You Can’t Fix History. I’ve thrown away my compass and maps. I can’t use them where we are now.
The rhetoric isn’t new … you could have heard it near a burning cross spoken by people wearing white robes and hoods or by George Lincoln Rockwell addressing an American Nazi Party rally. I heard it when I went to a George Wallace rally 41 years ago.
Beneath the rage, racism, and fear … were the lies.
A lie is the lens that can focus rage, racism, and fear to a fine point of white hot madness.
From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching
“Nearly 5,000 black people were lynched between 1890 and 1960. In her book, On the Courthouse Lawn: Confronting the Legacy of Lynching in the 21st Century, Sherrilyn A. Ifill, professor at the University of Maryland, College Park School of Law, investigates how the lynchings implicated average white citizens, some of whom actively participated in the violence while many others witnessed the lynchings but did nothing to stop them. Her research explores how this history of complicity has become embedded in the social and cultural fabric of local communities that either supported, condoned, or ignored the violence.”
In 1921, in Tulsa Oklahoma, whites stormed the black neighborhood, killing more than 300, burning 36 square blocks, and herding more than 6,000 people into a nearby stadium.
From the evening of May 31st, to the afternoon of June 1, 1921, more Americans killed fellow Americans in the Tulsa riot than anytime since the Civil War. Hundreds of African-Americans were killed and buried in mass graves, stuffed into coal mines or tossed into the Arkansas River. The Tulsa race riot was the worst single act of domestic violence on U.S. soil since the Civil War; worse than the 1965 Watts riot, the 1967 Detroit riot, the 1992 Los Angeles riot and the 1995 Oklahoma city bombing.
The rage, racism, and fear that constantly simmers under our country is our history. Horrendous history … but familiar territory. The people who fanned the flames and incited the riots in Tulsa didn’t hold any position of national prominence or influence. The mob didn’t have a national spokesman … but they still managed to cause unimaginable death and destruction.
But we’ve crossed over the border into new territory. We’ve never been here before.
A Kleagle is a Ku Klux Klansman who recruits new members. On the outside he probably looks just like a regular guy and has a regular job. We know on the inside he’s insane with rage, racism, and fear. And lies. With rudimentary public relations skills he can find others to share his madness. That’s why he’s a recruiter.
That was before …
Where we are seeing now is what happens after The Corporatocracy has spent hundreds of millions of dollars promoting a cadre of carefully picked and groomed Kleagles to national prominence and influence.
They’re on television and radio stations across the country all day every day. And all day … every day … they tell lies coated with rage, racism, and fear to an audience of millions.
They have exhorted their audience to riot and murder. And some of their listeners, insane with rage, racism, and fear fueled by their lies, have committed murder.
But the Kleagles remain on the air. Because they are doing the bidding of The Corporatocracy. They are not fined or fired. They are paid millions of dollars instead.
The other Talking Heads of The Corporatocracy do not condemn or censure them. They are paid not to. The Kleagles bray on to their audience because that’s what they’re paid to do.
Now we see that the majority of Americans want a watered down version of what other people in other countries take for granted. Simple. Basic. Healthcare.
But that would thwart the driving need of The Corporatocracy to make obscene profits from our sickness and pain. So our money-mad ruling elite has instructed their Kleagles to incite their audiences with more outrageous lies which play upon rage, racism, and fear.
We cannot take refuge in the fact that the Kleagle’s audience only makes up a minority in this country. Our Democratic process has been disrupted and perverted time and time again by this minority.
The Nazi analogue, certainly overused but nonetheless instructive, shows us that The “National-Socialist Freedom Movement” polled 3% of the vote in the December 1924 Reichstag elections, and 2.6% in 1928.
5 short years later Adolph Hitler was appointed Reich Chancellor at the head of a cabinet which included only a minority of Nazi ministers.
You can accomplish a lot from a minority position when you’ve got the money, the media, and a party of people insane with rage, racism, fear, … and lies.
Sara Robinson wrote recently, “We’ve arrived. We are now parked on the exact spot where our best experts tell us full-blown fascism is born. Every day that the conservatives in Congress, the right-wing talking heads, and their noisy minions are allowed to hold up our ability to govern the country is another day we’re slowly creeping across the final line beyond which, history tells us, no country has ever been able to return.”
Though Sara Robinson’s analysis is correct … she’s 9 years late to the party. We’re not about to cross that line … We already did. It was crossed on November 22, 2000 when 150 Republican-hired goons rampaged through Miami’s County Hall stopping the vote recount. The Corporatocracy-paid Kleagles and their so-called MainStream counterparts made sure that their audiences understood that the theft of the presidency was a normal transition of power with the imprimatur of The Supreme Court.
What we are seeing now is Fascism … not the beginning … but what Fascism in America looks like after 9 years. We know what it looked like in Italy and Germany. This is what it looks like here. All our electronic communication is monitored. Wars of aggression are waged for corporate profit. Mainstream Media lies by omission to us daily. Hired thugs disrupt the basic democratic processes. Am I leaving anything out? Quite a bit actually but what’s left unsaid is still negative.
What do we have left? The ability to talk to one another and try to ascertain the truth of what is going on. And I don’t know how much longer we can count on that. Liberal voices on radio and television have been silenced. They weren’t rounded up and sent off to camps. This is America. American Fascism is more civilized than that. They were silenced when the Corporatocracy made sure the money spigot was turned off. Just as effective as camps without the pesky PR problem of hiding crematoria smokestacks.
After the August recess, I’m afraid we’ll see an escalation of attacks against Democratic Senators and Congressmen who persist in having the temerity to reform our healthcare insurance system. I’m afraid that Limbaugh, Beck, and the other Kleagles will call on their audiences to bring the Tulsa riot of 1921 to cities nationwide. There’s a lot of money to be made by the Corporatocracy during upheaval and chaos. Blackwater made a bundle in New Orleans after Katrina.
We’ve got an Black Man for a president. The Kleagles will always have something to say about that.
And the reason I’ve thrown away my compass and maps? They’re all outdated. We have never been where we are now.
You Can’t Fix History August 13, 2009
