The End of the World Will Not Be Televised

Inspired by the several revolutions in recent months in North Africa, citizen occupations are presently continuing, and building, in the American financial capital, Wall Street, in New York City, as well as other cities in support of that one. Hundreds of people are taking part, including some unions, and at least two well known figures, Susan Sarandon and Michael Moore. Police have been using excessive force, including at least one incident of tear-gassing people whose behavior was perfectly peaceful. Meanwhile, rich slobs sit on their penthouse balconies overlooking Wall Street sipping champagne and mocking those in that mundane world below them who foolishly protest the means by which these slobs became rich.

It is interesting to me is that this event has gotten hardly any mention on the mainstream news media in the United States. Even outlets like the usually reliable National Public Radio have refused to cover it - in the case of NPR, no doubt scared of the growing number of members of Congress (which provides its funding) who are marionettes dancing on financial strings jerked by the ultra-rich. If one wants to know what is going on, one must pull in various alternative news sources through the internet, or turn to the foreign press.

It doesn’t take much to figure out why this would be – the mainstream news media are owned by the very ultra-wealthy whom these demonstrators are protesting against. And the ultra-wealthy don’t want this kind of protest to spread, and the voices calling for a change in the current policy of relieving the ultra-rich of any tax burden and any impediment, economic or environmental, on their quest to accrue even more wealth.

And it is clear what the alleged reasoning behind this crackdown is: The widely held view is that "it's not real, it's not significant, unless it's on television". Reality (that, if you don't remember, is the context of events that cannot be accessed by electronic media) be damned, what matters is hype. These people believe reality can be controlled, that facts can be manipulated into twisted distortions that serve their end-game. These people believe that, if this demonstration is ignored by the electronic media, it is doomed through insignificance to eventual failure.

And it is clear to me that the police have been told to help bring about that eventual failure more quickly, to break up this demonstration by any means necessary. Clearly these techniques of dragging people by their hair, of insulting them, of tear-gassing them, are meant to incite violence on the part of the peaceful protesters. Once someone loses her or his cool, the police can arrest and detain that individual.

I am reminded vividly of what the prophet John Lennon said:

“When it gets down to having to use violence, then you are playing the system’s game. The establishment will irritate you – pull your beard, flick your face – to make you fight. Because once they’ve got you violent, then they know how to handle you. The only thing they don't know how to handle is nonviolence and humor.”

What Lennon said exactly coheres with the pacifist philosophies of Lao-tse, Thoreau, Gandhi, and King.

What is sad about Lennon's point, in this context, is that the very moment some number of these peaceful protesters do lose their cool - when the police "pull their beard, flick their face", or, in actuality, as the police are doing right now, pull them off by their hair and tear gas them - THAT WILL IMMEDIATELY BE HEADLINE NEWS.

I support this kind of peaceful citizen protest; indeed, I think there are times when it becomes our civic duty. When government forgets its prime responsibility to be of the people, for the people, and by the people – when government becomes against the people – it is the civic duty of the people to protest, to speak out, and to resist.

The right-wing ultra-wealthy control the news media, and have for years so successfully that a vast proportion of Americans have been duped into believing that the rich shouldn't pay taxes, that homosexuals and dark-skinned foreigners are out to get us, that our essential civil rights and health insurance and social services should be eliminated, that nonsensical neverending wars should be fought and our young people killed in them. I see efforts like this one on Wall Street as part of a last-ditch effort to awaken citizens to the serious danger this right-wing movement poses.

I say to these protesters what I tell myself: My hope and prayer is constantly that if just one person is awakened by my efforts, then my efforts, my life, were not in vain. For one person can go on and awaken one more, and that person one more, and so on. And, yes, the cynics are right; perhaps in the long run it won't make any difference, that the lunatics will destroy this world anyway. But, as Ezekiel was told by Creator, even if they don’t listen, you still have to blow the trumpet to awaken and motivate them. And I say, as did Martin Luther, if I knew for a fact that the world was going to be destroyed tomorrow, I'd plant a tree today.

The lunacy is setting in on all fronts. It isn’t enough that Republicans are crowding the field in their efforts to bring shame upon themselves; President Obama, a Democrat, has horrified me by ordering the killing of a United States citizen. Anwar al-Awlaki had become a key figure in al-Qaeda and a very influential communicator in both English and Arabic. I do not doubt that his efforts are detrimental to the well-being of American citizens, even though he was never connected in any material way to any terrorist attacks on anybody.

However, the United States Constitution, which President Obama swore to uphold, requires him to maintain procedures of due process.

When Awlaki’s father sought a court order to bar Obama from authorizing the murder of his son, the United States Department of Justice argued that such decisions were “state secrets” and therefore beyond the scrutiny of the courts. Awlaki has not been tied to any material support for terrorist attacks. As a result, he was killed for his ideas, for his words, rather than his actions. Which means his Constitutional right to the freedom of speech, no matter how widely repugnant his words may or may not be, was summarily ignored.

But, more importantly, the United States Constitution, which Mr. Obama swore to uphold, requires individuals accused of crimes to be guaranteed the right to due process – they are considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. If Awlaki was guilty of a crime – and that remains even to be alleged, let alone proven – he was not found guilty in fair trial. And yet he was killed. At most, he may have been guilty of – not treason, but of sedition: action, writing, speech, etc., directed unlawfully against state authority, the government, or the Constitution, or calculated to elicit contempt for these, or to incite others to hostility, ill will or disaffection against these. Sedition does not amount to treason, and therefore it is not a capital offense. It is not punishable by death.

Which brings us back to the peaceful protesters on Wall Street. They are protesting, among other things, government, for its sanctioning of, its legalizing of, the elimination of taxes for the ultra-rich, the elimination of civil rights, the elimination of social services. Are they, then, guilty of sedition? By the vaunted “logic” by which the killing of Awlaki was authorized, could police or military be sent in to kill them, too? It has happened before – and several times, from the Whiskey Rebellion to the unionist marches in the Great Depression to the forcible putdown of peaceful civil rights and anti-Vietnam marches, most egregiously the killings at Kent State.

A government against the people sees its own citizens as enemies. If all it takes to justify killing citizens is an executive decree of guilt (rather than a decision of guilt in a court of law), then we are now living in a police state, in which any of us, at any time, including me for writing these words could be justifiably murdered by our own government.

The same day I heard about the murder of Awlaki, I had an agent of the government accuse me, on the telephone, of lying to him. I am supposed to receive a refund of overpaid taxes. I have called several times to ask the tax officials to send my money to me here, where I live in Panama. They continue to mail it to a defunct address in the United States, and apparently ignore the sticker put on by the United States Postal Service, when the check is mailed back to them, which provides my present address.

Despite all this, the agent on the telephone accused me of lying when I assured him that I have repeatedly called to provide my current address. I was forced to explain to him in very clear language that my taxes help pay his salary, that he is an employee of the citizens, including me, and that he has no right to adopt an accusatorial tone and state, without fact or proof, that I lied to him. I cannot help but wonder, now, if my statements to him could justify an executive order to kill me.

It seems to me that the world is drowning in a sea of rhetoric. Nobody seems to care about truth any more, just about shouting louder than everybody else - hence they get more and more outrageous in their wild statements simply to gain more attention; as a result, they wander ever farther from the truth.

The truth is: If citizens can be legally killed because “they look or sound like a terrorist”, there will be bloodshed in the streets at the hands of police and military. We must hold to the rule of law.

If that is the way things are, then may G-d have mercy on our souls.