If the Beast Had a Brain

From the Occupy Handbook, edited by Janet Byrne. [1]

"One of the complicating factors in the Occupy movement was that so many of the thrown-away people of our society--the homeless, the marginal, the mentally ill, the addicted--came to Occupy encampments for safe sleeping space, food, and medical care. These economic refugees were generously taken in by the new civil society, having been thrown out by the old uncivil one. Complicating everything further was that the politicians and the mainstream media were more than happy to blame the Occupiers for taking in what society as a whole created and for the further complications that ensued.

"Civil society contains all kinds of people, and all kinds showed up at the Occupy encampments. The inclusiveness of such places was one of the great achievements of this movement."

So, to begin with, they ended the nationwide moratorium on evictions. They are leaving MILLIONS of Americans in danger of being driven from their homes. Entire families could face the streets. Yeah, America cares about its kids.

The news comes hot off the heels of the twenty YEAR fiasco in Afghanistan, an ill-conceived "micro-militarism" (to borrow a term from Chris Hedges) wherein he bloodthirsty imperial behemoth got its ass handed to it by the Taliban, a group of religious theocratic dictators whose idea of civilization is rooted in Shariah Law. I can't say much more about THAT, or Vocal will refuse to even post this article. However, I'm assured by some White House talking head peon that we've "achieved our objectives" after twenty years and around four trillion dollars (not to mention thousands upon thousands upon thousands of civilian casualties, as well as thousands of young soldiers, contractors, and on and on, for a staggering toll in human blood and misery), and that, because we have "achieved our objectives," we can all safely pack up and go home, leaving Afghanistan in the same hands as when we invaded twenty years earlier.

No one with two brain cells to rub together would believe that. As Nietzsche said, "Everything the state says is a LIE, and everything it has, it has stolen." The Lie is that the war "Achieved the objectives" of the Imperial War Machine; the theft here is of the People's treasure, which bypassed the People entirely, and was siphoned massively, over twenty years, into the coffers of the military-industrial complex. The People, who, considering they have been suffering through a pandemic for a year and a half now, could have USED that money, but are instead facing a crisis of eviction and thus homelessness, of staggering proportions.

The Supreme Court refused to reinstate a flimsy two-month extension of the moratorium on evictions. Judges in states geared to favoring those already favored by race, wealth, and privilege were already ignoring the moratorium in support of booting women and children out into the streets. One article I read, fresh as today from the Washington Post, profiled a judge particularly in favor of this course of action. It made sure to note the Biblical basis of his theocratic if utterly hypocritical worldview. (Making one wonder: Who Would Jesus Evict?)

Representative Cori Bush staged a sit-in of sorts, sleeping on the steps of the Capitol [2], which secured a two-month extension on the moratorium from the spineless, servile Biden, whose life is a study in being beholden to corporate interests, wealth, power, and privilege. God bless her for this and anyone else in the system who tried to favor the people. She knows what it is like to be poor, homeless, and desperate in a country that only values the power of your bank account.

Because once you hit the spiral of poverty, of homelessness, dependence, and the economic exploitation of the ruling elite, the criminal enterprisers, the drug pushers, pimps, and those that prey on the vulnerable--your chances of crawling back out of the hole that fate and a cruel, ugly, terminally unjust world have prepared for you are markedly slim to none. There is no "social mobility" or damn little of it. The "richest with the mostest" have seen their wealth grow to staggering proportions during the Pandemic. The rest? Not so much.

Ten years ago, the Occupy Movement gathered in Zuccotti Park, in New York, laying siege to Wall Street by the thousands, eventually spreading to cities all over the United States, to protest their dwindling prospects under the yoke of a system that bailed out "too big to fail" financial institutions, while leaving the increasingly hurting middle and lower classes to see their prospects of the future vanish as certainly as the windbag proclamations and promises of so many politicians and pundits. Derided by the vomit brokers of the corporate media and eventually forcibly ousted by a Left-leaning puppet president, they sent a chill wind through the American landscape, letting the Powers That Shouldn't Be know that there was a young world with hearts of fire and minds filled with righteous outrage; that the people might, just might, not "go gentle into that good night." That they might rear an ugly head not seen since the fire and fury of the 1960s. That they might "rage...rage against the dying..." [3]

Ten years and one global Pandemic later, the situation seems far, far more grave. Inequality between the classes has only increased; political chicanery has brought to power a man whose corruption, egoism, arrogance, and quasi-fascist, cult-like appeal smacks equally of Huey Long, L. Ron Hubbard, and Benito Mussolini.

The world has inalterably altered: the lockdowns have brought the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, with a staggering unemployment rate. To paper over this (in the literal sense), the government issued a series of paltry "stimulus checks" to the people. Again, a massive transfer of actual wealth was handed over to the wealthiest corporations, who, Lord knows, certainly need it. The One Percent flourish; the rest starve. [4]

Very soon, they may freeze as well.

Human interaction has changed, too. No longer can people feel safe meeting close-up, face-to-face, making love, or just making amusement together. Now, EVERYTHING is the Pandemic, the new strain of which, the "Delta Variant," is said to be even more highly contagious. As Bad Religion use to sing, "Fuck Armageddon...this is Hell."

