Ka mate, ka mate! ka ora! ka ora! Ka mate! ka mate! ka ora! ka ora! Tēnei te tangata pūhuruhuru Nāna nei i tiki mai whakawhiti te rā Ā, upane! ka upane! Ā, upane, ka upane, whiti te ra! ~Ka Mate, Maori Haka (main body) |
'Tis Death, 'Tis Death, 'Tis Life, 'Tis Life
'Tis Death, 'Tis Death, 'Tis Life, 'Tis Life
This is the hairy man
Who caused the sun to shine again for me
Up the ladder, up the ladder!
Rise! The Sun shines.
~Ka Mate, English translation.
Ever heard of the Maori?
They're the Native people of New Zealand. Among other things, they are known for the Haka, a war dance that many other traditional cultures believe has magical properties and is very powerful. This was in fact referenced by Morgan Freeman's portrayal of Nelson Mandela in Invictus. The most famous, Ka Mate, is the story of a Maori chief named Te Rauparaha who hides in a well, from pursuing enemies of other tribes. He evades his enemies and is rescued by an unnamed man who puts a ladder down the well so he can get out. Made world-famous thanks to its use by the New Zealand All Blacks Rugby team, Ka Mate is a story of the triumph of life over death.
Why do I bring that up? Oh, no reason.
A SWAT Team in Salt Lake City knocked down an old man that was leaning on his cane waiting for the bus today, and left him to be helped up by, apparently, other cops. There have been a number of deliberate assaults against peaceful protesters, random people of all ages, creeds and colors, reporters, various bystanders, etc. Not just those that Trump deems "Enemies of the People" but everybody. There's a reason for that.
These are not the actions of brave men, and because they're cowardly shits, they think everybody else is, too. They think fear will cause others to submit to them. This is MAGA cruelty theater. These fucking people refuse to believe that anybody else might be different from them, or motivated by anything different. It's stupid, really.
But there's lots of these fuckers that are mad as hell about the fact that Derek Chauvin is being held to account for the murder of George Floyd. They're mad as hell that a lot of their superiors and union people up to and including the head of the Fraternal Order of Police have basically said "Hang the fucker" and not a few department heads have said anybody who supports Derek Chauvin can turn in their badge. They're mad as fucking hell that people see them for what they are, and they sure as fuck don't want reporters to film it. My personal opinion is they're angry as hell that people of all colors are out there protesting, too.
Conservatives, in general, are mad as fuck that a majority of the nation seems to be coming together in support of George Floyd rather than Donald Trump. And lots of cops are conservatives, if not outright fascists and many of these people have bought into the "Thin Blue Line" crap that Republicans have lavished on them for the past decade or so. Ever notice how as soon as a Black guy got elected President, these people stopped "Supporting" Federal agencies and the military and started "Supporting" the Police instead? Again, there's a fucking reason for that. Oh, and among other things the FBI has been warning since at least 2007 (to my knowledge) that White Nationalists were infiltrating police departments. Throw in declining educational and training standards, and lavish Federal spending on gear and weapons since 9/11 and there you have it.
Republicans got the cops in their pocket for exactly this sort of a time, when their poll numbers are in the toilet, their power is slipping, and their leadership is terrible.
Why? Because people who don't understand human nature, morality, religion, and a host of other things view force as a shortcut to getting what they want and worship it accordingly. Never mind that force has its limits, I mean, hell, they still haven't managed to force the majority of people to support Trump and he's been a part of the political scene...dominating it at times...for almost five years now.
However much force you have is only as good as your will to use it. That's what broke us in Vietnam, that's what broke us in Afghanistan and Iraq, and that very thing will break America. Why? Because we allowed ourselves to be ruled by cowards. Yes, Bill De Blasio, I'm looking at you just as much as I am at Donald Trump when I fuckin' say that.
