IT’S happening today with increasing frequency in America. Discussions on the second amendment, the right to bear arms, and the resulting widespread gun ownership and senseless homicides, are current. Guns have long been a weapon of choice in all sorts of nefarious activities in America. No place on earth compares to the mighty USA in gun ownership and use. Debate on gun control heightens as elections for a new president grab national attention. The Republican Party dutifully mouths the slogan of the powerful National Rifle Association (NRA) that, ‘guns don’t kill people; people do.’
Remarkably, most politicians in the U.S in both the Senate and the Congress seem fearful of the NRA, perhaps the most heavily funded and therefore most influential and uncompromising lobby in Washington D.C. Gun homicides continue unabated and like the NRA, U.S politicians hide behind the second amendment as cowards often do, in the face of powerful foes.
In the growing atmosphere of suspicion and mistrust, a senior politician from the west coast recently offered a sensible suggestion, which bears repetition. ‘Registration of all mentally ill persons in a central bank and compulsory background checks on all applicants for the purchase of a gun.’ But even such a guarded suggestion has been studiously avoided by cowardly politicians, as if it carried hidden, the malignant HIV virus.
The love affair with guns in America is appreciated, if not fully understood, by observers who understand how the west was won. The central instrument of conquest was the gun. It killed off the native Indians and later, conquered a large swath of the world seizing other peoples’ lands. The railway later consolidated the fields of stained Indian blood in the ruthless march towards the Pacific coast. Guns also played a central enabling role in the slave trade and became an instrument of intimidation and oppression in the new world of the African. The gun was therefore an instrument of oppression long before its users discovered the power of mind control.
The second amendment debate also takes front and centre stage following the senseless murders of innocent lives, especially that of the young. Of course the gun lobby soon kicks into action repeating the ‘guns don’t kill people; people do,’ slogan and deceitful nonsense. It is remarkable the lack of a strong rebuttal by those who know better. Too often, the only voices raised for sensible gun laws are those of the families of victims – and a minority of friends and politicians who are unafraid of the NRA. Very few Americans bother to ask whether homicides would be as high if there were fewer guns in private hands.
A discussion on gun violence often points to the agenda of elected politicians and officials who are best able to amend the U.S constitution. But the NRA stands resolutely in the way of any tampering with the second amendment. It knows that no politician can win elections in the U.S without money – loads of it. And the NRA is loaded. Change can only come with changes in the law governing campaign financing and when the electorate begins to vote for advocates of gun control. The cynically posit that, only the wilful killing of three or four politicians by a deranged gun man, God forbid, will get legislatures to act on sensible gun laws. In the meantime, the NRA retains a disproportionate influence over the outcomes of elections in America.
The father of a young female TV news reporter, who was recently cut down with her TV cameraman colleague, has sworn to dedicate his life to gun control. It remains an interesting dilemma that, that same father has publicly announced his decision to purchase a gun for self protection. Someone should inform this grieving man that the abundance of evidence points out that, people who own guns are more likely to die from gunshot wounds, than not.
The story of this hurting father reminds one of binge drinkers who must have a drink first thing in the morning to help get over their hangover. In the Caribbean, persons who once advocated medicating a dog’s bite with the animal’s fur will see the logic in that man’s action – and a clear victory for the NRA.
Regardless of pros and cons of the debate, the fact remains that money is at the core of the political industry in America. The business of America is first and foremost business; which means making money, hopefully leading to a good life and offering the wealthy a wider choice of pursuits – and happiness. Gun ownership is believed, wrongly, to protect businesses and enhance happiness for US citizens. But is that really so?
One wonders whether America’s love affair with guns and the historical reasons the weapon is so deeply embedded in American culture is of any concern to foreigners wishing to call America home. One also wonders whether in the rush to own a piece of the economic pie the average American bothers to think of the threat which guns pose, in the hands of the mentally challenged and criminal elements. It would also be interesting to discover the differences, if any, between the use of guns in America for legal purposes, and the guns used by the illegal drug industry for the protection of its illicit trade and those at its head.
