If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.
~George Orwell, 1984
The process is sadly well under way. And I am throwing in the towel on the American people for ushering in the police state. I’m not going to bother cataloging all the recent behavior, authoritative use of violence, lying rhetoric, or even to define what is a police state. The line of events, from the patriot acts, the department of homeland security, the groping of children and senior citizens at airports, the wiretaps, rendition and torture, the expansion of wars and assassinations, up to the suppression of Occupation Wall Street protests, are part of the historic record. As is the blatant serial betrayal and misuse of trust, granted the political leaders and perversely twisted against us, most obviously with wars and bailouts, as prequel to the inevitable misuse of trust in the police state the public had granted, and will have used against them down the future line. No police state in history has ever acted otherwise, and the American one will not be the first.
A police state in the USA can only take hold with the acquiescence of the people. That prerequisite has been met. Most recently reconfirmed with the acceptance of police violence in several cities, inflicted upon OWS protesters. Acceptance being the absence of tens of thousands of citizens in the streets, demanding arrest and prosecution of the police officers who committed violence. But like the bankers, mortgage brokers and other criminals, these have gone un-investigated and uncharged. The number of American people demanding justice is miniscule.
My former comfortable conclusion that America could never become a police state did not rest on naiveté or swallowing myths from school days. It rested on what I saw as I moved from youth into middle age; recurrent, consistent evidence of the American citizen’s love of personal freedom and intolerance for encroachment upon that freedom.
Back when the Clintons were selling their health care run by the insurance industry scheme. (Btw, where the Clintons failed, the insurance companies won. They run the show, and pocket billions in profits each quarter.) Anticipating developing technologies, the government planners hatched a plan for a health care information and coverage card. It would be like a social security card; it would be your ‘proof of insurance’, provided by the government, and it would a few years later be able to carry all your essential medical history on this credit-card type document.
People hated it. Overwhelmingly. So rapid and fierce the objection by the masses, the republican opposition didn’t even have time to get in front of the issue for political points.
A couple of pundits recognized the reason this idea was so abhorrent to ordinary Americans. They saw this would be a de-facto national identity card. Identity papers. Something routinely carried and produced on demand by authorities in most western democracies. But not the USA, dammit.
Deep in the gut of the typical American was a rejection of the concept of a national id card. Despite the ubiquity of the social security number used for identification, how many people actually carry their card? How often is the card itself demanded?
But that gut feeling has eroded. Slowly, insidiously. The zeitgeist of the American people is completely different than just a few years ago, regarding the equation of security and liberty. (An equation, which as ben franklin promised, never ever balances.) In the early stages of that change, I thought it impossible to go much further. But further it did.
Things today are way fucking different.
People are cool with government wiretaps. People are cool with any and all manner of anti-terrorist action. Even torture. People are cool with mass violence and death in the deserts above oil fields far from here. And now, people are cool with mass numbers of riot police to quash peaceful protest, dissent and free speech. For complete bullshit reasons (sanitation; curfews and time limits numbered in weeks; hurting small businesses and normal commerce; any other crap Bloomberg’s lawyers come up with).
The tolerance of stupid failed wars, so many historians and philosophers have told us, goes hand-in-glove with acceptance of decreased domestic rights. Now we are seeing this linkage for ourselves.
We still enjoy a tremendous degree of personal freedom in the United States. Setting aside the economic aspects of freedom, the necessity for some degree of economic security for personal freedom to have any meaning, we still have it damn good. If you compare our liberty to that of the rest of the world, today or looking back in history.
But, our standard is our own history. Our own recent history. Most of the current government infringements on our free expression and movement are small and subtle. But the direction is steady, and the movement is gaining momentum. Not in a good way. While the quantity of perceived freedom for the masses of Americans has eroded only slightly, even a hurricane announces itself with but a few raindrops and a moderate wind gust.
The riot-gear clad cops are dispatched not just for drug busts. Not just for ‘riots’. But for small, peaceful protests. Frequently for the purpose of intimidation, nothing more or less. Airport security is engaged in behavior control, ham-handed enforcement of unquestioning obedience, having nothing to do with stopping a terrorist bomb. Now, tactics of the powers-that-be include centrally planned suppression of the OWS movement. Possibly by the justice department/department of homeland security themselves
But the escalation of police and security acts against the populace is only the symptom. The sickness is the acceptance of the creeping police state. The people are cool with it, by and large.
There is exactly one force and one force alone that can stop or reverse the erosion of freedom by authorities. The people. The masses of people. Because left to their own devices, those in power will always choose control over freedom. And they have been left to their own devices too much for too long.
The suckers who still vote had no trouble re-electing all the clowns who extended the patriot act. Even so-called ‘tea party’ candidates who liked the idea of government security powers, voted ‘yes’ and got returned to congress. The percentage of people who are not troubled by squads of riot-gear clad thugs swinging batons on peaceful protesters. That is what counts. That is the one and only way the police state growing and festering in the United States of America can possibly continue.
If the American people allow it.
Well, the American people are doing far worse than passively allowing the police state to grow. They are actively approving the suppression of OWS. Not just a few Americans. Millions. Fucking millions. Maybe even a majority.
