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Immunity and Impunity in Elite America: How the Legal System Was Deep-Sixed and Occupy Wall Street Swept the Land
As intense protests spawned by Occupy Wall Street continue to grow, it is worth asking: Why now? The answer is not obvious. After all, severe income and wealth inequality have long plagued the United States. In fact, it could reasonably be claimed that this form of inequality is part of the design of the American founding -- indeed, an integral part of it.
Income inequality has worsened over the past several years and is at its highest level since the Great Depression. This is not, however, a new trend. Income inequality has been growing at rapid rates for three decades. As journalist Tim Noah described the process:
“During the late 1980s and the late 1990s, the United States experienced two unprecedentedly long periods of sustained economic growth -- the ‘seven fat years’ and the ‘long boom.’ Yet from 1980 to 2005, more than 80% of total increase in Americans' income went to the top 1%. Economic growth was more sluggish in the aughts, but the decade saw productivity increase by about 20%. Yet virtually none of the increase translated into wage growth at middle and lower incomes, an outcome that left many economists scratching their heads.”
The 2008 financial crisis exacerbated the trend, but not radically: the top 1% of earners in America have been feeding ever more greedily at the trough for decades.
In addition, substantial wealth inequality is so embedded in American political culture that, standing alone, it would not be sufficient to trigger citizen rage of the type we are finally witnessing. The American Founders were clear that they viewed inequality in wealth, power, and prestige as not merely inevitable, but desirable and, for some, even divinely ordained. Jefferson praised “the natural aristocracy” as “the most precious gift of nature” for the “government of society.” John Adams concurred: “It already appears, that there must be in every society of men superiors and inferiors, because God has laid in the… course of nature the foundation of the distinction.”
Not only have the overwhelming majority of Americans long acquiesced to vast income and wealth disparities, but some of those most oppressed by these outcomes have cheered it loudly. Americans have been inculcated not only to accept, but to revere those who are the greatest beneficiaries of this inequality.
In the 1980s, this paradox -- whereby even those most trampled upon come to cheer those responsible for their state -- became more firmly entrenched. That’s because it found a folksy, friendly face, Ronald Reagan, adept at feeding the populace a slew of Orwellian clichés that induced them to defend the interests of the wealthiest. “A rising tide,” as President Reagan put it, “lifts all boats.” The sum of his wisdom being: it is in your interest when the rich get richer.
Implicit in this framework was the claim that inequality was justified and legitimate. The core propagandistic premise was that the rich were rich because they deserved to be. They innovated in industry, invented technologies, discovered cures, created jobs, took risks, and boldly found ways to improve our lives. In other words, they deserved to be enriched. Indeed, it was in our common interest to allow them to fly as high as possible because that would increase their motivation to produce more, bestowing on us ever greater life-improving gifts.
We should not, so the thinking went, begrudge the multimillionaire living behind his 15-foot walls for his success; we should admire him. Corporate bosses deserved not our resentment but our gratitude. It was in our own interest not to demand more in taxes from the wealthiest but less, as their enhanced wealth -- their pocket change -- would trickle down in various ways to all of us.
This is the mentality that enabled massive growth in income and wealth inequality over the past several decades without much at all in the way of citizen protest. And yet something has indeed changed. It’s not that Americans suddenly woke up one day and decided that substantial income and wealth inequality are themselves unfair or intolerable. What changed was the perception of how that wealth was gotten and so of the ensuing inequality as legitimate.
Many Americans who once accepted or even cheered such inequality now see the gains of the richest as ill-gotten, as undeserved, as cheating. Most of all, the legal system that once served as the legitimizing anchor for outcome inequality, the rule of law -- that most basic of American ideals, that a common set of rules are equally applied to all -- has now become irrevocably corrupted and is seen as such.
While the Founders accepted outcome inequality, they emphasized -- over and over -- that its legitimacy hinged on subjecting everyone to the law’s mandates on an equal basis. Jefferson wrote that the essence of America would be that “the poorest laborer stood on equal ground with the wealthiest millionaire, and generally on a more favored one whenever their rights seem to jar.” Benjamin Franklin warned that creating a privileged legal class would produce “total separation of affections, interests, political obligations, and all manner of connections” between rulers and those they ruled. Tom Paine repeatedly railed against “counterfeit nobles,” those whose superior status was grounded not in merit but in unearned legal privilege.
After all, one of their principal grievances against the British King was his power to exempt his cronies from legal obligations. Almost every Founder repeatedly warned that a failure to apply the law equally to the politically powerful and the rich would ensure a warped and unjust society. In many ways, that was their definition of tyranny.
Americans understand this implicitly. If you watch a competition among sprinters, you can accept that whoever crosses the finish line first is the superior runner. But only if all the competitors are bound by the same rules: everyone begins at the same starting line, is penalized for invading the lane of another runner, is barred from making physical contact or using performance-enhancing substances, and so on.
