So what are we supposed to look forward to now? It’s hard to avoid asking the question.
Of course I’m referring to how things are going to play out here in the U.S., in the Middle East and throughout the world. For the ultimate good of humanity and the planet, do we really want to see our worst nightmares and predictions realized, or would we be grateful to see something closer to the dreams and expectations of the madmen in the White House?
How can someone who is in The Resistance even ask himself this question? Well, I’ve decided I don’t have to, and I won’t, since wishing can’t get me anywhere. The only way I can relate to the future is by working in the now.
Author: jameswagner
fascism
This is just too good to resist borrowing a bit from Bloggy‘s more extensive commentary:
From Britannica Concise:
fascism: Philosophy of government that stresses the primacy and glory of the state, unquestioning obedience to its leader, subordination of the individual will to the state’s authority, and harsh suppression of dissent. Martial virtues are celebrated, while liberal democratic values are denigrated. 20th-cent. fascism arose partly out of fear of the rising power of the lower classes and differed from contemporary communism (as practiced under J. Stalin) by its protection of the corporate and landowning powers and preservation of a class system.
Alright, so now is it ok to bring the word to America?
we can’t stop now
I walked through Manhattan today for four hours carrying a sign, “US OUT OF NY,” meaning that for its own survival the city must immediately try to sever itself from a national government whose policies both increase the threat of terrorism here and rob us of the civil rights New Yorkers appreciate more than most Americans. The idea was supposed to be that the city’s continued connection with a fascist regime in Washington can only endanger or destroy our community. The sign appeared to strike a chord for many out there today, judging from the reactions of those who saw it.
I now have to admit however that the situation is not quite so clear. It’s not just Washington. To the dangers from the feds we must add those presented by our own city authorities, when we describe the source of our most clear and present danger. We all saw that on February 15 the New York City government and its hopped-up police arm conformed to a classic fascist program when it sought, with a great deal of success, to make the presence of a million people gathered in its streets for a single political purpose, invisible and ineffectual. There was a repeat performance, with much smaller numbers all around, in Times Square on the evening after the war began, March 20.
For much of today I thought that our abusive city fathers and their armed cudgels had disciplined themselves to perform as New Yorksers should expect them to perform. There appeared to be no visible aggressive opposition to the presence of New Yorkers in the streets doing what New Yorkers have always done, making themselves heard. That is, there was nothing of the kind of attention we have come to expect.
However when we returned home from Washington Square Park after an amazing, truly glorious day with our friends and neighbors, it became clear that the police had decided that they were going to ensure that in the end the story of the day was not going to be 250,000 beautiful people marching peacefully against the war, but, to cite the NY1 headline at this moment, “Several Arrested, Officers Injured In Largest Anti-War Rally Yet.”
More than 20 people were reportedly arrested and at least 10 police officers were sprayed with Mace during an anti-war demonstration that drew an estimated 200,000 people to Manhattan Saturday afternoon.
While the rally began as a peaceful one, violence broke out near Washington Square Park as police attempted to disperse the crowd at the scheduled 4 p.m. end of the rally. Several protesters were arrested and a number of police officers were sprayed with Mace as they tried to move crowds out of the area.
“I was trying to disperse, you couldnt get through because of a line of helmeted riot police,” said a woman who participated in the protest. “They started making a line and pushing the crowd back so you could not exit. Theyre squeezing in people like rats because theres no place to go and the police are provoking whats going to be violent.”
Riot officers and mounted police tried to get control of the crowd, announcing via loudspeaker about 5:30 p.m. that those who remained in the area could face arrest.
These were the tactics of the police employed by a doomed Tsarist regime a hundred years ago and they are the tactics of a fascist regime not yet fixed firmly in power. If we do not continue to insist on our rights, next year there will likely be no reason for our governments to be so crude. There will be no protests.
For more on today’s march, and dozens of images, see Bloggy.
through the glass, but very darkly
Peter Freundlich thinks “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking Glass” should not be the models for American foreign policy.
Listen. Don’t misunderstand. I think it is a good thing that the members of the Bush administration seem to have been reading Lewis Carroll. I only wish someone had pointed out that “Alice in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking Glass” are meditations on paradox and puzzle and illogic and on the strangeness of things, not templates for foreign policy. It is amusing for the Mad Hatter to say something like, `We must make war on him because he is a threat to peace,’ but not amusing for someone who actually commands an army to say that.
bully mows down neighbor kid in kid’s yard
These are two borrowings from Bloggy, combined here as one post.
