Robert's Virtual Soapbox

(or, The Sanctimonious Professional Leftist's Blog)
NOVEMBER 16, 2011 9:45PM

To protect and to serve — the 1 percent

Rate: 3 Flag

Seattle activist Dorli Rainey, 84, reacts after being hit with pepper spray during an Occupy Seattle protest on Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2011 at Westlake Park in Seattle. Protesters gathered in the intersect

Associated Press photo

Treasonous taxpayer-funded thugs in Seattle — a.k.a. the cops — recently pepper-sprayed this tiny 84-year-old woman in the face.* Cops don’t deserve non-violence from the people they are paid to protect and to serve but instead brutalize. They deserve to be brutalized right back. It’s called karma.

If it wasn’t clear by now, it sure the hell is now: Law enforcement in the United States of America has been corrupted to serve the interests of the rich and the super-rich, and no longer serves the interests of the vast majority of the rest of us (the 99 percent, you might say).

Law enforcement has been bastardized from protecting and serving us, the people, to protecting and serving the 1 percent, to serving as the private security thugs for the rich and the super-rich. And to rub the fascistic salt in our wounds, we, the taxpayers (and the rich and the super-rich are tax evaders), pay for these thugs to oppress us for the rich and the super-rich.

(Similarly, trillions of our tax dollars go to their bogus wars for their war profiteering and their corporateering. The U.S. military also has been corrupted — it stopped being about national defense and started being about corporate expansion and bloated-beyond-belief, unnecessary military spending in the noble names of “national security” and “spreading democracy” and the like decades ago [and especially in the Middle East for at least the past decade].)

This is the deal: If you are part of the 1 percent, you most likely are a traitor to your fellow Americans, the 99 percent of the rest of us. You don’t become filthy rich because of hard work. You become filthy rich only by paying your workers much less than the value of their work — you get filthy rich off of others’ hard work – and by charging your customers much more than the value of the product or service that you provide (which, under capitalism, is just legalized thievery).

When you harm your fellow citizens in order to try to satiate your own insatiable fucking greed — such as by launching illegal, immoral, unjust and unprovoked wars on other nations for your war-profiteering and corporateering cronies based upon your bold-faced lies (that you later blame on “faulty intelligence”), or by being a Wall Street weasel knowingly bilking others out of their money for your own lust for obscene amounts of money, or by knowingly polluting the environment and contributing to global warming and medical conditions such as cancer – then you are a traitor.

There is nothing American about knowingly seriously harming other Americans for your own fucking selfish gain. If you commit treason, then you deserve to hang.

And if you support the 1 percent in their treason, such as being one of their thugs in law enforcement or in the U.S. military who fights their unjust battles against the people for their profits (including their war profiteering), then you are a traitor also.

Cops who brutalize people who peaceably are expressing their First Amendment rights deserve to be brutalized right back. There is no other way that bad, self-serving cops will learn that we, the people, vastly outnumber them and that they are accountable to us, and they don’t deserve that we, the victims of their treasonous violence, should turn the other cheek like a bunch of pussies.

Non-violence is bullshit. The 1 percent use violence against the 99 percent of us (at home and abroad) all the fucking time — only because the 1 percent are too pussified and too weak and too few to fight their own battles, they must recruit dipshits into the U.S. military and into law enforcement and brainwash these dipshits into believing that they really are doing anything more noble than serving the interests of the 1 percent.

The worst nightmare of the 1 percent that a good chunk of the 99 percent of us wake up and stop taking it.

You hear the traitors within the treasonous Repugnican Tea Party “leadership” in Washington talking about the specter of Americans turning against Americans — precisely because this is what they most fear: that we Americans whom they turned against long ago at long last will turn the table on their sorry, treasonous asses.

Class warfare? Real Americans (the vast majority of us) against “Americans” (the 1 percent and those who aid and abet their treason)? I say: Bring! It! On!

We’re long overdue for another civil war.

It probably is the only thing that will save what’s left of this nation.

*Reports The Associated Press:

Seattle — A downtown march and rally in support of the Occupy Wall Street movement turned briefly chaotic as police scattered a crowd of rowdy protesters — including a pregnant 19-year-old and an 84-year-old activist — with blasts of pepper spray.

Protest organizers denounced the use of force, saying that police indiscriminately sprayed the chemical irritant at peaceful protesters.

The Occupy Seattle movement released a written statement late Tuesday expressing support for “a 4-foot 10-inch, 84-year-old woman, a priest and a pregnant woman who as of this writing is still in the hospital.”

Dorli Rainey is an activist who has supported liberal causes in the Seattle area for decades. A photo showing Rainey being cared for by fellow activists in the immediate aftermath of the police incident appeared on news websites around the world.

Seattle police spokesman Jeff Kappel said he didn’t have specifics on the Rainey incident, but he said pepper spray is “is not age specific. No more dangerous to someone who is 10 or someone who is 80.”

