The Final Call

A nation divided against itself

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“The great commotion of the government and people of America; the civil unrest, insurrection, mental excitement and noisy confusion—there is no action that is being taken, nor can there be any action taken, that would bring the people to a better condition of civil action.” –The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, The Fall of America

Linda Norman, right, and Joanna Galt, both from Florida, hold their banners during a “Exempt America from Obamacare” rally on the West Lawn of the Capitol in Washington, on, Sept. 10. Photo: A/P Wide World Photos

The White House threatened to veto any bill that defunds health care reforms as the government was running out of time and money. In order to keep operating, Congress and the president must agree to raise the debt ceiling. Raising the debt ceiling allows America to pay her bills. If the government shuts down benefit checks and paychecks could be delayed, services cut and operations curtailed. Some fear it would also hurt the still recovering economy.

“Today, the constitutional conservatives in the House are keeping their word to our constituents and our nation to stand true to our principles, to protect them from the most unpopular law ever passed in the history of the country—Obamacare—that intrudes on their privacy and our most sacred right as Americans to be left alone,” said Rep. John Culberson (R-Texas).

“The American people don’t want the government to shut down and they don’t want Obamacare,” added House Speaker John Boehner, a Republican from Ohio. “The House has listened to the American people. Now it’s time for the United States Senate to listen to them as well.” Under the House measure the government would be able to function at current levels until mid-December.

House Democrat Steny Hoyer called the measure “hostage taking”—and it will take a two-thirds vote to override any promised presidential veto that would kill the law.

The Republicans admitted this is about politics and denying people health care, charged Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz. “This is about an internal civil war that is going on inside the Republican Party and the Tea Party has won,” said the Democratic National Committee chairwoman in a Sept. 20 interview on CNN. The GOP needs to return to sanity and not take the country over an economic cliff, the Florida Democrat said. Questions about Obamacare were settled with passage of the law, a Supreme Court decision that upheld the law and the president’s reelection, she added.

Now discussions, negotiations and a march toward a crisis or settlement begins again, just as it did in 1995, when the government did shutdown.

Whether the country dodges this bullet or not, it is another clear sign of the decline and fall of a nation, and how troubled America really is. Political infighting, maneuvering and even dirty tricks are not unusual in U.S. democracy but government has grown increasingly unable to do anything—whether the log-jam is based on principle, politics or racial disdain for a Black president. According to the teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad such infighting and confusion was prophesized and is the death knell of a rebellious nation, a nation whose evil has outweighed her good and a nation whose ties to slavery sealed her doom. “The White American people have practiced evil and injustice to the man in the mud, the Black slave, for so long that they think that there would never be any divine action taken against them for such evil and injustice. But this is what is now affecting—it is the actions of divine justice for the poor man (Black slaves),” he writes in “The Great Commotion,” Chapter 53 of his monumental book, “The Fall of America,” first published in 1973.

Forty years later, the warnings of a little Black man from Georgia are more valuable and of greater importance than ever before. “The great commotion today is witnessed by the nations of the Earth, for it is America whom Allah (God) is after, for her mistreatment of the poor so-called Negro (Lost-Found Original Black members of their nation). America mistreated and killed her Black once-slaves for sport, but America’s day is drawing to a close and she will not have the freedom to mistreat the Black once-slave much longer. As the mistreatment of the Egyptians practiced against Israel came to an end, so will the mistreatment of the Black slave by White America come to an end,” he declares.

Sounding a divine trumpet of truth and caution given by his teacher, the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan said, “With all of these problems, you would think that the leadership would be coming up with creative solutions for the people. But instead of facing the truth and focusing on fixing the problems, the leadership engages in what’s called ‘grid-lock’ politics. The leadership either cannot come to terms over the source of the problems or maintains a state of denial of the problems, while scapegoating the poor,” observed Min. Farrakhan in his powerful book “A Torchlight For America.” 

Not only does Allah (God) move against those who do evil, he also allows the powerful to act against themselves. So in the United States deep divisions plague the country and political leaders cannot agree on what is good for the nation. How long can a country function like this? The White House has been besieged with petitions from Americans who want their states to secede from the Union itself. Racial and class divides are painful realities as is economic suffering. But there is no common vision and no common cause to speak of as political leaders press different agendas and respond to the differing desires of voters. It is that common cause and vision that holds a nation together and the more those bonds are torn asunder, the quicker the demise of a country.