It’s with an extremely heavy heart that I sit down to write today’s post. Although widespread civil unrest was easy to predict, it doesn’t make the situation any less sad and dangerous. We’re in the thick of it now, and how we respond will likely determine the direction of the country for decades to come.
If the combination of peaceful protesting, looting and violence witnessed across American cities over the past few days completely caught you off guard, you’re likely to come to the worst possible conclusion about what to do next. The knee-jerk response I’m already seeing from many is to crush the dissent by all means necessary, but that’s exactly how you give the imperial state and oligarchy more power. Power it will never relinquish.
What’s happening in America right now is what happens in a failed state.
The U.S. is a failed state. Now the imperial national security state is going to flex at home like never before.
I spent the last decade of my life trying to spread the word to avoid this, but here we are.
— Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) May 31, 2020
I don't think people understand the significance of the President declaring "Antifa" a "terrorist organization". The Patriot Act and provisions of the NDAA of 2012 make this frightening. Because Antifa is informal it puts all protestors in danger–like declaring them un-citizens.
— Bret Weinstein (@BretWeinstein) June 1, 2020
GOP @SenTomCotton: "If local politicians will not do their most basic job to protect our citizens, let's see how these anarchists respond when the 101st Airborne is on the other side of the street." pic.twitter.com/NyojLoOEAT
— The American Independent (@AmerIndependent) June 1, 2020
The pressure cooker situation that erupted over the weekend has been building for five decades, but really accelerated over the past twenty years. After every crisis of the 21st century there’s been this “do whatever it takes mentality,” which resulted in more wealth and power for the national security state and oligarchy, and less resources, opportunities and civil liberties for the many. If anything, it’s surprising it took so long to get here, partly a testament to how skilled a salesman for the power structure Obama was.
Your election was a chance to create real change, but instead you chose to protect bankers while looting the economy on behalf of oligarchs.
You and Trump aren't much different when it comes to the big structural problems, you were just better at selling oligarchy and empire. https://t.co/QuSQNApeLY
— Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) June 1, 2020
The covid-19 pandemic, related societal lockdown and another round of in your face economic looting by Congress and the Federal Reserve merely served as an accelerant, and the only thing missing was some sort of catalyst combined with warmer weather. Now that the eruption has occurred, I hope cooler heads can prevail on all sides.
On the one hand, you can’t pillage the public so blatantly and consistently for decades while telling them voting will change things and not expect violence once people realize it doesn’t. On the other hand, street violence plays perfectly into the hands of those who would take the current moment and use it to advocate for a further loss of civil liberties, more internal militarization, and the emergence of an overt domestic police state that’s been itching to fully manifest since 9/11.
It’s my view we need to take the current moment and admit the unrest is a symptom of a deeply entrenched and corrupt bipartisan imperial oligarchy that cares only about its own wealth and power. If people of goodwill across the ideological spectrum don’t take a step back and point out who the real looters are, nothing’s going to improve and we’ll put another bandaid on a systemic cancer as we continue our longstanding march toward less freedom and more authoritarianism.
Cops and protesters banging heads while bankers sit at home drinking wine with their newly printed Federal Reserve dollars. Same as it ever was.
— Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) May 30, 2020
You have to hand it to them, looting on a massive scale by laundering it through the stock market is an ongoing act of evil genius.
— Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) June 1, 2020
Everything we’re seeing tonight is as sad as it was predictable. If we want to turn this thing around we need to start addressing our severe systemic problems at the root level. If we fail to do so, you can expect more of the same and worse.
— Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) May 31, 2020
While we aren’t going to solve everything at once, something should be done as soon as possible to at least partially address current anger and frustration.
Clearly there’s a major problem when it comes to policing in America, particularly in poor inner-city communities. Let’s start by ending qualified immunity.
Qualified immunity, created by the Supreme Court in the 1970s, shields police and other government officials from liability in civil rights lawsuits when the illegality of their actions was not “clearly established” at the time of the offense.
Attorneys representing the families of Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor called for policing reforms—including rolling back qualified immunity—at a press conference today…
While it may seem like George Floyd’s right to not be choked to death by a police officer would be rather obvious, the fuzzy phrase “clearly established” has evolved over time to become a pedantic and unforgiving standard. Plaintiffs are often required to go fishing for cases that match their exact circumstances, lest their lawsuit get tossed. Last year, a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel granted qualified immunity to an officer who, without warning, shot a 15-year-old holding an airsoft gun.
