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Saturday, July 11, 2020

Who Should Be Shot?

As published at Unz Review, Smirking Chimp, OpEd News, TruthSeeker and LewRockwell, 7/12/20:







In a recent article, “Smashing Culture,” I briefly described a scene in Philadelphia from 30+ years ago. Sitting in McGlinchey’s, I was drinking Rolling Rock.

This trivia triggered a most curious yet telling response from a commenter, “Rolling Rock? – really? Were you listening to the Eagles too? Nice street cred attempt, but it’s either ‘While knocking back a few beers’ or ‘While drinking a Guinness’ – Rolling Rock just makes you sound like, well, another pretentious art fag.”

It never occurred to him I was simply telling the truth. To establish “street cred,” I should have come up with something way cooler. It’s all about one’s image, you see.

With social media, everyone is a microscopic celebrity, the undisputed global star on his own cellphone, so online preening has become a universal obsession. Compulsively, they make duck faces while quack quacking bon, not really, mots.

Enjoying such a fabulous virtual life, they miss out on a real one, however, so “street cred” must be established, to mask the fact that they’re never on the streets, even when they’re on the streets.

Occupy Wall Street erupted in New York on September 17th, 2011. Four days later, I took a Chinatown bus from Philly to see what’s going on, and for the duration of this movement, I kept a pretty close eye on it. Besides the Occupy camps in Manhattan and Philly, I also visited those in Harrisburg, Trenton, Atlantic City, Washington, Raleigh, Savannah and Orlando.

Living in tents like urban savages, these protesters suddenly had a tactile and smelly existence inside a community, so despite the cold, rain and absence of indoor plumbing, they were soothed. Night after night, there were no brick walls between their bodies.

Their movement fizzled out, however, because it degenerated into an endless display of narcissistic posturing, with everyone making self-important speeches about his or her pet cause, to an audience of fifty, tops, which is not how a revolution is ever made.

Had Samuel Adams showed up, he would have had to squeeze his truncated speech in between, say, an animal right manifesto and a black reparation sermon.

Still, it was fun to fancy yourself a Mao, Che or Comandante Zero, even if your thundering cosplay was immediately canceled by the next, completely unrelated yet equally forgettable, performance.

Sitting on a striped blanket, a glum, balding guy went on a hunger strike to protest “UNEMPLOYMENT, POVERTY AND CORPORATE GREED.” Ignored by all, he disappeared after a few days, apparently to stuff his face greedily.

Conceived as not just an indictment but siege of Wall Street, Occupy became a sad, stinking and incoherent skit that increasingly annoyed nearly everyone who had to work, do business or transit around their messy camps.

Though government infiltrators undoubtedly helped to fragment Occupy, most protesters gleefully went along with their own gelding, because, to them, it was never about rallying the 99% towards common goals, as they vaguely claimed, but airing minority grievances. Most importantly, they could look cool doing it.

With visual evidence uploaded onto FaceBook, Tumblr and Instagram, etc., soy boys from strip malled subdivisions could accrue street cred.

Since “Occupy Everything, Demand Nothing” became Occupy’s rallying cry, it achieved literally nothing, predictably. A month after all tents were cleared from Zuccotti Park, Time Magazine anointed “The Protester” as Person Of The Year, so for being symbolically homeless for two months, the sans cazzo got a participation lollipop from the bossman.

Since then, unscathed and smirking Wall Street has only amped up its state-of-the-art shell games, punctuated by bailouts. What’s left of the country’s wealth keeps flowing to the top.

Although Occupy Wall Street exposed widespread discontent, it was deftly tamed by the state, without addressing any of the issues raised. Worsened economic malaise is papered over with fake news and statistics. Unable to afford even an efficiency, the young and not so young resignedly or bitterly move back home. I’m sure you know a few.

Beneath each basement, there’s another, even darker and danker, Americans kept discovering, so they just had to suck it up and simmer on, when not overdosing on opioids. It’s the new normal.

Occupy Wall Street protesters were mostly under-35-year-old whites, with at least some college education. Now, the same demographic is back on the streets, but instead of chanting for economic justice and representing, at least in theory, the 99%, they’re fighting Fascism and racism. With their inclusive definitions of such sins, however, they’re warring against most of the country.

