How Much Death and Destruction Will USians Take Before Rising Up?

♫A quiet voice is singing something to me
An age old song 'bout the home of the brave in this land here of the free
One time one night in America

A lady dressed in white with the man she loves
Standing along the side of their pick up truck
A shot rang out in the night
Just when everything seemed right
Another headline written down in America...♫

Fatal Force: 961 people have been shot and killed by on duty police in the past year’, Updated July 28, 2021

Most are disproportionately black and Hispanic

According to the CBO, 31 million Americans were without medical insurance in 2020; Covid-19 will have exacerbated it in 2021.

Mix this in:

“According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, approximately 6.4 million households were behind on their rent by the end of March. As of July, roughly 3.6 million people in the US reported they faced eviction in the next two months, according to the US Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey.

Congress has allocated nearly $47 billion in federal Emergency Rental Assistance funds through the CARES Act, but only a minute fraction has been distributed to renters in need. According to state and federal data from June, only about $3 billion of the first $25 billion in relief has been distributed by states and localities. Some states like New York have distributed almost nothing, while several have only approved a few million dollars

There were an estimated 50 million food-insecure Americans by the end of 2020, 18 million of them children.  The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known more commonly as SNAP can help, but for many it only lasts for three months.

Military Madness: Sec. Def Lloyd Austin’s publicly stated ‘Biden defense budget’ was $752.9 billion for national defense, $715 billion of which is for the Department of Defense (DOD) because: China, Exporting Democracy™, and nuclear modernization.

What percentage of that amount would provide all Amerikans with Medicare for All? 

Blow me down with the calumny!Corporate landlords poised to snatch Americans’ property after eviction moratorium EXPIRES’, BlackStone, BlackRock

“The moratorium also applied to homeowners behind on their mortgages and facing foreclosure – two million of them, to be precise, according to figures from Harvard University”, Aug.1. 2021

(cross-posted from Café Babylon caucus99percent.com)

back as i'm able..RL and all that jazz.

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usefewersyllables's picture

The frogs have decided that they all like that water as it heats up, even if it is getting just a little toasty. After all, they can all get personal air-conditioners from the Amazon Treasure Truck, and they can still find the Kardashians on pay-per-view. What's not to like?

Something is going to have to touch the comfortable, and hard, for there to be change. 50% depopulation from disease might do it, as might the water taps drying up, or the power grid collapsing. But any action will only come after said touching is in the history books.

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Twice bitten, permanently shy.

wendy davis's picture

boiling frogs analogy, but there may be a point when many feel they have nothing left to lose and choose to afflict the comfortable. how many cities across amerika have made homeless encampments illegal already? (i had to laugh out loud when our local paper named Boulder colorado as having done so.)

do they end up in jail? are there for-profit jails as with prisons? labor strikes have come increasingly difficult to manage, but in the old days, it took three families to support one striking worker's family.

the political class's champions of the underclass boiling frogs have flown the Fight for $15 banner, but that is not a living wage, is it? but that's part of the Disappearing Social Safety Net, isn't it? keep the serfs scrambling for dollars, food, and weary enough to never be able to fight for what should be their inalienable rights to shelter, healthy food & water, medical care, and above all...hope for the future.

but....but...bye-done's Infrastructure Trillions will save us! does the US care how many covid deaths there are when so many jobs and supply chains have been deemed 'Essential' under both this and the last administrations.

thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts, usefewersyllables.

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usefewersyllables's picture

@wendy davis

and more are to come. The homeless can make the comfortable uncomfortable in their cities. One needs only to take a walk downtown a few blocks north of the flagship 16th Street Mall, and get up into the 20s. Anywhere within a 10 block radius of the Denver Rescue Mission will be pretty much solid homeless encampments, in all of the grassy margins along the sidewalks and vacant lots. The parts of town up there that aren't gentrified already are very much home to the homeless, and when things get worse, there will be some gentrifications that will probably become conflagrations. Meanwhile, the city council is trying out ways to quietly sweep them off the streets without creating bad publicity.

But a lot of the comfortable will not see this, because their cities are too small or their police are too brutal and efficient: a few people living in their cars doesn't have nearly the impact of blocks and blocks of tents, tarps, and shopping carts. All I know is that the current thought of how to deal with the homeless clearly isn't working, their ranks are getting ready to skyrocket, and winter is coming- and around here, it means business.

