Statement on events in U.S. of
11 Sept. 2001
Source: The Memory Hole
We have met the enemy and he is us — Walt Kelly
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed — and hence clamorous to be led to safety — by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. — H.L. Mencken
I have spoken hitherto of the possibility that democracy may be a self-limiting disease, like measles. It is, perhaps, something more: it is self-devouring. One cannot observe it objectively without being impressed by its curious distrust of itself—its apparently ineradicable tendency to abandon its whole philosophy at the first sign of strain. I need not point to what happens invariably in democratic states when the national safety is menaced. All the great tribunes of democracy, on such occasions, convert themselves, by a process as simple as taking a deep breath, into despots of an almost fabulous ferocity. — H.L. Mencken
War is the health of the State — Randolph Bourne
Roll up your sleeve and bend over
As the interventionist chickens come home to roost and the current pResident of the White House and scion of the WASPs’ answer to the Corleones presides over plans for ever greater U.S. gov’t intervention in the name of defense both at home and abroad to the cacophonous accompaniment of “the mighty Wurlitzer” with all the stops pulled out, we wish it to be known we’re utterly opposed to any retaliatory measures, be they economic or military or otherwise, on the part of the U.S. gov’t against anyone for any reason, no matter what—not even for oil or precious bodily fluids.
Moveover, we want to see the U.S. gov’t from now on to desist from any further intervention, no matter what form it might take, in any other country, to remove itself entirely from those other countries, and to confine its misdeeds — that is to say, all conceivable gov't activities — within the recognized boundaries of the U.S.
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| I can no longer sit back and allow terrorist infiltration, terrorist indoctrination, terrorist perversion and the international terrorist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids—General Jack D. Ripper |
We realize, of course, the U.S. gov’t will do nothing of the sort until enough people, Anglo-Americans in particular, are similarly opposed.
What people, and especially Anglo-Americans (most of whom are as profoundly obtuse as they are provincial—particularly, the influential opinion-molders), generally do not realize is that the political power of the U.S. gov’t is derived from their own tacit approval, not from the military might of the gov't. Without that approval the gov’t is nothing. In other words, it is actually within the power of the people to determine what the U.S. gov’t may or may not do.
We’re not talking about the voting franchise, either. The gov’t presumes to grant selected people such a franchise and reserves the right to take it away, as it pleases. No, we’re talking about political power and where it ultimately resides. Whatever political power the gov’t possesses to grant or take away the franchise comes from the people over whom it presumes to have jurisdiction.
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| Mein Führer, I can valk!—Dr. Strangelove (nee Merkw�rdigliebe) |
Political power and therefore the power to decide what the U.S. gov’t will be permitted to get away with at the risk of lives of ordinary people in the U.S. or abroad is entirely in the hands of those people. We propose that these people, especially of Britain, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Australia, and Anglo-America, hold an extended general strike or work stoppage as a way to shift the center of gravity away from their central gov'ts and back into their own daily lives.
In closing we offer a final quote, perhaps more poignant than pithy, from a widely circulated letter originally submitted to the New York Times, 15 Sept. 2001, by the parents of someone who had perished in the very well anticipated World Trade Center catastrophe (among the events of 11 Sept. 2001 about which numerous questions remain):
[W]e read enough of the news to sense that our government is heading in the direction of violent revenge, with the prospect of sons, daughters, parents, friends in distant lands dying, suffering, and nursing further grievances against us. It is not the way to go. It will not avenge our son's death. Not in our son's name.
Nor in ours.
