STOCK MARKET WATCH - Friday, 17 February 2012

[Tansy_Gold]

82. Not the same. Horrible, yes, but not the same thing

None of these "wars" target individual internal enemies. They target classes of internal enemies and they target institutions, but they do not target individuals for disappearing.

If a son or daughter goes into the military and is killed in "the war," that is not the same as being disappeared. The erosion of the public education system, the inequities of drug crime sentencing, the dismantling of the manufacturing economy, all of these are open and transparent and explainable.

This is not the same as having an internal domestic secret police that comes in the night and disappears a member of your family, with no explanation, no answers. You do not know if they are dead or alive. You do not know why. There is no one to go to for answers. And those who ask too many questions disappear.

While we may not have a very robust investigative media, we do not have government policies that result in journalists being routinely exterminated. Yes, journalists get killed, but they do not get disappeared.

We do not yet have a government that is operating on principles of intimidation, fear, reprisal, and disappearances. Are we going in that direction? Yes, certainly, but we are not there yet. We do not have huge government orchestrated demonstrations in support of government actions. We do not yet have the wholesale extermination of protesters. Pepper spraying OWS participants, even shooting them with rubber bullets, is wrong and should be condemned loudly. But it is not the same as firing live rounds into a group of protesters and then officially cover it up for a geneeration, as was done with the Tlalteloco massacre in Mexico City in 1968.

In part, we have been acculturated to accept the mass incarcerations of the drug war, and we have a accepted the notion of a volunteer military with the attendant risks and anticipated benefits. Until we have a society that massive rebels against any of this to the point of eliciting sympathy and support from the general population, nothing is going to happen.

We saw that with Cindy Sheehan. If she was our "madre de la plaza de mayo," she did not attract sufficient support to grow her personal protest into a movement. Was she too vocal? Was she too extreme? Or did she not have sufficient fellow travelers?

that's why i said it's going to take a charismatic leader, someone whose presence and soul and bearing and story and whole package grab the attention and hold it without every letting go until the goal is achieved. The 2008 campaign gave us a taste of what kind of person I'm talking about. Obama had -- and totally wasted -- that gift. During that summer and faul, he could have changed the whole fucking world, but he chose for whatever reasons (probably selfish) not to. In doing so, I think he destroyed the gullibility of several generations, thus essentially ensuring the status quo march to the right.

The US is not a third world nation. if we have 20% unemployed and even another 10% under employed, we do not have rampant grinding poverty of the kind that generates revolution. We do not have -- yet -- the fear of extra-judicial incarceration. We do not have a military presence in our cities.

Are we number one any more? No, and we haven't been in many ways for a long time. And that's what, I think, fuels all this malarky about the demise of the US. We're not on top any more, but that doesn't mean we're on the bottom either. Are we pretty far down on some scales? Sure. Health care in this country is pathetic, because of the private insurers. But we do not have massive starvation. We do not have outbreaks of deadly epidemics in which hundreds of thousands die. Our cities are not overrun with crime, patrolled by armed paramilitary militias on APCs. We are not engaged in a deadly civil war.

Not yet.

What this means, then, is that like Scrooge, we still have a chance to avoid that nightmare future. Whether we'll experience a colelctive epiphany like ol' Ebeneezer remains to be seen.