He added, that if it were harmful, “we probably wouldn’t be using pepper spray if that was the case.” …

Pepper spray is no big deal? Then surely our treasonous cops won’t mind when we pepper-spray their treasonous asses right back!

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Comments

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Somebody here on OS wrote a piece about how the police was never for the protection of individuals - it was for "keeping the peace", i.e., controlling the populace and preventing riots and uprisings.

So they're doing what they're 'supposed' to do.

(Note - please don't interpret this as approving the police action, but rather as a deeply cynical view.)
I understand where you are coming from. One certainly could argue that the cops and the military ALWAYS have been about protecting the interests of the rich and the super-rich, and not the interests of the majority of us, we chumps who pay their paychecks.

However, be that as it may, it's long past time that we, the people, ensure that what we pay for actually BENEFITS US. And for fuck's sake, it's time to roll out the guillotines and watch some heads roll.
I absolutely share your feelings... BUT I also know that nothing would benefit the authorities more than video of large numbers of violent proesters. If the Occupy Movement is to become a viable social force, it has to keep the moral hgh ground. If there does come a time when that's impossible, then I'm with you.... But for now, nonviolence is the only way to remain a viable movment.
jane: Holy shit, man WHAT?

American: "The authorities"? Why aren't WE, the people, the authorities? I understand that we've all been brainwashed to obey the 1 percent and their attack dogs (the cops), but what revolution ever succeeded because its participants did only as the powers that be would have them do? And at what point do we fight back? Do we just allow them to put us into concentration camps, for example, because we uphold the bullshit, mushy-minded, namby-pamby ideal of non-violence?

At any rate, I don't advocate wanton, random acts of violence. But, as I stated, those cops who abuse their power and brutalize citizens, who use unnecessary force, are criminal thugs themselves and do NOT deserve the protection of a non-violent response.
The cops are obeying orders, not legal ones but orders; they may not deserve non-violence but violence may cause more problems than it solves for at least two reasons. As already indicated it will provide them with a propaganda excuse to clamp down with more violence and say they're responding to violent protests.

Also if this turns into a violent revolution and it is won that way then the most violent ones among the protestors will have the advantage when it comes to setting up a new government and in the past this has often resulted in exchanging one tyrant with another.

However it is tempting and hard to resist but it should be avoided if possible; and I suspect it is.
The history of the planet has demonstrated that tyrants rarely are overthrown without violence. The tyrants themselves make such violence necessary.

We progressives lose because we're too pussy -- we're worried what people will THINK! Oh, my!

Who cares what people think? Those who think ill of us never were going to do anything to better our common conditions anyway, were they?

We progressives tread too lightly and meanwhile the plutocrats make all of us poorer and continue to destroy the very planet. Why? Because we progresives care too much what worthless people think. Mustn't offend anyone! Mustn't lose any footing in public opinion!

Were the powers that be to violently crack down on Americans, all hell just might break loose against them. Are they willing to risk that?

I don't think that they are.

In any event, I do know that as long as the majority of us remain lazy and pussy, nothing is going to improve.

I find it interesting that the Occupy Wall Street encampments are being shut down. This could be an entire blog piece on its own, but if I were one of the treasonous plutocrats, I would WANT those OWS encampments to continue, lest the disenfranchised find OTHER, LESS FRIENDLY WAYS to be heard.

Denied pressure valves, the disenfranchised might just EXPLODE...
If they can get their storm troopers to escalate to a Stalin-like purge then they can't be overthrown without violence but I don't think they can; after enough stories like this one where the police tear gas an 84 year old woman then a growing number of cops will dissent and show that they're not Storm Troopers after all. In fact on TV last night they showed one of the protestors that was in plastic handcuffs after being arrested; he was in uniform, a retired cop.
Yes, Salon.com recently ran a story about that retired cop, who states, correctly, that the cops serve and protect the 1 percent. However, I don't expect other cops to follow his example and admit the obvious: that they essentially are security guards for the 1 percent.

Don't get me wrong: I would prefer a bloodless revolution. However, violence never should be taken off of the table. Everyone, at the minimum, has the right to self-defense -- against the cops, if necessary.

Hopefully, images like the 84-year-old woman who was pepper-sprayed will create public-opinion blowback that will rein the cops in. But I don't count on it. This isn't the 1960s, when images of the civil rights protesters being abused by the cops actually stirred people's conscience. People don't give a shit like they used to, especially if something doesn't affect them immediately and directly. (There are plenty of wingnuts who have expressed their delight over the cops attacking the OWS demonstrators. Clearly they are fine with stormtroopers attacking the people whose sociopolitical and economic views they disagree with.)

Hopefully, as Ted Rall puts it, the credible threat of violence will be enough to keep our stormtroopers in check. (And yes, they are just a goose step away from being stormtroopers. Fascism erupts when people aren't vigilant. If we don't keep the cops in check, they will up the ante. Way too many of them, if not most of them, are ignorant thugs who just happen to wear a badge.)