Culture Of Cruelty Obvious, From Big Picture Down To Details Wherein The Devil Dwells

"The only way left to affirm yourself in failed societies is to destroy." 

-- Chris Hedges

The arc of my reading this morning was rooted in Hedges' bracing essay on why the U.S. imposes a culture of cruelty on so many innocent victims. None of his examples of sadistic public policy were new to me, but taken together as a whole they paint a picture of surprisingly consistent cruelty.

It's been decades since I let corporations tell me what news to pay attention to, so I went on from there to read some familiar websites like Pressenza and a newish one specific to my home state, the Maine Monitor (formerly Pine Tree Watch). 

At Pressenza I read more about a situation I've seen some tweets about, "US Trying to Extradite Venezuelan Diplomat for the ‘Crime’ of Securing Food for the Hungry: The Case of Alex Saab v. The Empire by Roger D. Harris. It's one pungent example of U.S. economic warfare via sanctions enforced by incarceration. 

Did you know that one-third of nations on our planet are under some form of collective punishment via U.S. sanctions?

 Hodeidah, Yemen where the U.S.-supported war waged by Saudi Arabia has created rampant malnutrition. © Asmaa Waguih/Redux

Some awareness of history suggests that sanctions nearly always precede our invasions and bombing campaigns to control other nations' resources. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright famously defended sanctions imposed on Iraq that resulted in the death of an estimated 500,000 children: "I think that is a very hard choice, but the price, the price is worth it." 

This was before her confirmation hearings, by the way, but apparently posed no barrier to her joining the Clinton cabinet. Perhaps cruelty is actually a requirement for those who serve the empire?

Children are also the victims in Maine. When their parents are incarcerated, often for non-violent crimes and often for simply being too poor to pay fines or make bail, children struggle to stay in touch. As a former school teacher I know from personal experience how much kids struggle when a parent is in jail. But both public and private jails in Maine make money from gouging families for phone calls with loved ones. "As families struggle to afford 15-minute phone calls from jail, Maine counties rake in millions" by Samantha Hogan provides the satanic details.

Source: Save the Children

Zoom back out to the big picture, where children are going to bed hungry while billionaires buy another mansion. From Children's Defense Fund:

As of February 2021, more than 1 in 5 Black and Hispanic adults with children (22.8% and 20.6%, respectively) said their households were not getting enough to eat compared with 1 in 10 white adults with children (10.4%).

Cruelty as public policy is designed to engender fear, according to Hedges. Turning it back on the perpetrators is what is required now: 

"History has amply illustrated how this process works. It is a game of fear. And until we make them afraid, until a terrified Joe Biden and the oligarchs he serves look out on a sea of pitchforks, we will not blunt the culture of sadism they have engineered."

Do You Have To Talk To A Beloved 8 Year Old About How Not To Get Shot By Police? #WhitePrivilege

Image: Say Her Name

I am going to keep sharing the video below until it no longer makes me cry. So, probably for the rest of my life. 

As the demagogue with bad hair yesterday announced a ramped up "war on drugs" -- white supremacist code for ramping up violence on black people -- it's worth remembering that blacks are no more likely to use or sell drugs than whites. In some cases, less likely.

Despite the facts, this is how loving parents feel they must educate their children. For survival.



When I try to explain white privilege to whites who claim they are not and never were privileged, I almost always use some example of how their children are dealt with by police when said children do something illegal. Or even don't do something illegal, but are driving a car or walking or skateboarding. One of my children did a lot of dumb things that drew the attention of police, but as an articulate white boy he never experienced their violence and never went to jail.

I'm aware that police also target and harass white people who are visibly poor, especially the homeless. That does not change the fact that EVERY parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle or cousin of a young man of color worries that their loved one will end up dead after a routine encounter with law enforcement. 

Graphic: MappingPoliceViolence.org

And statistically speaking, they are quite right to worry.

Graphic: MappingPoliceViolence.org

Black and brown women and girls also face disproportionate levels of violence from police, often sexual violence. Many have died in custody. Say Her Name is a resource that helps us remember who they were and how they died.

I do not have a good feeling about the safety of innocent black and brown children in the U.S. under the new regime. 

Police who are not held accountable for extrajudicial execution of 12 year olds like Tamir Rice are likely to go on killing. If you also fear this deadly trend, please join me in sharing the video. Until the madness stops.

Dungeons & Dumb-dumbs

Dirty Tricks Department: Maine's (doubly) historic labor mural was removed over the weekend. The price tag for much maligned state workers to do so is undisclosed. Where the mural will end up, nobody knows. The City of Portland is backing away from enabling the sneaky removal, and may not offer it a home in City Hall after all.

The same week Gov. LePage announced he would remove the mural from a lobby in the Dept. of Labor because it is one-sided, he also announced that he would tax the rich in Maine, but he can't find any.

He said this once in class (see John Harlow's video here), and then repeated it for a newspaper reporter covering his appearance at University of Maine's Farmington campus.

Meanwhile the history buffs among us watch censorship rear its ugly head right out in the open. In the corptocracy, it usually works invisibly by shutting out much that is possible. The closing down, boarding up, tearing down style reminds us more of earlier eras of governments that worked on behalf of business, not for the people. Governments that controlled a restive underclass by whipping up hatred for scapegoats. As we now see in the many actions including preemptive prosecution against Muslims simply for being Muslim.

They and Bradley Manning are held incommunicado for immense stretches of time in a young human life, without being suspected or accused of any violent crime. They are in jail for what they believe, and because they are in one of two special prisons called Communication Management Units (article here about CMUs on Democracy Now!), there are twelve year-olds haven't spoken to their father in four years. Special prisons for ideological crimes looked too racist, so the prisons now receive environmental activists and animal rights activists to balance out the demographic of thought criminals.

Meanwhile, Governor LePage has special prisons in mind for Maine's indigent and homeless: “If it were up to me, I’d find a dungeon very cheaply and house them all.” Full report here on The Maine Campus.