WAR!
We are all aware that we are at war. We have been in one war or another continuously for decades. In its history, the US has been involved in 100 wars. However, sometimes military operations aren’t called war. They may be called police action, peacekeeping, intervention, or some other term that distracts the population from the fact that there is a war going on. The US has been involved in 325 military actions, which includes the 100 wars. The list of allies and opponents is impressive. It involves most of the world. Many countries are on both lists, sometimes repeatedly on both lists.
However, we are in a war that is overlooked. It isn’t happening in some other country. It is happening here. It isn’t happening to or affecting others in their homes, it is happening to and affecting us in our homes. Many of us (especially those who are in a more advantaged lifestyle) don’t notice that we are engaged in a war; a struggle for survival.
A common definition of war is
a state of armed conflict between different nations or states or different groups within a nation or state.
Are we in a state of armed conflict right here at home? Yes.
Who is the opponent? The corporate oligarchy.
How is this an armed conflict? Let’s have a look.
As people protest against the actions that are effectively a conflict between the poor, working class, and middle class against the donor class
- Police act brutally against protestors and demonstrators.
- Violence is perpetrated against protest action and is being sanctioned as acceptable activity.
- Armed police are rounding up journalists who are recording and writing about protest and counter protest activity, charging them speciously with crimes.
- Police regularly act violently to individuals, generally among but not limited to the poor or low end working class.
- Police sweeps round up individuals who may have committed some illegal activity.
- Mercenary forces act in conjunction with police agencies.
The war in which we are engaged has developed new, non-violent weapons. In a wars, particularly since 1915, there are many casualties among the innocent civilian population. Over the history of war against civilians, the means of destruction have generally been bombs, guns, and poison gas. Other than a couple of individual attacks by opponent forces, the US has luckily not experienced such destruction. However, the war in which we are engaged is taking civilian casualties and will continue to do so until the conflict ends.
Who are the casualties?
- The poor, who live in deplorable conditions, generally lack opportunity as corporate profiteering takes their employment to countries where the poor are more-or-less happy to be a little less poor.
- The working poor who do have employment, but employment that does not compensate them sufficiently, cannot afford health care, healthy food, communication technology, time off work.
- The working and middle classes who are expected to work excessive hours in a hostile environment in order to maintain their ability to live a somewhat healthy lifestyle, are forced to ignore their susceptibility to serious health problems from stress, exhaustion, and poor diet (associated with the need to quickly consume fast food in order to keep up the pace).
If we are at war, who are we at war with?
We are at war with the Corporate Oligarchy. For their own short-term gain, they are content with genocide (police violence, enforced poverty, unavailability of healthcare for the majority of the population, which all lead to illness and death), destruction (construction of industrial infrastructure), and ultimately the potential end of life as we know it (pollution and unrestrained climate changing activity).
The Corporate Oligarchy has taken over much of the government with the infiltration of the two major political parties, both of which, with some exceptions on the part of individuals within those parties, gladly approve whatever the Corporate Oligarchy wants.
Were some foreign power to lay American cities to ruin, leave the population homeless and in poverty, and use weapons that would cause untold sickness and death, the US government would spring into action immediately, unleashing the full power and fury of America’s military might on the perpetrator, even if they had to make up a plausible perpetrator on which to unleash the military might. However, the US government is complicit in this attack, is the actual perpetrator of war upon our own citizenry.
Our government will not protect us in this war, as would be the case with any government that commits genocide upon its own people.
Discounting the possibility of leaving the US, we have one course of action in fighting back against this war upon our own people: Resist the continuation of the genocidal practices as swiftly as possible in as many ways as are feasible. Many members of the progressive movement want to influence both major political parties, and reform the Democratic Party, which is supposed to be the ally of current and future victims of the slow-motion genocide. Other progressives want to replace the Democratic Party with a new party that demonstrates a, swift, effective, and ongoing response to the urgency of our situation.
There are disadvantages to both approaches, but one MUST be taken now, perhaps resolving the differences between the two when victory is in sight.
-30-
Thos