At these perilous times America (and her friends) need to keep constantly before them the reasons for the second amendment to the U.S constitution, the circumstances which gave rise to the second amendment matter. But had the men who cobbled the U.S constitution and its several amendments been alive today, would they have worded their renowned document in the exact same way. In other words in what ways would modern technology, travel and the increasing reach of the law dictate what goes into a constitution for these united states.
Clearly, had the founding fathers been alive today, their wish for freedom and their desire to give wings and strength to a new united America would surely mean a stronger military. But would it also permit every Tom, Dick and Harry to own a gun? Would the second amendment be similarly worded by these founding fathers? Common sense seems to dictate the answer to these and other gun control questions.
May the debate on gun control and the second amendment to the U.S constitution continue? May it do so in a sensible and less emotionally charged atmosphere? May the voice of its voiceless children; its young innocent lives, and that of its law abiding citizens win, in the end.
Josie:
This is perhaps the most objective article you have ever written, begging the question: “Is there a place for the hopeless sinner, who has hurt all mankind just to save his own beliefs ?” You shared these crocodile tears of concern about the perpetual proliferation of guns in the USA because of the enormous clout of the National Rifle Association, yet you have sold your soul to Papa Jab Chastanet who advocates the use of gun violence against unarmed Lucians who he calls “Bad Boys”, and just like I did not find sincerity in the fake tears of Allen Chastanet about a woman being unable to send her children to High School, I am not impressed by your concern for gun violence while you openly express hatred for Black People
There is much one can learn from the politics of the U.S.A. with the political “discourse” being one of distilled vitriol targeting the peoples blessed with melanin/Black people – a pigment, if you were “educated” would have been taught you by your parent, teachers, and professors. I don’t have the time required to inform you of such an elaborate subject that is responsible for the very existence of human life on this planet in this opinion piece.
Many times I have confronted the lie and effects of the Caucasian God nailed to the crossed-posts, and the detrimental subliminal effects upon the minds of Black children who are taught to hate themselves by this Satanic practice of worshiping the naked Caucasian-man-god-Jesus.
What I have not elaborated upon too much, is the effects of this Satanic Rituals upon the mind of the Caucasians; in a nutshell it inflicts a mental disorder commonly referred to as, “The God Complex” upon the mind of these Caucasian Christians. It is a false sense of entitlement and belief by Caucasians that their actions of Mass Murder, Wars of Genocide, Pillaging, and oppression can be practiced with impunity.
Donald Trump, the leader in the Republican Party for P.O.T.U.S./President, has stated that when/if he becomes POTUS, he will seize the Oil Reserves of Iraq and deport all the brown colored people whom he calls Mexicans, from the U.S. This belligerent language appeals to most of the Caucasian Christians who perceive people of Color as inferior to themselves; an attitude taught in the worship of themselves as God and Masters of the Universe.
This same attitude of entitlement is flagged in the behavior of the demented Allen Chastanet whose father professes the “TAKING OUT” of Lucian men he deems “BAD BOYS” while threatening the population of the island with punitive actions for making inquires into the educational inconsistencies of his son Allen your master. Yet the bogus Roman Rick John Wayne, the self-proclaimed ‘best journalist in the World’ has written nothing of condemnation of Michael Chastanet’s threats, because such Negroes like you Peter, Jeff Fedee, and John Wayne accept your inferior station in life calling yourselves Roman Catholics begging and praying to dead Caucasians to make you white like Jesus-God-the-Son, and give you a pale-skinned woman like Allen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Gq9GFEIbSA
Peetar?
This piece has “Sweet Pea’s (your better half -cranium) objectivity. You correctly reviewed the earlier entrenchment of the “six shooter” via “How the West was Won” -nice BUT PEETAR you omitted the tie in -nay THE WELDING of RELIGION via the DOCTRINE OF MANIFEST DESTINY. The gun has always received SANCTIFIED INDULGENCES
In a later posting I will provide a link to that famous painting of the theme of Manifest Destiny.
Here is a brief description: Wagons of pioneers are rolling west on golden sun lit praries.
An angel flies overhead protecting hem while sanctifying their mission.