Approving the use of riot cops. Applauding. Happy with the fact, while befuddled why anyone (like me,) would be disturbed, would think bulldozing the encampments are a big deal.
I never thought Americans would nod approvingly at the things that are commonplace today. I don’t understand why this change in the American psyche came about, even though I have closely and carefully watch it happen. It makes me sad.
I suppose comfort and freedom from troubling thoughts has become so necessary to my fellow citizens, that rampant consumer consumption wasn’t enough to satisfy the need for comfort. Order, routine and security from discomfort became more important than rights long ago taken for granted. Quaint rights like freedom of assembly, of speech, of religion (if you are a Muslim in downtown new york and own a building), to carry a gun, to not be stopped and frisked, rights that people delusionally believe will only be infringed upon for ‘other people’; the criminal, the ‘terrorist’, the political loon or extremist. Rights people cannot imagine being denied for them. Completely disconnected in their mind from a little feel-up at the airport, or having to show ID papers to walk down a particular street.
People are more infatuated with stomping on the rights of ‘others’ who are deemed undesirable, than they are in love with rights for everybody. They think their personal rights are immune.
Heh. They got a nasty surprise coming.
So many people wonder how the civilized, politically aware German population allowed the change in their society ushered in by the Nazis from 1933-’39. Fuck, we Americans of 2011 are so much worse than the German people. So much worse. Empty of any common sense or insight regarding the freedom that is the lifeblood of our nation.
By 1933, Germany had suffered humiliating defeat in 1918; economic privation as a result of the peace treaty; a crippling hyperinflation and currency failure in 1923; ten years of economic depression before The Great Depression even started, and things went from horrible to much worse; a decade of escalating political violence, deadly violence, on the streets of major cities, political assassinations numbering in the tens of thousands. And that violence was not monopolized by the rising brown shirts; communists, socialists, monarchists, police forces, private militias, public militias were all shooting and killing one another in the streets.
Hard to blame a people drained by fifteen years of unemployment, economic depression, a failed money system, and blood literally running in the streets, that they were willing to trade a few freedoms in return for some long-denied security.
What’s our fucking excuse?
Traffic was backed up on one day for a big protest march? Those dirty hippies have taken over one of a hundred parks in your city? Shit, the cost of police overtime is at least a rational concern when your city is already borrowing to pay pensions and salaries and keep services operating. And you can be forgiven asking the next question, ‘are so many cops working overtime really needed to watch those OWS campers, after a few weeks of peacefully just sitting there’?
Exactly what are you getting in return for allowing (or cheering) the violent suppression of protest by riot cops?
Comfort. Routine. Not having your normal evening news entertainment 22 minutes punctuated with people saying and doing weird things and drumming. That’s all.
Bad trade, America. There hasn’t even been a real riot. A few broken windows in Oakland; one cop in NYC gets hit in the hand with a piece of glass, and three others are splashed in the face with vinegar. That is it. And crass attempts to crush dissent, completely illegally, in complete violation of the letter and the spirit of the bill of rights and hundreds of court rulings over the year, all cool. No problem, in fact, I’m glad my mayor put things back to normal.
Heh. The turning upside down of the rule of law in the USA had been just some people are immune to the law, and can steal billions. While the rest of us suffer irrational punishment for petty theft of possession of a joint. Now, people completely in compliance with the law, and following police commands are arrested and charged. Not just upside down, but completely twisted and distorted. Of course a police captain is not charged with assault when he pepper-sprays two women doing exactly as they are told; but they are charged with resisting, disturbing, hell, they’ll probably have to pay for the pepper spray.
Whether OWS fades away (I doubt it) or grows and thrives (I think likely for several months, but the suppressors will just ramp up their violence and bullshit) is not what I am talking about. Irrelevant.
The quiet acceptance by millions of Americans (and active approval by millions more Americans) of the suppression of political dissent, with violence, has convinced me. The decay into a police state is not gonna stop. A done deal. I’m crying ‘uncle’; throwing in the fucking towel; invoking the mercy rule; no mas, por favor.
It doesn’t matter what your personal definition of a ‘police state’ may be. A reasonable definition can be applied today and has been by some friends and pundits. Doesn’t matter.
Even if the economic catastrophe hits this Monday morning, and causes the slumbering masses of America to wake up and smell the reality, it is too late. The mentality of the American people has already allowed the advancement on the road to a police state to go too far. The trend toward sacrificing freedom for the (bullshit) promise of security can’t be reversed or undone by anything short of millions of people in the street in opposition. And those millions ain’t gonna take to the streets until they are starving; and that battle will be unnecessarily more difficult and more bloody because we let the enemy arm themselves so well (on our dime). And gave them ample time to practice.
Sure, I can still write this, without risking arrest and punishment today. We ain’t there yet by my definition. But that dude who the other day said out loud what a Molotov cocktail can do to a crowded Macy’s store wouldn’t have been arrested and punished for those exact words in the exact same context ten years ago. A 2004 protest of a hundred thousand people in New York City against the Iraq war or the republican convention was met with less violence than an encampment of 200 people in 2011. Shit has changed significantly, rapidly, and irreversibly. Until people wake up.
And folks are still sound asleep.
