Black Athletes' Revolt Could Change USian Revolutionary Dynamics
APART FROM THE ONGOING rebellion of African-American athletes, the influence of which is already spreading beyond the realm of sports, probably the most important story in the USian Homeland right now is the One Percent's escalation of its efforts to radically reduce Working Class and non-white populations, whether by abandoning Puerto Rico to the most immediately deadly aspects of terminal climate change or by making healthcare so expensive only the One Percenters and their Ruling Class vassals can afford it.
Both tactics, denial of post-disaster aid and denial of healthcare, are obvious expressions of Capitalism's strategy of exterminating unwanted or surplus populations by boiled-frog methods of slow-motion genocide.
Meanwhile the athletes' rebellion offers the hitherto-unexplored potential of expanding revolutionary leadership to include a group of people who are not only profoundly respected for their physical prowess but are literally adored by a segment of the USian population that spans every race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and caste.
Whether and to what extent that potential might explode into actuality depends on how brutally the authorities suppress the athletes. The team owners' verbal alliance with the dissidents is obviously an attempt at nonviolent suppression, specifically by co-optation, but in such a white supremacist JesuNazi police state as the U.S.has become, literally anything is now possible.
That's why, though the Mainstream Media pundits assure us the athletes' protests are succeeding, also that there will be aid for Puerto Rico and that the latest Trumpcare terror will never become law, we dare not forget these pundits are the same Josef Goebbels types who assured us Trump/Pence JesuNazism would never be headquartered in the White House – the name of which has now been fully restored to its grotesque antebellum appropriateness.
We are thus ruled by an ideological combination of JesuNazi white supremacy and Ayn Rand moral imbecility in which anyone who is neither wealthy nor a Christian Identity fanatic is damned as the same sort of üntermenschen the Trump/Pence Regime's German Nazi predecessors gleefully consigned to the concentration camps. If We the (Real) People are to have the slightest hope of survival, we must therefore do the difficult work of cleaving through a seemingly impenetrable cloak of disinformation and deception to examine the regime's every gesture and initiative in terms of its real-world impact on ourselves, the global 99 Percent.
Not only does retaining health as a privilege of wealth guarantee the premature death of any of us deemed no longer exploitable for profit (whether because we're rebellious, old, disabled, chronically unemployed or all of the foregoing), it's also a helluva lot cheaper than manufacturing Zyklon B and building the facilities essential for its use. Besides which, death camps have fallen out of fashion since the Red Army liberated Berlin.
Moreover – given how our overlords get off on massaging each other with money – premiums from the plutocrats and from the professionals and executives who whore for them will obviously be sufficient to keep the insurance barons and prescription drug lords in business after We the (Surplus) People are all We the (Genocidally) Murdered Corpses, thereby guaranteeing the lords and barons their continued membership in Capitalism's global fraternity of sadists, mass murderers and eco-slayers.
In this dystopian context the most relevant report available is my own analysis, for which scroll down to “Single Payer Situation Report.”
But it is confirmed in far greater detail by a CounterPunch report published on 21 September: “Most of those Democrats have signed on because they felt politically forced to, because they knew they could not face their constituents if they didn’t. But many of them do not support single-payer... and will, in fact, do their best to undermine and prevent it.”
This was of course precipitated by Trumpcare's most brazenly murderous iteration yet.
While I trust most USian readers already know the horrifying details of the latest Ruling Class effort to make “healthcare” the newest euphemism for genocide, I'm nevertheless linking additional aspect-focused reports here, here, here and here. These URLs make the record complete and serve readers outside the imperial homeland who many not understand the infinite viciousness hidden beneath the Big Lie of “our democracy.”
As to what will obtain – whether genocidal Trumpcare will become law, whether the genocidal abandonment of Puerto Rico will continue and what will become of the athletes' rebellion – the best I can say is we won't know until it happens. But only a fool would be optimistic.
