I just got back from a beautiful 120k bike ride. Lovely, refreshing. So much freedom on the side roads, moving along, free and strong! Amazed by bliss.
Yet, I just couldn’t stop thinking about this sick, topsy turvy world I live in. The values I’ve stuffed into my heart, after so many difficult years, educating myself, seem like puff and pretense in this hard-core, swing first, ask questions later, state we all live in.
I’m talking about the recent protests on university campuses against the genocide in Gaza, the MASS GRAVES in Gaza. Who the F can be against that? Well, there seems to be a whole lot of “power” interested in suppressing the expression of common decency and civilized norms.
“This summer I hear the drummin' Four dead in Ohio.”
- Neil Young. Kent State Shootings (Murderers never charged)
For me, the university has always been a mixing bowl, where the problems of our times, were sorted, debated, shown naked to the rest of the world. In the name of intellectual growth, moral justice and the baking of a new generation, leavened with hope to change the world as it is, for the better.
But no more. Over my lifetime, I’ve watched universities and society enlarge become a mere economic project. Universities become staid places where you get a degree and get a “good” job. Put up and shut up. No longer are they places of moral growth and struggle. Society, our governments have too become but pawn to the casino we call “the economy” and our leaders no longer cheerleaders or visionaries but mere bookeepers, managing budgets and moving numbers here and there. Bureaucratic, pragmatically painted clowns. Where is the center that holds?
It’s so ironic, how western governments are suppressing their citizens from voicing opposition to genocide. Why? Well, almost all of these governments and police forces have been trained by Israeli consultants in “policing”. And the ethos and central tenent of this teaching is “hit first”. That’s what it boils down to - charge, hit, control. It’s not policing it is technological, armed to the teeth goonery. It’s so ironic, Israel exporting its state voilence which now is in operation to help it achieve its evil ends.
And the media coverage is the worst. Even the headlines lie “Anti-Israeli protesters CLASH with police.” Hmmm no. ATTACKED by police. It’s all totally clear.
It’s the same shit everywhere. Police swinging batons, choking to death innocent people, no accountability. Look at Hong Kong. Look at how Occupy Wall Street was beaten down. Or Canada’s honorable Trucker’s Protest. Or BLM protests. Or civil protests in Moscow for that matter. Swing, escalate, be violent, ask questions later. Don’t dare question or think for yourself. You only have the right to obedience. And if you do that - “You’ll own nothing but be happy.”
I remember my first attendance at a “big” protest, Kyiv - year 2000. Up Luteranskya Street, outside the Presidential administration building. The police charged us, horses stepped over old ladies, it was chaos. Then, an hour later, I went back to the scene. Buses lined up with baby-faced boys in riot gear smoking, laughing and sharing stories of their “fun”. Same shit everywhere.
If find it so hard to process - this endless police state violence, decades and decades of it and the many I see in this world supporting it. So many killed in the name of “law and order”. I curse our leadership. The world has gone arye - individual rights are triumphed by “group” think and rights. But who this group is beyond the facile call of “law and order” or as one university chancellor put it “don’t disturb the exams” - I can’t fanthom.
I think of Daniel Berrigan, now what, 8-9 years gone? … He fought the good fight, he protested, he helped temper the evil and make the world better. But alas …
“I may be oversimplifying, but it does seem to me that, as the saying goes, we are what we eat, and that's a cultural statement as well, which means the kinds of families that have been 'flourishing' in this society for a hundred and fifty years, especially in the white middle classes, have become what they have embraced: consumerism; militant self-interest; and wars to subdue 'natives,' obtain international power, and control various governments.”
- Daniel Berrigan
It’s even worse this time, this “bout” of police violence because it is done in the name of the “holocaust” and fighting “anti-semitism”. Yeah, my ass. Listen to this man, my hero. He gets it right, we all should be out there like him, until our governments begin to listen and get off their expense account, gravy train and get busy building a better world with dream police.
End of rant.
Oh yeah, one last thing. In what century did this disappear?
The Dream Police