THE
WHITE RULING CLASS in Ferguson, Missouri is obviously terrified by the
anger of the town's African-American majority population – hence the rush toward reforms reported in useful detail by The New York Times two days ago.
The
PollyAnna liberals, of course, will soon be hailing the reforms as a
great triumph, the silver lining in the storm-dark clouds of Michael
Brown's death and the still darker portends of the local police
fulfilling the purpose for which they have been federalized and
militarized – to serve as capitalism's army of occupation in the USian
Empire's domestic colonies. But nothing will change save the gradual
banishment of that conquered-territory image,
which must be suppressed because it (correctly) tells us our overlords
think Iraq, Afghanistan and the imperial homeland are tactically and
strategically interchangeable. That's why, within weeks if not days, a
team of obscenely salaried Josef Goebbels wanna-bees will be revising
our recollections of what really happened so that eventually Ferguson
fits the official Horatio Alger version
of U.S. history. And do not doubt they will succeed. The USian Ruling
Class manages the most diabolically sophisticated tyranny in all human
time, and its propagandists are the most effective truth-benders ever:
note how they have already revised the story of Martin Luther King Jr.
to remove the “r” from his call to revolution.
No
doubt the propagandists will do with Ferguson as they have done with
the life and death of Rev. King – they'll afix a smiley face to it.
Picture a smiley face replacing the Roman execution order atop a
medically accurate representation of Jesus' crucifixion agonies, or
(like the Arbeit Macht Frei above the main gate at Auschwitz),
hung at the entrance to Guantanamo: in either instance, complete with
its slogan – “have a happy day” – and you'll understand the ultimate
grotesquerie of this approach. Its historical context is especially
telling: the smiley face emerged at the height of the Vietnam War, as if
it were an admonition to capitalism's victims: “have a happy day” (or
else).
Yes that is the precisely sort of predator nation in which we now live, as the dismantling of the New Deal, the nullification of the Civil Rights Movement, the defeat of feminism and the terrifying triumphs of the lavishly funded theocratic counter-revolution
prove beyond all argument. “Reform” in this context is fraud – its sole
purpose is deception, an illusion of “change” that does nothing more
than temporarily cloak the savagery of capitalism, which is so
malevolent it can no more be “reformed” than cancer.
But this time the marks know the score. The Ferguson residents who dismiss the reform effort as a scam
are undoubtedly correct. The black community, like all other USian
minority communities, has learned from bitter experience that anything
the Ruling Class gives, the Ruling Class can just as quickly take back –
and no doubt will. Blacks know what too many of the rest of us still
refuse to learn: the federalized, militarized police and their
conversion into capitalism's army of occupation in the homeland colonies
means Ferguson is Everywhere U.S.A. just as Michael Brown is all of us –
every 99 Percenter regardless of race or gender or age.
Sometimes,
rather than offer bogus reforms, the Ruling Class merely lies, a
response at which the president is an obvious master. Hence Obama the
Orator's 2008 campaign slogan, “change we can believe in” – possibly the
most glaring Big Lie in U.S. political history – and his post-electoral
transformation to Barack the Betrayer. Now in the latter persona he is
again showing his true Republican selfhood by helping Pennsylvania
privatize Medicaid, which – exactly as intended – will significantly worsen the plight of the state's poor, no doubt in some cases fatally, all the while enabling the One Percent to turn a handsome profit on the resultant misery.
Since
Obama's absolute fealty to the Ayn Rand principles of capitalism is so
obvious, I would also question the promises by the U.S. Department of
Justice to investigate Ferguson and an even more obvious atrocity in Louisiana,
where a black man who'd been arrested, searched and shackled with his
hands behind his back and locked into a police car then supposedly
produced a concealed handgun and fatally shot himself.
The president has also called for a “review” of his own police federalization-and-militarization policies.
(Yes, the process of turning the police into storm troopers was begun
under Bush II, but like the nullification of the Bill of Rights, Obama
has continued it with a vengeance.) Probably all the “review” means is
the imposition of new measures to cover up the ongoing conversion of the
police into a new Schutzstaffel.
We the People are becoming more rebellious, and the One Percenters, who
worry the imperial war machine might not reliably kill U.S. citizens,
are becoming terrified. Hence here in the United States the aristocracy
turns to the police, exactly as the aristocrats did in Tsarist Russia,
which gives “serve and protect” a new and decidedly more Ayn Randish
meaning.
Hence
too what I would anticipate from these investigations is nothing more
than dramatic pronouncements in the characteristic Obama style:
compelling rhetorical flourishes that when carefully analyzed say
exactly nothing and change even less. Bear in mind too it's an election
year: that means Obama's required to (seemingly) pander to the
Democratic base. Never mind all the sensible Democrats (of which, long
ago, I was one) have already figured out the party labels are
meaningless – that we're governed by one Ruling Class party of two
names, and that the only meaningful difference between the Republicans
and the Democrats is the former are fascists and brag about it while the
latter are every bit as fascist but try to hide it behind a smokescreen
of lies.
As
many of you know I was an active supporter of the Civil Rights Movement
and in 1963 was jailed on related charges in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Reasoning from the eye-opening lessons I learned then and during the
subsequent 18 months I remained in the South, I have selected a three
more follow-up stories that seem to me to capture the essence of
Ferguson's importance – and more importantly stress the fact Ferguson is
(as I said above, and as cannot be said too many times) Everywhere
U.S.A. One of these texts is a Popular Resistance.org piece that makes the point the killing of Michael Brown and other young black men is part of the nationwide class war,
“massive disinvestment in urban neighborhoods and unconscionable levels
of joblessness and economic underdevelopment.” Another is an Associated
Press dispatch Reader Supported News rescued from the Orwell hole: it says the Ferguson resistance is inspiring a nationwide resistance movement –
which is precisely what the Ruling Class doesn't want us to know.
Lastly, also from the previous week – I now feel I should apologize for
having been so caught up in the personal angst of viewing newsprint
copies of my fire-destroyed photography – a Truthout exclusive examines the clash between “peacekeepers” and activists that is a vital part of the Ferguson backstory. It is actually a new twist to an old conflict: in my day, the “peacekeepers” were called Uncle Toms.
Finally here are three more stories that fall into the “as-if-there-were-any-remaining-doubts” category.
The first reveals the extent to which the so-called Main Stream Media (MSM) has become the government's propaganda apparatus, a perfectly logical evolution given the fact government at all USian levels is now a de facto
subsidiary of Wall Street. In other words, government and business have
merged, producing the ever-more-obvious reality of “capitalist
governance” – absolute power and unlimited profit for the One Percent,
total subjugation for all the rest of us – what earlier generations knew
as fascism.
Next, in the second report, we have another revelation of the forceable imposition of Christian theocracy on the military. Undoubtedly (though the text doesn't say it), this is a desperate effort by the Ruling Class to use the Prosperity Gospel
in an attempt to bolster the political reliability of the troops. Will
the theocrats succeed? Will biblical law replace remnants of our
constitution? Margaret Atwood surely thinks so – and having lived in the South, which is already a functional theocracy, I tend to agree.
Lastly, an anti-Michael Brown website provides a new yardstick by which to measure the magnitude of USian racism
– one of the many reasons I believe we are not far from the emergence
of an USian Nazism that will target racial, sexual, political and
spiritual minorities here in the bourgeoning Fourth Reich much as they
were targeted in the Third Reich. But here it will no doubt be under the
aegis of a smiley face, perhaps even with clowns to comfort the
children before they are gassed: “have a happy day.”
LB/14 September 2014
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