Recognizing Strategic Obsequiousness
‘Strategic obsequiousness’ is my new, cute term that describes ass-kissing for strategic reasons. This means that someone else out there has what you want and you know the “wise” thing to do is to pleasure this person in order to get some (or all). I often use Bill Clinton as my prime example of mastery of obsequiousness. Bill Clinton, I was told on some documentary somewhere, can make just about anyone feel like the most important person in the world. When you speak to him, he can make you feel like you are the only person in the world talking and what you are saying is profoundly important to him. So after meeting Bill Clinton you may not remember what he said but know how you feel—it was truly a pleasure meeting him.
Strategic obsequiousness is a necessity for interacting with barbarians on a daily basis. A barbarian can always cut the conversation short because they possess nuclear weapons. You can be right but they are always “right” because they can simply kill you (abstractly or literally). Barbarians assume that everyone else is a barbarian (or worse), which is another way of saying that everyone really and honestly wants to be just like them. This assumption is based on the limited imagination of the barbarian. When we make that extra, extra effort to be “nice” to a barbarian, we are pleasing the barbarian and are respecting barbarian powers. Roooarrggh!!! Barbarians know the secret of happiness and it involves you producing a smile for them—regardless of how you feel (you could actually be quite happy but for the barbarians you have to show it in the few ways they know it!).
When the ass-kissing strategy is successful, one barbarian is overthrown and replaced with another one. Since our new barbarian invested huge amounts of time and energy kissing ass, the new kid fully expects to encounter other designated subordinates who also take ass-kissing seriously. So no matter what you do with your life, this barbarian expects that a significant portion of your time is devoted to obsequiousness. Without ass-kissing in the barbarian world, life has no meaning. You may think you are talented and trained in some technical skill—but none of this has meaning without barbarian pleasure-giving skills.
Here in the rasx() context, the word ‘Negro’ refers to a person of strong African features who takes such ass-kissing seriously. Since ass-kissing is often confused with having “proper manners,” to have no interest in obsequiousness is admitting to the Negro that not only do you have no interest in reaping the rewards of life itself but you are also less than human, showing a lack of understanding of “basic humanity” and how the “real world” works.
An educated European—especially a European male—is allowed to take away from his enlightenment movement that a man has the right to control his own work. But for the Negro, his legacy of slavery prevents him from even considering this and he, by default, cedes all control to others—and these others become the obstacle course for a veritable Negro athlete rite of passage into a world of meaningfulness. For the Negro, to reject this way of seeing the world means suicide.
So here are few famous contemporary examples of ass-kissing for those who have read this far and still do not quite understand what I am talking about or why it is “relevant”:
- Alicia Keys giving a press conference in Europe talking about classical (European) composers in peerless isolation is more comforting and pleasant than her talking about say Ellington, Strayhorn, Mingus or Monk and Beethoven in the same breath. In fact, Alicia should express regret about not knowing more about “American composers” because being educated for European forms is relatively cheaper and easier to obtain.
- The California African American Museum is, of course, showing an African American artist in the form of African Canadian Artis Lane. Surely “the time has come” to show the work of a master artist (truly she is a master). Surely (however) it is an “accident of political convenience” that Artis Lane painted portraits of Ronald Reagan and Barbara Bush now on display in a state-owned building with pictures of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Martin Luther King in the same hallway.
- It is no accident that when Wynton Marsalis shows up at the Orange County Performing Arts Center to take a few moments celebrating that kid trumpeter from Iowa many of the members of the (majority white) audience might be left with a pleasant feeling that Wynton is “humble”, “inclusive” and “balanced”—this a ‘wonderful’ alternative to the audience having the feeling that Black people have developed some of the most influential and creative works even in the face almost total human deprivation. Ryan Kisor is an excellent trumpet player—don’t get me wrong—but, according to my ‘peculiar’ understanding of Barbarian Law, the fact that the American audience identifies Kisor as a white man helps—it helps Wynton like a mufukka…
- Oh, yes, here is the classic smooch from the HNIC himself, the freedom rider, Skip Gates, “The myth was our African ancestors were out on a walk one day and some bad white dude threw a net over them. But that wasn’t the way it happened. It wouldn’t have been possible without the help of Africans.” This statement, taken in or out of context, only pleases barbarians of all skin colors and their simplifying assumptions.
- And we can’t forget about Cornel West, his “Socratic and Prophetic Approaches to Democracy” talk presented in streaming audio here at kintespace.com. This one is just dripping with strategic obsequiousness.What is interesting to me is achieving recognition without lying to people. What is even more important to me is locating and exploiting the resources needed to conduct my daily business without paying a barbarian tax—or honestly recognizing that I am paying this extortion money (metaphorically or literally). I would rather be healthy with integrity instead of cancerous with a carefully crafted false structure that convinces the ignorant that I am “humble”, “inclusive” and “balanced.” When an under-informed child dreams of being famous and rich, the child may grow up to find that making a false character famous is not really being known at all and that being rich has nothing to do with barbarian concepts of wealth.
Okay, everybody sing the Neo Negro spiritual with Marilyn McCoo refined diction:
This is the dawning of The Age of Obsequious Obsequious!