AmeriKKKKans shop while Iraq burns.

[shadowed by the secret police]

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1127-26.htm

Published on Monday, November 27, 2006 by the New York Times
While Iraq Burns
by Bob Herbert

Americans are shopping while Iraq burns.

The competing television news images on the morning after Thanksgiving were of the unspeakable carnage in Sadr City — where more than 200 Iraqi civilians were killed by a series of coordinated car bombs — and the long lines of cars filled with holiday shopping zealots that jammed the highway approaches to American malls that had opened for business at midnight.

A Wal-Mart in Union, N.J., was besieged by customers even before it opened its doors at 5 a.m. on Friday. “All I can tell you,” said a Wal-Mart employee, “is that they were fired up and ready to spend money.”

There is something terribly wrong with this juxtaposition of gleeful Americans with fistfuls of dollars storming the department store barricades and the slaughter by the thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, including old people, children and babies. The war was started by the U.S., but most Americans feel absolutely no sense of personal responsibility for it.

Representative Charles Rangel recently proposed that the draft be reinstated, suggesting that politicians would be more reluctant to take the country to war if they understood that their constituents might be called up to fight. What struck me was not the uniform opposition to the congressman’s proposal — it has long been clear that there is zero sentiment in favor of a draft in the U.S. — but the fact that it never provoked even the briefest discussion of the responsibilities and obligations of ordinary Americans in a time of war.

With no obvious personal stake in the war in Iraq, most Americans are indifferent to its consequences. In an interview last week, Alex Racheotes, a 19-year-old history major at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, said: “I definitely don’t know anyone who would want to fight in Iraq. But beyond that, I get the feeling that most people at school don’t even think about the war. They’re more concerned with what grade they got on yesterday’s test.”

His thoughts were echoed by other students, including John Cafarelli, a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of New Hampshire, who was asked if he had any friends who would be willing to join the Army. “No, definitely not,” he said. “None of my friends even really care about what’s going on in Iraq.”

This indifference is widespread. It enables most Americans to go about their daily lives completely unconcerned about the atrocities resulting from a war being waged in their name. While shoppers here are scrambling to put the perfect touch to their holidays with the purchase of a giant flat-screen TV or a PlayStation 3, the news out of Baghdad is of a society in the midst of a meltdown.

According to the United Nations, more than 7,000 Iraqi civilians were killed in September and October. Nearly 5,000 of those killings occurred in Baghdad, a staggering figure.

In a demoralizing reprise of life in Afghanistan under Taliban rule, the U.N. reported that in Iraq: “The situation of women has continued to deteriorate. Increasing numbers of women were recorded to be either victims of religious extremists or ‘honor killings.’ Some non-Muslim women are forced to wear a headscarf and to be accompanied by spouses or male relatives.”

Journalists in Iraq are being “assassinated with utmost impunity,” the U.N. report said, with 18 murdered in the last two months.

Iraq burns. We shop. The Americans dying in Iraq are barely mentioned in the press anymore. They warrant maybe one sentence in a long roundup article out of Baghdad, or a passing reference — no longer than a few seconds — in a television news account of the latest political ditherings.

Since the vast majority of Americans do not want anything to do with the military or the war, the burden of fighting has fallen on a small cadre of volunteers who are being sent into the war zone again and again. Nearly 3,000 have been killed, and many thousands more have been maimed.

The war has now lasted as long as the American involvement in World War II. But there is no sense of collective sacrifice in this war, no shared burden of responsibility. The soldiers in Iraq are fighting, suffering and dying in a war in which there are no clear objectives and no end in sight, and which a majority of Americans do not support.

They are dying anonymously and pointlessly, while the rest of us are free to buckle ourselves into the family vehicle and head off to the malls and shop.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

[h&s]

Really, what do you expect?
But instead of labeling all Americans as racist, why don't you go out and do something about it?


The war was started by the U.S., but most Americans feel absolutely no sense of personal responsibility for it.

Why should they? Its hardly as if they voted for it.

[Anton]

interesting article,
nothing new and nothing radical but things like this being published in a major paper is pretty good

[bolshevik butcher]

H and S is right, this is a ridiculous article with no class analysis what so ever. The American working class didn't start the war, hell their over in Iraq dying in their hundreds for the ruling class' benefit. This is just some self rightous liberal article that seems to rely on some sort of Kantean moralism.

