“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”—Frederick Douglass
“Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience . . . Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves . . . [and] the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem.”—Howard Zinn
As the corporate/military U.S. Empire, headed by the nominally black Barack Obama, with the complicity of his Democrat[ic] and Republican party political pimps, rumbles along, crushing the economic needs, human rights, and aspirations of everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people in this nation and around the world, conditions for just plain ordinary people are worsening and deteriorating at lightning speed. Only the avaricious, blood-sucking, bloated rich are financially benefiting from the increasing misery of the masses of ordinary people.
Meanwhile, the propaganda arm of the U.S. government, i.e., the corporate-stream media, continues incessantly to peddle and parrot the distractions, distortions, omissions, and outright lies of its corporate masters to the enormous detriment of everyday people. At all costs, this corporate-stream media seeks to ignore, marginalize, or discredit those persons who are critical thinkers and who see the need for real systemic change.
The first casualties in this corporate/military government’s persistent war against everyday people are critical thought and political dissent. This nation has a president and other politicians whose de facto contempt for the pain and the common sense of everyday people is surpassed only by their arrogance, wars abroad, double-speak, and lies. Their actions repeatedly belie their phony and misleading rhetoric. They, like their corporate masters, are nothing more than political pimps and economic blood-suckers of the people, whom they treat as perpetual ping-pong balls and caged hamsters endlessly running on the spinning wheel to oblivion.
The U.S. corporate/military government is generally feared by the people of this nation, not held accountable by them. Until this fear is replaced by a collective, actualized, and unflinching demand on the part of everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people for transparency in government, full accountability, and economic parity, real change will not be forthcoming. Everyday people will remain as helpless, hapless pawns only as long as they/we allow ourselves to be.
Notwithstanding the odious genocide of indigenous people and the slavery of Black people that accompanied the founding of this nation, the U.S. Declaration of Independence pulled no punches when it correctly and explicitly stated that governments must derive “ . . . their just powers from the consent of the governed,” and “That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and institute new government . . .” Undeniably implicit in the requirement that the “power[s]” of government be derived “from the consent of the governed” is the right of political dissent. Moreover, it is the explicit “right” of the people to “alter or abolish” any “form of government” that is not what the Declaration of Independence refers to as “just.”
The cynical and callous manipulation and domination of everyday people by the 1 or 2 percent corporate/military elite of this nation is by no means “just,” and it is an utter mockery and subversion of anything even near to deriving its powers to govern “from the consent of the governed.” Additionally, this corporate-government’s perpetual wars of empire, the ‘Patriot Act,’ ‘Extraordinary Rendition,’ trillion dollar giveaways to the multi-national Wall Street robber barons, the shredding of any meaningful constitutional rights, attacks on Medicare and Social Security, and other increasing economic austerity measures against everyday people, are further examples of precisely how the “consent of the governed” has been brazenly subverted by the corporate/military elite of this nation.
Inevitably, an increasing collective loathing for the dishonest and hypocritical internal and external policies and practices of this U.S. corporate-government may yet very well come to replace lethargy and the fear of said government. For the moment however, this corporate-government is relying upon its formidable ability to manipulate the masses of everyday people by using fear, lies, and constant subterfuge. Also. for the moment, so many people of all colors in this nation remain, in actual terms, the economic slaves, pawns, and cannon fodder of the U.S. Empire.
Whether it is the police throughout this country the FBI, CIA, NSA, TSA, etc., this nation’s corporate-government uses fear, subterfuge, and the suppression of political dissent as a means to perpetuate this political theatre of the absurd in order to manipulate, quash, and subvert the “consent” and will of everyday people. As a long time reader of The Black Commentator recently wrote concerning the present overwhelmingly insane and lethargic state of affairs in this nation: “The police have now niggerized any and everybody through fear! This may explain the theatre of the absurd that we are witnessing.”
In due course however, even fear must take a back seat to the increasing joblessness, homelessness, despair, and hunger, etc., of everyday people in this nation. And even the double-speak rhetoric of the wily Barack Obama and his Republicrat [i.e. Democrat and Republican] cohorts will prove to be of no avail in soothing the legitimate rage of the people. For in the words of Langston Hughes: “What happens to a dream deferred?”
Clearly, the entire U.S. government, its corporate-stream “news” media, and most other institutions of the United States of America are inextricably beholden to the dictates of the tiny, blood-sucking corporate elite of this nation. U.S. wars and military occupations and/or interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, and elsewhere have nothing whatsoever to do with the championing of so-called ‘democracy;’ and they invariably mean more pain and more death to everyday people both at home and abroad, while serving to enrich the bottomless, blood-drenched coffers of the corporate elite. The United States is a corporate plutocracy whose alleged political ‘leaders’ are the conscienceless bane of this nation and of humanity as a whole.
Hypocrisy, lies, and subterfuge continue to be the mainstays of this U.S. Empire, but only for as long as we, the people, allow it. Despite constant acts of subversion, distortion and subterfuge by the world-wide octopus-like tentacles of the U.S. corporate/military Empire to manipulate and subvert the legitimate needs and aspirations of everyday people around the world, our sisters and brothers in Haiti, Palestine, Egypt, Yemen, Tunisia, Mexico, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, and so many other places on Mother Earth are resisting corporate and/or military hegemony in ‘body and soul,’ and they are rising up as a part of the human family.
Perpetual wars, corporate hegemony and greed, and austerity for the masses of everyday people are absolutely unacceptable. The pillage of our precious planet, Mother Earth, is also totally unacceptable. It is time to make the people’s history. It is time to reclaim the narrative of everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people collectively. Whether we like it or not our futures on this planet are irreversibly bound together. The people’s struggle for freedom, justice, and systemic change, irrespective of color, whether it in this nation or anywhere else in the world, is a protracted one and cannot successfully exist and grow in a vacuum.
In the words of Malcolm X [el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz], “Any kind of movement for freedom of Black people based solely within the confines of America is absolutely doomed to fail.” Ours must be an international struggle for justice and human rights. Nevertheless, we must begin it right here in this nation, and link it to our sisters and brothers planet-wide. It’s certainly not easy nor is it short, but then, no serious and effective struggle ever is. As Frederick Douglass said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
Onward then, my sisters and brothers! Onward!
BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board Member, Larry Pinkney, is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, the former Minister of Interior of the Republic of New Africa, a former political prisoner and the only American to have successfully self-authored his civil/political rights case to the United Nations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In connection with his political organizing activities in opposition to voter suppression, etc., Pinkney was interviewed in 1988 on the nationally televised PBS News Hour, formerly known as The MacNeil / Lehrer News Hour. For more about Larry Pinkney see the book, Saying No to Power: Autobiography of a 20th Century Activist and Thinker, by William Mandel [Introduction by Howard Zinn]. (Click here to read excerpts from the book.) Click here to contact Mr. Pinkney.
An insightful and inspiring essay!