Ending qualified immunity may seem like a small thing, but it’s an important step toward adding some accountability to those in positions of power. As it stands, power at all levels in our society largely operates above the law. This applies to politicians, national security state operatives, CEOs, Wall Street, the police, and of course, Jeffrey Epstein. Those in positions to do the most damage to society are simultaneously most immune from the consequences of their actions. This is a core systemic problem in our country, so let’s take a small step and start with qualified immunity for police officers while the opportunity exists. From there we can turn our attention to the bigger fish.
Why didn’t the looters just buy stocks and bonds like normal criminals.
— Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) June 1, 2020
I understand my message will likely fall on deaf ears, and I’m used to things not going the way I want them to. I have no idea where society will go from here, but I know we’re at a key inflection point in our nation’s history. We can begin to turn this thing around, or we can go totally off the deep end. Try to be as creative, constructive and conscious as possible during these trying times.
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Excellent post. It’s always nice to see someone not fall into the red/blue foolishness and focus on bankers and our actual structural problems instead.
My only quibble comes in the first paragraph, because I’m starting to seriously doubt this country will make it a few more decades in its current form. Dissolution seems increasingly likely and we could break into several (many?) pieces by then. This combination of financial distress, persistent unrest, and systemic corruption does not augur well for longevity.
I wouldn’t lament the breaking up of the American Union any more than I would lament the breaking up of the Soviet, European, or British Union.
I hope they have a nice day for it ! A consumation devoutly to be wished !
I agree with Michael here that SMALLER sovereign social groups are required.
The cities are single party power centers. They are exclusively Democrat. The city councils, be they white, partially white, or all black, hire the most ruthless and militarized police to act as revenue collectors. That’s all the police do in the black sections of the cities: raise money for the empty bankrupt coffers of town hall by issuing tickets and fines, citations and summons, and making arrests for the pettiest infractions in order to charge bail.
Some say poor blacks don’t pay taxes but that’s not the truth. They pay in ways the selfish spoiled whites in Antifa never experience. They pay to a guy with a badge, a gun, a nightstick, and a taser who tells them they did wrong! They did wrong and they have to pay for it! Imagine having to deal with that all the time, being treated like a criminal just so the Democrats up in town hall get some money to spend on their corrupt civil “servants”.
I read that mostly black Ferguson Missouri, a town of 20,000, had issued 15,000 arrest warrants. I also read that the average Ferguson resident paid $300 per year in police fines. I don’t know if those figures are correct, but I know they are close, because I’ve heard from blacks in New Haven about how they get pulled through the wringer by the police. A $300 parking ticket was not the exception!
These Democrat cities treat their black residents like they own them. And that’s because the Democrat party is the party of the Confederacy, of John C. Calhoun and those paternalistic slave owners who argued for the loving welfare for elderly slaves and their families was innately more humane than the cruel northern abolitionists who preferred to let elderly freed blacks freeze to death in the gutter. As far as the Democrat city councils are concerned, the blacks are their personal property, and they can exploit their possessions as they see fit.
Yet it seems that blacks cannot see the yoke around their neck. They refuse to embrace the Abolitionism of their forefathers and repudiate their oppressors because of the frankly ingenious propaganda effort that’s kept the blacks as slaves of the Democrat party.
Antifa unwittingly serves as the white foremen of the Democrat plantation. This is merely in keeping with the paradoxical and hypocritical nature of an association (if not a formal organization) that claims to fight fascism while adopting all the manners and tactics and even colors of historical fascists!
I discuss the Democrat problem here because the problem of urban black poverty is exclusively and totally their problem: it serves their power and their privilege. Degenerates like Cornell West have raged against Trump and white supremacy for years now not to serve the interests of the black community as he claims but to secure power within the Democrat party structure. He said so much in his latest screed: Party power comes first, solving problems (maybe) later.
What would Republicans do, one might ask? I have no idea, but since they are the reason the United States is totally bankrupt and collapsing thanks to the military global empire, I seriously doubt they could rally the forces of creativity, ingenuity, education, and industry necessary to alleviate black poverty.
For example, George W. Bush thought he was doing just that leading into the housing bubble: he compelled Fannie and Freddie to lower their standards so as to facilitate bank loans with ridiculous terms to the black community, convinced that home ownership would create equity and real capital for them. But when 2008 came about, all that happened was a massive theft as one million black-owned houses were stolen by banks like Mnuchin’s IndyMac on the flimsiest pretexts. And so-called conservatives railed away, blaming blacks for buying houses they could not afford, instead of blaming banks for making reckless loans with criminal terms in case of default.
There’s something revolting about a man being promised a zero-down loan, making mortgage payments for months that initially consist entirely of interest and no principal, and then being thrown into the street, getting nothing in return except a bad credit report. And yet it happened one million times only ten years ago.
