Crazy babies

Have you noticed that the United States, which calls itself the “land of the free”, has somehow become the land of unconditional surrender? America’s demands for obedience take several forms:

• Unconditional surrender is demanded from formerly sovereign nations
• Absolute submission is demanded by the police
• Zero tolerance is extended to juveniles, especially students

Just who the hell is the United States that everyone now must obey her? How is it that everyone everywhere is now a potential criminal who must be subdued and forced to submit or die?

Starting with the Germans and the Japanese in World War II, America has demanded unconditional surrender from her defeated enemies. Instead of treating them as sovereign states, America has treated them as criminal entities, regardless of the causes for the wars through which we defeated them. Whether it is declared wars, undeclared wars, police actions, humanitarian interventions, or covert military actions, the end game is always the same: surrender to America’s will or you will be killed. Those who refused to surrender (e.g., North Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Iraq) are either still our enemies or have been saddled with long-lasting genocidal impacts from our war making (atomic fallout, Agent Orange, depleted uranium, etc.). America is a sore loser and an even worse victor. Like Rome, we create a desert and call it peace.

Anyone who resists arrest in America is in danger of being killed by police and sheriff departments who are authorized to use lethal force in response to your resistance. It doesn’t matter if you stole a fountain drink or a pack of gum, if you then resist arrest you may be tasered, shot, and/or killed in response. And it’s extremely unlikely that any policeman or deputy will ever be punished for what he or she does to you. Have you ever heard of the phenomenon called “excited delirium”? That’s what they call a person’s death struggle when he is being killed by the police. According to the police, the perp must have been responsible for his own death because they certainly cannot be held responsible for your death at their hands from the lethal force they employed. Resist and you’ll be tasered, hogtied, and positioned with all your weight (and/or a cop’s weight) on your chest until you suffocate. That’s ok, because you were resisting arrest when you should have been absolutely obedient. Who said life was fair?

And what’s happening in our school-to-prison pipelines is absolutely moronic. Students who pull childish pranks, throw temper tantrums, perform minor acts of vandalism, or even accidentally bring a knife to school in their lunch bag are arrested, handcuffed by police, and taken to jail. And what’s the result of such “zero tolerance” policies? Wrecked lives and swollen prison populations; and you can still buy drugs including heroin in nearly every school in the country. How can these kids believe us when we tell them that the future is unlimited and they can do whatever they want without limitation? Can you spell hypocrisy, or maybe schizophrenia?

Think about this situation for a while, and like me you may come to the conclusion that all of this has little or nothing to do with concepts of “right and wrong” but has a lot to do with the concepts of “control and counter insurgency”. That’s right, COIN may or may not work in Afghanistan but that’s no reason not to use it in the United States. A government that seeks political power through the barrel of a gun (firearms, television, and syringes) will have no qualms about using any tool available to subdue not just its manufactured external enemies but even its own people.

Do you really think that the giant surveillance, police, and military network erected since 9/11 was necessary to track down a few ragtag terrorists living in some shithole in the Middle East? This whole monstrosity is aimed at you, American citizens, and at all freedom-loving peoples everywhere.

America’s fierce demands for unconditional surrender from everyone remind me of the following passages from the New Testament:

And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.

Revelation 13:16-17 (KJV)

The human population is growing fast, and the supplies of food and potable water are dwindling. America is spending pennies on famine relief and prevention but spending trillions of dollars on weapons and technologies to suppress and control the eventual hungry masses who will demand to be fed. Does any of this sound like a government which cares about the 99 percent, or is it one which cares mainly about the one percent who are more than willing to kill the rest of us so that their comfortable lifestyle can continue?