Starvation, frightening as it is, may not be our greatest fear.
Given the radical obtuseness into which most of us—myself definitely included—are trained from infancy, I need to not be abstract but to be absolutely explicit. The United States government is a government of occupation. Capitalism is an economics of occupation. If a foreign power (or space aliens) were to do to us and our landbases what the dominant culture does—do their damnedest to turn the planet into a lifeless pile of carcinogenic wastes, and kill, incarcerate, or immiserate those who do not collaborate—we would each and every one of us—at least those of us with the slightest courage, dignity, or sense of self-preservation—fight them to the death, ours or far preferably theirs.
But we don’t fight. For the most part we don’t even resist.
How’s it feel to be civilized? How’s it feel to be a slave?
Here’s how it works. Those in power pass some law. It doesn’t much matter how stupid or immoral the law is, it will now be enforced by people with guns: the police and the military. Or maybe some judge sets a precedent. Once again, it doesn’t matter how stupid or immoral the precedent is, it will also be enforced by people with guns. This law or precedent may be that human beings are property, that is, without rights (only responsibilities). It may be that corporations are persons, that is, with rights (and in this case, without responsibilities). It may be that corporate lies are protected free speech. It may be that corporate bribes are protected free speech. It may be that those who kill in the service of production are protected from accountability. It may be that those who destroy property “owned” by corporations face decades in prison as declared “terrorists.”
Those in power often con the rest of us into being proud of being good, defined—by them and by us—as being subservient to their laws, their edicts. They con us into forgetting—and in time we become all too eager to con ourselves into forgetting—that those in power can and usually do legalize reprehensible activities that increase their power (for example, stealing land from the indigenous, invading countries with desired resources, debasing the landbase, all done legally, because those in power declare it to be so) and criminalize non-reprehensible activities that undercut their power (soon after the most recent invasion many people were arrested in New York City for pasting up pictures of Iraqi citizens, that is, humanizing the U.S.’s current targets; consider a law proposed in the Oregon legislature mandating twenty-five year minimum sentences for doing anything that would disrupt transportation or commerce, including standing in the street during an anti-war protest [I’m not kidding]).175 Another way to say this is that those in power make the rules by which they maintain and extend their power. Of course. And then those in power hire goons—for when you take away the rhetoric of protecting and serving, the job of police and the military boils down to being muscle to enforce the edicts of those in power—to keep people in line.
When we forget that the edicts of those in power are merely the edicts of those in power, we lend these edicts a moral weight they do not deserve. Those in power (usually the rich) declare that those in power may under certain circumstances kill those not in power (most often the poor), and the rest of us forget they’re doing no more than using their power to get away with murder. Those in power declare that those in power may under certain circumstances devastate the landbases—oh, sorry, “develop the natural resources”—of distant communities, and the rest of us forget they’re doing no more than using their power to get away with murdering communities and murdering the earth. Those in power declare that those in power may under certain circumstances destroy entire peoples, and the rest of us forget they’re doing no more than using their power to get away with genocide.
Many of us do not effectively oppose the actions of the government that occupies our landbase because we’re afraid of the consequences, afraid of being killed or imprisoned. That fear is, I think, one reason I have not yet taken out any dams. I am ashamed to admit that, but it is true.
If our fear drives us away from effective action, we should at least have the honor to not make a virtue of this cowardice. So often we pretend that to be a law-abiding citizen is to be a moral human being. Or we pretend the following is a position of moral superiority: to be under all circumstances opposed to all forms of violence (except, of course, that we do not seem to so much mind when it comes to using resources stolen by force from others and from the earth). Even to be opposed to using violence to stop violence done to ourselves and those we love is considered morally tenable, even desirable (and not, oddly enough, despicable). These rationalizations are essential to the maintenance of current power structures.
The thirteenth premise of this book: Those in power rule by force, and the sooner we break ourselves of illusions to the contrary, the sooner we can at least begin to make reasonable decisions about whether, when, and how we are going to resist.
My friend who was tree-sitting down in Humboldt County—her name is Remedy—was recently pulled from the tree. With the assistance of the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Department, Pacific Lumber sent several climbers after her. She locked down, which means she climbed far above the platform where she lived, the platform she shared with flying squirrels, crows, termites, ants, and tiny salamanders who live in rotted-out hollows high inside the trunk, wrapped her arms around the tree’s woody flesh and put them inside metal sheaths, then locked her hands together. She did this so climbers would have to cut her away from the tree before they could pull her down.
The main climber is called Climber Eric. Pacific Lumber routinely hires him to take out tree-sitters. He climbs the trees, talks to the tree-sitters with the soft voice and smile of someone who knows he’s backed by the full power of the state, and tells them things will go much better for them on the ground and in the courts if they come down now. If they don’t come down on their own, he tells them he’s going to bring them down, and still smiling says, “See those deputies on the ground? If you resist, or make even the slightest move against me, they’ll shoot you.” I do not know if he still smiles as he cuts tree-sitters from lockboxes. Nor do I know if he smiles as he puts them in pain compliance holds—that is, as he tortures them—until they go limp. Then he ties them and brings them to the ground. Because of Climber Eric’s treatment, at least one tree-sitter is months later still unable to use his thumbs.