Recall the presence of a clergy man when Spanish ships moved in on enclaves of native inhabitants:
The clergy read a Latin or Spanish worded proclamation to folks who barely understood inter island dialects: “In the name of King FERDINAND & Queen ISABELLA if you do not swear to accept their Christian God, we (pirates,plunderers, rapists, sadists AKA conquistadors) shall do total harm or destruction upon all your people, , seize your property etc.
Yes Peetar the gun like the history of the 2nd amendment has been defended via the SYNERGY of the Bible as in an EYE for and EYE and countless episodes of distrust beginning with Cain & Abel
Remember: Moses (hollywood version) was a past leader of the NRA
The oratory skills of defenders of the 2nd amendment compare with the best mega church TV evangelists . evangelists. Why are their voices so effective?
Yes Josie, the statement of Manifest Destiny is absolutely essential in understanding the proliferation of guns in the American Arena as alluded to by the Scholar MACH BETH. Understanding the mentality of Theodore Roosevelt is a must to even beginning to explain the subject you intended to examine, but I will await the information from MACH BETH. In the mean time let me share this with you.
See Josie, the Military Industry runs the U.S. Government and controls the information disseminated in the “news”. If you are not dedicated to the destruction of empire and the dismantling of American militarism, then you cannot count yourself as a member of the left. It is not a side issue. It is the issue. It is why I refuse to give a pass in this presidential election campaign to Bernie Sanders, who refuses to confront the war industry or the crimes of empire, including U.S. support for the slow genocide carried out by Israel against the Palestinians. There will be no genuine democratic, social, economic or political reform until we destroy this permanent war machine.
Militarists and war profiteers are our greatest enemy. They use fear, bolstered by racism, as a tool in their efforts to abolish civil liberties, crush dissent and ultimately extinguish democracy. To produce weapons and finance military expansion, they ruin the domestic economy by diverting resources, scientific and technical expertise and a disproportionate share of government funds. They use the military to carry out futile, decades-long wars to enrich corporations such as Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman.
War is a business. And when the generals retire, guess where they go to work? Profits swell. War never stops. Whole sections of the earth live in terror. And the U.S.A. is disemboweled and left to live under what the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin calls “inverted totalitarianism.” Libertarians seem to get this. It is time the left woke up.
“Bourgeois society faces a dilemma,” socialist Rosa Luxemburg writes, “either a transition to Socialism, or a return to barbarism … we face the choice: either the victory of imperialism and the decline of all culture, as in ancient Rome—annihilation, devastation, degeneration, a yawning graveyard; or the victory of Socialism—the victory of the international working class consciously assaulting imperialism and its method: war. This is the dilemma of world history, either-or; the die will be cast by the class-conscious proletariat.”
The U.S. military and its array of civilian contractors operate as enforcers and hired killers across the globe for corporations, many of which pay no taxes. Young men and women, many unable to find work, are the cannon fodder. The U.S. military has served as the handmaiden of capitalism since it committed genocide against Native Americans, carried out on behalf of land speculators, mineral companies, timber merchants and the railroads.
The military replicated this indiscriminate slaughter at the end of the 19th century in our imperial expansion in Cuba and elsewhere in the Caribbean, in Central America and especially in the Philippines. Military muscle exists to permit global corporations to expand markets and plunder oil, minerals and other natural resources while keeping subjugated populations impoverished by corrupt and brutal puppet regimes. The masters of war are the scum of the earth.
It was the war profiteers and the military, as Seymour Melman has pointed out, that conspired after World War II to keep the U.S.A. in a state of perpetual war, deforming the economy to continue to produce massive amounts of weapons and armaments in peacetime. The permanent war economy is sustained through fearmongering — about communists during the Cold War and about Islamic jihadists today. Such fearmongering is used not only to justify crippling military expenditures but to crush internal dissent. The corporatists and the military, which have successfully carried out what John Ralston Saul calls a “coup d’état in slow motion,” have used their political and economic clout to dismantle programs and policies put in place under the New Deal. Brian Waddell writes of this process:
“The requirements of total war … revived corporate political leverage, allowing corporate executives inside and outside the state extensive influence over wartime mobilization policies. … Assertive corporate executives and military officials formed a very effective wartime alliance that not only blocked any augmentation of the New Dealer authority but also organized a powerful alternative to the New Deal. International activism displaced and supplanted New Deal domestic activism. Thus was the stage finally set for a vastly extended and much more powerful informal U.S. empire outside its own hemisphere.”
