Saturday, September 20
Raging Against Elite Amerika's Police State
Those who have put out the peoples eyes, reproach them of their blindness.--John Milton, 1642
This is not the country in which I was born.
At the end of the Reagan presidency in the late 1980s, Noam Chomsky articulated some of the "necessary illusions" seeded throughout the US media by a small but financially and politically powerful elite--those parters centered in New York and London--for "manufacturing consent" among the masses of their social and economic inferiors.
But George W. Bush and Dick Cheney prefer that their variety of fascist thought control operates less covertly, more in the open. Their most recent expression of their more overt social control: The police violence in St. Paul during the GOP national convention.
But how about a little cultural context? Below is a trailer posted at LiveLeak.com for the disturbing homegrown documentary Brutal Reality: Rise of the Police State, released July 2008.
So? You ask, White Middle America, "What's the point?" Well, there is one.
After many of white Minnesotan's children experienced preemptive police violence, i.e, violence without provocation*, (and here but especially here) at the Republican National Convention the first of this month, they now are better positioned to appreciate black males' gale-force resentment of American law enforcement.
Angry Black Man representative Ice Cube lights it up.
And the fabulous Marylin Mason has updated the song "Sweet Dreams" by Annie Lennox and the Euryhmics for evolving post-9/11 American sensibilities.
In closing, I have this election note for my fellow Amerikans come November: Vote early and often--and get out of the country.
---
*In 2007, Canadian law enforcement demonstrated how they've refined the process of arresting peaceful demonstrations by having disguised officers infiltrate their numbers and, biblically speaking, "cast the first stone."
Related: And for the more articulate among us, click here for a white rocker (of but a handful, black or white) whose creative vision helps me appreciate more fully the 2st-century Amerikan Dream.
And this music video by RATM (Rage Against the Machine) will help us sleep in the fire that consumes us.
This is not the country in which I was born.
At the end of the Reagan presidency in the late 1980s, Noam Chomsky articulated some of the "necessary illusions" seeded throughout the US media by a small but financially and politically powerful elite--those parters centered in New York and London--for "manufacturing consent" among the masses of their social and economic inferiors.
But George W. Bush and Dick Cheney prefer that their variety of fascist thought control operates less covertly, more in the open. Their most recent expression of their more overt social control: The police violence in St. Paul during the GOP national convention.
But how about a little cultural context? Below is a trailer posted at LiveLeak.com for the disturbing homegrown documentary Brutal Reality: Rise of the Police State, released July 2008.
So? You ask, White Middle America, "What's the point?" Well, there is one.
After many of white Minnesotan's children experienced preemptive police violence, i.e, violence without provocation*, (and here but especially here) at the Republican National Convention the first of this month, they now are better positioned to appreciate black males' gale-force resentment of American law enforcement.
Angry Black Man representative Ice Cube lights it up.
And the fabulous Marylin Mason has updated the song "Sweet Dreams" by Annie Lennox and the Euryhmics for evolving post-9/11 American sensibilities.
In closing, I have this election note for my fellow Amerikans come November: Vote early and often--and get out of the country.
---
*In 2007, Canadian law enforcement demonstrated how they've refined the process of arresting peaceful demonstrations by having disguised officers infiltrate their numbers and, biblically speaking, "cast the first stone."
Related: And for the more articulate among us, click here for a white rocker (of but a handful, black or white) whose creative vision helps me appreciate more fully the 2st-century Amerikan Dream.
And this music video by RATM (Rage Against the Machine) will help us sleep in the fire that consumes us.
