My Lil' Thoughts On Kony 2012

First of all, I only watched, like, 5 minutes of the vid the day it came out (but I have read a million gazillion articles-on both sides-since). There are two reactions 1) damm this is bullshit and 2) dammm this is bullshit, but for a different reason. It is here that I must quote my very good friend (and tour manager for the group Death Grips) @keyshawnjohnson.

Sac Town is awesome, yo.

"Liberal white bitches just do it (activism) to make themselves feel good." Thanks "J".

This dude Kony is the leader of the Lord's Resistance Army. There is much to be said about his posse and their origins (Lord's Resistance Army, c'mon now) but that is a different post. He's a bad dude, let's just leave it at that for now.

It is here that I must say about Invisible Children (the makers of the infamous vid) that I'm sure that they have nothing but great and good intentions; but it is intentions that I wanna talk about. As an atheist that comes from a religious family, I'm sure that they have good intentions when they wanna save my soul, but c'mon...your good intentions are selfish. Like I said a month or so ago, if I pass away soon and my family has a religious ceremony for me it would be totally selfish. It would be what they want and not I. That is what Kony 2012 is.

Sure guns kill people, but I would love to have an AK in my collection.

I'll cut to the chase. Yes Uganda needs help. Yes Kony is a bad dude. The thingy about it is that the Kony posse hasn't been around for 6 years. Yes, dude brainwashed many children and made them into child killing machines (bad). They raped and they pillaged....mostly 6 years ago (bad). The reality of right now is that their numbers are really low (200-300) and while still very dangerous, they are not the threat that they were years ago.

Since then Uganda has progressed and, I'll dare say, healed (I'm not sayn' everything is perfect). The thingy about it is that there are more immediate concerns for the Ugandans: food, water, education, infrastructure, basic needs, anything, anything would improve these people.

So what is wrong with Kony 2012. I can't comment on everything that I (and many) perceive to be wrong with this, I'll just mention one. American colonialism. Yes.

I believe it was a month or so ago that the usually super awesome Black Prez sent American troops to hunt for Kony (on a small scale, but sent nevertheless). I'll give credit to the super awesome Black Prez for his very good record of ridding the world of bad dudes and terrorists. That is fact. The thingy about this particular situation is that they are fighting a treat that WAS there. In the meantime there are more immediate concerns for the awesome Ugandan peeps (hello, we are hungry). That is not it.

When American "boots" hit the ground...they never leave. The pretense may be hunting for a terrorist, the spreading democracy, freeing the people from terror and oppression, but what happens after that. They stay. Look at Japan, Europe, Philippines and Korea (not to mention the whole middle East right now). We landed and  fought the good fight, but "we" never left. A legitimate fear of any country that is not America is American colonialism.

We are like the herpes of visitors. Once we get into your country, you cannot get rid of us. Not only that, we spread like a virus brining our very own American savior-Jesus.  Needless to say, Uganda has oil. With or without Invisible Children, eventually, we would be all up in Central Africa. That is what we do. If there are resources to be had (oil, minerals-n-such) God's American Christian army finds a way into that situation.

I Googled "liberal white people with good intentions." for this one.

It's not only the faux reason of freeing oppressed peeps (oppression is real, the reason is not) and/or securing resources, it's about the money that comes from bad ol' American militarization/colony creating. Bullets cost money. Hunting for terrorist costs money. Look at what happened after 9-11, we didn't even go to the right country to hunt for dude (even if it was the right or wrong dude. It was just an excuse to get in there and make money by selling arms) and look at the billions spent and earned the last ten years. All the money used for war stuffs could and should be used for feeding the people, housing them, educating them (deff not putting them in the line of fire to hunt for a dude that hasn't been around for many years).

I'm sure the white Americans that made Kony 2012 have nothing but good and great intentions (we need more people like that), but good and great intentions do not make necessarily correct intentions. In fact, just like if my family had a religious burial for this particular Team Atheist member, that would be....selfish.

* The mighty, credible and reliable Al Jazeera.

Update: I forgot that I wrote about this on Valentines Day. That's called callin' the shot, bro.