But there are wars to start where the brown people live elsewhere in the world, so I don't see that changing. Raytheon, Boeing, and their ilk aren't going to make any money from providing for the homeless, and it is all too easy for the MAGA types to just brush those people off as lazy "useless eaters" who might as well freeze to their park benches. I lack wisdom in how to deal with that.

On edit: one part of "dealing with that" has to be to convince the VBNMW types that the people they want us to vote for (because they are All Better) are actually no different than the MAGA politicians: they just don't say the "useless eater" part out loud. One need only look at the House bailing out, without action on the eviction moratorium, to realize that pretty much every dem "progressive" is just a republican with a nicer smile. The dems are going out of their way to not take any action that would help people, and folks have GOT to open their eyes to that fact. It is imperative that that happen.

The bottom line is that while many of the tarps in the homeless camps are blue, that is *all* that the color blue is going to do for them. The dems have to jet off to rub elbows with the Obamas, after all.

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Twice bitten, permanently shy.

wendy davis's picture

@usefewersyllables

comprador smile got away with fucking over lower class 'fellow blacks', and still polls high approval among his not homies.

anthony freda got the uniparty long ago:

on later edit: i keep meaning to ask you about the significance of your My Last Fuck votive candle?

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usefewersyllables's picture

@wendy davis

bottom line, but the label actually says "My last fuck: Oh look, it's on fire." Seemed fitting...

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Twice bitten, permanently shy.

wendy davis's picture

@usefewersyllables

and i'll pretend to know what it means, why you've chosen it...

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usefewersyllables's picture

@wendy davis

about "I have no more fucks to give"... I only have one more, and it's on fire.

It's sort of like having somebody step on your last nerve. Once that's done, shit is gonna get REAL.

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Twice bitten, permanently shy.

lotlizard's picture

I see more and more anger and agitation among Asian-Americans / Pacific Islanders, and have to resist being caught up in the turmoil myself, due to a perception that Asians’ lives, prospects, and property are being treated as collateral damage. There’s a sense that Asian-American victims of crime are being willingly sacrificed to the aggressive acting-out by frustrated members of other PoC groups, through the actions, or inaction, of “woke” progressive politicians (*cough* Chesa Boudin *cough*) and the failure to speak out by the media and elite intellectual gatekeepers.

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wendy davis's picture

@lotlizard

I see more and more anger and agitation among Asian-Americans / Pacific Islanders

,

and had had to bingle to discover that Chesa Boudin is the progeny of bill ayers and bernadette dohrn. my stars; but you're not a fan, then?

There’s a sense that Asian-American victims of crime are being willingly sacrificed to the aggressive acting-out by frustrated members of other PoC groups...

again, i'm unfamiliar with that trope; apologies. i'll assume it's class lines, not color lines?

thanks, lotlizard.

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lotlizard's picture

@wendy davis  
From back in February:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/09/california-arrest-attack...

Tweeting in real time from the San Francisco Bay area, “@activeAsian” and her followers blame Chesa Boudin for allowing an atmosphere of lawlessness to arise:
https://twitter.com/activeasian

Asian Crime Report @activeasian
21 jul.
The hostility between blacks and Asians are very high , it’s going to be a race war soon. Asians are on edge.

Asian Crime Report @activeasian
21 jul.
I’m not saying I’m anti black, I’m pro black and I don’t generalize or demonize the black community. But if no one talks about the problem and try to find solutions, we are not going to solve it. And more Asians will get beat up and killed by black criminals. How is that just?

 
Asian Dawn, a clickbait-y site that often strikes me as wanting to pit the Black and Asian communities against each other. Yet they couldn’t do that if reality weren’t supplying them with so much grist — horrific violent crimes against Asian people, mostly committed by members of other PoC groups — for that mill:
https://www.asian-dawn.com

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wendy davis's picture

@lotlizard

and have read every source and twitter account. and yet there was no mention of blacks until the asian-dawn site, none of the video alleged perps looked black.

also, asian covers a wide swath of cultures, but i had read that there were attacks on chinese folks after china/Wuhan Leak stuff.

i will say that RT.com paints every black lives movement action as racist/sexist, but by my lights they're trying to divide and conquer, while of course the original #BLM did turn out to be pretty corrupt (cullors, tometti, and...whozzit). mega-manions, etc. iirc, one or two chapters are suiing them. ; )

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lotlizard's picture

@wendy davis  
linked quite a few videos where one or more persons who were identifiably Black could be seen walking out of stores with sacks full of stolen goods, engaging in vandalism, or breaking into cars, as well as being cited as reported attackers of Asians.

