Now It’s All of Us
What has just begun at the Inauguration of Donald Trump is the class war to end all class wars. Lately I’ve been thinking that this election is indeed a class war, but it has nothing to do with “us”, the working class, the 99%. Rather it’s a class war amongst the Plutocrats, the billionaire class that runs the global economy and the War on Everything. It’s a war amongst the Davos set, the Assads, the Netanyahus, the Putins, the Dutertes, and the Trumps. It’s Tillerson and the Oil industry, Perry and the Climate Deniers. Yes, it’s the Military Industrial Complex, the KKK, the Death Campers and the Eternal Rape Machine, all marching across our collective consciousness in a Grand Opera of Phallic Power.
But while the Plutocrats of Goldman Sacks are ensconced in office to eviscerate what’s left of our Constitution and democracy, and to siphon the last remaining wealth of the Republic into private coffers at their billionaire tax havens, they have another annoying issue to deal with: the public menace sometimes known to them as “consumers” but mostly as “criminals”. We the Policed.
We are no small matter in this class war to end all class wars, especially if we manage to aperiodically throw a monkey wrench into the smooth operation of the Romanesque Rape and Pillage cavalcade, steered by chariot with our own Caligula holding the reigns. Actually these days it’s all gone digital, so our hackers, working in the shadows behind their glowing screens, will be the undercover Special Ops of the class war. But regardless—
Who are “we”? We are not just a single issue or single identity. We are not just Black Lives Matter. We are not just the 99%. We are not just the 52% of the world’s population labeled “Female.” We are not just Muslims. We are not just First Nations. We are not just Immigrants and Refugees. We are not just Mexicans and Latinos. We are not just Transgender and Queer. We are not just janitors, fast-food workers and warehouse stockers. We are not just the disabled, the poor and the imprisoned. WE are all of us. WE are all universally fucked in this class war to end all class wars, and that’s why now, it’s all of us.
But WE are also the white supremacists, the neo-Nazis, religious fundamentalists and ex-military mass shooters.They are part of “us” as well. Why?
What does it take to elect a twisted monstrosity like Donald Trump? What does it take to install a fascist regime of bankers, oil companies, generals, corporate executives and religious fanatics? We can’t even imagine such a Friday the 13th cast of malfeasants, even as the Worst Case Scenario parades before us in all its grotesque demagoguery. It takes our collective culture.
Because what is Donald Trump but a screenshot projection of our own culture? The same culture that produced “us” also belched up this Mussolini and his Wall Street henchmen. The same culture that imprisons over 2 million mostly black and brown people, the largest prison population in the world. The same culture that is pushing mass species extinction to the brink, that threatens the stability of the biosphere and our very survival on this planet. The same culture that rapes and denigrates women and girls to the status of “lesser” every day. The same culture that hates queers with a vengeance. The same culture that robbed First Nations of their land and erased their existence. The same culture that disemploys its own citizens by turning us into consumer logarithms with credit cards, that also enslaves desperate factory workers in China and Bangladesh. The same culture that barrel-bombs schools and hospitals and unleashes the mass slaughter of innocents in Aleppo. The same culture that produces white supremacists, neo-Nazis, meth and crack addicts, gang-rapists, and ex-military mass shooters also produces “us.”
We are Them. They is Us.
So now we’re seeing the final Endgame of our so-called civilization. Before the end of the first year of this Regime, we will be so violently sickened by the plague unleashed from the infected underbelly of our collective life that we will wretch forth our decrepit culture with everything left in our guts.
There will be nothing left to hold on to, nothing to deny, nowhere to run, and no place to hide. No one, absolutely no one anywhere on this planet will be safe.
Half measures availed us nothing. We stood at the turning point.
In this class war to end all class wars, now it’s all of us. We either transform our civilization into a culture of compassionate interdependence, with the equal care and protection of all living beings as our primary directive, a culture that fosters our life potential to pass on as our legacy,
or we will all perish. Together.
(All photos from Reuters, images from Inauguration Day, January 20, 2017).
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Inspired writing!
Grand opera of phallic power: fearful bullies’ apocalyptic tantrum…
https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2020/03/feature-the-authoritarian-reflex?fbclid=IwAR3HA3WMUuYo71D7xpLg7_yRSlq1hbRRkwUqM1vk5iGFiu2ouW2sYKI1ZTg
Don: I read the Harvard article on Pippa Norris and ‘Authoritarianism’ that you cited; incredible. Explains Authoritarianism as a world-wide phenomenon. And why economic inequality is a factor but not the driving force. Authoritarian Populism is centered amongst the Middling, middle incomes but lower levels of education, usually white. Not among the rich or the poor. Which is why the Corbyn-Sanders/Socialist argument often fails. It’s not primarily about economic inequality but social status and power. It’s essentially racist and xenophobic, as well as misogynist. I think the economic factor is about those who had both economic and social power–white middle class over 50–who are now falling out of that position of economic privilege. Less educated middle class whites have experienced downward mobility while people of color and immigrants have moved up slightly. They are asserting social power in the form of racism and xenophobia as they try to hang on to some sense of privilege and advantage.