Social media has been flooded with an endless stream of footage of police brutality as Black Lives Matter protests continue throughout the United States. As of this writing everyone’s talking about a 75 year-old man who was knocked unconscious after being forcefully shoved for getting in a police officer’s way at a protest in Buffalo, New York, but it will soon be replaced by other headline-grabbing videos of physical assault by police officers.

Turns out all it took to publicly expose a pervasive epidemic of violent tendencies in the police force was for the public to begin protesting violent tendencies in the police force.

Wherever these videos emerge online you will inevitably see a deluge of cop apologia (which I decided just now I’ll be calling copologia) saying the footage is fake or the victim deserved it and the cop’s just trying to get home to his family blah blah blah. There is not enough gold in the earth’s crust to make the number of olympic medals these people deserve for all the mental gymnastics they are performing to excuse unprovoked, completely unnecessary acts of violence from public employees whose job isn’t even statistically all that dangerous.

Most of these copologists do not even know why they are falling all over themselves to try and justify police brutality. It’s a conditioned response, like turning your head when someone calls your name. They don’t think about it, it’s just something they’ve been conditioned to do by decades of media and cultural indoctrination into an empire whose survival depends on the existence of a violent and militarized police force. They hear Pavlov’s bell and start salivating, just as they’ve been programmed to.

The thing is, their creative energy is being spent entirely in vain. Police and their apologists have already lost the argument.

A police force which cannot respond to protests about police brutality without the internet being flooded with a steady stream of police brutality footage is a police force in sore need of drastic overhaul. It has already been proven that that is in fact the case. There’s no taking it back. There’s no fixing it. It’s done. The debate is officially over. Huge, sweeping changes must immediately be made, and there’s no valid reason for the protests to stop until that has occurred.

These videos have made it clear that the institution of policing in America is completely sick from coast to coast, right down to its very culture. The most obvious example I can point to is that watching just a few minutes of the footage of police brutality at these protests makes it undeniably apparent that a belief pervades police culture that it is okay to physically assault someone who has made you feel emotionally upset. Over and over and over again we see police accosting civilians for saying impolite words to them or making rude gestures, or not demonstrating an adequate level of subservience. Over and over and over again we see an attack on a cop’s ego treated as an attack on the cop himself.

This is absolutely ridiculous. These are public servants. Imagine if teachers, mail carriers or DMV employees were routinely assaulting anyone who spoke impolitely to them.

Police should definitely be made to feel ashamed of having this attitude. They should be mocked and laughed at for it widely and consistently. It’s not okay to assault someone who hurt your feewings, you fucking infant. You’re a taxpayer-funded employee. You get to retire after 25 years. Get the absolute fuck over yourself, dipshit.

The fact that words pose no actual threat to you is something people are supposed to learn as children. There are nursery rhymes for it. The fact that public servants feel entitled to respect and deference from complete strangers should have been trained out of them from day one and been a strict taboo throughout the entire culture.

But it wasn’t. Because the entire institution is mentally ill. There is no saving this limb. Amputation is the only option.

Many have correctly pointed out that most of the jobs done by police today could be done much better by social workers, and that most of the remaining jobs are completely unnecessary and could be dispensed with entirely. On the rare occasion that a squad of meatheads with batons is necessary they can always be called in like a SWAT team. Ending the drug war, eliminating unhelpful laws and replacing the armed goon patrol with social workers would purge America of this gangrenous limb and begin a movement toward health.

Whatever changes are made, they need to be swift, and they need to be massive. Anything less is completely unacceptable. This has been resolved beyond any possible dispute.

___________________________________

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115 responses to “Police And Their Apologists Have Already Lost The Argument”

  1. Remember Leo Taxil who in the 1800s discredited the truth about the freemasons in an incredible psyop.

    1. Why remember Leo Taxil ? The relevance of your quote from Caitlin is not identifiable.

  2. Any possibility you could tone down the America narrative and talk about other countries shortcomings, like maybe Australia, or New Zealand or I don’t know…Nepal?

    I mean, holy shit!

  3. I remember reading an article on traffic citations by police in wapo decades ago where the reporter mentioned citizens had heard that police had a quota of 300+ tickets to give out each month but the police spokesperson said they had no quotas. I often think of this and wonder what it would be like to have such a ridiculous quota. It would be more useful for there to be a citizen advisory board with real power. If soros gets his will of defunding police it will mean privitazation – piratization, blackwater mercs. I read more than a decade ago that JINSA was sponsoring US police chiefs to go to Israel for training or training ideas for free, commenters called it junkets. I have met mostly polite officers though once part of a crowd rounded up by cops on mopeds in dangerous way at antiwar demonstrations in DC. try to look at what is happening at ALL angles, we are always being played. Several people on twitter said many police in Europe have 2 years training instead of 6 months with focus on personals skills in defusing situations.

  4. roger nowosielski Avatar
    roger nowosielski

    “Police and their apologists have already lost the argument”

    Losing the argument was never the issue. There never was an argument. But none of this prevents the existing power structures, at ALL levels, to perpetuate the culture of violence and brutality — from Liberal Mayors and Governors to Oxford-educated senators — and any change of regime is not going to alter these facts.

  5. In a so-called democracy you cannot change the status quo, you cannot change the class-divided society into a classless society.
    The dictatorship of the proletariat is not an ordinary dictatorship of an Adolf Hitler or Benito Mussolini.
    It is a dictatorship of the poor, the have-nots.
    Unless the have-nots have the power, they cannot stop the exploitation by the psychopathic elite syndicate.
    In a so-called democracy it is almost impossible for the poor to have the power for the simple reason that the oligarchs have enough money to fight elections, enough money even to buy the poor and their votes, enough money to buy the politicians.
    It is impossible in a so-called democracy for the poor to have power, and without power there is no possibility of changing the society.
    Unfortunately, the people remain in the grip of the syndicate and the political leaders.
    And they don’t want any real change to happen because every change means a danger to the status quo, a danger to the establishment.
    Any change is going to bring other changes, and then they will have to adjust to those changes.
    Who knows, are those adjustments going to be favorable to them, or unfavorable?
    Life for those leaders of the establishment is so comfortable and so luxurious it is better that everything remains the same.
    But as of now the situation is totally different.
    The establishment itself has unknowingly forced the situation of an ultimate change.
    The grip of society is lost.
    It is a beautiful time.
    Now that the society is disintegrating, the mind cannot remain, its roots are the society.
    Mind is constantly nourished by the society, now that nourishment is disappearing.
    The daring individual can use this opportunity to go beyond mind, because now the society cannot prevent them, cannot hinder them.
    Now they are free.
    So we are coming close to a tremendous transformation, and we are going to see before our very eyes.
    Something so rare and unique which has never happened before, and will never happen again.
    That is what is happening all around the world.
    There has never been so intense a search for spiritual growth, for meditation.
    But there has never been so much madness either.
    Both are happening because the status quo is no longer powerful.
    It has lost control.
    So I don’t think this crisis is bad, it is good.
    When the whole of humanity is meditative the state is of no further use.
    When the whole of humanity has become one family there is no need of anybody to dictate.
    When the whole of humanity has become intelligent, when the whole of humanity has dropped all miseries and is immensely blissful and free, the state has no function.
    The powerful will feel absolutely out-of-date, yesterday’s news.
    They will disappear because their function is no more.
    Then the state disappears.
    Then the world needs no hierarchy, no bureaucracy, no presidents, no prime ministers, no judges, no police, no army, no CIA, NSA, no QCHQ, no Five Eyes.
    When millions of hearts start blossoming it becomes a chain reaction.
    Just like one candle aflame can make thousands of candles aflame.
    Just bring the other candle close enough and suddenly the flame jumps to the unlit candle.
    The lit candle loses nothing and the unlit candle gains everything.
    The whole life is in the flame.
    Meditation brings transformation from the inside.
    It is not an imposition of morality and commandments from outside.
    Anything that comes from outside is worthless, morality, religion, spirituality, whatever you call it.
    Just as for thousands of years there have been people using drugs and thinking that they are reaching closer and closer to self-realization, nirvana, enlightenment.
    But drugs can only change mind, and individuals are not only mind.
    They are something more.
    The real transformation has to happen in that something more, in consciousness.
    And no drug can even touch consciousness.
    It can change the mechanism of the mind, the chemistry of the mind.
    It can give you hallucinations of samadhi, of nirvana, enlightenment.
    But those are only hallucinations, they are not true.
    Then people become addicted to the drugs, which only serve to cancel all revolutions, all rebellions.
    Drugs can take you very high but you will have to come back down, it was always the drug, not you.
    Only that which blossoms within you like a lotus has ultimate value.
    Meditation changes not your mind, but you, your consciousness.
    And the change comes by your own awareness.
    Nobody can fall from awareness.
    When awareness is complete, entire, then there is no way you can fall.
    You have arrived.
    Out of that arising of consciousness, you cannot do evil.
    Your every action will be spontaneous, it will come from your deepest being, and the deepest being cannot do any harm.
    And that is what meditation is a scientific methodology for.
    You should feel fortunate, blessed, to see the great transformation of all the old values, of all the old ideals.
    To see the birth of new values, new ideals, new categories of honor and respectability.
    If the new mind can prevail then life can become an enlightening process.
    And enlightenment will not be something rare, that it happens once in a while to somebody very special.
    It will become a very ordinary human experience, that only once in a while some really idiotic person misses.

    1. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/02/homeless-koreatown-unhoused-people-los-angeles-community.html

      But the number of homeless people in this country is steadily increasing; there are far too many for literal—or figurative—invisibility. The statistics extend gloomily from there. Advocates who work with the homeless estimate there are at least 2 million unhoused people in the United States. —-Help the homeless if you can, the writer of this piece was once homeless and is a powerful journalist. support homeless advocates who are pressuring city councils – hundreds of comments to this article, one said Singapore has draconian anti-homeless laws but everyone gets a free apartment. need to research some of the things mentioned in comments and the activists directly helping the homeless in the slate article.

      1. Hmmm

        The primary reason that the number of “homeless” has skyrocketed in America can be traced back to the steadfast refusal of Congress, in a bi-Partisan effot to secure our borders and stop the 3.5-5 MILLION, yes Million illegal aliens that have been allowed to swarm across our borders, completely unchecked for more than 30 years….And in the process, create a massive surplus of unskilled and semi-skilled labor which has destroyed the standard of living of working American citizens. And it is not just the lower and middle classes that the ruling elite have been targeting it is in fact the upper middle professional class as well as the number of “work related visas and permits allowing foreign workers to come into the country and steal jobs away from Engineers, Doctors, Phd’s etc. In fact, in the Mist of the largest job loss in the post war era your Congress has been busy making sure that the stream of illegals and work visa remains unchecked.

        Don’t listen to what Washington is saying, start paying close attention to what they are doing. That applies to everything that goes on in “our” government. From COVID-19, to the riots and on to both domestic and foreign policy. Why? simple: what they are telling you and what they are actually doing to you are far far apart…..

  6. Want less police brutality? How about fewer laws. There is only one valid sectarian law. Thou shalt not steal. Whether that theft be of property, life, or well being. Whether a baker chooses to make a wedding cake for a gay wedding or not is not a question of law, its an opinion. Not to pick on gays, its just a simple example. In fact, if a baker is forced to make such a cake the baker is the victim of a crime, not the perpetrator of one. Prejudice is not a crime, its an opinion, however misguided it may be. Violent acts expressing it are. Violent acts suppressing it are. Possession or use of a particular plant or drug is not a crime. Violent acts suppressing such are.
    Laws against theft are valid. All other laws are tyranny. The sheer quantity of “laws” insures the need for the sheer quantity of “law enforcers”. All the while the “law enforcers” are those guilty of the most crimes in the enforcement of invalid laws, even without considering instances of brutality. Valid laws are few. Invalid laws are crimes themselves.