It’s never been easier to be tagged as a Fascist. If you don’t think or feel correctly on all woke issues, you’re a Fascist, and of course, you’re a Fascist to the degree that you’re against antifa.

When it comes to sex, binarism is evil, for there’s no male or female, just endlessly calibrated genital transmogrification, if only in your gender fluid, intersexual mind, but with politics, binary thinking is uber kosher. If you’re not up-to-date woke, you’re a Fascist.

On August 14th, 2018, CNN reeducated us, “There is no national antifa group. It is mostly made up of people who are far left of center, who make it their mission to battle Fascists, racists and alt right extremists.” It’s a grassroot, homegrown resistance to hate, that’s all. “Behind the masks are people from all walks of life, artist, mom, ordinary American, as well as anarchist.” Four most gentle faces were shown.

On June 16th, 2020, CNN reemphasized that antifa was a belief system that unified all anti-Fascists, whatever their color, age or background, so how could you be against it, unless you’re a Fascist?! A burly, genial black man explained, “It basically means that you are against Fascism. If you are against Fascism, then you are antifa.”

In a BLACK LIVES MATTER muscle-T, a white wuss added, “Antifa is not a group. It’s not like everybody sits in, like, some basement, talking about how to overthrow the Fascist regime. I walked around picking up trash yesterday, behind the protesters. That’s what antifa looks like.”

Burly black guy, “White people have to be involved in fighting racism, in fighting white supremacy […] But if you are a white ally, remember that you still have to follow the lead of people of color.”

The New York Times and Washington Post have also written sympathetically about antifa. When the corporate media give you a positive spin, it must mean you’re serving the establishment. Mussolini had his Blackshirts, Hitler his Brownshirts and Mao his Red Guards. America’s rulers have antifa.

Far from threatening the 1%, antifa sows dissension among the 99%. Ignoring Wall Street, antifa trashes one Main Street after another.

Zealously branding its enemies as racist or Fascist, antifa generates more racism and Fascism.

Slammed by the economic crisis of 2008, Americans started to look more closely at Wall Street, Goldman Sachs and the Federal Reserve, etc., and they were enlightened by people like Ron Paul and Matt Taibbi.

In Rolling Stone, Taibbi wrote, “The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it’s everywhere. The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.”

Banksters were scrutinized with increasing intensity. It was in this climate that Occupy Wall Street was born.

Not quite nine years later, almost no one is talking about banksters, incredibly, although the country has been plunged into a much worse economic hell, with millions suddenly laid off, and millions of mom and pops permanently ruined. Thanks to another monster bailout, only Wall Street is doing well.

Broke and enraged, mobs swarm American streets, but instead of targeting those who are imploding their society, they pull down statues, break windows, deface walls, loot stores and attack cops or each other.

When your tyrants can’t even be identified, much less found, no coup, uprising or revolution is possible, and it’s pointless to assassinate an American president, since he is but a puppet, so who should be shot?

The month I was born, two presidents were killed. Though Ngo Dinh Diem has often been caricatured as an American puppet, he obviously broke his strings, or he wouldn’t have been shot. Kennedy, too, went off script. His death was a warning. It works.

American elections are cathartic farces. Drawn out and elaborately staged, they’re designed to give false hopes and stoke emotions. With the national mood already so volatile and foul, however, this year’s balloting promises to be a horror show. Unable to aim at their oppressors, Americans will be reduced to shooting each other.






.

10 comments:

Rudy said...

Hi Linh,

Street cred…

I have no phone - no smart phone or old fashioned cell phone (I don't know how to turn one on). I know how to use old dial up landline phones, but haven't had one, or even seen one for well over a decade.

Destroying statues to snuff out history…

Wandering around Nimrud in 1976 I came across a project to reconstruct a stone wall of cuneiform writing. I found a chunk that had been part of the wall, and was likely meant eventually to be part of its reconstruction, but never will be, because I stole it. Through the years guilt about that sometimes troubled me, and before the war that destroyed Iraq I fantasized about returning to give it back. But when Nimrud was bombed to bits by Isis, or whoever really did that, I felt pardoned by destiny, in that maybe I have the only remaining relic of that once majestic wall.