If some of the runners start ahead of others and have relationships with the judges that enable them to receive dispensation for violating the rules as they wish, then viewers understand that the outcome can no longer be considered legitimate. Once the process is seen as not only unfair but utterly corrupted, once it’s obvious that a common set of rules no longer binds all the competitors, the winner will be resented, not heralded.
That catches the mood of America in 2011. It may not explain the Occupy Wall Street movement, but it helps explain why it has spread like wildfire and why so many Americans seem instantly to accept and support it. As was not true in recent decades, the American relationship with wealth inequality is in a state of rapid transformation.
It is now clearly understood that, rather than apply the law equally to all, Wall Street tycoons have engaged in egregious criminality -- acts which destroyed the economic security of millions of people around the world -- without experiencing the slightest legal repercussions. Giant financial institutions were caught red-handed engaging in massive, systematic fraud to foreclose on people’s homes and the reaction of the political class, led by the Obama administration, was to shield them from meaningful consequences. Rather than submit on an equal basis to the rules, through an oligarchical, democracy-subverting control of the political process, they now control the process of writing those rules and how they are applied.
Today, it is glaringly obvious to a wide range of Americans that the wealth of the top 1% is the byproduct not of risk-taking entrepreneurship, but of corrupted control of our legal and political systems. Thanks to this control, they can write laws that have no purpose than to abolish the few limits that still constrain them, as happened during the Wall Street deregulation orgy of the 1990s. They can retroactively immunize themselves for crimes they deliberately committed for profit, as happened when the 2008 Congress shielded the nation’s telecom giants for their role in Bush’s domestic warrantless eavesdropping program.
It is equally obvious that they are using that power not to lift the boats of ordinary Americans but to sink them. In short, Americans are now well aware of what the second-highest-ranking Democrat in the Senate, Illinois’s Dick Durbin, blurted out in 2009 about the body in which he serves: the banks “frankly own the place.”
If you were to assess the state of the union in 2011, you might sum it up this way: rather than being subjected to the rule of law, the nation’s most powerful oligarchs control the law and are so exempt from it; and increasing numbers of Americans understand that and are outraged. At exactly the same time that the nation’s elites enjoy legal immunity even for egregious crimes, ordinary Americans are being subjected to the world's largest and one of its harshest penal states, under which they are unable to secure competent legal counsel and are harshly punished with lengthy prison terms for even trivial infractions.
In lieu of the rule of law -- the equal application of rules to everyone -- what we have now is a two-tiered justice system in which the powerful are immunized while the powerless are punished with increasing mercilessness. As a guarantor of outcomes, the law has, by now, been so completely perverted that it is an incomparably potent weapon for entrenching inequality further, controlling the powerless, and ensuring corrupted outcomes.
The tide that was supposed to lift all ships has, in fact, left startling numbers of Americans underwater. In the process, we lost any sense that a common set of rules applies to everyone, and so there is no longer a legitimizing anchor for the vast income and wealth inequalities that plague the nation.
That is what has changed, and a growing recognition of what it means is fueling rising citizen anger and protest. The inequality under which so many suffer is not only vast, but illegitimate, rooted as it is in lawlessness and corruption. Obscuring that fact has long been the linchpin for inducing Americans to accept vast and growing inequalities. That fact is now too glaring to obscure any longer.
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105 Comments so far
Show AllNeither Mao, Stalin or Hitler had pubicly claimed the Right to exrajudicially execute anyone , anyplace, anytime as has OilyBomber.
I love GG, but have to say this rant about the eschewing of the rule of law (which, of course, is dead on) makes his position on 9-11 (which seems to mirror Chomsky's) somewhat incongruous.
Cheney and company murdered those people in the towers. Anyone who has taken the time to look knows this. Think for one second about those people who chose to jump rather than burn. If we do not find the political will to get justice for these people, then how in the hell are we ever going to restore the rule of law.
And again, it is the opportunity of a lifetime. Staring this truth in the face, even the Tea partiers would take their rightful place among the '99%'.
Indeed, secret law places lawmakers and law enforcers above the law. But as regards the American history (leaving aside the world history) the rule of law applying to the enforcers, we might want to recollect the brazen assassinations and feeble excuses and patsies conjured up for Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, John Kennedy, and well before these James Forrestal.
Some have wondered about FDR's death since world history would have unfolded much differently if he had lived just another six months ... or else the corporate attorneys directing the battlefield action would have delayed the defeat of the Axis until "that man" was dead to keep their clients out of the docket at Nuremburg.
Don't leave out John Lennon and, even though he is the darling of the establishment conservatives, the attempt on Reagan. No one ever discusses that the man who shot Reagan was a close friend of the Bush family and a result of the attempt was the vast increase of the power of the V.P. Bush, former CIA chief, in the administration.
If the Occupy Movement actually becomes something powerful enough to threaten the status quo, then, if it is true that 9-11 was an inside job, we will have another 'terrorist attack.'
Reflecting on your comment, I have to agree.
It seems that agent provocateurs have not succeeded here. Nor has decapitation and demonisation of the leaders (since there are none to decapitate and demonise).
