Another Ordinary Day in the Empire

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Today is just another ordinary day.  There was an article about Michael Blake, a black assemblyman in the Bronx, being treated like a violent criminal by cops just by being a black man (1).  A Facebook poster, Aj Epoh, says:

“You can’t “prim and proper” yourself out of this. You can’t “educate” your way out of this. You can’t “articulate and enunciate” yourself out of this”.

Then, I came across an article about a black woman showing up in a court room without pants after three days of incarceration for shoplifting.  The judge flipped out on the abusiveness of the jailers for not providing her pants or female hygiene products (2).

As of yet today, I haven’t seen any articles about children bombed in bits in pieces in the Middle East or elsewhere, but I’m sure there have been devastated parents somewhere, asking why.

Something just clicked in me, telling me why things are how they are.  It clicked because I’ve been seeing people going furious over the prospect of how a Trump presidency will be for them. They say Trump is crazy:  he is not fit to be the president of the United States.  They keep posting nude photos of his wife saying she is not fit to be First Lady either.  They mock his hair, the way he talks, and make baseless accusations of him being a Russian spy.  And when they criticize his pronounced racism, nationalism, corporatism and so on, I can’t help but wonder if they are aware of the US embarking on numerous colonial wars and managing to be by far the worst mass incarceration nation while deporting record numbers of immigrants .  The ugliness of corporate plunder has already manifested in grave sufferings among the already oppressed and a huge gap between rich and poor.  That is the driving force of Trump’s demagoguery.  It almost feels like the mass anger against Trump is a huge collective projection among those who have tolerated crimes of the establishment.

I certainly do not have any faith in Trump to make things any better since once he is in the White House, he will be working with the people who have been coming up with all sorts of schemes for corporatism, colonialism and militarism anyway.  But I can’t help being reminded of the hopeless feeling of being called a racist when I accused the President of his wars and his neoliberal restructuring schemes for the rich.  To them, I was a hater who didn’t have respect for the office of the presidency.  I was told to speak nicely if I want people to hear me.

Well, that was that and this is this.  I do feel personal about the hypocrisy somewhat, but most of all, it’s excruciating that those people are cheering for the one government official who we have been warning about with all our might:  Hilary Clinton.

From colonial wars to police brutality, it seems that she has been involved in every single major contemporary issue against humanity.  Literally, following her footsteps traces a bloody trail of the empire as it bloated across the globe for the past decades.  Please see (3), (4), (5) and (6).

So here we are having another ordinary day with a lot more outrage in the atmosphere.  But the outrage is not directed at the inhumanity and injustice inflicted on our marginalized friends across the globe.  It’s outrageous that the good old colonizers have managed to colonize our anger, transforming it to continue and augment their reign.

Notes.

(1). http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/bronx/bronx-assemblyman-tears-talking-shoved-nypd-article-1.2734262

(2). https://www.facebook.com/MicMedia/videos/1190389550983833/

(3).  https://www.counterpunch.org/2016/02/26/hillary-goes-to-war/

(4). https://www.counterpunch.org/2016/05/04/hillary-clinton-and-wall-streets-neoliberal-war-on-latin-america/

(5). https://www.counterpunch.org/2016/06/17/hillarys-agenda-here-and-abroad-intertwinedfull-spectrum-dominance-around-the-globe-a-swelling-precariat-at-home/

(6). https://www.counterpunch.org/2016/07/19/the-time-is-now-to-defeat-both-trump-and-clintonian-neoliberalism/

Hiroyuki Hamada is an artist. He has exhibited throughout the United States and in Europe and is represented by Lori Bookstein Fine Art. He has been awarded various residencies including those at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, the Edward F. Albee Foundation/William Flanagan Memorial Creative Person’s Center, the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and the MacDowell Colony. In 1998 Hamada was the recipient of a Pollock Krasner Foundation grant, and in 2009 he was awarded a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. He lives and works in New York.