Hear ye, hear ye! Let it be known that in this 10th month of the first year of His Majesty King John Hickenlooper's reign, the sovereign governor of the Kingdom of Colorado handed down an edict closing the grounds of the Capitol palace to the public and ordering his praetorian guard to arrest the peaceful Occupy Denver protestors assembled at the castle gates.
This royal order, which made big headlines last week, was all about intimidating imagery. Just as King John had hoped, the iconic photograph to emerge from the sweep was a front-page Denver Post photo of a heavily armed police officer menacingly guarding the Capitol—a deliberate visual message telling the despot's subjects to retreat or face consequences. He later told a reporter that he was aiming to preemptively crush "something that could easily catch on."
Back on the East Coast, it was much the same, as His Majesty King Michael Bloomberg issued a decree stating that as a benevolent despot, he would "allow" his Manhattan subjects to occupy Wall Street (as if the mayor has the power to grant—or withhold—democratic rights). But then King Mike quickly sent his police force in for mass arrests, standing down only after a wave of outrage from the larger serfdom watching on television.
This might all sound like Medieval Europe, but it's not. It's America circa 2011, as these clashes are now taking place everywhere.
Alas, it's a predictable situation. Horrifying economic inequality has prompted the bottom 99% of income earners to finally exercise their constitutional rights to protest. In response, the nobles in the top 1% are demanding their political puppets make clear that such dissent will not be tolerated—and they expect their demands to be followed. This country's landed gentry, after all, spent a lot on campaign contributions to make sure their hand-picked autocrats were installed in governors' and mayors' offices, and now they're having those autocrats engineer a whole new kind of bailout.
As opposed to merely cutting a check to the bankers, this bailout is all about resource allocation. It has the kings preventing law enforcement from being deployed on financial criminals who destroyed the American economy. Instead, those finite law enforcement resources are being funneled into arresting more than 1,000 protestors and abrogating the vassals' First Amendment rights to "peaceably assemble and petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
In Colorado and New York, where the occupy-themed uprisings have been particularly intense, the gentry have two dictators well-schooled in using police power for this very purpose.
During his previous reign as mayor of Denver, King John ran a police department plagued by brutality scandals, threw peaceful Democratic National Convention protestors into cages, and oversaw indiscriminate arrests during that supposed celebration of democracy. King Mike, meanwhile, ordered similar mass arrests during the Republican Convention in 2004, unleashed an infamous "stop-and-frisk" policy against minorities, and created an unprecedented Muslim spying operation within the NYPD.
With such extra-judicial authoritarianism now being used against dissidents all over America, Denver and New York's responses are indeed serving as a "model," as King John himself predicted. And because of that, the United States is now emulating the very autocracy we originally waged our founding revolution against.
Ultimately, that's why this historical moment is so important. Whatever you call the spontaneous uprisings against oligarchy—Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Denver or simply "We the People"—they prove that the only savior in these neo-feudal times is continued protest. Without it, the future of the economy and our freedoms are clearly at risk from King John, King Mike and every other self-styled monarch now waging war on the fundamental principles of American liberty.
David Sirota is best-selling author of the new book "Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now." He hosts the morning show on AM760 in Colorado. Email him at ds@davidsirota.com, follow him on Twitter @davidsirota or visit his website at DavidSirota.com.
© 2011 CREATORS.COM
This royal order, which made big headlines last week, was all about intimidating imagery. Just as King John had hoped, the iconic photograph to emerge from the sweep was a front-page Denver Post photo of a heavily armed police officer menacingly guarding the Capitol—a deliberate visual message telling the despot's subjects to retreat or face consequences. He later told a reporter that he was aiming to preemptively crush "something that could easily catch on."
Back on the East Coast, it was much the same, as His Majesty King Michael Bloomberg issued a decree stating that as a benevolent despot, he would "allow" his Manhattan subjects to occupy Wall Street (as if the mayor has the power to grant—or withhold—democratic rights). But then King Mike quickly sent his police force in for mass arrests, standing down only after a wave of outrage from the larger serfdom watching on television.
This might all sound like Medieval Europe, but it's not. It's America circa 2011, as these clashes are now taking place everywhere.