As an expat who hasn’t been in the USA since 1997, I am unable to comment based on recent experience with Americans, but my worst fears seem to be in the process of being confirmed. The societal apathy decried by the writer seems nearly universal in the West and increasingly discomfiting economic circumstances will only increase the likelihood of totalitarianism being accepted if it is the price of perceived material security. “Perceived,” because one man’s “security” is another’s luxury.
Catholic Social teaching has as one of its pillars the principle of subsidiarity, a principle enshrined in Europe, although the votive light has long since gone out. Subsidiarity, in a nutshell, promotes self-reliance, indeed makes a virtue of it insofar as it advocates allowing the smallest unit to meet its socio-economic-politcal needs with the least interference from a larger governmental body; in fact, it discourages the creation of all but the most essential large-scale bureaucracies! And the EU claims to embrace the principle!
I fear too few will come to the writer’s conclusion with time enough to plan how best to confront it, or avoid it if that is one’s preference. As one who has arrived at 65 with a healthy (or perhaps not) degree of cynicism, I strongly believe the principle of subsidiarity should become ingrained in any and all who hope to maintain a degree of freedom and self-sufficiency in their own lives and those of their families. If this means sadly and resignedly leaving behind a society that rather than embrace freedom and self-reliance has chosen instead to suffocate it, so be it.
Howard
I echo your sentiments. I was going to write a post on a similar vain this weekend, but I couldn’t summon the will power to write it.
The moral compass of the American people is off. We applaud the beating of young people for exercising their right to free speech while remaining silent as criminals on Wall Street and in Washington DC destroy our nation.
Our only hope are these young people. The older generations have had their senses dulled by decades of propaganda, fear, misinformation and entitlements. They will not fight injustice. They would have to leave their living rooms and their 52 inch HDTVs. They’d have to care about what we are leaving future generations rather than their own lot in life. They’d have to care about their country.
You are right. The vast majority will not stand up and be counted. We are headed down a path of rule by demagogues.
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Howard,
Good article by a good doctor and good man. Hope went to school at UC Davis, you grew up in Davis, and I hope you retire in Davis, nice town.
Oscar,
The Catholic have come a long ways from their social teaching of “subsidiarity” so much so that I think calling it a pillar is pretty much a crock of shit. Be self reliant except for the Authorities rules.
http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-10-24/politics/30315525_1_humanism-financial-crisis-bretton-woods-institutions
I like this article but it fails to expand on the “why do we do this?” Quick question, are you a US Citizen or an American national? Do you know the difference? How many forms do you see that have that option on them?
Everyone is protesting evil corporations but fails to realize the three largest corporations are, The Vatican, City of London and The United States (different than the United states of America) as far as incorporated entities go. Each time you fill out a form identifying yourself as a “U.S. Citizen” you have joined the corporation just a little more. When you work for a company you agree to the employee handbook rules and sign a contract to that effect. No difference legally, except of course most corporations don’t come after you with threats to your life, liberty and pursuit of happiness with armed corporate enforcers should you decide not to contract with them.
Our school system has been designed to create exactly this type of “society.” One is trained for submission to the State and one is steered away from knowledge of their individual sovereignty. Sold into slavery by stealth contracts to the State apparatus. We aren’t taught our legal rights so we aren’t able to defend ourselves and state encroachment on liberty . We aren’t taught how to be individuals with free will and thoughts but are instead shoved into a segregated system that provides no real constructive thought process just regurgitation of bits of information that some central authority deemed relevant usually not inclusive of useful history.
“The danger to which the success of revolutions is most exposed is that of attempting them before the principles on which they proceed, and the advantages to result from them, are sufficiently seen and understood. Almost everything appertaining to the circumstances of a nation, has been absorbed and confounded under the general and mysterious word government. Though it avoids taking to its account the errors it commits, and the mischiefs it occasions, it fails not to arrogate to itself whatever has the appearance of prosperity. It robs industry of its honours, by pedantically making itself the cause of its effects; and purloins from the general character of man, the merits that appertain to him as a social being.
It may therefore be of use in this day of revolutions to discriminate between those things which are the effect of government, and those which are not. This will best be done by taking a review of society and civilisation, and the consequences resulting therefrom, as things distinct from what are called governments. By beginning with this investigation, we shall be able to assign effects to their proper causes and analyse the mass of common errors.” –
Thomas Paine “The Rights of Man” http://www.ushistory.org/paine/rights/index.htm
Good post Tap into the general mood of the future of USA
Bravo!
i can’t wait until the conventions next year–all hell should break loose.
Howard:
That was a strong piece. I echo your sentiments, and it also saddens me to see militarized police harassing our young people. This trend towards forced conformity is particularly disturbing. All we can do is hold fast and win small battles.
One thing is standing out lie a beacon.
We are doomed to be living in interesting times.
I personally think things will get far more interesting in the _near_ future when the extensions crumble and the pretensions are revealed to be false.
Let’s face it, when “extend and pretend” fails, nothing is left but the bald truth and the consequences thereof will not be pretty or acceptable to the masses. That spells Trouble with a capital “T” right here in River City… or Davis,CA, or NYC or, or, well everywhere.
I just wish we could get on with it. A universal human trait – impatience. Once it does get started, we’ll all wish it hadn’t!
MA
+1000 Howard, you nailed it.