The war machine is not, and almost never has been, a force for liberty or democracy. It does not make us safe. It does not make the world safe. And its immense economic and political power internally, including its management of the security and surveillance state and its huge defense contracts, has turned it into the most dangerous institution in America.
Military expenditures bleed the federal budget -— officially -— of US$598.49 billion a year, or 53.71 percent of all spending. This does not, however, include veterans’ benefits at US$65.32 billion a year or hidden costs in other budgets that see the military and the war profiteers take as much as US$1.6 trillion a year out of the pockets of taxpayers.
The working and middle class fund the endless wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen and a host of other countries while suffering crippling “austerity” programs, massive debt peonage, collapsing infrastructures, chronic underemployment and unemployment and mounting internal repression. The war industry, feeding off the carcass of the state, grows fat and powerful with profits. This is not unique. It is how all empires are hollowed out from the inside. U.S. citizens are impoverished and stripped of their rights, the tools used to maintain control on the outer reaches of empire -— drones, militarized police, indiscriminate violence, a loss of civil liberties, and security and surveillance -— are used on them. They have devolved, because of the poison of empire, into a Third World nation with nukes, ruled by an omnipotent, corporate oligarchy and their Pretorian Guard. The political class, Republican and Democrat, dances to the tune played by these oligarchs and militarists and mouths the words they want it to say.
There is another question which offers a hint as to the longevity of this antiquated amendment (recall that it was originally drafted to supplement local militias for a young country still mistrustful of continental Europe’s proclivity for recurring wars of partitioning among prior colonial powers (e.g., 30 years war, War of the Roses, more recently the War of 1812).
The question is as follows: Was the epidemic of LYNCHINGS a sadistic act of attempted genocide or a response to economic competition for scarce resources?
Recall that the so called “Mandingo Probus of savage intent ” was both an overt and covert label affixed to a majority of lynched black men.
“He stared hard at me as if to undress me”
“We were all drinking and gambling when the black bell hop placed his hand on my bare shoulders asking me if I needed help to step into my stateroom aboard the Mississippi Queen. GASP, it touched me!!!” Just some of the remarks a “fainting” or is it feigning, white female had to state in order to stir a lynch mob.
This is way before novels such as “Blues for Mr. Charlie” “Fire Next Time” et al.
The point is there has been a marked demarcation of the races into towns -villages and neighborhoods. These lines and later on, more subtle boundaries were first established by GUN power or the lurking threat of deliberate force. Later on banks could use thos red line districts to deny minorities home or small business loans (NO ECONOMIC AUTONOMY)
SEGREGATION as in separate and UNequal was most definitely enforced by the GUN.
Time marches on and so to the tenacious anchorage of guns- far more legal than BOOZE-SEX or SMOKES (all types).
There was even an amendment to ban booze (for a brief period) and there are laws to control consenting sex and smoking; but not GUNS
We have a military that can self destruct the planet plus local police forces that are far more aggressive than the early MILITIAS for which the 2nd amendment was designed in the first place. Yet we need to arm each citizen.
Our tech edge can defend our homes in real time via smart phone -sensors- cameras-connections to patrol officers (for a small fee I could design a landscape for your property-engineered with BOOBY TRAPS that actual PUNISH and or restrain intruders). Yet we need guns for each citizen.
Let’s go back to the six shooter revolver of the western frontier. Imagine the revolving chamber of bullets are a pair of male testicles and the the shaft as a penis- the rap thugs grab their crotches with similar erotic fervor as did the cowboys who walked with intimidation -felt and fired their six guns.
WARS have also contributed to the longevity of this archaic amendment.