Later on, kicking around in the ruins of a Babylonian reconstruction project I came across a clay brick like thing that appeared to have some lexical inscription stamped on one side. When I got back to Birmingham I showed it to Alasdair Livingstone, who was then in high school, I think, or maybe university. Merely glancing, he immediately said, I know what that is, ran upstairs, retrieved a book and showed me a hand drawn representation of it. He then translated the inscription. At this remove I have no chance of exactly recalling anything, but what reassembles from remaining fragments of memory goes something like this:
"I am Nebuchadnezzar, king of kings, king of all you can see, king of everything."

When I returned to the U.S. in 1986, I gave those two shards of history to my brother for safe keeping. I'm pretty sure he still has them.

Does that give me any cred at all? :-)

Lola Babalon said...

Much appreciation for your insight and good work,

eahilf said...

American elections are cathartic farces.

Actually they're the very opposite of cathartic -- but they are farces.

Linh Dinh said...

Hey eahilf,

You can disagree with me without implying I don't even know the meaning of cathartic. Don't be such an asshole, eh?

Asshole has a range of meanings, which you also disagreed with. Here, I clearly mean jerk.


Linh

Patricia said...

Rudy,
Fascinating! Yes, tons of cred, at least to me.

Patricia

eahilf said...

Hey Linh Dinh,

Logic is apparently not your strong point -- since elections in the US are today in no way cathartic, it was not unreasonable to assume/suspect you did not know the meaning or appropriate use of the word -- also, English is not your first language (albeit you write in English at a high level, and deserve credit for that).

A perfect example is, I think rather obviously, the 2016 election, which only heightened existing tensions -- it magnified the growing differences, and this discord will no doubt reach a new crescendo as the 2020 election approaches, and not abate afterward -- this is, I think also rather obviously, the exact opposite of an election being a catharsis.

Definitely a farce, but not a catharsis.

You can call me whatever you want; firstly because I'm a man, and secondly because I'm not the kind of guy who thinks there is necessarily anything wrong with ad hominem -- but the fact you are so touchy about it may indicate, as some might say, that "the truth hurts".

eahilf said...

@Rudy

Does that give me any cred at all? :-)

Just to enlighten me: what kind of "cred" are you looking for? -- in my view, a man earns "cred" by striving to learn, and by leading, or trying to lead, a life of integrity and accomplishment.

How do your anecdotes relate to that?

Linh Dinh said...

Hi eahilf,

Again, you display your arrogance and rigidity. Here you are lecturing Rudy... You are a humorless bore.

Please do us all a favor and don't visit this blog any more. I have work to do and don't need the distraction.

Thank you,


Linh

Rudy said...

Enlighten? Sorry jimmy. I would never attempt to convince a clever man, let alone a fool, that the earth isn't flat. You're on ignore now.

Rudy said...

Hi Patricia,

Thank you.

It's not clear to me what I'd intended when I started writing that, but I think it had to do with the fact that a simple thread, drinking beer for example, can connect together enormous variations in conditions of one's life. I've drunk a fair amount of beer with Linh and know that he's not fastidious about what's available. His saying Rolling Rock suggested that some detailed recollection - mundane or otherwise, it doesn't matter - was involved, something that might interest me. Then along comes some jerk spouting snide irrelevant doubting remarks. Linh patiently corrects him with the observation that apparently simple truth doesn't establish "street cred".

That, and whatever else was going on inside my head, cascaded, and I wound up wondering what truthful account I could relate that might cause a similar reaction and also be of interest.

Playing with dynamite at age 12? Nah.

Climbing two of the three big volcanoes in Mexico, summiting one and failing on the other, because altitude had robbed reason from one guy who just wanted to lie down in the snow and sleep, and who, if left alone, would have frozen to death? Nah.

I settled on Nimrud, because most people don't know of it, where it is, it's ancient history, and that a few years ago it was destroyed by weapons of modern warfare during the endless war on terror that was orchestrated by Israel and spawned by the 9/11 false flag event.