My opposition to OWS was their methods, not their message. Because it was their methods that provoked the police state, alienated the very people they needed to help them (the sheeple) and, in turn, strengthened the very forces that OWS was trying to expose to the world as evil and corrupt.
Sigh. Bottom up, Top down, Inside out.
What has driven the growth of the police state is FEAR. FEAR of the other or the unknown, FEAR of “want” or not keeping up with the Joneses, FEAR of not having “enough” money or goodies or a Benz, FEAR of some stone-age ragheads in a cave in WhatTheFuckistan, FEAR that without buying into the hyperconsumerism/fed.gov PLANTATION the wolves would be at your door, FEAR that if you little people break one teensy weensy rule you’re locked away forever. FEAR.
And yea amen brother, we have financed with with our dime. So clever of our Overlords, dontcha’ think? To let us finance our own destruction??? Hence my call to Starve the Beast.
The vast majority of the our citizens have clearly chosen “security” and “comfort” over the rule of law and liberty. What they are getting, good and hard, is a boot stamping in their faces forever.
So be it.
You can’t help them, you can’t. It is too late. You guys were hoping that this OWS movement would be some kind of grand awakening, but it will not. The awakening of the sheeple from The Matrix is coming with the oncoming economic storm. It will be violent and bloody and most of us will not survive. Sheesh, they kill each other when a McDonald’s order is wrong. That is The Doom, sorry.
You know my plan: Stock up, form up with like minded people, preserve what you can, be a lifeboat for the future.
I don’t know what else to do and am kinda done wallowing in the Doom. Off to sort through my bunker, heh.
Great article Howard. Really sums up the slippery slope we are on descending into tyranny.
@Todd
I refer to pre-Vatican-II Catholic Social Teaching, of which subsidiarity was very much a pillar. Catholics haven’t “come” a long ways from their teachings, they’ve GONE a long ways from it. Personally, I believe that any society that turns secular materialism into a religion with no sense of the transcendent is a society that will sooner or later go down the slippery slope to totalitarianism, but that’s MY point of view, not one I’d try to impose on anyone. I live a very self-reliant life far from the madding crowd and am more concerned for my posterity than for myself.
everyone is being so nice with their comments. thank you.
but i feel uneasy. i need smokey, or at least llpoh, to smak me; keep me from getting the big head.
hope, you linked and quoted “won’t get fooled again” in another thread. if i am pressed to name a favorite song, or top ten, that classic is always on my short list. and this other one, from david crosby, i consider a companion piece.
the who–won’t get fooled again: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsleaGuZwCU
david crosby/csn–almost cut my hair:
On November 2nd Webster Tarpley on Tarpley.net wrote,
“Last Tuesday, Occupy Wall Street Endorsed the 1% Wall Street Sales Tax and Became a Real Threat to Financier Power. That Same Day, Big-Time Police Repression Started.”
Is he right about that? Is the tax demand the real reason the State’s thugs are swatting the protesters?
@hope
i don’t think i can argue with or object to a single word of your post. thank you.
you wrote:
“You can’t help them, you can’t. It is too late. You guys were hoping that this OWS movement would be some kind of grand awakening, but it will not. The awakening of the sheeple from The Matrix is coming with the oncoming economic storm. It will be violent and bloody and most of us will not survive. Sheesh, they kill each other when a McDonald’s order is wrong. That is The Doom, sorry.”
i agree with your assessment. well, my hope for OWS is no where so great or grand, and never was. i’ll admit to wishing, but in real life i am quite the cynical bastard. (a few of the kids at zuccotti square have told me as much.)
i never changed my view that nothing short of the full force of the oncoming economic storm will activate and awaken our country. the financial events of 2008 and the economic events since have failed; the surprising unfolding of the eight weeks of OWS certainly have not and will not.
however, an attempt at awakening fellow americans is worthy of my support. and i am blessed with the luxuries of free time, no immediate familial responsibilities (no wife or kids), and proximity.
now, i am further blessed. davis is small enough, and i am bound closely enough to the town that i still consider the place home. and this event offers me a high-value target where the odds of making a positive difference are huge.
it isn’t the best location for a doomstead. but there are worse locations than davis. and some solid substrate for building a post-storm community.
eh, i’m rambling. i’ll save it for my next blog, on the davis police violence. but thanks for the kind reply. i agree with you. the protests are symptoms/signs of the festering disease. not the prescription or cure. or maybe, some of them are small signs of the immune response, like a fever and chills to an influenza viral infection. but no, OWS is not a cure; yet still valuable.
oh, one more thing hope.
the concept of restoration. the single word soundbite.
i love it. i think it is perfect. and again, you are absolutely correct. restoration is/can be/should be something very different that revolution. (or they can go hand in hand.)
but this is a huge, powerful idea. we had a capitalism that worked pretty damn well (especially once we let blacks, browns and women in). we have a constitution and basic laws that worked pretty damn well. and not in some centuries old idealized past. just a blink of the historic eyelid ago, within our lifetimes.
this is an idea that the mass of americans can agree upon, i think. maybe not 99%, but a huge number, from tea party to occupiers.
RESTORATION!
(bitches)
We are not told anything about the riot police. Are they contracted from Blackwater or some other corporation that hires mercenaries to do the dirty work of suppressing OWS? If it is found out that this is the case then don’t be surprized if a backlash comes out of the population. Something strange is going on.