[Comrade Marcel]

Originally posted by bolshevik [email protected] 29, 2006 05:26 pm
H and S is right, this is a ridiculous article with no class analysis what so ever. The American working class didn't start the war, hell their over in Iraq dying in their hundreds for the ruling class' benefit. This is just some self rightous liberal article that seems to rely on some sort of Kantean moralism.
Oh,please. No one FORCED those soldiers to sign up, and the entire "working class" of ameriKKKa is benefiting from imperialism. Whether the article intentionally has a class anlysis, it makes the point of ameriKKKans spending money on useless crap that will probably fall apart in less than 365 days while Iraq burns. If you can't see that this is obviously because ameriKKKans are an entire class of oppressers then you are missing the point.

And of course, the liberal is utopian in trying to plead with ameriKKKans to do something or atleast feel sorry. Why should they? It benefits them.

ameriKKKa will only learn when they burn.

[Herman]

And of course, the liberal is utopian in trying to plead with ameriKKKans to do something or atleast feel sorry. Why should they? It benefits them.

ameriKKKa will only learn when they burn.

He has a point there.

[EwokUtopia]

Originally posted by Comrade [email protected] 29, 2006 09:33 pm
ameriKKKa will only learn when they burn.
Problem being everyone else will likely be in the same boat as the Yanks at that point.

[violencia.Proletariat]

I don't think having politics based strictly on labor aristocracy and using "amerikkka" is going to help build class conciousness in the US. While the American proletariat is not responsible for starting this war, it is our responsibility to end it. We need to show solidarity to the workers in Iraq and try the best we can to shut the war down.

[EwokUtopia]

Since politics rests on the masses, America is a lost cause to any revolutionary without a network cable station at their disposal.

[fuerzasocialista]

Because of its imperialistic nature, the US will crumble as a result of its own actions. And that would be the best time for a revolution. Until that happens, people regardless if working class or rich, will continue to waste money on useless shit while others die defending their sovereignty from imperial opressors.

[Amusing Scrotum]

Originally, I was going to start this reply with the following:It is somewhat interesting, Marcel, that both you and a petty-bourgeois newspaper columnist share the same kind of outlook. You may pay lip service to the issue of class, something Herbert doesn't do, but there's nothing fundamentally different from the way you two view the World.However, out of interest, I looked up Bob Herbert on Wikipedia and the short article on him stated "He is distinguished by his frequent columns on poverty". So, I Googled "bob herbert poverty" ... and this article (http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/101305Q.shtml) showed up.

After having a quick read over the article, I realised something: my opening statement was wrong. :(

Not because I'd been mistaken about Marcel, no; but, because I'd underestimated Herbert. I hadn't underestimated him by much, mind you, but just enough to make my original statement inaccurate.

You see, what I'd overlooked, is that even a petty-bourgeois newspaper columnist like Herbert, is still capable of seeing a class divide in contemporary America. He sees it in the muddled kind of way most Journalists see it, granted ... but he still sees it.


Originally posted by Bob Herbert; in the article I linked.
One of the first things the president did in the aftermath of Katrina was to poke his finger in the eyes of struggling workers by suspending the requirements of the Davis-Bacon Act in the storm-ravaged areas. Passed during the Great Depression, the law requires contractors on federally funded construction projects to pay at least the prevailing wage in the region.

This is one more way of taking money from the working poor and handing it to the wealthy. A construction laborer in New Orleans who would ordinarily be paid about $9 an hour, the prevailing wage in the city, can now be paid less. So much for the president's commitment to fighting poverty.

Herbert is able to identify that the present "regime", Herbert's word, serves the interests of the bosses. And that, conversely, it attacks, brutalises and exploits the "working poor". Yet Marcel, a supposed Marxist, doesn't see this ... all he sees is "an entire class of oppressers".

It's completely bonkers, I know. I mean, how is it that a self-proclaimed revolutionary Marxist sees no class division, whilst a media hack is able to both see and describe it?

The answer to that question, of course, lies within the limits of one of the classes that is found in contemporary society. That class is the petty-bourgeois ... the class from which both individuals, Marcel's and Herbert's, ideologies stem from.

Herbert's political philosophy, on the one hand, is liberalism. A political philosophy capable of seeing the class divide, just not able to understand it properly. Marcel's political philosophy, on the other hand, sees ... well, nothing.

Two sides of the same coin, no doubt about that; but radically different at the same time.

In effect, one is the political philosophy of the petty-bourgeois left and the tother is the political philosophy of the petty-bourgeois right ... complete with a few scraps of Marxist rhetoric. Neither, however, has anything to do with working class liberation; rather, they're both obstacles.

