The American Insurgency
Amsterdan “An Insurgency is an armed revolt, or insurrection against an established civil or political authority, such as a constituted government.” (Quoted sections are from Wikipedia.) One thinks of the 20,000 in Iraq who are waging armed revolt against their duly elected, constituted government as well as what they perceive as a military occupation by an invading force, the Coalition comprised of mostly American men and women sent by the American government.The real “American government” is constitutionally of the people, by the people and for the people. The people are the Stockholders of the American democracy. And it is the American people who are under attack by a daring insurgency whose recent actions have been breathtaking.
In the last two decades a band of greedy and corrupt men and women has taken control of our government at top levels. For their own selfish gain – and that of their cronies – they have taken control of our arms and our treasury, and the treasury of future generations, and have taken action against these stockholders of the American democracy even abandoning our founding ideals of right to trial, presumed innocence, habeas corpus, the sanctity of one’s home and one’s private conversations.
While far more sophisticated, the parallels with traditional insurgents are legion. Our insurgents “have established ties with other outlaws” (the Abramoffs and Enrons) “and double agents” (like Chalabi) to further their goals.
Their tactics appear more subtle than traditional insurgents and they are cunning enough to direct most of their violence against those outside our borders. But like insurgents everywhere, many of their number seem to have no remorse at the killing of thousands of innocents, or of our own people, in furtherance of their ends, so long as it all occurs on foreign soil. Better there than here, they warn, ominously.
And like Islamic insurgents, they invoke their deity to cloak their deeds with righteousness and divine sanction.
“Some elements of an insurgency may use bombs, kidnappings, hostage-taking, hijackings, shootings and other types of violence to target the establishment's power structure and other facilities with little regard for civilian casualties.” The Iraqi insurgency is like that. But “other elements may only target their attacks on military objectives and avoid the targeting of civilians.” Our American insurgents fall into this category.
The term “insurgency is most commonly used to describe a movement's unlawfulness by virtue of not being authorized by or in accordance with the law. When the term is used by a state or an authority under threat, ‘insurgency’ implies an illegitimacy of cause upon those rising up.” This is not the case in our American insurgency, and that is the genius of it, and the source of its resilience. Because the American insurgency uses the law and civil authority to violate the law and manipulate civil authority.
In many traditional insurgencies “leaders of differing backgrounds from the insurgency movement itself may, at times, take over the insurgency.” So it is with the American insurgents. Decade by decade Democrats and Republicans alternately trade control of this insurgency. In a clever ruse of carefully structured elections of increasingly questionable accuracy, the American insurgency gives the illusion that it is sanctioned by those against whom it is being waged.
Be not deceived. We Stockholders in America, our values and futures, are under attack.
We dare not let the insurgents prevail.
It is our very good fortune that this American insurgency can be put down without bloodshed and violence, using the very rules this mob has seized upon in their rampage. We must educate ourselves, recover our dignity and moral authority, and vote them out. All of them. They are all tainted. All of them.
Then we must immediately change the rules they have steadily rewritten: the bias toward incumbents, the sanctioning of corruption in lobbying, the gerrymandering, the ear marks, the privately-financed never-ending campaigns for more money.
143 years ago (seven score and three) the first Republican, Abraham Lincoln, rallied us: "We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
How many of our future years of freedom and prosperity must we endure being stolen from us, before we rise up as citizens, put down this insurgency and take control of our government and our destiny?
posted by DanZ @ 11:45 PM
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