So, a political solution is impossible under the current two-party system. The Democrats are no different today than the planters of the Deep South 170 years ago. And 2008 showed the Republicans to be no sweeter than the northern abolitionists John C. Calhoun mocked way back then.
I would think a schism of the Democrat party whereby the blacks form their own party and then use vote-swinging to coerce one side or the other to grant concessions would be for the best. However, we are not in a place where the best of anything is possible. Now is the time of degeneration and entropy, where the selfish and the egotistical will ride the ruins into the dust. Until this is all over and people tire of utter corruption, there is no chance of “change”.
I would go further than blaming the TWO PARTY system. I consider any PARTY politics inherently corrupt. A party is almost by definition a conspiracy to deny the will of the people.
Best comment I’ve read in a long time Hansa. Thank you.
My best guess is that Tulsi’s New (national socialist) Democratic Party will form the schism you propose. I’m still hanging out on the limb maintaining she will emerge from the next election as President, for what that’s worth. I maintain that that is the plan to unify this country and that this whole country falling apart deal is a misdirection play, a set-up.
If we ask ourselves what would best contribute to the safety and security of the elites, it would be a wholesome, healthy, earnest, tough, hard-working, egalitarian, no-nonsense, constructive, relatively libertarian, and perhaps most importantly FORWARD-LOOKING cult of personality as the head of state.
My wife and I left Portland, OR eight years ago for exactly the reasons you described above.
Looking at the red/blue blinders many still wear from the comments section here and on Zero Hedge, I think your message did, unfortunately, fall on deaf ears.
A recap using a small set of excerpts from the article might be in order:
“…Because Antifa is informal it puts all protestors in danger–like declaring them un-citizens.” – B. Weinstein
“…let’s see how these anarchists respond when the 101st Airborne is on the other side of the street.” – T. Cotton
“…You and Trump aren’t much different when it comes to the big structural problems, you were just better at selling oligarchy and empire.” – M. Kreiger
“…the unrest is a symptom of a deeply entrenched and corrupt bipartisan imperial oligarchy…”
“On the one hand, you can’t pillage the public so blatantly and consistently for decades while telling them voting will change things and not expect violence once people realize it doesn’t.”
“…nothing’s going to improve and we’ll put another bandaid on a systemic cancer as we continue our longstanding march toward less freedom and more authoritarianism.”
ZeroHedge turned into that. If you started going there in ’09 or ’10 and remember the days of Reggie Middleton and fonestar and MillionDollarBonus, you know ZeroHedge is straight trash today.
ZH really is garbage today. There are a few good posters but they’re surrounded by trolls and Q-tards.
I remember a few years ago when people started complaining about the frequent n-word usage, saying that never happened in ZH’s early days. Now those people are gone and one can be openly accused of weakness if they DON’T use the n-word when referring to black people.
The place went haywire after Trump’s election, when he morphed from the outsider guy into the deity that Q invented. ZH knows their audience and they throw a lot of red meat articles to these people, which creates a downward spiral. It’s sad, because it was a great source of insight for a long time.
The maga-nana republic revealed as the third world oligarchy it actually is. The globalist elites with their zionist trained police enforcers presiding over a multi-culti squabbling multitude with nothing in common except misery & frustration. Add 40 million unemployed due to the covid panicdemic and all that was needed was a spark of outrage. Expect China-style totalitarianism as the imperial elites attempt to cling to power. This is how the USSR would have ended without Gorbachev.
“While we aren’t going to solve everything at once, something should be done as soon as possible to at least partially address current anger and frustration.”
Specifically whose “anger and frustration”, Michael?
A bunch of poorly raised white kids and black kids, who could care less about some guy in Minneapolis?
You really need to qualify that statement. Otherwise, things will only get worse, instead of better.
Because when a mob of rioters come into your neighborhood to destroy it you’ll have only one choice.
The point I was making, is this is an opportunity to address a real problem, which is unqualified immunity. And I think we should take this moment to address that.
I am opposed to people killing each other in the streets, obviously.
And when a mob of bankers and speculators destroy the whole economy, they get rewarded with more loot.
Who and where is the “leader” who will help us “turn this thing around”? I see this whole local / national / global mess as a totally organic charge-discharge process oscillating its way to a primary discharge like an unusually intense and “smart” lightning bolt that obliterates whatever gets caught in the discharge. Once whoever is left after this runs its course coalesce into much smaller dispersed groups, then real leaders will emerge and the organic process of reorganization and compliexification will begin again. The book Ridley Walker comes to mind.