Presumably the intent is to provide evidence of an atmosphere of lawlessness, in support of the campaign to recall Chesa Boudin which that Twitter account is promoting.

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wendy davis's picture

@lotlizard

than i'd thought or light-toned black people (mulattoes?) don't look like black people to me.

thanks for correcting my mis-observations.

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Raggedy Ann's picture

when the narrative of division is always at the forefront.

It is hard to unite when we call out the unvaxed as responsible for infections, while the vaxed contract and spread it as well.

It is hard to unite when we say "a black man robbed the store," instead of "a man robbed the store."

It is hard to unite when we say "people don't want to work; they want free money," when we all know it has to to with pay, benefits, working conditions.

Until we can genuinely CARE of our fellow human being, we will not unite. Pleasantry

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"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11

wendy davis's picture

@Raggedy Ann

and how true the fingers of blame over vaxxed and unvaxxed reach. biden's wobbly covid fascism coupled with bill gates' and big Pharma's profiteering reach are hideous. and now the FDA is telling the public that 'almost expired' J & J jabs are...safe. you betcha!

is this part of the general US society, or the mainstream media?

It is hard to unite when we say "a black man robbed the store," instead of "a man robbed the store."

perhaps both, come to think of it. our half black/half azteca son has sadly suffered mightily for being black, from store security to police lock-ups for the fun of it, to
being ticket for Driving While Being Black. i don't know, though, if he has an insurrectionist bone in body.

Golden:

Until we can genuinely CARE of our fellow human being, we will not unite.

but my hope is that once many of us are in the same abysmal soup designed by our Overlords, we may end up with more compassion for one another.

i used to blast this before mr. wd. and i would head down to town and Occupy Mancos (translates: lame in both legs), CO.on saturday mornings. those were heady days, a heady mass movement that was shut down finally in one swell foop by obama's fusion centers.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8KQmps-Sog]

i'd always liked it that some communities, black and brown, would call their resistance 'Decolonize ___' as they'd long been Occupied.

thanks, RA.

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Raggedy Ann's picture

@wendy davis ,
when they identify the person's race, it perpetuates racism because it has now set a tone in the mind.

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"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11

wendy davis's picture

@Raggedy Ann

naming a person's race in a crime (especially 'alleged') can also promote racialism, painting a group with...certain attributes.

but when 'on duty' US police kill citizens at such an alarming rate, i do want to now their ehtnicities.

your sig line:

The UFO’s are coming to unify us.

could you speculate as to how and on what issues, say?

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lotlizard's picture

@Raggedy Ann  
that says news items shouldn’t mention the ethnic background of a suspect unless it is “relevant.”

What is “relevant” is a pretty elastic concept though, and it’s only a guideline, not a law.

(In contrast, there is a binding legal prohibition on revealing a living suspect’s full name before he or she has been convicted. That’s why you’ll see the German press still doggedly referring to “Heinrich S.” or “Ali G.” when a suspect’s full name is freely available just by having a look at, say, the U.K. Daily Mail.)

Mainstream German news sources did continue to observe the guideline all through the migration crisis of 2015 and subsequent terror attacks. This had the undesirable consequence of a significant jump in audience numbers for right-wing populist blogs not bound by any press code. “See? The mainstream press withholds info and keeps you in the dark; only we go ahead and give you the full story [about the alleged danger posed by migrants and asylum seekers].”

So now, to counteract that, some mainstream German newspapers — particularly in former East Germany where the right-wing populist party AfD is strong — do go out of their way to signal the ethnicity of suspects (especially if they are thought to be white native German-European, as if to say “Hey, you xenophobes out there, don’t try to scapegoat migrants for this one”).

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.

It is difficult to unite when we cannot communicate with each other at all, let alone avoid calling each other names. The public sphere is now abolished. The wide open and anarchic internet is not quite under "control" but the effort to bring it under control is taking place in plain sight for all to see.

The unknown quantity in this orchestrated chaos is the mass of human beings in the USA who do not pay any attention at all to the internet, cable, TV, radio or print. There are at least tens of millions of such fellow citizens -- my guess it is probably close to half the adult population.

The most significant question is whether they will even take note of the national and global calamities in store for us. I think it likely that people who find themselves homeless will start looking for answers. And whoever has the most plausible explanation for those developing disasters will have the edge in the power struggles to come.

"You are too stupid to have an opinion worth noting," is not going to be useful in recruiting allies. So anybody who wants to gain political strength will have to listen as well as explain. And to listen respectfully to what will usually be ignorant bullshit.