  7. Imperial Police March
    .

  8. The cop culture is so basically sick it must be terminated. Anyone who has been bullied by these goons knows this first hand. The vast indoctrinated middle class conformist American sheeple lacks first hand experience in this dimension, and hence are easy to con into clueless worship of these would be storm troopers.

  9. Here is a video of an early copologist:

  10. The Buffalo incident is so fake it’s almost comical. Starting at the seven second mark, the old guy looses contact with the cop, walks backward for a whole second, carefully lowers himself, then lets the fake blood come out of his ear, with a mysterious tube connected from his face mask to his ear (looking a little like a 3rd strap). If you set the speed at .25 or step from 7 seconds using the ‘,’ key (‘,’ to back up, 24 clicks per second), you can see the whole embarrassing thing play out.

    http://www.youtuberepeater.com/watch?v=dCISe83UUgI&s=7&e=20#gsc.tab=0

    The “WTF” expression on the cop’s face is priceless.

    You can see a closeup of the tube coming from inside the mask here:

    1. pretzelattack Avatar
      pretzelattack

      if i read your post backwards, it is still asinine bootlicking apologetics.

      1. i think it’s about the ad in the q-vid or another plea for easier access to abortion facilities where pfram was born.

    2. does that still work?

  11. Clearly, the pot has been stirred big time, as evidenced by the plethora of comments made here. BUT, the American police and their aptly named “Copoligists” are only demonstrating the sickness that pervades American society. WHY, are Cops and their “Copoligists” being blamed for something that has been inserted into American society by their very own Government DELIBERATELY, giving the Police the powers they today have, and the laws to PROTECT them from their murderous actions, in the course of protecting the people who have made those laws in the first place ? You have “Copoligists” running around telling everyone the Cops have got it hard and are simply protecting themselves. Yet these claims don’t hold any water at all, when folks get held up by such Police and robbed of their money, possessions or life, and the LAW then turns a blind eye to what’s been done. I distinctly recall an American police raid on a home, allegedly a drug dealers home, door busted down, people shot and a baby killed, OOPS, wrong address, tough titties, sorry wrong address.The police were never charged, and the home owners could not even get restitution for the damage caused to their home. That’s just one tiny case on it’s own, there are millions more.
    The people overseeing these Police, the ones organising their recruitment, training, and cover up when the shite hits the fan, seem to be squeeky clean in all this, not one word of condemnation against them, for their crimes. Only the bottom line troops are being held to the flames. No one finds that rather ODD ? Where is the chain of command responsibility, why are their feet not being held to the fire ? How about the Congress people who are the ones passing the Laws to immunise the criminal actions of the Police in the first place, again not a word from them, or against them, why not ??? These are the people who have legalised the actions the Police take against their own citizens with impunity, why are these people not being bombarded with protestors protesting on their front lawns ? Why are not being held accountable and advised they won’t be voted for in the next election ?????
    Sad to say, I see all these protests coming to nothing, as has every previous protest held for the same reasons this one was. Just a lot of empty words, waffling on by the very same people who gave this immunity to the Police in the first place, and nothing will change that.
    I’m afraid far more serious actions need to be taken to make any changes at all. The first place to target is the Politicians, IMHO.

  12. Blair Schirmer Avatar
    Blair Schirmer

    .
    “Whatever changes are made, they need to be swift, and they need to be massive. Anything less is completely unacceptable. This has been resolved beyond any possible dispute.”
    .
    Good points all, but we must not stop here. Before the protests evaporate it’s essential to present demands. I’ve noticed black scholars insisting that reparations (an issue I only know superficially) must be part of any demands. In addition, surely we must have:
    .
    –Community-led policing, including community hiring and firing
    –Immediate prison release of all non-violent drug ‘offenders,’ and expungement of those records
    –Prosecution of all police seen to have committed police brutality during these protests and elsewhere
    –An end to qualified immunity for police, and politicians
    –Medicare for All and UBI
    .
    What else?

  13. I’ve said this a million times since the Rodney King affair: the laws need to be amended if these cops are doing legal things. To my mind it should clearly be illegal to just push an old man out of your way, or run into a protester with your car, or shoot an unarmed victim, or to choke someone for nine minutes. Being in a uniform body armour and carrying a gun does not mean you can slaughter anyone who gets in your way, or answers back to you or refuses to co-operate. There has to be some responsibility on the police for them to actually have their lives endangered before they can use these techniques. If they use them inappropriately they should be convicted of attempted murder and jailed.

  14. After reading the above comments — all of them — I think that both those who think of the police as the necessary forces to keep society orderly and those who revile them as pure evil would benefit by reading Lee Camp’s latest article in Consortium News, namely “Nineteen Facts About American Policing That Will Blow Your Mind” [https://consortiumnews.com/2020/06/01/lee-camp-19-facts-about-american-policing-that-will-blow-you-mind/]. Did you know, for example, that the average amount of training at police academies in the United States includes 110 hours devoted to firearms and lethality, and a grand total of eight [8] hours to conflict management and de-escalation? As Camp notes, this “means, generally speaking, police spend 12 times as many hours learning how to shoot and kill people as learning how NOT to shoot and kill people.” As an adjunct to this, the pro-police web site Officer.com ssays that empathy could be dangerous for policing. Even further, in 2000 courts upheld the right of police departments to screen out intelligence in their hiring practice, preferably filling the ranks with “dumb cops.”

    Or perhaps not so dumb. Police now steal more from citizens through civil asset forfeiture than street criminals take in burglaries. They also, on average, solve one felony per year, while spending the rest of their well-paid time enforcing “nuisance” crimes such as issuing tickets for jaywalking, disturbing the peace, begging, feeding the homeless,sleeping in one’s car, burying one’s deceased pets in one’s yard, and the like. “Crimes” which are primarily excuses to arrest the poor and the people of color and remind them of who the Masters are. And this is in addition to their lethal turn-off-your-body- and car-cameras and shoot large caliber bullets at the person’s center of gravity, which takes on average around 1100 unarmed people a year, or three a day. In England, by contrast, they kill three people in an exceptionally violent YEAR.

    And since the rate of cops’ standing convictions for murder is about three-hundredths of one per cent, meaning 99.97 per cent escape serious consequences, they in essence have James Bond’s “license to kill.” The “thin blue line,” supposedly a thing of the past, remains fully functional — and not only do murderous, drug-dealing, or habitually violent cops get fully paid for their time off while being investigated , but they generally, like the pedophile priests, simply transfer to another precinct or state upon conviction.

    As to how we got to this place, _viz., the origin of police, Camp notes that they were spawned in the U.S. — and in the colonies before that — out of slave patrols, the Southern institution that required all able-bodied males over the age of 18 to join a local enforcement squad whose sole purpose was to catch escaped slaves and to terrorize those still on the plantations who might be contemplating running away. This, by the way, was the reason for Madison’s revising the Second Amendment to include “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,…”, as Patrick Henry and other slaveholders were concerned that eventually the North would out-populate the South, and would then abolish the patrols.

    The U.S. institution of the police’s other roots were grown from class struggle, with groups like the Pinkertons hired to repress mineworkers from developing unions and carrying out strikes. A good book on the entire subject, besides the ones Camp mentions, is the probably long-out-of-print but most likely available from used bookstores [such as, online, Amazon’s ABE Books, which the Colossus of Bezos purchased from its original, independent owner], “The Iron Fist and the Velvet Glove.”

  15. Israel has been behind the push to militarize the U.S. police force for decades. Why should they care about American police? For the same reason they care about the U.S. military and U.S. politics — they own us. They control our government by controlling our sociopath politicians. Those politicians are totally bought and paid for with Rothschild money, the same Rothschild family that orchestrated both World Wars and created Israel in 1917 with the Balfour Agreement. Until we all recognize the elephant in the room, the Jewish sociopathic cabal, we will be reacting from a state of ignorance.

  16. Stephen Morrell Avatar
    Stephen Morrell

    It’s not simply a cop ‘culture’. It’s their goddamned job, their whole reason for existence. From day one the cops, the professional armed thugs of the bourgeoisie, have always been there to defend the rule of capital. In racist, decaying capitalist America that means keeping the ‘surplus’ population (overwhelmingly black but increasingly white) not needed for capitalism in its place. The cops aim to terrorise the populace back into submission, but in doing so they’ve torn asunder the threadbare, tattered mask of bourgeois democracy. Americans are being woken from their dreamy slumbers in no uncertain terms, and nothing can undo what has been done, nothing can ‘unsee’ what has been seen. Consciousness has been changed qualitatively, and in part we have the telephone camera and the Pentagon’s creation, the internet, to thank for showing the world at large what blacks, the poor and the oppressed experience every day in racist capitalist America.

    The current US uprising is a dress rehearsal. Lessons will be learnt, and organising along the lines, as outlined by Marx here, will occur:

    “To be able forcefully and threateningly to oppose this party, whose betrayal of the workers will begin with the very first hour of victory, the workers must be armed and organized. The whole proletariat must be armed at once with muskets, rifles, cannon and ammunition, and the revival of the old-style citizens’ militia, directed against the workers, must be opposed. Where the formation of this militia cannot be prevented, the workers must try to organize themselves independently as a proletarian guard, with elected leaders and with their own elected general staff; they must try to place themselves not under the orders of the state authority but of the revolutionary local councils set up by the workers. Where the workers are employed by the state, they must arm and organize themselves into special corps with elected leaders, or as a part of the proletarian guard. Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary. The destruction of the bourgeois democrats’ influence over the workers, and the enforcement of conditions which will compromise the rule of bourgeois democracy, which is for the moment inevitable, and make it as difficult as possible – these are the main points which the proletariat and therefore the League must keep in mind during and after the approaching uprising.”
    — Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League, London, March, 1850

    For the current situation to have a chance of progressing, the working class and oppressed must at some point form workplace and neighbourhood committees, nascent soviets, along with disciplined, integrated and armed militias under their control to protect and defend protests, strikes and working class neighbourhoods from the marauding cops, scabs, the National Guard and their fascist allies — along the lines outlined by Marx above. These militias must be drilled in the use of firearms and in military tactics to drive the cops off the streets, and veteran sympathisers no doubt can provide valuable help. Most importantly, the still-enlisted economic conscripts need to be reached out to, to organise to countermand the orders of the state to shoot their own, to bring about a situation of ‘dual power’.

    Bloodshed and violence in revolutions can be minimised only when overwhelming force is displayed on the part of the revolutionary class (‘threateningly’) which compels the rulers and their supporters to surrender. If there’s any hesitancy shown in using that force, the rulers will respond ruthlessly and savagely at the very first opportunity. Never in history has there ever been a ‘peaceful’ social revolution that replaces one ruling class and its property relations with another. Moreover, whenever there’s been even the slimmest possibility of the majority voting in some form of very limited, minimal socialisation measures, let alone ‘socialism’, the capitalists just go batshit crazy and mobilise to sabotage it, from capital strikes, to outright military coups and counterrevolutionary bloodshed, to fascism. And fascism is the ‘reward’ for letting revolutionary opportunities slip.

    Pacifism is always professed most stridently either by those whose existence has never hinged on defending themselves day in and day out; by those with a thoroughly inculcated slave mentality; or by those called on by the rulers to pacify an angry populace. Yet many who’ve professed non-violence from their cul-de-sac bubbles and their sterile and rarified moral high grounds are coming to a rather rude awakening that nothing under capitalism will change fundamentally short of a revolution. And some are even beginning to realise that revolutions can’t possibly occur without the use of force, violence — without civil war. Overwhelming force is absolutely necessary to minimise violence and civil war.