Given the past, they are no doubt conspiring another false flag as we speak, and this time it will be used to justify cleaning up mobs. People should be told to expect something. Doing so might just lessen its effectiveness.
University of New Mexico's excuse for evicting Unoccupy Albuquerque Encampment ( who are in solidarity with OWS), is the fact that a 48year old "homeless" man made a lounge with a knife at some Unoccupiers. Agent provocatuer?
I have just read that concrete used for nuclear power plant cooling towers has withstood test impacts from F4 jet aircraft. This suggests that we can expect a Piper Cub will smash a massive hole into such a cooling tower, triggering a dirty explosion, and FEMA and NIST will find that concrete is not as impervious to impact as previously believed -- so, you know, bunkers and Cheyenne Mountain and all that will have to be downrated....
".... severe income and wealth inequality have long plagued the United States. In fact, it could reasonably be claimed that this form of inequality is part of the design of the American founding -- indeed, an integral part of it."
Bravo!!!!! Indeed, the 1787 constitution creates a political aristocracy from the already existing economic aristocracy, which is plain as day when reading that document. Thus my contention that the populace at large venerates the writ and its composers which enslaves them through very extensive indoctrination--the primary reason "severe income and wealth inequality have long plagued the United States." But even here, few have read or understood the basic facts of history contirbuting to our oppression I often outline. Perhaps now, some will understand the deepseated nature of our problem and just how far "change" must reach.
I have since gone to Salon and discovered in today's essay Greenwald includes links to some published excerpts, http://www.salon.com/2011/10/25/book_excerpt_with_liberty_and_justice_for_some/singleton/ and
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/glenn-greenwald/too-big-to-jail-_b_1030388.html
Some may also want to read the into to this particular essay at tomdispatch, which provides a few other important points, http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175458/
The original idea in the Constitution was for the elite to appoint a President who'd be like a monarch and serve for life with the elite reaffirming his position every four years or removing him if they felt they needed to. That's why originally the V.P was their second choice, always in waiting as the heir apparent.
Two things changed this. First was that the first man they chose happened to be George Washington who did something no one ever expected and walked away from power after two terms rather than staying and dying in office. This precedent was so powerful in the American psyche that it up ended the founders intent.
The second and more important thing was Jefferson's Republican Revolution of 1800 that took away the power of the elite at the state level and changed the electoral college from an appointed elite who'd select the President into a body elected by the citizens of the state to ratify their choice.
If Washington had cooperated with the founders' intent and set a different precedent and if the Republican Revolution had failed then we might have quite a different list of Presidents.
Washington 1789-1799
John Adams 1799-1826
John Quincy Adams 1826-1848
Charles Francis Adams Sr. 1848-1886
Charles Francis Adams Jr. 1886-1915
Charles Francis Adams III 1915-1954
Charles Francis Adams IV 1954-1999
Charles Francis Adams V 1999-present
As usual, Greenwald cogently states his positions, with which I agree. But also as usual, he omits one dimension of the problem. Blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans are second class citizens by almost any measure: wealth, income, environmental quality, educational attainment, social status, interaction with the criminal justice system, and so on. I see no reason that this has to be so, just as the inequalities the founders accepted, to which Greenwald rightly alludes, aren't required by nature.
Racial and ethnic inequality, a result of current discrimination and the effects of past discrimination, is an important part of our national misfortune. The problems Greenwald addresses won't be solved unless we eliminate current racial and ethnic discrimination and correct for the damage done by our long history of such discrimination.
Excellent point. And the failure of the Founders to abolish slavery was based on the doctrine of property rights and enforced by the clout of wealthy Southern land owners - it comes out of a capitalist mindset and philosophy.
I'm posting before reading the other posts (so the comment I wish to share may have already been related), and would first say that I adore Mr. Greenwald and think he's one of the finest, most principled legal minds of our times. Still, he views the OWS phenomenon through his favored prism, that of equal justice before The Law. I think it may be about that, but what's missing from his analysis is the economic factor. While income inequities may not be anything new, it IS true that more wealth has aggregated into fewer and fewer hands lately, and that:
1. Massive numbers of once fine jobs have been shipped overseas
2. Massive figures (in the way of ) home equity have been expunged relatively overnight
3. Job prospects for all those offspring expensively educated are drying up
4. The abuses of the natural world are summoning very real ecological forms of blowback, weather events that have already impacted millions of people through compromised health, or threats to their homes and businesses
5. There is no privacy, and citizens are presumed guilty until proven innocent
6. Regardless of the issue (war, bailing out the banks, the fraud dressed up as Health Care Reform), majority preference is entirely bypassed by elected officials who are instead sworn to their big money sponsors.
7. Public ed has been turned into a virtual behavior mod garrison, not that different from the prison system, itself.
8. War is taking the $ out of the federal budget that is needed for programs that benefit communities. (How many see less library hours, more crowded classrooms, more fees for all sorts of invented reasons?)
So, just as the protests began in Tunisia over the increasing cost of foodstuffs, Amerikans see the distance between their paychecks and what they can now afford to purchase, and THEREIN lies the real rub.
