To analogize the privatization of an already brother-heavy prison population, I made allusions yesterday to the transshipment of the brother from the other side of the planet for slave labor. We've come a long way since the pressing license plate myths. Further developments will no doubt one day be even better news for the Chinese.
But the implication was not meant to stop - or start - with the Clin'on Administration. Like so many things during presidential terms, a lot of what he pushed through and presided over had already been on the White House agenda. The politics that followed distracted his base of supporters in impressive fashion.
His party's losing the House for the first time in forty years in his first midterm and failing to win in it back with his reelection (giving the GOP its first consecutive legislatures since Our Gang was on the teevee) made his tasks (that agenda) as easy as the misdirection of seminal fluid.
His eight years in office were bookended by NAFTA (his vice taking point as early as the election campaign) and the repeal of the Banking Act of 1933. In between he managed to maintain his government's stance on the UN's starving of Iraqi children and okay'd the bombing of a Sudanese factory for anti-malaria medicine (the "intelligence" said chemical weapons were being produced there. Sound familiar?)
"I can't embrace the anarchist philosophy because it doesn't offer solutions to either Yada, or Yada, or even Yada."
A citizen cannot oppose his country, or even some of its government's policies while supporting the state apparatus for government. In spite of the diversified democracy documents that accentuate otherwise, the state has the authority. Professed opposition under such circumstances is symbolic.
In the US, votes cast for Candidate B are votes for a representative of a representative, the former having about as much a relationship to the money that orders state policy as the voters do their taxes' appropriation. Y'think you can get piecemeal domestic policy from the latter rep as a trade-off for things you can't control anyway and do y'think that to believe otherwise is naive? You're probably right. Then again, maybe not.
Back when I was still drinking, I once stayed up until 7am getting shit-faced and discussing Marxist theory with the proprietor of Die Tagung, a community bar of German Democratic Republic extraction. He assured me that the revolution was indeed a scientific inevitability. While I found his impassioned otherness endearing, I couldn't help but think that the only certainty was that both the murderers and the murdered would have streets named after them.
The taking over of production by the proles is certainly a step in the right direction... ...in the nineteenth century.
Keep in mind that the 99 Percent represent an economic figure, not a demonstration of the will to change the system from within. In real flesh & bone numbers, not even those who claim to support the Occupy Movement do so in substance, and a huge chunk of the 99 percentile is doing quite well, thank you very much. How much conviction do you think the moral supporters have?
If history has demonstrated anything, it's that pro-democracy folks are desperate to spin every cynical sell-out into some little victory. On any given day, that number might range from 30 to 50 percent. You can easily subtract that from the 99.
Not even as a patriot can you guarantee you won't get caught in a bureaucratic web of federal flimflam. But if you are not a patriot, are you a traitor, or might you qualify for terror-associate status? Maybe this is what the Anarchophobists actually fear. Frankly, I think there is some serious projection being done. Anarchy is sedition, after all. We'd all be better off not going there.
Given that the anti-NAFTA candidate only garnered 19 percent of the vote in '92, I'd say it's a pretty safe bet that the democratically ruled will remain that way. It's not like anarchy would be possible short of earthly annihilation and, after that, what's the fear? No cops? Really?
So, what, then?
One may think that he or she is making a difference by taking to the streets. They can't arrest us all, one might say. That might've been true in the 1770s, before the landed gentry decided to make their kings electable. It might've been true in the 1850s, before one 1% sent their 99% to fight the other 1%'s 99% over, at best, a minimum wage for the slaves or, more likely, production rights.
It might even have been true in the 1900s, before the world's current ruling empire put down the revolution.
Now, however, they could definitely put everyone in jail. So I guess the strategy would be, "You occupy the prisons, I got a class to teach."
But the implication was not meant to stop - or start - with the Clin'on Administration. Like so many things during presidential terms, a lot of what he pushed through and presided over had already been on the White House agenda. The politics that followed distracted his base of supporters in impressive fashion.
His party's losing the House for the first time in forty years in his first midterm and failing to win in it back with his reelection (giving the GOP its first consecutive legislatures since Our Gang was on the teevee) made his tasks (that agenda) as easy as the misdirection of seminal fluid.
His eight years in office were bookended by NAFTA (his vice taking point as early as the election campaign) and the repeal of the Banking Act of 1933. In between he managed to maintain his government's stance on the UN's starving of Iraqi children and okay'd the bombing of a Sudanese factory for anti-malaria medicine (the "intelligence" said chemical weapons were being produced there. Sound familiar?)
"I can't embrace the anarchist philosophy because it doesn't offer solutions to either Yada, or Yada, or even Yada."
A citizen cannot oppose his country, or even some of its government's policies while supporting the state apparatus for government. In spite of the diversified democracy documents that accentuate otherwise, the state has the authority. Professed opposition under such circumstances is symbolic.
In the US, votes cast for Candidate B are votes for a representative of a representative, the former having about as much a relationship to the money that orders state policy as the voters do their taxes' appropriation. Y'think you can get piecemeal domestic policy from the latter rep as a trade-off for things you can't control anyway and do y'think that to believe otherwise is naive? You're probably right. Then again, maybe not.
_________
Back when I was still drinking, I once stayed up until 7am getting shit-faced and discussing Marxist theory with the proprietor of Die Tagung, a community bar of German Democratic Republic extraction. He assured me that the revolution was indeed a scientific inevitability. While I found his impassioned otherness endearing, I couldn't help but think that the only certainty was that both the murderers and the murdered would have streets named after them.
The taking over of production by the proles is certainly a step in the right direction... ...in the nineteenth century.
Keep in mind that the 99 Percent represent an economic figure, not a demonstration of the will to change the system from within. In real flesh & bone numbers, not even those who claim to support the Occupy Movement do so in substance, and a huge chunk of the 99 percentile is doing quite well, thank you very much. How much conviction do you think the moral supporters have?
If history has demonstrated anything, it's that pro-democracy folks are desperate to spin every cynical sell-out into some little victory. On any given day, that number might range from 30 to 50 percent. You can easily subtract that from the 99.
Not even as a patriot can you guarantee you won't get caught in a bureaucratic web of federal flimflam. But if you are not a patriot, are you a traitor, or might you qualify for terror-associate status? Maybe this is what the Anarchophobists actually fear. Frankly, I think there is some serious projection being done. Anarchy is sedition, after all. We'd all be better off not going there.
_____
Given that the anti-NAFTA candidate only garnered 19 percent of the vote in '92, I'd say it's a pretty safe bet that the democratically ruled will remain that way. It's not like anarchy would be possible short of earthly annihilation and, after that, what's the fear? No cops? Really?
So, what, then?
One may think that he or she is making a difference by taking to the streets. They can't arrest us all, one might say. That might've been true in the 1770s, before the landed gentry decided to make their kings electable. It might've been true in the 1850s, before one 1% sent their 99% to fight the other 1%'s 99% over, at best, a minimum wage for the slaves or, more likely, production rights.
It might even have been true in the 1900s, before the world's current ruling empire put down the revolution.
Now, however, they could definitely put everyone in jail. So I guess the strategy would be, "You occupy the prisons, I got a class to teach."
