Power Comes from the Barrel of a Gun
-Mao
This is part 4 of our Freedom Series. If you missed them, part 1 (Capitalism and Freedom),Part 2 (Freedom And Democracy) and Part 3 (Freedom To, Freedom From) are also available.
In our earlier essays we discussed how the structure of modern life means that we spend most of our time doing what other people tell us to: either in school or work. We are free to choose our masters, but almost none of us are free from having masters. Representative democracy, especially under capitalism tends to really be oligarchy: those with wealth buy the government, and an individual’s vote means much less than the money and votes and influence it can buy that capitalists have.
All of this is underwritten by violence. I live in Canada, some years back a homeless person built themselves a house near town, but on land owned by no one, except the government. You would think this is a good thing, but it wasn’t properly permitted and the land wasn’t hers, so they tore it down. She went back to being homeless.
They were able to tear it down because if she had resisted, big men with guns would have made sure it was torn down.
I’m no libertarian and I don’t think tax is theft, but if you’re American you may have a big problem with paying taxes because you hate that so much of it is used for corporate subsidies and to support a military which regularly engages in genocidal activities and which supports other countries when they commit genocide. (Israel is not the first.)
You’d think that living in a democracy your money would be spent in some semblance of what the public wants, but you’d be wrong. People don’t want to support Israel with massive subsidies, but it happens anyway.Most Americans would like universal health care, but that would mean less corporate profits, so it doesn’t happen. The infamous Princeton study found that what the average citizen wants has zero relationship to what the government does: but the opinions of those with wealth do.
So you might as well not live in Democracy, because a Democracy where what the people want to happen doesn’t happen, isn’t functionally a democracy, no matter how often you vote. This is at heart of the paradox that when polled as to how democratic their societies are, the major society whose citizens think it’s most democratic is—China.
Wait? A one party state is considered by its own citizens to be democratic? What the hell?
But the Communist Party actually does listen to its citizens and often does what they want. It also strives to make them better off, having lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.
You may not get to vote, but the government does a lot of what you want and improves your lives.
Of course it isn’t a democracy by the strict definition: democracy is about procedure—how we choose our leaders, not outcomes
But people might be forgiven for thinking that outcomes matter more. Hell, I can’t argue with it. Democracy exists because monarchies and aristocracies sucked for ordinary citizens and we thought that if we could choose our own leaders they’d be more likely to care for our well-being.
And here’s the thing: the CPC is good right now, or more good than bad. But then so was the US (for its own citizens) at various points, most recently from about 1933 to 79 or so. One can be sure that over time the CPC will devolve or be replaced by something worse. We don’t know exactly when this will happen, but its next sub-ideological cycle is about 40 years out.
This suggests the problem isn’t exactly the form of government.
Perhaps it is, as Thomas Neuberger likes to argue, government itself. Or, more accurately, the state, because every society ever has had some form of government.
States, which started existing about eight thousand years ago, first in Mesopotamia and briefly afterwards in Egypt, are noted for having a monopoly of force as Max Weber famously pointed out. In fact a monopoly of force is what makes a government a state. Your municipal government has a police force, but as Trump has shown with his ICE occupations, it does not have a monopoly on force. Tribes generally don’t have a monopoly on force: individuals often use violence themselves to resolve issues.
The early states were extremely nasty kingdoms, usually with the King either claiming to be a God or saying he was God’s chosen.
But Mao isn’t quite right. Power doesn’t come from guns or swords. It comes from control over the minds of the military class, whoever that is. It took about two thousand years for agriculture to produce the first kingdoms, because the actual task was getting the warriors to agree to be an enforcer class against everyone else, and take the King’s orders. That was a hard ideological task, and it took a long time to convince violent men to oppress everyone but themselves and a few nobles. Tribal warriors simply would not do it. (If you want to read about this process at length, see my Politics Series.)
This is at the heart of the question “will the military fire on citizens?” Will they obey that order?
The answer, usually, is yes. When it’s “maybe” you get more freedom. This is why conscription armies are usually not used for internal control: specialized police forces are used, men trained to beat the shit out of, or shoot, those whom power tells them to.
Most people don’t pay taxes because they want to. They pay taxes because if they don’t men with guns will eventually show up and hurt them, kill them or throw them in a nasty prison.
There are tons of stupid or unjust laws, and we obey most of them, and will obey more of them in the future as ubiquitous surveillance spreads. Oh, some we obey because we agree with them (hopefully things like “don’t murder and don’t rape”) but plenty we obey because we’re scared.
Everything flows from this. Forget law. Remember that woman who wasn’t allowed to keep a house she made with her own hands on land no one was using?
That’s the core. Your boss can’t, usually, call the cops on you. But he can fire you and you might not get another job or not as good a one. You might wind up homeless. You might not be able to afford health care.
