All the Protests Not Fit To Print

The New York Times has been hard at it in recent weeks, trying to drum up popular support for the "impeachment inquiry" currently being stage-managed in private by Democratic Party officials, the corporate media, and a coup crew of unelected military-intelligence bureaucrats acting as a kind of Greek chorus of jingoism.

While we regular schlubs await public testimony against Donald Trump with languid breath, whatever minimal interest we do have in the Ukrainegate Affair is being sustained by a steady drip of leaks, suppositions and personality profiles of the known cast of characters. As per usual, most of this information is on deep background as befits the "sensitivity" of the Deep State actors involved. Any day now, the Impeachers tease, we might just be lucky enough to get our very first glimpse of the heavily redacted inquiry transcripts. This is exciting news indeed, because the House Intelligence Committee leading this inquiry usually shares nothing with the public.

To make the suspense even more pleasurable, the anonymous CIA "whistleblower" who first spilled the beans on Trump's phone call to the president of Ukraine, in which he requested dirt on the rapidly failing Joe Biden, has promised (through his lawyer, due to the sensitivity of his matter) to answer or deflect in writing any questions that the GOP minority committee members might have for him.

A couple of weeks ago, I'd half-jokingly predicted that this CIA informant would ultimately get his 15 minutes of TV fame by testifying with the aid of voice-altering technology and with a protective hood over his head to give the show that extra boost of James Bond thriller atmosphere. But he will not be part of the movie, at least for now. Of course, it all depends on the ratings. If not enough people tune in to the Impeachment Follies when they finally do get underway sometime during the doldrums of this upcoming holiday season, they may decide to bring out their anonymous star after all, in a last ditch effort to save the show. Chairman Adam Schiff can only perform so many soliloquys. (Prosecutor Schiff, you may have read, had originally wanted to be a Hollywood screenwriter, but then had to resort to political drama when that career didn't pan out for him.)

But I digress. What has all this to do with public protest, which the various impeachment cheerleaders of the pundit class have been urging upon us ever since the dawn of the Impeachment Inquiry saga?

Well, it turns out that the only domestic public protests that the New York Times, for one, are interested in are the ones where people boo Trump at sporting events, and the astroturfed ones that professionally herd people into sedate groups bearing mass-produced designer impeachment signs.

 When, beginning on Halloween, about a thousand people spontaneously took to the streets of Brooklyn for three straight nights to protest police brutality and unaffordable subway fares, the Times wasn't interested. Rather than cover the ad hoc street protests, the Gray Lady devoted most of her weekend digital home page to a forensic analysis of Trump's 11,000 tweets.

If your only source of news is the New York Times, the Washington Post, or MSNBC, these citizen protests did not even happen. The total blackout of coverage is the other side of what Trump derides as "fake news." It is lying by omission.

To its own credit, impeachment-intensive CNN did briefly cover the Brooklyn unrest, as did the New York tabloids and local TV news outlets, if only to highlight the rowdiness of the crowds, the obscenity of their language, and the color of their skin. (Be very afraid of young black and brown folks acting disrespectfully to the uniformed police forces, some of whom had been unfairly caught on cameras beating up subway turnstile jumpers as well as innocent bystanders.) 

To the extent that the outpouring of outrage by oppressed human beings was covered, it was to subtly caution viewers about the dangers inherent in unauthorized, non-impeachment centered demonstrations. CNN slyly described the police brutality in the subway station as "police fighting with teens," as if they were co-equal combatants, as if the uniformed fighters did not come unfairly decked out with guns, night sticks and handcuffs.

Protesters chanted "no justice, no peace" Friday night as they marched by the Barclays Center arena, where the NBA team Brooklyn Nets play. The protests came days after a video shared widely on social media showed officers fighting with teens at a subway station in the city,according to CNN affiliate WABC.
Some protesters hurled profanities at officers, confronted them at a subway station and spray-painted police cars with slogans such as RIP Eric Garner -- the man who was choked by a New York police officer in 2014, WABC video shows.

Those taking part in the protest highlighted the recent video that shows police breaking up a fight among teens at a metro station as an example of police brutality.
In the video, an officer can be seen punching what affiliates said was a 15-year-old boy after police responded to a fight between two large groups that spilled into the Jay Street-Metro Tec subway station. Teens allegedly kept fighting and resisted arrest, and one punched an officer, WLNY reported.

The tabloid New York Post at least saw fit to mention in its own much meatier coverage that the core impetus for the protests was the recent subway fare hike,  leading to a shocking increase in turnstile-jumping by the people who can't afford the new $2.75 price of admission to the city's crumbling and neglected subway infrastructure. This mass refusal to pay, in turn, has provoked a police crackdown amounting to a terror campaign.

The Post reported:

The demonstration was in response to a planned crackdown on fare evasion by the NYPD — and two controversial police actions in Brooklyn subway stations in recent weeks.
In one of the incidents, an NYPD cop sent straphangers scrambling in terror when he pointed his pistol toward a window from the platform at the Franklin Avenue station in Brooklyn.
In another incident, an officer was caught on camera slugging a 15-year-old boy in a wild melee at the Jay Street-MetroTech station in Downtown Brooklyn.
“That was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” one protester, a 31-year-old woman who works in media said. “I mean, it’s monstrous. My f—king tax dollars are going to this? It doesn’t make sense.”

As of Monday morning, there was nothing at all on the three nights of protests from the New York Times, which is headquartered across the class divide mere miles from the scene. This is quite odd, especially since the newspaper had provided coverage of similar protests in Chile against subway fare hikes in particular and against neoliberal austerity in general. As a matter of fact, columnist Michelle Goldberg devoted an entire piece recently to the lack of protest in America, pointing specifically to Chileans as examples of the popular activism we should all emulate in this age of Trumpian authoritarianism.

But the purpose of protest in America, as defined by the ruling class, must be limited to supporting the interests of the more righteous, militarized, censorship-happy side of the Duopoly.

When it comes to screeching "Lock him up" at Donald Trump, the sky's the limit.

But when it comes to emerging from the dark underground subway system to fight back against the police surveillance state, people will simply be ignored in hopes that they will eventually give up and go away in despair.

The only elected New York official who has even bothered commenting on the financially strapped straphangers' anti-police brutality movement was Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. From the tabloid Post, again: 

“Ending mass incarceration means challenging a system that jails the poor to free the rich,” the first-term Democrat wrote on Twitter on Saturday.
“Arresting people who can’t afford a $2.75 fare makes no one safer and destabilizes our community. New Yorkers know that, they’re not having it, and they’re standing up for each other.”

A spokes-cop for the city's police union responded by calling AOC and all the other citizens who do not accept state-sanctioned brutality graciously "cuckoo."

The Washington Post's ironic motto in the Age of Trump, "Democracy Dies in Darkness" is supposed to signal that consolidated corporate journalists are doing their jobs against all odds. Either cynically or inadvertently, the Jeff Bezos Gazette speaks the truth that mainstream media itself is helping to kill what little is still left of democracy by ignoring any news that is not directly approved, manufactured, packaged and delivered by Information, Inc.