In the case of Herbert, it's to look for peaceful resolution to the class war. Usually that comes in the form of a call to vote Democrat. Indeed, even the article at the beginning of this thread, a supposedly anti-war one, reads more like a recruitment leaflet. ("Be a real American and do your duty. Join the Military!")

In other words, it's a political philosophy that misleads the working class down fruitless channels.

By contrast, Marcel's "Marxism" is ideological cover for scabs. Nothing more and nothing less. After all, why join a strike when we're all "an entire class of oppressers" ... that would just be silly. No class war folks, we're all part of the same class.

That that kind of shit is posted freely on a revolutionary message board, may surprise people. After all, we'd expect this kind of stuff in Opposing Ideologies (for example: The Myth of the Working Poor (http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php?showtopic=59099&st=0)), but on the main board itself? Surely not.

But, alas, Marcel can post freely ... and even become a Moderator. But just remember, comrades, he's a scab that you shouldn't piss on even if he were alight...

[Janus]

And Americans will continue to shop even if Iraq descends into total civil war. As long as overall conditions don't deteriorate too much in America, it will always be business as usual.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

They didn't shop on 9/11. I don't about when Katrina hit. I know the market was down.

[Janus]

On 9/11, everyone was glued their TV's while the Katrina episode occured over a prolonged period. And of course, those events were domestic events so it struck a much closer cord than the events unraveling in Iraq right now. I've come to think that much of our media has more or less deadened most people to what is going on on the outside world.

[Comrade Marcel]

Yet again scrutum babals about scabs, I wonder if he has ever even worked in labour or if he has even been part of a union.

He keeps trying to show that my understanding, and this is something he is missing - not me, is some how petty-bourgeois. It's rather unusual because he doesn't back this up with any examples at all. He just says this is so.

On the other hand, I have always defended temporary workers and have always promoted the labour buerecracy workers to unite with them. In the case where the two conflict, it's always benefitial to the bourgeois. But that is a national question.

On an international scale, imperialist country workers ARE a class of oppressors.

This doesn't mean I don't recognize the different classes that exist in the imperialist countries. This doesn't mean I think there are NO proletarians in ameriKKKa...

Scro: stop trying to misrepresent people, and try to back your shit up. I would confront your drivel point-by-point but I just came back from MMA training and don't have the brain-power left for it right now.

[Jesus Christ!]

You put one too many "K"'s in your title and what is the deal if identifying all of America with the fringe group of the KKK? what does that prove? LOL SOME AMERICANS ARE RACISTS. K we all know that.

Back on point. I don't really understand what the writer's objective is in writing this? To tell us all how we should share the burden of a war that even he admits " a majority of Americans do not support." ? What does he expect us to do? Demand the end of the occupation? Already have. Physically get George Bush and his administration to be willing to pull out? That's really impossible. Bush's approval rating is at and all time low and he still remains stedfast and arrogant. What are we to do to get the soldiers out that we haven't already tried?

[Raisa]

If you join the the countrys army youre dead when you registered...
What do you think? Army goes to war.
Iraq isnt going to throw puppies and sunshine at the soldiers.
And if people from iraq lived over here they would go shopping too.

Poor americans who can spend SOME money on SOME shit SOME times, are just what everyone else is going to aspire to be. Which is why the system must fall.

Why make people feel guilty if they have alittle money once in a while?
Cause somteies i dont think youre even talking about the middle class, I think youre talking about us in general.

Are you willing to go into the ghetto and lecture a young man who has recently gotten a nice car working good that people are starving in other places and that he is a class of opressors for living here and driving that machine?!

Would you lecture a person who came out the ghetto that they should be sick with their self for getting a house in a nicer area?

Well if you would then fuck you.

Youre probably bourgeois if you think that. Cause if you were ever really poor youd give a poor person props for getting alittle something something.
A tv or a car doesnt make a person bourgeois.

And if you think it does, try taking that shit to the pawn shop when you cant pay a bill.....
Youll get 50 dollars if youre fucking LUCKY. where will that get you.
The proliteriat has nothing. This whole thread was bullshit.

Iraq burns, america still sucks on the inside....maybe not your part of it though.


Dont some of yall see, this is why the class system needs to be distroyed?
Everyone is going to want something something....and you cant blame them.

[bolshevik butcher]

Originally posted by Comrade Marcel+November 29, 2006 09:33 pm--> (Comrade Marcel @ November 29, 2006 09:33 pm)
bolshevik [email protected] 29, 2006 05:26 pm
H and S is right, this is a ridiculous article with no class analysis what so ever. The American working class didn't start the war, hell their over in Iraq dying in their hundreds for the ruling class' benefit. This is just some self rightous liberal article that seems to rely on some sort of Kantean moralism.
Oh,please. No one FORCED those soldiers to sign up, [/b]
Ever heard of economic conscription?

