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The Coming Uncivil War: The Fire This Time

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  • The Coming Uncivil War: The Fire This Time

    Dissident Voice, United States
    March 8 2004

    The Coming Uncivil War: The Fire This Time
    by Richard Oxman
    www.dissidentvoice.org


    "Why not annihilation? Their glory has fled, their spirit broken,
    their manhood effaced; better that they should die than live the
    miserable wretches that they are.

    -- L. Frank Baum, later to become author of The Wizard of Oz, writing
    as editor of South Dakota's Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer, encouraging
    the extermination of each and every Native American, December 20,
    1891.


    Garland's "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" had just ended. I was
    lounging around, sipping my slave-picked Earl Grey from Sri Lanka,
    and pouring over my May 11, 1911 original edition of Le Petit Journal
    when the postman rang twice. A typical Tuesday afternoon, although
    it could have been Wednesday this week. Unreal.

    I'll tell you what was in the parcel post piece shortly, a bombshell
    of sorts for America. First, the obligatory parsing of pain.

    The publication's ink drawing portraying violent audience members at
    the opera house of Livermore, Kentucky -- spotlighting a quavering
    figure on stage in the foreground -- is unforgettable. There, yoked
    to a pole, his upper torso strapped tight, with rope drawn across the
    ankles forcing his lower body to bend at the knees, the black figure
    in profile seemed to angle to the right, a twist, wanting to get away
    from the drawn rifles and handguns, much like a dog -- too afraid to
    move -- knowing that the Master is about to do something painful.
    Perhaps more like a fish caught with a troll, in frozen anguish. His
    clothes are in tatters, in stark contrast with a clenched fist behind
    the back which is shooting out, stretching in the opposite direction
    of his protruding lip. Millay's "clutching at the South, screaming at
    the North" comes to mind, the contortion commanding all. And
    speaking of shooting, the public execution at Kentucky's cultural
    center only cost the usual prices for admission. However, those
    holding orchestra tickets were allowed six shots whereas balcony
    tickets were limited to one. For real.

    Like Stamp Paid, the mid-19th century black man in Toni Morrison's
    Beloved, does when he notices a bit of bloody scalp, I want to scream
    out "What are these people? You tell me, Jesus. What are they?" Of
    course, they were white settlers. Demonic, not insane, to use
    Terrence Des Pres' yardstick. (1) Genocidal by all the standards
    Raphael Lemkin established following Nuremberg.

    The Jewish Holocaust was not an abominably unique event, unless one
    is going to acknowledge the same for a million Armenians, Stalin's
    fourteen million "terror-faminized," et. al. in Bangladesh, Burundi,
    the Brazilian Amazon, Kampuchea, East Timor and elsewhere*(often with
    our invaluable assistance). (2) Respecting Africans and Native
    Americans, the only way Americans can make conscious-soothing
    distinctions -- allowing them to "do lunch," shedding tears over
    asparagus at an Oprah-based Book-of-the-Month tête-à-tête, in lieu of
    taking any significant action -- is to adopt the typical Eurocentric
    bias that indiscriminately groups dark-skinned and red-skinned people
    into only two undifferentiated masses; do that with white-skinned
    people and one can totally exterminate the Polish population without
    owning to genocide.

    *There was a "total extermination of many American Indian peoples and
    the near-extermination of others, in numbers that eventually totaled
    close to 100 million." (3)

    It's all horror that still goes on today, unabated here since the
    European foot first stomped on this hallowed ground. But you'd never
    know it to watch the parade of obese Americans, driving their SOVs
    (Standard Obese Vehicles) going about their dailys. Not waiting on
    them anymore to become compassionate, it looks like the guys who
    mailed me the package have a Plan B. As promised, I'll get to that
    below.

    At a mid-90s conference sponsored by the Global Alliance for
    Preserving the History of World War II in Asia (AOHWA) in Cupertino,
    California I saw the most horrific photographs I had ever seen up to
    that point. They were photographs, poster-sized, of the Rape of
    Nanking. Relative to writings about the Jewish Holocaust, very
    little has been made available to us concerning atrocities
    perpetrated in China, Korea, the Philippines, Singapore and
    Indonesia. The Japanese military was responsible for approximately
    50 million deaths, 30 million alone in China. It begs the question,
    "Why?".

    >From December 13, 1937 to February 1938, in the single city of
    Nanking, the International Military Tribunal of the Far East (IMTFE)
    estimates that 260,000 were killed. The Memorial Hall of the Victims
    of the Nanking Massacre in Nanjing claims that the number was over
    300,000. Some Japanese put the figure as low as 3,000, its leading
    historian of the war guessing that it was no higher than 42,000. (4)
    Live burial competed with burning and freezing and the slowest and
    most excruciating forms of killing ever known. Children were a
    special delight.

    A long time ago. None of it has much to do with us now, right?
    We're not killing minorities in cruel ways any longer, yes? We have
    our figures straight these days, no? Our scruples in a row, like so
    many ducks, vraiment? All I can say is "Quack, Quack!!" to the good
    doctors (Ph.Ds, Ed.Ds et. al.) who have diagnosed Our Day that way.

