Organizing Notes

Bruce Gagnon is coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space. He offers his own reflections on organizing and the state of America's declining empire....

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Location: Brunswick, ME, United States

The collapsing US military & economic empire is making Washington & NATO even more dangerous. US could not beat the Taliban but thinks it can take on China-Russia-Iran...a sign of psychopathology for sure. We must all do more to help stop this western corporate arrogance that puts the future generations lives in despair. @BruceKGagnon

Thursday, December 08, 2016

Meet the New Secretary of Endless War



My thinking is that Trump will help bring on the inevitable collapse of the American empire.  If people and countries around the world have any good sense they will not follow the US over the cliff.

Trump represents the collective sickness of white supremacy, imperial over reach, arrogance, and undeserved sense of exceptionalism.

'Mad Dog' Mattis exudes this American sense of arrogance and entitlement.  His words to the Iraqi people repeatedly indicate this notion that 'we came, we conquered'.  Imagining him in the role of Secretary of War, armed with the biggest military in human history, is frightening.  Will he walk into a room full of Russian or Chinese leaders and figure he can order them to do this or that and threaten to 'brawl' if they do not comply?

It's mind blowing to consider.

The US is like a cowboy gambler with a black hat on a Mississippi riverboat playing cards.  The cowboy looks around and sees himself surrounded by those he has exploited for years.  He thinks his only way out is to start shooting – the law of the west.  That, I think, is essentially still the foreign and military policy of the US.  Its part arrogance and part fear that the world has woken up at last and is rejecting the cowboy mentality of ‘full spectrum dominance’.

Growing global poverty and the reality of climate change though are banging on Washington’s front door.  The corporations are trying to make money from climate change – their love for the dollar bill is so great that they cannot see beyond their lust for power and greed.  I call them pirates.

The pirates have buried a treasure chest in the US – it is our national treasury created by the taxes from the people’s hard work.  About 55% of every federal tax dollar under the discretion of Congress goes to the Pentagon.  America has become a war culture.  Our economy is addicted to military production.  People are increasingly  being indoctrinated to believe the ‘Muslims-Russians-Chinese’ are coming to attack us so we must spend even more on weapons for war and we must have the very best space technology system in place to 'protect' ourselves.  We are a paranoid nation – massive guilt and fear comes from our long legacy of corruption and genocide. 

The bottom line is that much of America has lost its soul.  By becoming a killer nation we've lost touch with the sacred around us - our Mother Earth and all the life that inhabits this wondrous planet.  Nothing much changes until we heal this collective broken spirit.

Native people are calling for more prayer as one way to reconnect with the goodness of the sacred.  We also need to speak the truth more than ever as the dark forces try to smother the light.

We cannot cower and shirk in fear during these coming days.  All life - the plants, the animals, the land, water, air, human life - depend on us standing tall in our own communities and speaking the truth.

Bruce

1 Comments:

Anonymous Brother Jonah said...

Mr Trump studiously ignored Standing Rock until he couldn't any longer. Mr Obama and Ms Clinton did the same. Now the eyes are seeing and the ears listening. They saw last weekend what they face in the next four years. The Klan had a march celebrating Trump's "victory" but guess what, or rather who? The people they hoped to intimidate actually showed up. The Klan backed away and didn't do their march.

And the same with Standing Rock. The donald has at least partly and temporarily backed off the immigrant roundup. All in one week.

The Bonus Army massacre led by Eisenhower, MacArthur and Patton, was done in the darkness, at least metaphoric. There was no television, no internet, no way for people to know until it was over that "our" government had committed such an atrocity. Ludlow, just over a decade before, the same way. Klan marches, same way, Wounded Knee was still in living memory. But people rose up against each of these. A century give or take a decade or two, and we became complacent about Union protections, about VA care and other benefits, Desegregation and Native rights, Medicaid, people in the government cutting in whenever possible, but mostly because of the very intense Stated Will of The People, they had to comply.

Now we stand gawking at somebody who is, by now, realizing just what he has bitten off, and the lack of chewing ability frightens him.

There was no landslide, no mandate, not even a majority, He tries, still, to bluff and bluster, but the resistance grows every day.

We might just become the first empire to concede without a fight. Rather than the old fashioned way, like Rome. Or I always hope for such.

12/9/16, 1:40 PM  

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