I see a pattern forming- a carrot-on-a-stick thing in which the powers that be- the big-money fat cats who manipulate the government- essentially keep the people anaesthetized. There are a lot of reasons this would be to their advantage, and there are a lot of ways this is implemented.
Back in the sixties a couple groups of citizens formed organizations which the government perceived as an imminent threat to the carefully constructed order of things in the United States. Prior to the sixties the public had largely accepted certain norms which began to lose their believability as the Vietnam war began to expose just how inept, criminal, racist and classist the United States Government had become.
The two groups of activists- the Black Panthers and the Weather Underground- proved effective enough to throw the FBI and local law enforcement agencies in cities around the country into a reactive campaign of harassment, oppression, civil rights violations, and illegal methods of investigation. These kids, through their extreme actions, incited the law enforcement agencies to shine the light of day on their own corruption and unethical practices. The ironic thing is that the two groups began with civil, peaceful protest. Peaceful protest is apparently ineffective in the United States.
On October 15, 1966 the Black Panthers formed in Oakland, California setting forth a doctrine that called primarily for the protection of African American neighborhoods from police brutality. They were essentially protesting civil rights violations against blacks, and the acceptance of racism in the United States both with injustices within law enforcement and judicial systems as well as accepted norms of racism amongst a large percentage of the white American populace. The difference between the Black Panthers and the Weathermen was largely one of skin color, as the Weathermen’s views were quite similar to those of the Panthers. But because the Weathermen were white (and also because the Weathermen were much more covert from early on, and therefore hard to keep tabs on) I think until Haymarket Police Memorial bombing October 7, 1969 the Weathermen were treated with more deference than the Black Panthers.
The Weather Underground began in 1969 as a student organization known as the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) which was involved primarily in peaceful protest. In June of 1969 at the SDS National Convention a splinter group known as Progressive Labor took over the organization. Progressive Labor were comprised of students leaning towards more radical action, and soon changed the name of the group to the Weathermen (a reference to The Bob Dylan song “Subterranean Homesick Blues” which featured the lyrics “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”) They went on to become a radical group which bombed many public buildings from 1970-73. These bombing made it very easy for the press to vilify the organization, and they eventually realized that while they had certainly raised the awareness of young people in America to the many gross injustices the U.S. Government perpetrates every day, they could not go on doing this forever.
Between 1977 and 1980 most of the remaining Weathermen turned themselves in so that they could eventually live normal lives. Most of them did not serve time in prison, as the FBI had broken so many laws in their overzealous pursuit of the group that they prosecuting Attorney had a very weak case.
In today’s United States I don’t think a violent revolution would work, for a number of reasons. The biggest reason is that the U.S. Government is bigger and more oppressive than ever. Another reason is that law enforcement organizations now more than ever are groups of overbearing bullies with sophisticated weapons and diminished intellect, chiefly doing the bidding of the large corporations and special interest groups that hold the politician’s marionette strings. Another reason is that the press is complete rubbish and will print whatever sells, but rarely any actual “news”. Mostly the large corporate press is printing whatever the government will let them know. Censorship is alive and well, and I think maybe the press has devolved to believing that “infotainment” is journalism.
No- violent revolution would be quashed early on in decisive military actions which the press would glorify (the police would be portrayed as “heroic” while the political activists would be referred to as “terrorists”, their message purposely lost in the shuffle) and nothing would be gained.
A fantastic example of non-violent protest that produced profound and lasting results would be the Montgomery Bus Boycott in Montgomery Alabama. There are two stories to this, one in which Rosa Parks (link below) was riding a bus and when told to get up so a white man could have a seat she refused, making that decision spur-of-the-moment. The other story- one which was recounted by a Black Panther from the Oakland chapter (link below) said that the whole thing was planned by various ministers and neighborhood groups. Either way Rosa refused to get up and give her seat to a white man and she was arrested, a boycott was formed and the community stuck together despite physical violence, church bombings, police harassment- and 381 days later the black community prevailed and The Supreme Court ruled that segregated seating on public buses is unconstitutional.