I need to say Climber Eric’s use of violence is not limited to his professional life: he has twice been arrested for domestic violence.
As he cut Remedy out of her lockbox, he said to her, smiling (of course), “When you get down, to celebrate, you should get yourself a pearl necklace.” Pearl necklace is a pejorative term for having a man’s semen around your neck. I do not know if he was attempting to imply that he should be the one to ejaculate on her. I do know he was saying this to a woman whose hands were not free, and I know further that even if her hands had been available, and had she been able perhaps to slap him for the comment, she would still have had to hold back—to lie back and take his comment, as it were—for fear the deputies on the ground would have shot her.
Often when they pull down tree-sitters, the cops, goons, and loggers force the tree-sitters to watch as they cut the trees the sitters were trying to protect. In this case they didn’t do that.
That night another tree-sitter—this one named Mystique—climbed back up. She was there a few days before Climber Eric came for her too. Mystique climbed higher and higher, far higher than Remedy had ever dared, to the top of this ancient redwood—which are the tallest of all trees—to where the trunk was smaller than her arm. Climber Eric followed. He reached for her. He told her that he and the other climbers, as well as the cops on the ground, had already agreed that if she fell they’d all say she committed suicide by jumping. He tied a single rope to her waist and lowered her upside down to the ground.
That night, another climber made his way up the tree. This climber has already withstood several assaults by Climber Eric. As I write this,
the tree still stands.
If Nazis or other fascists took over North America, what would we all do? What would we all do if they implemented Mussolini’s definition of fascism: “Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of State and corporate power”? And what would we do if they then instituted laws allowing them to put a significant portion—say one-third—of all Jewish males between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five into concentration camps? What if this occupied country called itself a democracy, but most everyone understood elections to be shams, with citizens allowed to choose between different wings of the same Fascist (or, following Mussolini, Corporate) party? What if anti-government activity was opposed by storm troopers and secret police? Would you fight back? If there already existed a resistance movement, would you join it? Substitute the word African-American for Jewish and ask yourself the same questions.
Now, would you resist if the fascists irradiated the countryside, poisoned food supplies, made rivers unfit for swimming (and so filthy you wouldn’t even dream of drinking from them anymore)? What if they did this because . . . Hell, I can’t finish that sentence because no matter how I try I can’t come up with a motivation good enough even for fascists to irradiate and toxify the landscape and water supplies. If fascists systematically deforested the continent, would you join an underground army of resistance, head to the forests, and from there to boardrooms and to the halls of the Reichstag to pick off the occupying deforesters and most especially those who give them their marching orders?
Okay, so maybe your sense of kin, and your sense of skin, doesn’t extend to the natural world. Maybe you don’t yet love the land where you live enough that you will fight for it. But what if the fascists toxify not only the landscape but the bodies of those you love? What if their actions put dioxin—one of the most toxic substances known—and dozens of other carcinogens into the flesh of your lover, children, mother, brother, sister, father? Would you then fight back? What if the fascists toxify your own body? Would you still cling to the illusion that their edicts carry more weight than that brought to bear by their secret and not-so-secret police? Would you work for this regime? Would you teach others its virtues? Or would you fight back? If you will not fight back when they toxify your own body (and toxify your mind with propaganda leading you to believe their edicts carry moral weight), when, precisely, will you fight back? Give me—and more importantly yourself—a specific threshold at which you will finally take a stand. If you can’t or won’t give that threshold, why not?
None of these questions are rhetorical. The questions are real. They are, at this point, some of the most important questions there are.
How much closer must the culture cut before you will bring it down?
Prior to World War II, annual worldwide use of pesticides ran right around zero. By now it’s 500 billion tons, increasing every year. Of course—ho hum—there are massive environmental problems associated with the fabrication and introduction into the environment of so many poisons. But I recently came across a study that might help shake the miasma from all but the already dead. Scientists compared children raised in an agricultural area in Mexico where chemical pesticides were used with those from nearby foothills where pesticides were not used (I’d like to say where pesticides were absent, but of course by now they’re everywhere, some places are just not quite so saturated). Both the physical and mental growth of children exposed to pesticides were grossly retarded.
I’ve seen drawings by children of both groups. Those by children exposed to pesticides are pathetic, and I mean that in its deepest sense of raising pathos, except among the fully enculturated, who probably won’t notice, or even noticing won’t feel, or even feeling won’t act.
Instead of the fully formed figures created by children four to six years old—stick figures with smiling faces or balloon men complete with belly buttons—the creations become instead unidentifiable scratches, as though a chicken stepped in ink then made its way across the paper.176
Let’s be clear: Those in power are poisoning children, stealing their physical and cognitive health: making them weak, sick, and stupid.
How close must the culture cut before you will fight back?
WHY CIVILIZATION IS KILLING THE WORLD, PART I
The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.
