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Joseph Kony Is Still At Large and It’s all My Fault

I generally like to reserve Friday posts for frivolity, but I have been requested to give my view on KONY2012. Please brace yourself for a rant.

Let’s call Joseph Kony what he is: a narcissist, a pedophile and a terrorist. Virtually unchecked, Joseph Kony has been carrying out his campaign of terror against innocent African civilians in Uganda, Sudan and the DRC since 1986. He and his goons have destroyed hundreds of thousands of lives, raped countless numbers of women and girls, and ripped families apart. His tools are his power of persuasion, and that failing, the barrel of the gun. For over 20 years, this one man – who in interviews described himself as God Almighty – has maimed, pillaged and burned the homes and bodies of innocents while the world twiddled their thumbs.

Now comes this #stopkony / KONY2012 campaign, spearheaded by a group of white kids who hail from California. Their singular focus lies in the capture and conviction of Joseph Kony by the end of this year. And God bless them for it.

Can I speak plainly, reader? I am SO SICK of Black people and their twisted dogma concerning the “White Savior” Syndrome. Oh, you haven’t heard of it? It’s the belief in certain circles of the Black Intelligencia that because Black folk can’t do for themselves, White people have to come in and do for them, or more specifically, solve our problems for us. In the case of Joseph Kony in particular, one rather prolific individual on twitter summed up the KONY2012 (and implied White savior Campaign) movement by saying “the world exists simply to satisfy the needs – including, importantly, the sentimental needs – of white people and Oprah”. Prior to that, he says that “the white savior supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evenings.” This message has been retweeted quite a few times on Twitter, and I do see why. At first glance, this all sounds very witty and well thought out until you think about it, at which point you grasp your head and shout:

Oh My GOD, Black people!!

We decry any effort to stereotype and homogenize us as a race, and then we turn around and do the same thing to white people? Just stop and think. Look at the world around you. The vast majority of people who identify with the Occupy Wall Street Movement are WHITE. The people that they are on a crusade AGAINST are WHITE. How then can we lump all white people together as saying they fund our brutal policies and then swoop in to try and save us from them? It’s an insipid argument, and one that must cease immediately, for it makes us look foolish. How would you react to the assertion that sh*t and chocolate share the same properties, simply because both are brown? Exactly.

All these Africans, sitting at home behind your laptops and your Black Berries, carrying on about how White people will not leave us to our own devices: You all make me SICK. If the victims of Joseph Kony’s terrorist acts were the children of MPs and businessmen, he would have been disposed of long ago. If Joseph Kony expanded his reach into the streets of Pretoria and was brutalizing young white South African children, I wager that there wouldn’t be a jungle dense enough to conceal him. If the people he was killing and raping were of “value”, African governments would ferret him out! If Joseph Kony’s campaign was preventing Chinese “investment” in the areas he is currently pillaging, there would be a special force unit whose only job was to secure his capture.

Here’s the rub. The only people at fault for not bringing Kony in is AFRICANS. What I’m about to say is an “oversimplification” of events, but I don’t have time to give anyone a history lesson, because you’re intelligent enough to do your own research.

We got our independence. We’ve since elected leaders whose only goal for their positions is to rule for life. Africa is not poor, but these leaders exacerbate the image and façade of poverty in order to garner foreign aid, much of which they pocket for themselves and their cronies. They then leave the reviled common man to fend for himself, providing just enough of the very basics in terms of public facilities to give the illusion of a working developing city. Joseph Kony lives in this barely bourgeoning East African city. He goes to public school and is an altar boy, perhaps he’s been sexually assaulted by a priest, perhaps not, I don’t know. But at some point he has a psychotic break because he thinks he’s God. Somehow he gets a hold of some uniforms and some guns, and armed with scripture he decides he’s going to establish a theocratic state based on the Ten Commandments. Somehow, “thou shalt not kill” escapes him, but that’s only a minor detail. He pursues his dream of molesting little kids and eating their parents anyway.