Hundreds of thousands of soldiers need to relive their shooting prowess so they turn to the “sport ” of hunting. Hunting is truly BIG in small towns across America. By the by, more Americans live in small towns than in big cities.
The availability of guns in small towns is easily spread via the porous conduits to cities.
While waiting for a bus from a rural outing, I overheard a father’s remark to another male:
” I took my 9 year old on his first hunt with his first gun; Man it was great. he remembered all the techniques I taught him when he was my rifle carrier.
They threw a nice party for him when we got back. He glowed like a July 4th rocket as he told family and friends about his first solo experience.
Sweet Pea, I commend your objectivity on this difficult subject and as my closing line suggests the problem has superseded $. Let me summarize as if I were a citizen of a rural town in Western Virginia:
Think- I need my gun in order to send a message to unwanted neighbors. Just because you have the $$$$$$$$ does not mean you can move in.
I can’t put the fear of God into “dem crotch clutching mandingo savages” but they must know that I can blow them away to thy kingdom come , if they get too close or scare my sweet lil angel wife or child”
And guns have leisure / recreational components that maintain an edge of readiness to ACT with effective lethal ACCURACY.
Guns like sex-drugs and rock & roll is as American as Apple pie and evolving to be as beefy as a Mango Palwee in St. Lucia, n’est pas!
C. Wright Mills in “The Power Elite” warns of a military machine that not only holds the political and economic life of the nation hostage but also has the ability to form public opinion. The Pentagon spends US$4.7 billion a year and has some 27,000 employees who work on recruitment, advertising, psychological operations and public relations, according to a 2009 report by The Associated Press. But millions of dollars more for propaganda are hidden within classified budgets. The Pentagon places its commentators and pundits on the airwaves, produces “news” stories for the press, has ubiquitous advertising, runs junkets for Wall Street capitalists and elected officials and manages how Hollywood and television portray war and the military. Mills writes:
“… [I]n all of pluralist America, there is no interest -— there is no possible combination of interests -— that has anywhere near the time, the money, the manpower, to present a point of view on the issues involved that can effectively compete with the views presented day in and day out by the warlords and by those whom they employ.
This means, for one thing, that there is no free and wider debate of military policy or of policies of military relevance. But that, of course, is in line with the professional soldier’s training for command and obedience, and with his ethos, which is certainly not that of a debating society in which decisions are put to a vote. It is also in line with the tendency in a mass society for manipulation to replace explicitly debated authority, as well as the fact of total war in which the distinction between soldier and civilian is obliterated. The military manipulation of civilian opinion and the military invasion of the civilian mind are now important ways in which the power of the warlords is steadily exerted.
The extent of the military publicity, and the absence of opposition to it, also means that it is not merely this proposal or that point of view that is being pushed. In the absence of contrasting views, the very highest form of propaganda warfare can be fought: the propaganda for a definition of reality within which only certain limited viewpoints are possible. What is being promulgated and reinforced is the military metaphysics -— the cast of mind that defines international reality as basically military. The publicists of the military ascendancy need not really work to indoctrinate with this metaphysics those who count: they have already accepted it.”
The naked greed and violence that define empire, understood by writers such as Joseph Conrad, Eduardo Galeano and Arundhati Roy, is masked within empire behind the cant of patriotism and nationalism, which sanctify self-exaltation and racism. Imperial war is transformed through the magic of propaganda into glorious spectacle. Galeano once wrote that “each time a new war is disclosed in the name of the fight of the Good against Evil, those who are killed are all poor. It’s always the same story repeating once and again and again.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XHEPoMNP0I
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Ironically, it took a show of gun carrying federal troops to enforce desegregation at the University of Alabama and Little Rock, Arkansas High School. Yes sir, when television viewers nationally and internationally watched as soldiers armed with huge rifles escorting harmless eager to learn black students to their classes; Washington fast forwarded desegregation of schools .
If you truly want a deep real tear jerker, create the following on a single slide presentation:
Google a picture of the Little Rock High school students walking through a gauntlet of hostile/jeering adults and some teens
Google a famous newspaper photo of a lynched black man dangling from a tree while a thick crowd of smiling, smirking, carefree onlookers stare in satisfaction.
