Alternate timeline:
– US government prioritizes ordinary Americans over the desires of wealthy sociopaths.
– Derek Chauvin charged with second-degree murder immediately after murdering someone, because that’s what you’re supposed to do.
– Everything’s cool.
– We’re all still talking about Tiger King.
~
“The people are angry about police violence. What should we do?”
‘Hmm… have we tried using police violence?’
“Yeah! It just made them angrier!”
‘Must not be violent enough. Let’s try military violence.’
~
Mainstream America is being made more and more aware of the vast chasm of difference between what their country purports to be and what it actually is.
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Swift, sweeping policy changes would end these protests. Obviously they would. To believe otherwise is to turn the protesters into fictional, orc-like subhumans who have no human motives, who want nothing but chaos and devastation. To invent such things is to abandon rationality.
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According to the standards set by Trump supporters when the Guaido coup first launched, the video footage of these protests is full justification for a foreign nation to directly intervene and remove Trump from office by force right now.
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Trying to restore peace using the same violent police force whose violence disrupted the peace in the first place is a bit like trying to put out a fire using lighter fluid. The same lighter fluid that was used to start it.
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There seem to be approximately 500 billion white people on the internet who believe telling black Americans what course of action is best for them will be received with warm gratitude and solve everything immediately.
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Many marriages are ending because the lockdown brought the dysfunctionality of the relationship into the forefront. The marriages didn’t get less healthy, they just had their preexisting unhealthiness highlighted. The same is happening with America’s racial and economic strife.
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Americans: We demand actual change.
Democrats: Our feelings feel the feelings that you are feeling, but please go back to being quiet and ignored.
Republicans: Anyone who wears black clothes is literally a terrorist.
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One of the craziest things about everything that’s happened is that Biden could still lose.
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Funny how everyone collectively figured out that J Edgar Hoover was an unfathomably evil monster, yet the immediate response was NOT to dismantle his entire life’s work, or even take his name off the FBI building.
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I don’t belong to any political clique or faction, and I don’t want to. Sometimes people say I’m trying to infiltrate a movement or ingratiate myself to some faction with my writing, but I’ve never done that and never will. I stand alone. My work, good or bad, is just me being me.
I don’t understand a huge chunk of online leftism at all, because I’m really not part of that scene. A lot of it just looks like esoteric jargon and obscure inside jokes to me. I’ve got my own cozy ideological clique with me and my husband, and anything outside that is a bit alien. Like I still to this day don’t even really know what Chapo Trap House is. I still don’t know who Aimee Terese is, I just know people used to compare me to her but don’t much anymore. When I try to find out about these things I just see a big confusing mess of words and emotion.
What you see here is pretty much what you get. I have no interest in joining or leading anyone’s faction or movement. I just say what seems true to me in the moment I say it, based on whatever my reality tunnel happens to be shaped like on that given day. No more, no less.
_____________________
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75 responses to “DC On Fire: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix”
Love your work more with each day. Keep it up!!
I’ve lived the life of a “navy brat”, grew up two years in Barcelona, two in Naples, got back “state-side” at six, to see “monopoly money” rather than gold and silver, as my dad’s childhood books stated. I’d already understood the fall of Rome due to over-extended military operations, and inflationary monetary policy, so it was clear, in 62, we were on the wrong side of history.
At that time, America was a place anyone could get where they wanted, by choosing to educate themselves, and by working. I lived in New Jersey two years, Massachusetts, two, then moved to Chicago, for nine, working all the way through, perhaps 18 or 20 jobs during the nine years in Chicago.
I own a machine shop, bought in cash, over the last fifty years, never had credit, much of it is old, some a century old, but modernized, and my capital is invested in raw material, tooling, and I often take barter, meat, vegetables, in trade for repairs on farm equipment, cash from the lumber industry, but my focus is in keeping our town of some 900, alive and well, getting us all to pull together, because its our town, if we don’t keep it alive, it will die.
We have no race problems, we are all in this together, all of us know this as a fact, we’ve got a sub-set of druggies, alcoholics, as any town or city has, but most everyone works hard, knowing we are never more than a few months away from ruin, if we don’t keep it together.
Every effort has been made to “Balkanize” our populace, make race identity relevant, and a dozen other “identities” important, but my effort is to make work relevant, and skill, because none of those other things impacts our ability to buy and sell things, buy with our work, and sell what we make.
We have very little real money left in America, to invest, so what is here, needs stay “here, local”, and be invested. If we keep our focus on our own circle of influence, our own ability to control, we can move forward.
Others can choose to watch, and follow, some will laugh, and continue to burn down their own homes. I’ve watched it happen all my life. I choose life for the future, my choice will be supported by those also intending on there being a future for Vanceboro, and North Carolina, or broken, by too many choosing politics over living.
Anyone can burn they home, their community, their city down. It takes strong willed people to choose to remain, fix things, and rebuild. Some will do so, and there will be a distinct difference in outcomes. We may be able to survive, if enough people think for themselves, remembering they are part of the whole, and choose to fight for survival, and not for destruction.
I stand firm, on the founding concepts of “these united states”, not on The united states, hegemony. I can do what is in my hands to do, and will. I hope and pray others choose the same. I am prepared to defend my way of life and living, all the way to the pain. Been in pain, most of my life.
Semper Fidelis,
John McClain
GySgt, USMC, ret.
Vanceboro, NC, USA
Very moving, Mr. McClain. You know the price you’ve paid. We all do. Just to get to wherever we are now. Thanks for sharing your ‘story’.
Not saying you wish to emulate her, or even agree with her philosophy, but the writer you remind me most of is the late Molly Ivins, an irrepressible and irreverent lady journalist from Texas who died back in the 00’s. She called a spade a spade and Dubya Bush a shrub, probably in recognition of his intellectual prowess. She would not find the least favor with either BadOrangeMan or DementedCorruptMan.
Caitlin wrote:
> “The people are angry about police violence. What should we do?”