And you can’t take care of yourself because it’s illegal. You can’t just go to some land, build a home and plant some crops, say. If someone has way more than they need, and you don’t have enough, you can’t say “Look Elon, if you had a bit less I wouldn’t die homeless so I’m going to just take some of that and you’ll still be more than OK.”
If you do, the police will shoot you or lock you up.
This isn’t the way that it was for most of human existence. Hoarding was not allowed in most societies that ever existed, till those Kings came along. If you tried, the tribe would talk to you, then shun you, and then if you still kept more than you needed while others were going without, they’d either exile you or kill you.
This for hundreds of thousands of years this is probably how humans dealt with hoarders. Then Kings and states inverted it. The rich steal from the poor, the strong from the weak, and if anyone tries to do anything about it they get dead or worse.
Without violence and the state there are no Billionaires. There are no property rights as we understand them (which is why libertarians still want the State to kill people over property. They want to have lots of stuff, be safe when others are poor and they’re rich, they just don’t want to pay for any part of the State except the violent part.
At the end of the day you go to school for twelve years because the state forces parents to send their kids to school. This is the history, when mandatory universal schooling was introduced, parents who didn’t cooperate were dealt with the law, often violently.
You work for someone else at a shitty job you’d never even consider doing if you wouldn’t be homeless otherwise because some people have a lot and don’t want to share. Oh there’s a whole ideology of how capitalism is necessary for prosperity and progress, just as there was one about how Kings were needed, but that’s gloss. There’s way more than enough, but for us to have rich people there must be poor people.
Occasionally a state will, for a few decades, do good. They’re not all evil. See the CPC these days. But the capacity for state control is always there. The CPC forced a lot of peasants off the land who didn’t want to lead. Sure, it was “for their own good” but perhaps the peasants should have been able to decide that? Same thing with the Brits and enclosure. Or America and all the natives they killed.
This is close to the nitty gritty. The stuff about democracy and capitalism was important: but all of that has as its basis violence. Without violent men willing to do what the state says, none of that occurs.
There’s all sorts of arguments that states are better than the alternative, blah, blah, blah. Perhaps. Sometimes.
But the core of states is always violence: that monopoly Weber talked about. That’s how some people get to have a lot more than everyone else and then justify it saying they deserve it. Nobles said it was because they protected the serfs and were chosen by God. Capitalists say it’s because they create the jobs and technology and everything good comes from them so they deserve much, much more. Communists say they serve the people, same as democrats do. And, again, sometimes, for a few decades or even occasionally a whole century, they do. These justifications matter: the violent men need to be convinced to do what the State says.
But the society is still based on coercion underwritten by violent men and you still aren’t free. You are ruled by fear: fear of poverty in a system where if you try and support yourself in a way society doesn’t agree with, that violates property arrangements the elites like, you will be hurt or killed.
This is always true, of course. It was true in tribes. Hoard and eventually someone will do something about it.
But there’s violence to ensure everyone has enough, and there’s violence to ensure some people have more. There’s violence to take away your right to do what you want with your life, so long as it doesn’t harm others, and there’s violence that forces you to spent 60 to 70 years doing what teacher and boss tells you to—or else.
We need to move past the idea that shit systems are the best we can do. We need to conceive of a better way to live together. We need to stop saying “this is a flawed system, but it’s the best we can do.”
We need to dream and imagine. Only by doing so do we make a better, more free, society possible.
What I write here is for the benefit of everyone, but alas, I live in capitalism and I, and the site, take money to keep running. If you value the writing here and can, please subscribe or donate.
spud
fear works till they no longer fear the bullets. the trick is to organize as lenin not only did, but advised others this is how you do it.
there are about a million or less cops, vs. over 330 million people in america. of course add in the federal ones, and its bigger. add in the army, it gets even bigger. but for how long will they be willing to kill us, when their own families will suffer also.
and we need to understand, the oligarchs will not ensure a decent standard of living for their defenders, when the populace no longer fears the bullets.
of course along comes the gorby/yetsin duo, like clinton/obama, etc. and the cycle starts all over again.
Ahmed Fares
““Look Elon, if you had a bit less I wouldn’t die homeless so I’m going to just take some of that and you’ll still be more than OK.””
Funny you should mention Elon. I just read this article before yours. A quote from the article:
“I doubt very much that Mr. Musk plans to spend a trillion dollars before he dies. Suppose instead that he plans to spend, say, a hundred million. Now suppose he gives away all his money (or we confiscate it) and he reduces his lifetime consumption to zero. That leaves an extra hundred million dollars worth of food, clothing and fuel for the rest of us. Divide a hundred million dollars among three hundred and fifty million Americans and you get not $2800 per person, but 28 cents. That’s how much extra stuff the average American can now buy. ”
https://www.thebigquestions.com/2026/06/23/illiteracy-mathematical-and-economic/
Ian Welsh
That’s really not the math if you do it to everyone above a certain threshold.