The false bases for law enforcement, the endless wars, the lying politicians are ALL factors, but we should not forget that the basic standard of living (that which now reflects evident 3rd world features) has touched millions already... this is the rising tide that poses the most immediate threat. And it explains why people are beginning to say, "Enough!"
"Siouxrose"
You make a very good point.
It seems most people are willing to turn a blind eye to legalized corruption (?) as long as it doesn't significantly affect their own economic situation. When I read this article I was so relieved by the clarity of his assessment (that the corporate criminal class members are no longer even pretending to be a nation of laws) that I didn't catch the significance of the point you make.
Increasingly, the laws have been the servants of the economics and the whole fabric of our lives has unravelled (so that the threads could be accumulated by a few) to such a state that now more and more of us are feeling the coldness of our situation.
The facts that you state are an indictment of the sorry character of the people of this nation - that a great majority of people are willing to ignore how the law is used until it has an economic effect on them. This awareness and accuracy must be alive if there is to be real change.
Thank you.
BIRD BRAIN: I don't believe in the "selfish gene" theory at all; yet it's clear that much of America exists behind locked doors or gated communities. If you've ever walked down a beach early in the morning or close to sunset, and watched the crabs come out of their little hiding places, claws held high as defense, you observe something that works metaphorically in depicting the "soul" of our nation. Our nation, as entity, formed on July 4 which posits it under the sign of Cancer, the crab. And what a crab clutches onto, it does not easily release. It also lives inside its own organic walls, of a sort. In a selfish way, it protects its own interests.
It IS a shame that too few Americans have been riled up by the wars that have cost other lands (and their peoples) so much. However, the fact that the media moguls sanitized the truth plays heavily into this "response gap." Can you imagine if all those who get inspired by protecting unborn Amerikan fetuses were shown footage of pregnant women pulverized, or newborn babies burned with DU or a related chemical?
In astrology, Cancer represents the stomach--and thus the food we require to nourish ourselves. It also signifies the domain of the HOME and family. Personal homes and/or home ownership is the nation's unsung mantra. And through "Family Values" an inordinate amount of authoritarian conditioning takes place. If one's father, uncles, and brothers all sign up for "serving" in the military, that family tradition carries weight. So here, live and in color, we witness the Biblical adage in that "The sins of the fathers will be visited upon the sons."
Only a fearless moral reckoning that OWNS "the shadow" will put a stop to the war machine and the underlying psychology that rationalizes aggression towards designated (make-believe) enemies as a viable means to state-craft, and/or justification for arming a nation (and through it, the world) to the teeth... sure sign that more wars will invariably follow.
The BALANCE is off, and U.S. citizens have been increasingly taught to see violence, vengeance, and inverted vigilance as necessities and virtues. Eisenhower warned us... right now a lot of people feel threatened, their security is no longer certain; and therefore a visceral sense that power has betrayed them is moving through the land like a subtle drum beat felt below the surface of the usual deadening din.
"Siouxrose"
It's interesting that you mention the need to own the shadow. Recently, I have been under the weather and lying in bed watching the play of light and shadow. I was thinking about the balance between the degrees of both and how we recognize everything we see based upon how light and shadow define our world.
At first, my thoughts were of an artistic and optical application, but as I was carried along by the glass of the window, the patterns of the leaves, and the movements, my thoughts became of a more political nature. This was when I began thinking that it comes down to how we focus (or not) and how there has been an usurpation of perspective.
Most things look pretty dark when you are being deliberately blinded by someone else's light shining in your face.
We need to remember that there can be relief from the glare in the shadows and relief from the uncertainty in the light. Both are necessary, as you say, in balance.
Thoreau's quote about the mass of men leading live's of quiet desperation has always seemed to sort of sum it up for me, but I don't think the desperation has been so quiet since the late 19th Century.
Bird: Great response! Actually, when I mentioned "the shadow" I was imparting a premise gotten from Carl Jung. The idea is that what people disown in themselves (say violence), they often will "meet" through projection. I remember hearing boys who probably thought they weren't masculine enough call everyone else "gay." It's a way of getting the attention off one's self, in theory. And it reminds me of the way the US elites scream "terrorist" at ANY civilian force that tries to stand up to The Machine, and/or The grueling engines of Empire. Here we are, a nation that never owned THE SHADOW of what it did to human life in dropping atomic bombs; and instead of entering into a reflective period and vowing NEVER to initiate such calamity against its neighbors ever again, instead it has gone on a path of developing yet more intensive versions of this form of death & horror. In order to cover its own dark tracks, it must invent enemies "out there."
I remember decades ago when the US was known for genuine humanitarian acts, although I was not aware of the exposures made by Smedley Butler & John Perkins at that time. Evidently most alleged humanitarian initiatives were the fig leaves used as cover to hide the deeper capitalistic agendas being served or seeded. Nonetheless, with the US arming the world via amoral groups like Carlyle, only to PRETEND to serve as the globe's peace keeping force, suggests its own tale of tragedy.