    The rulers are beginning to get nervous that their cops are losing control, not just of themselves. They threaten to bring in their military, their own ‘overwhelming force’, but already there are murmurings among the economic conscripts of disobeying orders from the officers to shoot their own people. Even sections of the high command are divided. The murmuring will only grow louder and divisions in the military widen further if the conflagration continues and the cops keep up their rampage. And when the rulers take fright at the possibility of a chunk of the military going over to the side of the oppressed, then they’ll quickly reach out to the likes of Sanders to help put the fire out. Never forget that, and beware. Sanders may well become the political opium of the people.

    Leaders will emerge from this maelstrom, but without a party with a program rooted in the lessons of history to make a revolution that overthrows what has become the most entrenched and blood-drenched ruling class in human history, they will flounder. At base, anyone purporting to lead a meaningful social transformation had better know that if they don’t “hope for the best and plan for the worst” they will lose.

    1. The problem is that people who have been raised in the present “arrangement” (Matrix, if you will) are literally not capable of describing in great detail a better arrangement. They are perfectly capable of bitching about very specific “things” that are wrong with the present arrangement — things like police brutality and outright murdering citizens– but, again, they become tongue tied the moment they are called upon to describe something better. People find the mere request that they do that ridiculous and repulsive. They actually believe that marching around the streets and “protesting” and demanding that the Elite and their pit-bull cops and their pit-bull national guard and their pit-bull military soldiers and their pit-bull private mercenaries and their pit-bull corporations will change those psychopaths’s behavior. The herd will keep voting for an R or a D and hope for the best, but they’ll just keep getting what they’ve been getting, only lower and harder.
       
      Time has run out for the average people of the US to change the behavior of their Elite overlords. Change will be imposed on the US Elite by other nuclear powered nations and
      then the US Elite parasites will really start sucking the life blood out of their bewildered herd. Too bad.

      1. Stephen Morrell Avatar
        Stephen Morrell

        I think the millennials with no future (and no present either), and with nothing left to lose except their chains of debt, aren’t as hopeless as many might assume. They’re quite savvy actually, and not nearly as naive as many of the youth were in the 1960s for example. Most importantly many are black who won’t so easily be co-opted into the Democratic Party machine or other lucrative avenues which are mainly absent anyway. If not murdered by the cops or fascists, some will become the future leaders of a revolutionary party. We’re seeing the first pig-iron ingots of leadership being poured before being forged into steel.

        Over the last 30 years or so, we’ve witnessed a retrogression in left political consciousness flowing from the counterrevolutionary restoration of capitalism in the soviet union and Eastern Europe in 1991-92. What followed has been a conscious capitulation of many in the left to capitalism’s apparent victory, a process begun with its the one-sided class war waged from the late 1970s on. The failure of corrupted trade union leaderships to defend working class jobs and conditions in the capitalist west was matched by a failure of the Soviet bureaucracy to withstand the capitalist onslaught internationally. The ‘victory’ of the world capitalism seemed all-sided and universal, the ‘end of history’ in rather mortal words of the fatuous Fukuyama.

        Consequently, up until recent times at least, the ‘highest’ expression of popular leftwing politics has been a kind of eco-anarchism, not dissimilar to the pre-Marx socialists and utopians of the 18th and 19th centuries. With the events of 2008–09, and now COVID-19 throwing 25% and growing onto the unemployment scrapheap along with yet another cop murder of a black person unleashing decades of pent-up fury, it appears that this retrogression has very good chances of being reversed.

        There’s some way to go certainly, but there are signs in the current demonstrations and protests of their persistence, of leaders emerging, experiences being gained and some organising for further protests occurring. At some point, sooner rather than later, the question of leadership is going to be posed. Some will hit the books to learn from history and/or search out what remains of ‘Old Left’ organisations for programmatic guidance and on how to organise a revolution. Rather than ‘looking inside themselves’ or some other insipid narcissistic pablum or nostrum, they will gain practical experience and knowledge about how to win a better world.

        What’s happening now is only the beginning. It’s not yet 1905 in Russia (the ‘dress rehearsal’ for the October revolution of 1917), but the American 1905 in’t necessarily be a long way off either. Like Russia’s Tsar and his nobility, the US ruling class is so arrogant and ignorant but also still dangerous enough to find a way out of its current predicament.

        But if you think the American working class and the oppressed are hopelessly brainwashed, etc, then you’d be thoroughly demoralised by the human material the Bolsheviks had to deal with: 85% illiterate, and a similar proportion mired in religious superstition. Yet they made a workers revolution. The ‘bewildered herd’ of the US won’t remain that way for too much longer, and is becoming less that way with each passing day. And watch what will happen in July. Buckle up.

        1. Thank you for about as clear a view of the immediate future as can be gleaned right now. The breaking of the American social contract in the 70s/80s has finally resulted in the breakdown of American society itself. Deprived of any prospect of a decent future–not merely fighting against racism and an unjust war as their parents or grandparents did in the 60s/early 70s, but literally fighting for their lives–the working class young of all races have been forced to become more deeply revolutionary. No one knows where this societal breakdown will take us, but it’s happening before our eyes. The odds are that we will come out even worse, but there’s a slim chance that we’ll come out better, with the eventual emergence of a more viable society in both human and environmental terms. For so many of today’s young, simply bringing down the oppressive and ecocidal neoliberal status quo is a coin worth flipping–indeed, a coin that MUST be flipped.

      2. OK, here is a modest proposal then. Suppose we just segment the police into something akin to medical GPs and specialists. The GPs are the first in and specialize in dealing with mundane problems and otherwise don’t do anything extreme. If you need surgery or chemo or something like that then the specialist comes in. Just like this system keeps costs down in medical care, it is intended to keep violence down in law enforcement.

        we might imagine the first responder to be some Unarmed hero in a flak jacket who is just there to talk. Maybe he is just a social worker. If things get out of hand then, sure, call in the SWAT team..

        I really don’t know what MN is going to do with their refactored police department. Maybe they don’t either. Details are short. Let me just suggest that the answer probably isn’t anarchy and that we should wait and see what they propose before succumbing to terror.

      3. Stephen, I like keeping discussions to practical matters rather than theoretical. Caitlin and Tim published an article recently in which she said the following.
         
        “I can’t envision such a world for you, because you and I will have different ideas about what a perfectly healthy and harmonious world looks like.”
         
        And I commented:
         
        “I am going to ABSOLUTELY DISAGREE with the part of the above quote that I’ve made bold. I believe with every fiber of my being that if every human being on planet earth were to undertake to manufacture in their minds a DETAILED image of exactly how people would behave toward/with each other, and exactly how they would organize with each other to produce the necessities of life — both of these for a living-day-to-day basis in an ideal world, these billions of images in billions of minds, in many different languages and from many different cultures, would be, in the most important aspects, PRACTICALLY IDENTICAL.
         
        To illustrate just one example of an important aspect, no matter on what part of the planet we live, most of us have neighbors with whom we frequently interact to one degree or another. There can be good neighbors and there can be bad neighbors. When we moved into our neighborhoods, or new people moved into our neighborhoods, we “naturally” realized that the first meetings with those neighbors was of utmost importance for the future of those neighborly relations. What was the foundational principle that determined how we would behave during that very first meeting? What principle did we “bet on” that would engender good relations for the future? I’m willing to literally bet my life that every reader of what I’m writing is right now thinking/imagining the exact same thing, to the point that I don’t even have to state it. It’s that “self” evident.
         
        Another example. I think that it is equally self-evident that no human being on planet earth enjoys digging ditches or harvesting sugar cane or laying asphalt shingles on a roof , etc. etc. etc. on an extremely hot day. But the “job” of bringing the ditch into existence, getting sugar in the bowl and new shingles on the roof, etc. ad infinitum, MUST SOMEHOW be done. Just exactly HOW and by just exactly WHOM are those things going to be accomplished in the imaginations of the billions of people imagining an ideal-yet-practical world or, for that matter, in the minds of good neighbors who have to build fences between properties or clear debris from the neighborhood after a storm? What is the very first principle that those minds “base their thinking” on that will result in getting the job done while maintaining good relations between people rather than have them deteriorate? Again, I think that that is self-evident.
         
        IMO, although this principle is absolutely necessary to be employed between people who profess to “love” each other, it is also absolutely necessary, but sometimes much more difficult, that this principle be employed between people who do NOT love each other. In the latter case it must be employed, not out of love, but out of pure self-interest, in order to maintain decent-but-never-going-to-be-close relationships – in other words, to maintain “civil” relationships between perhaps distant “strangers” who are never going to meet.
         
        So as we all begin imagining an ideal world in which we individuals are not the only inhabitant, is that world going to be all about me, me, me, or is it going to be about us, us, us? Keep in mind that the former has gotten “first world” humanity to exactly where it is today – the edge of extinction by either environmental catastrophe or nuclear war. (And do not fucking tell me that the present situation exists because we have NOT been greedy enough!)”
         
        Here’s an even more prractical, larger-scale example. The 3 young human beings who have inherited a factory that has been in our city of 20,000 people for 75 years – one that employs 3,000 of those 20,000 people – suddenly decide to close down the factory and move their capital equipment to a place on the planet where there are desperately poor, starving people who are “willing” to work 18 hours a day, 7 days a week, for food and a place on the factory floor to sleep. Those three owners are going to make much more profit as a result of that move. They’re ecstatic about their decision.
         
        The employees of the factory who are about to lose their livelihoods are in panic mode because they know full well that there are no other jobs in their city. The owners of the local businesses that depend upon the employees of the factory spending their money in their establishments are also in panic mode.
         
        These groups contact their political representatives at the local, state and federal levels, but they are told that because the factory is “privately” owned, the owners are “free” to do with their “property” whatever they “choose” to do, including moving the factory to a location on the planet where they can “maximize profit”.
         
        The factory workers and local business owners decide to do something in an attempt to keep the factory in the city. They decide to “protest” the factory closure by surrounding the factory to prevent the equipment from being moved. This works for the few days that it takes the 3 owners of the factory to go to a court of law. In short, however many government employees carrying firearms it takes to arrest however many protesters it takes to allow the capital equipment to be removed from the factory is put into action and the equipment is removed.
         
        So will the vast majority of people living in this present arrangement think that the above situation is unacceptable and must be changed? I think the answer may very well be “yes”. So then the question is as follows. Just exactly WHAT is a better arrangement? We don’t need to “get off our asses” to discuss and, hopefully, decide what that better arrangement should be.
         
        The most practical problem of all that must be fixed. 0.0001% of us own or control the VAST majority of LARGE SCALE capital equipment (for their own astronomical profit) upon which we, the 99.9999% of the population knowingly, or unknowingly depend for our lifestyle, bad or good.
         
        If we 99.9999% do not want to go back in time to an era in which most tasks were accomplished by human hard labor, and continue to enjoy the benefit of LARGE SCALE capital equipment, we, the 99.9999%, have to some how, any way, take control of that LARGE SCALE equipment for OUR “profit”.
         
        There is no other way forward to a better world. It can not be acceptable for the “owners” of a factory that employs 2,000 people in a town of 20,000 people to decide to move “their” factory to another country in order to hire 1,500 desperate, starving people who are “willing” to work 12 hours a day for food and a place to sleep on the factory floor, in order to make more profit.
         
        Just exactly HOW do the 99.8888% change the present arrangement to one in which THEY own the LARGE SCALE capital equipment? THAT is THE question that must somehow be answered. There are two, and only two options — by vote or by firearms. I vote for the former, but that means that the 99.9999% must not vote for an R or a D, and that’s going to be a very tough slug.

