So Is It Over?

I haven't really been following the tangled disintegration of the Oregon Standoff, quote unquote, but it sounds like there might have been something of a resolution -- following an extended period of sex-drugs-and-rock-n-roll. Or something.

They say even the Old Man (Bundy) was rounded up as he de-planed in Portland.

My my.

And only one killed -- so far. Poor deluded LeVoy got his (apparent) wish and was shot down in the snow by state police as twirled and ranted after a botched attempt to flee a roadblock.

Well, I saw the same video everyone else did of his execution, and there appeared to me to be no necessity to shoot him at all, any more than there is a necessity for LEOs to kill this or that suspect, individual, person in the vast majority of cases. They do it because they can, and they can get away with it in almost all cases. Further, as in the case of the poor, deluded elder Finicum, they do it pour encourager les autres. To make a statement: "Fuck with us and you die."

Finicum fucked with the law and authorities a lot, he did. So he, of all those deluded individuals, had to die. I'm sure he was targeted probably very early on. An example had to be made. And it was in spectacular though tragic fashion.

Immediately afterwards, I saw a lot of cheering commentary regarding his killing, as if this time -- of all the thousands of police killings over the last few years -- the dude really needed killing, and hurrah! for the Feds.

No. He's liable to become a martyr, that one. All because he "stood up" to the tyranny of gubment. And they -- the vast, implacable They -- shot him down for it.

That's what makes martyrs, just as has happened over and over again throughout history, triggering one revolution after another.

I make mock of Bernie's pretense to "revolution" -- a "political revolution" as he calls it -- because that's what it is, a pretense of revolution, not the thing itself. I believe it is a deliberate move to stave off the real thing from the left, pressure for which has been mounting for some time. But what about from the right?

A neo-revolution (neo-colonial, neo-conservative, neo-liberal) actually has taken place, suddenly in the aftermath of the unsettled 2000 presidential election, and then slowly consolidating ever since. Because it's not actually a rightist revolution -- though it has many aspects of rightist action and rhetoric -- many actual rightists are unsatisfied. They want more.

They see power in the wrong hands. They want for themselves. Which is what the Bundy Bunch have been after for years.

Meanwhile hundreds of thousands of "patriot-rebels" (they say there may be three hundred thousand of these mooks or more) are arming and prepping themselves into a frenzy of rebellion, indeed potentially of revolution, the real thing.

So is it really over? No, not by a long shot as they say.

We're going to see more and more of this as the neo-crowd continues its consolidation of wealth and power. And those who would fight that consolidation of power become more and more radicalized.

The Blankfein Thing

This has gotten much play in the Haute Blogosphere for many days now:

BLANKFEIN: You’re going to have to undoubtedly do something to lower people’s expectations — the entitlements and what people think that they’re going to get, because it’s not going to — they’re not going to get it.

PELLEY: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid?

BLANKFEIN: You can look at history of these things, and Social Security wasn’t devised to be a system that supported you for a 30-year retirement after a 25-year career. … So there will be things that, you know, the retirement age has to be changed, maybe some of the benefits have to be affected, maybe some of the inflation adjustments have to be revised. But in general, entitlements have to be slowed down and contained.
PELLEY: Because we can’t afford them going forward?

BLANKFEIN: Because we can’t afford them.

Jeebus what a freak.

The notion that this mook should be lecturing anyone on matters of what we can "afford" and "fiscal cliffs" and so forth is surreal and insulting. His own sense of entitlement (and his bone ignorance) is unlimited.

Perhaps he would do well to contemplate just how close he and his ilk are to a ride in a tumbril before he and they mouth off again.

David Graeber Explains It All To The Shade of Chris Hedges

David Graeber, of course, is one of the founding anarchists of Occupy Wall Street, and he's been involved in Movements of various flavors for many years.

I was glad he took on the responsibility of responding to Hedges' sad little meltdown over the Black Bloc "cancer" in Occupy. I was glad he pointed out how dangerous that kind of rhetoric is; it's the rhetoric of eliminationists, and no matter what you may think of Black Bloc and anarchists, no matter how negative you may be about them, eliminationism is a serious -- and deadly -- social malignancy; it's an attitude toward the dehumanized Other that leads to disastrous consequences, and not solely for the dehumanized Other. As I've said before, Hedges did something shameful by scapegoating and demonizing "Black Bloc anarchists." Being a writer, he knows the power of language to inspire fear and loathing and providing excuses for deadly action against the Other. He was in Bosnia. He KNOWS. Therefore, I do not cut him any slack on that account, unlike Graeber who tirelessly appeals to Hedges' better angels.

