The Blinding Light

Category: Movies, TV, Celebrities

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The Blinding Light

I just watched a video post of Joe Buddens discussion with DJ Vlad of Vlad TV, at Serius radio. For those of you that are not "in the technological know", an incident occurred between an acquaintance of Joe and a rapper named Ransom. The incident was recorded and posted on sites such as World Star Hip Hop, Vlad TV, and AllHipHop.com and as many digital images these days made its way to being posted on Youtube.

The video shows Ransom and members of his neighborhood journeying to the house of Joe's associate with the intent of making someone an example. It shows Ransom and his goons clearly driven to distribute retribution. It shows these men on a quest to get to someone’s house, where they feel no matter what this crazy world may present, is a safe and sacred haven. It shows them ready to disrupt what is safe and sacred.

To make a long story short, the individual the men sought after was not present. His brother opens the door and explains this to the lynch mob in front of the house he lives in. Clearly agitated, one of the men slaps the brother in his face..in the threshold of his sacred home. There are three sides to every conflict..yours, theirs, and the truth.

The men went to retaliate for an earlier incident, which was a reversal of this one. Ransom allegedly was confronted by Joe Buddens and some of his goons in front of his home..on his block..where he and his child find serenity and comfort. Ransom as many black men that have grown up in poverty stricken urban war zones, immediately and unconditionally felt the need to guard his reputation with his life. (Which just so happens to be the 3rd law in Robert Green's 48 Laws Of Power.)

After these two things went down, Joe posted a vlog in which he declared Ransom the "winner" of this conflict. He expressed how he felt nothing from nothing leaves nothing. He stated that although his declaration to concede was being given..there really was no winner. To be winners in the public's eyes would require sacrifices on both sides that would alter lives of many people directly, and indirectly. It would require bullets flying..mothers crying..and inevitably people dieing.

After being sucked into the black hole of hip hop media coverage, alot of thoughts came to me. I listened and watched being as unbias as possible. Yes, I am a Joe Buddens fan in a sense, but this was a real nigga situation that made its way to every blaring computer monitor in the world. It was something that for the people involved, does not disappear when they are logged off. While the millions of viewers of these clips move on..this scenario lingers, creeping towards a destructive culmination.

Lighting my 4th Newport, I thought of who wins in these situations..who really wins. I thought of Vlad's defense for airing the footage, which he stated was journalism. I thought of how to Vlad, feels he has hands free of blood because he washed them in a pool of society's obligation to know all that is insignificant to their own lives. I thought of how the only stories on the news that made the timeslot of 11pm to 11:10pm, where a triple shooting in my hometown, and the on going conflict in Gaza.

Who really wins? I thought of how fortunate as a person I was to have known Christopher Wallace and Tupac Shakur. How when personal beef escalated in to a fabricated war of coast. How so many voices, that to the public have no face, helped enrage two men. How there were forces that saw opportunity in controversy and conflict, and pushed the envelope until..a major motion picture of a promising young man's life cut short by violence is opening this coming week. How the other young man's voice is featured as a collaboration with a current artist, to give you the feeling that even in death..he is still here. No. No he is not.

The prospect of success and power can become a blinding light. I say that to say..it takes people and makes them ready to give and offer anything for the assurance that it will not only come to them, but grow in and with them..if only they ignore the price. When Viacom's vice president of programming discusses the line up of shows this season with BET and MTV personnel, they do not take into account the repercussions of showing Bret Michaels search for his Rock Of Love. They do not take into account showing the life of Keisha Cole's dysfunctional family finding wealth. They do not take into consideration what showing Real and Chance's buffoonery will do to susceptible impressionable minds.

The unseen people on the top don't care that John Travolta and his wife are morning the death of life they created..they only care that you get an update, and that they get ratings. Ratings equals cash..cash equals exspansion..Exspansion equals power. Who really wins? One may be able to counter that you, the viewer does. That you win because now you have more knowledge of things in your culture. That you win because now you have something else to discuss on the phone..in the car..at dinner. You have an escape from the topics that plague you.

One could say that people have the ability to decide for themselves to participate in things or not. That you have the freedom to choose the information you consume, digest and process..you know that whole, "don't shoot the messenger mentality". One could also say that if this were not what our society craved, it would be given something different. PBS wouldn't need donations. Verizon would buy commercial time on their channels instead.

But the truth is..man likes mayhem, man craves power and lots of it. It's the Darwinian Theorization at work. Money and influence have replaced clubs and spears. Money and influence provide the "green zone" for the survival and flourishing of the strongest of our race..race meaning humanity. The people in charge at AIG knew bonuses meant more than the market collapsing. Former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan knew the strong, of which he is a member, would continue to get stronger..and that collateral damage is to be disregarded. Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld knew to erase morality from their being, the minute we entered Iraq. War is young men dieing, and old men talking.

Who really wins? The reality on going is that the blinded strong have so far. The people who have chosen to give mind, body and soul over to these luminated phantoms have. The innocent bystanders and unavoidable casualties for the sake of admittance to the club have been losing. And while it can be said that somewhere in this world, there's a Tibatan monk that feels he is winning because he knows something deeper than Maybach music and Kanye's new Louis V sneaker..he doesn't have money or influence enough to start or stop a military conflict should it come to his place of serenity.

I'll leave you guys with this..we got the 700 billion dollar bailout. But there is at least 25% of that money distributed that is completely unaccounted for. And oh yeah, there is 2.5 trillion in D.O.D money that has vanished into thin air. The department in charge of accounting for the Pentagon..well that was destroyed on 911.

Who really wins...I'm out.