Insert both pictures side by side on a 2 picture layout slide.
Then play the presentation- best on a projected surface.
Play several times focusing on the FACES in each crowd.
Extension: If you can motivate a nerdy teen who is fluent in the use of the GARAGE Band-Apple software; then have he/she create appropriate sound track for each photo.
Next, use the IMOVIE Apple software to create a movie using the same photos and two sound tracks created on GARAGE.
The final product can be saved in MP4 format and uploaded to Youtube.
Focus on the faces in the crowd and imagine if they had GUNS!
https://www.facebook.com/Mrbeksi/videos/932303070146564/
https://www.facebook.com/betkills/videos/343439395826057/
The hypermasculinity of the military, celebrated by Hollywood and the media, is seductive to an underclass trapped in menial, dead-end jobs. Empires feed like vultures on these pools of frustrated surplus labor. They manipulate their feelings of powerlessness. This is why capitalists create pools of surplus labor. Those who are desperate to secure a place in society are easy fodder for the military and ready candidates for underpaid jobs without benefits or job security. Our corporate, neofeudal society is by design.
The sons and daughters of the elites rarely serve in the military. The military, even at the service academies such as West Point, attracts those who have been cast aside by neoliberalism. Often, before joining the military, they lack a clearly defined identity or sense of purpose. They are terrified of being pushed permanently into the underclass. They are especially susceptible to indoctrination. The military teaches soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines not to think, not to challenge assumptions and structures, but to obey and to be “tough” and “strong.”
This hypermasculine culture glorifies the state and state violence. It renders all human beings outside the sacred national circle as objects to control or exploit. It creates a binary world of good and evil. It sanctifies violence, especially male violence. It is why rape is endemic in the military. It is why pornography and violence against women are so pervasive in the culture. Tenderness, nurturing and empathy, along with intellectual inquiry and artistic expression, are banished. The weak and the vulnerable deserve to be cast aside. Our enemies deserve to be killed. It is the culture of death. And we drink deep from this dark elixir.
W.E.B. Du Bois warns that empire was the primary tool used to break the working class in Europe and later in the United States. As workers organized and fought for rights and fair wages, the masters of empire started to shift production to countries more easily controlled, countries inhabited by “darker peoples.” This is a shift that is largely complete.
“Here, are no labor unions or votes or questioning onlookers or inconvenient consciences,” Du Bois writes. “These men may be used down to the very bone, and shot and maimed in ‘punitive’ expeditions when they revolt. In these dark lands ‘industrial development’ may repeat in exaggerated form every horror of the industrial horror of Europe, from slavery and rape to disease and maiming, with one test of success—dividends.”
Du Bois also knew that the costs of maintaining empire were offset by the profits. “What do nations care about the cost of war, if by spending a few hundred millions in steel and gunpowder they can gain a thousand millions in diamonds and cocoa?” he asks.
Sweet Pea?
Read what happens when you get on the objectivity range:
After your requisite reminders of serving in the wrong bivouac,
SOM is generous enough to nourish us with some premium excerpts addressing the autonomous military-industrial complex . This is the PREMIUM quality of research we also come to expect given your CHE-bereted Odlum internship.
Nevertheless, SOM’s literary generosity has motivated me to SHARE some familiar excerpts to garnish his pertinent conversation:
“The settler makes history and is conscious of making it. And because he constantly refers to the history of his mother country, he clearly indicates that he himself is the extension of that mother-country. Thus the history which he writes is not the history of the country which he plunders but the history of his own nation in regard to all that she skims off, all that she violates and starves.”
― Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth
“Colinialism hardly ever exploits the whole of a country. It contents itself with bringing to light the natrual resources, which it extracts, and exports to meet the needs of the mother country’s industries, thereby allowing certain sectors of the colony to become relatively rich. But the rest of the colony follows its path of under-development and poverty, or at all events sinks into it more deeply.”
― Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth
“The claim to a national culture in the past does not only rehabilitate that nation and serve as a justification for the hope of a future national culture. In the sphere of psycho-affective equilibrium it is responsible for an important change in the native. Perhaps we haven’t sufficiently demonstrated that colonialism is not satisfied merely with holding a people in its grip and emptying the native’s brain of all form and content. By a kind of perverted logic, it turns to the past of the oppressed people, and distorts, disfigures, and destroys it. This work of devaluing pre-colonial history takes on a dialectical significance today.”
― Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth
“The basic confrontation which seemed to be colonialism versus anti-colonialism, indeed capitalism versus socialism, is already losing its importance. What matters today, the issue which blocks the horizon, is the need for a redistribution of wealth. Humanity will have to address this question, no matter how devastating the consequences may be.”
― Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth
One Flagship Marley deserves a Frigate Marley
Ooh-ooh-oo-ooh. Oo-oo-ooh! Oo-oo-ooh.
Slave driver, the table is turn; (catch a fire)
Catch a fire, so you can get burn, now. (catch a fire)
Slave driver, the table is turn; (catch a fire)
Catch a fire: gonna get burn. (catch a fire) Wo, now!
Ev’rytime I hear the crack of a whip,
My blood runs cold.
I remember on the slave ship,
How they brutalize the very souls.
Today they say that we are free,
Only to be chained in poverty.
Good God, I think it’s illiteracy;
It’s only a machine that makes money.
Slave driver, the table is turn, y’all. Ooh-ooh-oo-ooh.
Slave driver, uh! The table is turn, baby, now; (catch a fire)
Catch a fire, so you can get burn, baby, now. (catch a fire)
Slave driver, the table is turn, y’all; (catch a fire)
Catch a fire: so you can get burn, now. (catch a fire)
Ev’rytime I hear the crack of a whip,
My blood runs cold.
I remember on the slave ship,
How they brutalize the very soul.
O God, have mercy on our souls!
Oh, slave driver, the table is turn, y’all; (catch a fire)
Catch a fire, so you can get burn. (catch a fire)
Slave driver, the table is turn, y’all; (catch a fire)
Catch a fire …
The reality of empire is nearly impossible to see from the heart of empire. Those who speak its truth are banished from the airwaves. They are condemned as traitors or “anti-American.” The cries of empire’s victims are rarely heard. The crimes that empire commits are rendered invisible. The greed of the war makers, along with the corruption and dishonesty of the political, judicial, academic and media courtiers who serve empire, is blocked from public view.
The image of empire is scripted like a Walt Disney movie. This mythical narrative is disseminated in films, on television, by the press, in churches, in universities and by the state. It is a lie. But it is a lie that works. And it works because it is what Caucasians Christians want. It appeals to their fantasies about themselves: that they are a virtuous people, that God has blessed them above others, that they have the highest form of civilization, that they have been anointed to police the world and make it safe, that they are the most powerful and righteous nation on earth, that they are always assured of victory, that they have a right to kill in the name of nationalist values -— values determined by their naked self-interest and that they conveniently define as universal.
Noam Chomsky, more than perhaps any other American intellectual, has laid bare the latent forces of totalitarianism in our midst and warned us against the contagion of empire. He says:
“Those with deep totalitarian commitments identify the state with the society, its people, and its culture. Therefore those who criticized the policies of the Kremlin under Stalin were condemned as “anti-Soviet” or “hating Russia.” For their counterparts in the West, those who criticize the policies of the U.S. government are “anti-American” and “hate America”; those are the standard terms used by intellectual opinion, including left-liberal segments, so deeply committed to their totalitarian instincts that they cannot even recognize them, let alone understand their disgraceful history, tracing to the origins of recorded history in interesting ways. For the totalitarian, “patriotism” means support for the state and its policies, perhaps with twitters of protest on grounds that they might fail or cost us too much.
For those whose instincts are democratic rather than totalitarian, “patriotism” means commitment to the welfare and improvement of the society, its people, its culture. That’s a natural sentiment and one that can be quite positive. It’s one all serious activists share, I presume; otherwise why take the trouble to do what we do? But the kind of “patriotism” fostered by totalitarian societies and military dictatorships, and internalized as second nature by much of intellectual opinion in more free societies, is one of the worst maladies of human history, and will probably do us all in before too long.”