Minutes before the [March 19] speech, an internal television monitor at the White House showed the President pumping his fist.
“Feels good,” he said.
This was two nights ago, just after the intellectually and morally-challenged nincompoop had unleashed our sophisticated military fury on a crippled third-world nation.
In the broadcast itself he said, “We will accept no outcome but victory.” Duh. I suppose we could at least be grateful that, like all bullies, the U.S. would never dare pick on an opponent of its own size [we never have], even if one were to be found. But in fact this evening I do not feel that gratitude, because these are the people we are blowing to smithereens tonight with “shock and awe.”
but this war was to reduce the risk of terrorism here
Ellis Henican writes in Newsday today,
Rand Beers, the top terror-fighting official at the National Security Council, stepped down this week, just as the first missiles were being readied for launch. Officially, he resigned for “personal reasons.” But close associates were saying privately that Beers left over his grave reservations about the Iraq attack and its likely exacerbation of terrorism.
Scared yet?
U.S. out of New York!
The U.S. is destroying New York City.
What wasn’t accomplished on September 11, 2001 [and some day we may learn to what extent it was not just Washington’s incompetence but even its design which was responsible for those blows] is now being finished by the same insane foreign and domestic policy which uses that date as its argument, by the destruction of our civil liberties and by the current military occupation of the City.
We are the primary target for the the anger of the world primed by the White House; we are the community most sensitive to Washinton’s theft of our freedoms of speech, assembly and unreasonable search and seizure, among others; and we cannot long function as the capital of the world if our movements are slowed or restricted by an army of police, soldiers and every other form of military occupier.
Bush and his handlers will not mourn New York, and I won’t dignify the mass of Americans who support Washington by suggesting they will miss this city when it is gone. The U.S. doesn’t deserve New York. New York belongs to the world. I only hope that world will not soon find we only belong to the ages.
even Mary is a guy thing
I haven’t been able to just walk away from the distressing experience of last night’s religious assault at BAM, John Adams’ “El Niño.”
The story of the piece was in fact not that of the niño or child, but the mother of the child, specifically the mother of the man organized christianity misuses as the excuse for its existence. Possibly the most disturbing aspect of the evening for most in the audience was that what may have been intended as a salute to woman was patronizing in the extreme.
Mary.
Historically the Catholic Church eventually absorbed the people’s cult of Mary for the same reason that the observance originated in the first place, the men who ran the home office operation had gone too far with the guy message of control and fear and had left compassion and a lot of people behind, especially people who had taken seriously the early Christian message of love and respect.
The Church needed to protect its power. It went with the Mary thing, but only on its own terms. Mary intercedes for us with the men. The Church has never suggested a woman could really be equal to men of any kind, on earth, in heaven or even in hell for that matter, since each of these branch offices has always been run by males. We are assured this will forever be the case, since Mister God has said so.
Adams’ oratorial is more than comfortable with that.
will their trucks sport doves in diamonds and gold?
Yesterday in the Daily News “Rush & Molloy” included a small item reporting that Cadillac, which is the exclusive provider of cars for the Academy Awards this year, offering attendees the choice of a standard sedans or a monster truck, is having an unexpected run on their would-be tank, the Escalade, “supposedly because rolling up in limos looks tackier.”
Huh? If they’re trying to be sensitive, although I don’t know why we should really think they are, someone should tell the stars that the suffering people of Iraq know that there’s nothing tackier than Americans, especially packs of Americans, in gas-guzzling SUVs trying to imitate the Hummers of Yankee, oil-field-conquering invaders.
man begins to lose it
A friend writes that a re-reading of George Orwell’s “1984” suggests that the administration has been using it as a road map, but it was an old [copyright 1961] afterword written by Erich Fromm which really took him aback. An excerpt:
Man in the beginning of the industrial age, when in reality he did not possess the means for a world in which the table was set for all who wanted to eat, when he lived in a world in which there were economic reasons for slavery, war, and exploitation, in which man only sensed the possibilities of his new science and of its application to technique and to production – nevertheless man at the beginning of modern development was full of hope. Four hundred years later, when all these hopes are realizable, when man can produce enough for everybody, when war has become unnecessary because technical progress can give any country more wealth than can territorial conquest, when this globe is in the process of becoming as unified as a continent was four hundred years ago, at the very moment when man is on the verge of realizing his hope, he begins to lose it.
Many thanks to Trick Gigolo.