  17. Mercury Stationary Avatar
    Mercury Stationary

    It’s fascinating to read the comments here. There are a number of thoughtful posters, there are a few aimless posters, and there are the usual reactionary trolls. I thank the thoughtful posters. The trolls extol their total lack of empathy and revel in defective reasoning.

    Were you a thoughtful poster or a troll? The curious thing is that if you know that I’m calling you out as a troll, that tells you all you need to know about your place in this discussion: destructive and malevolent. Your best move, then, is to ignore this comment.

  18. Piero Colombo Avatar
    Piero Colombo

    Protest by the public is only an accessory phenomenon here. The main protest is by the cops, and they are protesting the only way cops know how to — by taking it out on us.

    What they are protesting is the first time, since I think 1967, murderer/brutalizer cops have been sacrificed by their owners. So much so that this time they even got a serious-sounding charge — never mind how they get off the hook later.

    This was only possible thanks to the violence in the streets and the looting: it takes a lot of hurt for the owners of the country to throw a sacrificial lamb, sotospeak, to the big unwashed — and this time they did hurt a lot.

    So the cops are now revenging themselves on the public for their perceived loss of total impunity.

  19. Here’s a prediction- before the election a lot of media people will be saying that this was all Russia’s fault.

    1. Probably right, but have you looked at the demographics of who tunes into the MSM? Those young people in the streets tearing apart what’s left of America’s social fabric and squaring off against the cops don’t give a rat’s ass about the BS that the MSM is trying to feed them. And they will soon become the majority, the main actors in this drama, as we geezers who do pay attention to the MSM continue to rapidly exit the stage.

      1. The MSM is a distraction and the victim of an ongoing a conspiracy theory. It is not the problem. This should be quite evident. Most young people don’t watch TV or read newspapers. They get their news on twitter or other social media. If someone is being victimized and led on by the MSM, it is the ones who watch it. This includes FOX. Project much?

        It is quite possible that the ad hoc news feed on twitter et. al. is sensationalist or distorting or has an agenda. It is not like it has a copy editor devoted to unbiased reporting. However, to the degree that it is not all manipulated by a deep state algorithm in Mountain View, it would seem to at least be a grass roots sensationalist biased distortion and might just reflect the real feelings of real people.

        Keep in mind that the youth are particularly sensitive about authenticity. They (like the rest of us) have been the victims of far too much phony advertising and are deeply skeptical to say the least. Add that to a healthy dose of skepticism about authoritarians such as /parents/ and /teachers/ (shudder!!) — they may not have a long experience sucking up to bosses in the workplace, either — it could be easy to believe that they are particularly resistant to things like the MSM which they don’t watch. If only we could all say the same.

        “Have we looked into the deomographics of who >tunes in< to the MSM?” Why yes, yes we have. It is mostly older Americans, particularly Baby Boomers.

        As to the youth, if we consider the general level of suspicion that young people endure — you may recall yourself — particularly young males, particularly young black males, and one might imagine that they are taking to the streets because they feel it is in their own best interest. The youth is generally in it for the real. They are authentic, if at times, confused. I suggest you get real too, and stop trying to confuse the rest of us with such conspiracy theories.

        1. You COMPLETELY missed the gist of my comments. Did you wind up in the wrong column?

  20. Americans are being conditioned to be compliant slaves. That is why it is so important that this slave rebellion be put down as viscously as possible without waking up too many slaves at one time, just enough to terrorize others to never even think of challenging the status quo.

  21. 1968, the good old days, are coming back to Make AmeriKKKa Great Again!

    1. Freedom and Democracy delivered by a US President to the streets of Vietnam will very soon be delivered by a new US President to Main Street, USA (and it isn’t going to be a shove):

  22. How much training does one really need to know that you should deescilate with empathy and words before reaching for a gun or baton? Seems to me we would get much better results if we simply weeded out the sociopaths and psychopaths by screening people for it during training. This probably won’t happen because I truly believe they encourage sociopaths and psychopaths to apply. It’s a vicious cycle because police departments fudge the facts and exaggerate the truth to justify their massive budgets and sociopathic behavior. When activists are made to be terrorists they can just about justify anything and everything including torture

  23. This whole train of thought bothers me. When did everyone serve the public. Are we happy when firefighters destroy our house putting out a fire. We are not happy. Are we happy when armies decimate populations. We are not happy. Are we happy when police do things that result in injury and death. We are not happy. Firefighters, police and armies serve necessary functions for society. People make up society but society exists based on order over chaos. These forces of first responders and defense help maintain the illusion of order that enable society to exist.

    1. The nativAmerican civilisations did just fine without firefighters, armies, and police.

  24. Roundball Shaman Avatar
    Roundball Shaman

    We need “the police” to protect us from the “bad guys”.

    Then we need “someone” to protect us from the police.

    Then we need “someone else” to protect us from those who are “protecting us” from the police.

    Then we need “someone-else-else” to protect us from the first layer “of those who are protecting us” from the police.
    ….
    Then we need someone-else-else-else…

  25. this video is now unavailable – white nationalists who want to leave the group often have to go in hiding move to another state because they will be killed if they leave. they are often poor without many skills and the reason they joined was to have friendships. without friends and connections it is very hard to move and create a new life but some are so sickened they do. a twitter account had reports of fbi report ten years ago about white nationalists in the police force. during the jimmy savile scandal many mentions of police pressured to be in freemason lodges. david icke forum has a lot on this but is not the only place that focused intently on the savile scandal. operation yewtree was not a success in prosecuting crimes against children. i think that what these evil ones call the revelation of the method is part of God’s plan to reveal, unveil His enemies and true people in the book of Revelation which the evil ones try to mimic but Jesus will soon put an end to the captains and the kings and begin His eternal reign of justice and love.

  26. How many police persons are in Freemason Lodges and under threat if they don’t do what they are told?

    https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jun/5/57-buffalo-cops-resign-from-team-after-two-are-sus/

    The entire Buffalo Police Department Emergency Response Team resigned Friday to support two police officers who pushed an elderly man to the ground in a viral video, according to a report from a local news outlet.

    A total of 57 officers quit the team as a sign of support for the officers involved in the video who were suspended without pay, News 4 Buffalo reported. The 57 are still officers on the police force.
    “If they resigned, I’m exceptionally disappointed by it because it indicates to me that they did not see anything wrong with the actions last night,” Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said at a press conference.

  27. https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Ephesians-Chapter-6/#17

    Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.

    12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

    13 Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.

    14 Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness;

    15 And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace;

    16 Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.

  28. Harry S Nydick Avatar
    Harry S Nydick

    I’m not reading the other comments. Either they agree with me, or I see flaws. To understand the part of cop behavior that is violent, it is necessary to understand that police were first created to protect the wealth, property and lives of the elite. The only thing that has changed across the centuries is just how abusive modern weapons enable them to be. Even if one seems like a nice guy, he or she is the enemy, because they will stop being nice in a second, when ordered to engage in the hard realities of violent policing.
    They are not there to protect us. They solve very few crimes against regular people and they are too quick to find the guilty person, who is not really guilty. They turn reasonable behavior – like feeding the homeless, so that they don’t die – into crimes. They are there simply to scare the beejesus out of ordinary people, who will let that fear stop any response they would like to make.
    BTW, there is never any justification for the use of teargas canisters. Teargas is a chemical weapon that is banned for use even in war time. If it is not legal to ‘gas’ the enemy in a foreign country, how can it be legal to use it against your own citizenry
    And the only way that a cop can convince a thinking person that he or she is nonviolent is to quit the police force. For as long as he or she stay, that cop is nothing less than an act of violence waiting to happen.

    1. You make one false assumption that invalidates the rest. Society requires police to maintain the illusion of order. Much like the sheriff and judge in 1800 wild west. Otherwise the strongest rule. That is their primary purpose not to protect the rich. It works only until society rejects oppressive police behavior.

      1. Read the mission statement of the FBI.

  29. When Gil Scott-Heron released the iconic song it was a cry for racial justice. But it was far deeper than that. Because Scott-Heron spoke the truth that media was subordinate to power.
    That is why he knew the revolution he spoke of would never be on television, the most powerful form of media in the world at the time. Controlled by very few because technology had not transformed communication, corporate media crafted whatever narratives it and those it was subordinate to wanted.
    And those narratives are always sick, divisive and foremost fake.
    Today social media companies are supposed to act as democratized distribution platforms for images, thoughts, and information from one end of the world to the other. And those in power now realize just how hard it is to maintain narratives in a world where they can be debunked in real time by millions of people. You can read this relevant article here:
    The Revolution the United States Needs Will Not Be Televised by Tom Luongo!
    https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/06/05/revolution-us-needs-will-not-be-televised/

  30. It may be needed, and most people reading this may feel it is also necessary – but there will be lots of others who disagree.

    But ultimately the decision of wholesale review / replacement of policing with social services will be made by the same elite currently running the show i.e. Trump and cronies and the Republican Party. I dont know about anyone else, but personally I have zero confidence that these people have any interest or intention of making such changes, or even if they have the intelligence and emotional / ethical understanding to even recognise that there is a problem.

  31. Ms Johnstone, unfortunately, the ” copologia ” you speak of is in the re-enforced steel ” cementheads” that deems anyone ” different ” as being ” wrong ” and therefore destined to be abused or murdered. No matter how many videos emerge containing obvious ” police brutality ” nothing is going to alter the general public opinion that all minorities are here on this earth to be brutalized. Although every thing at all ” bad ” about Mr. Floyd is constantly raised in their discourse; nothing is ever said about the history of ” the police officer “. Things have always been this way. When ” the troops arrive ” they will shoot to kill like they did in Ohio during the Vietnam protests. The owners and the masters own all the streets and they will use deadly force to make sure that everyone understands that.

  32. Has anyone noticed the blood running from the fallen protester’s ear? That’s a probable skull fracture!

  33. Police brutality is just an extension of our foreign policy. It’s ok, in fact glorified, to destroy the lives of millions in other countries, but when the wolves attack their own, everyone is shocked.

