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Dear Bob Fitrakis---
I have just read your June 29 posting, "Blackwell, black votes and God's will in the Buckeye State."
Here is my take on Blackwell...:
First, he is a megalomaniac in the tradition of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. The French Existentialist author Franz Fanon decades ago identified and described in great detail the Freudian "projection" and "inversion" of his pathology. (See, e.g.; "Black Skins, White Masks.") While Blackwell began his political career in Cincinnati, it is clear that he long ago abandoned his constituency there for a "higher calling" known as political hypocrisy.
By being clever on such issues as demanding during the 2004 election that new voter registrations had to be done on 60-pound card stock (which our copy shop in Oxford, Ohio did not even carry!) he was "demonstrating" that he could be as corrupt as any white man. Instead of seeking to create a Consensus in a Commonweal, he is always testing the limits of illegal rulings even in the context of what amounts to a one-party state. Like certain African dictators (who arose in similar conditions---Cincinnati is, after all, among the most flagrantly segregated cities in the U.S.) Blackwell essentially considers himself above the law, and if elected governor of Ohio he will feel/know that he IS the law, like Bush. If he is elected, it would be intersting to see what he would do as governor with Bush-like "signing statements" at the Federalist state level.
Meanwhile, as someone who works in Ohio but lives in Indiana---where our Gov. Mitch Daniels (a Bush shill) has sold some of our interstates to non-U.S. corporate interests, I recognize this stategy as essentially a balloon mortgage of the public trust. A huge injection of funds into the state treasury initially, to make it appear that the budget is balanced when it is not---and a clever runaround on the state constitutional prohibition against deficit financing.
Finally, the real problem with the black vote in Ohio is that most urban blacks do not vote because they feel totally alienated from the entire political system, and well they should, because in fact they ARE excluded by a number of factors including systematic poverty and ghettoization. Blackwell seeks the Black Church vote because that is the ONLY remaining organizing force in the Black Community, given that all other alternatives were assassinated or jailed. (I know: I have a black nephew who came of age in Cincinnati, in the streets and at U of Cincy, recently obtained a law degree from IU Bloomington, now ON THE RUN FROM THE LAW!)
I AM AT LEAST AS GREEN AS YOU ARE, while if anyone other than Blackwell is to become the next Ohio Governor, he (Strickland) or you or both needs to adddress the real issues of the Black Community. I live in a small Indiana Town and I know some physics and I know how to build a solar collector on the cheap using used offset plates. In theory I have the "authority" to install these on my two-story property if I ever get my act together, while in the urban ghetto, even as this same technology may be applicable, the organizational conditions are nearly infinitely more complex (for example, getting the goddam landlord to approve putting such devices on the roof...). Let alone financing... . Let alone demo projects showing that the technology can save tenants money, etc., etc. Let alone the infinitely corrupt insurance industry!
Blackwell is sick, sick, sick, yet he is demonstrative of our times!. Alternatives to the Cheney oil/gas economy can only happen with a switch from government subsidies of that Economic Model to the Green Model.
Blackwell is a traitor to his race, but worse, to Humanity in general. Hoist him on his own petard.
I find your article very astute and wish you only the best.
DDSandage
Den
I have just read your June 29 posting, "Blackwell, black votes and God's will in the Buckeye State."
Here is my take on Blackwell...:
First, he is a megalomaniac in the tradition of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. The French Existentialist author Franz Fanon decades ago identified and described in great detail the Freudian "projection" and "inversion" of his pathology. (See, e.g.; "Black Skins, White Masks.") While Blackwell began his political career in Cincinnati, it is clear that he long ago abandoned his constituency there for a "higher calling" known as political hypocrisy.
By being clever on such issues as demanding during the 2004 election that new voter registrations had to be done on 60-pound card stock (which our copy shop in Oxford, Ohio did not even carry!) he was "demonstrating" that he could be as corrupt as any white man. Instead of seeking to create a Consensus in a Commonweal, he is always testing the limits of illegal rulings even in the context of what amounts to a one-party state. Like certain African dictators (who arose in similar conditions---Cincinnati is, after all, among the most flagrantly segregated cities in the U.S.) Blackwell essentially considers himself above the law, and if elected governor of Ohio he will feel/know that he IS the law, like Bush. If he is elected, it would be intersting to see what he would do as governor with Bush-like "signing statements" at the Federalist state level.
Meanwhile, as someone who works in Ohio but lives in Indiana---where our Gov. Mitch Daniels (a Bush shill) has sold some of our interstates to non-U.S. corporate interests, I recognize this stategy as essentially a balloon mortgage of the public trust. A huge injection of funds into the state treasury initially, to make it appear that the budget is balanced when it is not---and a clever runaround on the state constitutional prohibition against deficit financing.
Finally, the real problem with the black vote in Ohio is that most urban blacks do not vote because they feel totally alienated from the entire political system, and well they should, because in fact they ARE excluded by a number of factors including systematic poverty and ghettoization. Blackwell seeks the Black Church vote because that is the ONLY remaining organizing force in the Black Community, given that all other alternatives were assassinated or jailed. (I know: I have a black nephew who came of age in Cincinnati, in the streets and at U of Cincy, recently obtained a law degree from IU Bloomington, now ON THE RUN FROM THE LAW!)
I AM AT LEAST AS GREEN AS YOU ARE, while if anyone other than Blackwell is to become the next Ohio Governor, he (Strickland) or you or both needs to adddress the real issues of the Black Community. I live in a small Indiana Town and I know some physics and I know how to build a solar collector on the cheap using used offset plates. In theory I have the "authority" to install these on my two-story property if I ever get my act together, while in the urban ghetto, even as this same technology may be applicable, the organizational conditions are nearly infinitely more complex (for example, getting the goddam landlord to approve putting such devices on the roof...). Let alone financing... . Let alone demo projects showing that the technology can save tenants money, etc., etc. Let alone the infinitely corrupt insurance industry!
Blackwell is sick, sick, sick, yet he is demonstrative of our times!. Alternatives to the Cheney oil/gas economy can only happen with a switch from government subsidies of that Economic Model to the Green Model.
Blackwell is a traitor to his race, but worse, to Humanity in general. Hoist him on his own petard.
I find your article very astute and wish you only the best.
DDSandage
Den