Weapons of
Mass Distraction

It’s hard to cut through the caveman rhetoric of commercials and politics – the weapons of mass distraction that keep people misinformed. It takes a lot of work for the average person to realize the impact that bad government has on their life. And it takes a lot longer to fix things than it does to mess them up.

Politics is no different then understanding who is running the streets. We all have the rights and the power to understand and change politics. Each one of us has to take responsibility for more than ourselves.

This is my 16th year speaking on college campuses on the topics of rap, race, reality and technology. I talk to students about getting involved and how important it is for them – and for democracy – that young people are politically active. I tell college students that they are not children. They have the same rights that a 55 year old has. But we live in a country that doesn’t give young adults the latitude of freedoms that older Americans have.

Our culture of consumption keeps young adults in a naive state. Corporate marketing has succeeded in extending teenage life to 29 or 30 years old. But these are not kids. I’m here to tell people to open up your head and look beyond yourself – not to say you can’t have a great amount of fun in your 20s, but look beyond yourself and develop a defensive shield of intellect.

I use my music to look at these hypocrisies, to shine a light on our society. Our government is supposed to believe that everyone is created equal, that government is for the people and of the people, etc., etc. But the follow-through has been faulty. So being a rebel against that faultiness has been the right path for me.

I am a child of the 1960s. I grew up seeing Martin Luther King, Jr. and President Kennedy at a very young age. There were the Panthers and Nation of Islam, and people I admired like Malcolm X and Robert F. Kennedy. Twenty years later I applied these experiences and knowledge to a music that came from the soul. Music that itself was a relief valve. They had de-emphasized music education in New York City in the 1970s with all kinds of austerity budgets, but people always needed music. So out of those ashes rose hip-hop and rap music – they made musicians out of playing records.

I’ve always admired the songs that move people, or that people hate at first because the artists were trying to move mountains. I always was up for the challenge. You have to be kind of nuts to do that, that’s why I have all the cuts and scars. The thing that drives me is that I want to be able to make a difference through the use of words and music. I’m a firm believer that words can spur action. Music should be some sort of platform for what human beings should be all about – connecting people.

Unfortunately, America is like McDonalds – instead of a billion people sold, it is a billion people told. You have to be able to question everything. I don’t like the fact that Americans think there’s no open land, no clean water, no trees anywhere else – that somehow the rest of the world is a different place. But it’s all the same Earth wherever you go. It’s all orbiting the sun. That’s where the connection starts, but it goes much deeper.

Keeping focused on what’s important is hard. Campaigns to preserve wetlands or clean up toxic waste sites are fights that go on for 10-15 years or more. It’s more difficult because of the musical chairs in DC. You need really strong people fighting hard over the long-term. These are fights that must be backed by people who honestly see the value in protecting the environment and our communities. This is everybody’s fight – especially the young people.

“I keep my radio tuned to Air America; to listen to anything else is a drop off into anti-intellectualism that I can’t really afford.”

Chuck D is host of On the Real, Sundays 11 PM – 1 AM ET on Air
America. http://www.airamericaradio.com/onthereal/