April 4th

In 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. joined a group of 1300 city sanitation workers, civil rights leaders, the faith community and worker’s unions march for economic justice in Memphis. Together, they faced all who sought to suppress their free speech that day. They won the moral battle, and the following day, April 4th, 1968, Dr. King was assassinated. Maybe that should tell us who we are dealing with here, lest we continue to delude ourselves that “they” are “like us”.

Like the unified voices of the people’s movement four decades ago, our unified middle-class needs to follow the lead of Wisconsin and fight back. Union busting is an arena populated by assholes, thugs and bullies and is built on lies, fear-mongering and deceit. And lots of money. A campaign against unions is un-American, a vicious assault on individual workers and a war on the truth – a war without honor. The only way to bring down a union of people is to lie, distort, manipulate, threaten, and always (in some form or another) attack. The law only serves to suggest loopholes, maneuvers and define strategies such as pitting the agenda-mongering media, bought-and-paid-for politicians, media-supported companies and state governments against workers. All of us “workers”  – i.e. people with jobs – are essentially on our own, with no financial backing and no 24 hours a day news program for support. We are reliant on our own strength, intelligence, resourcefulness, and willpower alone for strategy.

History has a long list of scapegoating “others” for their problems. When Germany fell into a post war recession and crippling unemployment, they had to blame someone. Nobody loves scapegoating like Americans: Indians, slaves, emancipated slaves, black people, Italians, the Irish, Mexicans, Arabs (basically all immigrants), the poor, the unions, anyone receiving social benefits except themselves, the whales. The relentless, televised fear-mongering  programmed at angry, white, semi-racist old coots collecting Social Security, Medicare or VA benefits is meant to incite the idiots to blame “federal spending”, “state budgets’ and the “unions” for a bad economy brought down by state sponsored corporate greed on Wall Street and needless wars. The fear and hate is apparently  directed at anybody a with a “job” (teachers, clerical workers, mail carriers, firefighters, garbage men, nurses, miners, librarians, plant workers, all the people who make it easier for us to move through our day); but also, women and their bodies; intelligent and benign radio and tv programming; any faith but their own; college professors; intellectualism and academia; folks with glasses. Here are the forces of fascism rearing its ugly head, history repeating itself, banal and predictable, dangerous.

We are in a brutal war against a brutal enemy—every single conservative in America. Because they openly despise everything progressivism stands for: public education, a safe and efficient infrastructure, scientific advancements, a clean environment, safe food and water, sustainable energy/an end to oil reliance, choice, medical science, social justice, racial and gender equality, the arts, helping hands for the vulnerable and oppressed, a strong social safety net, peace. You know, everything except for obscene wealth hoarded by a few, tax evasion, fetus rights, empty sexual mores, and one-note Christianity. Know that they will do anything – circumvent the law, the constitution, the will of the people, human scruples – to take down the middle class, organized labor, women, minorities, public services and anything else that impedes their white, male, plutocrat overlorded from amassing unlimited wealth while enslaving everyone else.

Until we really accept that, and adopt the same mentality, we’ll lose this country. National strike. Stop buying their junk. Boycott of all Koch-owned business and every business owned by other key conservative financiers. Our own “tea party” where we can have fun dressing up in historical costumes and march alongside organized labor and women and blacks and Mexicans (four of the constituencies that conservatives hate and want to destroy most), in every major US city. Martin Luther Kin, Jr. lost his life struggling to help public-sector employees unionize and achieve their very modest goal of a dignified existence as workers in America.

Listen, and understand. A Republican can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.