Isn’t it obvious that the people are nothing but ants used for food and the grasshopers will not tolerate disobediance? This is what we get when we reject GOD. Regardless of what you athiests think what we are going through is written in the Bible. That cannot being denied!
Howard-Outstanding piece. I’m embarrassed to ask, but may I cut & paste excerpts to post on another site? You have captured my sentiments more eloquently than I could myself.
Re Restoration-Yes. I have been preaching restoration for years-restoring the principles of the Constitution, of free-market capitalism and self-reliance.
Cops now arresting journalists at OWS protests: http://www.naturalnews.com/034195_OWS_journalists.html
“PEN American Center and PEN International today condemned restrictions on press coverage of police crackdowns on Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in New York and elsewhere, calling the arrests of journalists, the grounding of media helicopters and the restrictions on access to the Occupy sites ‘an obvious abridgment of the First Amendment right of all Americans to monitor official actions that clearly carry their own First Amendment concerns.'”
@howard:
You gotta make a stand somewhere and Davis is as good a place as any. And while we don’t have the power to influence millions of people at a time, well, starting one person, one community at a time is the only way to go, as I see it.
You would be surprised at the number of people out there who “get it”. In my (lately)13 hour work days, I gently ask just about everybody I meet what they think is going on. Perhaps it is just Texas, but there are a lot of folks “waking up” to the fix we’re in. I’ve started handing out a little card with my favorite sheeple-waking websites on it instead of a business card.
But we’ll see.
AKAnon~
of course. you flatter me, thank you.
but, i let admin publish my blatherings; clearly i don’t care where it gets reposted.
All Americans must consider the following
“The bane of humanity is we learn nothing from the horrors of past atrocities; and history repeats itself. Our/Your passive acceptance of one transgression or worse complicit participation, always makes way for another. This and the belief that injustice, visited on our neighbor, will not one day come knocking at our door is the banality of evil and its final reward is death.” – Inflection Point
See: RAPE OF THE REPUBLIC – http://notionalvalue.blogspot.com/2011/09/rape-of-your-republic-what-say-you.html
The Banality of Evil
Us and them
And, after all, we’re only ordinary men.
Me and you
God only knows it’s not what we would choose to do.
– Pink Floyd, Us and Them
See: “There Are Monsters, And They Walk Among Us.” – Jesse’s Cafe Americain
– http://notionalvalue.blogspot.com/2011/06/there-are-monsters-and-they-walk-among.html
howard … channeling his inner Beale. Well done!
t-bird
1. We do know there was an 18-city conference call on the 17th to coordinate things
2. We are told DHS is involved, maybe embedded (unconfirmed) or advisory. Who needs Xe?
Playing the GOD card is only divide and conquer inaccurately. Not everyone you separate out is an atheist because they do not believe precisely as you.
I read this. Then I reread it. And then once more for good measure.
Howard, I tip my hat to you, sir. A brilliantly written piece.
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The pseudo aretes think a police state is what is needed,
Howard: If they only show the bad side on TV there will be no outrage. If the media succeeds in marginalizing the OWS crowd like they did the Tea Party, there will be no outrage. Maybe OWS should occupy the media that just wants to politicize this whole thing. I think a lot of us old folks(Tea Partiers) already suffer from “once bitten twice shy.”
Herein lies my problem with the article. Where were all of you as they took our rights away over and ove? You were no where until it effected you, thats right you. While you throw hate no the smoker because they smoke and the the politicians put forth a tax on them becuase they smoked you cheered for the tax those dirty dam smopkers. Next was food dam pigs should nto ewat there and I could go on and on and now alot of those same folks at the OWS movement who I initially supported want more and more governement and relief of their debt for graduating from college give me a break. I had to pay mine off. Choices we all make them and should be responsible for them intead we now think someone else should take care of our mistakes. I am not here as a pundit or here to agree with the OWS movement.
Having said all of that the police behavior and alot of the OWS folks behavior is deplorable. Hell they cannot even clean up behind themselves for crying out loud. We have had rapes, murder and running off the homelss they state to represent. I do not like the Tea Party either but at least when they left an area it was clean and they were not pissing on my stairs!
Part of protesting is respect for other people’s property and the OWS bunch missed the boat in that department. If they really want support maybe they ought to act like responsible citizens and clean up behind themselves and stop breaking windows and demanding free food. Give me a break.
olesenialguy
You watch too much TV.
the media is nothing more or less than a tool of the elites. a tool that primarily sells stuff; but secondarily helps control what the masses think about, and how.
OWS was ignored by the media. then misreported events. and continues to misreport to this day.
funny thing though.
the media lost its monopoly. youtubelivestreamtwittertextmessageiphonefacebookblogspot happened.
naw, occupy the media is not a good tactic. again, occupying wall street cuts out the middlemen, politicians and media. and all the alternative media outflank the mainstream.
although i do not suggest the media has failed. it remains a powerful, effective, winning tool of the pigmen. right alongside money, cops, armies, and politicians.
like that marine colonel on guadalcanal said. ‘we’re surrounded; that simplifies the problem’.
Beautifully written essay, Howard. Really captures the mood many of us are in these days.