> ‘Hmm… have we tried using police violence?’
> “Yeah! It just made them angrier!”
> ‘Must not be violent enough. Let’s try military violence.’
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Yes, if you just describe reality, it exceeds fiction. For instance:
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Peaceful Protest Interrupted By Swarm Of Aggressive Black-Clad Militants — The Onion
https://www.theonion.com/peaceful-protest-interrupted-by-swarm-of-aggressive-bla-1819580274
Something like an employment guaranty for everybody has a lot of merit as an opening position in the New-Social-Contract negotiations, which appear to be starting.
Lawlessness always results in an iron fist of absolute authority. As things get worse the people will scream for law and order at any cost. This is the entire reason for what us happening. Not some wishful social contract.
Caitlin: Please don’t change who you are or what you do. We love you just the way you are. Thanks.
“When it gets down to having to use violence, then you are playing the systems game. The establishment will irritate you-pull your beard, flick your face-to make you fight. Because once they have got you violent, then they know how to handle you.”-John Lennon
The protesters are playing right into the governments hands, because the powers-that-be want this. They want an excuse to lockdown the nation and throw the switch to all-out martial law. They want a reason to make the police state stronger. This fine article can be read here:
This Is Not a Revolution. It is a Blueprint for Locking Down the Nation
By John W. Whitehead!
https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/this_is_not_a_revolution._its_a_blueprint_for_locking_down_the_nation
Totally agree.
“Mainstream America is being made more and more aware of the vast chasm of difference between what their country purports to be and what it actually is.”
Collective delusions are what has held the country together all these years. The delusion that invaders had the right to push Native Americans off their lands. The delusion that this is a country of We the People. The delusion that politicians work “for us”. The delusion of “being Exceptional”. Manifest Destiny. The delusion of being the Land of the Free. The delusion that “money” conjured on a computer screen has real value. On and on it goes.
It is Mainstream America that has always held these delusions in their hearts. Delusions don’t work unless one becomes absorbed in them. There is not only resistance to “truth”… but for many there is a hatred of it.
If Mainstream truly begins to lose these delusions we are in a world of hurt because there are no positive narratives that will be allowed to take their place.
“Many marriages are ending because the lockdown brought the dysfunctionality of the relationship into the forefront.”
Wars begin in the home. Before that, they begin in the heart. We live in a seriously dysfunctional world of competing platforms of madness. Whatever goes on inside a person will become manifest outside. As it has always been.
Well, it is now Official
“God is Dead”
Has to be.
What was the line from Monty Python’s dead parrot sketch.
‘E’s not pinin’! ‘E’s passed on! This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! ‘E’s expired and gone to meet ‘is maker! ‘E’s a stiff! Bereft of life, ‘e rests in peace! If you hadn’t nailed ‘im to the perch ‘e’d be pushing up the daisies! ‘Is metabolic processes are now ‘istory! ‘E’s off the twig! ‘E’s kicked the bucket, ‘e’s shuffled off ‘is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible!! THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!!
……
It is now obvious that God is an Ex-God!
After all, if God was alive, then surely the sight of the Anti-Christ holding a Bible and then attacking and tear-gassing peaceful, non-violent protestors so he could stage a photo-op at a House of God would have caused a living God to sent thunderbolts down from heaven in anger.
It is official now …. God is Dead.
I’m curious what Australia spends for police depts.
This Is How Much Major Cities Prioritize Police Spending Versus Everything Else from (GQMagazine):
https://www.newsbreak.com/new-york/new-york/news/0PDHC9ci/this-is-how-much-major-cities-prioritize-police-spending-versus-everything-else
Cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis keep piling money on police departments.
Protests over the death of George Floyd have spread across the country, with thousands of people turning out in city streets to oppose police brutality. In many places, protesters were met with police in military-grade riot gear firing rubber bullets, launching tear-gas grenades, and indiscriminately pepper-spraying. As writer Caissie St. Onge put it on Twitter, “It’s kinda wild seeing pics of so many police officers all over the USA wearing so much paramilitary gear they look like Robocops while some doctors in our hospitals are still wearing garbage bags for PPE.”
There’s little evidence, if any, to suggest that more police actually correlates to fewer crimes—and more aggressive policing, like so-called “broken windows” policing and New York’s stop-and-frisk policy, seems to only increase arrests for extremely minor offenses while stoking violent interactions between police and minorities. Yet the hard numbers show that public officials have favored police department funding over public health and other concerns.
Los Angeles is a prime example: Mayor Eric Garcetti’s 2020-2021 city budget gives police $3.14 billion out of the city’s $10.5 billion. That’s the single biggest line item, dwarfing, say, emergency management ($6 million) and economic development ($30 million). Garcetti is also planning to raise the LAPD’s budget by 7 percent—to support bonuses for officers who have a college degree—while he’s also trying to institute pay cuts for more than 24,000 civilian city workers (to cope with budgetary fallout from the coronavirus outbreak).
In New York, which has the largest budget for any police department in the country, Mayor Bill de Blasio has called to reduce the NYPD’s budget by $23.8 million—a step in the right direction, but only 0.4 percent of the department’s $5 billion budget. As Brooklyn College sociology professor Alex Vitale writes in the New York Post, “New York City spends more on policing than it does on the Departments of Health, Homeless Services, Housing Preservation and Development, and Youth and Community Development combined.”
In other major metro areas, the trend continues: Oakland PD receives nearly half of the city’s discretionary spending( $264 million out of $592 million), dwarfing every other expenditure, including human services, parks and recreation, and transportation combined. A whopping 39 percent of Chicago’s 2017 budget went to police, and still the department got even more money, peaking in 2020 with a 7 percent increase to nearly $1.8 billion. Mayor Lori Lightfoot told reporters that no matter how dire the city’s budget shortfall gets as a result of coronavirus, she is “not ever gonna cut back on public safety.”