Most of us in this forum understand that the end of The Cold War meant that there SHOULD have been a peace dividend and wholesale scaling back of militarism, beginning with closing some of the foreign bases planted all over the globe. Instead, the 911 matter just "happened" to take place to put this idea of TERRORISM front and central. The necessary new enemy was born! Plus the scatttershot nature of terrorism, the implication that it could happen to you and your family at a train station or even during a church visit made many people agreeable to the notion that IT had to be stopped. At any cost. Enter the police state which not so coincidentally is spreading 'round the globe. Today's CD article on FIJI is rather chilling.
Of course if Amerika, acting as imperial agent, enters other lands to steal their resources and people attempt to fight back, to frame THAT response as terrorism is most convenient, and equally false. The control of media means that many who finance (through their taxes) these murderous exploits never question the logic or honesty behind their purpose. The liars get to frame modern history through their control of media, and new attempts at controlling public education.
In any case, The Shadow has been fed through countless dark deeds and now it's begun to cannibalize its own by devouring US cities, leaving children homeless, those in medical need going without... and still the millionaires use their media clout to reinforce to a still naive public that this IS reality, how the business of the world operates, and all that is possible. After all, they claim, having raided the public's trust fund to finance the banksters' gambles and wars of opportunism, there's nothing left in the public's piggy bank. YOU will have to go without.
Meanwhile the mystics, poets, and teacher-souls paint the portrait of something else entirely, and do what they can to cast light on the otherwise dark cave shadows. What is to come relies upon the New Vision... "2020, a balanced vision based on equal input from both the Masculine and Feminine forces of the manifest world.
The law is an adroit mixture of customs that are beneficial to society, and could be followed even if no law existed, and others that are of advantage to a ruling minority, but harmful to the masses of men, and can be enforced on them only by terror. ~Peter Kropotkin, Words of a Rebel
Laws: We know what they are, and what they are worth! They are spider webs for the rich and mighty, steel chains for the poor and weak, fishing nets in the hands of the government. ~Pierre Joseph Proudhon, quoted in The Match!
And one of the most tyrannical of laws, the legal tender laws, continues to enslave our nation for the 1%.
Brilliant article that sums up nicely the attitude of the 99% in this country. To me it is worth mentioning 1 thing that allowed the curtain to be pulled back and the corruption to be exposed was and is the internet. We are able to share experiences and observations that was not possible in the past as it was filtered through corporate media and we were only allowed the information deemed worthy by the powers that be. This is why net neutrality is so important right now. We must not allow this medium to be censored as it is currently one of the few places the truth can be aired. Many people complain about the ease of falsifying information on the net but it is our duty to weed out the nonsense. And have you read a paper lately. Apparently the net is not the only place that has this problem
serfdumb, Oct 25 2011 - 2:38pm -- Extremely important point! Thanks.
As Balzac pointed out: "Behind every great fortune is a crime." It would thus be simple justice to confiscate the ill-gotten gains of anyone with a net worth of, say, $250,000,000. (I'm willing to negotiate the figure but not the policy.)
If inequality itself, vs just a sense of unfairness, has lost (or loses) its legitamacy, then we have undergone a paradigm change, and the future will be a painful period of the working out of that change through our institutions and our minds.
If that change is not now underway, there are two other phenomena out there, our global siblings and ecological realities, that in the not to distant future will conspire to bring the change to us.
Re. Glenn Greenwald's article, the condition that he presents as accounting
for Americans' anger is that the concentrated wealth comprises ill-gotten gains,
not in any way earned. Cf. Tom Paine's "counterfeit nobles". We know that
the wealthy " ... control the law," and not the law's controlling them. It is a
devilish contrivance, and the devil is in the details -- that is, the details of a
long-tolerated fashioning of corporations as people, and as such enjoying the
protections of the Bill of Rights, just as though they were real people. Indeed,
as the then (Supreme Court) Justice Felix Frankfurter declared in the 1940's
-- and as David Morris quoted in a CommonDreams article on Oct. 7, 2011 --
"Artificial or not, corporations have won more rights under law than people
have -- rights which government has protected with armed force." The devilish
favoritism toward banks and financial institutions originated with the favoritism
toward corporations. Banks and financial institutions are corporations, and so
they partake of the protections in the Bill of Rights, (admittedly unjustifiably)
but nevertheless moreso than real people do. Corporations as people were
foisted upon us (long ago, and nowadays even more powerfully) by clever
lawyers and beholden judges.
Let the natural-born people look into the falsely derived privileges of the
corporations -- and put SOME limits on THEM -- and we will achieve a
"redress of grievances" which we deserve regarding big bank's unfairly
gathering and accumulating grotesque wealth.
"aequum"
As far as I know, neither "corporation" nor "democracy" are mentioned in the Constitution of the United States.
That said, the fact stands out even stronger how
corporations are given more power than the people and
it is at the expense of any semblance of democracy.
It has been proposed that the Commerce Clause and other parts of the Constitution create corporate control of the economy.
