Larry Pinkney

“People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.” -James Baldwin

“Had the price of looking been blindness, I would have looked.” -Ralph Ellison

In the U.S. political system, liberals and liberalism have always served to perniciously stymie people’s movements for real systemic change.

The late English author, journalist, and satirist, Malcolm Muggeridge, described “liberalism” as “the great disease of our society,” and indeed it is. Liberals are important gate-keepers of and for this politically bankrupt system. Their role is now what it has always been, which is to ensure that superficiality is placed above substance. Thus, instead of demanding and organizing for real systemic change, liberals, utilizing various guises, pose as “progressives” or even leftists, and in so doing, neutralize the struggle for fundamental and real systemic change on the part of everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people. Malcolm Muggeridge had it quite correct when he further noted that “every time it [liberalism] has been applied, the consequences have been disastrous.” In other words, the political system is hideously kept intact under the fallacious auspices of there having been some kind of real versus superficial change having supposedly been brought about, thereby pacifying and stymieing the struggle for much-needed real, fundamental, systemic change.

The talking head liberal pundits of the corporate-stream “news and analysis” media, and much of the so-called “alternative” media dare not point out the fundamental contradictions and hypocrisies of this U.S. empire’s political system. And they certainly dare not call for fundamental systemic change. Notwithstanding their ceaseless rhetoric, liberals repeatedly demonstrate that their foremost concern is to hold on to their own perceived systemic privilege. Only when their own economic privilege comes under assault will they sporadically and disingenuously embrace and parrot “progressive” and/or leftist sounding rhetoric meant to ensnare the undiscerning. They, in essence, pimp the pain of the people, hoping not to fundamentally change the system, but rather to be an integral part of it. This applies to liberals of all colors who, in fact, won’t and don’t hesitate to ignore and/or outright economically decapitate the poor and dispossessed masses of everyday Black, White, Brown, Red and Yellow people, no matter what their rhetoric espouses.

Even as conservatives and their other right wing allies seek to play on and manipulate the fears of everyday people, liberals seek to pretend that they are intrinsically somehow different. They are not. What they are is slicker - that’s all. They know full well that it is the system itself that must be fundamentally changed for the benefit of the masses of everyday people. They also know full well that superficial, window-dressing change is really no real change at all.

This is why the bloody U.S. wars, waged and directed by the corporate / military elite, continue unabated and, in fact, have intensified, with barely a peep from liberals who fancy that now they have a “black” president - mass murder, predator drone missiles, torture, extraordinary rendition, and hypocrisy abroad are just not important anymore. This is why corporate greed, mass incarceration, police brutality, home foreclosures, and the continued de facto shredding of the U.S. Constitution under the ‘Patriot Act,’ etc., are rampant here at home. But it’s okay, right? Now that there has been a superficial no change-change of over two years ago, it’s all somehow okay. It’s not okay! As James Baldwin poignantly stated, “...anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.”

Both the liberals and conservatives have “eyes,” but they resolutely choose not to look, not to see, and so they “invite their own destruction.” Liberals continue their insidious game of hypocrisy even though the fate of humankind and Mother Earth hang in the balance. Yes, “liberalism” truly is “the great disease of our society.” It is a terminal disease that needs to be confronted and removed.

Right wing politicians in this nation have traditionally been, and continue to be, blatant purveyors of big corporate greed and war; but it is the liberals who facilitate this continued cycle of insanity by way of their unabashed hypocrisy and their refusal to genuinely embrace the everyday people’s struggle for real systemic change.

In the words of Frederick Douglass, “If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning.”

There is precious little time left, and no more time at all for liberal hypocrisy. We must be about the struggle - educating, agitating, and organizing!

-###-

http://www.blackcommentator.com/417/417_kir_pain_people_share.html

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board Member, Larry Pinkney, is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, the former Minister of Interior of the Republic of New Africa, a former political prisoner and the only American to have successfully self-authored his civil/political rights case to the United Nations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In connection with his political organizing activities in opposition to voter suppression, etc., Pinkney was interviewed in 1988 on the nationally televised PBS NewsHour, formerly known as TheMacNeil/LehrerNewsHour. For more about Larry Pinkney see the book, Saying No to Power: Autobiography of a 20th Century Activist and Thinker, by William Mandel [Introduction by Howard Zinn]. (Click here to read excerpts from the book). Click here to contact Mr. Pinkney.