USING GUNS LIKE CREDIT CARDS
One thing the OCCUPY movement has been confronting, sometimes inconveniently, has been physical abuse by police - police in service of the whims of selfish politicians, upper-middle class and gated communities, and the banksters and all they manipulate, including the media. The filthy lucre elites want their privilege, and so act in abusive ways that consequently disempower the less well-to-do.
The elites do this, and by extension, so too do the banksters. And by extension, so do the politicians - and by extension so do the police, and then the neighbourhood associations, and then the gun-toting vigilantes, and then the beer-swilling redneck goons...
This is a stratification of ongoing, perpetual CLASS WARFARE. And let there be no mistake, this class warfare - really a thieving of society's WELFARE - has an awful lot to do with groupism: dealing with BOXES of people, playing groups against each other: the middle class vs the poor, the Christians vs the Muslims, the whites vs the blacks. Left/right. Women/men. And so on.
And let there be no mistake, this CLASSISM presumes far greater privilege, rights, irresponsibilities, divination, and genetic purity, generally speaking, for the elites higher up in the hierarchy.
So, let there be no mistake, this classism - which often simply expresses itself as a kind of sociopathic idiocy of the rich - is greatly invested in RACISM, as well as sexism, and so on.
(When you see either the left or the right playing IDENTITY POLITICS, whether it sounds benign or not, you must take into consideration the bigger picture, and ask yourself if this is fulfilling some larger strategy of the "higher" elites, meaning to manipulate the masses, if only through their idiocy, as moved by lust, competition and collusion for THE ALMIGHTY DOLLAR, whether or not that filthy lucre, and its complicit DEBT, be grown on trees somewhere inside the Fed)...
Well, let it also be known that those down at the lower rungs of this classism chain of command, beholden as they are to more powerful "authorities," are ultimately expendable, when deemed necessary.
As Ed Schultz pointed out, you can't get ANYONE from the NRA to speak up now, in the wake of the "hoodie shooting" down in Florida. That vigilante, (Zimmerman), who saw himself as an extension of the gated community's Neighbourood Watch, and so as an extension of the police, and so as an extension of the local CLASS OF PRIVILEGED WHITES, who no less than HUNTED DOWN the black teenager, Trayvon Martin, IN COLD BLOOD, (because he was "privileged" to take those leaps of logic and abuse), suddenly found himself quite abandoned, when people like Ed Schultz brought this fast-sleeping issue to light, and the elite authorities ran for the hills.
The neighbourhood association has said that he was not a part of their watch programme. The police has put him at arms length, and welcomed the the D.A. and the U.S. investigators to relieve them of this responsibility. Those GOP politicians who had advocated and voted in the abhorrent "STAND YOUR GROUND" laws came out and, in consistent inconsistency, declared that those laws were never meant to be used in this way, (http://ontd-political.livejournal.com/9468190.html). Well, thanks for that, eh?
And, once again, the NRA is nowhere to be found - being an organisation of businesses existing, mainly, by manipulating a loose militia of morons, rednecks and racists.
Now, I am in favour of personal gun ownership - and of gun regulation. But these "STAND YOUR GROUND" laws take the sanctity of privacy in one's home, which one is allowed to defend THROUGH DEADLY FORCE, and BY YET ANOTHER EXTENSION, takes it to the public sphere - where feelings and emotions, or the "sense" of being threatened - may be enough to justify shooting that gun, and taking a life.
And, by extension, this may be taken to mean, given the proper militant atmosphere, the law now grants the right to hunt down blacks - because MIGHT MAKES RIGHT. The act of injuring a victim somehow rationalises the legitimacy - the innocence - of the shooter. So think those at the lower rungs of the classism chain of command, until they find themselves expended. Suddenly lacking that privileged, classism, RACIST credit card.
Overextended.
Today, many in this country have been induced into fear by anti-terrorism jingoism and a plundered economy, towards racism, clutching for privileges held by those more well-off. In times where a mentality of fear and governmental control somehow rationalises EXTENSIONS and intrusions such as: pepper-spraying innocent protesters; monitoring phone and computer information; grabbing for pensions and entitlements; illegally foreclosing on privately owned homes, and so on, many people search for safety in the arms of wealthier authority, corrupt or BULLYing though it may be. Like battered wives, sanctioning violence.
And, in a once comfortable society where wealth and rights are being quickly extracted overall, many people seek to cling to their past privileges by executing an ACCELERATED DENIAL, unfortunately trampling over the rights of the less secure, the poor, the black. BY EXTENSION. Accelerating towards a less and less viable future by maxing out the credit card...
"Greed is good." "Every man for himself." "I've got mine." "USA!" "Drill baby, drill!"... THESE MANTRAS FROM THE 1980'S CONTINUE TO FEED PEOPLE'S DENIAL, as they blindly conspire in the wrecking of the Commons and of the country. THIS HAS GOT TO TURN AROUND OR WE ARE DOOMED.
When push comes to shove, and everyone is both "right" and "deserving," lost wealth, and lost credit, become substituted by might-makes-right, brute force: guns.
With millions of people each locked into a ZERO-SUM-GAME mentality, always RIGHT, always having INFINITE RIGHT, ever fueled by a FIGHT-OR-FLIGHT BRAIN - by illusions and self-delusions and paranoia - there can be no resolution of this over-reaching hubris, except through collapse - or through democratic voting, (dismantling the electronic voting machines).
Personally, a just and rational resolution, (RATHER THAN AUSTERITY MEASURES AND SECTARIAN RIOTS), might mean each person adopting humility, and circumspection, and a bigger RATIONAL ECONOMICS picture - AND ALSO EXTENDING ONESELF in empathetic and charitable ways. I.e., through values and practices of appreciation, NOT RACISM, sexism, and divide-and-conquer identity politics.
Otherwise, WE OURSELVES ARE EXPENDABLE. We become nothing but logs on the fire of a globally ballooning LIE.
What an irresponsible state to be in - where everyone is out, hunting, trying to symbolically achieve their elitist privileges, or their lost wages, at the very time when HYPERINFLATION may move in like a match to gasoline.
Should the global economy collapse even more severely, do you think "ME-FIRST" will solve anything, or save anyone, other than the ignomious elites?
There is a "Million-Hoodie-March" occurring in NYC today. "March 21: A Million Hoodies March for Trayvon Martin" ... http://www.democraticunderground.com/12521542