"glenn ford"
It would be nice if there was a separation of government from commercial control and a return to adult supervision of commerce.
For me there is no doubt that mayors who send their police forces to break up protests and arrest protesters on the grounds that the protesters violate city ordinances violate the first amendment of our constitution which forbids them to make laws that "abridge the rights of the people peaceably to assemble and voice their grievances". I also hold that forbidding the use of megaphones etc. to "petition for a redress of grievances" is another violation of our constitution which does not say "how the people can or cannot let the government know what their grievances are". I fervently hope that there still are courageous federal judges in this land who understand what the first amendment means even today and invite suits to that effect. Furthermore, since freedom from state interference with the free exercise of religion is warranted in the same amendment, where are the priests, the rabbis, the ministers, the mullahs? These cowards should all be out there every day every hour and tell the mayors and their police bullies what democracy is meant to be. All, not just a few. If they do not act now they may lose religious freedom eventually. That has happened elsewhere not too long ago.
This whole question of legitimacy is very tricky. If large nos. of Americans no longer accept the Gov't as legit. all bets are off. I don't see that yet. If it was the case then this movement would be ignoring the law period and its not. However, I can see a time not that far ahead when these same people might reach a place like the colonists did where they begin to sever these bounds if they believe they are now chains instead.
I've got to compliment the commenters on this post. Not only is Mr. Greenwald's article an excellent one, as usual, but the civility and erudition of the comments has been a pleasure to read. Thank you all! I've learned much here this evening.
I agree. Keep coming back. On many- really most- websites about news and public affairs, the level of conversation tends to be a lot less civil and a lot less logical and a lot less educated. Common Dreams is always the first page I go to when reading on the web, and then branch out from there.
It's a shame how rare it is to find a site like this. Sometimes I think that real progressives are very few- if that is the word for someone like me, who was more or less alienated by the massive and long-running crime called the Vietnam War, and was a "Mother Earth News" kind of hippie- never a warrior- who just got older, like in that great Bellamy Brothers song. Not the religiuos type but more of an animist, seeing the creator in all things as much as I can- at least that is the goal- and then applying all those good old hippie ethics to social problems, and solving them for everyone by telling people to just get along, don't be greedy, don't hit, don't steal, and make love, not war.
But no one will listen when I say these kinds of things. Actually, I get called things like "nuts" and "mentally disturbed"- and it gets worse if I mention that maybe we have a great big problem with the official story of 9/11, and a great big problem with the wars- at that point, most people I have tried to talk to about real things in America these days, have made excuses quickly and gotten themselves out the door away from the damn truther- or they will attack me to convince themselves that a message becomes invalid if you can only invalidate the messenger- a principle which has never been true, and never will be; but people will continue to try and square that particular circle just out of sheer inability to admit that they have been misinformed, or- and this is where people get upset, so I have to be careful- fooled, hoodwinked, conned, scammed, robbed, and betrayed.
They would rather deny clear and provable realities than surrender the jot of pride necessary to say "tell me; I admit, I don't know everything."
I see why pride heads the lest of the seven deadly sins.
And I am just talking about friends and family here! -most of whom profess to be against war, and for the Bill of Rights, and against torture, and for the environment, and so forth, but who refuse to even discuss any of these subjects- not just with me, but ever- because these subjects have been placed in a category called "not for the dinner table"- and not for church, or the workplace, or public meeting, either; or even, for the most part, in the public press and media.
It's astounding how many people just made up their minds a decade ago, and do not want to be bothered with any facts which could possibly upset their opinions.
So I found myself writing a story, or fairy tale, about a man with a parasite, becaude in my old hippie-ethos-addled brain, it describes something I see happening in th U.S.A. nowadays- it may sound nuts, too, but it's a parable, or an allegory, or something, and of course, not meant to be taken literally.
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A man has a tick the size of a cocker spaniel on his neck, and it is bloated with nearly half his blood, and it is very heavy, and it causes him just feel sick about everything in his life, and fearful, and angry, and frustrated, and dissatisfied; in fact, it is killing him.
Another man comes along and sees the situation and says "Excuse me, mister, but are you aware of that awful thing hanging off your neck? I can't imagine that could be very comfortable."
"Oh, that thing!" says the poor afflicted man. "Surely it is not that big! I don't believe you. It doesn't hurt very much. It will go away any day now. All I need to do is ignore it."
"Welll..." says the other man. "I don't know about that. How long has it been on you, anyway?"
"Ten years last month- and I'm fine. It's not a big problem. Anyway, it has to be there. It's for my safety."
"For your safety?" says the other man, astonished. "How could a gigantic, horrible, relentless, tick on your neck..?- Oh! I get it. You mean, no one would dare come near you, because of that horrible thing, and so, that makes you safe? Good joke..."
"It's not that at all", said the tick-host. "It's not that at all. I'm sure you wouldn't understand. It's... it's my duty. We have to sacrifice. This is my country. It's about honor. Freedom isn't free. And look here, pal- I'm starting to wonder what business it is of yours. Why you're trying to stir up some trouble."
