Tuesday, June 9, 2020

The Democrats Are Parodies of Themselves

House Minority Whip Jim Clyburn has actually had the chutzpah to complain that his party's attempted co-optation of one of the biggest public uprisings of all time is being "hijacked" by the protesters themselves.

How dare these people who are getting killed and beaten up and terrorized by out-of-control police forces presume to demand that their oppressors be stripped of their money and their power out of some misguided wish to live in peace?

Demands for divesting even small towns of their military hardware are a "distraction," added Rep Karen Bass of California.

Plus, if the Dems recklessly do right by the citizens, what will the Republicans say and do? (What will the neighbors think?) The opinion of the bad neighbors on the other side of the shared fence is a top priority if the Dems have any hope of redecorating their chambers with new "moderate" seats this fall.

So Congressional Democrats did the only thing they know how to do whenever they're confronted with some actual democracy. First, they blamed Trump and their  Republican colleagues. Then they staged one those perennial stunts which substitutes for policy in the public interest. They donned traditional Kente cloths  and took a knee for precisely 8 minutes and 46 seconds, the same amount of time that it took for their hired police state knee to suffocate the life out of George Floyd. The sound of hundreds of creaking joints and the even creakier neoliberal rhetoric of "reform" as a cure for corruption reverberated throughout the media echo chamber.

It was a reminder that there will be no true reform of state-sanctioned brutality on their watch. They may have thought they were showing solidarity with George Floyd and other victims of the police state. But their arthritic knees only served to remind us who is controlling the knees, fists, grenade launchers, tear gas and bullets of the police.  They may also have thought they were displaying their pro-science cred during Covid-19 by social-distancing and wearing masks. But they were only flaunting how distanced they truly are from the masses of people, most of whom don't even have a couple of hundred bucks saved up for a household emergency. Their masked faces only reminded us that they are bandits and marauders who steal from the poor and give, give, and give to their oligarchic donors.

The sight of Chuck Schumer (D-Wall Street) grimacing in pain as though he were struggling to get off a toilet also reminds us how mentally constipated the whole lot of them are. 




They yack on and on about the need for "big structural change," as though centuries of institutional racism and class oppression sprang up all by themselves. They are loath to admit that they are the chief architects and developers and designers and agents and enablers of the Structure.

Donald Trump, the convenient villain of the theatrics, played his own part to perfection, accusing the corporate tools in the Democratic Party of radical leftism and thus giving them cover for their aggrieved stunt. The trouble is,  hardly anybody believes their reality show is even tenuously tethered to reality.

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, however, is not playing his own assigned role with the glib finesse of a Barack Obama. As much as he panders to the "movement," he just cannot lie and disown the police state this late in his misbegotten career. He will continue throwing unaccountable billions at Cop World if he is re-elected. There will be no dismantling of police forces under his watch. He and Trump are on the same ideological page regarding state-sanctioned brutality, much as Obama admitted that he was the same page as Mitt Romney in 2012, regarding austerity and the "need" to cut Social Security and other public programs at the behest of Wall Street.

Because the worldwide protest movement is multiracial and multi-generational, the governing class's clinging to identity politics as a substitute for justice is more easily seen for what it is - a con. Leaders of both establishment parties can no longer fall back on the "divide and conquer" techniques traditionally used to keep us in line. Trump can't engender fears of a "race war," because we're all in this together. Liberal CEOs and corporations can no longer proclaim "solidarity" with the victims of the uniformed weaponized oppression that they've always relied upon to protect themselves and their own looted property and their gated mansions. Amazon's Jeff Bezos cannot get away with standing with black people, not after he just fired the black organizer of a walkout at his Staten Island facility, where underpaid workers were denied paid sick or family leave for Covid-19.

What really terrifies them is the prospect of a general labor strike in tandem with the anti-police demonstrations.

A new poll commissioned by Just Capital reveals that only 25 percent of Americans think that capitalism is good for society. Few people are anxious to return to work in the midst of a deadly pandemic. Most people are angry at the billionaires and corporations who haven't done right by their workers in the middle of this social, economic and health crisis.

Only one out of nine publicly traded corporations temporarily increased worker salaries during the crisis, while seven out of every ten CEOs maintained their obscene salaries, which on average are about 300 times that of the average American worker. The 10 percent of workers whose pay was raised during the first months of the pandemic have largely seen their salaries return to pre- Covid levels.

And the Stock Market continues to climb.

As the New York Times put it: "Investors shrugged."

 Michael Bloomberg, the godzillionaire former mayor who thus far this campaign season has shoveled at least $18 million to the copacetic Democratic Party, spoke for the entire oligarchic police state when he bragged while obliterating the Occupy movement in 2011: "I have my own army in the NYPD, which is the seventh biggest army in the world."

Meanwhile, Democrats in costume performing clumsy dance moves have introduced the usual"sweeping legislation" to reform the domestic occupying forces. This means that they will strive mightily to sweep the abuses right under the rug via the Bidenesque solution of "community policing" as code for continued militarization. We'll have to wait and see how the irate citizenry reacts to his own particular bragging about how he let law enforcement write his 1994 Crime Bill, much as the predatory health insurance industry was allowed to write the Affordable Care Act.