In Minneapolis, the city council and Democratic mayor Jacob Frey passed a $1.6 billion budget for 2020, bumping up the Minneapolis Police Department’s funding by $10 million (to $193 million) in order to add an extra class of recruits. But according to the local ABC affiliate, programs and agencies that could actually prevent crime get a relative pittance: $31 million for affordable housing, $250,000 for community organizations working with at-risk youth, and just over $400,000 for the Office of Crime Prevention.
Local police departments are also awash in cash and resources from the federal government, which keeps outfitting them in military gear. Between 1990 and 2017, the Defense Department provided $5.4 billion in military equipment to police departments across the country, including night-vision googles, bomb-diffusing robots, and 18-ton “mine-resistant, ambush-protected” vehicles previously deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Here’s my satirical take on our inner Amy Cooper nature:
Wharfers Unite! June 2, 2020
On my YouTube page ‘Laurie Dobson’
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lZBEmv-MibY&feature=youtu.be
If any of you folks would like something to follow, you’re welcome to follow us. We can’t promise comfort, we might be crazy—and we will certainly offend—but we cannot be bought, we cannot be intimidated, we cannot be `canceled.’ There is no cushy pundit job waiting for us, no lobbying gig either. The only things waiting for us are a cage, a box, or another step on The Long Walk.
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We’re the best thing on offer (that we’ve been able to find at least). And, should you think you’ve found something better? Well, if you’re right, we’ll probably incorporate those good ideas once they’re brought to our attention. We are not rigid ideologues, we are not close-minded fanatics, we are not infallible. We are simply ignorant—but less ignorant than the status quo, by far.
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So, what are you going to do with this opportunity presented? No matter what you decide, after this you can’t use the argument, `What was I supposed to do? What could I possibly have done?’ We made you an offer, an offer you can even explore with no risk to yourself before you make any sort of committment. If you don’t take it? Well, friend, that’s your choice—just remember all choices have consequences. And at this late hour, there are no neutral positions.
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So what’s it gonna be? You take the blue pill—the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill—you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Remember, all I’m offering is the truth—nothing more.
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The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/k1omyaf0r73shvk/Twenty-Twenty-four.pdf/file
https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2020/05/30/18833392.php
I like both the substance and the tone of your messages and would really like to understand specifically what you are asking of me, of us, but I cannot make your link work, being a tech-challenged boomer who has nevertheless managed to keep at least some of the 60s fire alive in his mind and heart. Would you kindly provide a direct link to something I can simply click on to grasp the gist of your message, your invitation, or perhaps lay out the basics in a longer comment? Thanks for considering my request, which I doubt I’m making only on my own behalf.
Of course, our pleasure. We’ll give you a few options in case one gives you (or anyone else) trouble.
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If you just want to start with the full book, just click here:
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https://www.indybay.org/uploads/2020/05/30/twenty-twenty-four.pdf
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You can find a plain text message summarizing at a high level our goals here:
https://pastebin.com/qV2qT0GU
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The mediafire link is probably the most hoop-jumpy nonsense one (free hosting with anonymous signup can be such a tedious chore). I’m betting that’s the real problem one for the less tech-centric folks.
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If you click our name on any post you’ll be directed to archive.org. And that page also has a bit of a release message. And here’s that link:
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https://archive.org/details/twenty-twenty-four
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The indybay.org one is probably the most basic of the bunch (book is embedded near the top):
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https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2020/05/30/18833392.php
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And what are we looking for from you folks? The first step is simply to have as many individuals as possible critiquing our book and pointing out the flaws so that foolish mistakes can be avoided. That’s our desired path: the one where tens of millions (we can dream!) brutally shred our ideas. What other movement will offer you such things?
And another note: depending on your browser and settings, the direct link to the book may simply open the pdf in your browser for viewing. To save the file to your computer simply click on the `Download’ button which is likely to appear at the top of the page.
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Don’t hesitate to ask questions if you’re confused—Tech Support: A requirement for any modern revolution.
Thank you, IO, for your prompt, thorough, and helpful response. Makes me all the more eager to check out and perhaps get with the program you’re proposing. Will set time aside over the next day or two to follow your leads.
The thing about revolutions is that anyone talking about 2024 when the revolt is taking place in 2020 is obviously either missing the boat or trying to steer others into missing the boat.
Hey, here’s the plan. We get people to try to read 3700 pages of meandering, clueless BS instead of going out and joining the revolt. If they actually try to read 3700 pages, then their brains will be scrambled before they are done. But don’t worry, the opening is so wandering and pointless that I doubt that will happen to very many.
Bravo, Emma. We have endless self-important would be messiahs telling us to join some bloviated wave of the future. Infinite Onion is just another float in that sad parade. I’m sticking to my friends and trying to keep myself away from hate and milleniallists like Infinite Onion.
A wise choice, dividing ourselves into small camps and tribes always ends well.
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Or, perhaps you might want to step out of the rutted tracks you find yourself in, and take a look around?
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And for those who actually take the time to explore what we have created, you and Emma are actually reinforcing our narrative. You are both in the book, doing exactly what we predicted you would do. So we thank you for your assistance there, but we might recommend a bit of self-reflection.
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Either way, be sure to tell your friends how awful and self-important we are, our grandiose narcissism would love that.
We love that you’re actually being critical, be sure to keep it up!
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However, you seem to be ignoring (which is interesting given the site you are on) that the entire world is narrative. You do realize that more than 3,700 pages of meandering bullshit made you who you are today, right? Lots more, to be accurate. So what’s your plan after you’ve held your signs and smashed your shit for some days? How exactly do you propose you upend the millennia worth of narrative which infests the brains of the masses? Are you going to do it 140-woke characters at a time? Or maybe just the right picture-text combination will make everyone see the light? Or maybe you want to do it by word of mouth one person or small group at a time, in person, rather than taking advantage of the tools you have available?
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You don’t say, so we don’t know.
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But, don’t take this as an attack of course, just as we don’t take yours as such (though perhaps you intended it that way, we don’t really much care).