With considerable effort, and some pain on his face, the man straightened up a bit, trying to stand tall, and glared at the newcomer. "I think you'd better watch what you say. There's a war on, you know. So just shut up. I know what I'm doing. The tick is fine. I'm used to it. I can handle it.. it's how I serve my...."
Suddenly he groaned, and then keeled over. There was no color left in his face.
Careful to avoid touching the tick, the stranger reached over and put a finger on the unconscious man's throat. There was no pulse. Well, no wonder; there was hardly any blood to pump. He had never seen anything like it.
The huge tick got off the dead man, as it no longer needed to keep him safe, and lumbered off.
"The inequality under which so many suffer is not only vast, but illegitimate, rooted as it is in lawlessness and corruption."
..and dare I say cowardice? Coward cops in Oakland tonight with their gear and tear gas and flash bombs beating up on unarmed women and peaceful kids. The elites goon squad nazis. This shows the face of the elite. Coward champagne sippers who send in their paid goons to do their dirty work. The charge-"unlawful assembly". Isn"t it a constitutional right or does 'freedom of assembly' mean something else?
http://www.ktvu.com/video/29587140/index.html
money is stronger than heroin and the aftermath is death and destuction
In 1983 I wrote a weekly newspaper editorial titled "Reaganomics: A Formula for Greed and Disaster, which interestingly got picked up by Sen. Max Baucus and placed in the Congressional Record (no doubt for partisan purposes). The piece basically stated that Reagan had opened the floodgates to greed in a society that was already suffering from gross economic inequity.
Responses from many readers in that rural Montana community were along the lines of "You should work for Pravda," "you foolishly disparage free enterprise," "you unfairly disparage the rich who work so hard for their money and create so much for the rest of us," etc.
It has always seemed to me that rebellion against tyranny was the quintessential American virtue - tough, relentless, unwavering. This mistrust of authority and privilege was essential to the American Revolution, to the spirit that founded and grew our nation, and to the later movements for abolition of slavery, establishing women's suffrage, opposing war and nuclear armaments, fighting for environmental and economic justice.
Those, on the other hand, who merely parroted cliches about "free enterprise" (or the "free press") were no better than religious zealots who pronounced their moral superiority over others while practicing gross moral hypocrisy in every imaginable fashion.
The seeds were sown long before Reagan, but he (or rather the "first" Bush administration) did indeed open the floodgates that no one has yet closed.
And the people waved their flags, and paid homage to Ronnie, and homage to how great we were, and the real heart and soul and guts of the original Revolution and its dedication to human liberty - got badly, badly lost. Perhaps, now, at long last, those not-so-ancient passions that spawned perhaps the greatest revolution in history are being reborn and rediscovered, in a way that would indeed make many of the Founders truly proud.
anybody remember obama's answer when asked about reagan, during his election? he grew in hawaii in reaganite household, of course indifferent to any ideology
Ever read this item, http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29234.htm
very concise observations wildraven. thank you
lets hope that this time the display of discontent and the support of even employed but increasingly intimidated by the economy public will turn out more relevant than in the famous 60's
eventually democracy will happened, but there is no guarantee that in this decade, since as of today no one is talking even of national government financial independence or being a lender to the bank, so what could be the position of deprived of its own currency society
We should never act as the o1% are gods above us. The truth is that without our purchasing their good and or services. They are just us. All the monies they accumilate come from us. Truth be told we are the power . we to use a slave term are the overseerers . We have not been doing our job for over 30 years now. Our job is a simple one.Remember "all men are created equal"(that means you also ladies).Want it even simpler. Just don't Buy. Hey they already took away most of our jobs(sent them overseas)Just don't buy( those credit and debit cards you use( they are tools to keep the 99 % seperated and down) just don't buy( So oil goes up when the slightest signal of recovery shows up,thus taking more dollars of the 99%) As for banks? over us just transfer all funds into the smaller local banks) The solution has always been here waiting.(we are the people One nation, American ,Liberty and Justice for all) The future is in our hands,all we need to do is want it.
Reply to genaman:
You are correct about our not buying. We, the 99%, are
expected to play the role of getting and spending money.
That flow of money is the lifeblood of corporations. But
we don't have to play the expected role. Hold back your
money and you'll see more than a few banks and other
big corporations disrupted from their dominating plans.
You'll also see senators and representatives begin to
rethink their subservience to big corporations.
american market is about 25% of their global profit - since societies have right to their own existence, they have right to their own government and their own monetary system
This is precisely it. The People must cut off the life blood of money to the beasts, in mass, and hit them where it really hurts.
Hey, look, the frauds have no clothes.
Greenwald hits the nail on the head, again.
Have native Americans ever found our system illegitimate? Out of the 400 hundred years blacks have lived here, how much of that time has the legitimacy of the system, equal protection of law, and uniformity of justice been established for them: maybe 10%? But Greenwald's point is well taken: America's rich have betrayed their end of the bargain with the middle class, and now they, their political lackeys, and the rest of the corrupt, stinking elites that bedevil this country, will meet their just end as all oppressors do. The succinct restatement of this article: pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. And it's past time to ditch the "inequality of outcomes is fine" worldview. Human rights are far more important, and a society that does not promote, protect, and preserve those rights is worthless.
