Killing Them Softly

YOU ARE NOT FASCIST, BUT YOUR COUNTRY IS:  

Killing Them Softly

            With sanctions, you don’t even have to get into the details of what they are because they are so simply explained by aims that cannot be denied.  Sanctions are a method of mass-murder set upon the civilians of a country in order to try and control their rulers.  And it may or may not work; all depending on if the rulers of said country are as ruthless as the one placing the sanctions.  I do not use the word murder loosely here.  It’s not used for shock or merely to offend, it is because sanctions work as a war without guns.  People don’t just starve, they don’t just suffer, but they die, sometimes in the hundreds of thousands.  Sanctions are murder.  The intent is death.  Nothing “cripples” the economy of a country like a pile of dead children.

            The current villain, Iran, is not America’s first journey into this immoral territory, though it is being ignored by the voting-class just as much as the last time major sanctions were put upon a country. Those sanctions brought about the death of up to 500,000 children.  Then only a few years later the Federal Government started a war, which killed hundreds of thousands, wounded hundreds of thousands, and made a refugee class out of millions.  I’m referring to the sanctions in Iraq in the 90’s under Bush I and Bill Clinton’s administrations.  If sanctions can kill so many, and the country that was being mass-murdered wasn’t brought to its knees, then why will it work this time?

            Sanctions are the silent war.  We only hear about them from the media and our leaders in the most basic words.  We never hear about the inflation, or the starvation, or the lack of medical supplies, or the deaths involved.  We never have it framed as war, but what else is it?  In the minds of most Americans it is just a word that means that somewhere some kind of punishment is going on and the people receiving it must deserve it because our rulers don’t like them.  Why would any Americans care?  They aren’t us.  They don’t look like us.  They don’t dress like us or eat like us.  They don’t worship like most of us.  How can we possibly relate?

The people that are suffering and dying are human beings.  Just like you and I, they have a runaway and controlling centralized government in which none of us has any control over.  Human beings don’t have to relate by culture, religion, or color to be the same.  Every time we sit down to dinner, with family or maybe alone; every time we drive to work or ride the bus; every time we go out for entertainment or take a sip from our favorite drink, this is all we need to connect.  Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness drives our cultures no matter who we are.  They are us and we are them, just people with desires for great things within our own lives.  Human beings don’t desire mass-murder, nations do.

             But we, as Americans, don’t realize any of this, because just as Iranians have been put to bed with hard sanctions, we are as oppressed in other ways.  Government and state media continue on with their propaganda, warning of bombs that aren’t there, and not talking of the oppression that is.  The realities of what we do simply do not reach us because the people being hurt are the “other.”  Would it matter of the realities of our actions did reach us?  It’s not an issue that we vote for, but most likely because they are Muslim that means they must want to kill us, and I have a feeling that if we did vote with sanctions on mind, things would be exactly as they are.  So while our rulers kill them, either with weapons or by suppressing their economic liberties, every death of every child will have been justified because we are America.  We are right and we are proud, even when our hands are covered in the blood of human beings just like us. 

The Splendors of the War Criminal

YOU ARE NOT FASCIST, BUT YOUR COUNTRY IS:
The Splendors of the War Criminal
 
The remedy to power is to simply withdraw that consent. – Murray Rothbard

For the second time in less than a decade Americans have gone out to the polls and reelected a war criminal.  2012 was very much 2004, years in which the people of a country could not see past their own boxed in ideologies and decided to go and vote when in reality there was no actual choice to be had.  They should have stayed home.  In these two years, not only were criminals given the reward of more power, but they were given consent to take even more rights away than they did in their first four years.  The worst picture painted on election night is right after this consent is given.  We see masses of people celebrating their very own natural human rights being legislated and executive ordered away; tearful, wondrous celebrations of their very own indefinite detention.  So while 60 million voted one way, we were sadly just over 2 million votes away from a different regime with very much the same views of authoritarian power. 

Over 100 million Americans chose abuse over enlightenment.

It is a terrible position for people to be put into.  Essentially we have a choice between a man who promises to murder thousands, and the other who speaks the rhetoric of peace while actually murdering thousands.  How did we get to this point?  The illusion of choice has become strong within our society, an illusion that has us believing there are two teams in existence within this political structure, and that one is more evil or less evil when they are both evil all the same.  Those who choose to vote are celebrated while the individuals who choose to opt-out are derided for their conscious decision.  Even those who do vote, but do so for a third party in protest of the corporatist party, are considered fools for wasting their vote.  Patriotism is reserved for those who choose to reelect war criminals.  The bright minds of the future are those who are bribed with their own money. 

The opt-outers of the abusive federal system, in which there were at least 100 million, aren’t even considered.

Revolution will never come by casting a vote.  Men who gain enough money and advertising to head the corporatist state have clearly been bought.  They have made promises to nefarious people and they have lied to millions.  It is not a problem for them to have blood on their hands or to take in billions of dollars through force and act as if they have the know-how in which to distribute it.  These are not men with great courage.  They are men who simply have the guns and know where to point them.  Yet we still find so many people believing their promises when we should all know by now that they are just slick advertisements or flat-out lies. 