There's an "immigration crisis" at the Southern border. Someone told me that several HUNDRED migrant children were found sleeping in a cage designed for around...forty. True colors of the system. Proving how much it cares for human life, which is to say, NOT IN THE LEAST.

The Middle Eastern wars bled the treasury for decades. And yet, they were resounding failures. The world is not safer; we have not "exported our Democracy" all across the planet. We teeter on the brink of becoming world pariahs. Our people go without proper healthcare; many of them now face reported "food insecurity."

Companies are hiring, complaining of a fictional labor shortage. The real shortage is their willingness to pay a LIVING WAGE to people that can't afford to rent an apartment they'll get kicked out of as soon as they can't cough up the money for due to looming future "lockdowns."

The Raven

I had a dream two years ago. A night-black raven, the image of death, was sitting on a rotten buffet table, this food of excellence symbolizing abundance. But the feast was over, and the grapes of wrath "rotteth upon the vine."

Hundreds of thousands already go homeless in a country with millions of vacant dwellings. According to some estimates, it would take several billion to cure the homeless problem in this country, but that would be a one-time investment. The Afghanistan War, by contrast, cost a TRILLION dollars. The People starve amidst plenty, their lives held hostage by the system that stole their money and bled their future dry.

What do you think, in the staggering waves of homelessness that must surely ensue now that landlords are allowed to evict those behind on their rent through no fault of their own, will happen to women and children who find themselves on the streets with not even the protection of a roof over their heads? What do you think the trade will be like in prostitution and human trafficking? Pimps, pornographers, pedophiles, and even serial killers must be drooling at the prospect of so many new young bodies available, unprotected, out in the open, desperate, and waiting to become victims. Already victims, really, of the capitalist system that chews up the lower classes on behalf of the privileged elite.

Some lament that this may "increase the spread of the Delta Variant" of Covid-19. What they say is true, but it is also cold-blooded as hell and misses the point entirely.

If the Beast Had a Brain

If the Beast had a brain, he'd try to stave off the coming wave of newly homeless. He'd do what he could to take care of his hostages to fortune; because masses of people sleeping in tent cities with their children, who are going to learn a somewhat "special" view of the American Dream they are all taught they must venerate as a kind of religious dogma, is possibly NOT a fortuitous turn of events.

I'm no expert on the history of the Occupy movement, but I well remember it. The young kids in Zuccotti park, their righteous anger at an unjust system they knew, somehow, had dispossessed them and sold their birthright to the corporate overlords, the banks, and the ruling elite. Their movement spread to other cities; suddenly, The Powers That Be recognized they had a vast, messy, embarrassing problem on their hands. They acted with predictable brutality to suppress it, to brutally evict the Occupiers. They used the oppressive cudgel of the State apparatus to suppress a spontaneous uprising of protest and dissent.

If it had been some tin-pot regime in the third world, the United States would have loudly condemned such actions as "suppressing freedom and human rights" on behalf of the authoritarian state. Honestly, there is no depth of hypocrisy these people will not plume.

But the anger will grow. The offense will become palpable and real; already is. The people wield an enormous amount of power when they are organized and lead. A single spark can ignite the tinderbox of social anger, a single incident, setting off a wave of protests and unrest. The result is that the system finds it must increasingly show its true, fascistic colors by violently and mercilessly tamping down on the much-vaunted "freedom of dissent" allegedly enshrined in the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights.

(As in: "You have the Right to Remain Silent.")

I want to quote one more line from the excellent article cited above.

An ex-Marine, Shamar Thomas, who was clad in medals and fatigues, said of the NYPD crackdown on the OWS protestors: " This is not a war zone. These are unarmed people. It doesn't make you tough to hurt these people. It doesn't. Stop hurting these people!"

Shamar is said to have been carrying a sign that read, on one side, "End Police Brutality," and on the other: "NO WAR."

What is the potential for another Occupy movement? Perhaps one that would dwarf the original in sheer numbers? What will be the impact of masses of homeless children freezing on the street? Will they not be preyed upon by those that traffic in children? Exploited? Raped and killed?

Most importantly, will they not grow up to be very, very ANGRY?

The Beast should stop to consider all of these things. It might contemplate and come to a logical conclusion and course of action. If it only had a brain.

Or a soul.

But, perhaps, the latter is asking for too much.

Notes.

1. Solnit, Rebecca. "Civil Society at Ground Zero." The Occupy Handbook, edited by Janet Byrne. New York, Back Bay Books, pgs. 294-299.

2. Stracqualursi, Veronica. "House Democrat sleeps on Capitol steps as she blasts lawmakers over expiring eviction moratorium" CNN, www.cnn.com/2021/07/31/politics/cori-bush-eviction-moratorium-cnntv/index.html. Accessed August 31, 2021.

3. The lines borrowed here are from the famous poem "Do not go gentle into that good night" by Dylan Thomas.

4. Sloan, Allen. "The CARES Act Sent You a $1,200 Check but Gave Millionaires and Billionaires Far More." ProPublica, www.propublica.org/article/the-cares-act-sent-you-a-1-200-check-but-gave-millionaires-and-billionaires-far-more. Accessed August 30, 2021.