Let's talk Ferguson
Aug. 22nd, 2014 05:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
valarltdLet me preface this with the statement most of you should know by now:
I am a psychopath. My reaction to any situation is the wrong one. I need to be vetted by real people before I am allowed to speak.
This is unvetted.
Read at your own risk
The word for the Ferguson mess is "sloppy."
Sloppy police work killed Michael Brown.
Sloppy PR exacerbated the situation.
Sloppy backing and filling by everyone from the cops to the legislature only made things worse.
More sloppy PR and covering up led to arresting journalists instead of feeding them disinformation.
And the racist beat goes on: the lower orders are rioting again, It's Watts all over, looting* everything but workboots, blahdablahdablahda. (and this is from a FB feed relatively conservative-free. I can only imagine how much wildest Wingnuttia is rubbing their hands in glee at the prospect of a race riot and an excuse to hunt blacks like the animals the wingnuts consider them)
Nonetheless, protests are being held in solidarity with the residents, 90 year old Holocaust survivors are being arrested on the news (sloppy PR again)
Helluva a way to run a reign of terror, let alone a genocide.
I get the impression--I know, I know, never read the comments--most white folks in St Louis (and other places) would be apathetic at best, cheering on the sidelines more likely if the cops decided to wipe the black population of Ferguson off the map.
I get the feeling the cops WANT to do this, but lack the courage of their convictions.
It's not as if it hasn't happened before. Greenwood OK was bombed by the US government in 1921. Rosewood FL was razed off the map in 1923.
But the key to such an operation is to plan well, strike swiftly and efficiently, not be deterred by the massacre and have it done before the first Youtube videos leak. That's where most genocides fall down: they aren't fast enough, they aren't well planned enough. The media generates sympathy for the ones being eradicated and they are stopped.
America is going to have to decide, and probably in the next few decades, whether we are to stay one country or fracture. Are we going to be the Land of the Free, with Liberty and Justice for All? Or are we going to slide inevitably into a fascist police state, run by corporate feudal lords who keep us fighting each other over the scraps? We can't do both.
The hatred of the poor; the push for drug testing welfare recipients in the face of evidence; the open racism, expressed in public; the anti-immigrant sentiment; the voter ID laws; the pushback against women's independence, it's all of a piece. It's meant to distract us.
LBJ said it best: "If you can convince the lowest white man that he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll even empty his pockets for you." That's what the plutocrats are counting on. If we're too busy shoving blacks back into place, and complaining about looted beauty supply stores, we won't notice the whole country is being looted.
We haven't improved. Not in 50 years. Not in 93 years. We only learned to hide our hatreds better in public, but the last 6 years have ripped off that veneer of politeness. It may be too late to avoid the last exit away from fascism, but that doesn't absolve us of the responsibility to try.
This time, they were sloppy.
We need to stop them before they get better.
~~~
*A thought about looters. Most of them are coming from outside the community. I'm wondering if they are being paid by an outside group to cause MORE havoc, thus encouraging a greater crackdown.
I am a psychopath. My reaction to any situation is the wrong one. I need to be vetted by real people before I am allowed to speak.
This is unvetted.
Read at your own risk
The word for the Ferguson mess is "sloppy."
Sloppy police work killed Michael Brown.
Sloppy PR exacerbated the situation.
Sloppy backing and filling by everyone from the cops to the legislature only made things worse.
More sloppy PR and covering up led to arresting journalists instead of feeding them disinformation.
And the racist beat goes on: the lower orders are rioting again, It's Watts all over, looting* everything but workboots, blahdablahdablahda. (and this is from a FB feed relatively conservative-free. I can only imagine how much wildest Wingnuttia is rubbing their hands in glee at the prospect of a race riot and an excuse to hunt blacks like the animals the wingnuts consider them)
Nonetheless, protests are being held in solidarity with the residents, 90 year old Holocaust survivors are being arrested on the news (sloppy PR again)
Helluva a way to run a reign of terror, let alone a genocide.
I get the impression--I know, I know, never read the comments--most white folks in St Louis (and other places) would be apathetic at best, cheering on the sidelines more likely if the cops decided to wipe the black population of Ferguson off the map.
I get the feeling the cops WANT to do this, but lack the courage of their convictions.
It's not as if it hasn't happened before. Greenwood OK was bombed by the US government in 1921. Rosewood FL was razed off the map in 1923.
But the key to such an operation is to plan well, strike swiftly and efficiently, not be deterred by the massacre and have it done before the first Youtube videos leak. That's where most genocides fall down: they aren't fast enough, they aren't well planned enough. The media generates sympathy for the ones being eradicated and they are stopped.
America is going to have to decide, and probably in the next few decades, whether we are to stay one country or fracture. Are we going to be the Land of the Free, with Liberty and Justice for All? Or are we going to slide inevitably into a fascist police state, run by corporate feudal lords who keep us fighting each other over the scraps? We can't do both.
The hatred of the poor; the push for drug testing welfare recipients in the face of evidence; the open racism, expressed in public; the anti-immigrant sentiment; the voter ID laws; the pushback against women's independence, it's all of a piece. It's meant to distract us.
LBJ said it best: "If you can convince the lowest white man that he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll even empty his pockets for you." That's what the plutocrats are counting on. If we're too busy shoving blacks back into place, and complaining about looted beauty supply stores, we won't notice the whole country is being looted.
We haven't improved. Not in 50 years. Not in 93 years. We only learned to hide our hatreds better in public, but the last 6 years have ripped off that veneer of politeness. It may be too late to avoid the last exit away from fascism, but that doesn't absolve us of the responsibility to try.
This time, they were sloppy.
We need to stop them before they get better.
~~~
*A thought about looters. Most of them are coming from outside the community. I'm wondering if they are being paid by an outside group to cause MORE havoc, thus encouraging a greater crackdown.
