The Mason Missile, November 26, 2016

by John O. Mason, The Mason Missile, November 26, 2016

Greetings, and happy holidays!

Yes, I am over the shock of the reality of Donald trump becoming the next president of the United States, keeper of the nuclear codes, leaders of the “free world.” How did it come to this? Was Trump really the avatar for change he made himself out to be?

Donald Trump-a billionaire (as far as we know) real-estate tycoon who inherited the business from his father (who discriminated against minorities renting is apartments; who used his father’s connections to attain deferments from the draft for Viet Nam; who has insulted almost every one of the “other” demographic groups-Mexicans, Muslims, the physically handicapped; who acts like women are his playthings to just grab wherever he chooses; who offered simple sound-bite rhetoric to complicated foreign policy issues, like the civil war in Syria; who joined the ‘birther” crusade that said Obama was not born in this country; who, in spite of his “protectionist” talk on trade, had his brand of ties made in China, his brand of clothing made in Mexico, and the furniture for his hotels made in Turkey.

Now, barring a miracle in the Electoral College, he will be our President, the face we have to show the world who and what we are as a people. Is it anything to be proud of?

The Trump campaign has brought out of the woodwork the racism in this country, against African-Americans, Asian-descended people, Muslims, Jews, and LGBT people-swastikas sprayed on walls, arson fires in churches, taunts of kids in schools, and physical assaults. How can we tell kids that bullying and terrorizing minority kids is wrong, when they see the President of the United States do it and get away with it?

Racism, long confined to such code works as “inner city” or “law and order,” has returned into the political mainstream, due to Trump’s campaign….

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The E-newsletter of John Oliver Mason, July 5, 2015

Greetings! I hope everyone has had a good holiday weekend.

Recently, we have had events showing how far we have to go in this country towards truly fulfilling democracy for everyone in this country, even after nearly 240 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. One is the shooting in Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in June, resulting in the deaths of nine parishioners, including the Reverend Clementa Pinckney, the church’s pastor and State Senator; also the Reverend DePayne Middleton-Doctor, Cynthia Hurd, Tywanza Sanders, Myra Thompson, 59; Ethel Lance, Susie Jackson, the Reverend Sharonda Singleton, and the Reverend Daniel Simmons Sr. May their memories be a blessing.

The shooter was Dylann Storm Roof, a 21-year-old consumer of racist internet propaganda. I got the sense his acts were racially motivated when we saw the pictures of him in his jacket with the flags of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and of South Africa in the apartheid era. His website sowed him burning the US flag and holding the Confederate “battle flag”, which was really the flag of the Army of Northern Virginia in the Civil War, commanded by General Robert E. Lee.

As he was shooting, Roof was alleged to yell, “You rape our women and you’re taking over our country! You’ll have to go!” In his website which he called “The Last Rhodesian” a hat tip to another racist regime), Roof wrote of how we received information about racial issues from the Council of Conservative Citizens, which comes from the White Citizens Councils of the ‘sixties-the “uptown Klan,” the respectable business and professional people who used economic and political pressure to keep whites from deviating against the old “Jim Crow” segregation order.

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John Mason, The Mason Missile, December 21, 2014

Greetings! I bid everyone a happy and prosperous new year, for ourselves as individuals, and as a nation. We could do with it, since our nation is still mired in racism and class division.

During the ‘seventies, the media available to me, such as Reader’s Digest and Time, told us that racism was over in this country, after the Civil Rights movement, and African-American people no longer suffer discrimination.

To me, it’s an exercise of saying “We don’t want to deal with it anymore.” Our political-social-economic elite (and their media) don’t want to deal with racism, they don’t want to bring about peace and reconciliation between the dominant white group and non-white peoples-except, of course, to use racial hatred as a political propaganda tool; using racial stereotypes, like “welfare queen,” “urban crime,” to infuriate whites; and our elites, working through the government they supposedly despise, cuts taxes on corporations and allows said corporations to close down factories and set up factories in poorer nations.

This way, workers are unemployed, taxes are fewer for local governments to collect, and such services as police, fire, schools, highways, etc., cannot be paid for and so have to be cut back on and become diminished in quality. And the conservative “private-sector” advocates tout the “free market” as a the cure-all to reduced government services-privatize schools, liquor stores (in Pennsylvania), Social Security, water companies, prisons, you name it.

The Mason Missile, November 24, 2014

by John Mason

Greetings! Yes, I was disappointed at the Republican takeover of the Senate and the retention of the “House of Representatives”–some members being wholly-owned subsidiaries of corporate interests.

From what I understand, though, this would be a false victory for the Republican right-wing tea-party element; the reality is seeping in about gerrymandering of congressional districts, voter ID suppression efforts, and voter apathy.

We have to understand that this IS the only government we have, it DOES run our country and DOES affect our quality of life. The libertarian fantasy of being by yourself and the corporations running everything is an illusion; we don’t live by ourselves, we ARE indeed dependent on each other.

One of the favorite conservative propaganda lines is “You can’t have the government do everything for you.” That’s not the point; the point is, WHO is the government working for? What government functions are the conservatives objecting to?

From the actions of the Reagan administration to today, the targets for “cutting waste in government spending” and “fighting excessive regulation” have been food stamps, occupational safety and health (OSHA), environmental protection (EPA), civil rights, health insurance, school lunches, to name a few. But military spending and the police state? No problem there.

The aforementioned programs came not from the generosity of the federal government, but after long and hard struggles by dedicated activists, working from the neighborhoods and streets, to have the federal government listen to the people, listen to the plight of workers, farmers, women, and distressed minorities, and not to be owned by the corporations…

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