In The Black: Rand Paul, Roger Simon & Glenn Reynolds

"We look at slavery like its a thing of the past, but you can go to any penitentiary in this nation and you will see slavery. That was the reason for the protests by prisoners in Georgia in 2010. They said they were tired of being treated like slaves. People need to know that when they sit on trial juries and sentence people to prison time that they are sentencing them to slavery.

If a prisoner refuses to work and be a slave, they will do their time in isolation as a punishment. You have thousands of people with a lot of prison time that have no choice but to make money for the government or live in isolation. The affects of prison isolation literally drive people crazy. Who can be isolated from human contact and not lose their mind?" 

 I've been reading the letters of Ray Jasper, a black murderer who was just executed. They're part of Gawker's Death Row series.

"I am aware of the truths that Jasper writes of." 

 That one's from the victim's brother, Steven-Alejandro. These were men who understood this country, if not each other.

“Whatever you think of Rand Paul, he’s actually doing something that politicians rarely do — talking at length to audiences who don’t usually agree with him. And winning over new friends in the process.”

This is Pajamas Media's Roger Simon, being quoted favorably by Glenn Reynolds while giving us the "whatever you think of Rand Paul" routine. Paul's a man who also seems to know this country pretty darned well, but he doesn't want to talk about it. He didn't at Berkeley. Good for us, right guys?

 

 Paul discussed the NSA. He stuck to a tightly-controlled script and still came off, to me, like a delusional paranoid white supremacist twerp. Did Roger Simon hear the NSA speech - or something else?

"The country is changing. Whole new groups are ripe for the picking, most obviously the young who are being so completely raked over by the Obama administration via Obamacare and the rest of the entitlements so many of them know they will never see. They were ready to applaud at Berkeley." 

 So Simon DIDN'T hear the NSA speech. He's hearing other things. ObamaCare speeches. Speeches on entitlements. Speeches on getting scammed and "raked over". And he's hearing voices. Voices that tell him to use his PJ apparatus to publicly pump up Rand Paul, by launching into those very "social issues" Paul has said we'll have to "agree to disagree" on - by not discussing them.

But I'm chilled by Simon's phrase, "ripe for the picking," signaling, as it does, such malevolent concern. Excellent choice for a fan of Paul's reptilian charms. It's amazing how, when doing the white supremacist/white privilege thing, those on the Right can achieve a perfect pitch they fail to find with minorities.

I don't know how Simon can type while vigorously rubbing his hands together, but that's just me. He does see a power dynamic, with himself perched above, though. I wonder if Simon, like his hero Rand Paul, would have a difficult time deciding if he'd let Martin Luther King sit at a lunch counter? I know now to *duck* when such men voice their "concern":

"And African Americans — when, since the end of Jim Crow, have they done worse than under the Obama administration with its record black unemployment numbers and horrifying statistics on out-of-wedlock births in their community? Consciously or unconsciously, Democrats have been waging a 'War on Blacks' since the days of the Great Society. It’s been a disaster for African Americans, a nightmare, in truth." 

 And the guy who had Wolf Blitzer drag a statement out of him, affirming the Civil Rights Act, is going to save us? Roger Simon needs to take off that damned hat - the headband's getting too tight.

"But where are the Republicans, the party of Lincoln, on that? They should be in the black communities talking to them about it, suggesting ways to make things better. Instead, they just sit around getting annoyed when the Democrats call them racists. Play offense, not defense." 

 Look, why don't you guys cut the crap? Blacks don't have any "friends" - friends would bring us justice - not try to figure out a new way to keep us working for you. What we've got is a bunch of unthinking, insensitive, clods who still think we're desperate to hear them tell us what to do. 

Rather than being jerks, "suggesting ways to make things better", I strongly suggest you non-racists read Gawker's Death Row series. Or pick up a copy of Richard Wright's Native Son, and reacquaint yourselves with what you - and "colorblind" Rand Paul especially - are all so desperately running from.

And, by the way, social isolation from the culture you grew up in, even online - for saying exactly the cultural truths no one wants to hear - that's one of America's prisons, too…