Stephen Biko, anti-apartheid activist tortured to death by state police
WHY CIVILIZATION IS SKILLING THE WORLD, TAKE ONE. Here are the words of Marine Corps Sergeant Sprague of Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, part of the U.S. force invading Iraq: “I’ve been all the way through this desert from Basra to here and I ain’t seen one shopping mall or fast food restaurant. These people got nothing. Even in a little town like ours of twenty-five hundred you got a McDonald’s on one end and a Hardee’s at the other.”177
WHY CIVILIZATION IS KILLING THE WORLD, TAKE TWO. I received a note from a friend, Katherine Lo, a sophomore at Yale University. She set up a talk for me there. Soft-spoken almost to the point of shyness, she nonetheless possesses courage far beyond that held by most of us.
Her note: “I hung an upside-down American flag outside my window facing the main campus to express my dissent with the war the U.S. government is waging on the Iraqi people and the wars it has waged and is waging economically, politically, militaristically, and culturally on other countries and peoples.
“The next night several males carrying 2 x 4s entered my dorm suite without permission, then attempted to break into my bedroom, which was locked. After about ten minutes, they left the following note on my message board: ‘I love kicking the Muslims ass bitches ass! They should all die with Mohammad. We as Americans should destroy them and launch so many missiles their mothers don’t produce healthy offspring. Fuck Iraqi Saddam following fucks. I hate you, GO AMERICA.’”
She continued, “It is hard for me to fathom that people are capable of such malevolence. But this same hatred and racism is prevalent in the very policies of the U.S. government, the blind patriotism of many Americans, and the deeply sickening aspect of the dominant culture that has led some Americans to believe that an Iraqi life is somehow worth less than an American life. There is something seriously and fundamentally wrong here.”
The incident in her room was not unique. She compiled a list of similar incidents that took place at Yale in just thirty-six hours. You could probably do the same for your own locale. The evening after the men entered her room, a group of undergraduates participated in a silent, non-violent vigil in the university’s dining halls to mourn the deaths of Iraqi civilians. One participant, Raphael Soifer, was followed outside and spat on by a white male. That same evening, in response to an article Kat wrote, a number of anonymous, racist, and threatening posts were made on an online forum. Late that night, perhaps in response to posts on that forum signed by an African American, the following note was left on the door of the Afro-American Cultural Center: “I hope you protesters and your children are killed in the next terrorist attack. Signed Fuck You.” Many undergraduates decided to fly flags upside down outside their windows as a sign of dissent, distress, and solidarity with Kat. At least one student’s suite was illegally entered, her flag reversed. The next morning, students put up an art installation, permitted by the President’s Office. The work included twenty-two American flags representing twenty-two U.S. invasions. One flag, in the center, hung upside-down. A group of husky white males confronted the activists, demanded to see the permit. When it was produced, the group ripped down the flags anyway (forming a parallel to the U.S. demanding that Iraq allow U.S. weapons inspectors into its country, and when Iraq acceded the U.S. invaded anyway). That morning, another upside-down flag outside a student’s window was torn down and stolen.
Smackyface.
What does that mean?178
We need to be explicit about interrogation techniques employed by the CIA and associated groups. I’m sure you’ve seen the CIA Torture Manuals�
�oh, sorry, Pain Compliance Manuals, oh, sorry, this time a real title (and I’m not making this one up) “Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual, 1983”—and I’m sure you can guess their contents. I’m sure you’ve seen the chapter from the 1963 CIA “KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation Manual” entitled Coercive Counterintelligence Interrogation of Resistant Sources. These manuals are explicit: “The following are the principal coercive techniques of interrogation: arrest, detention, deprivation of sensory stimuli through solitary confinement or similar methods, threats and fear, debility, pain, heightened suggestibility and hypnosis, narcosis, and induced regression.” They go on to describe the advantages and disadvantages of each technique, and how each of them can be most effectively used to break their victims, that is, to cause three important responses, “debility, dependency, and dread,” that is, to cause their victims to “regress,” that is, to lose their autonomy. As one manual puts it: “these techniques . . . are in essence methods of inducing regression of the personality to whatever earlier and weaker level is required for the dissolution of resistance and the inculcation of dependence. . . . As the interrogatee slips back from maturity toward a more infantile state, his learned or structured personality traits fall away in a reversed chronological order, so that the characteristics most recently acquired—which are also the characteristics drawn upon by the interrogatee in his own defense—are the first to go. As Gill and Brenman have pointed out, regression is basically a loss of autonomy.”179
In short and in vernacular, the point is to mindfuck victims (or as the manual also puts it: “Coercive procedures are designed not only to exploit the resistant source’s internal conflicts and induce him to wrestle with himself but also to bring a superior outside force to bear upon the subject’s resistance”) until they give the perpetrators what they want. This is the essence of abuse. It is the essence of civilization. Every day we see these processes and purposes at work in the culture at large, whether it is teachers, bosses, cops, politicians, or abusive parents who try to exploit our internal conflicts to increase their control, safe in the knowledge that if we refuse to be so exploited they will use force to achieve the same ends.180
Endgame Vol.1 Page 24