Oh Black people. You like to complain and criticize. But where is the action, eh?? Why are we not staging sit- ins at our Ghanaian embassies around the world, demanding that OUR president take a firm stance on Kony until he’s captured. Why are Nigerians, Gambians and Kenyan’s not doing the same? Why are we not speaking out until our voices are impossible to ignore? Here’s a better question: Why did an AFRICAN not start the Kony2012 campaign? It’s because you people care, yes, but you don’t care enough

When the Save Darfur campaign was at its height, who did we see out on the Washington Mall at those rallies? White students! There was a sprinkling of Blacks here and there, but not en masse as it should have been. These are our brothers and sisters after all!

As a continent, we are guided by fear and mistrust of each other, and it is reflected in the leadership we appoint to govern us. We have few visionaries, and fewer leaders with balls. By the time we have a Laurent Gbagbo refusing to step down after losing an election, there is no appealing to the better side of such a man. He HAS no better side. So what did our ECOWAS leadership do? They threatened military action against him, but it was all talk, as usual. Gbagbo was not ousted until the French intervened. Was this a White Savior Complex? Hardly. It was yet another manifestation of Pervasive Black Apathy.

All this chatter about the group Invisible Children, heh? Instead of talking about the “damage” this video has done, has anyone given as much energy into discussing how to bring this man to justice? Why is Uganda now pointing at what the video has done “wrong” instead of discussing what they themselves have been doing wrong these last 26 years? MSTEW!!! If you really want to make a difference on the continent, stop sitting on your Black asses and bitching about what White people are doing. We have film makers. We have photographers. We have WRITERS. Any of these people could have brought attention to this issue, which is not a new one. Lisa Ling did a report on Joseph Kony is 2006! But just like the short lived outrage over blood diamonds, that too escaped our consciousness. Stop knocking people for caring.

Oh Black people. You like to complain and criticize. But where is the action, eh?? Why are we not staging sit- ins at our Ghanaian embassies around the world, demanding that OUR president take a firm stance on Kony until he’s captured. Why are Nigerians, Gambians and Kenyan’s not doing the same? Why are we not speaking out until our voices are impossible to ignore? Here’s a better question: Why did an AFRICAN not start the Kony2012 campaign? It’s because you people care, yes, but you don’t care enough

When the Save Darfur campaign was at its height, who did we see out on the Washington Mall at those rallies? White students! There was a sprinkling of Blacks here and there, but not en masse as it should have been. These are our brothers and sisters after all!

As a continent, we are guided by fear and mistrust of each other, and it is reflected in the leadership we appoint to govern us. We have few visionaries, and fewer leaders with balls. By the time we have a Laurent Gbagbo refusing to step down after losing an election, there is no appealing to the better side of such a man. He HAS no better side. So what did our ECOWAS leadership do? They threatened military action against him, but it was all talk, as usual. Gbagbo was not ousted until the French intervened. Was this a White Savior Complex? Hardly. It was yet another manifestation of Pervasive Black Apathy.

All this chatter about the group Invisible Children, heh? Instead of talking about the “damage” this video has done, has anyone given as much energy into discussing how to bring this man to justice? Why is Uganda now pointing at what the video has done “wrong” instead of discussing what they themselves have been doing wrong these last 26 years? MSTEW!!! If you really want to make a difference on the continent, stop sitting on your Black asses and bitching about what White people are doing. We have film makers. We have photographers. We have WRITERS. Any of these people could have brought attention to this issue, which is not a new one. Lisa Ling did a report on Joseph Kony is 2006! But just like the short lived outrage over blood diamonds, that too escaped our consciousness. Pick a side. Either be a part of the problem or be an agent for the solution, but for God’s sake stop knocking people for caring.

 

STOP!!!

Do NOT press “Comment”

As of March 11th,  we are playing a little game called “Get off My Comments section”. In this game, everyone STOPS commenting on this Kony2012 issue (on my blog anyway), puts all that energy into promoting the causes that they are passionate about, creates a viral video and sits back to watch the fruits of that labor grow. Okay?  Don’t be a spoiled sport.

The game starts NOW!