Our Dear Leader and Indefinite Detention or What is Universally Known as American DEMOCRACY!

Represent Our Resistance By Dr. Lenore J. Daniels, PhD BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board

What was unexpected, both in timing and intensity, was that I would not only live through one of America’s great revivals but during a subsequent era when my country - without debate, consideration, or struggle - decided it really didn’t want to be America any more. Few even talked about it, but, as a writer and as a child of segregation, I knew that in the silence could be something as telling and evil as words. After all, the language of the old south was most descriptive in what it didn’t say – and what wasn’t allowed to be said. Much later I would come across the words of a German university professor who described to journalist Milton Mayer what it had been like under the Nazis in the 1930s: To live in the process is absolutely not to notice it - please try to believe me - unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted’. . .

Believe me this is true. Each act, each occasion is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join you in resisting somehow... Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we did nothing)…

William Shirer noted something similar in Nightmare Years:

What surprised me at first was that most Germans, so far as I could see, did not seem to mind that their personal freedom had been taken away, that so much of their splendid culture was being destroyed and replaced with a mindless barbarism, or that their life and work were becoming regimented to a degree never before experienced even by a people accustomed for generations to a great deal of regimentation . . . -Sam Smith, “Somehow We Missed It: America’s Silent Collapse,” Counterpunch, December 20, 2011 We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason. If we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men - not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were, for that moment, unpopular. -Edward R. Murrow, 1954

The Talking Heads sneer. Out the side of their mouths, comes “Dear Leader.” He is dead. “Dear Leader” and the Talking Heads mock the arraignment of power - over there…

We cannot imagine life in North Korea. U.S. citizens are fortunate NOT to experience life as the North Koreans do, so the talking heads at Fox News and the “expert” guests at NPR tells us. If you were too young to remember Bush II and his axis of evil, our State Media will inform you of all you need to know: North Korea is A COMMIE State…a DICTATORSHIP…with a dead “Dear Leader” and a nation of the strangely grieving, a “collective wail of millions,” rather than of uprising protesters demanding democracy, preferably American democracy!

Web news is not immune to constructing American democracy.

North Korea “spends massive sums on its military and nuclear programme, yet it cannot feed its own people,” according to an article in AlertNet, December 19, 2011. The article continues: the famines of the 1990s killed at least 1 million, but the regime’s “economic mismanagement” is also to blame. A dictatorship America is not! Let us collectively remember that North Korea’s government and its people are delusional!

Who is delusional?

Over 2 million citizens in the U.S. reside in its in-house prisons. Many are political prisoners; many have served more than 30 years behind bars. They are tortured and endure inhumane treatment in a nation that is quick to point out the human rights violations of other nations. How many citizens does the U.S. execute each year?

American Democracy! It rises the more CEO salaries rise, the more the military spends on new surveillance devices, and the more robber bankers grow fat on surplus profits. Just over 17 million households, 14.5% of households (one in seven) were “food insecure,” according to a Coleman-Jensen’s 2011 study. Nearly 47 million people are in poverty, up from 37.3 million in 2007 (DeNavas-Walt, 2011) - in the United States, the world’s richest nation. Twenty-two percent of children - in the United States - live in poverty (DeNavas-Walt, 2011). Nearly 50 million citizens - of the United States of America - live and die uninsured (De Navas-Walt, 2011).

In the United States, famines cannot account for these figures. But we are told to remember that North Koreans are delusional! The United States of American is not a COMMIE State, a DICTATORSHIP, and a “Dear Leader” we do not have - at least that is what we are told. We have American Democracy! ENEMIES want to take American Democracy away - and ENEMIES, as belligerent as Iraq under Saddam or Afghanistan under the Taliban, that must be forced fed American Democracy. All the while others wait in the wings, plotting to attack American Democracy.

American Democracy is McDonald’s on every corner and at least one U.S. military base and Exxon drilling for oil.

What COMMIE State can match the U.S. spending 50% of its budget on the expansion not only of its physical occupation of sovereign nations but also its “occupation” of hearts and minds? Of the 153 leading countries with the highest military expenditures, North Korea is not on the list, but South Korea is number 12, with the help of American Democracy! Suicide is the highest in the world - in South Korea!

“You are either with us or against us!”

And “Dear Leader…Dear Leader…?”

Here, in the U.S. images of JFK still hang on living room walls among family photos, and an increasingly powerful executive branch is not alone in channeling Ronald Reagan and the spirit of de-regulation just as Condi Rice is not alone in her admiration of George W. and the “either you are with us or against us” model of moral righteousness. All parties pay homage to Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, proud members of the 1% club. Before an image of whom did Nixon bow and pray?

“Amending” its paternal narrative to appear “progressive,” the Empire turns to the Daley Machine. There, in Chicago, a well-groomed son, awaiting his ascendancy to the higher echelons of power, honed his skills in alchemy, producing gold for the “good guys” on LaSalle Street who, in turn, anointed him and filled his coffers with millions of dollars.

To the People, he proclaimed, He would feed the hungry and clothe the poor, bring Hope and Democracy to the world, glory to the Empire (Oh, Oceania!) - and to the Obama-Robinson clan. (Why not!). The illusion of American Democracy is so great that millions felt absolved and others chanted, “He’s Black! He’s Black!” Still others cried and pointed to the figure: Dr. Martin Luther King incarnated! Young admirers tweaked other young admirers: remember a new era of miracles, of Hope, and of Change is on the way. Get to the polls!

