RE: [Marxism] Re:What happens to a race deferred?

[Joaquín Bustelo <jbustelo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Fred Feldman writes: "This will happen even if -- as I hope and may be
happening -- the political forces who are opposed to a vindictive
demonstration of official power against the Blacks in the city win out
over the "take back the city" and crush-the-"insurgency" forces."

The vindictive wing of government officials and opinion shapers is very
strong, even if they don't have the commander of the troops in the
field.

Take the lead article in today's NY Times web site:

"On streets where gun battles, fistfights, holdups, carjackings and
marauding mobs of looters had held sway through the week, the mere sight
of troops in camouflage battle gear and with assault rifles gave a sense
of relief to many of the thousands of stranded survivors who had endured
days of appalling terror and suffering."

Having been immersed in the product of on-the-spot journalistic
coverage, there are neither reporter's own observations nor eyewitness
accounts to back up this sweeping portrait. But we do know for a fact,
from the account of the Black Panther Party founder and recent Green
city council candidate, that there was white vigilanteism, which nowhere
else gets mentioned.

The "marauding mobs of looters" were the only ones actually captured on
videotape and testified to by eyewitness. And they were just the poor
people of New Orleans not letting a couple of locks stand between their
destitution and a chance to survive.

Over on Fox News there isn't a mention of this "mob rule" without rape
being thrown into the mix. Of course, nowadays they don't mention the
race of the supposed rapists, they just show pictures of Blacks
recquisitioning food and water while they talk about rape and looting.
But even without the pictures, it is such an ingrained part of American
white supremacist mythology that race need not be mentioned.

The historical truth is, of course, precisely the opposite. It was the
massive, systematic rape of slave girls and women by their white masters
and overseers that really took place.

And then there's this:

"While the sound of gunfire had been common in the streets of New
Orleans for much of the week, it seemed to taper off. Michael D. Brown,
director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said much of the
earlier violence had been by youths with guns. 

"'Some of these kids think this is a game,' he said. 'They somehow got
their hands on a weapon. They think they are playing Pac-Man or
something and shooting at people. Those kinds of hot spots will
continue, but I can tell you they will learn very quickly the 82nd
Airborne does not like to be shot at. This is not a game.'"

Brown is an asshole lawyer who was removed as head of a horse beauty
contest organization for incompetence. He is representative of a type --
the caste of (mostly white male) lawyers and MBA's who get to run
everything. 

The point isn't that these people are inherently incompetent, although a
surprising number are quite demonstrably so.

Rather, it is that these sorts of statements show how completely removed
their world is from that of the Black youth who were fighting for their
own and their family's survival in New Orleans this week. 

Brown knows from right-wing propaganda, of course, that video games turn
teenagers into crazed murderous werewolves. But the only video game he
can think of is the 25-year-old arcade title Pac Man, which most of
these kids never played, and may never even have heard of. It is a
surreal and pathetic portrait of the ultranarrow white gated community
mentality that you see evidenced among the Bushites, and that reflects
the outlook of their social base, the most privileged five or ten
percent of the population, the caste of lawyers and MBA's and their ilk.

It's the kind of thing that CONVINCED them that Saddam MUST be holding
out with WMD's because his accounting and documentation of their
destruction was incomplete. The kind of thing that convinced them that
Iraqis would receive them with flowers and hosannas for the attemtp to
turn their country into an American strip mall. The kind of thing that
convinced them that the levees couldn't break. The kind of thing that
convinced them that people who didn't leave New Orleans were those that
chose to stay and had only themselves to blame, because even if their
Humvee was in the shop for repairs, they should have taken the Suburban.


It's the kind of thing that has some of the more thoughtful people in
ruling class circles questioning whether the government can be left in
the hands of a political movement and millieu that displays such
indifference to reality. 

For it is one thing to lie about a Fidel or a Saddam whom you have spent
decades demonizing and about whom people will believe anything. It is
quite another to believe your own lies, and base policy upon them,
because you can disregard reality but it won't disregard you: it has a
tendency to come and bite you in the ass.

I do not know, and make no predictions, that the ruling class is ready
to replace this regime (in the sense that Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and
Bush II all represent a continuous trend in policy). It may be argued
that it is just this *administration* that is the problem, but this
administration is the culmination of a whole political evolution, the
product of a political shift or movement by the ruling class that
started three decades ago in the wake of Nixon's resignation.

But quite likely by this time next year a) the housing bubble will have
burst and b) the economy will be heading into or already in a recession.
There is also the very real danger of another terrorist attack by the
CIA-spawned, multimillionaire-led, crazed reactionaries of Al Qaeda. The
crusade to conquer the Middle East --the neocon response to 9/11-- has
turned into an unmitigated catastrophe. Ditto for Katrina. 

And all this "homeland security" stuff is incompetent posturing. The
U.S. is just as vulnerable and four years after 9/11, much less prepared
to handle the aftermath of any attacks or natural disasters that affect
the population of an urban area, as New Orleans shows. 

The putting together in one department of intelligence,
counter-intelligence, police, military defense and civil defense
functions, in many cases overlapping with the jurisdictions of others,
without clear separation between the different functions, is one of the
root causes of the New Orleans disaster.

But more generally, an overall political system and Congress so
dysfunctional that it can allocate tens or hundreds of millions of
dollars each to scores of worthless pork barrel projects but couldn't
come up with a similar amount to build up the levees around an
absolutely vital economic hub like that centered in New Orleans is no
good, even from a ruling class point of view. 

Sure, politicians are going to lie, cheat, steal, take bribes, all the
rest of it. That's the nature of bourgeois society. But there also has
to be some vision, some taking into account of the "common good" --
which isn't incompatible from a bourgeois point of view with a few
thousand Blacks getting killed, but it definitely is incompatible with
letting New Orleans get catatstrophically flooded. 

Flooding of New Orleans in the wake of a hurricane was clearly
identified by the ruling class's own experts and specialized agencies in
these matters as one of the top two or three most likely major natural
disasters that could befall the United States. This was undisputed. Just
a year ago they held the civil defense equivalent of war games around
this scenario. 

There were also specific plans and projects, short, medium and long
term, to mitigate the risk. The simplest and most obvious of these was
maintenance of the levee system, since these constantly tend to subside.


Yet neither the administration, nor congress came up with the necessary
funding --a few hundred million a year-- to try to prevent the
catastrophe nor with a plan to handle it if it came to pass. Despite
their war-gaming, they just couldn't bring themselves to believe it
would happen.

I forget which neocon said that the tax cut strategy wasn't about
destroying the federal government, but just cutting it down to a size
where someone could grab it by the neck and and drown it in the bathtub.


What significant elements in the ruling class are beginning to see is
that such a vision of government IS NOT COMPATIBLE with modern
capitalist production, the complexity of U.S. society, and allowing
Congress and politics generally to degenerate into nothing more than a
slush fund for a self-serving, self-perpetuating claque of spoiled,
bratty white kids like W.  is a mistake that is likely to lead to more
catastrophes.



Joaquín


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