Jack Burns Lives!

Expanding Violence

People are mad in America. Not that we haven’t been mad about various things throughout our history. We’ve had a history of anger and violence from day one, but the violence meter has shown a high degree of variance in history. Sometimes it’s at much higher levels than others, but we do seem to be on an upswing of late, eerily similar to another period in our nation’s history.

There’s the not-so-carefully disguised anger from the far right toward Obama and what he’s supposedly doing to the country. The left, a distinct group from centrist Democrats, is angry over Obama’s apparent inability to take a stand against corporate power, as evidenced by his positions on healthcare, militarism and energy. Many on the left aren’t “angry,” but are tremendously disappointed, and they should be. We wish he would do something to the country.

But the anger from the right is frightening, because it seems to be leaning more and more toward violence as a possible solution to what is ailing our nation. Hardliners are egged on by blathering idiots like Glen Beck and irrationally take bits and pieces of disjointed, unverified information and use that to justify the formation of militias and acts of violence.

I can only conclude these are pitifully ignorant, even stupid human beings. What the Teabaggers don’t seem to understand is what they want, less control and regulation and more “free markets,” is precisely what will increase their misery. They’re against “the government,” but fail to realize that at this point, a strong central government is the only thing that can protect them from pernicious corporate power.

An anarchist touting a strong, central government? It’s not the optimum situation, but in the short term, it’s our only option. We can practice anarchism in our local communities and use the central federal government to reign in Wall Street. Eventually, it will all fail, but in the short term, it’s our best tool.

Do they think it’s the government that caused so many of them to lose their homes? Do they think it’s the government that caused them to lose millions in investments? Perhaps it was the government that forced the plant closure and the resulting loss of income and health benefits. Or, was it the government that denied your claim for needed surgery and then dropped your coverage because you’d been sick too much?

No, these are the failures of capitalism we, as a nation, seem unwilling to face. And while the government is far from innocent, most of this type of anger is misplaced. Why isn’t more Tea Party anger directed at corporations? Are these people really that stupid?

I’d like to believe the irrational and ridiculous actions by Joseph Stack and John Bedell are isolated incidents, but my instincts tell they are not. Based on what I’m hearing from Teabaggers and various other miscreants, I fear we’re headed toward more violent outbursts that will do little more than perpetuate the cycle of violence.

It’s a lose-lose situation for everyone. The perpetrator is killed or imprisoned for life and the state strengthens and expands its already panoptic, hegemonic control.

“Sadly enough, there is a pattern,” said Northeastern University criminologist Jack Levin. “He (Bedell) represents a much larger force in our society today. If one individual is paranoid, we call it mental illness. If thousands of people share the same paranoia, we call it ideology. There are thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of Americans who are extremely angry with the federal government.”

If we want to be angry at the government, lets be mad about two things. One, the government not doing anything to curb corporate power and for allowing the judiciary to become the latest pawn of the power elite, and two, lying to the American people and the world about it’s use of military power. But even that all comes back full circle to corporate power and capitalism, since it’s industrial, growth capitalism that fuels the military machine.

From Truthdig: “We are going to be poorer,” David Cay Johnston told me. Johnston was the tax reporter of The New York Times for 13 years and has written on how the corporate state rigged the system against us. He is the author of “Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense and Stick You With the Bill,” a book about hidden subsidies, rigged markets and corporate socialism. “Health care is going to eat up more and more of our income. We are going to have less and less for other things. We are going to have some huge disasters sooner or later caused by our failure to invest. Dams and bridges will break. Buildings will collapse. There are water mains that are 25 to 50 feet wide. There will be huge infrastructure disasters. Our intellectual resources are in decline. We are failing to educate young people and instill in them rigor. We are going to continue to pour money into the military. I think it is possible, I do not say it is probable, that we will have a revolution, a civil war that will see the end of the United States of America.”

At the end of the day, perhaps we should simply be angry at ourselves.

Mike Ruppert recently posted the cold, startling truth about the coming revolution:

“There is a revolution brewing in this country. Some are already attempting to define it… perhaps as a means of shaping it. Perhaps as a means of preventing a no-sided melee which no one can win. — Mark my words and mark them well. A left-right labelling of this revolution will mark the failing of our species and condemn millions of Americans to death and suffering…Anybody who fights the infinite growth economic paradigm is my brother and my sister. Ron Paul is fighting it. Cynthia McKinney is fighting it. And I, for one, am not going to chop either one of them off — and hurt all of us — in the process… because of a freaking label. These are two of the bravest and most honorable people I have ever met. — I am reminded of something attributed to Albert Einstein; ‘The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.’”