Slavery

I watched the movie, "Matewan" last night. I have been wanting to see it for a long time. I thought it was a pro union movie, turned out to be more like a pro non-violence movie, but still, my understanding is that they portrayed the condetions of coal miners in West Virginia very well. A two year war after the Matewan Battle ensued between miners and detectives from Baldwin-Felts, fellas hired to keep the folks from rising up and exercising their humanity. You see, the miners were paid in company script and forced to buy their food at the company store, all owned by the folks who owned the mines. These folks were another form of slave. The company brought in Blacks and Italians as scabs, but the Blacks and Italians were taken into the union and went on strike right along with the white miners.

Shusli is reading "The Culture of Make Believe," by Derrick Jensen. In this book he describes the conditions of slave trade. Shusli was even taught about the slave trade in 7th grade in powers. The diagram of how a shit was packed to the right was the diagram she was shown of the human cost of slavery. These folks had to live in their own shit which, of course, does horrible things to your skin. If they survived the journey, conditions were differently horrific. Women were raped, folks were whipped, tortured, imprisoned, families sold off, locked up...you know...all the goodies the owning class like to impose on us working class types through folks like Baldwin-Felts, Pinkerton, Blackwater, the police, FBI...I'm sure you are all aware of the folks who protect the assetts of the owning class from those of us of the lesser classes.

You see, the owning classes brought over black slaves in ships where conditions were so horrific a Freddy Kruger movie could not do it justice. They also brought over indentured servants who were often raped, tortured, whipped, murdered, imprisoned, and many other glorious things that the owning class do to us lessers.

And in "Matewan," we see that these things still continued into the 1920's. And if you see all the union struggles, you see that these things still continue today. And if you just look around you, you will see that us working types ("beasts" as glorious white wealthy founding father James Madison would have called us) are still getting fucked. I mean they use a kinder gentler hand now thanks to the media, the education system etc. The media and education system has fucked our heads so powerfully that we believe that this is a good system to work within, even as we see our jobs go overseas, our health care turn to shit, we do nothing. They don't need the cops or the national guard anymore. We police ourselves, as it were. And as I see an increase in homelessness, increases in folks loosing their houses, we see that Alan Schwartz gets thirty billions dollars in our tax money while we get shit for health care.

I sometimes wonder if we have become the perfect slaves? Folks who think the master is so great or so powerful as the master cannot be stopped by any means. Yet, you take a rock to the master's head, and the worthless heartless mother-fucker is gonna fall down with a bloody gash in his noggin and a nasty lump. The master ain't nothin' but a human bein' that helped teach us through this great american system to take it in the ass while the wealthy elite steal OUR fucking money so that worthless fucker Alan Schwartz can keep his multi-million dollar houses and multitude of mistresses.

Aint democracy great?

And don't get me started about the occupation of our land, Indian land, upon which all this bullshit happens.