At least in our enlightened, educate opinions . . . .

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I cried when I wrote this song. Sue me if I play too long.

wendy davis's picture

@fire with fire

thank you, amigo. the internet IS under almost complete control now, especially with the constant bannings of 'not faith-promoting' constructions/opinions on Twitter and Farcebook, and course youtube.

The most significant question is whether they will even take note of the national and global calamities in store for us. I think it likely that people who find themselves homeless will start looking for answers. And whoever has the most plausible explanation for those developing disasters will have the edge in the power struggles to come.

Yes! and this:

So anybody who wants to gain political strength will have to listen as well as explain. And to listen respectfully to what will usually be ignorant bullshit.

it was my favorite part of Occupying mancos that often angry males would stop by, yell at us, but we listened and then asked them questions that often led to small epiphanies. many wold wal back to their pickups...nodding.

thank you, fire by fire. 'God said fire not flood next time' (P,P,& M??) and james baldwin, too?
; )

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Pluto's Republic's picture

...the amount is 'vast and unlimited' — as long as the suffering and carnage is attached to the name of an American boogyman — past, present, or future.

How Much Death and Destruction Will USians Take Before Rising Up?

.

Americans are even willing to fight and die in illegitimate and morally reprehensible US false flag wars, which they are also obligated to pay for in full. Even if those war costs make common human rights unaffordable for them.

This is a perversion that grows stronger with each passing decade. Don't wait around for an uprising. All that equipment has been shipped out and been buried at sea.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
wendy davis's picture

@Pluto's Republic

but may i offer that All Americans are Not Equal, neither by class, ethnicity, predilection, nor morality/ethical compasses.

i'll try to heed your advice on not waiting for an uprising, but then i may need to just keep
some modicum of Hope (another 4-letter word) alive in my heart. ; ) it's gonna get ugly out there for millions of amerikans.

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I hate to say it but people are not going to do anything until it affects them personally. I know someone who could have cared less about drug addiction until their kid died of a drug overdose. Another person did not care about disabled veterans until she married one. This list is endless.

People could not believe that minimum wage passed here in Florida. I was not surprised. Even Republicans voted for it. Why? Because after you've sent your kid to college and they graduate and owe $50,000, they get offered a job paying $10-$12 an hour. The same people who don't want to pay your kid wants theirs to make a decent salary.

I don't know when we will hit the tipping point.

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wendy davis's picture

@Enchantress

the sense of the room, even without the anecdotal evidence you've proferred.

thank you, Enchantress.

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wendy davis's picture

the last four of five popular resistance newsletters, but from am new york, july 29::

City Hall Protest Over NYC Homeless Relocations Leads To 11 Arrests;

"Homeless rights advocates wound up in handcuffs on Thursday near City Hall while protesting the transfer of some 8,000 unhoused individuals from hotels to congregate shelters across New York City.

The rally led by Housing Works took place just outside on Broadway and Park Place, drawing dozens of activists just before 10 a.m. on July 29 to call out Mayor Bill de Blasio’s failures to provide safe and supportive solutions for the unhoused, shuffling them between hotels and shelters like cattle.

Housing advocates dubbed de Blasio a broken record for his repetitive phrases such as a “Recovery for all” and references to New York’s bright future, which they say ostracizes the homeless community. In response to the mayor’s “empty promises,” several organizations held the “de Blasio Broken Record” Action, during which they demanded a halt to the transferal of unhoused individuals from hotels to shelters.
............................
But the pleas soon transformed into cries of anger as the group launched into the roadway, blocking traffic with their bodies — doing everything they could to get the mayor’s attention.

Hunkering down on a crosswalk, advocates symbolically broke vinyl records while chanting “Housing is a human right.”

During the chaos, a food vendor zoomed onto the sidewalk in an attempt to bypass the human roadblock. Members of the NYPD immediately chased down the driver, hammering on his vehicle and swiftly placing the man under arrest at the scene.

With the situation swiftly spinning out of control after more than an hour of blocking the roadway, officers began to play a warning message for the crowd to disperse from the street or risk being arrested. The threat was ignored and the act of civil disobedience went on.

That led to police rounding up about 10 housing advocates and zip-tying them while placing them under arrest. A crowd still watching from the sidewalk cheered on their comrades as they were hauled out of sight."

#GoodOnThem.

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wendy davis's picture

wondering how much empathy and compassion are key, compared to the solidarity in facing a common enemy.

that's all; i'll keep contemplating.

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