Monday, July 29, 2019

THE BALTIMORE TWEET: NOT RACIST.

ICHEOKU says does not think that the president's tweet concerning the Congressman from Baltimore, Elijah Cummings, is racist; nor did he tweet it with racism on his mind. It is only that people have mastered the art of attacking the messenger, rather than addressing the message in order to parry away issues which they would rather not discuss nor engage in. A very distractive, change the subject, ploy and approach to issues; a readily available clever tool in the hands of politicians, who are often times averse to being called out and would do whatever it takes to change the subject. The issue should have been whether the president's tweet was true that the Congressman's district is in a parlous condition and not that the president said it, needless to turn it into a racial issue. 

Probably, Baltimoreans, especially their politicians, were mad that the president brought a global attention to the squalid state of affairs in their city and publicly shamed them. They would rather nobody knew the actual state of affairs in their city and it being made so public by President Donald John Trump put them in a bad light, as another failed liberal city of America. Their angst was not because what the president tweeted was not true; otherwise they have since invited the media to walk them through the neighborhoods. It was not also because the president falsely accused Baltimorean Congressman Elijah Cummings; either. The appalling state of Baltimore has been previously highlighted by Bernie Sanders, Baltimore Sun newspapers as well as the New York Times. The president merely added his voice to it and because his voice has a global reach and everybody has now come to know about it, they are crying blue murder.  

A corrigible city government and its politicians would have taken a lesson from the president's tweet and try and fix their broken city; and even asked the president to help them with money to fix their city. This is where the Congressman would have come in and use his Congressional position to plead with the president for federal dollars to help lift his Congressional district. But no, they hate the president; hence everything that comes from the president, even if otherwise ordinarily beneficial, must be castigated and put in a dump and branded racist. Then you ask yourself what is racist in telling a Congressman to first take care of his district before pretending that illegal immigrants at the Southern border are not being treated well enough or has it tougher than impoverished American citizens who live in his district. 

Afterall, it was the Congressman who claimed that no human beings should be allowed to live like those illegal immigrants, while hundreds of thousands of poor African Americans and other down on their luck Americans live in far worse conditions than those illegal immigrants; begging the question, why does the Congressman's' charity not begin from home. But he is a politician and politicians are all about posturing and he wanted his moment in the sun by badgering the Border patrol head at his committee's hearing. Americans were shocked to see the Congressman's tone of admonishment, particularly when he said that people don't have to live that way, whereas millions of Americans, are living worse than that way, including in his own Baltimore Congressional district. as well. 

A point which nobody needs to go searching too far in order to see, such that ICHEOKU considers it scandalous that America will be parading its generosity abroad when millions of its own citizens are living in worse conditions than those foreigners which their country is often helping abroad. All it takes is a travel through the inner cities of America, the Midwest, the Appalachian, as well as the gutted Ross belt and some shocking levels of poverty will be staring one on the face. Yet, these forgotten Americans are killing themselves daily due to despondency, overdosing on drugs, committing suicides with guns and whatever they can find to end their lives, but their government is in Washington DC pretending that all is well; and that they have money to be helping other countries while their own citizens are in such a perilous state; and with great incredulity as to what happened to their own American dream, which has since turned into a nightmare. 

ICHEOKU says may be one of the ways to control immigration is for America to start showing its poor people and their impoverished neighborhoods to the world, as it will surely deter immigrants craving a shot at the American dream. The logic will be so easily discernible - if American citizens are this impoverished, why bother coming over. But no, a country of camera, lights and action, would like to showcase only the good, while intentionally forgetting the bad and the ugly. This is incentivizing the out of control immigration, which thus makes America's inner city citizens to be out competed  by more hungry immigrants who readily take the jobs which they would have been doing and for far too less a wage, thus compounding an already bad situation. 

But the president must not be allowed to air it and when he does, a deflection of racism is thrown into the mix just to keep the lid over the situation and you wonder whether this situation will ever be resolved or solved. It is a vicious circle and there is apparently a conspiracy of silence around it, the reason all these people are now hollering racism because they do not want the world to know what the real situation is actually in America. 

ICHEOKU says if Congressman Elijah Cummings must be angry, he should first be angry at the state of affairs of impoverished American citizens, particularly those who call his district home and thereafter, he can look at those illegal immigrants at the Southern border. But he got the whole situation wrong when he forsook his primary constituents who are living in squalor and became an advocate for illegal immigrants. This is the issue that needs to be discussed and not whether a presidential tweet was racist because it was not. The president only drew attention to the Congressman's misplaced priority and many in his congressional district agree with the president that the Congressman got it all mixed up, as they too could use some help from the government in order to improve their living conditions. Such a calling out is not racism by any definition, no matter how widened.

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