  34. R Zwarich ('Caliban') Avatar
    R Zwarich (‘Caliban’)

    O geez … Sigh … I mean, just … Sigh …

    Ms. Johnstone is embarrassing herself now, (with her pretentious posture of being the arbiter of truth, ‘the decider’ of arguments). She does not command the truth. (The truth knows no command). She is not the arbiter of who has won or lost ‘the argument’. She sounds like a child here, making a commanding declaration that to any mature adult just sounds silly and childish. “You’ve already LOST the argument”, (cue the tongue sticking out).
    .
    She thinks that ‘her side’ comprises ‘reality’ itself because the Mass Media, which are wholly owned by, and under the complete control of, her own Enemy, are egging her on. She is in a state of emotional excitement, having left Reason behind, because the Mass Media, (her own Enemy), have ‘hyped’ the nation into anti-police race riots.
    .
    What is happening is the result of the Mass Media Barons’ own contingency plans. Imagine the degree and scale of planning/organizing it took to have whole ‘squads’ of provocateurs in place in cities all over the nation. Do we think this was not carefully planned ahead? Some people think as many as 1 out of every 6 (16 out of every 100) ‘protestors’ are actually operatives for the Elites. This is top tier CIA-level ‘color revolution’ stuff. This is exactly what they’ve been doing in other countries for a very long time. They’re REALLY good at it.
    .
    Is Soros funding BLM? Black folks ‘on the street’ suspect they’re being ‘set up’ as scapegoats. Soros is a billionaire oligarch. Black folks ‘on the street’ are beginning to post their own videos warning other Black people that these riots are a ‘set up’, and that Black people are going to be the scapegoat, (aka; ‘the patsy’). It could all be rumors planted and ‘sent viral’ by whatever CIA-level agency is running the current scenario.
    .
    Anti-police race riots are among the best possible outcomes for them, (for Ms. Johnstone’s own Enemy). What is happening would not be happening if the Syndicated Forces who own and control ALL US Mass Media, did not want it to happen.
    .
    NOBODY here is arguing that the police aren’t ‘militarized’. Nobody here is arguing that the police are now playing a proper democratic role in a truly democratic society. The police serve their bosses. Their bosses are cunning and evil.
    .
    The Mass Media Barons can create Mass Mob Hysteria virtually any time they want to. If the Left succeeded in an independent effort to create Mob Hysteria, that the Mass Media Barons did not like, the Mass Media Barons would create Mass Mob Hysteria against the Left to quash the Left’s Mass Mob Hysteria.
    .
    The operational point being that the Left’s current excitement over what it regards as its ‘success’, is the exact delusion that the Left’s own Enemy wants the Left to believe. The Mass Media Barons are, yet again, succeeding in having the Left dance like a mindless marionette on the Mass Media Barons’ strings.
    .
    The Mass Media Barons always pick a ‘flawed’ case to ‘hype-to-the-max”. If the Floyd case was a clear cut case of obvious police brutality, the Mass Media would have chosen a different incident to ‘hype’. A ‘flawed’ case is more advantageous to them, because it makes both sides angry. The ‘perfect’ case would be the one that makes both sides hate each other equally.
    .
    Ms. Johnstone is thinking and acting EXACTLY as her own Enemy wants her to think and act.
    .
    But she thinks this is going to turn out well for her objectives?
    .
    How so? What are her predictions for how this scenario will develop? When you have half the nation whipped into Mass Mob Hysteria and hating the police as “racist murderers”, and the other half supporting the police, which side does she think has the best chance to prevail? (Did she notice all the paid professional forces, and weapons, and equipment, and money the other side has?
    .
    “Forward, the Light Brigade!
    Charge for the guns!” he said.
    Into the valley of Death
    Rode the six hundred.”
    –A Tennyson
    .
    If she thinks her side will prevail, how does she think this will play out?
    .
    “I can hire half the working class to kill the other half”. –J Gould.
    .
    Does Ms. Johnstone REALLY believe the ‘other half’ has already lost? Does she believe they have already surrendered? ‘Cause it looks to me like those folks have quite a bit of ‘fight’ left in them. And they have all those weapons. And about half the nation is on THEIR side. From whence, (other than her Enemy’s blaring Mass Media), comes Ms. Johnstone’s bizarrely pretentious conviction that the argument has already been won?
    .
    With the Mass Media under such highly centralized control, I think you’d need at least 80% support to prevail. (Minimum!) Even just 80% would be problematic. 90% would be better. The means of communication are the means of power. With Mass Media under their total control, even 20% gives the Enemy a LOT to work with. It’s a game of winning hearts and minds. Even with just 20% to 30% support, that is plenty for ‘them’ to work with, when they have complete control of what people hear and see and think and believe . (The average American watches TV for an average of 5 hours every single damn day).
    .
    So … You take over the government … You win the election with a 50.001% majority. And 49.999% are against you. You think you’ll like things better when the tear gas and pepper spray are in your hands, and you expect, (or at least hope), the police will follow YOUR orders? You think the half of the American working class that now hates you will not ‘take to the streets’ against you?
    .
    This ‘revolution’ stuff is more complicated than a LOT of folks seem to realize. Ms. Johnstone is a brilliant writer She ‘sees’ a lot. But she is a VERY poor ‘general’ (and/or strategist). She is leading her ‘troops’ into an obvious trap that any minimally competent general officer would ‘see’. (Or so it appears to me).
    .
    I guess we’ll see how it plays out. Eh? Time passes. Things happen. History unfolds before our very eyes. If ‘things’ go as they usually do, the Left will get its ass-kicked (yet again), and then will boast incessantly, for years, about its losing exploits. I’ve been watching this happen for a long time.
    .
    “If one allows one’s enemy to control one’s actions, and even one’s thinking, one need not fear the outcome of any battle. You will lose them ALL!” –Moon-Tzu, from ‘The Art of Not Being a Complete Idiot’.

    1. William Nolan Avatar
      William Nolan

      Could you be a bigger joke, Caliban?
      Go suck cop dicks, cop troll.

      1. R Zwarich ('Caliban') Avatar
        R Zwarich (‘Caliban’)

        Okey doke, cowboy … Thanks for sharing … good luck with everything … Sorry to disturb your reverie with intrusions of reality.

    2. You have a lot to say, why don’t you get your own website and blog and say it? Bugs me that people like you piggyback on someone else’s blog to espouse your own opinion. Thanks for your politeness though.

      1. R Zwarich ('Caliban') Avatar
        R Zwarich (‘Caliban’)

        Isn’t that what blogs are for? To have an exchange of opinions? Just about everyone here is here to “espouse their own opinion”.
        .
        This is someone else’s blog. That person owns it. That person has property rights over it. Any blog owner has a ‘control panel’ that gives them complete control over any comments on the site they own. I make no claims of free speech rights here. I’m only exercising the same capacity, the same ‘right’ to speak, that anyone and everyone else here is.
        .
        Here we are again. First divisive Identity Politics. Then the sort of ‘stalinist’ self-righteousness of Political Correctness that always characterizes the Left. Jean wants me to ‘purge’ myself? That’s a new one. Anyone should just know not to express any dissenting opinions on the dissident Left?
        .
        I came here because I encountered Ms. Johnstone’s work and admired it, as I have already explained at some length. I think Ms. Johnstone and I share the same political objectives. This is a discussion of strategy more than ideology. (Ideology does enter in).
        .
        Nothing serves the Elites’ interests, the Elites who own ALL our Mass Media, the Elites who rule over us, more than fomenting anti-police race riots derived from a video that does not show what the Hysterical Mass Mob Left is pretending it shows.
        .
        Trump’s ‘base’ is demanding he should ‘crack down’. He has been perceived as “weak” by at least some of his supporters, who think his lack of decisive command, his indulgence of the riots, is hurting him politically. https://www.unz.com/article/where-have-you-gone-donald-trump-a-nation-turns-its-yearning-eyes-to-you/
        .
        These riots serve our Enemy’s best interests. NOT ours. That is why, (as should be obvious), the Mass Media, which are ALL owned by our Enemy, are effectively ‘cheering on’ the riots.
        .
        This is CIA-level, ‘color revolution’ level, political manipulation. These people have been doing this all over the world for a very long time. They are VERY good at it.
        .
        What is happening now serves no useful purpose for the Left unless we learn from it. I’m trying to get us to learn from it even as it is in progress. My purpose here is entirely constructive.
        .
        I believe these riots are going to damage the best interests of the Left. They are going to cause harm to, rather than help, the plight of the nation’s Common People under ever more brutal Elite rule. I agree that the American Police have been militarized, and that this militarization can be a precursor to fascism. Making the police hate the Left only reinforces the danger of growing fascism.
        .
        The Left is needlessly setting itself up to lose. But we got ourselves a big ole ruckus going, and people on the Left are all excited, and all in a bother, about that. Whoopee! … Should be a grand old time until reality sets in.
        .
        Time will tell. We’ll see how this history unfolds. If I’m wrong, I’ll be eager to learn that I am wrong. Maybe spreading racial animosity among ourselves is exactly what our nation’s Common People need to do to defeat the Elites and gain political power?
        .
        Does that sound right to you, Jean?
        .
        Really?

        1. I am not asking you to “purge” yourself. I am just wondering why you don’t set up your own blog if you have so much to say. I’m always suspicious when a reply to an article is almost as long as the article itself. I’ve found that replies like that are someone who has a different agenda other than discussing the article. They want to pontificate on what they think, and what they think the solution is, or why the author is wrong. Your first sentence is “oh geez, Ms. Johnstone is embarrassing herself now”. So do you think that is conducive to a good discussion? The tone of your original comment is like a parent scolding an errant child. I found it very condescending.
          “Then the sort of ‘stalinist’ self-righteousness of Political Correctness that always characterizes the Left. ”
          Please don’t make assumptions about me or what side of the spectrum I sit on. Again, you spew a whole paragraph of insults when you don’t even know me. If anyone is sounding “stalinist”, it’s you.

          1. R Zwarich ('Caliban') Avatar
            R Zwarich (‘Caliban’)

            Jean: You quote a comment out of its context, and ask me to explain? (It was in the context of a ‘conversation’ that spanned several days, in relation to several of Ms. Johnstone’s posts).

            Well … OK … I do see what you’re saying. I’m not sure Ms Johnstone is too much older than my oldest daughter, (of three). I suppose I lapsed into a ‘condescending’, (some might say “parental”), tone. I certainly have expressed ‘parental’ encouragement toward her as well. Folks is just folks. As people grow older perspective changes. Perhaps younger and older need to cut each other some slack? Are our feelings really so lily tender? Do we have to tip toe through egg shells in trying to communicate honestly with each other?

            I try hard to be respectful of others. I know that I’m not always successful. I don’t think, overall, I do all that bad. I truly DO respect people, even people I disagree with. If it makes you feel better, I always feel bad afterwards, whenever I disrespect anyone, (even if they have it coming).

            I am honest, and indeed, I come with a SERIOUS agenda.

            If you would try to inhabit my point of view, (not agree with, just try to understand what my ‘reality’ looks like from my point of view), you would see that I am not doing anything here other than exactly what most other people are doing.

            Yes … I’m guilty … I plead guilty. I’m guilty of participating in a Left blog that is hosted by a writer whose work I think is brilliant. It’s always a pleasure to have the opportunity to exchange ideas with a person of such intellect. If Ms. Johnstone was Taylor Swift, if she just wanted her blog to be a ‘fan club’, I’m sure I would have been ‘purged’ quite awhile ago.

            I think Ms. Johnstone’s a big girl. She’s a full grown human woman. She has children. She’s tough enough. I afford her the respect of assuming that she values honesty. She can hopefully take honesty just as well as she can dish it out.

            I was being ironic in saying you wanted me to ‘purge myself’. It would be more accurate, I suppose, to say that you want me to self-censor.

            Thanks for sharing this feedback. Indeed, ma’am, you’ve got me ‘pegged’. I am a serious man with a serious agenda. I don’t come around here for ‘light or transient’ reasons.

            RZ

            1. I appreciate you explaining a little bit more of where you’re coming from. We are probably not that far away in age. I am not into censorship in any way, so that was not my intent. I come to this blog to get a little bit of sanity in this otherwise insane world; this is one of the few places I can find it. I just think that if you find a writer that’s “brilliant” as you say, you might want to cut her a bit of slack too. Caitlin throws out of a lot of ideas, you can agree or disagree with them. I don’t always agree, but I’ve never found anyone in this world where I am 100% in agreement with. That doesn’t mean they’re embarrassing themselves by having a different point of view. Go after the ideas, not the person.

    3. Relax, you’re not on a list.

    4. You talk too much. Stop it.

    5. “She is in a state of emotional excitement, having left Reason behind, because the Mass Media, (her own Enemy), have ‘hyped’ the nation into anti-police race riots.” Coming from one who has made many astute observations on this blog and thereby contributed to its quality, this bizarre statement and other recent comments of yours are troubling, indicate that for some reason this Floyd incident has caused you to run off the rails. Why, Caliban, have you chosen to make an incendiary last stand over an incident which you yourself characterize as a police fuck-up? And why are you still paying attention to the BS fed us by the MSM, which you obviously see through along with the rest of us? Why, in other words, do you seem so itchy to pick a fight with Caitlin and others who comment here, when you also admit that we’re all seeking some version of the same end: the bringing down of the neoliberal status quo and the birthing of a better world? If you’ve got a disagreement with the strategy that some of us are advocating or have a more effective strategy to put on the table, how does the tone of your recent commentary invite a constructive discussion of such issues? Clarification or amplification would be greatly appreciated, even more so if made in a civil fashion.