There can be no rational debate about empire with many desperate Americans who have ingested this as their creed. The distortion of neoliberalism has left them little else. Here lies the virus of fascism, wrapped in the American flag, held aloft by the Christian cross and buttressed by white supremacy. It is a potent and dangerous force within the body politic. And it is growing. The real enemy is within.
Here’s the reality of Guns as Americans murder Iraqi civilians and celebrate the “KILL” of women and children.
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10153634641578573
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A succinct excerpt /overview from one of Shakespeare’s classic“ literary buffet” as it applies to Western Expansionism AKA Wall Street’s “Greed is Good”
The following is from Spark Notes dot com
The Corrupting Power of Unchecked Ambition
The main theme of Macbeth—the destruction wrought when ambition goes unchecked by moral constraints—finds its most powerful expression in the play’s two main characters.
Macbeth is a courageous Scottish general who is not naturally inclined to commit evil deeds, yet he deeply desires power and advancement. He kills Duncan against his better judgment and afterward stews in guilt and paranoia. Toward the end of the play he descends into a kind of frantic, boastful madness.
Lady Macbeth, on the other hand, pursues her goals with greater determination, yet she is less capable of withstanding the repercussions of her immoral acts. One of Shakespeare’s most forcefully drawn female characters, she spurs her husband mercilessly to kill Duncan and urges him to be strong in the murder’s aftermath, but she is eventually driven to distraction by the effect of Macbeth’s repeated bloodshed on her conscience.
In each case, ambition—helped, of course, by the malign prophecies of the witches—is what drives the couple to ever more terrible atrocities. The problem, the play suggests, is that once one decides to use violence to further one’s quest for power, it is difficult to stop. There are always potential threats to the throne—Banquo, Fleance, Macduff—and it is always tempting to use violent means to dispose of them.
Allen Chastanet has proven that he is an incorrigible criminal, who preys upon the shamelessness of individuals like Peter Eddie Josie’s insatiable lust for power, to victimize the most vulnerable of the poor Lucian as was done to this single mother who this worthless knave Allen Chastanet used as his prop in his latest episode of deceitful acts to mislead, fool and insult the people of this little island. This time, the struggling sister made it clear that the Lucian people should distance themselves from this reprobate and those who have sold their souls to this Son of Satan Allen Chastanet.
https://www.facebook.com/284538805083530/videos/vb.284538805083530/428025300734879/?type=2&theater
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A bit tardy on that Manifest Destiny link :
http://www.american-historama.org/1841-1850-westward-expansion/manifest-destiny.htm
It is a very good one with painting and text that explains both the allegory and political themes of Manifest Destiny.
Here is a very good overview on lynching- definitely upheld by Guns
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3178
This is good must read for youth –
it could serve as a framework for studying the explosive use of gun play in our society.
Here is one that truly undresses the 2nd amendment.
http://applepatriot.com/little-rock-nine-1957-101st-airborne-division/
But first study the photo of ms Ecford assailed by a mob of adult women. Study the faces and one did spit at her.
Secondly, note the irony in the deployment of the State militia (national Guard versus the eventual deployment of the national militia (the 101 st Airborne battle group.
The second amendment begged for a true militia (there are many layers of them), however, even with a true militia the rights of minorities are assailed.
Since it is near impossible to get rid of lethal guns perhaps the only effective strategy is to legalize only Tazers for local civil enforcement
This act of educating a Black Child became an act of war. I have always argued that Caucasian Christians would declare War if they were made to worship an image of an African as the Son-of-God, and this war zone in Little Rock proves my point. If these Evil Caucasian Christians would use the National Guard to prevent Black Children from attending school, just imagine what they would do if the Son-of-God was a Black African — WAR !
Yet Negroes like Rick John Wayne, and Josie feel no shame in kneeling and begging an image of a naked Caucasian for favors, even as the idiot Rick John Wayne goes around telling people, “I am Roman Catholic ! and the only journalist in St. Lucia because I do research” HaaHaaa.