The real shortcut is to break the willpower, or delude the mind. The Russians didn't need to hack out elections, not when they could easily hack the minds of conservative voters with information warfare. The Maori might not need to crack your skull with a Greenstone club or run you through with a Taiaha if their Haka could intimidate you into submission. As I said, the NZ All Blacks famously used Ka Mate for exactly that reason. In Invictus, the Springboks locking arms and staring the Kiwis down is an example of this same principle.
This is part of why conservatives fall apart in the face of a threat like Coronavirus, they can't bullshit it or intimidate it, and it doesn't know or care who they are, so they have no idea how to fight it.
And when this campaign of murder and intimidation by police goes sideways in some way and the Republicans find their power reduced or those they claimed to support not sufficiently grateful (i.e. refusing to Kamikaze themselves for the Republicans' small shitty god and large expansive tax cuts) the Republicans will move on to "Supporting" whatever the next group of suckers is that they think will support their ends, anti-government insurgents, for example...who will turn right around and kill police officers and soldiers. Republican relationships were purely transactions long before Trump came along and made it official. I can remember when Republicans as a rule were far more likely to hate cops, and Democrats were more likely to love them. I can remember when far more cops were union Democrats than were Republicans, including a longtime family friend who laughed at me for voting for Bob Dole in 1996 when Bob Dole's first move after retiring from politics was being in Erectile Dysfunction ads and Viagra commercials. My friend's running joke was that at least Bill could get it up. I got even when Bill got caught getting blowjobs from Monica Lewinsky, though. Good times, the Clinton years. Just sayin.'
In insurgent warfare, and in peaceful protest alike...and in democracy in general...the real metric of which side is winning or losing is public opinion. On the level of body counts and use of force, Indochina and Algeria counted as victories for the French, yet they lost. The Vietnam War is widely considered to have been a military defeat for the United States despite the fact that we killed hundreds of thousands of people and 50 years later the damage from that war still lingers in many places in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. There are still NGO and United Nations EOD teams digging up and disarming unexploded American ordinance on the Plain of Jars in Laos, once literally the most heavily bombed location on the face of the Earth. We lost in Vietnam because our willpower broke.
Against an insurgent force like the Viet Cong or peaceful protesters like the African Americans marching for Civil Rights or the Anti-draft protesters of a few years later, using excessive force will generally fuck you in the court of public opinion.
You have to use a minimum amount of force in counterinsurgency and you have to give the other side something so they have an incentive to stand down. Republicans aren't doing that, and they're creating thousands of images that will only be used against them for as long as they continue to exist, at this point.
No American still supports and damned few Americans even remember Ngo Dinh Diem. Hell, damned few Americans remember Thich Quang Duch either...but millions of people around the world remember Malcolm Browne's iconic photograph of the aged monk burning himself to death in the middle of the street.
American public opinion fucked the South Vietnamese government after that. Diem was eliminated in a coup that November, and the Kennedy administration shifted toward a conventional approach in Vietnam. Oops. JFK didn't live long enough to see how badly that turned out.
Likewise, In the era of what Max Boot calls "Radical Chic" people like Che Guevara became iconic images of their time...regardless of whether or not they'd been successful. (Che wasn't.)
The same applied to the Afghan Mujahideen in the 1980's despite the fact that the Soviet Union was far from a democratic state. Despite ITAR-TASS and Pravda, the people figured it out. Those same people were heroes in the West, only to be our enemies twenty years later. Now, We have 24 hour cable news and social media. Unless you are ignoring everything, you know what's going on minute to minute in real time.
The image of a little girl with blood dripping down her face because she committed the horrible crime of walking down the street with grocery bags rather than cowering in the face of authority and power does not fill me with fear. It makes me think very much about the fact that I was taught to use a rifle once, and that I was taught that in an America that would have almost uniformly reacted to a sight such as this with revulsion and whoever did it would have likely had their court case be a national news event.
Instead, only about two thirds of us are filled with horror and revulsion, while another third cackle in simpering glee at the sight of the blood of the undeserving.
