imperialism. America has myriad of social issues that reek. The stench of American hypocrisy is undeniable. We all smell it, especially those of us who have been adversely affected by it and its innumerable double standards.Fredrick Douglas was right on point when he said: Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.You see America does not like her dirty, funky laundry aired out there for the rest of the world to see, smell, and speak on. Damn----she does not even like those who live within her man-made borders to speak on it, even though they “smell” it. However, something very curious happens when one does not air out and wash their “dirty laundry”; it becomes dirtier, and more infectiously dangerous to those who come in contact with it. When the malodorous stench of white supremacy, imperialism, and institutional racism are not aggressively addressed publically they will indeed be passed on as soon as they touch the nascent psyches’ of younger generations of naïve children. America’s white children will then become the new wave of purveyors of those aforementioned evils, and children of color will almost certainly inherit the nefarious wrath of systemic oppression. However, America’s oppressive “qualities” do not only limit themselves to her stolen shores. Some of the least talked about examples of American hypocrisies are the ones that take place in other countries. This is where the silent cancer of apathy reigns pervasive and metastasizes throughout America. The sickness of American “democracy” even causes delusion, amnesia, as well as a baseless feeling of superiority and self-righteousness. This version of the sickness has ostensibly become an epidemic throughout congress, and the white house, regardless of who occupies that dwelling. This is evidenced every time one turns on their corporate media laden TV where you will most certainly notice some mainstream politician lecturing another country on how to administer “free” , “fair” and “democratic” elections. They seem to forget that it looks much better when your own country executes free, fair, and democratic elections where truly every vote counts. However, given the fact that thousands of black voters from Florida and Ohio were disenfranchised in the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004, respectively, they might want to take a long hard look in the mirror before they volunteer any advice to other countries. And when it comes to human rights America might also want to refrain from giving advice out to other countries. Within the first five months of the cultish “Change You Can Believe In” administration they have executed airstrikes on everything from civilian communities to funerals, killing hundreds of innocent civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan. You think those evil deeds might qualify as a violation of human rights? You’re damn right they do. If you only listen to most American elected officials, or the corporate media, you might not think so because the genius of this American “democracy” is to make sure you don’t think about those types of things within their proper context. After all, this is a democracy that makes heroes of the likes of the white minority ruled South African regime supporting Ronald Reagan. It is a government that placed the African National Congress and Nelson Mandela on the “terrorist” list all the while supporting and funding organizations like RENAMO (Mozambican National Resistance) and UNITA (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola). These two groups, along with the white ruled South African Defense Forces, were responsible for killing over one million black Southern Africans. Reagan and the American government supported all three. Ronald Reagan was the furthest thing from a good man, yet in America characters like him are celebrated on a daily basis, along with their morally challenged “principles”. The celebration of these people, and their ways, continues to happen in America because, unfortunately, many Americans hold no point of reference when it comes to history, historical figures, or hypocritical holidays like The 4th of July. They hold no point of reference because the corporate media is farce and the public school system’s history books are also infected with myopia and white supremacy. If there has ever been a time to turn our backs on these holidays and the celebrations of slave holders and Indian killers like George Washington, Andrew Jackson and so many more, the time is now. The celebration of the 4th of July and the Declaration of Independence will only be superficial symbols as long as the US government is continually using its military might to dominate, intimidate and destroy countries infrastructure and their innocent civilians, all in the name of a misguided “war on terror”. How does one fight such a broad based ideology (terror) in the first place? Any sensible person can tell you that you can’t fight it with more terror. Have we forgotten that terror is in the eyes of the beholder? When US made bombs are being dropped onto communities by US made aircraft flown by ill-advised American pilots, that is very much terror to those people dying wholesale at the hands of our government. We need to bury this notion that terrorism mainly happens to Americans or that it started when Reagan coined the phrase “war on terror”. Have we forgotten that it was European invaders of the Western Hemisphere that practically created and revolutionized the art of terrorism? After all, terrorism has reared its odious head for a long time on “American” soil dating back to when indigenous natives had their land, and lives, stolen from them by imperialist minded Europeans. Then those same lazy Europeans systematically enslaved, and killed, tens of millions of Africans. The day the Declaration of Independence was signed countless Africans were living under the hell of white supremacy and within the system of American chattel slavery!If I had one request this 4th of July “holiday” it would be for all of us to step outside of our collective and individual comfort zones and think about the millions of people who are suffering in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Africa, Central America, South America, the Caribbean, Detroit, Oakland, DC, Baltimore, and Harlem, to name several. Many of the people within those aforementioned places are suffering at the hands of American styled “democracy”, capitalism, xenophobia, imperialism, and social apathy in the US. We all need to give a damn, continue to give a damn, protest and organize to change this broken wretched system so that it no longer only benefits the plundering elite. Putting a brown face on the same ole war mongering system does not mean that the injustice based evils are magically whisked away. That superficial change is nothing more than a façade meant to pacify the masses who, collectively, can invoke the real tangible change the world needs to see. As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”

Solomon Comissiong is an educator, community activist, author, public speaker and the host of the Your World News radio program (http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Your-World-News). He may be reached at: sunderland77@hotmail.com.
Windows Live™ SkyDrive™: Get 25 GB of free online storage. Get it on your BlackBerry or iPhone.
Windows Live™: Keep your life in sync. Check it out.