The Mason Moment with John Oliver Mason

I speak on social and political issues, calling them as I see them. I speak today about the decision by the Alabama Supreme Court on frozen embryos, and the movement towards theocracy in this country.

The Mason Moment, February 25, 2024

Greetings, Americans! We have reached the end of African-American History Month, set aside to honor the history of African-descended people in our country-a history that has long been slandered and distorted, for the basest political purposes. Ever since the end of the Civil War, and the giving-up on Reconstruction in the former Confederacy (which led, albeit briefly, to the empowerment, economically and politically, of the former slaves), historians, learned men in some of the most respected universities, helped to propagate the myth of the “Lost Cause—” that the Confederacy was at war to defend their “states’ rights” (for what?) and that such Confederate military commanders as Lee, Jackson, and Jefferson Davis were valiant warrior chiefs, and that the slaves were perfectly happy in their slavery and loved ole massah, and that Reconstruction was a monument of corruption and rule by bestial, ignorant ex-slaves. Historians, and many other influencers of the post-Civil war era—a period of “free-market” capitalism at its worst, with politicians on company payrolls, wealth flouted in the people’s faces, and grinding poverty—went along with the “lost cause” idea, calling it “binding the nation’s wounds,” but the attitude was more like “we don’t want to deal with it anymore;” and the federal troops, once utilized to police the post-war South, were sent to fire upon workers striking against their terrible pay and working conditions. A great source for reading on Reconstruction is Eric Foner’s Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution; I highly recommend it. (https://www.harpercollins.com/products/reconstruction-updated-edition-eric-foner?variant=32116709523490) There have been in our history efforts to control how such events as the Civil War and Reconstruction are taught and presented to school kids. The United Daughters of the Confederacy, founded in 1894, led the way in altering the memory of that era, as memories were fading. They called for the construction of monuments in honor of Confederate leaders, and they demanded local school boards not purchase history books that were “unjust” to the South. (https://www.vox.com/videos/2017/10/25/16545362/southern-socialites-civil-war-history) Monuments, statues, and school textbooks are prime propaganda tools; they tell the kids, the future leaders, who their heroes were, what to believe was just, and whom to emulate. the classroom is just one more medium of acceptable propaganda. The film The Birth Of A Nation (1915), considered at one level to be a cinematic masterpiece, was also part of the “lost cause” movement, portraying Klansmen as valiant defenders of white women, protecting them from bestial freedmen; this film was one of the prime motivators of the founding of the 20th century Ku Klux Klan. (https://www.atlantahistorycenter.com/blog/the-connection-between-the-united-daughters-of-the-confederacy-and-the-kkk/) This idea was helped along with the help of academia at the time; in the late-19th-early-20th centuries, two “scholars” based in Columbia University—William A Dunning and John W. Burgess—developed what became known as the Dunning-Burgess school of the history of Reconstruction, which stated that the South under Black governance was a disaster to the South (the WHITE South), and that the former slaves were to childlike and emotional to govern, and the end of reconstruction was to them a blessing, the passing of a “disastrous” era. (https://slaveryexhibits.ctl.columbia.edu/exhibits/show/williamdunning/columbia-and-johnburgess) This shows that popular beliefs and prejudices could influence scholarship, and “learned” professors could be influenced by racism. Slowly but surely, the Dunning-Burgess theory has been challenged, and leading this challenge was the scholar WEB Du Bois, with his history Black Reconstruction (http://www.webdubois.org/wdb-BlackReconst.html) (https://libcom.org/article/black-reconstruction-america-web-du-bois) ; Du Bois contends that rather than being a total disaster, reconstruction was a positive movement for the freedmen AND poor whites; who if combined would be able to challenge the dominant economic powers of that era—southern planters and northern capitalists. In short, race did NOT have to be the great dividing line in this country; white and black workers and low-income people COULD unite to defend against the financial powers that still seek to pit us against each other, so they can remain in power; I still hold out hope that such unity is attainable. Now, for example in Florida, the teaching of African-American History is a political battleground, with their genius governor declaring “war on woke” and policing the teaching of Black History, and resisting the horrible, terrible, very bad, no-good thing that is (gasp!) CRITICAL RACE THEORY! (https://www.reuters.com/world/us/florida-proudly-teaches-african-american-history-official-says-he-defends-2023-01-21/) Governor Deshithead also has the audacity to declare that slaves, during their enslavement, acquired skills that they could utilize for their benefit. This movement by the state, under the so-called “Stop WOKE S Act,” bill also tries to deemphasize white privilege, and tries to prevent white people, particularly school kids, from “guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress” over what their ancestors did. Remember, these are the same damn people who have no trouble terrorizing transgender or gay kids, or allowing racism to run amuck in this country, and who mock concerned people as “snowflakes,” and NOW they don’t want to hurt white people’s feelings. (https://www.politico.com/news/2023/07/20/florida-black-history-teaching-standards-00107067) (Do I HAVE to mention it again? Critical Race Theory is really—pay attention now—the theory of how racism has permeated every aspect of American life, like the judiciary, the financial-corporate sector, government, law enforcement, AND education and academia. I’ll keep repeating this for as long as I have to.) (As for “woke,’ it has a long tradition in African-American culture; “woke” meant to pay attention to what’s going on around you, especially dealing with white authority figures; then it moved on to mean having consciousness about social and economic issues. Marcus Garvey, founders of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), once proclaimed, “Wake up, Ethiopia! Wake up, Africa!” Later, during the case of the Scottsboro Boys, Huddie “Leadbelly” Ledbetter , wrote a protest song on the case, which was of nine young Black men accused of raping two white women in 1931. Ledbetter, at the end of the song, warned, “So I advise everybody, be a little careful when they go along through there (Alabama)—best stay woke, keep your eyes open.” (https://www.vox.com/culture/21437879/stay-woke-wokeness-history-origin-evolution-controversy) THESE are the gatekeepers of our education—racial and religious haters who refuse to accept people not like them as full-fledged citizens and human beings. But it’s not at all hopeless; the Republicans, being infested with the trump-MAGA virus, and home for the haters, have been soundly defeated in last year’s elections, particularly in school boards, which were formerly dominated by anti-Black, anti-LGBTQ+ haters. So let’s go to the polls, whenever and wherever they take place, and do some serious voting—and yes stay WOKE! For my part, I’ll be as woke as a cup of coffee with an espresso shot. Stay safe, stay strong, and stay together! Slava Ukraini! Am Yisrael Chai! America will be free! Bye!