As Graeber puts it somewhat more powerfully than I do, let's go to the quote:

I am appealing to you because I really do believe the kind of statement you made is profoundly dangerous.

The reason I say this is because, whatever your intentions, it is very hard to read your statement as anything but an appeal to violence. After all, what are you basically saying about what you call “Black Bloc anarchists”?

1) they are not part of us

2) they are consciously malevolent in their intentions

3) they are violent

4) they cannot be reasoned with

5) they are all the same

6) they wish to destroy us

7) they are a cancer that must be excised

Surely you must recognize, when it’s laid out in this fashion, that this is precisely the sort of language and argument that, historically, has been invoked by those encouraging one group of people to physically attack, ethnically cleanse, or exterminate another—in fact, the sort of language and argument that is almost never invoked in any other circumstance. After all, if a group is made up exclusively of violent fanatics who cannot be reasoned with, intent on our destruction, what else can we really do? This is the language of violence in its purest form. Far more than “fuck the police.” To see this kind of language employed by someone who claims to be speaking in the name of non-violence is genuinely extraordinary. I recognize that you’ve managed to find certain peculiar fringe elements in anarchism saying some pretty extreme things, it’s not hard to do, especially since such people are much easier to find on the internet than in real life, but it would be difficult to come up with any “Black Bloc anarchist” making a statement as extreme as this.

There have been many more responses to Hedges. He is not getting away with his smears, but he may have his King of OWS crown repossessed.

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Meant to post a link to this response to the Hedges Smear, but forgot I guess. It's from a Socialist perspective and it's quite good compared to a couple of others I ran across; the comments are good, too:

Against Hedges on the Black Bloc

More to the Point: We Are Ruled by Idiots

Le Roi du Déluge, Louis XVI

The calls for Revolt and Revolution are growing more and more strident and shrill every day. As the upshot of the Debt Crisis Crisis Deal settles in -- and there is much more of this Satan Sandwich to come -- people are OUTRAGED!!!™, and not simply in the Left-o-sphere, oh no.

The OUTRAGE!!!™ is spreading this time well beyond the comfortable confines of Blogtopia® (h/t Skippy the Bush Kangaroo) and into the masses, and it is not being "injected" by the handful of constitutional malcontents who see it as their job to stir up discontent.

No, this time the Anger and the Bile in the Gorge is spreading nationally, among all kinds of people, most of whom have no interest in or contact with the Blog-o-sphere, Left or Right (or Decline to State), due to the fact that the People's Screwage is, like that in Wisconsin earlier this year, right out in the open -- with much more to come -- was deliberated for months, and it is a deeply, profoundly disturbing vision Our Rulers have set for the rest of us.

The Deal essentially institutionalizes the Status Quo -- which is miserable for millions upon millions of Americans, more every day. "More misery for more people!" is its obvious motto. There is not only nothing whatever in the Deal to alleviate any of this misery, there is nothing on the horizon to do so. Quite literally, just as in most of the West, the People's well being is being sacrificed, right out in the open, on the altar of finance and greed.

"Hope" is changed to "Fury."

The Fury has yet to be channeled into into a Revolt that can actually overcome the Power that is being consolidated and reinforced every second of every day. One after another, the stream of revolts at home and abroad this year has failed to actually reverse -- or even to substantively modify -- the March of Oppression and Greed which is overwhelming simple common sense.

How long will it be before the metaphorical calls for Tumbrils and Guillotines are replaced by the real thing?

Whatever the course of events:

We are ruled by idiots.

Cairo Comes to Madison.... Maybe

About 10,000 people are reported to be gathering at the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison to protest the newly elected TeaBagger Governor's demand that public employees be denied collective bargaining rights over matters of working conditions, pensions and so on. The TeaBagger governor, some clown named Scott Walker, is trying to jam the measure through the 'Bagger dominated legislature, and all hell is breaking loose.

Even the Packers have come to the defense of the public sector workers.

Obviously, this is serious as a heart attack. Walker, for his part, appears to be vying to out-dick Ohio's Dickhead Governor Kasich, who is trying for the same sort of unilateral overhaul of public employee rights.

All I can say about these pissant moves is that California's Own Orange Waxy Man, Ahnut, tried to blame the budget deficit here on public employees, specifically unionized nurses and teachers, and he was, to put it gently, taken to school. He was dogged everywhere, up and down the state, by nurses and other public employees who shamed the living shit out of him.

And that's what's going to happen to these yahoos.

Whether it will trigger an American Uprising, who can say.

But the fuse is being lit.