i always thought may 19 was some sort of special date, but outside the fact that a couple of guys i knew in my younger days both had their birthday on this date, i no longer think it has any particular significance. funny how such an irrelevancy can captivate our imaginations!
i think the same thing when contemplating the headlines today about obama's upcoming speech to the arab world. as the christian science monitor has it, "what arabs want to hear (and not hear) in obama's speech". we in the US continue to be so obsessed with what we think, and what we do -- and how it plays to the rest of the world. at the same time, that "rest of the world" is itself a caricature and a figment of our own self-referential imaginations, that we can't begin to see "those people" as people at all. they are more like the plastic army men me and my playmates would setup in our imaginary war games, only to knock down or blow up in various proto-sadistic scenarios. outside of our own conceit of a world of us vs them, to be stood up and thrown down at whim, nothing had any independent reality or existence.
when the US president speaks to the arab world, it's a lot like the childish games we played those decades ago, except that now the plastic figures are flesh-and-blood people, and yet they're no more considered living beings with hopes and aspirations, lives and families and intrinsic worth, than the plastic army men we setup to throw down in our mindless diversions underneath a giant oak tree down the street. obama will go forth with a lecture about the proper relationship between master and subject people, imploring the proper and expected deference of the unwashed, barbaric masses with their strange god toward the good, clean and proper white overlords with their ossified notions of hierarchy and protocol.
for the arabs, the best they can expect is to be junior members in the global banking cartel that makes money off speculation in the commodities that the arab lands hold in some abundance -- mostly energy resources vitally necessary for the continued operation of the global armies of exploitation and oppression needed to maintain the global top-down order. serve us, is the message, and we won't lay waste to your countries and murder your people. we destroy utterly those who oppose us, while raining the rewards of benign neglect upon those who obey. it's an offer they can't refuse -- never could.
the so-called arab spring is notoriously misunderstood by those of us the clueless USA. it is primarily a manifestation of the anger on the street of those who are feeling the actual sting of the collapse of this global banking cartel. its insatiable greed is driving the price of necessities beyond the reach of the majority of people, who see the ostentation of the porcine classes and contrast it with their own desperation, bringing with it a classic WTF moment. it's not about freedom or representation or a yearning to embrace the hypocrisy of whiteness -- it's about putting food on the table.
i'm sure if you asked the people on the arab street about mr. obama, most people would respond that they just wish he'd shut the fuck up and carry his shyster rhetoric back to the american people, who'd be a lot better off studying up on the obligations of citizenship in a democratic republic. with the government running amok to serve its corporate masters, the US has become a rampaging monster which, as it loses control of the rest of the world, will soon have to double down on its repression at home to keep the lid on creeping social disintegration sure to follow the burgeoning economic inequality in the land.
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