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And you may find that it contains quite a few useful things for those folks currently engaging in some unrest. But because you simply dismiss us you’ll never have the opportunity to do so. Your close-mindedness will certainly be your loss, hopefully it does not affect others. And remember, don’t get distracted by the sexy stuff, real revolt isn’t an action-packed adventure.
It is fascinating how on the internets, the same voices that just weeks ago were telling us that government public health orders were an affront and assault on Freedom and that all true Patriots must get into the streets and protest and storm state legislatures armed with guns in order to protect Freedom from an overreaching government have ….
…. now
…. become voices stating that all protest is a horrible assault on Freedom and that Protest = Tyranny and that it is the duty of all to obey all commands from government and authority. The same voices that were demanding protest against public health orders now say that all protest must be crushed by the power of the state.
For me, the biggest disconnect is between the outrage expressed over the taking of TVs, shoes, clothes, and other consumer goods AND the taking of trillions of public funds by the big banks, big corps, Wall Street, and the elites in general. At the outset of this pandemic, they were made whole by massive infusions of fiat money, while the rest of us, the 90% or so (if you include the upper middle class courtiers with the obscenely wealthy) were given a measly $1200 and a temporary extension of unemployment compensation. Same outrage happened last time around in 2008, and maybe, just maybe, we’ve learned the hard way.
These two fragments nailed it for me..
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“According to the standards set by Trump supporters when the Guaido coup first launched, the video footage of these protests is full justification for a foreign nation to directly intervene and remove Trump from office by force right now.”
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“Americans: We demand actual change.
Democrats: Our feelings feel the feelings that you are feeling, but please go back to being quiet and ignored.
Republicans: Anyone who wears black clothes is literally a terrorist.”
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It’s good that you remain outside any clique. Hope you don’t mind having a following.
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cheers, Glen.
Calls for President Xi of China to provide the American rebels with the means to defend themselves against the regime have not yet been answered.
https://www.moonofalabama.org/
I think the author was being a bit sarcastic. 🙂
As the American regime, attacks, gasses and kills its own people, we the protesters demand that the freedom loving nations of the world enforce a No-Fly zone over America and help stop our government from killing us. The regime uses aircraft to spy on us, and to coordinate attacks on protesters. The American regime has a history of using helicopter bombs against protesters (see Philadelphia and the MOVE protests), so we need the world to enforce a No-Fly Zone to protect us.
We have the power to impose it on ourselves. No-fly zones and no-work zones and no-normal civil participation zones, etc. Instead, for the short run, we do for ourselves as best we can and build genuine and lasting solidarity. I hope and pray that this is what we’re just beginning to see. To do this, the cost will be great. But it will cost a lot more NOT to do it.
Remember, you don’t fight things that can fly while they’re in the air, you sabotage them and/or their replacement parts, while they’re on the ground. Some might also argue you go after the maintenance crews as well.
You’re not a nation state, so don’t fight like one. Guerilla warfare is the only form of warfare capable of killing empires.
Quite true. Castro’s Cuban revolution is fascinating in this respect, since he started out with only 20 or so liberators holed up in the mountains and built from there. Perhaps the most immediate and direct action we can take to create no-fly zones is refusing to fly ourselves…anywhere. Not that it’s what you mean, but the last thing we want to do is cripple a passenger airplane without letting others know and cause a catastrophe.
Yes, far better to make them useless paperweights while on the ground. There isn’t really any benefit to incinerating a planeload of people—unless you get to hand-pick the passengers.
And every journey begins with a few steps, if you’ve got some idea where you’re going you’re off to a good start. Keep walking and they’ll come out of the mists to join you.
I can’t determine what else we should expect when we continuously support the notion that an entity whose only authority is their ownership of a monopoly on violence should be in charge. Government is nothing more nor less than putting a gun to people’s heads and forcing them to do, or not do a particular thing. Why the big surprise? Why would one suppose that putting the correct psychopath in charge of such an entity would improve anything? Why would nearly an entire race of Americans insist on loyalty to a particular gang of psychopaths with a “D” attached to it? Are not such “D”s largely in control of the exact local psychopaths who are presiding over the destruction of that race? If one voluntarily submits to a gang of psychopaths whose only tool is violence, do not expect candy, flowers and unicorns to appear.
Well Caitlin, honest soul that you are and a true-blue Ozzie, I love it that you let it all hang out as you see it. That is honest and correct.
There is one point that I have not seen expressed by the pundits, and that is, given the fact that the police officers at the cause of this mess are really too irresponsible and stupid to hold any position of power in civilized society . . . one must view the fact that any individual will act and/or likely over-react when they perceive a threat to their person. This is what happens when folks resist arrest and/or otherwise act confrontationally towards a police office engaged in doing his assigned duty.
Folks who are stupid enough to resist arrest or fight with police on duty will get “roughed up.”
We do see rather too much of dull individuals resisting arrest and/or otherwise behaving in a manner physically threatening to police performing their duty which activity ends up with death or physical injury to the dull individual.
Civic leaders and the MSM are at fault for glorifying the stupid individual who instigated the “excessive” use of force use by the police in their effort to protect themselves while they do their duty . . .
A more correct message that would actually be helpful and not act to incite civil unrest would be to point out the actual whole truth of the events and warn society that any individual engaged in resisting arrest or otherwise being confrontational is simply inciting strife and stupidly inviting the use of force against himself.
I’m an old guy who grew up in Australia, lived 20 years in London and Europe and now 30 years in New York . . . hence I observe clear distinctions in the way these societies and their police forces interact. Ditto one can observe a sad decline in the honesty and conduct of the MSM . . . it has become too destructive in the manner it engages in reporting events.
Only when the vast majority of us pay no attention whatsoever to what the MSM is telling and showing us, pro or con, rely instead on alternative media and word of mouth and personal reflection, will the revolution become overwhelming and unstoppable.
I’m not a Democrat or Republican either. My observation from the outside looking in is that if the Republican party wants to survive. They will tell Trump it’s time for you to resign. And, if you don’t we will have your cabinet remove you with the 25th amendment.