      1. R Zwarich ('Caliban') Avatar
        R Zwarich (‘Caliban’)

        Yes, Newton, (if I may) … I’ve already figured out that in your extremely self-biased ‘reality’, anyone who disagrees with Newton Finn has “gone off the rails”, (in Newton Finn’s opinion). I know you like to ‘romanticize’ your days in the counterculture 60s. They were times of great turmoil for me. Where I was (UCLA) about every 5th ‘activist’ was an operative. It seems it was ‘a lot of fun’ for you.

        You seem most focused on glibly flipping coins and “bringing down the status quo” with race war, but there in posh Waukegan, in WAY North Chicago, (WAY far from the South Side), you don’t strike me as someone with any immediate personal ‘skin in the game’.

        For such a smart person, it’s surprising to ‘see’ your simple-minded way of seeing hate-fueled anti-police race riots in the streets as a possible gateway to something constructive, (as “birthing a better world”). Going out into the streets to vent mindless anger and violent shrieking hatred strikes you as a good way to ‘birth a better world”? And anyone who thinks different has “gone off the rails”?

        Uhh …Okey doke then, cowboy …

        And you’re not even the least aware of how bigoted (self-biased) your insultingly aggressive posture is.

        Copied and pasted:

        big·ot
        /ˈbiɡət/
        noun
        a person who is intolerant toward those holding different opinions.

        I wanted to send you something. awhile ago (today). I thought about sending it through Finn&Finn, but I decided that doing so would be inappropriate. I’ve read about about your career. Certainly impressive. You should feel proud of the life you’ve lived. I respect and admire you. Your writing is very good. You’re a thoughtful person. You seem like a real good guy to me.

        I don’t hold your insulting bigotry against you. Folks is just folks. We’re ALL just poor dumb humans. We ALL have our faults. Lord knows mine are ‘legion’. But most all of us have something of value to offer, mixed in with our human faults and foibles. I try hard not to hold ‘being human’ against my fellow humans.

        I thought about posting it (what I wanted to send you) here, (and yet may). Clearly I would hope that Ms. Johnstone will read it.
        But I think it’ll make its own way ‘around’. contact at rzwarichatgmail if yer interested.

        1. “I don’t hold your insulting bigotry against you.” You’re far too intelligent, Caliban, not to see the passive/aggressive self-contradiction in that “virtue” statement and others in your post. You can call we what you want, of course, I’m a big boy, but I don’t appreciate your moving to the more personal details of my life on this public forum, a life of which you know next to nothing but the little that can be pieced together from internet search engines, most of which you’ve pieced together wrong. Like you’ve said about yourself in a rather moving post, I’ve also had a hard and difficult life in many respects, as have most of us. I don’t know what Caitlin’s policy is when commentators start to reveal their “take” on personal aspects of other commentator’s lives that they’ve dragged up online, but I draw the line here. I would never dream of nosing around the internet, perhaps finding out scattered things about you, Caliban, and then including them presumptuously and promiscuously in a comment on this blog or any other. I would never go there, however much I might take issue with something you have said and get into it with you concerning WHAT WE BOTH HAVE CHOSEN TO SAY TO THE LARGER WORLD. I’m far too told and at peace with myself to feel threatened by this intrusion, but I do find it creepy. I, too, based upon some of your earlier comments, felt a desire to talk further with you via an email exchange and looked forward to maybe finding a way to make that happen. Sadly, no longer.

  35. LOL. You so very right, unfortunately, like you say, the culture, Americans can smile and say nice things, but in the end they mostly the same sort of dipshit fucks as the police are themselves. Thousands of Churches in this nation but they all worship Satan. The feel truly good people here deserve to be released from this hell, death is but moment, let all these whores burn in an ever lasting hell on Earth.

  36. When around a dangerous animal like a lion or hyena. I am cautious. I do not do anything to incite them and get injured or killed. When I am around someone carrying a weapon I try not to rile them and possibly get injured or killed. Lions should be in cages and people with weapons should be responsible. However I do not assume it is always the case. I instead see the danger and proceed cautiously. Now if I get hurt or injured in many cases I am partially at fault. But I never never assume the other dangerous party will be sensible. Doing that puts your life in jeopardy. Blame the police every time if you want but assuming you will be treated fairly every time by someone in authority or power is just taking your life in your own hands.

  37. Thanks Cartlin – many years ago when going to school I worked as a night admitting clerk in an emergency room. I interacted a lot with the local police. They were almost to a man a bunch of swaggering, arrogant, overbearing, authoritarian assholes. Attitudes enculturated for generations. If you don’t exhibit those tendencies – strike three and you are out.

    1. You just described all jackboots throughout history. Accept that and you will treat them accordingly. Tough minded people gravitate toward such jobs. People think if you have a campaign against bullies in school they will cease to exist. Wishful thinking. They are still there and grow up.

  38. And exactly. I’ve been a public employee for over a decade. In that time I’ve seen coworkers be verbally and physically abused by random people for no reason at all. They’ve had bones broken, faces and rib cages shattered. We’ve been called every unwholesome name under the sun by every variety of person from street addicts to gentrified old ladies for every idiotic and inane reason imaginable. Yet, to physically assault someone for these outrages would see us instantly fired.

    And do cops really have a dangerous job? More NYC bus drivers died of the corona virus than NYC cops have lost to shootings in 40 years. We all face hazards out there, but bus drivers don’t get to carry sidearms and they have no authority. Enough with the Pavlovian cop worship. They’re just people doing a job like the rest of us. They DO NOT have the right to behave however they want

    1. Oh how I love your comparing the job of a bus driver to the job of a policeman. Next you will compare the job of a soldier to a humanitarian worker.

      1. Actually the best comparison is to a sanitation worker, though it’s likely that sanitation workers (garbage persons) run many more risks, are not armed, and understand public service.

      2. Like I said, you’re a serial fool. The comparisons are there but you aren’t bright enough to understand them.

  39. During the last few weeks here in mild mannered Canada two young women of color sought help. The police arrived and within minutes they were both dead. While our mainstream media is full of US police atrocities these Canadian killings are not a big deal.
    You can go to Wikipedia and read a list of over 200 police killings in Canada where 12 resulted in the cop who did the killing being charged. One (1) was convicted and sentenced to 3 years, probably out in 1 year??? The other 11 were acquitted, most are still on the job. So in Canada you have a 1 in 200 chance of receiving a minor sentence if you are a cop and kill someone.

    1. Yup. Read Canadian Patriot. We’re almost married, our two countries.

  40. Theresa Barzee Avatar
    Theresa Barzee

    Thank you so very much! You and Trevor Noah might get us through this with many brothers and sisters of sentience alive. May you thrive to guide us, making awareness an easy option for as long as you can! Bow to you, dear journalist! Huge important messages.

  41. You are absolutely right. The systemic indoctrination which leads these individuals to believe that they are entitled to harass, assault, imprison, abuse, loot, rob, and murder their own people, on behalf of a group of total fucking strangers who wouldn’t spare a drop of evian water to put them out if they were on fire (by the way), is absolutely bizzarely ridiculously stupidly absurd.
    People have absolutely every right to be very very pissed off about this. They also have every right to do everything that can possibly be done to make it stop.
    We don’t need armed men and women threatening to jail and/or kill us over some stupid rule or other (which they usually pull right out of their butts) every time we have the nerve to set foot outside of our own homes.

  42. Liberalism really is a mental disorder.,Serious. Have you ever been is a small group and the decisions they made went south because there was no real leadership or most importantly no one was brave enough to put play an important part so the whole group signs off on sub-par performance. That is a small microcosm of what is going on in the world and the liberal culture at large. If you take the avenue that the walk away movement founder did then you are ostracized So basically you are in a societal support group of which you know that if you walk to far away of the group think you will be put out in the cold. Doesn’t encourage much intellect or thought. Add to that the emotions and anger and psychotic behavior and this is just amplified 100x. So yes liberals have lost their minds. I have watched two videos in this story the first the 75 year old who was, “ forcefully shoved and knocked unconscious” I was expecting bad. What I saw was a cop most likely doing what he had done 100x that day before. Was he supposed to walk around this guy? I could just as well look at this video and say he was grabbing the officers weapon, but I don’t really think that. Personal responsibility, If you are a 75 year old man who can’t stand upright is a strong wind then don’t put yourself in front of a line of police who have been in a war zone for days on end. One might apply 10lbs of pressure to your chest as he tells you to backup and oops. The problem was this guy was 75 and very, very unstable. Not the cops fault. We are talking about a tense place here in other circumstances maybe he should not have pushed. It was not much of a push. I was expecting a slam down. Oh but look I’m thinking, attempting to be objective, having a different opinion I must be evil and blah, blah, and that is how it works. Liberal have shut down critical thought with anger and self-interest in garnering social cohesion. The second video, grabbing her breast? I really don’t think so. I see a cop attempting to subdue a person and her breast got in the way. . These protesters are angry and have not the slightest rational capacity. They are pure emotion supported by a peer group where being emotional is rewarded, thinking is not. This is an us vs. them mentality. I feel sorry for the cops. There are good people there and the left has abandoned all civility. Like I said Liberalism is now a mental disorder.
    Oh, but you evil white guy you say. Hmm, let me see. The way I see it each person is an unique individual, it is kind of magical, perhaps spiritual thing. There are black people I admire as much as anything. I like them because of ‘who they are’. The color they are has nothing to do with my admiration for them. Flip this around and I am not allowed to be liked for ‘who I am’ because of my skin color. I am judged by who I am on the outside. So attempting to combat racism they are essentially throwing away the argument against racism, (at least my argument) Perhaps I am being old fashioned in believing people are unique and there is a spiritual side to people. That the person is who they are on the inside and we shouldn’t judge that. Because obviously we should.
    What can I say, they want me to apologize, they want me and my children and grandchildren to pay for past grievances. Guess what this is my first time here on planet Earth. Who is to say what person I would have been in 1870. Perhaps I would have run an underground railroad? Perhaps I am re-incarnated, remember that liberals? Perhaps I was a black person in my previous life.
    Liberalism = bowing to the weakest intellectual link in an effort to hold the chain from breaking.

    1. You can always tell an American know-nothing because he divides the world into ‘conservatives’ and ‘liberals’, with liberalism being on ‘the left’.

      Turn off the television and go get an education.

      1. You can always tell a liberal because slander and a put down are what they think is the golden ticket to winning every time. Hey, I’m an Independent, quit the Rep over Iraq, Quit the church. I know what the middle is, I live in the middle. I used to cheer on Cindy Sheehan back when the left was anti-war and didn’t think there was a Russian hiding behind every bush. They even tried to pin these riots on The Russians, if that isn’t crazy lying B.S. I gave money to Tulsi. I support whomever makes sense. I say I gave money to Tulsi and I did. I don’t know if I would ever vote for her. Because she is still in crazy land with liberal ideology concerning the 2nd (it’s about hunting, who could of guessed? And the best way to fight Hitler is to take all the guns away so Hitler will have all the power, and no I don’t think Trump is Hitler that is just more liberal delusion, lies and crazy talk) You don’t put anything out there because if someone pointed out the inconsistencies you couldn’t deal with it. I totallly understand about the militarization, abuse and lack of accountability and have told people who would listen about it for years, maybe decades. Still it does not help the cause or anything that matter to through objective, rational thought out the window and loose your mind in the irrational whims of the mob.

        1. agree with you Clint, I considered myself a “lefty” liberal until the last few years. That position has morphed into something I don’t recognize. There is no rational discussion anymore, there are a set of views that you must have and if you disagree, you’re a card carrying Nazi, xenophobic, racist. No in-between these days, and there seems to be no way the 2 sides can communicate. The NYT tried it with the Cotton editorial, look at the blowback from their own staff! It’s a crazy world out there, stay sane!