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The Rest of the Week in Review: Obladi, Oblada, Death Goes On
The Broader Significance of the Athletes' Rebellion is what it reveals about life in the USian Homeland as it truly is for those of us who refuse to give the stars-and-stripes banner of white patriarchal Capitalism-under-god the Zieg Heil its politicians demand.
Racist malevolence has become so extreme even cultural heroes – and major-league USian athletes are certainly that – are routinely attacked by the police. Thus it is increasingly undeniable the police have been federalized and militarized specifically to sustain Capitalism and expand white supremacy.
Most of us know this story already. Many of us have experienced it firsthand. But its ultimate significance lies in the fact the transformation of the local police into the equivalent of armored infantry – and thus into a functional counterpart of the German Nazi SS – began long before the advent of the Trump/Pence Regime.
This tells us our overlords knew at least two decades ago, and probably as early as the Nixon years, that the uniquely USian hybrid of Capitalism, racism, misogyny, homophobia and Christian Identity bigotry would eventually become so vicious its defense would require Gestapo-type brutality.
The Central Intelligence Agency's Strategic and Tactical Debt to Nazi Germany – so obvious in its activities both at home and abroad (though not specifically mentioned in the linked text) – should thus surprise no one, particularly those of us who recognize the father-son relationship of Capitalism and Nazism.
Predictably, the CIA under Trump/Pence management is becoming yet another instrument of JesuNazi fulfillment: “more white, more male, more Jesus.”
Just as Trump/Pence Normalizes Violent Racism, So Does It Enable Militant Misogyny, a disheartening conclusion strongly suggested by an alarming escalation in assaults on family planning facilities. Obvious question: are representatives of the regime secretly meeting with JesuNazi zealots and giving them permission to maximize their anti-abortion aggressiveness?
Apropos Mysogyny, Note Nikon's Exclusion of Women from Its Newest Camera Ads. Thirty-two photographers, no women. Nikon claims it's an accident but those of us with a more rationally skeptical turn of mind wonder if the company is cozying up to the Trump/Pence New Order.
St. Louis Police Brutality Is an Old Story, but Truthful Coverage of It Is Brand New: a detailed report by People's World provides us the perspective Mainstream Media deliberately suppressed.
Harvard Comes Out of the Closet, Defiantly Aligns Itself with JesuNazi Agenda by honoring Betsy DeVos and endorsing her campaign to destroy what remains of USian public education. Since Harvard is the leading USian Ruling Class university – first amongst the academies of privilege where those who transform Capitalism into JesuNazism are educated in the methodology of Machiavellian malevolence – its fondness for the Trump/Pence Regime should surprise no one, especially after the university's behavior toward Chelsea Manning.
But Apparently Not Every Department Got the Memo. The Harvard business school just released a report condemning what too many of us still think of as “our democracy” as a primary enemy of the people.
JesuNazis and Other Fascists Now Openly Recruiting College Students, another manifestation of the same Trump/Pence dynamic that's targeting minorities and women. Thus fascist Ohio seeks to abolish on-campus dissent.
More on How the Democratic (sic) Party Continues to Fuck Itself – and Us. Yes it's an old story, but in such desperate, any-port-in-the-storm times as these, we (myself included) often need to be reminded the Democrats are merely the more deceptive half of the One Fascist Party of Two Names that tyrannizes us all on behalf the One Percent.
New Vietnam War Documentary Refurbishes Old Vietnam War Lies. not surprising since it's broadcast on PBS – the now hopelessly co-opted Plutocratic Broadcasting System. A properly negative critique, here, with my comment-thread recollections of the class warfare that so often divided veterans and non-veterans and foretold how the latter would purge the Working Class from the Democratic (sic) Party. Plus an antidote to the documentary's lies, here. Relevant to these texts is a soldier's essay on why there is no longer an effective veterans' anti-war movement, its conclusions supplemented by my comment-thread review of the real reason the government ended the military draft: that mandatory military service was training the revolution.