The Mason Moment with John Oliver Mason, February 19, 2024

I speak today for Medicare for All, and to comment on the murder of Alexei Navalny.

The Mason Moment with John Oliver Mason, February 12, 2024

I speak about the Republicans playing political games with the needs of the American people.

The Mason Moment with John Oliver Mason, February 6, 2024

The Mason Moment with John Oliver Mason, January 29, 2024

I speak on social and political issues, calling them as I see them. I speak today about the republican politicizing about the border, and with the E. Jean Carrol verdict and the “quality” of trump’s legal team.

The Mason Missile, January 24, 2024

Greetings, Americans! Once again we have celebrated the life and legacy of the reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I believe people are paying attention to that part of King the commercial media doesn’t let out, that of the King who challenged authority and social orders, who recognized the interconnectedness of racial and economic problems, and the injustice of the Viet Nam War. If King was just some harmless nonviolent peacenik, the FBI wouldn’t have the whole smear campaign against him. That’s how social change works; we’re going to anger some powerful people in government and finance (about the same thing). As the movement to correct a social injustice proceeds, those in power, who benefit in some way from said injustice, wit for their time to roll back the gains the movement has done; then comes the backlash (the popular media plays a role in this), and some pundit proclaims, “Isn’t the movement going a little too far?” It happened with the Civil Rights movement, in the latter 1960s, when more radical African-American activists said there were still injustices to addresses, there were uprisings in cities, and King was held to blames for them. All of the injustices of race and class emerged from the shadows, and there is media generated sentiment against the movement, with a note of nostalgia, the dream of returning to some unspecified “good ol’ days,” when certain demographics of people “knew their place” and didn’t make any noise about it. That’s what trump means when he says “Make America great again,” like it stopped being great for some reason. In the 1970s, it was like that with the feminist and LGBTQ-rights movements; the leaders of those movements were veterans of the Civil-Rights and anti-Viet Nam-war movements, and they learned their organizing skills in those causes, and applied them to fighting for the rights of their own groups. Then came the backlash: well-subsidized organizations campaigned against the Equal Rights Amendment (let’s try it again), raising the fear of women press-ganged into the workforce and genderless restrooms; and campaigns rose against LGBRQ+ rights, saying the gays are trying to attain “special privileges” and were out to “recruit our children.” (For them it’s all or nothing; any advancement in Civil Rights for any group is called giving them some sort of privileged treatment, as if the dominant group has become some oppressed minority, or else makes it their right to terrorize their “inferiors.”) The forces opposing changes in society have the advantage of “tradition,” which could, to them, mean “It’s always been like this, and we can’t handle change!”; such changes make them uncomfortable; hence, a crew of media figures (I hesitate to call them “journalists”) and politicians arise to take advantage of such sentiment and anxieties. The commercial media, having the habit of “What’s the latest fad we can talk about?” thinking, and being mainly from the once-dominant classes and races, pick up on this, and they treat this as something here to stay, forever.” That line has been said all through the nation’s social history, coming from every news outlet, that the current situation is how it is for all time. Not so! By banding together, by joining forces with each other, in our neighborhoods and worksites, we can affect change, and move the nation forward to something better. It was an established “fact” earlier in our history that slavery of other human beings, for the benefit of a useless, parasitic class of European-nobility wannabees that pretends to be dukes and duchesses (and getting deeper in debt to keep up appearances) would last forever; that the second-class citizenship of people of color, and the accompanying oppressions and humiliations, were permanently fixed; and that an oligarchic class of multi-billionaires is destined to rule the world, thanks to tax-breaks from their pet congress-members. In short, we fought them before, we beat them before, and, if we band together for our rights, learn together, work together, and VOTE (hint, hint) we’ll continue to beat them. Stay safe, stay strong, and stay together! Slava Ukraini! Am Yisrael Chai! America will be free! Bye!