Law and Order

The "loss" of law and order that Barry Goldwater complained of when running for president in 1964, iterated (on behalf of Capitalism) an up-dated effort to save the legitimacy of the social and economic system in crisis. The true voice behind that iteration was Capitalism itself. As the only true subject of modern history, Capitalism was frantically seeking dry land. Needing a pretext to stave off the structural crisis it faced in the 1960’s and 1970’s, capitalism began a string of wars on strawmen: drugs, poverty, illegal immigration and terror. The mask it would choose would be the “rule of law.” Over the past 44 years, trillions of dollars have gone towards the control of the class structure and social revolution. Whether it is the Military Industrial Complex or the Prison Industrial Complex or the Surveillance Industrial Complex, our world must come to terms with the nasty reality that the "ideology of the rule of law masks, or is meant to mask, the fact of class rule" (John Gibler, Mexico Unconquered, 2009). As a result of these complexes of control serving to maintain the “rule of law,” we have an extremely paralyzed society unable to muster a serious fight against the enormity of it all.

Goldwater—and each subsequent president—would have to make a center piece of their campaign platform the return of law and order. However, there was never a “loss” of law and order, but a sudden realization that the rule of law (read: authoritarian control) had been weakened by massive social upheaval. Normally, when people get feed up enough with the crappy reality of their lives, they rise up. Capitalism needs to contend with this, so control of unhappy people is necessary.

Nixon said while campaigning in 1967: "America has become among the most lawless and violent [nations] in the history of free people." Depending on whom one takes to be the "criminal" (i.e. the capitalists, or union organizer, or Black Panther, or the dope-smoker) Nixon could be understood as extremely honest or dishonest when he blamed liberal decisions for "weakening the peace forces against the criminal forces." Ronald Reagan "aspired to nothing less than readjusting the balance between the forces of law and the forces of lawlessness." George Bush Sr. concentrated on five areas of crime, three of which dealt with illicit drugs, and as he infamously said: “Take my word for it. This scourge will stop!” Bill Clinton was perhaps the toughest on "crime" with his unprecedented Crime Bill, because he believed the "first responsibility of government is law and order." George W. Bush meant what he said when he warned “if you break the law, there will be a consequence.”

Slavoj Zizek recounts an old parable that helps us understand how the subjective manifestations of violence like a homicide, or a rape, or an assault, or a drug bust, or a bank robbery, or an international conflict, or terror, or civil unrest do not happen against a background of zero violence. In fact, it is the background which is the most insidious, egregious and violent of all. Violence in the objective forms of systemic and symbolic violence is ever-present and constant. The resulting pathologies, anger, abuse, and violence are all a result of a cosmic dissonance of violence already done to us.

In the parable, Zizek tells of the “worker who is suspected of stealing. Every evening, as he leaves the factory, the wheelbarrow he rolls in front of him is carefully inspected. The guards can find nothing. It is always empty. Finally, the penny drops: what the worker is stealing are the wheelbarrows themselves…”

As the guardians of our own society, “we need to learn to step back, and disentangle ourselves from the fascinating lure of this directly visible “subjective” violence, violence performed by a clearly identifiable agent. We need to perceive the contours of the background which generates such outbursts. A step back enables us to identify a violence that sustains our very efforts to fight violence.”

The Prison Industrial Complex is a multi-billion dollar industry. After killing the black leadership of the 60's, they next thing to do was to put millions in prison. Of the 2.3 million American prisoners (roughly seven times the amount in 1971), over half are black.

Building a Prison Industrial Complex has served many purposes:

1. Class control
2. Billions of dollars of profit
3. Deal with civil discontent
4. Deal with the ugliest aspects of capitalism’s objective violence: i.e. vagrants, welfare mothers, the mentally ill, etc.
5. Deal with the effects of neoliberal globalization: “illegal” immigrants
   
   

Being “tough on crime,” the “War on Drugs,” the “War on Poverty,” and—the most Orwellian of wars—the “War on Terror,” have all served a simple ideological purpose of perpetual wars on strawmen/scapegoats. When violent reaction reaches the absurd levels of today's world it can no longer be called an aberration, but an inherent reality of an inhumane, anti-democratic, and anti-environmental system that prefigures it. The one true crime boss is the system itself. It has successfully pitted us against ourselves and the system’s spectacular marketing has masked the wolf in sheep’s clothing. Docile and scared like sheep, we huddle together and tremble, until the master’s of mankind divide us further and further so that we can be easily picked off one-by-one.

Infantile World

I know it may be asking too much for idiot ideologues, pundits, and politicians to be honest enough to admit that it was Colombia that crossed the border of a sovereign nation, not Venezuela, but things are getting ridiculous! Likewise, we know Obama and Clinton to be intelligent enough to read and understand the verifiable truth about Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador, but getting them to be honest enough to actually read it and then admit THE TRUTH may be too tall an order.

Here's the thing that sucks. Even when handed the evidence on a silver platter (as I've done here) ideologues won't read it (there are actual studies on this kind of blind dogmatism). Secondly, once they read incontrovertible fact, they'll deny it. Like petulant children they'll stomp their feet and say it just can't be true, because rather than grow up and admit the flaws in their thinking, they carry on with infantile behavior. Perhaps that is the reason they often choose not to read the facts...it forces them to admit that they are wrong. Oh the shame...the shame of admitting we are wrong or that we don't have a clue what we are talking about! Surely not "wrong"...that's worse than death!

But I've decided to give the benefit of the doubt to this hapless bunch in case they can be honest enough to read the evidential record (all of the highlighted links in this post are actual evidence, documents and articles, not homepages of websites) :

1) Colombian paramilitaries are responsible for 70% of all human rights violations in Colombia, not the FARC. These incontrovertible facts can be found in the following links Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Global Exchange, Witness for Peace, et. al.

2) The paramilitaries (AUC) are an armband switch-a-roo away from being Colombian military and police. Thereby making the actual terrorist organization the Colombian government and their criminal leader: Alvaro Uribe.

3) The U.S. is therefore a major sponsor of terror! To the tune of $5 billion since 1999 through Plan Colombia to fight the FARC and ELN, not the AUC paramilitaries.

4) Just in case $5 billion is not enough, a U.S. corporation has been linked to the paramilitaries to fund their repression of organized labor and carry out assassinations, torture and disappearances. (Just in case you try to say the paramilitaries have demobilized...we've got that one covered with, gasp--EVIDENCE! and more EVIDENCE!)

5) Oh yeah, what about that sorted business Uribe's gotten himself all caught up in called "Para-politica," which hasn't even led to a pause in U.S. funding.

6) Chavez has won democratic elections consistently since 1998. Then when one of his policies was defeated, he graciously accepted defeat. Despite what ever fantasies ideologues may have, Venezuela under Chavez is a democracy. (Just in case someone tells me to move there, let me interrupt you and say that I'm staying here because I want to bring democracy to the U.S.!)

7) The U.S. has already tried to overthrow Chavez once (2002) and failed. We funded and gave tactical support to the coup through the National Endowment for Democracy and USAID. Yo fool ideologues! You don't have to do your homework today since I did the research for you. Here are some declassified documents...just in case you actually decide to be honest and begin doing actual research and look at actual evidence, here you go: EVIDENCE

The ridiculous obsession of some people who love to demonize Chavez despite contravening evidence makes them sound like fools!

The credibility, like the fantasies of so many ideologues, continues to crumble away since they continually fail to provide any kind of factual evidence to back their ridiculous claims. Even the U.S.'s own documentary record condemns them. One only need go to the National Security Archive and read through the declassified documents there!

When those of us seeking the truth are forced to hold our noses as we read and listen to the undocumented claims of ideological quacks and jingoistic pundits all day long, we are often foolish enough to wait for evidence from them. Then we come to our senses and realize who's shilling the shit! However, far more shameful than holding out hope for some honesty, are the ideological hacks and lazy asses that repeat these false claims and try to pass off opinion as fact whenever it suits their narratives. If they were my students I would have to fail them for not providing evidence to back their claims.

Fortunately, I don't feel as though I've wasted my time, nor my breath on ideologues who--by their very definition--will likely not change even when struck by lightning! Nope! My students will read and witness for themselves the infantile world they have the misfortune of inheriting.

To Vote or Not to Vote...

“There is a difference between an inconsequential left and a consequential right, the difference is they both do the same things, but one says they don't.” Subcomandante Marcos

There is simply no way for democracy to adequately function within the capitalist system. For that matter, we cannot consider our federal system a democracy... perhaps it's a republic, corportacracy, state capitalism? It's certainly not a functional democracy. For this reason, I can only conclude that to participate in the presidential elections is to uphold a corrupt system and makes us complicit in its crimes.

Bought and sold by big money, Clinton and Obama (like Republicans) are in no way beholden to those they pretend to represent. They have prostituted themselves to those that are truly running and "electing" our leaders! Are they different then the Republicans? Sure, they do the bidding of big business in sheep's clothing, making their airs of benevolence that much more hateful!

It is often purported that Hillary is left of Obama. This is flatly false. She is and has always been the candidate of big business: a reality that puts Hillary in a position directly in conflict with the struggles of the poor, unions, social, environmental and economic justice. She was featured on the front page of Fortune magazine as the best candidate for big business, for god's sake! As the article points out she has been allowed to get away with--and I have heard many reminiscing with her--saying that the 90's were better. But it was the 90's in which all of the vicious free trade deals that crushed unions, the working class and the poor of the earth were devised, "negotiated," and signed! By supporting the business agenda she is also promising to accelerate environmental destruction of our planet. The poisonous elixir of free trade agreements that reduce environmental standards which allow corporations to further pollute our planet and her stated rejection of the Kyoto Protocol is the recipe she has in store for our world. She is also the candidate that repeatedly voted for the Iraq War and is muscling up to be tough on terror and national security. She is morally reprehensible and should not be thought of as someone above the fray of prostitution "democracy." She like all other candidates is opportunistic, power hungry and vetted beyond human recognition.

It is utterly insulting to hear Hillary Clinton use the slogan "Sí se puede" which she has shamelessly co-opted. This slogan is meant to overthrow tyrants, not to be used by them!

When discussing the issue of whether or not to participate in our elections, the issue of welfare, social security, funding for education, etc. is an often repeated concern. Well, the Republic of Lakotah pointed out that despite the generosity of the U.S. government for the past 155 years in the form of welfare and food stamps, they have the lowest life expectancy for males of any nation in the world (44 years)! They have an unemployment rate of 85%. An amazing 97% of Lakotah people live below the federal poverty level! And the suicide rate is 150% of the national average! Wisely--I think--they decided to go at it alone. I have no idea what their plan is. Frankly, it's not my business. But I can honestly say that they couldn't be much worse off no matter where in the world they were living, so why not try a new direction? In relation to voting, what has it gotten any American Indian? What has voting achieved for any of us? Real change has never come from voting, if it did, they'd outlaw it!

Please bear in mind that the TV/Toothpaste Elections intend to make us feel as though any of these candidates actually cares. They smile at us and make us feel reassured that someone is going to stick up for us. Someone is going to calm things down, "get us out of the war" (remember this recent promise?), unite the "divide" in this country, etc., etc. But it is the PR industry that elects our leaders, and "super delegates," not us!

By the way, is the country actually divided? No. The country is not nearly as divided as we've been led to believe. Confused? Yes. In the abstract we are divided, but placed within context our country is far less divided. A recent NY Times/CBS poll showed that 64% of Americans would willingly pay $500 more per year in taxes in order to have universal healthcare! Americans want out of the war…immediately! Americans overwhelmingly believe CEO's make an unfair, bloated salary and believe money should be more fairly distributed. The majority of Americans believe we should be signed onto the Kyoto Protocol. And on and on and on. So why is there such a huge disconnect between public policy and public opinion?

To me the answer is simple: we continue to allow our system to shill false hope that anything of significance will come from federal elections and so each time we vote we further legitimize our system, and so are complicit in the drawing out of global misery. We also demonstrate a measure of contempt for democracy by knowingly participating in this sham. Just think what it would be like if Americans were appropriately aware of this sham and through a rapid decrease in participation gave a vote of no confidence to our federal system. If we coupled abstention from voting with education and organization, we could build a resistance to mental colonization and prepare ourselves for how we are going to have to provide for ourselves. Couldn't this lead to democratic changes? Possibly an end to the two-party dictatorship? Or Instant Run-off Voting? Or campaign finance reform? Or more?

If our concern is democracy than we should protect it, fight for it and stand up for it by creating it on our own in the workplace, and local communities! No to federal elections!

Playing the Game

People are failing to appreciate the system that oppresses them and continue to believe—wrongly—that a politician such as Barak Obama is the solution. Obama is being called a "unifier," and people are swallowing this shit up. Obama smiles at us, and talks to us, and makes us feel all good inside, but we know nothing about his policies. And this is very intentional. This helps maintain the wide gap that exists between public opinion and public policy. Along with keeping the public out of the policy-making arena and leaving that business to elected elites, the American political system degenerates any possibility of making meaningful elections possible by engaging the public in a tense battle of voting for personalities and forgetting about the issues. So how do we narrow the gap and make the political system respond to our demands? Do we play the game and risk expending valuable energy and money on politicians or strike out in our own direction of local organization that can lead to powerful direct action? Do we need to take more personal risks in the spirit of civil rights activists from the 60s or turn of the century workers fighting for the right to organize, or do we sit back and wait for Obama, Clinton and Tester to “deliver us from evil”?

Just like Bill Clinton before him, people see this charming personality in Obama and hear his rhetoric of unifying a divided country, but the true divide exists not between conservatives and liberals, but between public policy and public opinion. Policies in this country are generally more conservative than the American public. A prime example is that Americans want universal—even socialized—health care by a wide margin (70%), but we can't get our politicians to even recognize this demand. When we hear politicians talk of “mandates” one is in danger of dying from laughter unless they say they have the mandate of the American people to institute universal health care.

Too many assumptions are being made that a woman (Hilary Clinton), an African-American (Barak Obama), or a Carhartt-wearing farmer (Jon Tester) are going to level the playing field, based deceptively on their roles as minorities or as members of the working class. However, we never hear their proposals, their policies, etc. We only hear about how they are going to unify a divided country, but they can’t put the slightest dent in unifying the rest of their fellow policy makers in D.C. with the majority of opinions held by Americans. Most Americans believe we shouldn’t be fighting a war in Iraq, that we should be respecting the Kyoto Protocol; paying teacher’s more money; protecting the border with Canada (not Mexico); engaging antagonistic countries through diplomacy not war; respecting the international rule of law; punishing crooked politicians the way they punish other criminals; investing in alternative energy in a meaningful way; reforming campaign finance laws; narrowing the gap between CEO and worker pay; etc.

An equivalent to an “activist” doesn’t exist on the Republican side of affairs; they are just called “the base.” That which would be considered the concerns of right-wing activists (were they to exist) are simply taken up by the Republican Party since they are in line with the American political spectrum that is shaped by the wealthy, property owning class. However, non-profit and activist causes from the left exist because of gaps in public policy and a system that fails to provide for its society. Therefore, activists must dig deeply to find politicians (even from the supposed “left”) to take up their causes, and since these causes from the left generally fall outside the accepted political spectrum a champion from within the political elite is hard to find. This reality results in social justice causes dividing their energy and money between their cause and a politician that they hope will risk mentioning it on the floor of congress. On the other hand, a right-winger simply gives their money to their cause through one easy-payment to the Republican Party.

Americans need to look at the system and critically assess their blind faith in the American political structure to bring about meaningful change. Included in this assessment should be the role modern marketing and money plays in shaping elections and political decisions. A deeper and more honest analysis would surely reveal the evidence and reason to demonstrate how social justice and the American economic and political system are irreconcilable. Depending on the coddling of our American founding fathers and “heroic” politicians has only served to perpetuate on-going violence and injustice. Making a sound decision to organize oneself locally in order to give a voice with power to public opinion is just a start. Consistent and creative organization that forgoes institutional dependency and seeks to maximize pressure on the system would serve two purposes: 1) reveal the illusion that American elections equals democracy, 2) that direct action and participatory democracy are the most effective means for meaningful social change.

Granted the question of protecting oneself, society, and the world from vile politicians such as Bush, McCain, et. al. by “playing the game” and helping to elect center-right democrats is a valid one. What do we risk if we fail to participate in elections, their campaigns, etc. while working on our genuine concerns? While working for social revolution how much energy and money do we give to helping elect more moderate conservatives such as Obama and Clinton? Giving/wasting donations on Tester, Obama and Clinton in order to toss out the neo-cons means donating to the system in lieu of donating to organizations that are seeking to change the system. How can we ensure that “playing the game” doesn’t become tantamount to perpetuating it? If you look at the places in the world with meaningful democracies such as Venezuela and Bolivia, one cannot ignore the roles extreme poverty, oppression, and violence have played in prepping that society for social revolution. What do we do with complacent and morally apathetic Americans? What will motivate them? Four more years of reactionary neo-con train wrecks? Or a “democratic” revolution that lulls us further back to sleep?