Also, how is the entire american working class benefiting from imperialism/ capitalism. I'm Scottish so i suppose I benefit from this too, how as a working class scot do i benefit from British Impieralism?

[Amusing Scrotum]

Originally posted by Marcel+--> (Marcel)Yet again scrutum babals about scabs...[/b]

Is this sentence the result of the latest incarnation of the "how to spell like a r-r-revolutionary handbook"? Or is it just you being dense? Either way, it's still funny ... in a laughing at you not with you way.

And I "babal" about scabs, because that is what your ideological positions provide cover for. You may not like to admit it, but the events surrounding the Detroit newspaper strike do represent the logical conclusion of your philosophy ... and that conclusion ain't pretty.


Originally posted by Marcel+--> (Marcel)...I wonder if he has ever even worked in labour[/b]

Uh, "worked in labour"? :unsure:

That's a new one, for sure. And, to be honest, it's so random that I don't really know how to answer. That is, I work in a bar, as a barman; whether that's "working in labour" or not, I'll leave up to you. (It certainly represents being a member of the working class.)


Originally posted by Marcel
It's rather unusual because he doesn't back this up with any examples at all.

What an absurd thing to say! My whole last post was an explanation, based on examples, of how you spout the ideology of the petty-bourgeois. You may not like the reasoning I used, but you can't deny that I laid out my case.

And that case is, very briefly, that your political philosophy serves the interests of the propertied classes by heaping ideological confusion and clutter on the struggle between the exploited and the exploiters. And by advocating that the working class subordinate itself to various capitalist sects ... like the Iraqi Resistance and the Taliban.

You can either try to rebut these arguments, or leave them be; but you simply can't claim that there are no arguments. As I said, that's an absurd thing to say.


[email protected]
This doesn't mean I don't recognize the different classes that exist in the imperialist countries. This doesn't mean I think there are NO proletarians in ameriKKKa...

This horse has already bolted, Marcel. So it's a bit too late to try and cover your ass with a few blanket statements ... and it indicates a certain lack of courage in your own convictions.


bolshevik butcher
...how as a working class scot do i benefit from British Impieralism?

You get cheap whisky and Mars bars in batter...

[Tekun]

Like Nam, the only way that this conflict is gonna end is when Americans start feeling Iraq breathin down their neck
When they start reading and seeing body bags by the hundreds every month, then they'll start shutting it down
However, when it comes to consumption and the conflict
Even a terrorist attack didn't stop them from buying....as we all saw, a couple of days after 9/11 the government was able to influence most of the public to resume their daily activities, specifically shopping
They even urged ppl to "go out and resume shopping" for if they didn't the terrorists would win :rolleyes:
Business never takes a break
Though I do feel that most of the public is rather indifferent to the conflict, hundred dollar purchases are not necessarily connected to the conflict in itself
The public's superficial and trivial needs/tastes doesn't mean that they do or don't support the government's foreign policy
Shopping wont decrease if the public all of a sudden begins to condemn the government for the failure in Iraq
Rather, shopping and materialism will all but disappear when socio-economic conditions get so bad that shit like brandname clothes and TV's don't satisfy the needs that ppl have for a better and more just society

Up until now, the governments adroit public relation squad has done an incredible job of making ppl forget about what they're doing over in Iraq, all while feeding the public's need to shop

[Comrade Marcel]

Originally posted by Amusing Scrotum+November 30, 2006 06:28 pm--> (Amusing Scrotum @ November 30, 2006 06:28 pm)
bolshevik butcher
...how as a working class scot do i benefit from British Impieralism?

You get cheap whisky and Mars bars in batter... [/b]
I was thinking more along the lines of your TV, microwave, computer, the clothes on your back, the shoes on your feat, the tea and/or coffee you drink, some of, or most or all of the fresh fruits and vegetables you eat, canned goods, etc etc.

Then even the big appliances that are domestically made, check into where the raw materials come from; so if you have domestic mad fridge/stove, where did the rubber, copper, steel, etc. come from?

[OneBrickOneVoice]

I am seeing alot of shock at the way he spelled America, and while I'm not a MIMite and I think spelling America Amerikkka is pointless and makes no difference, here is their explanation for people who use that grammar

Your grammar, spelling and art (fill in the blank) suck (http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/faq/suckwork.html)


Your grammar, spelling, art and (fill in the blank) suck

A lot of these complaints stem from never having seen politicized spelling before.