Back to the carrot-and-stick idea, I believe what the powers that be are doing is either keeping the public distracted by shiny baubles or keeping us anaesthetized. The middle class are slaves to their wants and needs- they have to work hard to afford the most luxurious lifestyle of any working class on the planet. This leaves little time to organize a revolution. Flashy commercials set super-loud keep the public brainwashed that they must have the next I-phone, the new SUV, a Harley, fake tits, handheld video games, portable connectivity- whatever- and the people blindly eat it up. Basically television is a device used to “educate” the weak minded. I don’t care if it’s a commercial, a situation comedy, a drama, the news- everything on there is selling you something, and none of it is real or true. People should look at television and ask themselves, “What is it they don’t want me to be seeing when they show me this crap?” Because there is news out there- out in the real world- you just have to take the blinders off and ask the right questions- which is exactly what they don’t want you to do. Cheap beer, illicit drugs, vapid movies and television- all anesthesia to keep the people medicated.
The revolution will not be televised.
Change will come from education, a collective realization that we should be out creating something, adding value- that we aren’t the sum of what we buy, but rather our individuality comes from within- and in a sense from what we don’t buy.
Change will come from a collective refusal to be a mindless pawn that just consumes. A consumer revolt is in the wind. Right now corporations make brands, not goods- they market and sell by plastering their brand all around us, brainwashing the people into believing it’s cool. It is so NOT cool to purchase your identity, to goose-step in time with all the other “individuals” in a culture that emulates glossy magazine ads and derivative corporate tackiness. Today corporations basically tell us what we get- they don’t ask us what we want. Refuse to buy from them for a month or two and see how their attitude changes as they come to their customers on their knees asking what they can get us.
Prices are inflated, the goods we’re offered are mostly garbage, plastic tackiness who’s production was outsourced to sweat-shops in slave nations. There is too much plastic, which the earth can’t get rid of (getting rid of petroleum completely would be a great start towards extending our stay in this universe, BTW. Sure- we need cars and trucks for emergency and service/delivery vehicles, but otherwise public transit and bicycles are a great answer. We’ll need to go back to the old way of developing a community around stores, schools, and public buildings- but is that really a step backwards? Right now most of our communities are faceless and ugly.)
And of course maybe a lot of people in the United States will be indignant about their motor vehicles- like their cigarettes and cable television, they might not be able to live without them, despite the negative side-effects. And that’s okay- people should fight for what they believe in- but bottom line is that people should open their eyes and take a stand, one way or another. People should think- research- whatever- but they should not just accept blindly because some parasitic entity tells them that is what they should do. And in the end, if people take radical action like a consumer revolt- maybe a complete absence of petrol-driven motor vehicles isn’t the outcome we’re looking for. Perhaps we just want to light a fire under our bought-and-paid-for government and the corporations who own them, inciting them to enact change for a more ecologically conscientious mindset sooner. Because none of us want to fuck ourselves up- and none of us want to live in a place we don’t have access to the basic needs- food, shelter, potable water and clean air. It’s time to enact change, to change the way we live, and to demand change from our government and the corporations that tell them what to do.
Definitely the people of the United States need to wake up and look around. Our culture is vapid and greedy- we live more luxuriously than other countries not because we work hard, but because our government is overbearing and has a lot of weapons. And while we live luxuriously with nice cars and houses, do we really live better lives? Would it be so terrible to ride a bike or skateboard to and from work? Because truth be told you don’t have to be a scientist with a degree to see the folly of burning more fuel- you just need to smell the air in any modern city, and look at the color of the sky in Los Angeles or New York city.
For every vehicle we melt down and turn into bicycles and steel train rails we should turn under parking lots and plant gardens and fruit trees. Then in the absence of the deafening roar of a million engines we might hear the wind through the trees.
• Live healthier
• buy less
• think more
• create something beautiful
• be kind to each other
• and above all, be free.
The Weather Underground Video:
http://www.hulu.com/watch/118170/the-weather-underground
Culture Jammers headquarters:
https://www.adbusters.org/
John Trudell on the futuristic police state:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6id8kGegln0
Montgomery Bus Boycott:
http://www.africanaonline.com/montgomery.htm
http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2005/Rosa-Parks-Dickson1dec05.htm
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:) :) :) DON’T BUY THE HAPPY MEAL :) :) :)
