When I was a little kid, loyalty and partnership were not expressed terms amongst my friends. These were the unwritten rules that we operated on, and when broken always led to someone getting punched or body slammed. We were all taught turn the other cheek, but we all failed that class because getting some “get back” was far more important than asking “what would Jesus do” in that moment. In those cases where a bully tried to intimidate friends one by one, he got his ass kicked by the group. Anyone in the group that showed a bit too much fear was looked at as soft or whatever. Depending on that kid’s overall temperament they’d get a pass or a whole lot of shade thrown their way. Don’t blame me, these are the rules. 

A Little Background

Africa as a continent has been thoroughly raped by European nations and the United States over the last 600 years. You can’t step foot on the continent without feeling even a little bit of the fall out of colonialism. Gold, diamonds, and humans were the prize before, now it’s other natural resources and minerals…plus gold, and diamonds. Humans, not so much, but trafficking in Africa is still pretty bad to the tune of 3 to 4 million people annually. However, many of them are being abused by people they know, to do work for the colonizing parties. So it still kinda comes back to the original point there. That said, it’s more of the same really, just colonial ventriloquism. 

Real Talk

The U.S. is not known for true diplomacy. In my opinion, it is backhanded diplomacy, or that shady shit you know isn’t genuine. It’s like our Government is telling other places “OK, I see you with your little country, trying to get money” with the little shoulder bop and fake smile to match. For those in the dark on this…no matter how nice a compliment is, the term “I see you” with the insertion of “little” means whatever comes next is shade. The few exceptions would be a little baby or dog…even then the compliment is gonna be partly cloudly. Anyway, the diplomacy we give comes by way of appeasing or giving just enough to maintain current conditions, but never enough to improve conditions unless it can be immediately capitalized on. 

Injuries and Insults

For all of my early years, I saw the WORST images of Africa on my tv. Just about every weekend I saw Sally Struthers asking for what was considered chump change even for poor people, to help these kids with flies on their faces and swollen bellies. She’d walk through these villages, well fed, over dressed and rich, giving this disrespectful, yet emotional plea for a few fucking quarters to buy rice for starving kids. To be fair, she did the same thing to poor Asian people as well. This led to too many people in America having this colonialist savior complex that doing barely anything was equivalent to changing their lives…and doing barely anything in essence was more than enough. Not just the United States though, the UK, France, Australia, and the wealthier parts of Europe did the same shit. 

Take a few moments to think of “The West” as a unified group and just freestyle a few of the clear injustices you can think of over the last 50 years forced upon people that are not considered The West. Those places combined see our place as the bully whose ass needs to be beaten. Back in the day, the UK was the face of the bully, now it’s the US, which means even though I’m the descendant of slaves, and technically a victim of the system, I have to deal with it too. Imagine that shit! Better yet imagine this…you’ve watched Sally Struthers strut her big ass through your village for 20 years and her efforts to help yield 3 metric tons of dry rice, but no means of cooking it, clean water to boil it in, dish to eat it from, table to eat it at or anything meaningful to help you maintain without her bullshit assistance. That’s US…the U.S. as it pertains to these places.

When Racism Goes Wrong

There’s another guy out there that was bullied for decades but then, thanks to the racism and shade thrown by Richard Nixon, they came up instead. The U.S. tried to (and successfully did) begin exploiting China. Tricky Dick walked in “Oh OK, I see you with your little factories and these little people working them for $3 per week”. He turns to all of the White businessmen that would listen “no need to produce those Knick knacks here for $2 per hour when we can just fuck these people over who are glad to do it for $2 per week”. The greedy businessmen in unison said, “fuckin A, I’m in” and slowly transitioned middle class jobs to exploited labor positions over seas. The profit was like cocaine, and with every bump they closed a production facility. Next thing you know, you can’t go to ANY store without something in it coming from China. Walmart slaps on the United States flag stickers and they do their “We stand with people in trailers” because they’re selling the cheap stuff produced in China that led to these folks not being able to afford much more than a trailer in the first place. Magically the GOP convinced all of those people that it was because of Blacks and Mexicans, and they believe it.

When The Oppressed Make Deals

Here we are now, China is a world power, larger than most of the people that raped them and hungry for some get back. Now, they’re using actual diplomacy with other nations still recovering from this unwanted Western penis they just took. They’re in Africa helping them to build infrastructure, building means of production there. China was doing the same thing in Afghanistan before the Taliban stormed back into power. However, their investment strategy of diplomacy means they are still profiting from the Afghan oil fields right now. Hmm, with all this good strategy, I wondered what Chinese-Palestinian relations looked like before reading this I assumed good. Wouldn’t you know I was right.

Our forefathers and captors had it wrong. The current Western political leaders have it wrong too. A basic level of respect and genuine assistance to those in need is the ONLY way those below do not return an ass whooping when they’re eventually above. This world has worked in some crazy ways, and we’ve seen dynasties rise and fall. Very few of those places rose and fell in a short period of time. Usually it takes societies some time to forget humility and respect…but the Greeks, Egyptians, Chinese, Indians, Persians, and probably thousands more through history have learned when it was too late. Greed and ambition become a deadly elixir for all that take it in excess. In the likely event that you do take too much though, it’s better to have a lot of people friendly towards you, versus those that want you to suffer.