I don’t see how a president Pence could be any worse than Dotard.
Pence is a certifiable religious nut; he will not have to pretend.
George Floyd was poor.
He was Black.
He should have been working a $32hr. job.
The cops should have been at a ballgame.
We might be conditioned to hate poor people. Especially poor Black people.
If the Solidarity Labor Movement brought us anything, it was a profound appreciation for work. The old Union members believed we are all fulfilled by our work. They believed that a good job is a right. They believed in full employment. Martin Luther king, Jr. said that a ballot didn’t mean much without social justice, without a decent job. The present day Labor leaders are mostly white. They do not believe this. 140 Million Americans are in poverty because we allowed our “union” leaders to sit on their dead asses while the 1% deindustrialized our country.
Not all white working class people believe this. Lots of white working class people hate Colin Kaepernick.
George Floyd was murdered because he was Black and poor.
How did this mountainous hateful, dogeatdog, Elite-driven culture happen?
WHY was George Floyd poor? Why are so many minorities unemployed? Why couldn’t so many working class whites understand what Kaepernick told us all?
Colin Kaepernick sacrificed his own job in taking a knee to get our attention to what poverty does to minorities. Kaep tried to tell us what it’s like to live in ghettoes controlled by drug gangs and cops. Cops are assigned to control the 140 MILLION Americans in poverty. In Gary, Indiana, where the steel mills once were, the steelworker neighborhoods have not been steelworker communities for a long time. They are poverty neighborhoods ruled by gangs and defeated cops. There are daily drug deals, beatings, knife fights, shooting and rapes. A Navy Vet friend who grew up in such a neighborhood told me what it was like. And he said, “I was not going to raise my family in all that….especially my daughters.” And he picked up his family and moved to Wisconsin. His Dad had been a Steelworker. But the Chicago/Gary steel jobs were sent to foreign slaves by do-nothing-good “union” leaders and corporatists. And, what did WE do about it? If YOU are a white working class member, did you defend Kaepernick? Did YOU defend our work? Why do we have ghettoes?
Before Colin, Solidarity Union people of all colors tried to explain all this to us. I saw Packers fans boo Kaepernick and I saw confused “union” people helping to cut our jobs.
I believe George Floyd died because of us, because we left the good fight for good jobs for all. Because now we have a generation of working stiffs who under-value work and decent $32hr jobs for all. And I believe that anyone sincere about fighting racism needs to start with Just Economics. We need an Economics that serves everyone!
Anyone serious about racism and solidarity, anyone who truly wants to fight to fix this should take a few moments to think about George Floyd and his poverty. Think about why the cops are not working to protect and serve in happy fully-employed communities? Think about what we are willing to do in the Good Fight to change this country from hate to happiness?
WE NEED JOBS! We need justice. We need good jobs that pay $32hr. for everyone!
George was poor and practically unemployed because the all-white, sellout leadership of American Labor abandoned the fight for our jobs. Not only abandoned the fight FOR jobs, but led the Solidarity Union Movement backwards….led the fight against jobs!
My “union” is not the great Social Justice UAW anymore. Hasn’t been that exemplary Solidarity Union for 50 years. It has just agreed to cut 7 more auto plants with our work shipped to foreign slaves. Seven more plants closed means at least 100,000 more auto jobs lost. 100,000 auto jobs lost equals 600,000 related jobs lost in the greater community! The loss of 700,000 more jobs means the loss of 700,000 chances to stop racism/poverty!
Are You really serious about stopping racism? What are we willing to do to save these jobs? What are we willing to do to strike and fight to wipe out poverty here and in Mexico and Canada? What are we willing to do to end the cop murders and pound nails into the coffins of racism? When will WE see that the answer to a happy America is as simple as GOOD JOBS FOR ALL?
We need a new Solidarity Labor Movement that organizes strikes and WINS for GOOD JOBS FOR ALL!
Because when we work together, we work together.
Good, thoughtful post!
Nailed it, Tom. The only proposal on the table right now to create the kinds of jobs you’re talking about, and to create them for everyone who needs them, is the Job Guarantee Proposal (JG) put forward by Modern Monetary Theory economists. Understanding the fiat nature of modern money on the federal (not the bank) level–just note the trillions of federal dollars created by keystrokes at the outset of this pandemic and poured into bailing out the big corps and banks and the stock market–the JG calls for similar infusions of fiat money to create millions of federal jobs, locally organized and administered, with a livable level of wages and benefits, for every working age adult for whom the private sector cannot or will not furnish such employment. No one who is able to and wants to work would ever suffer from crippling unemployment, and a floor would be automatically set for private sector wages and benefits which would have to match JG employment to attract employees. The nature of such federally financed jobs are limited only by our imagination since there’s so much necessary and beneficial work to do in service to people and planet, pressing work which does not yield sufficient private sector profit. And when we have to stay home because of a Covid spike, new virus, or other public health threat, JG workers would paid for staying home at governmental direction instead of for working, with no change whatsoever in their income. For those attracted to this stunningly simple and practical idea, a much better alternative IMHO to a meager UBI, a brief internet search will yield plenty of informative articles and videos. Same goes for those who immediately worry about hyper-inflation. No group of economists have studied inflation more closely and thoroughly than those who think through the MMT lens.