Funny thing but lots of these old Boomers were anti-war protesters in the Vietnam era. They grew up to be Yuppies whose stock portfolios got a bump from the spending on FIM-92 Stinger missiles that went to the Mujahideen, but they still made those same noises about freedom and peace at that point. In their old age, they've evolved into not much more than a bad parody of what they accused their own parents of being.
Funny thing, but I have not noticed any kind of pro-Trump rally 'round the flag effect. I have not seen anybody saying they were gonna vote for Trump because of the protests or the riots.
Except, of course, from the people that were already for Trump. But those people? They don't care about America, the entire Continental United States could be reduced by strategic weapons to a series of glass-edged craters slowly filling in with seawater from both oceans and they would somehow claim it as a win for Trump before they drowned or died of radiation poisoning.
If We The People do not back down, we've got this. The cops, and Trump, have lit that fuse now that tells me that this crisis of ours has a decent chance of being resolved well before the elections, and that unless Republicans break off a piece of America for themselves and each side's territories hold separate elections, the Republicans are going to get their ass kicked. Unfortunately, the second conclusion all but guarantees the first. This is the existential dread I've been feeling these last few weeks.
Do. Not. Back. The Fuck Down.
Hold Fast, we're in for one hell of a bar brawl.
But we ain't gotta take this shit, and I have a feeling we're not going to.
If you want a better nation, you have to be a better citizen, and now is the fucking time.
Either we take a stand against the fall of night or we don't. Either we believe the things we say we do, or we don't. There can be no half measures.
Part One.
Update: This morning, Senator Tom Cotton, a US Army infantry veteran and Harvard-educated lawyer, said that protesters should be given No Quarter.
That's a problem.
Donald Trump has made similar statements in a rather less polished manner and demanded mass arrests of protesters in a conference call with the nation's Governors today, which many have found disturbing. Protesting is a fucking Human Right protected by international convention and the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, which itself predates all of said conventions currently operable.
And a No Quarter Order is a fucking war crime. It means that those who surrender should be killed rather than allowed to withdraw or taken prisoner, that wounded should be allowed to die rather than shown mercy and treated, among other things.
As David French (himself a former Army Reserve JAG who served in Iraq) specifically points out "No Quarter" has a very specific meaning in the context of armed conflict and military action and he goddamned well knows it. The issuing of a No Quarter order has been considered some level of war crime since the Hague Convention of 1907 per Section 23 (D) of said convention. Violators of said convention are considered war criminals under both US Federal and international laws and the Uniformed Code of Military Justice. It's also in domestic terms a specific violation of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878.
This is what we're up against, people.
These motherfuckers need to be driven from power by whatever means present themselves and then denied the capability to ever have it again.
Vote, and if need be, fight against this shit like your life depends on it, because it fucking does.
These fucking people will never be content with anything short of cowering submission to Authority and I'm fucking sorry, but that's not America. It's America Or Trump at this point. Remember that.
And we didn't make it that way, they did.
Given how they're defining "Protesters" they're basically saying they'd issue a no quarter order against you for walking down the street with grocery bags in your hand. Do you want to live in that kind of country? I sure don't. And remember that these are the same fucking people who were threatening violence over lock-down stay at home orders intended to protect the public health.
But they want to shoot you in the face for daring to go get groceries.
Think about that, for a second. Just think about it. Think about how much of a totalitarian asshole you gotta be for something like this to even enter your brain pan. And that's what we're up against.
I'll have more on this tomorrow, but I'm too tired to write today.
A SWAT Team in Salt Lake City knocked down an old man that was leaning on his cane waiting for the bus today, and left him to be helped up by, apparently, other cops. There have been a number of deliberate assaults against peaceful protesters, random people of all ages, creeds and colors, reporters, various bystanders, etc. Not just those that Trump deems "Enemies of the People" but everybody. There's a reason for that.