Why?
Because it redistributes capital and income.
The best measure of how much the rich and their hangers on have soaked up is to estimate what wages would be if they had continued to rise at the same rate as productivity.
Estimates vary, but the low end is 30% and the high end is around 60%.
And how many people could you lift out of poverty, which is the actual question? Well for 900 billion, you could give 90,000 people 1 million dollars each. If you capped wealth at 50 million, how many people could you give a million dollars to?
Ahmed Fares
Quote with link:
“The alleged decoupling of growth of pay from productivity, as Robert Gordon explained in 2009, “compares apples with oranges, and then oranges with bananas.” Median wages for the whole economy were deflated by the consumer price index, which exaggerated inflation and understated real income growth. Rapidly growing health and retirement benefits were often excluded. These muddled measures of real pay, which also failed to adjust for changing household size or hours, were compared to productivity of the nonfarm business sector, not the whole economy. And real output was calculated using GDP deflators that showed much less inflation than the CPI. With those errors, one estimate for the income-productivity gap from 1979–2007 was 1.46 percentage points, but Gordon’s adjustments shrunk that to a negligible 0.16. He also noted that mean and median incomes grew at remarkably similar rates, suggesting inequality did not explain much.”
https://www.cato.org/blog/william-galstons-not-so-great-decoupling-pay-productivity-common-sense
Ian Welsh
Oh absolute bullshit. CPI understates inflation significantly. Enough apologia. Don’t comment here again. I don’t have the time or inclination to play whack a mole, my bingo card for arguing with randos on the internet got filled up years ago.
https://briefglance.com/articles/the-inflation-illusion-is-the-cpi-masking-a-cost-of-living-crisis
https://www.ianwelsh.net/official-inflation-vs-real-inflation-rent-edition/
https://www.ianwelsh.net/why-economists-are-wrong-about-how-good-the-economy-is-and-regular-people-are-right/
https://www.ianwelsh.net/bullshit-economic-statistics/
mago
The ‘boss’ thing, who has power and how they wield it is an interesting study.
For most of my culinary life I was either an independent operator or the guy in charge, although as a chef/manager I had to answer to owners while listening to the staff’s yapping while trying to placate both in some ways. Kinda like being in a vise.
Both as an owner and a manager I favored the open, empathetic and humane approach with mixed results. Sharks smell blood. Social conditioning favors competition and conflict, yet people want to be treated fairly and with respect. Sometimes you have to smite them down. Running a kitchen is like captaining a pirate ship.
It’s a topsy turvy world of extremes.
As an educator in unconventional settings with unconventional students from unconventional families I faced other challenges—the parents, the administrators, the wild and (mostly) defiant teenagers. Oh, yeah, that’s another thing: it’s always high school all the time in America. And ain’t that the way it is the land of the free and home of the brave on the eve of celebrating 250 years of glorious freedom unless you’re living on the street in which case you can kiss your ass good bye. By and by we shall be free
Credit to ML for among other things surviving that No Cal SF public education nightmare and reporting on it.
Oh, geez. It’s a wild and woolly time and ride.
“Come on people/let’s get together and try to love one another somehow.”
Don’t know how it’s going to happen, but I pray for positive results.
Bob
A major problem with what “we” allow to be the case is that “we” are completely brainwashed by twelve years of schooling and the entertainment and news media rackets.
“We” seem to be completely incapable of reflection and analysis about what an abusive shitshow “our” society is.
Maybe a small handful of people get it but not enough for the idea to spread.
And the gets-it-but-doesn’t-get-it contingent is the more common among the small handful.
Matt Kennard comes to mind, a brave and brilliant journalist who exposed how the world is run by corporations and shadowy legal frameworks who then advocates supporting the Green Party and standing in the street with a placard.
Although saying anything else these days in the UK might be a bit dicey.
bruce wilder
i think it and mago says it. quite an effective division of labor.
out of the crooked timber of humanity . . .
Jan Wiklund
The Chinese system is paternalist confucianism. It usually works a few generations, but it always gets corrupt because there is no thumb in the eye of the officials. For a while localized protests against obvious abuses may keep the officials to behave, but since coordinating such protests is the worst crime you can commit in China, it is usually powerless in the end. Until the abuses have been so great that nationwide revolts occur, with victims counted in tens of millions.
The traditional democracy in Europe (or the US) was able to keep the officials to the job as long as nationwide coordination of popular movements worked well. The main burden of this coordination was on the trade unions, and they were reasonably efficient until the 70s. What happened then was a combination. The big industry was captured by rentiers without interest in production, so they let it fall and unemployment made trade unions powerless. And the matchless boom after WWII combined with generous social legislation made people quite complacent – they believed politicians would take care of their interest so that they didn’t need to bother any more.
