The way we were taught about how all of this is supposed to work is that our elections are designed to put in office a group of representatives who should reflect the will of the people. Well, that ain’t happening. And granted, for most of our history it never did. We just happen to be living in a window of time where the mission statement of America actually came close to being realised. I’m like a broken record on this one, but in my view, America didn’t become what any of us modern-day enlightened hominids would consider to be a democracy until the 1965 Voting Rights Act took effect. And then we likely slipped out of that Democracy around 2012 when Citizens United took away the last vestige of the meaning of one person, one vote, and returned us to some form of Oligarchy. What we’ve witnessed in the past 9 months is that Oligarchy transforming into a full-fledged Autocracy. And now the last step in making that Autocracy a lasting reality is to make sure that our elections are completely moot and put in place a police state to quiet the coming unrest.
Building a police state is not all that hard to do here in America, given the amount of infrastructure we already have in place with our militarized local police forces and our so-called Department of Homeland Security. In the hands of a lawless regime, like the one we currently have, it all depends on who will be willing to take orders, and so far, that looks like most of them. But let’s face the fact that it’s a slippery slope. Here in Chicago, we have masked men running through our streets with guns, yanking people out of their cars without explanation. Every day, we see dozens of videos of these thugs violating the basic human rights of our citizens. One man has already been killed, and there is no investigation, even though all evidence points to reckless homicide by a DHS agent. Currently, local law enforcement is being told not to interfere, which feels like compliance, but what happens when and if some choose to uphold the law? Then what? Do they do battle with DHS? And then we have State and local police getting into skirmishes with the much better-equipped and funded Federal forces? That’s the precipice this lawless regime has brought us to.
But I digress, and that’s easy to do these days. Let’s get back to the topic of how our government is supposed to be a reflection of our society, shall we? Because there’s hope there. You see, our current government does not reflect the majority of our society. And that’s a result of the money and disinformation polluting our public discourse, making it almost impossible to govern ourselves. And that is largely due to what we call the Market. (There are structural problems too, the electoral college, gerrymandering, big state, little state issues, but let’s stick to the money problem.) The Market is represented by our Government quite well, and right now, the Market prefers Fascism. Currently, our government is more of a reflection of the Market than it is of the majority of our citizens because here in America, money is speech, and the Market has all of the money, and therefore, most of the speech. We normies, or let’s call ourselves the Labor, are not the Market. We will never be the Market. But we are endlessly being told that the Market is both inevitable and a natural reflection of the will of society that it supposedly reacts to and caters to. It doesn’t, and it never will. There is no invisible hand of the market that magically whisks in and solves our problems. As I talked about in a recent piece called Capitalism Ate Democracy and All I Got Was This Lousy T-shirt, the thing that has caused many of our problems will not be the thing that solves them. What we need is a government that is truly a reflection of the will of the people. A government that can keep the Market in check. What we don’t need is some amorphous Market that is constantly messing with all of our heads while claiming to be the true reflection of our collective impulses. That’s just fantasy. And we’ve largely fallen for it.
SO, as an exercise, let’s put the actors back into the meaning of the Market, shall we? Because what is the Market? It’s not some mystical energy field created by all living things that surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the galaxy together like it’s the Force or something. No, that’s actually Nature. The Market is just people. It’s the industrialists, or we can call them Oligarchs, they’re fairly interchangeable terms, but in this case, I prefer to use the term Industrialists. Ever since the rise of capitalism, it’s always been the industrialists who manipulate what we call the Market. Currently, it’s the men and women (but mostly men) in Silicon Valley, where they flip our triggers with algorithms. In Oil and Coal and Gas, where they’ve infiltrated governments across the globe to keep us from solving Climate Change and dependent on fossil fuels. In the Military Industrial complex, where in America they’ve managed to convince us that we need a trillion-dollar war machine more than we need education and healthcare. In Pharma and Insurance, where what should be inexpensive life-saving treatments are considered profit centers. In what’s become our Ultra-Processed Food industry, where our labor and land are exploited in what may be the most naked expression of how capitalism works. The list goes on, and on, and on. Thanks to Citizens United and the thousand cuts that came before it, the industrialists have a much bigger voice than the rest of us, so our government is now a reflection of the smoke screen that they like to call the Market. Wait a minute, didn’t I say something about hope? Because this sounds really depressing.
