'What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?' by Frederick Douglass

[ckaihatsu]

?This is the perfect time to read the entirety of Frederick Douglass's famous speech, and not merely because of the date on the calendar.


More... (https://www.thenation.com/article/what-slave-fourth-july-frederick-douglass/)

[TomLeftist]

Yeah there has been a revision of the US history, thanks to the internet and other sources. And now many people are waking up to the painful truth that their Founding Fathers (Washington, Jefferson etc) were not good like they were taught in schools but they were evil oppressors. And that there has not been any revolution in USA in 4th of July of 1776. But what happened was really a continuity of the UK Empire, in USA but with another name and with another flag. So USA has been an evil empire from the first day of its foundation. 241 years of poverty, pain and misery for the majority of the citizens of this 241 years of hell, bills, taxes, working, working, working and more working and zero pleasures






?This is the perfect time to read the entirety of Frederick Douglass's famous speech, and not merely because of the date on the calendar.


More... (https://www.thenation.com/article/what-slave-fourth-july-frederick-douglass/)

[ckaihatsu]

via wsws.org (http://www.wsws.org)

The police mobilizations throughout the country, justified by citing the possibility of a terror attack, marked another effort to expand the power of the state in anticipation of social unrest.

More... (http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/07/06/four-j06.html)

[GLF]

I don't know enough about the founding fathers to comment on them as persons. I will say this, at the time, their brand of democracy was really a radical conception. The whole idea of "We the People", in the context of time and place, could easily be considered radically left-wing. Many of them were also deists (which was a public way of saying you're an atheist). Unfortunately they didn't do near enough to protect the people, and the American system, in practice, was oppressive and more about taking rule away from some and giving it to others. But when it comes to calling them "evil", we have to remember that we're dealing with historical figures; let's keep in mind the standards of their time. Even Marx and Engels would generate plenty of controversy among leftists if some of the things they said were to be said in today's time.

I will say this, Thomas Jefferson is a man I admire very much. I disagree with him on many things, but there's no question he was extremely wise. Frederick Douglass, too.

[TomLeftist]

Hi, many people in the left, claim that all the problems like racism, classism, hatred, evil in the USA are caused by the upper classes, by the upper wealthy ruling classes. And that everybody else (the middle class and the lower class of USA) are great people. But that's not true at all. In the USA the majority of white americans, behave like Donald Trump, Bush and Hitler, with an air of family-narcissism, family-pride (that i hate so much). The stupid inane family values, religious values, and they are very exclusivists, and very into their own central group.

And if you notice most americans have 2 behaviours, most americans are evil and good. They are good toward the members of their own group (central family, churches, work place) and evil against members outside of their group.

Around where I live which is a neighborhood of poor people (Because wealth spreading only happens in the movies and in dreams (Like George Carlin said). people live in wooden houses of cheap material, and live a shitty depressive life of working 365 days per year and not even 1 single day of party and fun. And even though they might earn 10 dollars per hour to about 20 dollars per hour. They are still poor, and broke, because there is a sort *TRICKLING-UP* economic model (which is an inverted Robin Hood system), in which even people who earn 50,000 dollars per year. Do not have any right to use those 50,000 dollars in pleasures and in what ever they want. Those 50,000 really belong to the over-valued payments of very thing from houses (1000 or more a month, 400 per month for the payment of their stupid cars with lots of gadgets and stupid GPS toys, internet and other toys to fool the masses). And because people are not dumb, they know that they live a shitty poor life, even if they earn alot,a nd they realize that as time goes by they get fatter, fatter, poorer, poorer and more depressed, depressed and depressed, because the human body and mind are not built for 365 days per year of working, and mowing lawns (which is the life of about 80% of US citizens.

That ultra-expensive life, living in shitty labor gulag cities, full of Mcdonalds in every corner. full of ugly depressive trucks, and a hell of a life of only working, going out to their work in depressive dull cities without any action and any motivating images. All that turns people into angry-fucks, angry-rebels, with mean faces like the people of the movies Fast and Furious. And I've noticed that there is a specific class in USA, that is more ultra-right wing, more xenophobic, more evil and more depressed than all the other classes, which is (the lower layer of the middle class, the lower-middle class) that class is dangerous. They feel that they must hate poor people, but at the same time they cannot compete with the upper-middle class professionals (doctors and lawyers and with upper class members (Like Warren Buffet and Donald Trump). But they feel very reluctant and violent toward mingling with the lower class citizens (Mcdonalds workers, Immigrant workers, poor un-employed people, sick people etc. (lower middle class americans, specially nurses, and specially white european hospital workers are the more dangerous and more far to the right-wing).

Dealing with these human anti-change, anti-communism, silent, extreme right-wingers trash of the lower middle class sectors is not a piece of cake. They are also full of envy. They hate anybody who they consider better than them, and develop all kinds of repressed emotions and un-checked appetites. As long as the USA still has a "Soft Middle Class" like Bob Avakian says in this MP3 Audio Speech http://bobavakian.net/sound/new/1_why_we-re_in_the_situation_we-re_in_today_1.mp3 we won't see a Communist revolutionary situation. The lower-middle class and the whole middle class. And the upper layer of the lower classes are very far to the right-wing. These pieces of trash do not want to support any leftist option, not even Amy Goodman, not even Democracy Now, not even The Green Party, not even Berny Sanders, not even Ron Paul. These people are the ones who are to blame for their own shitty life and the shitty life that we are forced to live in USA. Which is the most painful nation of the world to live in, with very low living standards and almost zero opportunity to see some economic, educational, physical and emotional progress.

As long as the narcissist lower middle class, middle-middle class and upper-middle class is powerful and big we will see Democrats and Republicans in the US government and not even The Green Party


.


?This is the perfect time to read the entirety of Frederick Douglass's famous speech, and not merely because of the date on the calendar.


More... (https://www.thenation.com/article/what-slave-fourth-july-frederick-douglass/)

- - - Updated - - -

GLF: You are right, very smart and rational your comments about the USA Fathers. Besides politics is an immoral science. But like you said I guess that Washington, Jefferson and the others were left-wing for the 1700s which was a time of Monarchies and Feudalist Political System in the world.

That's why I think that the writers of Counterpunch.org are not very scientific, I think that many of them are ultra-moralists and not scientific enough. Most writters of Counterpunch do not like the USA fathers


I don't know enough about the founding fathers to comment on them as persons. I will say this, at the time, their brand of democracy was really a radical conception. The whole idea of "We the People", in the context of time and place, could easily be considered radically left-wing. Many of them were also deists (which was a public way of saying you're an atheist). Unfortunately they didn't do near enough to protect the people, and the American system, in practice, was oppressive and more about taking rule away from some and giving it to others. But when it comes to calling them "evil", we have to remember that we're dealing with historical figures; let's keep in mind the standards of their time. Even Marx and Engels would generate plenty of controversy among leftists if some of the things they said were to be said in today's time.

I will say this, Thomas Jefferson is a man I admire very much. I disagree with him on many things, but there's no question he was extremely wise. Frederick Douglass, too.

[ckaihatsu]

Two hundred and twenty-two years ago today, in a field near what's now Greenville, Ohio, a preacher named John Rhys delivered an Independence Day address to the United States Army.


More... (https://jacobinmag.com/2017/07/fourth-of-july-united-states-indian-policy)