The fully one-fourth of the national workforce that is now officially unemployed finally have the time for a brand new job. And that job is to vent their fury at the political officials who have made most people's lives a living hell long before the Coronavirus ever showed up to throw capitalism into such a state of disarray.
The tipping point for many was the broad-daylight Memorial Day police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Just as Congress hasn't bothered to hide its own massive and criminal multitrillion-dollar giveaway to the rich under the cynically-named Cares Act, the officers didn't bother hiding their own public execution of Floyd from a crowd of distraught onlookers, their cell phone cameras whirring. Is the police knee pressing on Floyd's neck and squeezing the life out of the man really all that different from Nancy Pelosi's stiletto heel squeezing all hope of health care, guaranteed housing, food assistance and direct cash aid from hundreds of millions of American citizens?
It's considered chic for both liberals and never-Trump conservatives to foist most, if not all, of the blame for 100,000 Covid-19 deaths in the United States on his administration, while they ostentatiously wring their hands over his dangerous tweeted medical advice. But it was New York Governor Andrew Cuomo who closed city hospitals and cut Medicaid funding before refusing to shut down the state for weeks after the virus had already started spreading like wildfire. It was Cuomo who absolved nursing homes of accountability before he sent elderly hospital patients to their deaths at these state-sanctioned warehouses for the disposable. It was Cuomo who appeared on the floor of the Stock Exchange the day after the Floyd killing to maniacally cheer the opening bell of profit and greed even as his constituents stand in line for hours for meager pickings from food banks. It was Cuomo who has refused to give relief to renters even as his legislature plans to bail out the state's landlords, using the tax money paid by New York's potential evictees.
Of course, they all mouth the necessary platitudes and they feebly call for justice for George Floyd even as their own hands are caked with decades' worth of dirt and blood.
If they immediately fire the bad cops and even charge them with murder when faced with incontrovertible evidence of their guilt, they think they can absolve themselves. But the fact is that the police are in essence mere servants of the oligarchs. They act as a buffer zone between the poor and the rich. The plutocracy draws its domestic armed forces not from within its own class, but from the ranks of the working poor, integrating them into its program of economic and political oppression. Police forces are the low-intensity (usually) military ops for the elites.
It's a class war and it's a race war, and it's all right out there in the open. Racist dog-whistles are quaint relics. The Trump-style bullhorn has officially evolved into the state-sponsored snuff film.
Of course, the political-media complex strives mightily to reframe their deliberate policies as a culture war, pitting various segments of the working class and underclass against one another. In Minneapolis, we see self-described rednecks with shaved heads guarding convenience stores against "looting" by black people. Pick a side, and it will take your mind off the real looting of the treasury and the commons by the billionaires and corporations.
Neighborhoods on the elite chopping block have been transformed into military Human Terrain Systems. CCTV at every intersection allows real instances of urban violence to supplement the fictional fare that Hollywood produces to frighten us into submission. If citizens can envision urban areas and housing projects as hotbeds of savagery, then citizens can also accept more police and more jails. It's an endless propaganda feedback loop, in which both the cognitively superior "liberal" elites and the fundamentalist right-wingers are manipulated into joining forces in their hatred of the "Other". One side calls them IQ-deficient gun-loving losers in need of a hand up rather than a handout. The other side calls them godless moochers and takers lolling about on their hammocks of dependency.
And the elites meanwhile moan and groan about why can't "we" just all get along, because "we" are all in this together. If you call them out, you're being "divisive."
Any day now, they will declare a victory in their valiant fight against racism by organizing a cocktail summit between the paranoid white "Karen" and the black bird-watcher whose upper middle class Central Park confrontation was the top story before the Minneapolis police execution spurred even Donald Trump to call for FBI intervention.
Meanwhile, here are your two pre-approved "lock em up" choices in the coming election. As Biden advised in a 1994 Senate speech touting his Jim Crow crime bill, "we shouldn't really care why they are sociopaths."
All we should care about is the sad truth that each contender for the highest office is a sociopath who is shamelessly courting the votes of the very same people they've spent their entire long careers demeaning, robbing, cheating and oppressing.
19 comments:
Wow, Karen, a great pulling together of many of the diverse threads of 20th- and 21st-century U.S. politico-economic pathology.