Oh right, sorry I digress, it’s really easy to do these days. Well, if there’s one thing the occupation of Chicago has reinforced in me, it’s that most people don’t want the whole goddamned system that I just described above. Even if they haven’t yet overcome the fallacy that capitalism equals freedom from all of the brainwashing we’ve all been subjected to, most people can feel that there’s something terribly wrong with the pillars that our country is resting on. There’s so much brainwashing to overcome that most people plug into this thing thinking it’s the only way anything can work, and that they better make sure they don’t end up on the bottom of it all. Because being at the bottom of this system truly sucks. And that is a fantastic distraction. But here in Chicago, watching our collective response to this lawless occupation is a clear reminder of what most people really want. Most people want to take care of each other. Most people want to protect their neighbors. Most people want others to have what they need to pursue our mission statement of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And most people want our planet to be preserved for future generations. And we’ve seen examples of that every day—all over our city. People are rushing out of their homes to protect workers from being kidnapped by ICE agents. Every day, people are showing up in Broadview to show support for the people who are being illegally held there in inhumane conditions. Restaurants all over the city are donating food to immigrant families and to nutrition assistance recipients being affected by Trump’s illegal refusal to fund SNAP. Organizations all over the city are holding fundraisers, just one of many examples was the Tiger Moon Market, put together by a collection of asian restaurateurs in a matter of days that raised over one hundred thousand dollars. Chicagoans are now carrying whistles and documenting every atrocity they see. And Get The HELL Out Of Here has become our own Bella Ciao. (Well, that’s the PG-13 version, I mean this is Chicago after all, but you get the idea.)
Every day, some new atrocity prompts press conferences with local officials, where thousands of concerned citizens come out to attend in the hopes that they can help their neighbors and put an end to this madness being thrust upon us. It’s beautiful to witness, especially given our history of segregation. But today we are seeing everyone coming out, and not just in Chicago, but all over the country where these atrocities are taking place. We do need more white folk, though, I’ll say it, but hey, there’s more coming out than probably at any other time in our history, and that’s progress. So keep it up white folk, lend your voice to your black, brown and native neighbors. Do it out of love and not just because somewhere in the recesses of your mind you know that if you don’t, this same lawless apparatus will eventually come for you as well. Do it because you know it’s the right thing to do.
So, in short, I’ll take it, and I’ll repeat: It’s beautiful to witness.
But you know who isn’t showing up? The industrialists, or Oligarchs, call them what you want. Do you see Tim Cook speaking out about how his customers are being abducted? Do you see Jeff Bezos speaking out and telling his Washington Post, most famous for toppling an American President, to report the truth about what’s happening? Or the CEOs of Home Depot, Lowe’s or Menards standing up to protect their customers, the same hard-working laborers who buy their products and make them rich. How about General Mills, decrying how their customers are being scared away from work, and deprived of SNAP, making it impossible for them to buy those delicious baking mixes of theirs, or Cheerios? What about Meta, or Google, or any of the Social Platforms that make money off of all of us? What are they saying? Crickets, that’s what. How about Comcast or AT&T, anything? No, none of the leaders in corporate America are doing anything; they’re either just watching this happen or worse, helping it along. So, like I said, the Market, or better, those who are the decision makers of the Market, have chosen Fascism as their government of choice.
Well, all I got to say is that one day, somehow, we’re going to get past this. It could be a year if we’re lucky and we dig in and fight hard enough, or it could be many years, or even decades if we miss this moment. But when we do, we’re gonna need a new Never Forget. As in, Never Forget who cared for one another when the Fascists sent masked thugs into our streets. Or deprived our neediest citizens of food, or all of us of access to health care that didn’t bankrupt us every time we got sick. Or who said nothing when troops were threatened to be sent into our cities. Or who just stood by and kept placating the Fascists. Yeah, I’m talking to you, Tim Cook. Jeff Bezos. Elon Musk. Larry Ellison. Every CEO in every company in America right now, because as far as I can tell, I don’t see any of them doing anything but hoping this thing goes in their favor. So remember who was ready to stand up for their neighbors, their fellow citizens, and the people who needed help the most. Because we can’t ever let ourselves get in this situation again. We need our Democracy back. It was short-lived, but it’s worth fighting for—people spent centuries fighting and dying to get us to where we finally landed in 1965—and we can’t just let it slip away now without a fight. And when we reclaim it, and I think we will but it’s not inevitable—we can never take it for granted again, and we’re going to have to rebuild it in a way that reflects the actual will of the people, and safeguard it against the greed of the few and their willingness to subjugate the rest of us. Because this is what happens when we’re not vigilant, the bastards always come around to try to take away our basic freedoms. So when we rebuild, let’s remember what the industrialists have all done in this moment, and let’s remember who stood up for the most vulnerable among us. And let’s rebuild with that in mind.