To avoid the defunding of corrupt and violent departments, the legislation calls for databases of police misconduct, the better to track it with.

 But without defining "last resort," it would also allow cops to use deadly force only as a last resort. Therefore, if a reckless officer thinks that somebody is looking at him funny and then shoots him, the codified Doctrine of the Last Resort will become the go-to defense in the unlikely event he or she faces criminal prosecution.

The national uptick in frightening "no-knock" SWAT raids, increasingly with the aid of dangerous flash grenades, tear gas and  battering rams affixed to tanks would be tamped down a smidgen by only banning such assaults at the federal level. States would somehow be "incentivized" to do the same.

One nifty proposal, put forth by Nancy Pelosi, is to redirect money to school policing and mental health, as though the two concepts were joined at the hip.

The legislative package also includes a federal ban on lynching. How much bolder and more sweeping could it possibly get?

People will be so impressed, they'll be rioting in the streets with joy after they tell their bosses to take their expired hazard pay and shove it.

11 comments:

  1. Police as we know them were invented. Sir Robert Peel invented the London Metropolitan Police in 1829. Before that, there were no "police." No city had them.

    Peel also had "9 policing principles." One is the importance of consent, and the resulting cooperation of those policed. Two others emphasize earning "respect and approval." The full list is worthy of study.

    Modern American big city police utterly fail to fulfill Peel's principles. They are no longer worthy of the inventor's work.

    They are become an army of occupation. It is therefore no surprise that Minneapolis had visiting teams from Israel teach how they handle Palestinians, including routine use of kneeling on the neck. It was in the teaching materials on line, until taken down last week. I'll bet it is still in the printed materials, and still at the Academy. But that would be confidential, and they would refuse to say.

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  2. Democrats are a sick joke. Who's the producer/director that came up with that ridiculous scene? Just what Blacks are demanding, right? A performance! I'm surprised they didn't perform in blackface.
    ____

    Notice that POLICE are not on this list of NY State Licensed Professionals. Every other profession is licensed and held accountable by the state and they're not even carrying weapons intended to kill. All a cop needs is a valid drivers license.

    Acupuncture
    Applied Behavior Analysis
    . Licensed Behavior Analysts
    . Certified Behavior Analyst Assistants
    Architecture
    Athletic Training
    Audiology
    Certified Shorthand Reporting
    Chiropractic
    Clinical Laboratory Technology
    . Clinical Laboratory Technologists
    . Cytotechnologists
    . Clinical Laboratory Technicians
    . Certified Histological Technicians
    Dentistry
    . Dentists
    . Dental Anesthesia/Sedation
    . Dental Hygienists
    . Registered Dental Assistants
    Dietetics-Nutrition
    Engineering
    Geology
    Interior Design
    Land Surveying
    Landscape Architecture
    Massage Therapy
    Medical Physics
    Medicine
    . Physicians
    . Physician Assistants
    . Specialist Assistants
    Mental Health Practitioners
    . Creative Arts Therapists
    . Marriage and Family Therapists
    . Mental Health Counselors
    . Psychoanalysts
    Midwifery
    Nursing
    . Registered Professional Nurses
    . Nurse Practitioners
    . Clinical Nurse Specialists
    . Licensed Practical Nurses
    Occupational Therapy
    . Occupational Therapists
    . Occupational Therapy Assistants
    Ophthalmic Dispensing
    Optometry
    Pathologists' Assistant
    Perfusion
    Pharmacy
    . Pharmacists
    . Pharmacy Establishments
    Physical Therapy
    . Physical Therapists
    . Physical Therapist Assistants
    Podiatry
    Polysomnographic Technology
    Psychology
    Public Accountancy
    . Certified Public Accountants
    . Public Accountants
    Respiratory Therapy
    . Respiratory Therapists
    . Respiratory Therapy Technicians
    Social Work
    . Licensed Master Social Worker (LMSW)
    . Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW)
    Speech-Language Pathology
    Veterinary Medicine
    . Veterinarian
    . Veterinary Technician

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  3. Police officers lounged in House Democrat's office amid nearby looting.
    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2020/jun/11/george-floyd-protests-donald-trump-jefferson-davis-statue-live?page=with:block-5ee27d7c8f08969537f77f72#block-5ee27d7c8f08969537f77f72

    "Chicago police officers were caught on camera relaxing in the South Side office of Democratic congressman Bobby Rush as looting took place at a nearby shopping plaza.

    Rush announced at a press conference alongside mayor Lori Lightfoot that the cameras in his office had captured footage of at least eight officers relaxing instead of addressing the looting.

    Rush shared some of the footage, which showed several officers lounging on couches and making themselves popcorn and coffee from the office’s supplies. One of them was asleep on Rush’s couch."

    Well, this looks like some evidence for the point I made in a comment here recently on Karen's previous post (though my comment was with regard to NY, not Chicago): that the police DELIBERATELY deployed their resources so as to allow looting to occur, which increases middle class fear, and, in turn, increases the clamor for more and better-armed police and more brutality.