But one always have to. The world is always ruled by compromises between interests – but only the interests that are mobilized! If your interest isn’t mobilized (by the millions!) compromises will take place without you.
Power doesn’t grow from a gun only, but also from the ability to destroy handy routines. That was what forced social legislation in the North Atlantic world in the 1930s-1940s. Why not try again?
Like & Subscribe
Don’t know how it’s going to happen, but I pray for positive results.
It starts with looking in the mirror and seeing what’s really there versus what you want to be there or you think is there.
Bukowski’s The Genius of the Crowd is relevant and poignant here, especially this line. I can unequivocally, nay emphatically, proclaim that I am not feeling the love here, but then again I never expected it.
… and the best at hate are those who preach love …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUb-0N30xmQ
bruce wilder
Two truths supported by history: humans are almost as bad at designing or theorizing institutions as we are at sustaining them. What we are really remarkably good at in the end, is cheating and gaming the system, any system. Every prosocial institution is liable to end in a fatal morass of corruption.
As far as I can tell — and frankly I would welcome correction because I do not entirely like the implications of the dubious insight that I am about to share — the only source of saving grace and possibility of renewal for human prosocial institutions is the asabiyya related to intergroup (outgroup overthrowing ingroup) competition.
They say, “the fish rots from the head”, but, again, as far as I can tell, the tail is never far behind.
In terms of political philosophy, I have always been a small-L, small-D liberal democrat. And, prone to be wrong about everything in the manner of that tribe. Most especially, too sanguine about the value of centralization as a remedy for the “wrong guys” winning in local conflict and way too optimistic about the value of education and technocracy in empowering the idealism of the individual. In real political life, putting on a team jersey and reciting the pledge or prayer actually does seem to matter. Indulging the lazy wish for automatic systems is the wrong way always taken — cf AI
Hypothesis: The contempt of hypocritical, entitled liberals for populists is an expression of corrupt class self-interest.
I appreciate what L&S says about looking in the mirror, with qualification. Mirrors can show us superficial flaws on the front-facing surface, but are not that helpful in showing us the shadows we cast behind. Christians are told we are all sinners; it never seems to help much.
The in-group, out-group political partisanship synthesized for us by professional propagandists, with its conspicuous virtue-signaling and denial of reality, isn’t likely to redeem institutions approaching endstage senility. Political despair is the proper order of the day.
Feral Finster
Worrh repeating:
Representative democracy, as a practical matter, is a fraud, an exercise in passing the buck, in avoiding responsibility. Everyone in power claims to answer to and derive their authority from someone else, going ultimately back to “the people” who themselves do not directly exercise power, and who would find it difficult to exercise as a collective action problem, even if they had the formal authority to do so.
The technical term for this is a “beard”. That is, a cover for the rulers to do what they want, even though the rulers themselves and their policies all may be wildly unpopular. After all, your elected representatives approved this. If you don’t like it, you can vote for a different carefully vetted corporate imperialist muppet, so until then, shut up and fall in line!
What this means is that real power is often in the hands of unelected bureaucrats, who typically don’t even want to stand for election because they don’t want the voters to know what their programs are, much less to exercise any oversight. Robert Moses is the classic example here.
Even that minimal level of scrutiny is too much for some, and real power is often exercised by people not formally part of any government structure. Corporate lobbyists or Robert Kagan come to mind.
This is the principle advantage of a democracy over a more authoritarian system. A Lukashenko or a Xi cannot tell the public that he hears their concerns, but sorry, his hands are tied, the Parliamentary Ombudsman made a ruling that the decision has to first go to the sub-committee and then the full committee and they won’t meet until after the by-election, so sorry, he wishes he could help but there’s nothing he can do. Everyone knows who makes the decisions and where ultimate responsibility lies. Who calls the shots and where the buck stops.
Of course, heartwarming happy horseshit rhetoric aside, a Starmer or a Johnson isn’t going to let any law or procedure get in the way of something he wants, like bailing out the billionaires at the casino or an escalation of the War On Russia.
The Chinese and Canadian response to the COVID lockdown protests is most illustrative here. The Chinese government gave way to the protests. The restrictions were lifted. The Canadian government ignored every law, right and principle in putting the protests down, even their own courts said so, but somehow, nobody was punished or faced any consequences. Instead, a different corporate imperialist muppet was installed.
Feral Finster
All systems can be made to work tolerably well, if and to the extent they are run nmby non-sociopaths.
The problem is that, as a system becomes successful and accumulates power as a result, that power attracts sociopaths the way fresh dog shit draws flies.
