Evolution | Heroic Times

Ohhhh

theres got to be more
on this
road of life
there’s got to be more
than this
horror and strife
oh hhhh
there’s got to be more
On the
Road of Life

oh
there’s got to be more
than this
horror and strife

Ohhh
there’s got to be
Mooooore
on a
Road called life

So I lit into Microsoft a post or so back, and deservedly so. But, while they are one of the more egregious examples of power corrupting, there is culpability enough to go around,

President Obama and the FBI- earn my unhappy face for an administration that unfortunately differed from his predecessor’s only in eloquence. In the real nuts and bolts of what he signed into law, he continued the rape of the American citizen in the interest of big business, and the expansion of both the domestic and global police state, and the dismantling of civil liberties.

Sweeping into office on the dreams and quotations of better men, men who fought FOR civil liberties, his administration, as I feared (go back to my pre-election posts) has been a staggering betrayal of every election promise, and every election speech.

But even I, am surprised to the degree, that he has utterly sold out the American people.

He is the living, walking embodiment of the talking android from Ishmael Reed’s seminal MUMBO JUMBO (get the audio book, it reorders the text and is actually an improvement). Something designed to speak the words, and have the appearance of the common man and liberty, but underneath serves those who would see the bulk of men in chains.

His latest betrayal, not just of America, but the world, is signing into law Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. Which basically gives media empires sweeping, unmitigated powers to shut down anything or anyone, anywhere in the world, with the full military might of Herr Sam backing them. It’s a blank check for tyranny.

Another one.

God, seriously, I get the idea of money, I even get the idea of power, and I know Obama, and the various acronym-ed agencies, distant step-children of the Nazi SS, are but pawns for massive multi-nationals, but I don’t get the pawn part.

I mean, I don’t get the trade-off of power and money for liberty and justice.

I don’t see the value of much, if you have to give up those last two things to get it. I don’t see what good money and power does you, after you’ve betrayed every single thing and every single one.

I don’t know how you look anyone in the eye, your children, your family, when they ask you how your day was… and you have to dodge around the fact that you spent the day eliminating liberties.

Not seeing the upside to that.

To surrender one freedom, to back pedal on one liberty, to erase one right, is to spit on the sacrifice, and blood, and suffering of countless people. It is to make a mockery of every war fought, and every life lost, if the purpose of all that blood, is but more efficient tyranny.

Is that really the job you signed up for?

More efficient tyranny?

Be it warrantless wiretaps, warrantless isp, email, vehicle and cell phone monitoring. Even usage of social networks, such as the whole Cops twittering fiasco. Any liberty you think you have online, law enforcement is using as a weapon.

Every single one.

How is Nazi Germany wrong, if a Patriot Act America and an Apartheid Israel can be right?

How? What did we fight for, if we surrender everyone of our liberties to people who live and die, by every tide, and every atrocity, we fought to stem.

We fought Nazis, only to become Nazis? And we fought slavery, only to become enslaved?

Not acceptable.

Not if you wrap it in the red, white, and blue, not if you have trumpets blaring, not if you sanctify it in tales of Holocaust.

It is not acceptable.

If you came out of a Holocaust, only to become a holocaust, then you are not acceptable.

And you can call yourself the FBI, and you can call yourself America, and you can yourself patriots.

But what you are, are your grandparents betrayers, and your Grandchildrens slavers. What you are… is the problem.

Money, Power?

For this you sell your past and your future?

Money,Power?

But how much of either do you see?

You young recruit, I’m asking you. Hired to bark on command, hired to put down protestors, and spy on citizens, and kill enemies.

Is the money good? Is the power good?

Not good enough I think.

Because I think even paying lip service to liberty, and justice, you begin to know those words. And in some part of you, you seek more of the American Dream, then the tatters they are using you to make of it.

They are old. And scared. These tired dragons of Woodrow’s New World Order dream, that hire you to protect their money and their power.

But you are young, and somewhere not quite dulled by the programming, is the idea… that we can all be more, than pawns in an old game.

Money and Power.

Those are old ideas for old men. They are illusions of paper and pen. And Alexanders would have laughed at them, and put all these foolish old men to the sword.

All of them.

All the captains of Industry. The plotters of wars. The hoarders of wealth.

Alexanders would have laughed at them, and put them all to the sword.

Liberty and justice.

THESE are words to put air in your lungs, these are words to make your chin rise, and your heart swell. These are words to raise children on. These are the causes you were put here for young Alexanders.

You are not here to be a simpering old man’s dog, protecting his ip and movie rights, and his numerous illusions, you are here young Alexander, in this place, in this time, in this position… to make right the things that are wrong.

To make right, the things that are wrong.

And I so charge you, by a right and a duty that transcends multi-nationals and war machines and orbital weapons, I charge you by a higher duty, your own decency…. look at all this blood… and be moved.

And how you pleaseth God, whatever God you bend your knee to… how you pleaseth God, dispose the day.

This is why old men love wars, because it is a meat grinder for the young, so you can not rise against them, so you learn your place… in the game. Their game.