Michael, You do not know this case yet, even if you think the video shows everything. Nobody is guilty until proven so. There is a legit question re cause of death here.Also,Floyd was a dangerous violent felon who committed home invasion. Also note that the attorneys herein were involved in many hoaxes such as Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown. Racial Racketeers writ large. The best point you make is the hegelian dialectic where engineered problem enables engineered fascist response. For ex–911 and current chaos —“out of chaos will come a NEW WORLD ORDER”
I’ve been watching old noir movies, one a day. This is the life I remember. Boys were crazy about girls and almost everything they did was to get them, and it was the greatest feeling in the world when they did. Boys and girls are leery of each other now, because the leadership has managed to make men hate women and women hate men over the frustration of heavy indebtedness, high housing costs and lack of good job prospects, retarding marriage prospects. The tools they have been given to shield their pain by the leadership is to call masculinity toxic, females gold-diggers and marriage a prison, leaving suicide as the only choice in old age. The U.S. leadership has destroyed the relationship between man and woman and the family itself-for profit. It has intentionally created tens of millions of miserable, hopeless, purposeless lives-for profit. There is nothing worth saving about America, which may in fact be merely a corporation. The right thing is for it to be destroyed, or at least the ENTIRE leadership, to a man. The violence needs to expand and become focused.
Dat was a mouthful…not arguing it at all.
First we get rid of the Democrats then we get rid of the Republicans and replace them with the Propertarian party. Study up on PROPERTARIANISM by Curt Doolittle and John Mark. It is the only thing that will save this country.
it seems some people are afraid…
“I am opposed to people killing each other in the streets, obviously.”
Yeah? Tell that to the antifa-trustafarian’s you’re defending, and let me know how you react when they show up in your neighborhood with a violent mob mentality.
That’s some kind of bullshit!
I’ll say it one more time. I am not in favor of mobs going to random neighborhoods and committing violence against others.
Thomas Frank said this (or v. similar)
2008 was the turning point and Obama missed the turn.
How can you sum it up better than that?
Obama knew he was going to miss the turn.
You can’t miss a turn that you knew you were never going to take.
USA is an Oligarchy and always was. Once Teddy Roosevelt went Trust-bashing it was left to Barons of Finance to be the power brokers and they faced little international competition. WWII produced enormous prosperity for US Citizens because of huge Gold imports from Europe in return for weapons and food. Marshall Aid kept US factories running without postwar collapse – German patents acquired at zero cost (UK paid royalties) gave Us industries a technological boost into 1960s.
Germany had an undervalued exchange rate not convertible until 1957 – UK was forced to resume convertibility in 1948 and crashed economically with devaluations and Exchange Controls until 1980 and debt overhang until 2016.
Germany had a debt haircut in 1952 and 1990 and the 20th Century Defaulter had a clean sheet.
So US Citizens thought they were in Paradise with Consumerism, Full Employment, STEM Scholarships to fund “William Foster” in College and Grad School before “Falling Down” ended his dreams in 1993.
College, Party time, Credit, but fundamentals not really sorted other than in patchwork like Medicare and Medicaid and Great Society boondoggles to create “Constituencies” that people like Daniel Patrick Moynihan fought against and Joe Califano fought to expand.
The rich used Phillips Exeter Academy to ensure conveyor belt to Ivy League and rest got ideological public schools funded by property taxes at county level.
The faultlines were evident even before Reagan started dismantling the structures and Stockman was taken hostage by the Military. US Budgets are skewed to Imperialism and away from domestic priorities – tax breaks are skewed to the favoured cliques and User Fees and Fines have replaced taxation on low income groups.
US is now experiencing its “Intifada” – you know like the Palestinians it will never succeed but cheap foot soldiers keep the elites on each side fighting proxy wars for negotiated advantage behind closed doors.
Maybe the US should reflect back on those British soldiers sent to Northern Ireland in 1969 to keep peace between two sides fielding paramilitaries and how many died – >3500 deaths with 32% being Soldiers and Policemen
It started out with Civil Rights Marches for justified grievances and ended in decades of bombings and violence. Go read up on 1968-69 in Belfast and Londonderry to see just how far things morphed and wonder how many Us police forces are making the same errors as the RUC back in 1960s
wow
mike this was your very very best post in a long long time, but it was the best BECAUSE OF THE AGGREGATION of all your other posts before this.
you need to run for governor mike. i’m not even joking. i’ll be your campaign manager remotely from new york.
are you going to pork fest?
i’ve never been, but i Might join a friend if you are going.
this is probably not a good time to be going this year.
honestly, between covid and everything else, i just wouldn’t reccomend it.
what say you?
z
Ending qualified immunity is not a small thing, it is huge. Qualified immunity along with police unions have given police the power to literally get away with murder. Ending qualified immunity, and banning police unions would restore credibility to LEO’s in this country.