At the same time, power is what gets things done. Even if you don’t like it or want it, once it’s there, someone will claim it, and you may not like what they do with it.
It’s a can of worms. Zymurgy’s Law Of Evolving Systems Dynamics teaches us that, once you open a can of worms, the only way to get it back in is to use a bigger can.
The upshot is – there are no answers. Only temporary expedients that fall apart once the sociopaths get a sniff, victims of their own success.
David on an Island
The state’s monopoly on violence is the core operative principle of civilized society. Most people don’t care to be forced to resort to a gunfight every time that they go to the shops or reach a 4-way intersection, so we tend to prefer this order of things. The successful state backs this monopoly on violence with legal due process. The breakdown of due process, both real and perceived, is what offends most Americans in the present moment.
I disagree with your assertion that Americans had it “more good than bad” from 1933-79. The “more good than bad” period really only lasted from about 1959-72, much of it attributable to Eisenhower and Kennedy appointing the Warren Court in order to expand due process and equal protection of law as a reaction to fascism and the Cold War. Even then, for most Americans ”more good than bad” was more a matter of hindsight than a reality. Warren improvidently announced his retirement in 1968 and in 1972 Nixon appointed Lewis Powell to the Supreme Court — and that was the end of that.
Mark Level
A very useful and thought-provoking post as usual, Ian, thank you.
Some responses, first to your short 3rd paragraph: John Steinbeck covered this point very well in the Grapes of Wrath. I referenced Dickens in the Brits Fucking Their Society into Death post; he was more reformist, thought that Christian kindness and the Confucian “Do unto others” could do the work. Sadly this usually falls short.
Listening to George Galloway as I type here, he’s talking about all the horrid, NOT elected PM’s that the Brits have, they don’t even feign “democracy” as a fig leaf anymore. And they get dogshit like Ursula Fond of Lying running the entire EU, never elected in any vote of the public, chosen for her psycho/sociopathic incompetence. First failed as the worst German “Defense” Minister ever, she gave billion$ to Pfizer (I think, could be mistaken) after Fauci’s “Gain of Function” release of Covid-19 in Wuhan Province. Somebody wanted to investigate her corruption, but she “lost” all the texts from her phone or email on the specifics, it “disappeared into thin air.”
About your 6th-7th paragraph, Russell Dobular did great reporting on his trip across E. Asia on 2 one-party states that both do great for their people: China and Vietnam. Yes, you have to be a Party-member to pull any power-levers, but something like 90% of the time they do the right thing. In the late Capitalist USA that’s not even 0.9%. And he also covered, in contrast, the Utter Hell that is Hong Kong. It still has all the Colonial names, like Prince Albert Station or whatever, it has gross economic inequality on the level of USA, Honduras, etc. He went on a tour given by a very smart woman Guide, she showed off the housing crisis there. Where he was there were tons of elderly, poor people at death’s door squatting on the street, might have an umbrella or a small tent, not quite at San Francisco levels (which I’ve seen with my own eyes) but miserable, immiserated, just waiting for a lonely, pathetic death. Meantime the housing is stacked up high (actually very ecological) and people built shanty structures atop the Skyscrapers, of course have to pay to do so, claim the small area. And it gets even worse. The “Cage Homes” were part of the tour that he filmed. In his “Russ on the Road” side-podcast for the Asian trip. So people who are young and strong with actual jobs have to buy cages to sleep in at night, pay for like an 8×8 foot space, sleep on your mattress, all your worldly belongings somewhat safe in the cage while you’re doing your 12 hour shifts. Ain’t Capitalism God’s Greatest Gift!! Now on the other hand, New York City at one time had a vibrant and powerful Squatter scene, in the 80s and 90s, Anarchist punk kids with skills (electrician, carpenter, chef like mago, etc.) would break into the unoccupied apartments of the wealthy, had metal bars etc. and would barricade against the cops entering, and fight so viciously that sometimes the cops just let them alone for months at a time. Tough to enter a building in force when there’s a 24 hour watch and the youth can drop bricks on your head as you enter, even cops have their limits, they are all cowardly as well as lazy.