Thanks to the Davos crowd (WEF), the markets, global corps, business ‘thought influencers’ & the UN (and others, many others) we’re told ‘Climates Change’. Their CC movement (and poster child/children Greta & XR), have warned us were all gonna die, we need a Green New Deal (new economy, we wrecked the old one), so you may very soon find millions (more) jobs gone for cleaner everything (It’s for the Earth, people!). It’s a done deal, the 4th Industrial Revolution (#4IR) and #thefutureofwork is here (moved up by covid, according to multiple articles) and framed as good for us & the planet. From no drivers on ANY vehicles, to robots taking over fast food, to no more retail clerks, to robots bosses (if you keep a job), to online medical, free office space-your home, etc, the coming world of jobs is about as bad as Andrew Yang warned, and covid is thrilling the 4IR planners. Even these riots today may seem minor as the changes are made. But, don’t worry, they promise eliminating millions of jobs will create millions of jobs (in coding, & you’ll need to reskill 7-8 times in your life to eat, because working 1-2 jobs for 30 years at a good wage, with a pension or social security is pretty much your dad’s world). You can search, millions of articles.
https://eiuperspectives.economist.com/financial-services/why-coronavirus-will-accelerate-fourth-industrial-revolution
Search automation, AI, machine learning, robots-articles dated before, then after covid. We need fewer dirty humans in the age of covid. note to employers: buy an employee once, no pay, insurance, hours, sick days, quitting, eating, sleeping, etc.
In summary: “Wage slavery and environmental overshoot for all!”
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You folks need to get this toxic infatuation with jobs out of your heads. People want to be able to survive and have a meaningful life: full stop. Why would anyone insist on wedding a future movement to this ridiculous invention of `jobs’? Most jobs shouldn’t exist. Most meaningful, valuable work people do is unpaid, and carving out every little thing into a job is a foolish, technocratic endeavour.
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And, your $32/hr? Well, people shouldn’t be working anything called a `job’ for more than 10-15 hours a week, so it is clear that your generous pay bump seems to continue to expect that they will be working 30-40 hours (or more)—otherwise they’re still in poverty. So, this isn’t a radical stance, it’s just neoliberal-lite. And the lift to get there? Part of the issue is just getting this massive thing started moving in the first place, and you just want to nudge it slightly and stop?
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No thank you, we’re not interested in continuing slavery. We’re interested in an actual break with the past. We recommend all those interested in the same start tearing our ideas apart so we can actually do this right.
Then let me start right here. E.F. Schumacher alludes to the Buddhist view of good work or right livelihood (which he indicates could as easily be grounded in other religious or existentialist traditions) as meeting at least a fourfold human need, individual and social: (1) to help people overcome their inborn egocentric tendencies and learn to cooperate and work with others; (2) to more fully develop and express one’s innate skills, talents, and gifts; (3) to provide a sense of personal meaning, dignity, and responsibility; and (4) to create the goods and services necessary to support a viable, sustainable economy and society. Please tell me what is wrong with this idealistic view of what work could be, and why the very concept of work itself (detached from capitalist debasement and exploitation), is nevertheless somehow evil.
The view is good, the problem arises when you bring income into it, we think.
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None of us would be here without Everday Communism. Your parents (we hope) did not charge you to wipe your ass as an infant, or feed you, or do any such things. This is not a `job’ in the usual sense (though some may use that term for it) but it’s certainly work.
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Now, do we want to create a job title of `Parent’ and pay them for that? Or is that just a kind of necessary work which receives no pay? Is it beneficial for us to be drawing these lines of paid work and unpaid—especially if some of that unpaid work is necessary and helpful while some of the paid work is unneccessary and harmful? Or does this hurt society?
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Many people find the things you outline in jobs, because they have to have a job to survive and it is their best available option for extracting meaning during the brief period they’re alive. But many jobs people derive meaning from should not exist.
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So we say: why go through all the trouble? Why not divorce survival from a job? That doesn’t mean everyone sits around all day watching Netflix doing no work like many critics claim. There’s plenty of things people can do for themselves, their communities, their world. Meaningful things. But let’s leave the technocrats out of it. We’re more than capable of finding beneficial things to do, we’re not interested in having to justify those things to a bureaucrat in order to get our survival stipend.
Great news, folks. Corporate America, and specifically the Mass Media Barons themselves, have all signed on to support ‘The Revolt 2020’. https://www.businessinsider.com/disney-netflix-hbo-hollywood-george-floyd-protests-statements-2020-6#paramount-cbs-nickelodeon-and-other-viacomcbs-owned-divisions-9
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The Revolt 2020….Fight racism!.. Fight sexism!… Fight white supremacist Nazi people!…..(Just don’t fight Corporate America and US Empire)…Vote for Skinny Joe…. “I’m Joe Biden and I approved this message”.
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With US Big Media fully supporting the Marionette Left, who can stop us now? Dare they even try?
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The black bloc antifa folks must be happy knowing that Disney, and Warner, and Bezos, and Netflix, and Sony, and Hulu….and ALL the ‘Dons’ of US Mass Media power, are right there ‘in the streets’ with them.
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Big Media’s ancillary corporate marketing/merchandising companies are already lining up sweat-shops in SE Asia to make ‘Antifa Goons Do It Harder’ t-shirts, hoodies, balaclavas, and coffee mugs. Disney is rumored to be thinking of a new theme park in Orlando, where they can sell whole black bloc outfits to the kids when they come in. Black combat boots buckled over tight black leggings. Many characters to emulate. Goth chic … Helmets … Bandanas … facial hardware … Guy Fawkes masks … henna tattoos … black lipstick and eye-shadow … gas masks …free speech signs to carry that have handles with the heft of baseball bats … (fads that involve lots of ‘gear’ are always popular)…
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It’s all been reduced to a ‘scripted reality’ TV Show. ( ‘Scripted reality’ is like a pro-wrestling, and/or a ‘sexy bodies on the beach’ type show that pretends to be real but is really scripted. ).
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Turns out ‘The Revolution2020’ will not merely be televised, it’s actually a new hit ‘dramedy’ series, brought to you by the nice folks who own Corporate America, (and also run our electoral system, give orders to the heads of both political parties, and sponsor most all members of the US Congress, in both political parties, and Bernie too. (When Bernie stops hugging Uncle Joe’s leg and licking his boot, he plays make-believe and pretends like he’s an ‘Independent’…. Awe … It’s such an adorable pose…)
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When even the people who have been making the most sense start sounding like their eyes have gone wide in crazed excitement over what they see happening, (which to you looks like a real ‘set up’ of a disaster in the making), the plot has definitely ‘thickened’.