These are not the actions of brave men, and because they're cowardly shits, they think everybody else is, too. They think fear will cause others to submit to them. This is MAGA cruelty theater. These fucking people refuse to believe that anybody else might be different from them, or motivated by anything different. It's stupid, really.
But there's lots of these fuckers that are mad as hell about the fact that Derek Chauvin is being held to account for the murder of George Floyd. They're mad as hell that a lot of their superiors and union people up to and including the head of the Fraternal Order of Police have basically said "Hang the fucker" and not a few department heads have said anybody who supports Derek Chauvin can turn in their badge. They're mad as fucking hell that people see them for what they are, and they sure as fuck don't want reporters to film it. My personal opinion is they're angry as hell that people of all colors are out there protesting, too.
Why? Because people who don't understand human nature, morality, religion, and a host of other things view force as a shortcut to getting what they want and worship it accordingly. Never mind that force has its limits, I mean, hell, they still haven't managed to force the majority of people to support Trump and he's been a part of the political scene...dominating it at times...for almost five years now.
However much force you have is only as good as your will to use it. That's what broke us in Vietnam, that's what broke us in Afghanistan and Iraq, and that very thing will break America. Why? Because we allowed ourselves to be ruled by cowards. Yes, Bill De Blasio, I'm looking at you just as much as I am at Donald Trump when I fuckin' say that.
The real shortcut is to break the willpower, or delude the mind. The Russians didn't need to hack out elections, not when they could easily hack the minds of conservative voters with information warfare. The Maori might not need to crack your skull with a Greenstone club or run you through with a Taiaha if their Haka could intimidate you into submission. As I said, the NZ All Blacks famously used Ka Mate for exactly that reason. In Invictus, the Springboks locking arms and staring the Kiwis down is an example of this same principle.This is part of why conservatives fall apart in the face of a threat like Coronavirus, they can't bullshit it or intimidate it, and it doesn't know or care who they are, so they have no idea how to fight it.
In insurgent warfare, and in peaceful protest alike...and in democracy in general...the real metric of which side is winning or losing is public opinion. On the level of body counts and use of force, Indochina and Algeria counted as victories for the French, yet they lost. The Vietnam War is widely considered to have been a military defeat for the United States despite the fact that we killed hundreds of thousands of people and 50 years later the damage from that war still lingers in many places in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. There are still NGO and United Nations EOD teams digging up and disarming unexploded American ordinance on the Plain of Jars in Laos, once literally the most heavily bombed location on the face of the Earth. We lost in Vietnam because our willpower broke.
You have to use a minimum amount of force in counterinsurgency and you have to give the other side something so they have an incentive to stand down. Republicans aren't doing that, and they're creating thousands of images that will only be used against them for as long as they continue to exist, at this point.
No American still supports and damned few Americans even remember Ngo Dinh Diem. Hell, damned few Americans remember Thich Quang Duch either...but millions of people around the world remember Malcolm Browne's iconic photograph of the aged monk burning himself to death in the middle of the street.
American public opinion fucked the South Vietnamese government after that. Diem was eliminated in a coup that November, and the Kennedy administration shifted toward a conventional approach in Vietnam. Oops. JFK didn't live long enough to see how badly that turned out.
Likewise, In the era of what Max Boot calls "Radical Chic" people like Che Guevara became iconic images of their time...regardless of whether or not they'd been successful. (Che wasn't.)
The same applied to the Afghan Mujahideen in the 1980's despite the fact that the Soviet Union was far from a democratic state. Despite ITAR-TASS and Pravda, the people figured it out. Those same people were heroes in the West, only to be our enemies twenty years later. Now, We have 24 hour cable news and social media. Unless you are ignoring everything, you know what's going on minute to minute in real time.
The image of a little girl with blood dripping down her face because she committed the horrible crime of walking down the street with grocery bags rather than cowering in the face of authority and power does not fill me with fear. It makes me think very much about the fact that I was taught to use a rifle once, and that I was taught that in an America that would have almost uniformly reacted to a sight such as this with revulsion and whoever did it would have likely had their court case be a national news event.