The main point I would add is that the left needs to overcome its traditional distate for guns and arm itself before it's too late. The citizenry should not think that when there is as much money and power at stake as is the case in the U.S., that the plutocracy/oligarchy will cede any significant amount of that willingly. They will not only plant their knee on your neck and mine, George Floyd style, they will fire on us. As you wrote, Karen, "All they have is tear gas and rubber bullets... and if comes to it, real bullets, tanks and drones." Yes indeed. Kent State was not an accident. The plutocracy -- here or anywhere -- will always have its enforcers, and be willing to use them. Open warfare with weaponry by the state against white people in the U.S. has been anomalous only because white people can usually be controlled adequately via fear of "the other" -- communists, socialists, black or latino people... When that fails, all bets are off.
There are a couple of subsidiary points I'd like to make about firearms. 1) Even if one's only intention is to escape the upcoming dictatorship or chaos by fleeing across the border, being armed may be necessary to successfully accomplish that, any dislike one may have of firearms notwithstanding. And 2) if any of you readers arm yourselves, do it responsibly. Secure your weapons and ammunition against children, against theft, and against use in a state of anger, depression, or other mental illness. Also, get training in their proper use -- and that training should preferably be from a leftist, presumably you wouldn't want to enrich a fascist by paying one for lessons.
Why is it only Trump or Cuomo, when we can see that there are other leaders who are acting responsibly?
I’m not a fan of Newsom or Breed, but they have worked well together (so far) to keep California relatively safer.
Viruses don’t recognize state borders, there are no guarantees, but Newsom and Breed’s prior ability to listen to Dr. Lisa Cody and Dr, Greg Gonsalves have served the state well in the first two months.
They’re not perfect. We’re still at risk, especially with a reopening. We will likely have to shut down again after this.
But we Californians are planning to get through this together, just as we’ve struggled through the last three years of fires mostly together, not flee to “the border.” I don’t know if we’ll be successful trying to protect our fragile state, but for those who have noted above that the border is beckoning, I would caution that the notion that Canada or Mexico have any intention of letting armed white people through, left or right, is optimistic, at best.
They don’t need or want Americans for good reason.
Upbeat Song to Be Sung at Crucifixions
(Monty Python)
If life seems jolly rotten
There's something you've forgotten
And that's to laugh and smile and dance and sing
When you're feeling in the dumps
Don't be silly, chumps
Just purse your lips and whistle - that's the thing
And...
[Chorus]
Always look on the bright side of life
(Whistle) (Come on!)
Always look on the right side of life
(Whistle)
Um, the Pandemic, record unemployment building into a new and improved Great Depression, the grossly unjust Cares Act among other routine structural financial crucifixions, and then the George Floyd murder by the thin blue line dedicated to serve and protect.
There are about a thousand killings by US lawmen each year, some no doubt unavoidable because the criminal was uncooperative and dangerous. Most, I suspect, are probably Floyds, into petty mischief or absolutely nothing at all, yet whose life meant nothing to cops who joined the force for the opportunity to bully people.
But why dwell on pervasive structural negatives that cripple half the population? Look for the institutional successes, no matter how dwarfed by the banal quotidian catastrophes. ALWAYS LOOK OVER THERE!!!
No crucifixion over in British Columbia, where the corona virus first struck in Canada. Its Prime Minister, John Horgan, has kept the death count exceedingly low, better than his counterparts, say, in Quebec Province, with its lamentable record to date of 4,000+ deaths, thanks to medical and governmental incompetence. But forget Quebec.
https://www.inspq.qc.ca/covid-19/donnees
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
Dwell on those wonderful people of the Pacific Rim. They act responsibly. Must be the salt air. They're planning to get through this together, apparently by looking away from everything east of Eden. 'Together,' for them, means unmindful of the unfortunates facing the fire-breathing dragons listed above. 'Together' does not mean stand-up resistance to Trump and Cuomo, bullies who crucify millions on a daily basis. 'Together' means gravitation towards the sideshows of moderate success, preferably close to home. The ostrich, not the lion, shows the way.
And look on the bright side of life, always.
Joker's comments about guns remind me of a recurring conversation I have with a friend who lives in a small city. Just so there is no suspense, neither of us has persuaded the other to change their view!
My friend is a very strong proponent of an armed citizenry that could act in some undefined way if the government became too oppressive. I then sketch out what I think would actually happen if a ruthless dictator was in control of all the levers of government in the United States. This is based on the attitudes of dictators from Hitler, to East Germany, to Saddam Hussein -- with emphasis on "ruthless".