One of the first quotations I ever learned was from Anatole France — “The Law, in all its magnificent impartiality, prohibits the rich as well as the poor from sleeping under bridges.”
The Law, Mr Greenwald, was *never* on the side of the poor and dispossessed — not in the ‘effete’ France of the Fin de Siècle *or* in the mythical Golden Age of the American Revolution.
Law in capitalist society is made to serve capitalist interests — “Equality before the Law” is a poor compensation for the ‘right’ to lose one’s job if it is unprofitable for the capitalist to employ one.
Since nobody reads the comments, I offer them for my own gratification. Mr. Greenwald makes an argument for greater justice which cannot cure the problem of income inequality. Simply changing the rules merely offers an easily overcome obstacle to oligarchs. Which brings us back to the basic need of election reform to produce real representatives of the people. This should lead to policies which declare that wealth distribution be changed and inherited wealth be contained. Election reform is the linchpin; without it radical movements will simply be bought off and things will remain the same.
The season of authoritarianism may well be coming to an end; and, it is possible that a new season is just now dawning: one that is characterized by a "partnership model" of social relatedness that is synergistic and linking - as opposed to ranking). These are modes of social organization which foster mutually empowering relationships via a “power - with” rather than "power - over" orientation..
However, let’s be realistic. Philip Slater, in a Dream Deferred, highlights the issue well:
While he argues strongly for the conclusion that authoritarianism is a dying culture, he also adds the following (somewhat obvious) caution:
"...cultures don’t die easily and we can expect a long and bitter struggle before the democratic megaculture is firmly rooted. At some point authoritarians usually resort to violence in resisting democratic change - given their psychological and structural rigidity, it is usually the only response they have left.”
American*Memorial
No*Freedom - No*Justice
There is no freedom behind policies and fences of oppression and fear, no freedom rests on conquered lands which share resources and productivity reluctantly with the conquered and those now considered alien or impoverished.
No freedom won, secured or protected by the lives given to erect statues and walls proclaiming liberty and justice to all, when many are held in the slavery of poverty and the injustice of serving the masters and profits of war.
No freedom inscribed within the laws and structure of celebrating a national identity of plunder and idol worship.
No freedom, when change is feared and people are demographically boxed by color, race, religion, gender, political and sexual orientation.
No freedom in the broken trust of overspending, overdeveloping, and over reaching of individual or bureaucratically sponsored theft.
No freedom when health care, mandatory insurance burdens and legal wrangling deny basic freedoms and rights of how to live and die.
America has always been an occupied land, taken from he’r native peoples, and until s’he truly embraces he’r global citizenship and reality of being a melting pot of nationalism, a beacon of cooperation, a statue of liberty and peace, a harbor of tolerance and a cradle of compassion, s’he will not be worthy of he’r claims to freedom, democracy and justice for all.
Now is the time to end nationalism, in favor of cultural and national identity and embrace the humanity of relationship.
Now is the time for the occupation to end, the borders to open, the freedom of global harmony and the healing, realization of world peace to commence.
America is the heartland of the world, and thus it is time to remove the occupation of fear that nationalism demands from that heart, time to embrace the grace and pride of cultural and national identity which borders this heart, time to truly open the spiritual and scientific freedom of opportunity to all*ways, for this is the true strength of the American Dream, the true reality of the Peoples*Dream.
This is the purpose of Your*Creation.
Now is the time to humbly honor and fully respect the memory of the lives given, to truly embrace the realization of peace, through the elimination of the oppression that nationalism advocates within the creation of a social, economic equality, and to build the common future we all will share, from the separate and collective past’s we have experienced.
Now - is the time, for Truth, Justice and the Peoples*Way.
©Bruce Larson*Moore
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched , every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the geniuses of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.”
— President Dwight D. Eisenhower
Declaration of Independent Trust
We The People of the United Web of Humanity, in order to create a more equal world, declare our right to peace, justice, dignity and equality for every person to be a Sacred and Secure Blessing of Freedom, to defend and promote the greater good, global tranquility and raise our collective posterity within the establishment of these ordained truths.
Many Political, Religious and Corporate leaders have continually refused their Assent to Laws and Actions of Paramount Importance to the Greater Good of Humanity and the Planet.
In every stage of these Oppressions we have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury and so these leaders are unfit to dominate the rule of a Free People, or to create a sustainable environment for the future of Our Children.
It is therefore the Duty and Right of The People to cast off these arrant foes, from holding position and power over the will of The People and the resources of the planet.
We, therefore, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of this World, solemnly publish and declare, That the United Web of Humanity is, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent; that they are absolved from all Allegiance to these leaders, and that all political connection between them, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent People, they have full Power to levy Protest, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent People may of right do.
And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes our sacred Honor and HE(ART) of Peace.
In Truth We Trust