Amsterdam so Socialist and Lefty during the same time period that the Authorities allowed the poor to squat if something was unoccupied, peacefully and sometimes with state support even!! Couldn’t be more different than UK, USA.
spud notes the systemic actions of the puppets who front for the Faces Never Seen, David Icke’s Lizard People, correct. Thanks to mago, yes, I was fortunate as my dad made me such a good Anti-Authoritarian. The only students who had “problems” with me were the ones with ODD, Oppositional Defiance Disorder, who wouldn’t cooperate with any teacher. Now I’m not naysaying Bob’s comment just after mago, yes, much of schooling is “the hidden curriculum”, submit like a lab rat, when the bell rings, go to class, don’t question authority, etc. I was lucky to teach (& model) the Humanities, a perfect fit for me. There was a site called “Rate My Teacher” at the time, and I got very supportive comments for the most part, thereon. The best, most concise one ever was “You be good, he’ll be good.” Do unto others, to repeat myself. I recall one angry post about me, “What’s wrong with this nerd, he’s so into History and Wars and blah, blah, blah.” Angry that I was professional, modeled my own interest in topics so it was interesting to the more engaged students. As the bumper sticker could say, If you think ignorance is easiest, leave school and try crime.” We had some bad teachers, and in the “Woke” era of 2019 and just after, the students got onto Social Media and targeted several, and some of them truly deserved it. I’ll mention one of the most egregious cases, there was a Science teacher named Corey something. Corey was a chubby, jolly guy, mostly had a good rapport with students I thought, but it emerged that, the hypocrite had attended UC Santa Cruz, the Hippie/LSD/Follow your Bliss UC Santa Cruz, whose team mascot was the Banana Slug!! So he MADE students stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance when it was read over the PA during first period!! Reprehensible!! What a hypocrite, but at least he was teaching kids to disrespect and distrust authority, which I obviously respect.
I doubt he was substantively punished, but glad he was at least exposed. The Science department was for a time run by a Fascist Power Couple, “Big Jimbo” and his wife, Debbie. When the Librarian before me did a reach-out to all staff for their favorite book and we posted reviews, Big Jimbo gave a glowing review to the corrupt Mega-Pastor Rick Warren’s “The Purpose Driven Life: What Am I Here On Earth For?” The dude a hate-filled right winger, his own gay son committed suicide due to daddy’s bullying and contempt, he funded Kill the Gays movements in Uganda because “That’s What Jesus Would Have Wanted,” etc. Big Jimbo and a little flunky he had, Jeff Jorgensen (think Eric in That 70s show, a perfect weasel) debated with the Libs before students about reelecting Obama, their argument was “He’s an insane Socialist and will destroy America.” Now he was a Socialist-for the 0.1%, no doubt but that’s not what they meant, quite the opposite. Big Jimbo thru Jeff as his pimp recruited a 2.5 decades younger woman as a teacher and then threw aside his wife Debbie for the (at first) attractive Samantha. (She gained about 90 lbs. being with a man that old, mid-50s. I don’t even wonder why.) Once he refused to do Mandatory Testing with the rest of us as he was Staff Royalty, a big mistake as a new, Black Principal had just started, and Big Jimbo’d gone in and informed him that he RAN our school site, a big mistake, he got yelled at for insubordination, rightly so. And my best friend on the staff, Brian Ortiz, who rand the Teacher’s PAC and flipped the School Board from 5 Mormons out of 5 members (not in the least representative of the Community), to 4 of 5 members friendly to teachers. He’d once been mentored by Jimbo as a youth, and even got District Teacher of the Year Award with Jimbo’s support, but hated him by that point, for his open bullying of other staff and hypocrisy. He reported via email Jimbo and Samantha’s absence during No Child’s Behind Left Testing day, they were fucking in a classroom, pretending to be “collaborating on curricula”, he was called on the Carpet. He actually reached out to me to be his Union Rep, once I’d actually gained Political Gravitas at my school and in the district, he tried to co-opt me into his Suck-ups group, I demurred. He got off with a slap on the wrist, had to write an apology letter to the teachers loaded down with extra drill-&-kill duties by his entitled arrogance and uncontrolled sex drive. Back to the Jeff character, when I deplored the Iraq war, in the midst of the Civil War and Torture, he wagged his head in faux regret, said “It’ll be all right, Mark, don’t worry, everything will be alright.” Yeah for you and your bigoted family (might be unfair here, I hope his kids rebelled against Jeff’s stupid Faux-Catholicism.) Yeah, for you and yours, piece of shit!!
Back to the Pledge of Allegiance: I can’t recall whether I stopped standing & saying it in Middle School or early High School, but I did, lived in a nice suburb of Chicago, none of my teachers ever bullied me or demanded I conform on that detail. Once I had political heft in the District, I often had to attend School Board Meetings to expose and decry certain abuses, I would stand during the pledge so as not to draw hatred or suspicion, but not say a word. A little cowardly, kind of hypocritical, we all make compromises sometime. I never made a single student say it, sometimes I would stand but say nothing, sometimes I would stay seated. (Probably depended on whether I’d had coffee yet!!) Once when the dumbest Mormon Board member came in unannounced to evaluate my teaching, I’d taught the boy who told daddy I was a dirty Commie’s older brother 2 years prior, that boy liked and respected me. The younger kid was special ed an brainwashed, fortunately when dad (known in the community for not having a real job other than schoolboard, sponged off his poor wife) came in I had just a straight coverage of particular issues, the Depression or whatever, Mr. Judson shook my hand and complimented my professionalism, no more unannounced surveillance.
