Friday, November 10, 2017

Why Does Africa Fail?

Let's dismiss 'scientific' reasons for now.

It's too big.
It's too diverse.
There are too many different ethnicities.
There is no one single religious belief...

All those things may be true but the primary reason Africa fails is that it cannot unite.
The continent has all of the natural resources required for many of its countries to become global players on the world stage - yet they just can't seem to get their shit together.

Myanmar Gaddafi wanted to change all that.
He was dictator, sure - but hard times call for hard leaders.
His calls for a United Africa and his plan to create an African Dinar to replace the Euro and American Dollar were just too much.

But this is not an African thing.
It's not even a Black thing.
The main goal of power is to obtain even more power - by any means necessary.

Like MLK and his Poor People's Campaign - Gaddafi's concept of giving more power to the people who should actually control their local resources was a threat to the establishment's power structure.
As soon as a player can no longer be controlled, they are of no use to the owners and then they are summarily dismissed or eliminated.

Okay, this isn't really about Africa, but America.
The Democrats in particular.

The Democrat party has nothing to hold them together.
Latinx issues are not women's issues.
Women's issues are not LGBTQ issues.
LGBTQ issues are not Black issues.
And so on and so forth,...

The Republican party has something greater than hate to hold them together - they have fear.
Fear of  their White Privilege no longer entitling them to a better life than their parents.
Fear of disparate groups coming together and treating them the way they treated these groups in the past.
Fear of their hallowed institutions and beliefs becoming obsolete.
Fear, is the strongest tool in Trump's repertoire.

Race, in many cases, doesn't matter.
Obama won the election because he promised 'hope'.
People recognized that the country was broken and Obama (as a perceived outsider) was just the man to fix it.
But a president is not a dictator and Obama's hope did not translate to action.
Sure, Obama bailed out the banks,
but he should have bailed out the people.
Sure the stock market improved, but people's bank accounts didn't.
Sure, we had a Black man in the country's highest office,
but this didn't help the Black man in the hood.
Obama proved to be the safe bet for the elites.
(And I have no problem with the elites - I aspire to be one one day.)

As soon as Americans begin to focus on the good of all (even those different from ourselves) and not the illusion of a two-party system - maybe then we will be able to get things done.
As soon as we can put our petty differences aside and begin to focus on what's really important to each individual (Abortion rights, Gay Marriage, or whatever... I don't have dogs in those fights so they're not divisive or definitive issues for me.), maybe then things will change for the better.

Trump is not the answer.
Trump is the new dog with the same fleas and I expect nothing to change for the better.
The real agent of change will represent the little people - all of the little people - and he'll create real problems for the establishment.
Then again, the real change agent will probably be assassinated.



2 comments:

CNu said...

The Qutb holds back for fear of his loved ones being made to suffer.

brohammas said...

We need a pragmatic party. One that has in its charter, the pursuit of effective solutions to systematic and every day problems.