Face/Off, the film about a terrorist and an FBI agent trading places and faces, is eerily similar to how our political and economic system operates. "Terrorists" in turbans are sold like human derivatives in off-the-map areas in unconquerable lands, while real terrorists are counting their money in luxury suites in off-the-map islands. The waters have already parted but the president, presented to us as the Messiah, has people crossing their fingers instead of crossing the Nile. King said he saw the promised land, it must have been a mirage because he was leading a nation lost in the desert, aimlessly killing nameless enemies. It is a strange desert, some are looking for the nearest shade while others continue to pretend that there isn't skin being burned off their back. But at least we have our heroes, regardless if they do or don't recognize their own significance. I consider Bill Hicks, Ron Paul, Hunter S Thompson, Tupac, Alex Jones, Immortal Technique, Joseph Campbell, Bob Dylan, Amy Goodman, Bill Moyers, and so many more, as our heroes, and Emerson's children, who wrote magical stuff:
We are wiser than we know. If we will not interfere with our thought, but will act entirely, or see how the thing stands in God, we know the particular thing, and every thing, and every man. For the Maker of all things and all persons stands behind us, and casts his dread omniscience through us over things.
But beyond this recognition of its own in particular passages of the individual's experience, it also reveals truth. And here we should seek to reinforce ourselves by its very presence, and to speak with a worthier, loftier strain of that advent. For the soul's communication of truth is the highest event in nature [...]
Searching out the truth in our day doesn't take discipline or any level of commitment. All it takes is turning on the television and everything that the talking heads say, the reverse is true. This exercise almost always works. If it is said that socialists are going to kill old people, believe the exact opposite which in this case is to save them. If it is said that an unregulated market led to the housing collapse and financial ruin, flip the statement and rewrite: a Wall Street-Congress-Fed regulated market has put us in another dark age. Down the line, whether it is characterizations about political figures, the safety of certain consumer products, etc...whatever the topic, reverse the logic.
The truth is not laid out like a plate of processed, vaccinated and mechanized meat, but like a plate from Fear Factor. The only way it'll go down is if people step up to the plate of fear, and eat it raw. You can chomp into pieces then consume it, and covering your nose also helps. But there is no other way, you can't pack your bags and go home because this is actual reality, not a television program. Food for thought is what the foolish thought, the real organ required to digest reality is not the brain but the stomach. Some accept the hard breakfast only on their deathbeds, while others are accustomed to the taste and swallow it everyday. Either way, to keep away is not what the good doctor ordered.
The recent arrest of Gates and the subsequent finger-waving by all sides is another revelation that the American media misses the point of every story, and I'm not sure it is deliberate anymore. It was the second time this year that a cop's stupid and criminal action received media attention. A lot of these dumb downers are dumb downed themselves. Nobody in the press conferences have mentioned prior incidents regarding police misconduct. So far in the Obama era there have been been two occurrences that have made national headlines.
The first time was the murder of Oscar Grant, who was not a professor of an Ivy league school, by a BART station officer in Oakland, who was definitely a racist. It happened near the beginning of Obama's term and I don't think he ever acknowledged it. The mainstream media surely didn't bring it up because it was cold blooded murder and could not be defended. Sergeant Crowley's mistake, however, is partly explainable because he arrived on the scene after a 9/11 call was made, and Gates talked back like he was a citizen or something. I guess Gates didn't know what country he was returning from his trip to another police state.
In the future, there will be more Oscar Grants dying and Obama won't raise a hoot, much less call the murderer stupid. People who voted for Obama still believe they are viewed as citizens by their government. But I believe civilian is the new term. I don't fault police officers, in fact, I'm in awe of them - they have a job unlike their comrades out of arms.
Homeland Security calls the shots, and the slaves oblige because they have learned to rationalize their own slavery. If I am irrational it is because I am free man. At least that is how I rationalize it. Or not. But if America wasn't a police state, the private prison system would be an unprofitable industry. Shit, the cops and guards are the fucking shareholders of most of those prisons. They're on slave patrol most of the time. The death of Grant wasn't followed by media chants because he wasn't in his house, but out in the field. The 'Left' cries racism but doesn't say a word about the process of indebted servitude a.k.a slavery, in America's prisons. If Obama really wants to emulate Lincoln he would support the legalization of marijuana, go to any private prison in the country and read one of his god-awesome speeches. Not by heart, though, because that would mean he actually cares enough about his words to memorize them.
Police officers are about as pure as the crack they are paid to get rid of. I understand that the majority of cops are hard-working and honest individuals just following protocol. What I have a problem with is the protocol. I'm sure there are thousands of cases where police confrontations with citizens, ahem..I mean civilians, end peacefully. I just want to see them on tape. Verified proof clarifies truth. Public protection is important but only to an extent. I don't like gate-keepers, and I hate gates even more. But I'll rather stay in the woods then side with barbarians who want to bash through the gates. If anything, Crowley was acting more like a barbarian than a gate-keeper when he invaded Gates' property. Maybe invasion is too strong a suggestion, in this case, the officers' trespass was justified because there was a call made, but, once he arrived on the property he didn't have a good reason to stay there, let alone arrest the owner of the house. For all their tough gear, most cops lack the thick skin to face up the public. Only the best and the brightest, or something close it, should be given the uniform because it represents public trust, civility, and order. No other job like it exists.