FYI – I was rooting for OWS and hoped they could break thru the sound of the chattering classes to capture the attention of everyday Americans, and get them to THINK and ACT.
As Hope said, people are waking up. Just doesn’t appear to be enough of us, in a critical mass who will take action to fight the tyranny.
I don’t think it’s fear that keeps people from taking to the streets – there’s something else going on, something in the air, I just can’t put my finger on yet.
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“I don’t think it’s fear that keeps people from taking to the streets – there’s something else going on, something in the air, I just can’t put my finger on yet”……Mary Malone……………I can, the free shit is still coming, courtesy five billion daily in deficit spending. The collapse hasn’t arrived, but it will, and it will be magnitudes bigger than you think.
oleguy says: “Herein lies my problem with the article. Where were all of you as they took our rights away over and ove? You were no where until it effected you, thats right you.”
you know what oleguy? i think this is a perfectly reasonable question. I think so, because i ask it of myself. frequently. over the years. so i don’t mind answering. but i can, of course, only speak for myself.
first, your assumption is flawed, at least as it applies to me. i have yet to be affected in any serious way. when i get dressed up, i walk, talk and look just like a 1%er wannabe. it would be much easier and lucrative for me to go with the flow.
i did not get radicalized because a bank sold me a bad mortgage, or illegally foreclosed. no cop pepper-sprayed me. my ‘rights’ haven’t been violated. by your construction, i am speaking up and taking action before i am affected, not after.
but that is a relative point. no matter. i can and do ask myself, ‘why aren’t you doing more?’ ‘why didn’t you do more last year, or five years ago?’
my answer to that more applicable question–because i think it would be futile. that is a partial answer. in addition, factors such as my own abilities, desire, convenience, cost/benefit play a part.
back in the summer, anonymous.org announced a protest action. at zuccotti park. i had some free time and an errand to run downtown, so i drove by. i saw no one protesting. i parked and walked over. i saw one dude with a sign, and one dude with a guy fawkes/V for Vendetta mask. i turned and split.
i didn’t go with the specific aim to protest, or to bring down the system. wanted to check it out. learn, among other things, how many people were gonna show.
in contrast, on the second day of OWS, there were hundreds of people. again, i did not intend to protest, just wanted to check it out. i talked to some folks. had some lively conversations. learned something. i think i taught something. and that, small as it was, was something. the time and effort were not futile. although it would not be unreasonable for an outside observer to call it that, in my judgment and evaluation, it was not futile. it was something.
anyway, i tried to keep it short, and failed miserably. me striving for brevity is usually futile. i may at some point in the future look back on today and think, ‘well, that sure was a waste of time’. or look back at some point in the past and think, ‘you sure screwed up, not doing everything in your power to prevent tim geithner’s confirmation, or the ben bernanck’s reappointment’.
it is a very individual calculation, of cost/benefit/necessity. with little precision.
Oleguy-Some of us have been thinking about this stuff awhile, some have been doing things for awhile. Personally, I have mostly just been bitching (and preparing). Others are just waking up as things go downhill faster. Have you read 4th Turning? If you subscribe to Strauss & Howe’s generational theory, there was little chance of much happening before the Crisis. Agreed, the actions and inactions that brought on the Crisis have been brewing for decades, but the time for resolution is now. Orson Welles said “We will sell no wine before its time”. Sorry to be fatalistic, but now is the time.
I am not sure we are decaying so much as we are noticing more. We have long been thus. I remember seeing Texas Rangers do incredible things as a child – one once made a man destroy his entire carnival stall/mechanical games when the carnie refused to close it at the Ranger’s order. The Ranger pulled a gun and gave the man an axe and mad him chop his small business to bits. I remember seeing cops beat shit out of a teenager in 1983. I remember cops taking a young man from my dad’s business and putting him in jail because they said he was “disrespectful”. I remember being harassed by cops simply because I was young. Etc. Etc.
This is age-old stuff. Much of it is now filmed and so gets more attention. But it has been going on forever. Plus there are ever new additions to the loss of freedom associated with new realities – terrorism, etc.
It has long been thus.
Thanks, Howard.
As an aside, I think the most outrageous thing is that prisoners are still held in Guantanamo, uncharged and untried, with no public presentation of charges, who these people are, what they have done, what evidence exists, etc.
That is outrageous. I suspect that these folks are dangerous. But I do not know it for a fact. This is an incredible situation and there is no end in sight. May God have mercy on their souls as it seems no one else will.
Howard,
Great post. Realistic thinking. From what I see a lot of people are waking up but they are still mostly morons who just aren’t asleep anymore. We are doomed.
Great post Howard. Maybe if we’re all comfortably numb, the slide into totalitarianism won’t seem so disgustingly unnecessary.
Women And Prescription Drugs: One In Four Takes Mental Health Meds
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/16/women-and-prescription-drug-use_n_1098023.html
CDC – Fact Sheets-Excessive Alcohol Use And Men’s Health – Alcohol
http://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/fact-sheets/mens-health.htm
Jul 20, 2010 – Approximately 62% of adult men reported drinking alcohol in the last 30 days and were more likely to binge drink than women
And after reading this , I think i need a stiff one.