I half agree with Jan Wiklund, on the “paternalistic Confucianism”, this is partially correct. Last I heard they still jail at least, and even execute the grossly looting who get caught, so good on them!! Due Diss’s Russell Dobular notes those people are rewarded here, his main example is the actual alien Gray Rick Scott, stole billions from Medicare and elders with his hospitals in Flori-duh, the biggest Medicare fraud ever known, got caught and had to pay million$ in fines, and then . . . becomes a big-power Senator, still around, hippie-punching on the poor, howling for War against Russia, etc. Bernie Madoff about the ONLY Ponzi-scheme runner during the W./Obama Admin to actually get jailed, he stole from his own (wealthy Jews) and was chosen as a single pretend cautionary example. Madoff didn’t make off with the goods!! The only other New Yorkers punished were a Chinese Family Bank, went to jail, race-targeted like Wen Ho Lee, by Obama no less. Lies that WHL was spying, hounded for decades with no supporting evidence I think even jailed for some time. “Don’t become an expert in Nuclear Science if you’re a Chink!” I think was the intended lesson.
I’m an admirer of Bukowski’s writing so will actually look into LAS’ share, to see if he’s correct or barking up the wrong tree as usual. Might get back in a future post about that. LAS very wrong on Mamdami (well, 90% anyway) he just cleared the deck of the worst Zionists and Monsters in the election recently, no less than George Galloway apologized publicly, stated he was 100% wrong on Mamdami, his show featured a repeat clip (during his short breaks) of him saying that Mamdami was an utter phony who he compared to the man pre-brainbleed-Biden plagiarized, Neal Kinnock!! Never lifted a finger to help the Brits per George, I believe him. The best laugh for me, G.G. shared that The Daily Mail or some fascist rag lamented that Dan Goldman, an extreme Zionist with oceans of blood on his hands, lost his election, and that’s Anti-Semitism!! Even though a less bloodthirsty Jew beat him!! Call Jonathan Greenblat of the ADL, call in the JDL, maybe they can firebomb the homes of voters who promoted GoldMan’s opponent (GoldMan a George jape, an easy one) online.
bruce wilder, generally good point per usual, but I will quibble. Shit mostly worked, institutions to a point (unjust and slanted, but at least had clear guardrails, to a point) when I was a youngster even in the 70s and into the 80s. But after Covid, shit went downhill fast, not quite Wile E. Coyote Plunge, more like Homer Simpson falling down a mountainside and hitting every big rock on the way down. But hey, Greenspan, burning in Hell, as Yves Smith noted recently “sent those unions a message”!! Die, slaves, you will have no dignity or food, we’ll show you.
One last George (& others) share this afternoon: the Brit Far Right baying about “2.5 million girls groomed and (g)raped in the UK last year, by Pakistani gangs,” oops there were fewer than 250 documented or alleged rape cases publicly known in that year, were the other 2.45 million girls all Religious Zealots Raptured to Heaven and memory-holed? I’ll quote Diff Clue on this one, that is some stinking KlanMAGA slop, through and through.
Finster, great comment as usual. Yes, poor Obama, his hands were tied, he never had the “chance” to enshrine Roe v. Wade permanently (a flat lie, he never lifted a finger.) Infrastructure Joe got the Chamber of Commerce $$ passed, to comfort the comfortable, he then used the scuzzbags Joe Mansion (daughter got the Monopoly on Insulin in West Virginia, raised the price 400%, killed thousands. Oh well they’re West Virginians, might’ve died of coal-dust filled lungs anyhoo). The DimmieCraps specialize in always cultivating 2-3 “Villians of the Week” to bury the Mace of Power in the Peasant’s Craniums.
On the other hand, Congress voted that Trump must leave Iran. But oops, “there are no mutual hostilities now” says the Orange Orangutan, he’s in a 60 day “Cease Fire” exemption period!! Who Watches the Watchmen? Nobody in the Executive, Judiciary or Legislative, obviously. Calvinball Rules, House always wins, gambler loses every game.
My earlier comment accords with Island David’s as I lived through that period, well the latter part. I would only add look into the Powell Memo if his post didn’t already prompt you, but I bet most on IW.Net are familiar with it. Thanks to all (even maybe LAS?) a pleasure to spend time here.
Jan Wiklund
@Feral Finster: Nothing ever work on autopilot. You always have to mobilize against adversaries, because everything in the world is decided by compromises and only the mobilized interests count.
The old rascal Jefferson said that there was a need for a revolution every generation to shake the system free from the sociopaths (no, he didn’t use that word, you do). And Trotsky called for a permanent revolution. So do I, but I call it social/popular movements. Without them society rots.