    I believe former UN relief chiefs, Hans Von Sponeck and Denis
    Halliday --with decades of devotion to UN efforts behind them-- would
    not agree. As I remember, they quit their UN posts at very crucial
    times over the cruel sanctions that were being imposed on the Iraqis.
    Over the bombings, too, that had been going on for at least ten
    years; there was that incredible 18-month study that John Pilger
    cited not too long ago in The Mirror, wherein something like 36,000
    sorties were flown over the Iraqi no-fly zones, 26,000 of them combat
    runs (when there was no war!) (5), all in violation of international
    law. And that didn't account for the British bombs or the Turkish
    air-campaign atrocities inflicted on the Kurds, the American and
    British flyboys conveniently looking the other way.

    In our own country, as Jeffrey St. Clair points out -- lamenting the
    federal government's abandonment of efforts to prevent
    pesticide-caused cancer -- "Corporate and governmental statisticians
    will broker the 'acceptable' number of people permitted to contract
    cancer from pesticides residues, comforted in the knowledge that most
    of these people will be poor and black or Hispanic." (6)

    I cite the particulars above -- when there are an endless number to
    choose from -- because, for the most part, they're the ones that were
    alluded to in the little package I opened on Wednesday, March 3rd.
    The one that informed me --anonymously-- that something was in the
    works, and motivated me to do something about it all.

    "There is a physical difference between the white and black races
    which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on
    terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot
    so live, while they remain together there must be the position of
    superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of
    having the superior position assigned to the white race."

    -- Our own Abe Lincoln during the Stevie Douglas debates
    (Undermining underlining mine)

    As much as any other man? What man? He's not talking about
    Frederick Douglas here. Nor you, I presume. Certainly, he's not
    speaking for me. And I know those fellows who mailed their missive
    to me have quite a different attitude.

    However, one can't say the same for Tommie Jefferson ("the
    blacks...are inferior to the whites") or Benny Franklin ("Why
    increase the sons of Africa....?"); and they were the so-called
    "soft-liners" who were nowhere near as maniacal as the likes of
    Andrew Jackson, a leader far more representative of our past. Of
    course, there's the shining example set by John Quincy Adams who
    "gave lip service" to the Indians and others. (7) What a crew. What
    a foundation. Quelle dommage!

    The point is is that the country is rotten to the core respecting the
    issues touched upon above, and the stench is starting to motivate
    compassionate/infuriated minorities, and their sympathetic brothers
    and sisters of different stripes, to take trenchant (unprecedented in
    America) measures. Take note, if you will, a house divided will not
    stand.

    One has to get notions of rebellious rag-tag youth gathering at the
    gates of the Capitol Building (putting heads on the chopping block)
    out of one's mind. It's not going to happen that way. Mau-Mau in
    Kenya is more the model*. Mobilization by MoveOn will not be the
    order of the day. And to make hay, the midnight killers -- for
    that's what they will be if our present momentum is not reversed --
    will not require huge groups, consensus or any form of
    politically-correct sanction. They will be Invisible Revolutionaries
    more along the lines of the Algerian Resistance. But unlike the
    Algerians and Vietnamese, they will not demand the cover of the
    general population. For they will not be fighting -- in the most
    immediate sense -- for the people, nor in unison, but, rather, out of
    rage, and out of unrequited love for what's right. They will be
    frustrated warriors who -- in the face of stultifying surveillance
    and overwhelming weaponry -- simply can't sit by and take it anymore.
    Without any Grand Plan that all the academics and most
    "officially-approved" leftists demand of those who would force
    change. Arundhati Roy and Pilger, of course, are exceptions, but
    where are the prominent U.S. examples?

    * Minus the secret society meetings, the mountains of retreat being
    replaced by myriad buildings, "habitats for humanity" in the minds of
    many. No Kenyatta to capture, the individual insurgents will
    proliferate on their own like cancer cells.

    It's a real shame 'cause it wouldn't take much for a Bush or a Kerry
    or a Nader or SOMEONE to simply step forward regularly, acknowledge
    the horrors we continue to perpetrate...and remind the populace that
    there's not much else that's more important than changing the course
    of history in this respect. To show that they are doing this and
    that...daily...to make it so, to make things right. A little bit of
    Emily Dickinson's "thing with feathers," not token gestures.

    That, or I'm afraid it'll be a thousand points of burning lights,
    illuminating everything from gas stations and office edifices to
    private residences, ski lodges and wherever it is that golfers
    congregate. Perhaps fire won't be necessary in the clubhouses.

    Thomas C. Mountain of the Hawaii Black History Committee, in an
    article that appeared in Counterpunch, February 27, 2004, asked, "How
    are we ever going to come to grips with racism in this country if we
    continue to deny people of color their historical place? How could
    white people hate people of color if they were taught Jesus would
    pass for black if he were to rejoin us today?" He noted that Buddha,
    Jesus, Krishna, Mohammed and Moses were all people of color.