The newest bundle package of Barrack Obama, Tim Geithner, Larry Summers, Ben Benancke, and William Daley went to work fine-tuning the financial mechanisms that would funnel all resources and, most important, all wealth to further the expansion of the U.S. Empire.

Deception and lies? - No! Let us have an ODE to our paternal piss-pots!

Nothing changes if it is all an illusion: the same regime in power since the 2000 elections. The same regime and the same Dear Leader for over 200 years! But tell that to the Dear “Minority” Leaders.”

The Empire, in a bi-partisan effort (“Republican” boldfaced thievery of votes and Democrat incarceration policies) disenfranchises the majority of Black Americans, yet “Black” organizations such as the NAACP are stuck on the capitalist’s great pie-in-the-sky scheme, if we just vote ( - for the Democrats!!). Children, mothers, housewives, workers, activists, organizers, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. died for workers’ rights and the end of poverty. But the Dear “Minority” Leaders, individuals, Christian or African-centric, at regular intervals, count their take. Time has sidestepped them, and like a tree planted by the waters, they shall not be moved! Blockades! Go along, get along consumers of illusions.

Do not frown on the Commies in Korea and miss the FASCIST deployment of the ignorant and dangerously contrary.

The operation of the US economic and political system has led to certain people/groups being relatively disenfranchised…

The normal operation of the economic system will create a significant amount of poverty (Hunger Notes, http://www.worldhunger.org). In addition -

The US political system, which should address the major problems of its citizens, is to a great extent not focused on fundamental concerns of poor people, but on other concerns. Other concerns!

Are we surprised that COMMIES and TERROISTS look alike? Eastasia was yesterday; today, it is Eurasia! Tomorrow, it always was Eastasia!

Other concerns!

While our Dear Leader is waiting for the people in North Korea to protest, we are protesting here, thousands in Washington D.C. alone. Yet, how does the government respond? Why are U.S. citizens under the illusion that the U.S. government will distribute roses among protesters here? When the people within their communities are fighting homelessness, the greed of Wall Street separates the people from shelter. When the people fight for better wages or for wages period, the U.S. government (Supreme Court) declares corporations PERSONS, entitling them to shuffle the workforce around the world to their advantage.

Our Dear Leader is on the campaign to win, again. His regime does not want OSW protesters or concerned citizens to overshadow the electoral process, for it is the next best thing to tainting the waters with Prozac. Look this way, and miss his signature on the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). One more act, one more occasion, “worse than the last, but only a little worse” huh? Remember a new era of miracles, of Hope, and of Change is on the way. Get to the polls, again!

Our Dear Leader is not a benign patriarch!

The 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force Act, (AUMF) already gave the U.S. President the power to detain indefinitely suspected “terrorists,” but the NDAA codifies by statue the right of the President to detain “terrorists” indefinitely.

“It is the first time such powers are being codified in a statue since the McCarthy era or International Security Act of 1950,” writes Nick Baumann in “Did Congress Just Endorse Rendition for Americans?” (Mother Jones, December 21, 2011).

Nothing to worry about, some tell us. You are not a terrorist - Al Qaeda, Taliban! You are not a terrorist, are you? Why worry?

The children on Indigenous “reservations” are not terrorists. Neither are the children in depressed urban areas or, for that matter, the children in Iraq, or Afghanistan. What is the logic of codifying “indefinite detention”? What is the logic of prisons, of Supermax facilities, of detention centers for juveniles and immigrants? What is the logic of this violence?

What will be the next step in 2014, or 2016? Should we wait for that “one shocking occasion”? Do we wait to resist then? - because now, the U.S. Empire is institutionalizing a reality akin to George Orwell’s 1984, offering a nightmare scenario of equal opportunity: indefinite detention for ANYONE in the world! And regulating the militarization of the world is as delusional as believing that a gallon of water will halt a raging fire.

Surveillance technology, developed and deployed to subdue the Philippine population, was further fined tuned to subdue Brown, Black, and Indigenous populations in the Americas. A USAF predator drone was already used in the U.S. to aide the local police force arrest members of a North Dakota family who “allegedly wouldn't give back three cows and their calves that wandered onto their 3,000-acre farm this summer” (Opposing Views, December 13, 2011). Chemical weaponry is used against Occupy Wall Street protesters - on U.S. Streets. The production, use, and sale of these and other military weapons is market driven and the ideological mindset that permits the codification of indefinite detention and the use of high-tech weaponry to target “covered” people will always speak of the need for safety against “enemies,” “criminals,” “terrorists.”

How will regulating the use of military technology play out? Who will be the people targeted, or the populations targeted? Will it be okay to apply the violence of the U.S. Empire against the majority of the world, the people of color? Commit a little bit of violence but only on them - not us, Dear Leader!

Who will be the them and who will be the us? Who? The Dear Leader, the DECIDER, and his cabal of criminals labeling others the “enemy,” the “criminal,” and the “terrorists”?

I think we have seen this before, and I think it is more American Democracy! A capitalist enterprise!

Revolution means the end of the old order - the dismantling of American Democracy and its serial killers, Dear Leaders, and the delusion of superiority and market-based progress. No more, no more! We meet in the streets, Dear Leader!

Grassroots Organizing in the Trenches: See Nancy Lockhart’s book Locked Up - What To Do When Your AZZ Gets Locked Up nancylockhart.blogspot.com

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, Lenore Jean Daniels, PhD, has a Doctorate in Modern American Literature/Cultural Theory. Click here to contact Dr. Daniels.