Alas, it's a predictable situation. Horrifying economic inequality has prompted the bottom 99% of income earners to finally exercise their constitutional rights to protest. In response, the nobles in the top 1% are demanding their political puppets make clear that such dissent will not be tolerated—and they expect their demands to be followed. This country's landed gentry, after all, spent a lot on campaign contributions to make sure their hand-picked autocrats were installed in governors' and mayors' offices, and now they're having those autocrats engineer a whole new kind of bailout.
As opposed to merely cutting a check to the bankers, this bailout is all about resource allocation. It has the kings preventing law enforcement from being deployed on financial criminals who destroyed the American economy. Instead, those finite law enforcement resources are being funneled into arresting more than 1,000 protestors and abrogating the vassals' First Amendment rights to "peaceably assemble and petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
In Colorado and New York, where the occupy-themed uprisings have been particularly intense, the gentry have two dictators well-schooled in using police power for this very purpose.
During his previous reign as mayor of Denver, King John ran a police department plagued by brutality scandals, threw peaceful Democratic National Convention protestors into cages, and oversaw indiscriminate arrests during that supposed celebration of democracy. King Mike, meanwhile, ordered similar mass arrests during the Republican Convention in 2004, unleashed an infamous "stop-and-frisk" policy against minorities, and created an unprecedented Muslim spying operation within the NYPD.
With such extra-judicial authoritarianism now being used against dissidents all over America, Denver and New York's responses are indeed serving as a "model," as King John himself predicted. And because of that, the United States is now emulating the very autocracy we originally waged our founding revolution against.
Ultimately, that's why this historical moment is so important. Whatever you call the spontaneous uprisings against oligarchy—Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Denver or simply "We the People"—they prove that the only savior in these neo-feudal times is continued protest. Without it, the future of the economy and our freedoms are clearly at risk from King John, King Mike and every other self-styled monarch now waging war on the fundamental principles of American liberty.
David Sirota is best-selling author of the new book "Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now." He hosts the morning show on AM760 in Colorado. Email him at ds@davidsirota.com, follow him on Twitter @davidsirota or visit his website at DavidSirota.com.
© 2011 CREATORS.COM
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Who else has any money to donate... ahem, invest?
The real pro-99% candidate would be someone like Dennis Kucinich, but he could get no campaign "investment" money at all, considering his message was about reining in corporate concentrated capitalist power. Like the OWS protest, his was an idea that the top 1% felt obligated to "preemptively crush", so that it could not catch on.
This is why many of our white European ancestors came over from the old world, they were just plain fed up with the inequalities they had to live under. The working class could not buy land, only rent, or agree to work it for the owners gain. The owners were not selling, but merely maintaining a sharecropper like system (call it peasant slavery). The working people had to live day-to-day life amongst people who had differing family values, could not freely do what they wanted on their assigned piece of land. But, there was a "new world" ready for the taking, a place to escape to. -- not so today!
What do we have here today? - A society of white settlers came here who had no tolerance for differences of opinion, no tolerance for someone telling them what they are allowed to do on their own land, no tolerance for someone who would not or could not pull their own weight. If you got sick, or fell on hard times, unless you had friends or family who believed in you, could support you with their excess, you would perish. These are the ancestors of the Tea Party, those attitudes passed down through the generations.
Am I a compassionate person who will sacrifice my own well-being so that others can keep buying seasons tickets to the Brewers? Hell no! Welfare for no more than generic, prepare-it-yourself food, for basic non-fashionable clothing, for basic shelter from the weather housing, rabbit-ear TV, land-line phone, maybe dial-up internet, okay. But nothing left for delivery pizza, brand name fashion, master suites, NFL Sunday Ticket, Xbox 360, or family plan Android phones.
But, nobody is going to hire me or have my kids in their daycare or school if I am not reachable 24-7 by phone, if I do not have broadband internet, if I do not have an address of my own, if I do not have reliable personal transportation to get me somewhere within 30 minutes guaranteed. I cannot go the doctor or dentist if I do not have a health insurance card, even if it means an annual deductible that leaves me paying 100% for anything that cannot be deducted on my IRS 1040.
This is why the bottom 99% is angry.