More Miscellany

1. Local news. I caught the local news in Milwaukee a couple of times last week and noticed two reports on channel 4 that stood in stark contrast to their ads promising to do "the right thing" by going the extra step to "investigate" and not just "report" the news. One concerned a woman a couple of whose kids were found in a boarded-up house down the street from me. The report showed that this was a black neigborhood, stated or suggested that the woman had 14 kids, all living with her, and was pregnant, and that the kids ran away because they were abused. None of these things were actually true. These racially stereotyped depictions came from the police department and were essentially repeated as fact without bothering to get the other side. Another report talked about protesters showing up at military funerals, and left the impression that local anti-war activists were involved. No information was given on the protesters, who are actually part of the far-right fringe and not so much anti-war, as stalwarts of the line that 9-11 (as well as every military death, hurricane or flood) is a divine punishment for toleration of gays and other liberalism. This story could have been embarassing for the right, since some of this loony doctrine comes straight out of the Christian Coalition that forms a base of "mainstream" Republicans.

2. Thanks, Tom! We have a neighbor, Tom, who offered to cut our grass, but when we said okay, he trimmed the lawn, weed-whacked all our bluebells, killed our rosebush and two beautiful trees, all things we told him to be very careful not to do. When he was all done destroying our yard, he asked if could be paid extra for having done everything we told him not to, since it was extra work for him.

When it comes to displaying gratitude for the U.S. military, I think of Tom. Poor idiot. He worked hard, he went the extra mile, did all sorts of extra killing for me that I didn't want. I felt some sympathy for him. I didn't sue him. But I wasn't about to say thank you either. So, no, I won't thank the soldiers who are using neo-napalm and white phosphorous in my name to kill people against my wishes, ruining and squandering my nation's wealth and reputation, and making me less safe.

I saw Ted Rall getting ambushed on Hannity and saw his reaction when Hannity made a reference to our armed forces as granting us the freedom to dissent. Rall was right on when he said, no, it was the Constitution, not the military that grants us this freedom. Though Hannity was right in one respect, the military has the guns, so they could always just shoot us dissenters. It's probably a good thing that they think their job is to protect us, even if they never do. The last time the U.S. military acted with relative clarity to defend the freedoms of Americans was during the War of 1812. (I don't cite the Civil War because in effect, the military was on both sides of that one.)

The fact is that the U.S. military is the enemy of freedom. In the colonial era, the local militias protected the property rights of slaveowners by helping track down escaped slaves. Their successors, the state militias, continued this service for the early republic.

In the Anti-Federalist papers, Brutus wrote that “it is indeed impossible that the liberties of the people in any country can be preserved where a numerous standing army is kept up.” Samuel Adams stated that “a Standing Army, however necessary it may be at some times, is always dangerous to the Liberties of the People.”

The Civil War began on April 12, 1861 when, General P.G.T. Beauregard opened fire upon Fort Sumter. Otherwise, the armed forces were mainly involved in brutal wars of expansion, wantonly killing Native Americans who were the ancestors of today’s Native American citizens, taking over a third of Mexico (and largely failing to honor the freedoms of those living in this territory, despite their protection in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo). In wars that were strictly foreign, it was the rights of American businesses that were being helped. As recounted by General Smedley Butler:

I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested.

When not off to war, the Army and National Guards kept their focus on killing striking workers and their families, from the great railroad strike of 1877 to the Pullman Strike of 1884 to the steel strike of 1919. Most infamous was the Ludlow massacre of April 20, 1914, in which 20 people were killed, most of them women and children from the families of coal miners.

And of course, Army Intelligence began from World War I onward to monitior domestic dissent. Most famously, military units monitored Martin Luther King I, II, and III from the 1940s onward. In reaction to media allegations of illegal army intelligence activities during the Vietnam War, the army chief of staff formed the ACSI (Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence) Task Force in early 1971.

And the National Guard continued to kill protesters. On May 4, 1970 four students were shot dead in the Prentice Hall parking lot at Kent State University by National Guardsmen during a protest against the U.S. invasion of Cambodia: Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Scheuer, and William Schroeder. On May 14, 1970 at Jackson State University in Jackson, Mississippi, protesters Phillip Gibbs and James Earl Green were shot dead, and 15 people wounded.

And in Iraq, the Committee to Protect Journalists notes that 17 reporters were killed by “coalition” forces. Bush considered the total destruction of Al Jazeera, which suffered a series of actual attacks.

So yeah, thanks a bunch for protecting my free speech.

3. Offensive cartoons. Just two quick observations on the ruckus surrounding the Danish cartoons some of which are justifiably deemed deeply offensive by Muslims. 1) In many places, Muslims are reasonable in seeing the West as mobilized in a Crusade against them; this is certainly not the case everywhere, but where Muslims are oppressed, deprecatory speech against them symbolizes the attitudes upon which violence against them is predicated. Such circumstances stretch free speech to its limit because there is a clear and present danger in such circumstances. It is the reason why the publishers of an earlier run of anti-Semitic cartoons could be executed for helping to fuel genocide. This is something most of us in the West don't get. 2) Those who violently protest the cartoons, as opposed to those that simply decry them, seem to have their anger greatly exacerbated by a failure to understand how much the other side just doesn't understand. They exaggerate the degree to which the delf-described supporters of "free speech" consciously support the nasty message. They would find it much easier to appreciate the I-hate-your-message-but-respect-your-rights position if they understood how clueless many people are that take that position.

4. Politicizing funerals. Someone devotes their life to fighting for a progressive ideal, they die, and then people who’ve been on the opposite side want their two cents on the funeral. It happened with Paul Wellstone, and now with Coretta Scott King.

So, friend, (I’ll call you friend, though it would be perhaps be more accurate to describe you by make, model, and serial as 2006 GOP talking points auto-repeating relay station number 3386Z) you didn’t like the role politics played at Coretta Scott King’s funeral? Well, tough beans! Who the hell are you to say what her funeral should be like? When you die, you can have whatever kind of funeral you want. Until then, nobody should give a fig what you think.

For Bush to show up at a funeral of someone whose goals he’s spat upon for decades was nothing more than a sham to pick up underserved political points. If he showed at my funeral, I would hope my real friends would have rotten tomatoes on hand with which to pelt the interloper and thereby celebrate my life.

But credit where due: great way to change the topic.