Time is not my friend, lately. I skimmed the article by William M.
Boardman, and plan to read it in more depth...later...
But I was struck by the sense that we Americans are not doing enough
to alter the course the Empire is taking. Blaming the victims is not
going to turn the tide. The American Empire is doing exactly what it
was established to do. It is taking control of the entire planet.
It, meaning the vast corporations that control it, is plundering
almost at will. The Working Class is but a pawn, used to do the
bidding of the Empire's Rulers. Long years of conditioning the
American Working Class, has rendered it useless as a resistance. At
best we are Serfs, locked into our Master's fiefdoms, totally
dependent upon His generosity. At worst we are Slaves, locked into
our Master's world-wide plantations, and totally dependent upon His
generosity.
The Empire's propaganda has beaten into our brains the belief that we
are helpless. "What's the use? You can't fight city hall", we say,
turning back to our can of beer and pack of smokes. And so it is,
just as long as we continue sucking at the teats of Mass Media,
believing that the jumble of nonsense that pours out of our television
is "Truth". We have been "Foxized". But CNN and NBC, ABC, CBS and
all the mass media channels are spinning their own version of the
Master's Word.
But just because it is extremely difficult to break the cycle does not
mean that we give up. If we want a better, more just world, then it
is on our heads. Change always rises up. It never flows down. The
Working Class holds the real potential power. We have more ways to
bring down the Ruling Class than they have ways of preventing it. But
the first step is to understand our collective strength. The next
step is to create a Vision of what we want the world to be. We have
not reached that place, yet.
Carl Jarvis
On 7/11/18, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
> Dark Foreboding: Is the American Democratic Experiment Over?
> By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
> 10 July 18
>
> Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
> Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world
> The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
> The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
> The best lack all conviction, while the worst
> Are full of passionate intensity.
>
> - William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming, 1919
>
> Apocalyptic thinking has been with us for a long time, and it sometimes
> ushers in actual apocalypses, albeit at human scale, without biblical
> finality. For a century now, the Yeats poem above has served as an
> increasingly common reference point for those who fear apocalyptic events
> approaching. Today such fears are varied, the threats are real, and
> reactions range from crisis-mongering to self-serving denial, making any
> rational, coherent societal response almost impossible.
>
> We've been heading this way for decades. We finally got here in 2016. It's
> taken awhile, but the forces of chaos and greed seem to be cohering,
> tightening their grip on power, on government and culture, facing little or
> no effective opposition. An election is coming. It will matter. But how?
>
> Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the
> world
>
> Worse, things are under attack, the center is the enemy. The US president
> veers toward dictatorial powers and seeks out new targets to disrupt or
> destroy. The US wages war around the world in at least 7 countries (with
> combat forces in 146 according to Seymour Hersh). The US Environmental
> Protection Agency wages war on the environment along with public health and
> safety. The US Education Department wages war on public education. The US
> Justice Department wages war on Justice, turning law enforcement into a
> profit-making, human-trafficking criminal enterprise. The US Department of
> Housing and Urban Development wages war on the poor, as do other agencies.
> The US Labor Department wages war on labor. The US Supreme Court wages war
> on pretty much 99% of the population. And so it goes: almost everywhere one
> looks, there is almost no center left to hold. Resistance is scattered,
> ineffective, inconsistent, fragmented - mere anarchy is loosed upon the
> world.
>
> The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
> The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
>
> This is our country that has loosed a blood-dimmed tide across the globe
> for
> decades, this is American exceptionalism that has flooded countries from
> Iran to Guatemala with its citizens' blood for American ends. This endless
> flow of American violence and death has drowned our innocence, and still so
> many of us pretend there is no blood on our hands, no blood up to our
> eyeballs, no blood vengeance haunting our future.
>
> That's not the way we see the border, but that's the way the border is.
> American-sponsored dictatorships and genocides are sending the children of
> their victims to our borders where we victimize them again and again and
> again. And finally, at least more than just a few people notice who and
> what
> we are, and who and what we have been for so long, and there is horror, at
> least for some. No border guards are yet showing signs of conscience as
> they
> carry out unlawful orders, but at least one immigration judge has expressed
> embarrassment at asking a one-year-old if he understood the proceedings the
> US was putting him through.
>
> The best lack all conviction, while the worst
> Are full of passionate intensity.
>
> And so we head for another election on November 6, bitterly divided as a
> country. It's a so-called off-year election (no presidential race), but it
> may be darkly viewed as the last stand for the American democratic
> republic.
> Some say that 242-year-old experiment has already failed, and there's logic
> to that opinion. The decline has been long, slow, relentless and the end
> will not likely be apocalyptic.
>
> When did we lose the possibility of a country of freedom, tolerance, and
> honesty? OK, the Constitution allowed slavery. More recently, was it our
> willingness to incinerate Japanese civilians with atomic weapons? Was it
> our
> willingness to accept Reagan as president despite his dealing with Iran to
> rig the election? Was it our willingness to let the Supreme Court choose
> Bush for president? Was it our willingness to let Bush lie us into wars
> that
> haven't ended yet? Was it our willingness to accept yet another blood
> dictatorship in Honduras (after all the others over so many years)? Was it
> our willingness to accept a Supreme Court decision (Citizens United) that
> turned democratic elections into plutocratic power auctions? Was it our
> acceptance of Republicans stealing a Supreme Court seat? Was it our
> election
> of minority-president Trump? Any of these points (and no doubt others) were
> turning points where the best lacked all conviction, while the worst rode
> their passionate intensity to the verge of total control of the US
> government. From there, it could be but a short distance to totalitarian
> control.
>
> We're heading into the 2018 election with polling that shows only a slight
> majority of Americans - around 53% - opposed to the direction of the
> country, opposed to Republicans, opposed to Trump. Republicans currently
> control the presidency, both houses of Congress, and the Supreme Court
> (with
> another justice online). The election can't change the presidency. The
> election can't change the Supreme Court directly (especially if Kavanaugh
> is
> approved beforehand). The election can change either house of Congress,
> neither of which is anything like a sure thing. If the House gets a
> Democratic majority, that puts all legislation on the negotiating table and
> raises the possibility of articles of impeachment for which this president
> has qualified since day one of his presidency. If the Senate gets a
> Democratic majority, that also makes all legislation negotiable and makes
> it
> harder for Republicans to pack the courts. If both houses of Congress get
> Democratic majorities, that gives the American experiment a chance to
> continue, dependent on Democratic courage long in short supply.
>
> And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
> Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
>
> So ends The Second Coming by Yeats, inconclusively, suggestively. There's
> no
> knowing what may happen to head off our own rough beast slouching toward
> November. Perhaps Mueller will go public on Trump crimes. Perhaps the trade
> war will implode the US economy. Perhaps Trump will sack Mueller (or some
> other critical figure). Perhaps enough people will recognize - and reject -
> the already functional police state created by ICE jurisdiction. Perhaps
> Republican Senator Richard Burr, already on record as chair of the Senate
> Intelligence Committee that Russian collusion in 2016 happened, will seize
> the moment to hold hearings to learn "What did the President know and when
> did he know it?"
>
> Or perhaps the fascist coup, the totalitarian American state, is already
> upon us and we're only waiting for massive popular passivity to confirm it.
> There are those, after all, millions who seem to believe that Donald Trump
> really is the Second Coming.
>
>
>
>
> William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV,
> print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont
> judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America,
> Corporation
> for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award
> nomination
> from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
>
> Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work.
> Permission
> to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
> Supported News.
>
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