Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Is The Growing White Disconnect/Discontent A Prelude To Revolution?

Is The Growing White Disconnect/Discontent  A Prelude To Revolution?

From The Ramparts
Junious Ricardo Stanton

    “Seventy-one percent (71%) of all voters now view the federal government as a special interest group, and 70% believe that the government and big business typically work together in ways that hurt consumers and investors.  That helps explain why 75% of voters are angry at the policies of the federal government, and 63% say it would be better for the country if most members of Congress are defeated this November. Just 27% believe their own representative in Congress is the best person for the job.” Only 21% Say U.S. Government Has Consent of the Governed Thursday, February 18, 2010 Rasmussen Reports February 18, 2010

    On my natal day, February 18 a disaffected out of work white software engineer named Joseph Andrew Stark III,  revved up his single engine Piper Cherokee airplane, took off and deliberately crashed it into a building in Austin Texas that housed the IRS after setting his own house on fire. Claiming the US government was the cause of his misery, in utter frustration, he became an American suicide bomber. After Stark’s act the corporatist media covered it for a day then quickly went back to business as usual.
   
     Could Stark’s act be the first salvo of a new American revolution, the 2010 version of the Boston Tea Party or Bunker Hill? Stark left a very articulate letter in which he detailed how in his opinion, based upon his personal experiences the US government had continuously shafted him and people like him over the years. In the early part of his letter which was posted on the Internet he said, “We are all taught as children that without laws there would be no society, only anarchy. Sadly, starting at early ages we in this country have been brainwashed to believe that, in return for our dedication and service, our government stands for justice for all. We are further brainwashed to believe that there is freedom in this place, and that we should be ready to lay our lives down for the noble principals represented by its founding fathers. Remember? One of these was ‘no taxation without representation’. I have spent the total years of my adulthood unlearning that crap from only a few years of my childhood. These days anyone who really stands up for that principal is promptly labeled a ‘crackpot’, traitor and worse. While very few working people would say they haven’t had their fair share of taxes (as can I), in my lifetime I can say with a great degree of certainty that there has never been a politician cast a vote on any matter with the likes of me or my interests in mind. Nor, for that matter, are they the least bit interested in me or anything I have to say.

    Why is it that a handful of thugs and plunderers can commit unthinkable atrocities (and in the case of the GM executives, for scores of years) and when it’s time for their gravy train to crash under the weight of their gluttony and overwhelming stupidity, the force of the full federal government has no difficulty coming to their aid within days if not hours? Yet at the same time, the joke we call the American medical system, including the drug and insurance companies, are murdering tens of thousands of people a year and stealing from the corpses and victims they cripple, and this country’s leaders don’t see this as important as bailing out a few of their vile, rich cronies. Yet, the political ‘representatives’ (thieves, liars, and self-serving scumbags is far more accurate) have endless time to sit around for year after year and debate the state of the ‘terrible health care problem’. It’s clear they see no crisis as long as the dead people don’t get in the way of their corporate profits rolling in.” Internet note purportedly written by Joseph Andrew Stark.
 
       It’s interesting more and more whites are now experiencing what marginalized and oppressed people of color go through in this country every day. Later in the letter he details his travails at the hands of the US government especially the  IRS. He says “As government agencies go, the FAA is often justifiably referred to as a tombstone agency, though they are hardly alone. The recent presidential puppet GW Bush and his cronies in their eight years certainly reinforced for all of us that this criticism rings equally true for all of the government. Nothing changes unless there is a body count (unless it is in the interest of the wealthy sows at the government trough). In a government full of hypocrites from top to bottom, life is as cheap as their lies and their self-serving laws.

    I know I’m hardly the first one to decide I have had all I can stand. It has always been a myth that people have stopped dying for their freedom in this country, and it isn’t limited to the blacks, and poor immigrants. I know there have been countless before me and there are sure to be as many after. But I also know that by not adding my body to the count, I insure nothing will change. I choose to not keep looking over my shoulder at ‘big brother’ while he strips my carcass, I choose not to ignore what is going on all around me, I choose not to pretend that business as usual won’t continue; I have just had enough.” ibid.
   
    Interestingly on the very same day Stark took out his frustrations by crashing his airplane into a building which housed the Austin IRS office, pollster Scott Rasmussen released his latest survey which indicated seventy-one per cent of the people he polled said the US government was a special interest group. This is consistent with an earlier survey Rasmussen conducted which found “75% of likely voters now say they are at least somewhat angry at the government’s current policies, up four points from late November and up nine points since September. The overall figures include 45% who are Very Angry, also a nine-point increase since September.”  www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/february_2010
  
     Rasmussen who conducts his surveys via the telephone probably didn’t contact many black folks or Native Americans if any but his numbers reveal increasing animus against the system by whites. Working class white folks who played by the rules and believed in the system now find themselves suffering and barely hanging on. They watch as Wall Street crooks and shysters get away with unspeakable financial fraud and get over like fat cats. (Bernie Madoff is only in jail because he turned himself in!) They see the Military Industrial Complex being shoveled trillions of dollars, while the insurance companies and banks are about to rip them off even more with the willing help of our Congress Critters. Their frustrations rise as they lose their homes, savings and dignity while their rights are nullified and trampled by all three branches of the government. Small wonder people are angry. They don’t trust their own government to do right by them. Guns stores can’t keep ammunition on the shelves.
  
     Tupac Shakur’s lyric, “When  it rains it pours, they got money for wars but can’t feed the poor.”  resonates in the minds of the masses as they watch their savings shrivel the result of  Wall Street pump and dump scams, massive insider trading and giant Ponzi schemes. People see their government openly siding with the crooks and con artists against them. Gil Scott Heron sang, “The revolution will not be televised”. I’m not so sure. The twenty-four hour cable “news” coverage of Stark’s response to the frustrating disconnect and animus he and millions of other US citizens feel may be giving us a preview of what the revolution will look like.

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