    Remember, in most locations police aren't allowed to strike. But they can usually get away with slowdowns, "work-to-rule", mis-deployments, etc., all designed to convince any politicians not already in their camp, and the general public, that they are more essential than any other use of tax money.

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  4. Police, Wall Street, Pentagon, and White House Crime: What’s the Connection?
    A Conversation With Sarah Kendzior —
    https://whowhatwhy.org/2020/06/12/police-wall-street-pentagon-and-white-house-crime-whats-the-connection/
    June 12, 2020 ~ by Jeff Schechtman

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  5. Can't you negativist lefties believe your own eyes? America has turned to God. Trump proclaims the Bible on church steps while Pelosi and Schumer kneel with bowed heads in the Capitol. The rest ought to be silence.

    Along with Simeon, I can say

    “Sovereign Lord, as you have promised,
    you may now dismiss your servant in peace.
    For my eyes have seen your salvation,
    which you have prepared in the sight of all nations:
    a light for revelation to the Gentiles,
    and the glory of your people Israel.”
    Luke: 22-40

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  6. Within the last two years, I have had interaction with the local police while "driving while white." One in mid-evening so it was dark. I felt the car behind me was driving a tad to close, with bright headlights on so I sped up, so did the car, I slowed down, so did the car, and as you do in Vermont because most roads are one lane, when you are uncomfortable with a car driving behind you pull off on the shoulder and let them pass, so that is what I did, and the car pulled off behind me and turned on the blue lights. He pulled me over for driving erratically he said. I went ballistic and called him every name in the book as we argued back and forth, through an almost closed window. When it was all over he said as he handed back all the paperwork, "I hope that we meet again in better circumstances." The next time I was pulled over for doing 57MPH in a 50 MPH zone as I attempted to pass a car going 48 MPH. Again, it was a Vermont one-lane-road where you only get sporadic opportunities to pass so after driving about 46MPH for five minutes or so I had a short opportunity so I sped up to pass, did so and got back in my lane. A mile or so later I was pulled over by the County Sherriff for speeding. I was in a really foul mood when the kid told me you can't speed to pass someone, you can only drive 50 in a 50 zone and I just looked at him. So to be obnoxious I left the car drift forward, very slowly, while the cop was sitting in his truck writing up the ticket. I probably drifted about 60 feet or so, so the kid called for back up. The guy who showed up was totally obnoxious, beefy, shaved head, wrap-around sunglasses, and we were discussing the infraction and as he handed me the ticket and other papers I called him and the Sherriff's Office a bunch of Nazis He glared at me and said. Do You know what church I go to?" I hit the window button, gave him the finger and drove away. I really despise law enforcement at all levels and do not need any more reasons to hate them. I had a friend criticize me when she said that policemen have families and their jobs are stressful and then they go home at night. And I was like yeah, they are, but a lot of that stress is self-inflicted and does the cop abuse his wife and children that evening if he didn't get to beat anyone up or shoot them during the day? She didn't respond. It is a sad country we are living in. Very sad.

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  7. @Jay--Ottawa:

    I know that there's an Eric, a Barron, a Donald Jr., a Stephen (Miller), and many more in the White House. Plus a "sloppy" Steve, a "mustache" John, and quite a number of others also used to be disciples there.

    But who is this "Luke" you speak of?
    :-)

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  8. Most on the left are well aware of the degree to which mainstream media improperly biases the news, by means of both omissions and commissions with regard to subjects deemed "newsworthy", and when covered at all, the amount of coverage, the slant, the affiliations of the talking heads analysing and editorializing, etc.

    Not to in any way excuse any of that, but it looks like "coverage" and public opinion manipulation has now reached a notable new low:

    "Fox News runs digitally altered images in coverage of Seattle’s protests, Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone."

    https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/fox-news-runs-digitally-altered-images-in-coverage-of-seattles-protests-capitol-hill-autonomous-zone/

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  9. @The Joker

    But who is this "Luke" you speak of?

    Luke is not to be confused with Paul Newman (Cool Hand Luke), nor is he involved with the Trump administration. Nor is Luke even of this world.

    Centuries ago, the flimsy record goes, he was a prominent commenter on a then alternative website that eventually took off and achieved prominence as the NT. Respected critics will tell you that the NT is faux news, at bottom hateful, and the institution that glommed together in its wake is badly managed by misogynists.

    Over the years, nevertheless, Luke's status has risen, at least among scriptural scholars, from prolix commenter (contributing at least 1/4 of the verbiage of the NT) to prize-winning journalist by devotees of the main protagonist in Luke's stories.

    Luke's opus would never pass muster to reach modern best-seller lists in the West: too much virtue signalling and an overabundance of magical realism. Furthermore, Luke's protagonist (who goes by more names than space allows here) identified excessively, to the extent that modern tastes are taken into account, with victims of injustice, the most prominent then as now being the poor.

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  10. @Jay--Ottawa:

    Nicely put.

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