Immus' Problem

He had a lot of followers but not many friends. He was a pioneer in lots of ways, way out there all alone, taking shots at whatever pleased him to shoot. He seemed to some to be a poor man's philosoper but he was all alone in this too.

He fails the test of democratic dialog as presented from Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and he does not fit with the democratic foundation of John Stuart Mill, Hume, Kant, Emerson, Bayer, Rousseau and many others – all these and their thoughts and opinions are foriegn to those of Immus.

Teachings from Moses, Jesus, Mohommed, Buddha, Ghandi, Dahli Lama, all of these and their ideals appear foreign to Immus. There is no room for any of them in his ideas.

His appeal is carefully confined to the lower class of Americans who are in debt, confused, worried and fearful of the future. These are people who don’t understand the nature of their problems and simply want someone to show them what to do without telling them to go do it. To these people he offers a target where they can focus their fearful gaze and instead of understanding the nature of the corporate cancer that is stealing their lives away, they are told to fear those who are even worse off than they are.

He is a master of inuendo. That’s what I grew up with in Mississippi: “You know what those people are like.” He belittles those whom he perceives as inferior to him and his pack, hence the “nappy-headed ho’s” comment was a typical snicker stick that his crowd could giggle over.

I see nothing positive in his entire presentation. His approach is to attack the wrong targets – for example placing blame on Snoopy Dogg Dog as being a black performer of bad rap instead of putting the blame for all of that on the marketing processes that made Mr. Dog moderately rich, and the the corporations who support him so powerfully wealthy in money and social power.

Immus seems to me to be a fundamental facist. The solutions to his problems are not to understand the nature of our problems and to work together to improve the lives of the people affected by them, but to build walls, to isolate “his people” into some “nation” that will be “pure” and will always instantly know the “proper” solution to every problem, and will obiedently serve some not yet identified powerful leader. He and his ilk are peddlers of human values for those who have none of their own. Tells people what to think instead of how to think.

Fascists always work on the people like a cook serves up Gyro’s, shaving off the outermost pieces of the lamb in that case, the population in this case, as the meat slowly turn over the fire. First the Jews, perhaps, then the homosexuals, then – like Hitler – the communists and then the gypsies, the blacks and browns don’t have to go – completely – as long as they can be subservient and helpful, Asians make a nice slice, Indians might be next, and so on. There are always people on the outside and always new people learning to slice. What’s the solution? Education is our only hope, but schools no longer educate students, so we have to teach each other. People like Immus, Limbaugh, Michael Savage and many others, take advantage of this great vacuum of knowledge, it is their home behind the baseboards of civilization.

© John Womack, 2007. All rights reserved.