I couldn’t quite believe the covering tweet was true. Pretty much is though. Here’s the proof.

Philadelphia police smash windows of SUV carrying mom and baby in video, while union claims child was ‘lost
National union claims “child was lost during the violent riots,” then removed post that’s been called “propaganda.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/philadelphia-police-smash-windows-suv-carrying-mom-baby-video-while-n1245476

Thin blue line, huh? How about the blue wall of silence, or even worse–the cops committed a crime, and then lied about what happened so remorselessly that it was the polar opposite of the truth they were trying to peddle.

Here’s the thing. This is only tangentially a story about cops. The real lesson is what power structures now routinely do to protect themselves from We the People. Politicians lie. Rich people lie. Halfass administrators at podunk community colleges lie.

And: this is nothing new. For thousands of years, since the first kings put themselves on thrones in Mesopotamia, they lie and lie and lie as a matter of course to get their business done. It’s easy for us to scoff at the idea that Pharaohs were literal gods, not hard to roll our eyes at the later fiction that goes–well, not gods maybe, but ruling by the will of God, for sure! The concept known as divine right.

Democracy is arguably an improvement over monarchy, but don’t be fooled. It is in NO way a cure for the horrible cancer known as Civilization.

As soon as people give up hunting and gathering, as soon as they give up natural anarchy, the lines are drawn–nobles and serfs, blacks and whites, brahmins and untouchables–and guess what? You’re not in the right club.

Those that are in the right club will say anything, including self-aware lies, to stay in.

They might even tell you that you are in. Don’t be fooled. No matter how lily white your skin, no matter what heights your bank balance grows to, no matter what church you go to or who you marry, you’re not in the right club.

Instead, you have a choice.

You can live your life supporting all the lies, be a spokesmodel or a news reader for the left half of the club or the right half, you can vote and go to work every day for the club and pay your taxes and fund their lying wars that turn evil foreigners and your loved ones alike into skeletal dust in the wind … you can be what Ward Churchill once controversially referred to as a little Eichmann.

Or you can work as a revolutionary to bring the club down–or at least blunt its grip on your own mind and that of your fellow travelers.

The latter course sounds far more noble naturally.

But I have to be honest with you. A brilliant revolution that results in the complete destruction of the existing club may very well lead in a few short years to it simply being replaced wholesale by a new club. See the tragedy in France. See the tragedy in Russia. See the exact same tragedy befalling the American revolution, and ending up in this atrocity of morality described above, a few blocks from the Liberty Bell.

And: this isn’t the worst part.

The worst part is that for every one time like this that they get caught red-handed (and even then nothing bad happens to them), there are 99 lies that stand up as truths to the masses, and maybe even you.

Try taking a course in American history and actually digging in for real to any incident you care to name.

The machine killed the natives and celebrates them. Glorious Cochise County was named that only 20 years after Cochise was murdered in an Army jail–he had come there under flag of truce, for peace negotiations. They just lied and murdered and got clean away with it.

I don’t have to tell you about slavery, or about what our hallowed founding fathers did, or didn’t do about the actual systemic practice of considering living human beings as personal property to be bought and sold, raped and killed.

I don’t have to tell you about Japanese civilians melted into their sidewalks. Not soldiers. Not suicide bombers. Teachers and grocery store owners, women and children. Turned into slime on the pavement.

I don’t have to tell you about Afghanistan or Iraq or Libya or Yemen or Honduras or Bolivia.

I don’t have to tell you how capitalism actually works.

I don’t have to tell you this:

I don’t have to tell you this:

I do have to tell you this:

This isn’t a story about institutionally bad cops.

This isn’t a story about how horrible America is, either. America just happens have the biggest, strongest club of sociopathic bullies around, and that his been true for all of your life and all of mine.

The Chinese clubs are engaged right now in a whole new techno-wave of atrocities against their ethnic minorities, straight out of science fiction.

That doesn’t make China your enemy, or if it does, you have to say the same about your beloved leaders, and I mean Obama/Biden and the Clintons too, and not just Trump and the Bushes.

This is a story about when human beings stop living free and settle down and immediately begin to stratify themselves and pray to Gods and let themselves be ruled by some club of despots because, well, at least the grain silos are full this fall. At least the trains run on time. Never mind that they’re full of Jews, or black mothers, or Mexican children, or Iraqi civilians.

What I’m saying is that your longing for things to “be normal”, and comfortable, and like they used to be but never were, your silent howling for privilege and to never be considered one of the herd of cattle being put to the slaughter in Philly or Ferguson …

It can kill everything good about you.

It can make you mortally complicit in the kind of moral crimes you don’t even want to think about, much less be a part of.

And you have to be on your guard every second of your day to make sure it doesn’t.

You’ll know you’ve been successful when they lie about you and try to take away your paycheck.

Happy Halloween.