I can begin by belaboring the obvious, that there are several more disturbing developments in the news or I can summarize by announcing (once again) that the destruction of our civilization proceeds apace, which is to say ‘unimpeded’.
Does anyone else find the sheer lack of anyone willing to champion the cause of the ‘average/common’ people disturbing?
Apparently not, all mention of the ‘working class’ has vanished from the vocabulary of the Corporate Owned media.
Speaking of ‘wage slavery’, our first offering of today is a propaganda piece that flies in the face of all of the evidence…
“I was earning $50,000 a year, and now I get $200 a week,” said Jan Thomas, 62, an unemployed marketing executive from Sarasota, Fla., who has been laid off from two jobs in the last three years. Ms. Thomas said in a follow-up interview to the poll that she recently dropped her health insurance “just hoping all will be well” and that she would soon lose her unemployment benefits, leading her to think about applying early for Social Security. “And I’m giving up my apartment and moving in with my mom because my unemployment will be running out,” she said.
The toll that unemployment is taking on families is not just financial, according to the telephone poll, which surveyed 445 unemployed adults from Oct. 19 to Oct. 25 and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus five percentage points. More than half of those polled said that they had experienced emotional or mental health problems like anxiety or depression because of their lack of work, and nearly half said that they had felt embarrassed or ashamed not to have jobs. More than a third said that they had had more conflicts or arguments with family and friends because of being jobless. The top reason people cited for not getting work: Too many applicants. [snip]
But the unemployed continue to believe in the American dream. Two-thirds of those surveyed said that they still believed it was possible to start out poor in this country, work hard and become rich — only a little lower than the three-quarters of all Americans who said that they believed that, according to a New York Times/CBS News nationwide poll that was conducted at the same time as the poll of the unemployed adults.
Um, it’s that last paragraph that has me scratching my head. Where is this ‘fantasyland’ that full grown adults claim to still believe in ‘upward social mobility’ despite the last living example of such a phenomenon is now in his sixties…
Truth be told, Mr. Gates isn’t exactly a ‘rags to riches story’, he had some ‘advantages’ your average person didn’t have…just as our ‘he came from nowhere’ president was better connected than his vagabond childhood would lead one to believe…
Which is to point out what most of us already know, the list of ‘self-made’ men is longer on the criminal side of the ledger than it is on the business side.
Which is NOT to say that those who ‘make it’ in business do so, er, ‘honestly’.
But I digress…
Let us move on to a related subject, that of politician directed policing
Long before any act of violence occurs on the streets, a series of command decisions are made, and it is those decisions that ultimately determine whether a protest will be largely peaceful or descend into chaos. Smart crowd control requires letting protesters protest – giving them an outlet. In Oakland on Tuesday evening, long before anything bad happened, police decided to deny Occupy Oakland that outlet. A peaceful, if rowdy march was headed from the main library toward Frank Ogawa Plaza – the location from which they'd been forcefully evicted the night before. They were headed off by a hastily assembled line of police clad in riot gear. The protesters decided to change course and head toward the jail where, according to a National Lawyers' Guild observer on the scene, 105 protesters were being detained.
Again, the police blocked their route. They made another turn (I don't know what the objective was at that point) and were again blocked. The police did not have the manpower to actually block the many cross-streets we crossed, but somewhere a commander decided to put five or six cops on every side street. This was a stupid move, as five officers cannot keep 500 protesters, now angrier than they had been at the onset, at bay.
It was only then that I witnessed the first violence. Protesters swarmed around these five officers, they started swinging batons, made two arrests and then found themselves completely surrounded. I am certain it was a scary moment for those officers. There was another, thicker line of riot police a block away. At some point they realized their comrades were in a jam, and maybe two dozen came running and responded with extreme force. (It was at this point that a flash-bang grenade came flying toward me, going off about three feet away and leaving me shaking for about an hour.) One officer, at the front, was firing less-than-lethal projectiles at the crowd – which, at that point, was in full retreat --
This particular article was written from a position in sympathy with the protesters. Those of the now downright hostile ‘right wing’ (really Libertarians!) are considerably less understanding in their point of view…
A large majority of our population believes our political system is FUBAR and the ‘bar’ part of that acronym means ‘beyond all repair’.
At what point, good citizen, do the police ‘lose their legitimacy’?
When do they stop being ‘lawmen’ and turn into armed thugs?
I submit that the above story provides evidence that this particular police force fit’s the ‘armed thug’ category.
Compound this with the current ‘accepted wisdom’ that ‘the police ARE NOT your friend’ and you have an extremely hostile set of working conditions, fostered by the emerging ‘security state’.
I will never tell you what to do good citizen.
Unlike empty-headed conservatives, my readers don’t need to be told what to think, they merely need something to think about!
So I will share my opinion that these situations (Out of control cops/politicians) are EXACTLY why the constitution provides us with our 2nd amendment rights.
An amendment that our ‘freedom loving’ conservatives will repeal in a heartbeat when the time comes.
The ‘end’ draws near, not that you will see it on the TV or read about it in the corporate owned press but it’s there if you know what you’re looking at.
The ‘showdown’ is coming…prepare!
Thanks for letting me inside your head,
Gegner
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