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“When you hear your own Enemy cheering for you, getting your head out of warm dark moist place must become a high priority” –Moon-Tzu, from ‘The Art of Not Being a Complete Idiot’.
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Raise your hand if you think that the bizarre alliance between the American Left and the Power Structure Syndicate that owns and runs the US Empire, probably has a better chance of working out better for the Power Structure Syndicate than for the American Marionette Left.
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The cops are now the ‘new’ bad guys … Oh goodie … A new tribe of boogie-men to hate….
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(Don’t sweat it guys … It’ll be another one of those ‘dual cognitive reality’ things … The girls will always be attracted to the uniform … (And even missy snooty pants is secretly attracted to the ‘bad boys’) … The danger and power of the strong guy who ‘comes heavy’? Are you KIDDING? (A touch between the breasts, like an imaginary pearl secretly clutched) … Next natural disaster we’ll renew the ‘First Responders’ dramedy series, and blue collar cops with blue sleeves rolled up over sinewy forearms, bellowing out “I’m a free-born man of the U-S-A!”, while swinging a pint of dark brown Guinness (and pale ivory foam) overhead… will have many a comely lass’s heart all aflutter)…
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Just keep staring into the colored light…Keep hearing the blaring noise … Indulge your passions … Let them all roar-out tonite … Free your Inner Anger. Free your unthinking Rage. Free your Hate.
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As long as you hate someone, we don’t care who it is… “Just Hate Someone … You’ll like it when you do …”
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And vote for Skinny Joe. And whatever Black Woman he names as his successor.
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New Listing … Won’t last … Suspension bridge over East River…Old-school design…
Or, .. maybe enough people have had it with the poor, working class being exploited and all the wealth in the country held in the hands of a few families. …nah.
Joe Biden will never be the President of the United States, even if he is elected.
I don’t think the real Dem President will be anything like tv Joe. The real President will be the chronic (Intl) elite party-machine clubkids that here financed the first black president in US history who did absolutely nothing about ghettos & poverty & policing (some folks got a bump in food stamps, tho-nice!) during his first 2 years & had both Houses in Congress.
I’m pretty sure everyone who elected him wanted/expected him to do just that, but the Uncle “BO” got sidetracked by Citizen Soros, Syria, and celebrities.Tough break, black & poor. Maybe if they’d been sponsored-breakout black singers or pro sports players…
Yup. I cried when Obama, for whom I worked hard, was elected the first time. Not long afterward, I cried again when he turned his back on the hope and change many of us expected from America’s first black president. Apart from occasional flashes of inspiring rhetoric and being able to sing “Amazing Grace” gospel-style, he wasn’t even slightly black, in the 60s/70s normative sense of MLK, Malcolm, The Panthers, Ali, etc. THAT bait and switch was the death knell of what was left of the American left…until maybe now.
Me, too, cried. If course I voted for him, same hope as you. What a fool I was.
I don’t think we were fools, the first time around, but merely hoping against hope that the idealism of the 60s/early 70s was somehow still around, that it could suddenly leap forward from decades of suppression/repression and finally beat back the bastards who had gotten a firm and sinister upper hand in American society. Shattering to learn otherwise, at least in the case of Obama…and now Bernie.
Yeah, but I’ve known for decades politics isn’t really real. What’s in public is designed for the public, everything is actually done behind closed doors, often at some Itnl. closed meeting. Money is involved. No one checks if we even make a trillion dollars of new war crap every year, or why-are last year’s planes rusted? Every politician leaves wealthy but the country’s broke?, nothing is done about lies/crimes, the most degenerate ppl run the world (it IS, imo, a global empire of inbreds who consider themselves our betters, not just a US one, who suck off all wealth for themselves, outsiders & whistleblowers are imprisoned/killed). I could go on. But, was it always this bad years ago, it seemed better, (hmm, or maybe I was a child), and King is one of many black people’s heroes, as well as mine, so maybe…maybe?
Nope. I fell for it. But this year, look at our great choices chosen for us. They aren’t even trying to fake it anymore.
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“I don’t understand a huge chunk of online leftism at all,…”
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—Me either. After Sanders caved so cooperatively there were some online chatrooms set up to talk about what comes next. I have little faith in elections but see the value of third party building as an organizing tool, particularly towards striking, and I was invited into some rooms to talk about exactly that. I thought. It turned out to be anything but. Or everything but.
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Some were adamant that unless [obscure something] was in the party platform they weren’t interested. Some others were adamant that unless [other obscure something] was in the party platform, they weren’t etc. etc. I was thinking that a third party that gets behind M4A (which keeps us healthy and less poor while we’re fighting), a Green New Deal (which keeps the planet from burning while we’re fighting), and doesn’t support killing people overseas over stuff (which seems self-evidently the right thing to do) would cover a lot of essential ground, and we could work on the rest while we’re building support for the main stuff, but no one wanted to do that, that I could tell. There was, though, some discussion of Italian techniques of organizing. And Lenin. Always Lenin.
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“What about proposing a specific day for a general strike, and either building support for that, or find out it’s better to move the day and seek to rally people around that?” I said.
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Nope. Nobody wants to do that, either. A lot of people seem to think we have all the time in the world. I don’t think we do.
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Of course, this was last week. Maybe people feel a little more urgency, this week. Best,
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The issue is they’re attempting to apply old narratives in new situations—thinking they can be picked up and used essentially like lego blocks. But this is not the case, you need to do quite a bit of whittling to make the old blocks useful in the present era. But instead its Trotsky this, Lenin that, blah blah blah.
We’d recommend checking us out though, we’ve got your M4A, we’ve got your GND, we’ve got your anti-imperialism—and we make a case for going much farther. If you want to get this done you need to be able to take people on a journey and return them safely (but hopefully less ignorant) to the same place they started—then it’s up to them what they do and where they go next.
