(learn more about the book at the “Ask Me Anything” on Reddit)

It doesn’t seem too much of a stretch to imagine that the sky really is falling this time.

A few decades ago Malcolm X basically threw himself under the political bus by speculating that JFK’s assassination was simply the proverbial chickens coming home to roost, a statement that got him all but kicked out of the Nation of Islam. After the fact he claimed that the statement just referred to the fact he wasn’t surprised an assassination occurred given the pervasive climate of hatred in America at the time, although it doesn’t seem too much of a jump to imagine that perhaps he might have been referring to American interventionism abroad finally returning to bite the nation in her backside.

Flashforward to last month, when the chairman of the New Black Panther Party declared that The Hour of War is at Hand:

Your enemy in Afghanistan, your enemy in Iran, your enemy that you are bombing in Libya today – those are not our enemies. Our enemies are right here in the United States of America. Our battle is not against Ghaddafi. Our battle is against police brutality right here at home. Our message to the State Department, our message to the CIA, our message to Homeland Security, our message to the government today, is that your enemy is not our enemy. Your enemy in Afghanistan, your enemy in Iran, your enemy that you are bombing in Libya today – those are not our enemies. Our enemies are right here in the United States of America. Our battle is not against Ghaddafi. Our battle is against police brutality right here at home.



And then on October 2nd Jesse Jackson warned that American is on the edge of an explosion. Say what you will about Jesse Jackson’s current political salience, but the man does still makes the rounds and still has at least a few fingers still on the pulse of black America:

Jackson warned in a Newsmax interview that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg might have a point when he predicted rioting on the streets. “There is real tension in the streets because people are becoming so desperate,” he said. “We’re really on the edge of an explosion.” Jackson likened the situation in America now to the sinking of the Titanic. “We keep feeding the wealthy on the deck while the water is coming in at the bottom,” he said. “The great Titanic did not sink because the wind blew the chairs on the deck, it sank because the water came in from the bottom. The bottom is feeling the impact of rising water and desperation.”

Whether or not you take much credence in what either the Black Panthers or Jesse Jackson have to say, the harsh economic and social realities faced by those who now have the least to lose in America is impossible to avoid: