Yeah, yeah, I know it's hardly enough, what with the military-industrial complex and all, and the transnational corporations going everywhere they want and doing anything they have to when they get there. The "internal" push for armed actions gets, well, intense.
It reminds me of the guy who castrated himself in prison, 'cause he was a wild perverted violent sex fiend and he was desperate to free himself from his mad and domineering "urges". We'll need to castrate ourselves, just like that chap -- demolish the Pentagon, close all our foreign bases, revert to a citizens' militia.
But we're hardly there yet, eh? First we must ballyhoo "the pledge" -- we must make the broad mass of our citizenry realize the empire is not patriotic, the empire is not the job stiffs' friend; the empire is a killer, a killer that lives among us, is us, and when the day comes, as it must to all monsters, it will be through our heart the stake is driven.
Yesterday evening I read a now-stale post by Max Sawicky. Max poses question one here, if a bit convolutedly:
What then is the argument for "the indispensable nation" not commissioning new carnage in Iran or North Korea?Indeed, where is the root blowing charge we need to place at the stump of each one of these brutal gun play interventions? We need right here and now to stop the insanity from happening again. But we haven't even begun to set the charges -- in fact I suspect most of us dare not set any charges -- because, as Max writes, "Criticism of imperialism can still be painted as 'anti-American.'" He's dead right. He continues, "The only safe way to do it [i.e. attack the American empire project] is as a conservative or libertarian."
But doesn't the horrendous debacle that the Iraq escapade has become give us progs the means to beat the empire's battle apes senseless in the public square, right now, even as they still grapple like ruthless futile imbeciles with their sand hydra? To free ourselves and our future from these horrors repeating twice every generation, we must wave the bloody shirt of this present monstrous carnage like raft-bound castaways trying to flag down a passing ship.
Flashback to the low 70's: the "anti-imperialists" lost the Nambo post-mortem, didn't they? The GI's were near rebellion in 1970, but by 1980, these same vets had joined the white-trash roar for Reagan. The Nixon white house did it up brown. Man, were they good, what with the brilliant MIA cult, and the fabricated Jane College anti-vet spitskrieg. In spite of Dick's personal and temporary disgrace and fall, his pattern of goverence and his notion of national entitlement passed through the gauntlet without a scratch.
As Hunter T wrote in '72, "we are really just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen, with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable." Yes, this rabid vicious national moment was "lived with" and we were lullabyed to sleep each night with hands still soaked in foreign blood.
And compadres, it will happen here again. It's already begun. Once more, we will get the horse collar hung on us, not the Cheney Express ponies -- that is, unless we strike first. First and with the gut level of the job class as our target. This time let's not play it like parson peacefingers from the pulpit. Let's not approach our task with superior airs and a heavy measure of condescending self-righteousness, as if we're tutoring the morally challenged.
Comments (9)
Challenging murder as a way of life isn't going to be tidy. Nor is mobilizing School of the Americas type disruptions at munitions and weapons factories a simple task, despite all those brave-hearted Catholic Workers.
The fallout from displacing our imperial economy portends misery any way you cut it. Internal violence will ensue.
Posted by Spartacus O'Neal | November 20, 2006 11:51 AM
Posted on November 20, 2006 11:51
Fallout from Imperial economy displacement? Internal violence? Havoc? Chaos? Scenes of "civil war in the former United States Of America", as described by a newscaster in the film V For Vendetta?
Fine, let's get the hell on with it, if only because the alternative is for this entire friggin' nation -- the so-called peace movement included -- to continue slogging around as if wading knee-deep in wet cement while on Quaaludes. And if a bloody, flaming, shuddering paroxysm of collapse is what it takes to restore peace and freedom to the rest of the planet, then that suits me fine.
I've often thought that the only thing that'll really get that ball rolling here is a nuke strike on Iran, a resumption of the draft, 15% unemployment, and $10-a-gallon gasoline...and the sad thing is, lately, I've really found myself hoping for it all -- not because I think people really deserve to suffer that way, but because I'm firmly convinced that this will be the only situation that will get people in this country off their sofas and into the streets.
Liberals -- and large segments of the Left -- today remind me more and more of the people who Frederick Douglass spoke of, the people who want the "rain without thunder".
So, bring on the goddamn' thunder, already.
Posted by Mike Flugennock | November 20, 2006 1:35 PM
Posted on November 20, 2006 13:35
some self criticisms
father smiff indulges my prose too much
purple corn alert:
"But doesn't the horrendous debacle that the Iraq escapade has become give us progs the means to beat the empire's battle apes senseless in the public square....."
jacobean train wreck:
".. right now, even as they still grapple like ruthless futile imbeciles with their sand hydra? "
the famous tie me sense in knots trick:
"To free ourselves and our future from these horrors repeating twice every generation..."
plain over the top BAD
"we must wave the bloody shirt of this present monstrous carnage like raft-bound castaways trying to flag down a passing ship"
i re read this and considered
signing up for a hitch in
dick cheney's new condor legion
Posted by js paine | November 20, 2006 2:12 PM
Posted on November 20, 2006 14:12
i know when i started i intended to avoid the verbal slag sling...
in fact its tempestuous nonsense like this that emphatically won't connect
with joe the job holder
i'm not sure exactly how to convince him
this 300 billion dollar game boy gig
is anything to regret
let alone learn to " dread
the thought of repeating "
born to raise hell
and reborn to serve jesus
got what we use to call a rolling road block
out in front of us
to succceeed at our task
with this target
--the jobbled slab of the polity---
will require many and brutal
feed back sessions
Posted by js paine | November 20, 2006 2:23 PM
Posted on November 20, 2006 14:23
A war on them always means a war on you and me, bubba, no matter what the lying, moralizing suits say.
You're not going to make many inroads with people whose identity consists of papier mache made from the Wall Street Journal op ed page. But I bet seventy percent of the country can understand how the wars on them are always a war on us too.
Posted by J. Alva Scruggs | November 20, 2006 3:12 PM
Posted on November 20, 2006 15:12
Ah, but Mr. Scruggs, another attack by black ops goons blamed on "Iran," and at least 70% of that 70% will immediately fall back in line. And, there is too much money, and too much power, and too much sheer sociopathic glee associated with the neverending "War on Terror" to allow anything as twee as feeble, easily swayed popular will to stop the gravy train. Plus, throw in all the new crowd control "non-lethal" weaponry, and the crushing of dissent can be done very photogranically, even.
Posted by Brian Miller | November 20, 2006 5:45 PM
Posted on November 20, 2006 17:45
".... bet seventy percent of the country can understand how the wars on them are always a war on us too"
"too much sheer sociopathic glee associated with the neverending "War on Terror" "
i trhink these two statements are both entirely correct
so i see opportunity but i also see
we got some real fucking aegean stable type work to do
my review of the post nam era
gives no guidance
of the form
do more of x
yes plenty of do much less y
there was not even a preliminary
defining of a proper x
let alone x targeted praxis makes perfect
Posted by js paine | November 20, 2006 8:56 PM
Posted on November 20, 2006 20:56
"I've often thought that the only thing that'll really get that ball rolling here is a nuke strike on Iran, a resumption of the draft, 15% unemployment, and $10-a-gallon gasoline...and the sad thing is, lately, I've really found myself hoping for it all "
an honest voice
and in our hearts we all feel this way
its our class position that makes it so
and from there hangs our dilemma
joe job holder
once us in a bellevue tuxedo
and that's only in his moments
of high humor
otherwise he's thinkin' we need
...somethin' nasty
Posted by js paine | November 20, 2006 9:07 PM
Posted on November 20, 2006 21:07
MBS is a corpulent complacent pwogwessive royal a-hole who can cram it up his nostril passage.
Posted by grudge | December 12, 2007 9:35 AM
Posted on December 12, 2007 09:35