What Will We Say?
by Eric Peters
http://lewrockwell.com/peters-e/peters-e115.html
for example, the recent Indiana Supreme Court decision that a homeowner has no right to resist even an illegal, warrantless and probable cause-free entry by cops. A cop, possibly psychotic, without doubt armed and packing the state’s authority to administer lethal violence – can literally kick in your door, for absolutely no lawful reason whatsoever – and if the homeowner resists, it is the homeowner who is in violation of The Law. If, say, you are asleep in bed and are awakened suddenly by the sound of your door being kicked in and you – fearing for your life – grab the pistol you keep by your bed and shoot the unknown berserker, it’s you who will go to prison!
I saw you had posted a little blurb about Malcolm X smiling somewhere back and felt like commenting on this most charismatic leader who saw the whole picture clearer in ’64 than many today, even though they’re gifted with 20/20 hindsight.
His speech the ballot or the bullet was one powerful piece of work.Too bad not many listened other than those that marked him for death.The Dems co-opted the black nationalists , just as easy as the Repugs co-opted the old Dixiecrats .
Short story.I used to work for a Dem congressman, who during election , would go to the black churches, sit on the front pew, stand up, sing , dance, clap and stomp time with the old tyme Gospel hymns and afterwards in private make fun of the congregation.Sickening, but he always got their vote a nd in turn became even more filthy rich than previously so.
Whether one agreed with Malcolm Black nationalism message or not, he definitely knew the score,
It’ll be the ballot or it’ll be the bullet. It’ll be liberty or it’ll be death. And if you’re not ready to pay that price don’t use the word freedom in your vocabulary .Malcolm X
Malcolm was right here:
If we bring up religion, we’ll be in an argument, and the best way to keep a-way from arguments and differences – as I said earlier – put your religion at home – in the clo-set. Keep it between you and your God. Malcolm X
But wrong here:
“The white man is too intelligent to let someone else come and gain control of the economy of his community. But you will let anyone come in and take control of the economy of your community, control the housing, control the education, control the jobs, control the busines-ses, under the pre-text that you want to integrate”. Malcolm X
The white mans economy was off-shored along with the black’s and has resulted in the destruction of white and black communities as people pull up lifelong roots and trudge across the nation looking for any work.The money changers only care about profit and control, nothing else matters to them.And, if the mass graves again become necessary to retain that control and power, then so be that too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFWzDFjBKUw
And here:(but correct in saying we’re all in the same bag , put there by the same enemy.)
“They don’t attack me because I’m a Muslim; they attack me ’cause I’m black. They attack all of us for the same reason; all of us catch hell from the same ene-my. We’re all in the same bag,” Malcolm X
“They’ attacked Malcolm and ilk because they’re were becoming very successful at splitting the power base and disrupting revenue streams via national boycotts.
The white man, at least the ones swinging the axe of Imperialism could care less about the color of ones skin. The money changers employ tactics straight out of the pages of Machiavelli’s The Prince .Chaos via war, murder, uprising,divide and conquer are their modus operandi and no nation is untouched.
Western meddling in Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia led to the murder and persecution of tens of thousand of Christians, but the so called Western christian power could care less.They would crucify Jesus again own the resources of these countries
.Malcolm X went to his grave believing that the majority of black Africans were gaining total Independence from the colonial powers, but he died too soon to have heard of the Africa Command (AFRICOM).I
Apparently, the strategy of the money changers is to break the power of the secular nation states of Africa and the middle east by fomenting revolution and turning neighbor against former neighbor via religious, class and tribal warfare and then merely buy the emerging warlord powers off western wealth.
The blood thirsty and ignorant are more easily appeased with baubles than those bearing principle who diligently work for peace.
And I think that’s the current play in progress.Crack up the geo-politcal order and then side with whatever powers emerge. To paraphrase MA Rothschild, the PTB could give a rats ass who control the people , they just want to control the money. And therein lies the root of all evil.
Expect push come to shove.
Gil Scott-Heron RIP
I
“I do not like the Tea Party either but at least when they left an area it was clean and they were not pissing on my stairs!” —- oleguy
Yeah, but you just HAD to come here and piss all over an awesome post with your bullshit. Didn’t you?
Jeezus, there’s always one in the crowd.
“I do not like the Tea Party either but at least when they left an area it was clean and they were not pissing on my stairs!” —- oleguy
LOL….the tea party’s protest didn’t last past their 4’oclock supper time.
oleguy
Your must have strong arms to wield a broom and manage such sweeping generalizations.
Not to mention disinformation and outfight lies. But from the top of your blather:
Where was I? This American (without a country) living in Australia for half my life, since 1974, Half a world away is not out of sight, out of mind. From 1970 through 1972, I was battling the IRS thugs to a standstill using their laws and regulations. Way before that, I was trying to teach a few people about the Federal Reserve and was considered a tin foil hatter, who’s now sayhing, “I told you so!”
I’ve written enough letters to congresscritters, no mas. And I could go on but
Why don’t YOU show your credentials? I suspect you have none from the MSM slop you repeat. I can see why you don’t want someone pissing on your stairs — it’s your prerogative.
“If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.”