I just want to make clear that these are not final statements, and that my opinion on cops is never final. Police officers are meant to serve the public interest, which is an incredible duty, and sometimes it is life-fulfilling. The good ones demand our respect. I have had few personal encounters with police officers, the nature of most of them were peaceful. I have never been pulled over, but I also don't have a car. I was stunned by cops once, not by their tasers but by their act of bravery. Seven years ago, after a long night of trick and treating, mostly treating, a gang of idiots chased us down a sidewalk next to a busy road and snatched our pillow-bags of sweets. We were devastated, especially those who had nothing left in our hands except our sweaty masks and a few snicker wrappers. Then, not even a minute passed before a couple of police officers dressed in ordinary clothes got out of a black SUV, crossed the road and pursued the gang of idiots into a street.
It all happened so quick that we didn't even notice them at work. I still regret not paying attention to them more. We were wondering what was going on, why there is a SUV parked near the side of the road, and didn't even think about following the kids ourselves. Then, the group of undercover cops, one of whom was a woman, handed back our lost treasures and quickly jumped back into the SUV to do some more crime-stopping in the area. This was the year Spiderman came out but I'm certain that those cops could beat Spidey in a footrace. We didn't even have a chance to say a deserving thank you, they just revealed their identities after recognizing the puzzled look on our faces, and boom. Gone. I went from feeling depressed to being part of something out of movie. I remember one of my friends asking them as they ran into the SUV how they got back so fast and they just answered "it's our job." After that day, nobody can persuade me that police officers are not needed and that they don't deserve our thanks.
I consider myself very lucky for having that memory. I realize it was only one experience and there are countless other individual examples where cops show ill judgment and incredible inhumanity, but that's part of being human.
The reason why I'm concentrating so much on the police is because in their current function they are the protectors of the pyramid. By the pyramid I mean the economic structure of society as it exists today. Everything points to the top, that is how the corporate model has realized itself, the state, everything and anything. Financiers' wealth, most of it ill-gained from war and unnecessary taxation via the income tax is brought together at the top, and used to fund the military and police to keep the tax-slaves from stopping the injustice. Forget weight, the greatest human imbalance in America is between the rich and the poor. Cops are not exclusively the gatekeepers with boots in this system, they serve other roles as well but when the shit hits the fan they are given the impossible job of keeping the peace. By keeping the peace I mean stomping down on anybody who dares to resist. It is not the police's job to keep the peace, or establish order. When the police fire upon the people, they are not public servants anymore but become public enslavers, much like the police in America during slavery days - when, black Americans were spied on, tailed, and all because the police were ordered to. For anybody who suggests that the police department is an institution that was created to keep society civil and orderly, nothing can be further from the truth.
Creating order from the end of a gun is not order, it is disorder in disguise. Tragically, the police have been assigned an task that is impossible for them to accomplish. The true way to order is abolishing the pyramid model of human organization, as Kierkegaard advised us to. He said that those overlooking the pyramid from the top are the furthest from God, and that "the whole enterprise of the pyramid is something to which God is exceedingly opposed." I am not hardly against social and financial achievement but when it is done on the backs of slaves and corruption, how can I support it? Side me with the outcasts, searching for my own individuality at the bottom of the pyramid. I'm all for uniting, but under one banner. And the whole effort is doomed from the start, because as we have recently relearned, pyramid schemes can't last - they are not designed to. Extraction of wealth is the main driving goal, not peace, freedom, prosperity or happiness. As Kierkegaard writes; "So God pushes the pyramid over and everything collapses - a generation later man begins again with this pyramid business."
Kierkegaard also warned of the dangers of centralization in Europe. He said it would lead to economic ruin. All the great giants of thought throughout history have attributed human grace to the individual, and to small minorities.
Centralization is never complete without blood. That was true when Genghis Khan attempted it, and all the other empire builders throughout time. Hitler in the last century believed in the destiny of the German people, and desired to invade in what he thought were German lands. Empire builders are always confrontational in their endless pursuit, like they're in a struggle with mankind. Confiscating the rights of the people and consolidating power is never done without resistance of some kind. Modernization of Russia cost the country millions of lives. In the early 21st century, Western bankers are trying to put the final touches on their consolidated system, to the resentment of their own people and foreign people alike. Reversing the trend of centralization is the most essential task if we wish for all of humankind to be free and prosperous in the centuries to come.
Gore Vidal highlighted the concerns of federal expansion in America by its premier literary critic, Edmund Wilson. Vidal wrote:
Wilson questioned the central myth of the American republic, which is also, paradoxically, the cornerstone of our subsequent empire - e pluribus unum - the ever tightening control from the center to the periphery. Wilson is pre-Lincolnian (or a Lincolnian of 1846). He sees virtue, freedom in a less perfect union. Today's centrifugal forces in the former Soviet Unin and Yugoslavia he anticipated in Patriotic Gore where, through his portraits of various leaders in our Civil War, he shows how people, in order to free themselves of an overcentralized state, are more than willing, and most tragically, to shed patriotic gore.Once the societal pyramid finally collapses, which is soon, going back to business as usual can not be an option. I pray that we have evolved from Kierkegaard's time so that I can be rationally optimistic about mankind's future. I hope that we will remember this final crisis and learn to never repeat it again on this scale, ever. But I am not so certain because of the grave evil at work behind the scenes.
Noam Chomsky concluded a talk he gave in Harlem back in December by saying:
Now, of all the crises that afflict us, I think my own feeling is that this growing democratic deficit may be the most severe. Unless it’s reversed, Arundhati Roy’s forecast might prove accurate, and not in the distant future. The conversion of democracy to a performance in which the public are only spectators might well lead to—inexorably to what she calls the “endgame for the human race."The 'endgame for the human race' is coming in short order. Hopefully, it will be a short order. Because I can not live with villains running the world. Even if there are heroes around.