With regard to grammar, some critics have run tests on our writing and shown others that it's not as bad as they think. Nonetheless, we have to admit that the corporate media has the advantage of hiring multiple people full time to do editing and proofreading. A typical magazine article might have three writers and four editors. At MIM we cannot do that. The solution is not to whine but to join.

On the plus side, MIM's lack of professional staff makes MIM more effective as an outlet for change than charities or political groups with overheads in staff. MIM's money goes right into doing things.

Relying on amateurs in our work is necessary because of the whole structure of the class struggle. No one has figured out how to make a profit selling the revolution. Bands like Rage against the Machine have only figured out how to do it for a piece of what needs to be done.

We also make no bones about using amateurs in our art and graphics. We have no alternative and our basic attitude toward this question is an important aspect of materialist philosophy. If you can do better in anything we do, please go right ahead. If you would submit good art to replace bad art, you might even find MIM willing to do that. It's not that we do not want to improve. It's just that we insist on using the best of what we have on hand and deride all other approaches as nihilist immaturity.

[SPK]

Consumerism is designed to help the bourgeoisie avert and neutralize political resistance to its imperial project. Tending house, tooling about in an SUV, and going shopping at the mall – and working for the money to access these “leisures” and diversions in the first place – burn up time that the working class could be using for political activity. The mall-people that Bob Herbert describes in his New York Times essay are the product of this ruling class strategy.

Herbert also describes a kind of stupidity which I think is very real among many people in the usa: there is minimal awareness of the moral depravity of the war; of the situation on the ground for the Iraqi people; of the situation for amerikan soldiers there; of the real purposes of the ruling class’s recent military offensives; of the usa’s eroding global economic position and its structural crisis; and of the relation between the war and that crisis. This ignorance is the result of multiple factors. One is the terrible primary educational system – public or private, it doesn’t matter. Another is a mass news-media that barely recognizes the existence of a world outside of the boundaries of the usa and, when it does, filters any message through a distorting, ideological prism that is increasingly disconnected from objective reality.

This lack of understanding, like consumerism, is also ultimately a product of ruling class strategies for maintaining the capitalist system here. Specifically, the bourgeoisie has, since the end of amerikan intervention in Vietnam, depended heavily upon a highly specialized state apparatus to execute its imperial plans. Conversely, any attempts to engage the amerikan people and build ideological consensus or hegemony – or even a majority opinion, for that matter – in support of its wars have been eschewed. In other words, I think, the ruling elites have increasingly chosen to simply keep people completely in the dark about the world around them, rather than allowing the level of objective understanding or knowledge which would be required to build that consensus or majority opinion in favor of war. With the bulk of the working class sidelined in that way, the state then relies exclusively upon its apparatus, the central component being, of course, the volunteer armed forces.

This strategy arose out of the disastrous results of the amerikan intervention in Vietnam (disastrous for the bourgeoisie here). Conscripting millions of primarily working class people, training them in combat, putting weapons in their hands, and then sending them to Vietnam to die by the tens of thousands in a war the usa could clearly not win was not a good idea. :lol: When that war went bad for the ruling elites, soldiers used their weapons to rebel, take over their bases and ships, and kill their officers. Enlistees returning to the usa used their training to support armed self-defense groups and revolutionary organizations like the Black Panther Party. Many soldiers were deeply politicized by their experiences in Vietnam, whether by the example of the Vietnamese resistance itself or by their new understanding of the true nature of the war, i.e. working class people dying for profit.

The bourgeoisie wanted to avoid this experience in the future, of being dependent upon the working class, the vast majority of people to implement its plans. That dependence required the careful construction of public opinion, since the people were the ones doing the fighting in the first place. People, whether soldiers in Vietnam or their family members and friends back in the states, had a stronger vested, material interest in understanding the objective reality of the world around them and in Vietnam. The ruling class attempted to skew this knowledge in a way that was consistent with their imperial interests. Of course, that ultimately failed, and with the war going badly, amerikans began turning to more independent sources of information. With the armed forces being dependent upon conscription, but with the social consensus in favor of the war broken, the usa had to eliminate the draft and finally withdraw.

The approach right now to Iraq is to rely on the volunteer military and keep everyone entranced with baubles. When people buy lots of stuff and are inundated with obfuscating news reports of shark attacks, abducted white children, and Lindsay Lohan’s latest tryst, that is integrally related to this imperial strategy.