    Indeed. Again, what would it take for a president at a podium to
    preach what's begging to be expressed? To talk constructively about
    what's been wrong, in real language. Not much. Little for anyone.
    But nothing like that is heard, periodic pontifications on places
    like Haiti --during crises only-- notwithstanding. On the other
    (bloody) hand, it wouldn't take much for the senders of my package
    and their underground compatriots to set off bonfires in continental
    coordination, sort of flambes for freedom, if you will. Bonfires,
    originally, were fires in which bones were burned, evil-smelling
    affairs that were nothing like the celebratory fires of today.
    Nothing liked brings nothing liked.

    Please tell Ashcroft, once he's back to full health, making his
    disgusting, fascistic overtures in full force, that I burned the
    communication I opened last week; it would be too easy for him to
    draw a line between this article, my recent piece "AH!" ARSONISTS FOR
    HAITI" (which appeared on www.counterpunch.org and
    www.dissidentvoice.org), the coming catastrophes and (alleged)
    advocacy on my part. That's if he asks. I want no part of an
    investigation into the coming Kikuyu-like catastrophe that we're
    bringing on to ourselves.

    Yes, I've got nothing more to say to the Justice Department or the
    American people regarding the above. After all, it IS the American
    people who are responsible for what's taking place --as per legal
    precedent established at Nuremberg by us-- and they will have nothing
    to complain about once the fan starts blowing, hurtling unwanted
    waste and more their way.

    "Will all great Neptune's oceans wash this blood, clean from my
    hands?", asked Macbeth. Today, yes. The day after tomorrow, maybe
    not.

    Finally, it would behoove us to give some thought to these additional
    (personal, emailed) words of Thomas C. Mountain (quoted also above),
    perhaps relating them to this article's opening quote from L. Frank
    Baum,

    "You might want to consider just how bad for black folk "integration"
    or rather assimilation has turned out. Before
    integration/assimilation black folk controlled the institutions in
    their lives, the schools, the shops, the sports, even the music.
    When their struggle began to lead the movement in the US, the move
    was made to "integrate" them into white society, to take their
    children out of the schools they controlled and assimilate them into
    white schools, with white teachers etc. If one looks at the
    statistics covering the majority of black folk, the 2/3s who did not
    benefit from equal opportunity, life has gotten worse since the
    "civil rights movement", since assimilation started. Infant
    mortality, maternal mortality, birth weights, drop out
    rates/graduation rates, incarceration rates, drug addiction rates,
    all the statistics show that life has gotten worse for most black
    folk. In other words, if you want to break a people, break their
    institutions first, than they become a crushed and broken people easy
    to control and not a threat to the status quo."

    Keep in mind, if you will, that we're not just talking about
    dark-skinned people here. And the parameters of hostility might
    easily extend to include people wanting to protect our public
    lands...and many others.

    Those dangerous-sounding gents who reached me at home via the postal
    service --color not clear-- claimed to be the three guys who I wrote
    about recently in the Counterpunch piece cited above. I understand
    the points they made about the U.S. not honoring The Universal
    Declaration of Human Rights of December 9, 1948, and our ignoring
    subsequent related international agreements and conventions. What I
    don't understand is a) why they contacted me, b) how they were able
    to read my article and get something out so quickly (a day following
    its appearance!), c) why they used a box when the only contents were
    a letter, and d) how they got my home address.

    I have a lot of questions.

    Richard Oxman, a big fan of James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time, can
    be reached at [email protected]. He has fire gear available
    upon request.

    REFERENCES

    (1) Terence Des Pres, "Introduction" to Jean-Francois Steiner,
    Treblinka (New York: New American Library, 1979), p. xi.

    (2) See Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn, The History and Sociology of
    Genocide: Analyses and Case Studies (New Haven: Yale University
    Press, 1990). Also, Richard G. Hovannisian, ed., The Armenian
    Genocide in Perspective (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers,
    1986). And Robert Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet
    Collectivization and the Terror Famine (New York: Oxford University
    Press, 1986), especially chapter 16.

    (3) David E. Stannard, American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New
    World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 151.

    (4) See Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of
    World War II (New York: Basic Books, 1997), pp. 99-104. Also, Haruko
    Taya Cook and Theodore F. Cook, Japan at War: An Oral History (New
    York: New Press, 1992), p. 39.

    (5) John Pilger, The Secret War: "The U.S. War Against Iraq is well
    under way" in The Mirror (December 20, 2002), as posted on ZNet
    (www.zmag.org/weluser.htm).

    (6) Jeffrey St. Clair, Been Brown So Long It Looked Like Green To
    Me: The Politics of Nature (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press,
    2004), p. 133.

    (7) R. David Edmunds, "National Expansion from the Indian
    Pespective," in Indians in American History, ed. Frederick E. Hoxie
    (1988), pp. 159-165.


    http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Mar04/Oxman0308.htm
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