Ah, the Buddha Ms Caitlin speaks the truth from her soul and she has ” followers ” like me gladly reading her every word! Former police officer Derek Chauvin was not only severely cruel, he was also blatantly stupid because he saw others recording his cruelty and eventual killing of a handcuffed man already on the ground. The United States of America has a ” blue plague ” of death caused by human beings with ” badges “. Mr. Chauvin has stolen “the show” away from Donald Trump.
“One of the craziest things about everything that’s happened is that Biden could still lose.” C.J.
Oh no!! Surely Americans are not so stupid as to allow Joe Biden’s mental deterioration come between them and Joe on election day.
whichever wins, we lose. the parties are like drug cartels fighting over market share.
Nationwide looting, protests, arson etc. does not just spontaneously happen. It is planned and executed. Who and for what purpose, I have no idea. It is definitely not the Russians. I am sure the culprits are much closer to home. I have no idea where this is leading but it will not be good.
Agree 100%. This doesn’t pass the sniff test. Anyone who’s organized demonstrations will tell you that it is difficult just to get 100 people in one place at a particular time for a specific reason. But tens (hundreds?) of thousands of people with all of the communications and transportation and Antifa tools in place in such short time and across the entire country? That takes a LOT of time and organizational skill…and lots and lots of plugged-in workers/volunteers. This is not the least bit organic.
We probably ought to remember that an important, epochal annexation is coming up very soon … annexation … nobody is talking about it now. Hmmm … I bet that’s a good thing for the annexors.
Hint, hint … Antifa = ISIS = ?????
You’re right. These are the tactics which were used in Ukraine and to a great extent still are being used in Venezuela. This is how the US deep state destabilizes countries. What the objective is here and how things will end, I don’t know, but I’m pessimistic about a good ending. As Frankenstein found out, it’s much easier to create the monster than to control him.
The resemblance with Ukraine, Venezuela, Hong Kong, etc, etc is uncanny. They also had a go in Iran a few years back, internet savvy and Green in one package! Maybe everything looks like a nail to a deep state wielding a hammer.
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A dead give-away would be reports of snipers firing into both sides of the crowd.
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I think your pessimism is well-founded. How do you get a good outcome from a nation with so little sense of community, and so easily manipulated? Or am I miss-reading the situation? Maybe we can learn from the nations that have successfully resisted this interference. The strength coming from the people, the society, the culture.
Absolutely right. Much of the violence is undoubtedly false flag. I saw this in action first hand during the Occupy Movement in the city where I was living at the time. Violent, drink- and drug-addicted, thieving “disruptors” were literally trucked into the camp in an unmarked box truck and Fox News showed up soon thereafter. Prior to that, everything was peaceful and productive. There were also real-life trolls spreading disinformation. Similar happened in Seattle during the protests there.
The purpose of all this is to generate fear in the general population,
to justify police militarization and brutality, “See, these people are animals who are only out to destroy you! We have to do this to keep you safe!” It further supports racism and ups the “divide and conquer” policies of the elite. The more fear, the more acquiescent the majority of the population will be to whatever the powers that be want to happen in the name of safety, regardless of how irrelevant and/or nonsensical and/or counterproductive and/or unconstitutional the measures are.
There are photos on the internet of piles of paving stones, delivered and placed in public spaces, without any legitimate reason for them being there. Many people are suspicious.
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From the phone videos of the police building being evacuated, I got the impression that many there were just onlookers who came to see what was going on. There were fireworks being shot into the sky. JM, maybe this is how you attract people. Fireworks.
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There were a core of activists at the center of the action at the police station, but lots of onlookers at the periphery. The exodus of the police convoy was a bit surreal. Were the police and the activists in collusion, or were they both a little wary of conflict up close?
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There are times when I wish I knew what was going on – a pointless wish! Khatika, this is just one aspect of a really long process. It may take weeks or months to get a picture of it. Remember the Arab Spring, and the spectacular protests in Cairo? That took a couple of years to unwind, by which time most people had lost interest. The elites can keep up pressure for decades. What I have seen so far in the USA doesn’t look like a revolution or a popular uprising (not that I’m an expert). It will surely deepen divisions within the nation, but whether it hurts the elite remains to be seen. I don’t think the super-rich care much about the USA anyway. Isn’t it expendable too? Given the looting that has taken place with the CARES act, etc, I don’t think they care about the survival of the nation.
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As for who is organising it, probably lots of different agents are seeing an opportunity. Possibly an attempt to hurt Trump’s election prospects. The only thing we can know for certain is we won’t find out from watching CNN. I find it hilarious that anyone is trying to blame Russia (still!!!). Did they hack Antifa’s email servers? Maybe they’re buying up ads on Facebook.
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Apropos organised influence, part of any organised strategy would include trolling of comments sections. Propaganda needs to spread itself widely in order to be effective. A good time to contemplate where your world-view has come from.
I live in a mid-size American rust belt city, which just went through a substantial round of looting following a peaceful demonstration. Most people here are so demoralized that they can’t even plan their daily lives, much less engage in strategic undermining of the status quo. I’m a firm believer in many conspiracies, from JFK to 9/11, but I can guarantee you that the looting spree in my home town was not planned but merely happened, as some disadvantaged people saw an opportunity to grab some of the goodies they had been unable to afford. Is that really so hard to understand?
they have these things called telephones, and most of it is not looting or arson, most is protesting. you have undercover cops instigating violence, but most of the cop violence is blatant and out in the open.
Ah what do I know.
anemic
We are so sorry Uncle Albert.
Instead of anemic it was to be…
Ah, what do I know.
Good rant. From the heart.
I derive endless enjoyment and sanity restoration from your writing. Thank you for being such a funny, amazing, and brilliant writer!
And the thing is, is that the same shit people who decide what I can and cannot read, what I can say and cannot say are still here. So nothing changes, nothing but shit people rule the world because everyone else ain’t nothing but shit to begin with. Why else would one third of the United States of America be behind bars?
The beatings will continue until moral improves.
oh. Bummer.
i thot you new ever’thin’.
now what?
Right on, Caity.