Humans are the only species that wear boots. So chew on that awhile. We are doing this to ourselves.
howard in nyc said, “but i feel uneasy. i need smokey, or at least llpoh, to smak me; keep me from getting the big head.” He further said in his article:
“So many people wonder how the civilized, politically aware German population allowed the change in their society ushered in by the Nazis from 1933-’39. Fuck, we Americans of 2011 are so much worse than the German people. So much worse. Empty of any common sense or insight regarding the freedom that is the lifeblood of our nation.”
Really? You’re comparing America to 1930s Germans and saying we’re worse? I don’t think so.
Our nation has had many tragic missteps, for which our predecessors and we have paid dearly. Particularly slavery. Then there’s the Indian wars of the 19th Century. The Japanese-American internment fiasco of the 20th Century. The list is long. Fits and starts all over the place. Nearly all of which we have tried to correct at a healthy price to our citizens.
Then, there’s the Germans, who have lived under an autocratic government for nearly their entire existence as a nation. Century after century. Until Hitler, who took dictatorial powers to new heights with his racist, anti-semitic creed. Germans bought into it.
I could care less that Germans experienced 15 years of chaos after THEY started WWI. Germany was prosperous until Kaiser Wilhelm took the country into war. Germany got its ass kicked as a result and paid a dear price. It was the US that paid attention to the harsh terms of WWI, corrected those mistakes, and helped rebuild Germany, largely through the Marshall Plan.
I lived in Germany for 3 years, Howard. It’s a different culture which I am glad we have NEVER reflected or emulated. I’ll take our stumbling, dysfunctional republic any day.
Does that smackdown bring you back to reality?
you should read “The Politics of Obedience” by Étienne de La Boétie, written 1552–53
“For the present I should like merely to understand how it happens that so many men, so many villages, so many cities, so many nations, sometimes suffer under a single tyrant who has no other power than the power they give him; who is able to harm them only to the extent to which they have the willingness to bear with him; who could do them absolutely no injury unless they preferred to put up with him rather than contradict him. Surely a striking situation!”
http://mises.org/daily/4138
http://mises.org/rothbard/boetie.pdf
Jim
One of your best topic posts yet. Everything will depend on the “security forces” “doing their job”. If you notice “security forces” is the favorite term of our esteemed Sec of State Clinton when referring to any jack booted thug of a “friendly” nation. “doing my job” of course is the Eichmann paraphrase. I post about this frequently on goldwerewolf.typepad.com. This is the single most thing that will cause the necessity of armed uprising. Any doubts, view the soulless eyes of the police in the UC-Davis police as they pepper spray peaceful protestors for blocking a sidewalk. We are at a crossroads. One way is for sheep. The other is for revolutionaries. ALL cops today would have sided with the king over the founding fathers.
S~
thanks. i needed that.
heh.
naw, our culture has little in common with 1933 germany.
my point is much more narrow. in 1933, germans made the decision to trade some liberty for the promise of some security. their recent history makes this decision more understandable than our similar trade today.
they enjoyed much less security than we do today. economic, and security from violence.
but i think you got that point.
and, again, i needed the smack. better than a sharp pepper spray in the face. thanks, dude.
SSS
I wouldn’t use ‘fiasco’ for this:
“Charles Fahy, an appointee of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, deliberately hid from the court a report from the Office of Naval Intelligence that concluded the Japanese Americans on the West Coast did not pose a military threat.”
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/may/24/nation/la-na-japanese-americans-20110525
“I could care less that Germans experienced 15 years of chaos after THEY started WWI. ”
you should read “The Myth of a Guilty Nation” by Albert Jay Nock. the winners write the history books.
http://mises.org/resources/6647
“Austria was supposed to be, and still is by some believed to have been, Germany’s vassal State, and by menacing Serbia to have been doing Germany’s dirty work. No evidence of this has been adduced; and the trouble with this idea of Austria’s status is that it breaks down before the report of Sir M. de Bunsen, September that Austria finally yielded and agreed to accept all the proposals of the Powers for mediation between herself and Serbia. She made every concession. Russian mobilization, however, had begun on July and become general four days later; and it was not stopped. Germany then gave notice that she would mobilize her army if Russian mobilization was not stopped in twelve hours; and also, knowing the terms of the Russian–French convention of served notice on France, giving her eighteen hours to declare her position. Russia made no reply; France answered that she would do what she thought best in her own interest; and almost at the moment, on August, when Germany ordered a general mobilization, Russian troops were over her border, the British fleet had been mobilized for a week in the North Sea, and British merchant ships were lying at Kronstadt, empty, to convey Russian troops from that port to the Pomeranian coast, in pursuance of the plan indicated by Lord Fisher in his autobiography, recently published.”
American pigs …. errr, cops …. inspiring tyrants around the world
===================================================
How the Egyptian Military justifies it’s violence
Two people were killed in Cairo and Alexandria this weekend as Egyptian activists took the streets to protest the military’s attempts to maintain its grip on power. And guess how the state is justifying its deadly crackdown.
“WE SAW THE FIRM STANCE THE USA TOOK AGAINST OWS PEOPLE & the German govt against green protesters to secure the state,” an Egyptian state television anchor said yesterday (as translated by the indispensable Sultan Sooud al Qassemi; bold ours).
http://gawker.com/5861191/how-egypt-justifies-its-crackdowns-occupy-wall-street