They would not want an armed citizenry, even if such citizens had supported them. They would systematically confiscate all private guns and within a year they would have 99.99% of them. First there would be an amnesty period to turn in guns. Many would not do so and the dictator would make a harsh example of some of the holdouts and their families. Most remaining guns would then come in. Then rely on a database (see below)to track down most remaining holdouts, again with severe punishments. Torture works: anyone found with a gun must give 10 names to make the torture stop. Use paid informers on an ongoing basis. Game over.
From what we know about current government surveillance capabilities, think how easy it would be (actually is?) for a group just 50 or 100 of the 40,000 employees in the NSA to develop a database of gun ownership. Registered guns, of course. People who subscribe to gun publications. Monitor social media. Remember that all e-mails and cell phone calls are already collected and all postal mail packaging is photographed. Take photographs of license plates at gun shows. And doubtless a few more sources I'm overlooking.
If there are remaining holdouts in a redoubt in Montana, they will never see the missile coming that kills them. Years of practice with drones in the Middle East can be brought to bear domestically.
As the Borg say on Star Trek, "You will be assimilated, resistance is futile"!
Please tell me I'm wrong!
@voice-in-wilderness:
Yes, dictators and would-be dictators would want to remove guns from the populace. No doubt about that. And I agree that modern databases, social media, and other surveillance would certainly facilitate that. But while the scenario you've laid out is certainly possible, it's predicated on a largely-unresisting populace. I think that confiscation of firearms to the degree that a dictator would desire could not be achieved in the U.S., or at least not easily, for at least three reasons: 1) the vast number of guns currently in civilian hands, 2) the mindset of a substantial fraction of U.S. gun owners, and 3) the large-scale and multi-step nature of the confiscation process you've outlined. The end result is that before it got very far along, I think there would be civil war in this country. The dictatorship might still eventually triumph (as Francisco Franco did in Spain, and as Bashar al-Assad is likely to do in Syria) but the country would be in ruins after a civil war.
So there is a fourth factor, but it's not entirely clear how that would play out.To the extent that the rich and the corporations have political influence in this country and wouldn't want a civil war, with its accompanying destruction of their business interests, that could be a counterforce to the occurence of anything that might lead to civil war, including the posited confiscation. However, those business interests might not be sociologically-savvy enough to envision such a chain of events, or understand that partnering with fascism is ultimately a losing game. It's possible that similar to German industrialists of the 1930s arrogantly thinking that they could control Hitler, while reaping the benefits of his repression of "socialists", "communists", indeed anyone demanding economic and social justice, 21st century U.S. ones think that they will be able to control a modern U.S. dictator they help install, as well as reap the benefits of his repression of "troublesome" movements. If so, they might be in full agreement with any attempt to disarm the populace.
@ Joker & voice
MoA is now featuring the topic of uprisings against federal, state and local authority. Big city mayors are now accusing white outside agitators of initiating violence under cover of the Floyd protests. In the comments following 'b,' as you can imagine, many more interesting angles are brought up on how the establishment might put down protesters by means fair and foul, and how the gun-toting types might play their cards.
Now THIS is the proper response!!!
Minneapolis NAACP is recruiting Freedom Riders to protect Minneapolis from outside instigators. [undercover police et al]
Check out their supply wish list at this link and consider supporting them in every way possible. Paypal donations also accepted.
https://twitter.com/NAACPmpls/status/1266840490537877504/photo/1
Susan Rice, former Obama security adviser, is apparently suggesting foreign actors and Russian involvement in the George Floyd protests.
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/susan-rice-blames-foreign-actors-for-stirring-george-floyd-protests-right-out-of-the-russian-playbook/
Yep, not only Trump officials, but also Obama-era officials (as well as Bush-era officials, Clinton-era officials, etc.) will never stop whoring for the plutocracy. The one thing you can count on from most of them is that they will never lack for excuses to deflect and distract from the idea that ordinary people in this country have large legitimate grievances, be they political, economic, judicial, racial, educational, health care related...
Can't be -- We're Number One!
"ordinary people in this country have large legitimate grievances, be they political, economic, judicial, racial, educational, health care related..."
Agreed.
I'm beginning to wonder, are the news sites exaggerating, or is something big brewing in the spreading riots?
The inscrutable Antifa, as we've come to expect, is happy to stir things up further. The Trump Gang is threatening to label them terrorists, which opens a door to more trouble.
Is this the spark the left has been waiting for? Is this the spark we ought not yearn for? Can nonviolent protests prevail with good effect, given this administration, given the composition of the militants?