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Life and Death Under Capitalism Closer to Home
Washingtion State Has the Nation's Most Regressive Tax Structure, nor will its smirking Bill Gates aristocracy ever allow even the slightest easing of the deliberately impoverishing burden its taxes inflict on lower-income people. Between-the-lines message: apart from the state's deceptively progressive identity politics, it is as socioeconomically viciously as any unapologetic plutocracy in the deep South, the greedy malice of its Ruling Class proven by its perennial war on public education and infrastructure.
A Washington State Lawsuit Could Clarify a Key Issue of States Rights. Attorney General Bob Ferguson's suing GEO Group Inc., the operator of the for-profit gulag in which immigrants are held for deportation. His state Superior Court suit accuses GEO of wage theft and enslavement of prisoners. GEO claims its violations of Washington state labor law are legal under federal law because its prison is a federal facility.
But What Might Ferguson Do If Trump/Pence AG Sessons Invades the State with deputized federal troops (note particularly the fourth paragraph) and/or DeVos Family mercenaries for mass arrests of marijuana users? It is now almost certain Sessons is planning such an action – no doubt intending to confine the thousands of prisoners in concentration camps on federal military bases.
Though There's Also Some Solidly Good News from Washington State. Trump/Pence misogyny has sparked a surprising surge of female activism in a nominally conservative rural county. And a precedent-setting show of female photographers is generating big attendance and rave reviews on an island near Seattle.
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The News from Abroad Is a Mixture of Intriguing and Disheartening
How BRICS Is Emerging as the Main Threat to USian Imperial Hegemony: an anthology of informative, thought-provoking reports assembled by Global Research that explain why the imperial plutocracy, in sheer terror of losing its global dominance, is trying to start World War III.
Fascist Resurgence Restructures German Politics. First a report from Der Speigel, then a commentary from Common Dreams, and somewhere deep in the CD comment thread, the restoration of my commenting privileges and my gratitude obliquely expressed by what might accidentally be a poem:
HARK!
Do I hear the sound of snare drums?
Of hobnailed jackboots trodding cadence on the cobblestones?
Is it of Horst Wessel the marching multitude now sings?
Be afraid.
Be very very very afraid.
For this time there is no Red Army to save us
from ourselves.
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Stuff to Contemplate
It Ain't Utopia, but There's a Helluva Lot Less Anxiety Under (Real) Socialism: a brief anthology of interviews with residents of the former German Democratic Republic.
Existential Crisis: Do I Punch That Nazi or Just Walk Away? From the text: “...in order for the left to present itself as a true alternative that is supportive of everyday citizens’ struggles and opposed to the continued oppression of the state and its right-wing metastases, it must embrace people’s rights for justice, equality, defense and dignity by any means necessary.”
We Should Continue Reading Chris Hedges Despite His Despicable Slander of anarchists, socialists and Marxists by portraying us as no better than Nazis. Why? Because he is brutally forthright in warning us of what is to come: “This is a war of ideas. The corporate state cannot compete honestly in this contest. It will do what all despotic regimes do—govern through wholesale surveillance, lies, blacklists, false accusations of treason, heavy-handed censorship and, eventually, violence.”
Anti-Fascist Heroines Past and Present. A Common Dreams essay honors three women, Sophie Scholl, Anne Frank and Heather Heyer. It concludes with “Let all their stories inspire a new wave of bold resistance.” Let us therefor in the name of “bold resistance” also remember heroines such as Lyudmilla Pavlechenko, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, Zinaida Portnova and all the other Soviet women who battled the fascists, personifying female courage for all time and humanity.
Clicktivism Occasionally Works. But don't for a minute imagine it takes the place of the revolutionary activism that is our only true antidote to Capitalist tyranny. Nevertheless sometimes it's better than nothing. Hence this.
LB/26 September 2017
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