          1. Thank You Jean, here are some links to stories I put on Medium. I have this crazy idea that what we need is a new playing field we need to ‘change our relationship’ with thought I believe is what Caitlin often says. Anyway see what you think. For me it is the only way I see out of our predicament and we could start right here on these comment boards if we had the will to do so. Thanks again.

            https://medium.com/@whmilk/the-value-of-anonymity-in-a-collective-intelligence-c0a003f481b6

            https://medium.com/@whmilk/thinking-outside-the-vertical-line-28161b232d64

            https://medium.com/@whmilk/here-is-a-book-i-have-placed-on-amazon-and-smashwords-e864cc0e2c60

            1. Quote “First you must understand that a true collective intelligence is an artifact of our technological age. Without modern technology it would not be plausible or possible.”
              Collective intelligence is exhibited by what Rupert Sheldrake calls the morphogenic field. He proved its existence with a varity of rat, and ollective awareness is visually observable in the sychronisation of schools of fish and flocks of birds. If they can do it, so can we. Also, the toltec realityMap describes accessing silentKnowledge by shifting our assemblage-point-of-perception to a specific location.
              Excepting this Materialist fallacy, your reasoning is a pleasure to follow, Clint.

              1. Thank you, Thank you for the info. Hope we find a an alternative means someday. I do believe it is coming. Just a matter of time.

                1. Not meaning to be argumentative, i say that it is already here.
                  Living from the totality of our self means that the faculty which perceives the invisible landscape, formerly thought of as the aetheric realm, from which originates mythical relics about evil spirits. This perception is temporarily accessible, courtesy of any number of shamanic techniques, the most effective of which have been ferociously outlawed by Jehovah the Liar, and his Puritan political lobbyists.
                  Our forbiddenFaculties are latent simply because we have been conditioned to beLieve that heightened awareness cannot exist for us. Anyone who experiences high-grade telepathy can no longer honestly agree with the conformists who claim ownership of what we are permitted to think.
                  I think it a mistake to believe that a mass awakening is coming.
                  Much too passive, risking wishful thinking where magickal thinking is required.
                  Our Freedom of Awareness must be Stolen, retrieved from thieves of individual sovereignty.
                  These unthinkable inorganic beings, with their deceitful methods of robbing mankind of our Creator’s heritage, are best documented in the last of Castaneda’s 12 volume reportage . . . of his introduction to the revolutionary Toltec realityMap, in The Active Side of Infinity. These mindParasites are called mud shadows ; mud for their fluid weight, and shadow for their appearance as an oval absence of light. Their hidden influence rates an entire chapter, in what is regarded as the Topic of Topics by mankind’s premiere scientists of Awareness.
                  Thank you Clint for finding my contribution useful ; the rarity of meaningful acknowledgement makes your appreciation particularly valuable and satisfying. We intrepid pioneers of future evolution are too often mistaken for the enemy.

    2. I feel sorry for you. You don’t see reality as it is. You see yourself.

      1. What is it about myself that I don’t see? Please tell me. Is it the part about a person being unique, mysterious, spiritual and that you shouldn’t judge them on their skin color? I suppose you are somehow inferring that I see the world through some sort of lens where all the advantages I have had should somehow be acknowledged and atoned for. I don’t think the world works that way. We are all here for just a short time. I am not God I did not create this mess. Life is an internal struggle, we have to make the right decisions and when we do hopefully that is a good thing. Like staying sober and clean so you can keep your job. Like putting the effort into being honest with persons who are close to you. Like not stealing, looting and rioting simply because you could get away with it and your peers are all doing it. Those are the things we can do, every day. Those are the things that will allow us to do more. Giving up the one thing you have, your discretion as a person on how you think, how you conduct yourself and adding value to the world as only you can. Giving that all up to follow your friends in an orgy of irrational non-sense. To me that is no different than doing drugs, Maybe it is easy and feels good, But you have sacrificed part of yourself. With that I say I am sorry for you. Maybe one day you will find yourself, and judge yourself by yourself, not how your friends see you.

    3. Lol. Well stated but you are wasting your breath. We are racing headlong toward dissipation of rational thought. When it all collapses liberals will be the very first to be swept away. Sort of like the preacher walking towards the indians as they riddle him with arrows.

    4. You are a sick, sick sick individual!!!

      1. Why can’t a liberal EVER, EVER, EVER do anything than just try to demonize people. I know looking past a person’s skin color and appreciating them for who they are on the inside , who they are as a person is a really, really Sick, Sick concept to liberal activist. Accepting that reality is sometimes what it is and attempting to keep a rational frame of mind so as to make fair judgemnet is a Sin against humanity and a waste of time when we should be judging and hating others when they don’t conform to our Ideas’ and submit to our wishes as this is much more expediant and get the results we want now. You are the one can’t say anything but demonize because you haven’t thought for yourself in so long you have forgotten how and you call me sick?

    5. You are a sick, sick, sick individual!!!

    6. Well, I don’t know; remember the guy who stood in front of a tank and the crew in the tank tried to go around, but in the end just stayed put? That’s our blood thirsty Chinese military enemies; so how is it that an American cop is such an immovable force?

  43. I was a well known gay activist with lots of regular media coverage. I was also a Ferguson Activists. (Many Ferguson Activists now dead) About 5 years ago I was using a police scanner to monitor police behavior after receiving several complaints of police brutality from the community. One night I overheard police targeting a known gay drag bar as ppl left to go home. 2 or 3 blocks from the bar they begun beating “the pedos.” They turn their radios on so other sadists can take pleasure in the screams and cries. I heard it all. I immediately called the Chief and reported the incident and all the officers were given a stern talking to. About a week later I became a Targeted Individual. Everyday since then I am attacked with invisible energy weapons, painful stimuli, pressure, v2k and heat torture. I have also bad ocassional brain hacking and gang stalking by government goons. Once I woke up walking down the street a couple blocks from my house with a laceration to my stomach. I was missing about an hour of time. I am not crazy. I am a former EMT, college educated very sane person. They have told me I am going to a computer generated hell when I die. They told me If I blew the whistle they would plant my DNA on a crime scene and arrest me. There’s really nothing anyone can do for me as I am at the full mercy of the FBI, CIA, Homeland Security, Infragard and local police. My only request is that people start to believe Targeted Individuals when they tell you what’s going on. They are not crazy. What’s happening to them is very real but by design from psychologists “the program” mimics mental illness. American policing has a back up plan which includes being able to press a button and make people instantly fall asleep. The technology they have .is extremely advanced. May God bless the american people fighting for the right to be alive and may God bless targeted individuals.

  44. Protesters livestreamed the murder of Captain David Dorn, looters passed by as he bled out on the sidewalk. Captain Dorn leaves behind a widow, five children, ten grandchildren, but these black lives do not not matter. This weekend the beautification of a nine time convicted felon will include all the famous race baiters. Foreigners given a false sense of racial division, which in organized political subversion. Americans of all races are awake, and disgusted.

  45. Caitlin is wrong in saying that insults do no harm to us. As a person of unusual intelligence, i have been punished all my life by resentful persons telling me i am worthless and stupid. This despite having professional qualifications in medicine and engineering.
    Insulting me with low expectations has injured not only my spirit ; my body has been producing psychosomatic illnesses since 1987. 30 years of severe diahorrea is a poetically precise commentary on Western culture ; it gives me the shits. Especially the insults are aimed at my moral values.

    1. Insults do not harm you. The harm you suffer is wrapping up your view of yourself in how others view you.

      1. Contradiction carries zero meaningful information. My physical illness is proof you and cynics like you have nothing but disgusting disbelief to offer. Attacks on my self-respect are psychological violence of the worst kind, and JWK adds to the injury with blanket denial of its reality, insulting my intelligence as well as my soul.

  46. Aardvark-Gnosis Avatar
    Aardvark-Gnosis

    The Policer are slaves just like us… Police policing slaves… been like this forever… nothing new I’m afraid… The just have military hardware now, they might as well be military police and we are under faux marshal law that is counseled in a matrix of deceptive propaganda by the elite that run the world order that baked the idea we are free… the only thing we are free to do is go to work???… anesthetized in a vacuum of merchandised propaganda, a psychological conditioned state believing what the educational system is designed to do…keep non-critical mind in an paralyzed hypnotic state of dysfunction…

    Sorry, even the protesters are falling for the MSM non-censored news of racial deception and baiting all that do not understand, this is not racial but total and decisive in a functional mentality as Atlas Shrugged. Fictional real life players coming alive in 3-D dysfunctional harmony designed to tear humans apart from being free to think on a higher plain of spiritual awareness… Revolution you say, The elite want just that, so they can have an excuse to kill and maim with impunity any who disobey the Bilderberger machine of the population 500 mullion club… Heading for a bunker under the white house or parliament near you…

  47. chuck n0 bomb Avatar
    chuck n0 bomb

    Israeli Terrorist forces train U.S. Police.

  48. Rest assured, we’ll still be here once the latest fad “uprising” has fizzled out—that’s what happens when you neglect to provide a real vision and narrative that appeals to more than `Woke Nation’ and simply focus on the sexy and flashy. Though, feel free to use ours if you like; it’s certainly better than the one you’ve got and there’s no reason our timeline cannot be sped up if you already find yourself with the mass movement and\or committed guerilla wing necessary for doing so. You’re still going to need to read 3,700+ pages of “meandering bullshit” though. Never forget: true heroism is minutes, hours, weeks, year upon year of the quiet, precise, judicious exercise of probity and care with no one there to see or cheer.
    .
    And no judgement, we all make mistakes, get caught up in bullshit lies from time to time—the past year has been full of them. Sure, it should be obvious that the reason anything looks different this time is because Russiagate failed, `OMG the norms!’ failed, impeachment failed, the manufactured mass hysteria over a not-actually-super-deadly virus is failing (though the consequences of that hysteria are very real), and Joe Biden just plain sucks, so the narrative mongers needed something else to attempt to destroy Bad Orange Man with. And still, we won’t judge—it might be a good idea to do some self-reflection and learn from your mistakes though.
    .
    In the grand scheme of things George Floyd is nothing but a minor, tragic blip. Hell, even in the sea of horrors that was just the day of his death he was nothing but a single whitecap. He is nothing more than the lure the greyhounds desperately chase around the track, while the exploiters look on with glee and cheer (and some make money). The same goes for every one of these clips.
    .
    And speaking of dogs, cops kill far more of them than “blacks” each year but #DogLivesMatter wasn’t seen as having the same branding, marketing, and career opportunities we suppose—and at least that one wouldn’t have arbitrarily broken members of the same species up into different groups. Let us also save you the time of countering with all the other awful things done to “blacks” that aren’t killing since we’ve got death and slave camps all over the country causing horrors on a scale that just does not even come close to what we inflict upon “blacks” now ors during any time in history. While you rage against “white” supremacists and their ignorance, recognize that you are likely an ignorant supremacist of a much worse kind. Though, don’t worry, we don’t make you choose, we intend to liberate both.
    .
    When the real revolt comes, rich powerful shitheads in the media and politics will not be cheering you on, they’ll be hiding in fear (no, the BunkerBoy meme the propagandists and fools got trending doesn’t count) and attacking you with everything they’ve got. If they’re cheering you, they’re playing you. Wake the fuck up before the far more capable establishment propaganda machine crushes everything you claim to care about.
    .
    And if you think this time you’re playing them? We only ask: With what\whose narrative?
    .
    https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2020/05/30/18833392.php

    http://www.mediafire.com/file/k1omyaf0r73shvk/Twenty-Twenty-four.pdf/file

  49. Hmmm

    A truly horrifying fact that the US media is obviously going to great lengths to keep out of the public’s mindset: Minneapolis Police were trained at no small cost to the taxpayers to use the life threatening neck restraint technique that killed George Floyd by Jewish Israeli trainers and consultants from israel. It turns out that these israelis fanned out across the country “training” almost every major police force in the entire country starting around 2012. Many of the techniques taught violated existing rules, regulations and procedures, but again that fact was minimized by the media and “our” Police at the time as well….

