We are in conflicting times and I am constantly contradicting myself regarding thoughts on policies, our nation, our South and our everything else. Like the stuff people pass off as art, I just writing what is on my mind, which reflects haywire things happening today. You are truly a blog assassin and those who enter a philosophical debate with you will find themselves in bad shape—like the guy who goes bear hunting with a switch.

The mix comments are an attempt to gleam the positive and negative aspects of any leaders’ actions. On some level, I am prepping for the negative folks who want to shoot down everything the next White House does just because they don’t like losing power. If moderates gave the previous presidents a fair chance, liberals and conservatives should do the same for the president-elect.

Yes, some new voters are so ill-informed that they think the Republicans currently control the Congress but hey, I welcome their civic involvement. These same voters will quickly learn that Obama is not the fix all for everything from tooth decay to sick yaks in Mongolia.

A charismatic leader like Kennedy, Reagan and FDR must appeal to the nation to “ask not what this…..” In fairness, I think McCain and Obama attempted to help the citizens know that the road ahead would be difficult and long.

Typically when you mix in positive comments about ‘Evil Bush’ in the same article in which you are critical of a “protected Black” you open yourself up to attack.

You did so with both Toni Morrison and Barack Obama.

As painful as it is to see our people behave as they do as if some savior has come upon them – this is a necessary phase. Not that anything magical will come about them but instead because certain fantastical notions will be evaporated.

I noted this past summer while sitting in an airport the day after the Philadelphia police had beaten 3 Black suspects in view of a camera from a helicopter (I will refrain from extra commentary regarding their having earned the beating or not) I watched as a Black mayor and a Black police chief were on national news having to represent the actions of the officers who they command. While the dawn of Black elected leadership is imagined by some to be the dawn of a new day – to the Black people suffering the same abuses from the people at their command – getting your butt whipped by police men commanded by Black leadership is little different than if that leadership was White.

I believe that after this period of time – and we indeed are living through some tumultuous times – the Black community will be changed for the better. Not because Obama is going to ride through the ghetto with an asphalt paving machine, redoing our streets with gold nuggets but because having “risen to the top” and YET STILL the basic problems persisting —— our community will be looking for WHAT’S NEXT.

I will speak for myself with the label “Black conservative” and not make assumptions about you – but at this time there is going to be a need for ALTERNATIVE VOICES that challenge the Black Political machine FROM WITHIN. This will be the difference between Blacks who are drunk with power, despite the continued problems within our community versus Blacks who are more committed to addressing the original reasons that our people took to the streets for political activism.

The reason why you see the behavior that you do see is due to a VOID that is present. Absent the ability to define and construct LOGISTICAL plans and methodologies to get from your present state to your transformed state you become susceptible to mysticism. You put your faith in MAN rather than a system that rationally can take you from your present state to where you need to be. This is a system that ASKS OF YOU rather than rains down upon you.

I say that as a man who is sore presently from having adopted a new exercise regiment that in 90 days promises to have me lose the weight that I want to. The key difference between this program and the “Audacity of Hope” is the repetition and action that are defined, with the hopes that I will transform my sedentary ways and my eating habits.

The job of you and I as social critics is to wrest control from those who have UNCHALLENGED influence upon our people and get our people to, ironically, recommit to what we set out to achieve rather than what they have been drawn into following which has not worked.