We shall not be moved: Police repression, official mendacity and why OWS has already overcome
October 29th, 2011Published on Intrepid Report, by Phil Rockstroh, Oktober 28, 2011.
With a major portion of public space utilized for commercial exploitation, and, as a consequence, the concept of the public commons ignored into psychic oblivion, the surface of the corporate state may appear to be too diffuse, too devoid of a center to pose a threat of totalitarian excess.
Although, as of late, by the violent response to Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protesters by local police departments in Oakland, Atlanta, Chicago, and in other U.S. cities, the true nature of our faux republic is beginning to be revealed.
Behind the bland face of the political establishment (purchased by the bloated profits of the plundering class) are riot cops, outfitted and armed with the accoutrements of oppression, who are ready and willing to enforce the dictates of the elitist beneficiaries of the degraded status quo. In deed and action, as of late, the police state embedded within the neo-liberal economic oligarchy is showing its hyper-authoritarian proclivities to the world.
In general, existence within the present societal structure inflicts on the individual a sense of atomization and its concomitant feelings of alienation, vague unease, free-floating anxiety and anomie. The coercion is implicit and internalized … //
… Those who know this—have already won . . . have already overcome.
Lorca limned the situation (one extant as well in the enfolding OWS movement) in his theory of “the duende.” His concept of the duende reveals why people, when faced by the ossified order of an inhuman system, either become caught up—even compelled—by the challenge to begin to make the world anew—while others are seized with mortification, indifference, resignation and hostility.
In which direction does your soul wend? ”The arrival of the duende always presupposes a transformation on every plane. It produces a feeling of totally unedited freshness. It bears the quality of a newly created rose, of a miracle that produces an almost religious enthusiasm.”—from The Havana Lectures, Federico Garcia Lorca.
When I witness police harassing, arresting and brutalizing those exercising their rights to free assembly, I find myself gripped by a surge of rage . . . The rage rises in me in an animalistic fury—an urge to fight tooth and nail, to tear at the throats of these vicious intruders into the territory of authentic social discourse.
As of late, instead of pushing down the fury rising from within me or acting upon it, I let it inundate my being. As a result, the coursing rage transforms into a penetrating, powerful force—enveloping and demarcating the geography of my convictions . . . arriving to bring acceptance and to define and defend the contours of my true self.
Rage can appear as an angel of self-definition, the protector of one’s authentic nature and a source of personal power . . .”ain’t gonna let nobody turn me around, turn me ‘round . . .”
One’s anger is vital to one’s existence; it is a valuable gift; therefore, it should not be squandered . . . no need to waste it on fools and idiots.
When rage arrives, invite him in; his presence will fill the room with alacrity, and his surging vitality will allow you to push farther and deeper into the unexplored regions of your soul.
In contrast, the world of the neoliberal oligarchs, the duopolistic political class and of the cops has been called into question. They have grown accustomed to having their way, of having a compliant and complicit peasantry. In this they are not unique; what they are experiencing is universal: The world we know (or at least believe we do) and struggle to maintain, from time to time, is apt to reveal an aspect of itself that seems alien and unmanageable e.g., the growing dissent across the nation, perhaps too vast and potent to be kettled, penned, tear gassed, cuffed and detained. The otherness of the world seems too large . . . has become an army of aggrieved angels … (full long text).