    The Israelis are considered the leading experts in this field mainly because the use of potentially deadly Force techniques for crowd and riot control have been perfected by their everyday use for more than half century against Muslim victims in israel, Palestinian, Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.

    And as the American people have finally figured out, for nearly a decade victims here in the United States as well……

    1. And Annexation is just around the corner …

  50. As an American who has endured the disparagement of police from time to time, I have to agree with your assessment, however there is another side to it as well. We no longer are a culture, a Nation of founding principles, we’ve got little self-discipline, and we’ve completely allowed political narratives to drive our actions.
    We are not a racist Nation, we aren’t a Nation at all. We’ve left behind a common culture, one which all clung to, a century ago, however faulty it was. We’ve left behind our “federal Government for a central one, in doing so, we’ve allowed the Constitution be ignored by all, from local police, to Presidents and Congress, as well as the courts.
    We appear to have a “police/race” issue, because it’s news when race is involved, but boring, if it isn’t. We do have a police brutality issue, and we continue to have racists, however, the vast majority who aren’t racist, won’t stand strong, and denounce the continued race baiting, and the media gets a free pass, when it openly, clearly lies. Antifa isn’t “anti-fascist”, it is in fact, fascist by nature, but it makes a better story, the other way. Black lives do matter, but so do whites, Latino’s, Greeks, Asians, all of us.
    Take a good look at the protests, everyone is attacked with vigor, enthusiasm, the protest is against unlawful use of power, and it demonstrates unlawful use of power.
    It is entirely illegal for “executives to deliver orders”, and expect people to follow them. We have legislatures to write “such law as we, The People” desire to have passed, yet they write their own laws, absent our input or our recognizance. This too is unlawful. Executive office is to “execute the laws”, law is that which “The People” see, recognize as needed, and call for, we were established with representative government, Sovereign Citizens and States.
    We have allowed “executives to make executive orders”, in following them, rather than denying their right to exist, we’ve taught the Police, we are servile, and having done so, they act like we are indeed, belonging under their thumb.
    We have a system stating “innocent unless proven guilty”, but civil court systems that assume guilt, unless we prove innocence, something which almost never happens, and we accept the notion, “in civil court, we have other standards of proof, innocence, and guilt”, even though it remains “court action”.
    We’ve, “The People”, failed utterly, to hold our Constitution as our own, we never should allow any of those in government think it belongs to them, it is the law over them, but if we don’t claim it, they do.
    We held Constitutional government until James Monroe, who assumed office after Mr. Madison, who oversaw the last real fight over Constitution, rightfully decided, wherein he stood on the fact, the President who nominated a justice, didn’t see cause to seat the same, in his tenure, and not having nominated the would be justice, was free to nominate his own, and seat him.
    The Congress suggested Madison had to seat Marbury, but without citation of the Constitution. The courts followed suit, but again, without a constitutional theory, and Mr. Madison stated repeatedly, “the Constitution is written in plain English”, it is to be read to the common meaning of the words, at the time they were penned, with no interpretation needed, and no establishment of authority over its meaning, in any of the houses of government, but in the plain language we, Americans, spoke, and was recorded, established, by Noah Webster, a founder precisely because of his “New American-English dictionary”, establishing our American lexicon, as different and exact as British English is. A “republic” can only last as long as “the Publicans” remain aware, we are the ultimate authority, and we are informed by our culture, our history, and our principles, as to how we must govern ourselves.
    We’ve had a fascist government, completely, since the war of northern aggression, and it has become a “world power, hegemony” since the last great war. We are also broke, we have unpaid obligations, and have an empire, falling apart around the world, and scramble to manipulate trade, price, quality to keep our fiat dollar relevant, with all rational people certain it must fail, and shortly, but every effort taken to ensure shortly is as far away as possible.
    We could’ve fallen in 06, taken a drastic cut, perhaps 40%, in our dollar’s value, and demanding massive changes in corporate structure, bank structure, perhaps even getting to honest banking, if we were wise enough, however printing was easier, blowing the bubble bigger, kept it from failing then, however it ensured the fall would be far greater. It may even be possible to inflate again, for a short while, but if it is, it ensures an even greater failure.
    At this point, even the elite know there has to be a fall, but its so great a fall, one further out, they might not live to see, seems better to individuals, than taking the fall does, to the vast majority, tired of being wrung out of income, and ready to start fresh. “The People” have always been willing to start fresh, from nothing, because that is normal. The elite aren’t willing to take a 20% drubbing, now, voluntarily, to avoid total collapse, but always intend to get out, before the fall, letting “all the others” take the drubbing, never imagining it must come at sometime, and put off forever, means failing without any notice.
    No empire ever imagines it will fail, exactly as previous ones did, even though they all do. Empires come because People fail to retain their own authority, and stand together in this, against all who would rule. We always have a majority which would rather be led, than choose their path for themselves, and this always brings on government of imposition, using force to make its will complete.
    Semper Fidelis,
    John McClain
    Vanceboro, NC, USA

  51. Linda Whitefeather Avatar
    Linda Whitefeather

    You forgot to mention what truly amazes me. The defense of a cop by superiors or a defense attorney that he feared for his life when he shoots and kills a civilian during an intense confrontation.

    Person shouts an obscenity or rubs their nose or God forbid sticks their hand in their pocket and “bang bang” they’re dead, because an apparently mentally unstable cop feared for his life.

    What? The police academy didn’t train you to control fear? You’re not a 17 year old given a gun and dumped in Vietnam.

    1. Edward Hackett Avatar
      Edward Hackett

      There is a definite disparity between an unarmed person and an armed and sometimes armored police officer. I am so old, that I remember when the police were considered to be our friends and someone you could trust. That is no longer true and the destruction of their image is entirely their own fault.

      Instead of calling out members of their organization who are not acting correctly, they form a shield around them and protect them at all costs. This attitude has been reinforced by the Supreme Court by its many rulings in favor of police forces.

      One of the worst rulings, made by the Supreme Court, granted the police a “Qualified Immunity”. This protects a government official from lawsuits that allege that the official violated a person’s rights. What greater violation of a person’s rights can there be than killing that person? This ruling applies to other government officials as well as police officers.

      Using this ruling as a defense, it is no wonder that so many juries find the police not guilty in cases involving the killing of unarmed persons.

      Couple this legal ruling with increased militarization of police departments and we have today’s very bad situation.

      The war on drugs, which in many cases, is a war on poor non-white citizens and using the police to harass homeless people living on the street, is a further escalation of the deterioration of the image of the police as our helpers and guardians.

      1. When I first started practicing law in the U.S., more than 40 years ago, there were lines of cases in the various states to the effect that not only was a cop expected to rise above and ignore even the vilest language directed toward him/her, but that a cop had a special duty to exercise this discipline beyond that applicable to the average citizen. In this one area alone, mirrored in a myriad of others, I watched American law morph from what had already become a labyrinth of casuistry into the brutally oppressive monstrosity now clearly evident to nearly everyone.

    2. Easy to speak so boldly from the safety of your home. Most of us dont routinely have to control our own fear. Guess that is why war produces so much PTSD. Being in fearful situations continously. Thank goodness the police can master it so well and do their jobs. Police are conditioned by what happens on their jobs just like soldiers. When will people realize that.

      1. It is easy to be so homey and safe in the boldness of your speech.
        I find myself having to control my fear every time I go to the supermarket, or the chemists, or shop online. Most of this is routine. Nonetheless my fear has only produced mild PTSD. Maybe that’s because I was trained not to whine or bust balls or stamp my feet.
        Please don’t sully goodness with your thanks. Please rise above your conditioning. Please let’s hope police and soldiers will rise above theirs.

  52. Edward Hackett Avatar
    Edward Hackett

    I read an interview with an English policeman and he said that the difference between his training and the training given to American police officers is that he was taught to de-escalate a situation with words. American police officers seemed to be taught to use violence and not words.

    It makes me wonder if people in England are so much more reasonable than people in America? Maybe there is a fundamental difference in mental attitude, but I have a feeling that in many cases the result of a confrontation could be damped down with words instead of being allowed to escalate into violence.

    1. A number of years ago, I tried to capture this American cultural shift/devolution in a brief essay, which Caitlin and some of her readers might like to read.

      https://newtonfinn.com/2011/12/15/would-paladin-have-shot-bin-laden/

      1. Newton, your points about Westerns in your blog made us think of this:
        .
        “Have you ever asked yourself: ‘How have I come to accept the cop’s argument as the whole truth without questioning how I came to believe it?’ But who tells the people’s truth? The large majority of law-abiding citizens know little about “what goes on out there.” What we think we know we’ve been taught by decades of fictional TV cop shows sponsored by Power—the insurance companies, the mammoth oil corporations, international banks, car manufacturers, national loan sharks, pill pushers, and the various other offspring of Power. We’ve been provided entertainment, not the whole truth, by the voice of Power—the media. We’ve come to believe Power’s propaganda in much the same way that we believe our religions—that our police and prosecutors will not prosecute and convict the innocent. Such would be un-American. But blind beliefs, cultural brainwashings, can hasten the end of a free people.
        .
        Note that cop movies of the ‘rogue cop breaking all the rules’ variety, that now seems the default mode for a Hollywood action movie, did not exist at all until the 1970s. In fact for the first half-century of American cinema there were hardly any movies at all that took a policeman’s point of view. The rogue cop movie appeared at the moment the Western disappeared and is largely a transposition of Western plots into an urban bureaucratic setting. Clint Eastwood famously defined the transition: from Sergio Leone’s Man with No Name (1964, 1965, 1966), to Dirty Harry (1971). As others have observed, the Western plot is typically an effort to contrive a situation where it is justifiable for a basically decent person to do things that in any other situation would be absolutely unjustifiable. Transposing that onto an urban bureaucratic environment has disturbing implications.”

        1. Good points, especially about “the Eastwood shift.” I would say it a little differently, however. Take “Gunsmoke,” for example. That classic series about a U.S. Marshal in Dodge City DID take the cop’s perspective, BUT the cop, Marshal Dillon, was a decent and honorable guy, a man you could trust, rely on, feel safe under his protection. He’d NEVER beat the crap out of someone because he merely mouthed off to him. Indeed, in the opening sequence for the shows, you see Dillon in a face-off with an apparent gunslinger whom Dillon must corral for the safety of his city. But when he does this, when he outdraws the bad guy and wounds or kills him, Dillon grimaces. Why? Because he hates violence, even though it’s part of his job. He uses it only as a last resort and feels shitty even when he must do so…the waste and senselessness of it all. No doubt, this was all largely mythological, the Old West surely being a much nastier place and the average sheriff or marshal a much nastier guy (not to mention the ominous backdrop of genocide). Yet, it seems important, at least to me, that this mythology about the Old West–this IDEALISM–helped to shape the aspirations of those who watched the shows and others like it. As I’m fond of saying, the mortal enemy of neoliberal capitalism, its polar opposite, is not socialism (and I am a socialist) but idealism: the deep-seated conviction that the higher things in life have no price, that to even TRY to put a price on them, to make them commodities, defiles them and they evaporate in your hand. Short step from there IMHO to the elemental, universal value distilled by Schweitzer, which may be the only thing that can save us: reverence for life.

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