Instead, only about two thirds of us are filled with horror and revulsion, while another third cackle in simpering glee at the sight of the blood of the undeserving.Funny thing but lots of these old Boomers were anti-war protesters in the Vietnam era. They grew up to be Yuppies whose stock portfolios got a bump from the spending on FIM-92 Stinger missiles that went to the Mujahideen, but they still made those same noises about freedom and peace at that point. In their old age, they've evolved into not much more than a bad parody of what they accused their own parents of being.
Funny thing, but I have not noticed any kind of pro-Trump rally 'round the flag effect. I have not seen anybody saying they were gonna vote for Trump because of the protests or the riots.
Except, of course, from the people that were already for Trump. But those people? They don't care about America, the entire Continental United States could be reduced by strategic weapons to a series of glass-edged craters slowly filling in with seawater from both oceans and they would somehow claim it as a win for Trump before they drowned or died of radiation poisoning.
If We The People do not back down, we've got this. The cops, and Trump, have lit that fuse now that tells me that this crisis of ours has a decent chance of being resolved well before the elections, and that unless Republicans break off a piece of America for themselves and each side's territories hold separate elections, the Republicans are going to get their ass kicked. Unfortunately, the second conclusion all but guarantees the first. This is the existential dread I've been feeling these last few weeks.
Hold Fast, we're in for one hell of a bar brawl.
But we ain't gotta take this shit, and I have a feeling we're not going to.
If you want a better nation, you have to be a better citizen, and now is the fucking time.
Either we take a stand against the fall of night or we don't. Either we believe the things we say we do, or we don't. There can be no half measures.
Part One.
Update: This morning, Senator Tom Cotton, a US Army infantry veteran and Harvard-educated lawyer, said that protesters should be given No Quarter.
That's a problem.
Donald Trump has made similar statements in a rather less polished manner and demanded mass arrests of protesters in a conference call with the nation's Governors today, which many have found disturbing. Protesting is a fucking Human Right protected by international convention and the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, which itself predates all of said conventions currently operable.
And a No Quarter Order is a fucking war crime. It means that those who surrender should be killed rather than allowed to withdraw or taken prisoner, that wounded should be allowed to die rather than shown mercy and treated, among other things.
As David French (himself a former Army Reserve JAG who served in Iraq) specifically points out "No Quarter" has a very specific meaning in the context of armed conflict and military action and he goddamned well knows it. The issuing of a No Quarter order has been considered some level of war crime since the Hague Convention of 1907 per Section 23 (D) of said convention. Violators of said convention are considered war criminals under both US Federal and international laws and the Uniformed Code of Military Justice. It's also in domestic terms a specific violation of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878.
This is what we're up against, people.
These motherfuckers need to be driven from power by whatever means present themselves and then denied the capability to ever have it again.
Vote, and if need be, fight against this shit like your life depends on it, because it fucking does.
These fucking people will never be content with anything short of cowering submission to Authority and I'm fucking sorry, but that's not America. It's America Or Trump at this point. Remember that.
And we didn't make it that way, they did.
Given how they're defining "Protesters" they're basically saying they'd issue a no quarter order against you for walking down the street with grocery bags in your hand. Do you want to live in that kind of country? I sure don't. And remember that these are the same fucking people who were threatening violence over lock-down stay at home orders intended to protect the public health.
But they want to shoot you in the face for daring to go get groceries.
Think about that, for a second. Just think about it. Think about how much of a totalitarian asshole you gotta be for something like this to even enter your brain pan. And that's what we're up against.
I'll have more on this tomorrow, but I'm too tired to write today.
#Next5 #Top20
;: nods in approval ::
ReplyDeletefollows in nodding vehement approval while also chuckling in mirth at your wonderful snark. bravo!!!
ReplyDelete