A Quick Contemporary-American History Lesson
A comment left by Malcolm Martin December 11th, 2007 12:48 pm at this article by Chris Hedges (which includes this wonderful quote: Acts of resistance are moral acts. They begin because people of conscience can no longer tolerate abuse and despotism. They are carried out not because they are effective but because they are right...Resistance is about affirming life in a world awash in death.):
Our bourgeois democracy, which has been narrowing in recent years will in time be shut down completely under the pressures of an expanding war in the Middle East and the deep economic crisis which is just around the corner. Elections will never again decide matters of substance in the United States of America.
As our capitalist economy enters its final stages, a nearly seamless political transition to fascism is taking place. The trappings of bourgeois democracy are a brake on profits and so they are being shredded. The Constitution and its Bill of Rights are being rendered meaningless by plans for perpetual war, by presidential signing statements and the theory of the unitary executive, extraordinary rendition, government surveillance programs and the like. Programs based on democratic principles like the public schools, Social Security, Medicare, affirmative action and welfare are being starved to death. Separate and parallel InterNet and military forces are being constructed along with internment camps and the legal construct for a martial law declaration. Blackwater will ultimately fight US military regulars in the streets of this country. (Too many sons and daughters of the working class in the US military to be trusted by the bourgeoisie.) The mass media and electoral machinery and both major political parties are now fully under the control of those in power. Bloodless coups in 2000 and 2004 installed George W. Bush in the White House and no future ballot will remove the candidates of the ruling class from power.
Pointing out the defects born of a flagging capitalism has become as easy as shooting fish in a barrel. The ruling class brushes its liberal democratic/progressive critics off like gnats as long as they stay away from the third rail. But let one of these voices dare mention unity based on working class-consciousness and a mobilization to strike at profits (think Boston Tea Party, Flint Sit-down, Montgomery Bus Boycott) and great danger would shortly thereafter visit.
Let’s dream for a minute, like Dr. King did before he became too dangerously revolutionary to allow to live. In this dream, on an appointed day, at an appointed hour, Americans across the country turn their cars off in the street, pocket the keys, and walk home to wait. Wait for the oil industry to be nationalized and the ExxonMobil directorate to be arrested, or better yet, wait for Bush and Cheney to vacate government housing. Hey, December 16th is the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party!