Mark Level
A great video here on the Lack of Freedom, being forced into a Cult when you are a child, by the Due Dissidence Duo, and the real reason Tulsi Gabbard resigned, not the false claim about her husband’s sudden rare “bone cancer” (true I assume, and they’re broke, they don’t even own the house they live in, karma’s a bitch). Tulsi was in Military Intelligence, a PsyOp division, thus the wild swings in her positions, she was a rabid Homophobe and Islamophobe when starting out, due to her Hindu background, then got good ratings as a Dem Rep for LGBTQ+ issues, then was a Bernie supporter but he didn’t want her around (stupid), she called out DJ Trump for being “Syria’s bitch,” (or something like that, not Russiagate) . . . Then she went anti-Woke and joined the MAGA movement, #2 at DNI, occasionally told the truth and pissed off Donny, no, Iran doesn’t have or want a Nuclear Weapon, spiteful Donny replies “I don’t care what THAT WOMAN thinks!! So if you watch the clip she was in a horrid cult, in the Philippines, and very close to the Cult Leader, learned all her tricks, rhetorical and proper use of “her eyes,” etc.
This was Due Dissidence’s first real segment yesterday and I watched it early, was in the Chat and lots of people were like “I belonged to an insane cult as a child, but I outgrew it” attempted excuses. Watch the whole segment, this story was going to break soon, just did though Ryan Grim and some others had been looking into it. I’m betting the White House Door hit her pretty ass on the way out!! Oh but Good on Her for exposing Fauci on the way out the door. Sometimes the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Link– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqqYbGpkKXk
It’s 30 minutes 14 seconds. Oh, and I thank Like and Subscribe for the Bukowski link, very short couple of minutes but generally excellent, not at all where I feared he might go. I will do a more detailed take tomorrow, too much time online today!!
mago
Since L&S lifted the last sentence from my previous comment and reacted to it I’m assuming that I’m expected to take it personally. Like, see who really are not who you think you are (with the term butt wipe implied.)
A Bukowski quote about those talking about love are the haters.
Kindness is just a concept, some kind of virtue signaling or something.
Another implied message is walk the talk; you’re a poseur.
Ok. Lots of presumption and assumptions there señor Like and Subscribe, which I’m not going to address beyond a couple of observations.
One is that along the (spiritual) path there is the notion of outer, inner and secret.
The outer might be expressed in a blog comment or with the person you share a duvet with. Now you might get to the inner with your intimate other when the walls come down.
But the secret is inner essence that you might share with your teacher if appropriate, otherwise that’s something kept ineffable and unspoken.
Second observation:
I dunno, I like most of Bukowski’s poetry especially the one about betting and winning on a dark horse and making it with a racetrack hooker, but I wouldn’t consider him a teacher or a voice to back my viewpoints.
But that’s just me as all the assholes say these days.
Like & Subscribe
… because everything in the world is decided by compromises and only the mobilized interests count.
Yet another reason everything is screwed up — compromise. Compromise, more often than not if not always, results in a dysfunctional half measure, nay quarter measure or less, solution that ultimately creates many more problems that must be resolved in the future and of course, those many problems are in turn “resolved” by the same compromising process.
Like & Subscribe
I’m not wrong about Mamdani, you are. Even if Mamdani was true and pure and not a disingenuous opportunist, it still wouldn’t matter.
https://www.fairobserver.com/politics/zohran-mamdani-hypocrisy-socialism-and-the-danger-of-elitist-politics/
We can view Mamdani as yet another charismatic young politician doing whatever he can to get ahead. However, just as people talk about white privilege, Mamdani represents brown privilege. Many of the South Asian elites send their children to the US. Typically, these elites have enjoyed all the fruits of empire but profit from railing against it. Their children and grandchildren who become Americans are dyed in the wool socialists because their families gained from this system. They also have the sense of entitlement that they, not markets, should control the commanding heights of the economy.
Along with entitlement, these inheritors of brown privilege have a sense of victimhood. They argue incessantly that they suffered against white oppressors who frequently robbed them of their language, religion, and culture. Naturally, identity politics follow. Mamdani is appealing to the poor by blaming billionaires. He is attracting LGBTQIA+ voters by supporting “gender-affirming treatments to trans youth.” Mamdani is seducing South Asian voters through slick Bollywood-inspired ads. He is drawing in Muslim votes by laying claim to his Islamic heritage.
Just to be clear, Mamdani’s family enjoyed all the fruits of the British Empire. So their railing against the empire is a little rich. Now Mamdani seeks to bring in the old spoils system that his Hindu IAS grandfather administered in India. He seeks to bring socialism to the land of capitalism, failing to answer a critical question: Why did socialism that India chose through its free will fail so spectacularly?