If the country's troubles keep multiplying, will the US be able to hold an election in November?
Interesting times becoming more so.
@Jay-Ottawa
You asked "Is this the spark the left has been waiting for? Is this the spark we ought not yearn for?"
Yes, hard to tell in advance -- and hindsight is 20-20. Several tactical and strategic issues, though:
Fascism thrives on the middle class fear of disorder. I think protesters need to maintain strong discipline and keep their own violence in check, as well as be ready to effectively publicize any unwarranted police violence against demonstrators -- which, beyond eliciting public sympathy, would also ironically well showcase for the news audience the truth one of the basic premises for the protests, police abuse of force and power. It's been more than 50 years since Chicago 1968, but "The whole world's [still] watching". Problems:
1) what will the mass media show, and how will they slant it? Luckily, the existence of the internet and social media means that corporate mass media cannot control the narrative as they once could. Still, traditional mass media retains considerable influence on a fraction of the populace greater than what often determines elections.
2) how will politicians seek to slant and exploit the narrative to their benefit? Again, think 1968, this time Nixon and Agnew.
3) how can other forces be prevented from hijacking the protests? The problem is that also likely present and operating under cover of these demonstrations will be police and white supremacist provocateurs, anarchists, and opportunistic looters, all with their own agendas, very different from those "woke" to police violence and racial prejudice, and hoping to wake a much broader fraction of the populace to promote social justice.
4) Predictability and diversity in tactics? You can bet that whenever large-scale protests occur, that the police, sheriffs, homeland security "fusion centers", etc. will be studying and learning from and adapting to what's going on. And that will be incorporated into future training and tactics. Which means that if protesters behave righteously but cannot soon carry their protests through with enough inertia to a win, future protests will be more difficult -- unless protester's future tactics bear little relation to current ones, so that they can make any "lessons learned" by the government non-applicable, or better yet, actually misleading.
The Gov't blaming 'Antifa' reminds me of the mysterious 'Khorasan' group, the worst of the worst terrorists, hundreds times more dangerous than ISIS!!! Remember them? Neither does anyone else, including the media that mindlessly repeated that bogus claim.
Who is Antifa? I am Annetifa! We are Antifa! We might as well be, because everyone staying on the street after Trump declares War is going to be shot as if they were Antifa terrorists, 'worse than ISIS!', you can count on it.
By the way, are the cops 'taking a knee' in solidarity with the killer cop or the protestors? The media is giving them the benefit of the doubt and spinning it as if they're supporting them, but it's repulsive, to me at least, to see them in that posture given that George Floyd was murdered by a killer cop's knee. At best it's extremely insensitive and at worst a not-so-subtle dog whistle to other racist cops and their civilian racist army of supporters, i.e. Trumpets/MAGAts. I'm not getting a good feeling about their 'gesture of solidarity'.
I doubt Colin Kaepernick is taking any comfort seeing them pull that shit either.
Nothing worthwhile just happens. To grow and intimidate, crowds in the street must have clear goals, able direction, a tight list of demands, stamina.
The crowd's leaders must take complete charge on their side of the barricades. It is up to them to build discipline and guide motivation, and to find and weed out spies and provocateurs. No on else will do these tasks for them.
Aimless anger goes down blind alleys, gets bamboozled, loses public opinion, wears itself out and fades away. What noble force stands in the wings ready to shape what must be seen as a class war? And what will it take to turn the police against their paymasters?
The "inscrutable" antifa. OK.
https://twitter.com/BenjaminPDixon/status/1267284896625688576
"Equal parts ignorant and enlightened."
--Benjamin P. Dixon
"Don't protest like that. Protest the way I want you to."
They are not here to convince you.
Several possible captions for Trump's photo-op with the Bible at church:
"This Bible is all this visit's about? They told me there would be Russian hookers here!"
"B-I-B-L-E. So that's how you spell it!"
"Only a Bible? Damn! Hearing it was a thick black book, I was hoping it was my chance to recover the unreleased records left by that Washington Madam!
Here's a guy whipping out his assault rifle to threaten Black Lives Matter protesters in Upland, CA yesterday. He didn't actually shoot anyone (thank non-existent God), but how long do you think it'll be until some MAGAt does pull the trigger? Shit's gonna get a lot worse, I'm afraid.
https://twitter.com/romualdotv/status/1267606026859147265?s=19
Good news! Sites where the Black Block can sit things out.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/02/us/police-protesters-together/index.html
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