Written in 1994, some things change or do they really?

©1994 M. Bennett Hooper

Robert Kaplan in his soon to be published book, “The Coming Anarchy” lends credence to an age old philosophical view of Pliny (23-79AD) who quoted an ancient Greek saying “Ex Africa semper aliquid novi” (Out of Africa always comes something new). This seems apropos as we venture to look at what the coming years may portend for mankind in the twenty-first century.

Using West Africa as his model Kaplan posits how scarcity, crime, overpopulation, tribalism and disease are rapidly destroying the social fabric of our planet. It seems only fitting that from the continent which is the cradle from which mankind began, man’s demise or reformation as a social animal is most discernable. Kaplan characterizes the cities of West Africa at night as without gasoline for their vehicles. (**ATLANTIC MONTHLY, FEBRUARY 1994 pp44-45). The article continued to state that in Sierra Leone, young men who took power confiscated all of the official vehicles, I.e. Mercedes, Volvos, and BMW’s and wrecked them on the roads. One of the coup’s leaders Solomon Anthony Joseph according to an African minister (politico) shot the people who had paid for his schooling; “In order to erase the humiliation and mitigate the power his middle-class sponsors held over him.

If this scenario sounds familiar in urban America we can but look towards its’ origins. Any society in which large numbers of people lack power, employment, safety, adequate food, housing, and sub0standard education, historically have resorted to tribalism (READ RACISM) and then anarchy. The African continent and its native inhabitants have been raped, pillaged, and robbed of its’ natural resources, peoples, and their history for so long that many of its’ people lacking knowledge of their history and receiving periodic and fleeting glimpses of what they perceive to be a rich outer world are in a stat of rebellion. WHEN REBELS CANNOT STRIKE OUT AT POWERS THEY ENVISION AS INSURMOUNTABLE THEY SELF DESTRUCT.

Europeans the erst while copiers of original civilization stand at the same cross road. Sabers are being sharpened all over the world while politicians meet and talk of peace and too many people in industrialized nations bask in the fallacy of conducting BUSINESS AS USUAL.

While the stop gap approach to the solution of crime in the cities and throughout the country spurs the increase in jail house construction , it does nothing to affect a change in the fortunes of thousands, some of whom prefer meaningful employment to survivalist deployment. CORRECTIONS SHOULD SPRING FROM MEANINGFUL DECARCERATION . INCARCERATION has not proven to be a deterrent to crime. Grass roots interviews with former inmates illustrate that our penal system provides little rehabilitative successes other than providing many with advanced degrees in criminality. (FEW MALCOLM’S ARE RETURNING IF ANY) What is happening in Africa is prophetically and categorically happening in America. When a large number of people in our society namely Black males are abandoned and deemed worthless, and expendable it should not come as a surprise that they would become the new army of anarchists.

In assessing some of the conditions which give rise to anarchistic states we do not condone anarchy in America or abroad. We are only making an observation. THIS DISCLAIMER IS NECESSITATED BY THE TENDENCY OF SOME READERS TO INTERPRET AN INTENTION INCORRECTLY AS A PREMISE.

MY SOLE INTENT IS THE ERADICATION OOF THE POWER OF INSTITUTUINALIZED CONCEPTS OF RACIAL SUPERIORITY ANDINFERIORITY. LET THE CHIPS FALL WHERE THEY MAY. IT DOES NOT MATTER WHO WORSHIPS AT THE ALTARS OF IGNORANCE AND STUPIDITY WHEN THOSE RITUALS ERADICATE AND ENTIRE SPECIES…NAMELY HUMANKIND. WHEN OUR MEN HIDEOUR WOMEN MUST LEARN TO FIGHT. SAVE THE SPECIES!! MY BLOOD CLOTH LAYS BEFORE MY DOOR. WHERE IS YOURS? ISN’T IT TIME WE STOPPED EATING OUR CHILDREN!