Be better than that my young Alexanders.

Be better… than them.

They speak of evolution as if it’s a dead thing.

It is not.

You are evolution.

Which is why they are in such a hurry to kill or corrupt you.

Evolve past them, and past their sad little dreams of power and money.

The day is coming, some would say it is upon us, when you will have to choose young Alexanders… what masters you follow and what masters, like rotting oaks, you fell.

Choose well, my lords.

Choose well.

Profound things I’ve recently read or reread:

“If we live all our life with lies, it becomes hard to see anything if it has nothing to do with those lies.”
– Amiri Baraka (writing as Leroi Jones at the time)

I met him today. Went to hear him speak. It is rare when the fact of a man, lives up to the myth. Mr. Baraka is such a rarity.

He spoke on many things, in his 70s, he spoke on many things, with wit and grace and humor, and something very few people fractions of his age have… with passion.

He was very much still, that young man who sought to, and to great degrees did… change worlds.

Still that Angry Young Man. And I use that phrase in its finest meaning. Not Anger that destroys, but Anger that motivates, that asks of the world to rise from burning beds. Conviction is perhaps the more accurate term, he had the conviction of that younger age of Panthers and Prophets. Of men who did, rather than discussed.

He had more energy in that 70+ year frame than in a whole city of young, confused , direction-less Black men, being herded, and in many cases running headlong, to the prisons and the graves.

The whole wheel of our society is designed around what DuBois called THE MIS-EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO, our schools, and entertainment and churches and urban centers and laws and fractured homes, geared to produce ignorant masses.

Why?

Control. Control has always been the fuel and the feast of the tyrannical.

A ruling class, maintains rule by concepts of supremacy and inferiority. A bigoted system doesn’t just prefer, but needs the stereotype of the thug, the menace to society, because that villain… is inferior and is easily dealt with, easily used, easily enslaved, and easily turned against his own and turned to the needs of the state.

But a Baraka, a Shabazz, this nation has fought internal wars of terrorism against the growth of such men.

Because such men, resist stereotypes. And not only do they give the lie to the concept of White Supremacy, not just by proving themselves the equals of their detractors, but they make a very compelling argument for being their betters.

The 1960s is when America, and the world was on the verge of a real… evolution. When we had in our sights the chance for growth, not of our technology, but our humanity, our conscience, our unity, our art, our peace.

And it all hinged on this idea of self determination, from China to Cuba to America to Senegal… the whole world was fighting to grow out of their fathers’ lives. And perhaps into their own.

From the Black Panthers to the Zapatistas, it was all the same fight. A fight against entrenched colonial evils, entrenched slavery. But more than that, it was a fight for evolution.

Instead of evolution however, powers and principalities won the day in the 60s, and crushed globally, but most notably in America that burgeoning social consciousness. And from that point to now, when the rule of law was put on hold, and assassination of the enemies of empire green lit, going on 50 years, we have not evolved. Our technology yes, but not our humanity, not our art, not our dreams, not our conscience.

We largely are stuck mired in the same entrenched hates, and economic folly, and capitalistic wars, of the 60s. In fact it’s worse, because our technology increasingly allows our hates and our ignorance a greater ability… to harm.

So in the 60s when we put down those Angry Young Men who spoke, before anyone else, of community based health care, and community schools, and self-love, and true community/tribal policing, and pan-national unity, when we stopped them because of their dreams and plans of Camelot… what did we stop them for?

Is the average American, whether white or black, any better than his father? I would say we are worse, sure we have toys, but we also have an America on the verge of economic, cultural and societal collapse. We are Germany, poised before the rise of Hitler.

We are poised again for Fascism. Again for Rome.

We have gone backwards since we turned our back on those young men, who pointed us to the future. We murdered them and caged them for life, and allowed the greed of the few, to condemn the many to failure.

Failure for the dream of America. Failure for the dream of something better for our children.

Your racism is a class construct used to make you a tool, make your children tools, and preserve a decaying power structure of Disney and Time Warner and Sony and Shell, to preserve a decaying, fabricated system of lords and serfs, that should have been demolished and strewn to the four winds, five decades ago.

Your racism keeps you… a slave. A nigger. That’s the war we fight. Not of name calling, or ethnicity, but of reason and ignorance. It is a fight to see the whole chess board, not just the piece you sit on. And ultimately it is a fight to evolve, and that cannot happen in a world run by multinational corporations and robber barons, in a world of unchecked capitalism/fascism.

“If we live all our life with lies, it becomes hard to see anything if it has nothing to do with those lies”

That’s why I go out and listen, and hopefully learn from these women and men who still speak the truth.

I have some hopes, that the word, in an age of orbital nuclear weapons and designer diseases… I have hope… that all of it, all of it, all the lies, all the powers, all the principalities, can begin falling like dominoes. Knocked down by men and women… who will never cease speaking… a few true words.

[p.s. Many of Mr. Baraka’s books and plays have long been out of print. He’s making them available for purchase through his recently setup website. I of course highly recommend supporting him, and owning his books. You can view his site here.]