No voter can truly be blamed.  This picture of the powers that be is never painted for us because both figureheads of the one-sided coin have their very own television station.  Each station worships their own celebrity and each paints their celebrity’s equal as the evil version of themselves.  The voters no longer have access to watchful eyes that report truth (if they ever did), only promoters and handlers that shape, clean, and shine their restoration project until the rust has been scraped from the surface.  Because of this power worship, the election process has become a long-winded, never-ending reality show, and the voting class doesn’t quite understand that at the end of the game it is their own heads on the line.  The casting of ballots has become a foolish task in which we acquiesce our rights to a man who simply seeks power.  Voting is a reminder to the elected leader that “yes, they can.”

Yes, they can take away your rights.

Yes, they can take your labor and your property.

Yes, they can murder whom they want.

Yes, they can waltz into any country they please and join in on the oppression that already exists there.

The worst part of the continuation of this self-abuse is that you cede ownership of your life and will.  They own it now.  Yes, they do.

You are the splendors of the war criminal.  

A Bagful

The thought began with a carelessly placed bag of apples falling from the counter and rolling to all corners of the kitchen floor.  He then remembered months later finding two that had been lost in the space between the refrigerator and the wall, shriveled down to silver dollars.

She got so mad at him that day, and it was so damn stupid.  The entire time she knew she had smelled something off, but he said she was fool-crazy.

Why was this the memory that had started him crying?  Why, when there were so many others…

You Are Not Fascist, But Your Country Is: Introduction

Some would say the use of the word fascism is an exaggeration, but I don’t think so.  If we feel comfortable calling our system of government crony capitalism, or corporatism, then I see no reason why we can’t call it fascism.  It is straight to the point, but at the same time I can see where it is misleading, so this series of essays will be about figuring out how to define fascism in our current context.  I’m not referring to Europe in the 30’s and 40’s, but America now.  I’m not going to use the lists that authors have compiled as tenants for what they think makes a fascist society.  I don’t have to.  While this country may hit a lot of the benchmarks, I believe that we are suffering through a uniquely American fascism.  One in which we maybe don’t realize is happening, but we actually embrace.  It’s the old boiling frog scenario, and the heat has been on a slow rise in temperature for a very long time, though the times are changing and many of us are just now starting to realize we better jump from the pot before it’s too late.

If this country isn’t suffering through a long bout of fascism, then what is our system?  I know, it’s a Republic, or a Democratic Republic, right?  Sure, and on its surface The 4^th of July is about independence.  But of course we know that is nonsense.  Just as much as our country is not free, that day of nationalistic fervor can only really celebrate the past, America’s heyday of independence.  But how do they connect it to the present in any substantial way?  They’ve slowly reframed it as a day of celebrating militarism.  Though most likely, we no longer know many of the soldiers who go overseas.  We no longer see the pictures from their wars.  We barely know their stories.  We hardly grasp that their suffering has nothing to do with independence.  So if it isn’t about independence now, what was all this pain about in the past?  Even beyond the last American century, how long did independence really last?

Instead of a day of blind nationalism where we celebrate what they tell us to, I think it’s time for a day of questioning where we can all put our collectivism that has been built over the years to good use.  We can get together and openly question policies set forth by the government.  These won’t be Republican questions or Democratic questions, because as an institution, the government doesn’t exist within in those ideologies, it is now one beast whose figurehead sometimes changes, but beyond that the song remains the same.  

For this day of national questioning instead of being mesmerized by the booming fireworks, we can ask why we have such expansive militarism in so many countries all over the world and whether you feel comfortable spending $1,000,000,000,000 on it every year.  Instead of singing the empty words of patriotic songs, we could try to understand what these words mean and how they actually relate to the America we are living in.  We can look at the words that our authoritarian leaders use and understand that sometimes independence actually means dependence.  Instead of saluting Old Glory, we could look at all those stars and stripes and try to understand what actually holds us together like a bundle of sticks.  Is it that social contract that none of us has ever seen or signed?  Is it the Constitution?  Maybe it is just fear.

What is it about keeping this bundle so tightly wound that is more important than freedom?  In this convoluted yet archaic system that we have allowed to be built around us, where does the individual truly stand anymore?  Who are the Americans beyond the management and beyond the central planning?  Can we still be the masters of our own lives?

This is the first of what I hope to be many essays on the crumbling road that America has decided to traverse.  This isn’t about George Bush.  It’s not about Obama or Romney.  These men are just personalities that every now and then hand off the reigns to one another for something that is bigger than they can ever be.  There is nothing organic happening between them and us.  Government is a power-sucking machine and the people outside of it are just grease grinding through its gears making sure that it continues to run.  This is why it is us who have to dry up these old ideas of empire and fascism.  This deeply entrenched system must not continue to move through our lives as if it were the natural progression of humanity.  Force and control on such a massive scale are not naturally occurring concepts; they must be taught and embedded within us.  It is time we stop learning from the wrong people, those who would have you believe that liberty is a virtue to be granted by a higher authority.

It is my hope that with these essays I can help convince a few people to open their eyes when our fearless rulers want them closed.  I hope that you feel the need to speak, when they want you to shut up.  It is time to look directly into the soul of what we have become, and not weep in pain, but speak in the clear and sure voice of a free thinker. 

Let the individual emerge and show the path to the future.