This has always been America: Ferguson and our dangerous delusions on race and democracy

[marmar]

from Salon.com:



This has always been America: Ferguson and our dangerous delusions on race and democracy
We believe we're the world's champion of freedom. In reality, we torture, invade, violate rights, stop and frisk...

AARON R. HANLON




Politicians both left and right turn to the troubling doctrine of American exceptionalism to justify unilateral military intervention abroad, but what happens when we turn that dangerous delusion of unbounded moral supremacy against our own citizens on our own soil?

This is what’s happening in Ferguson, Missouri, right now, where it’s clear that the police have made an exception to the modus operandi of rights-based democracy by silencing and arresting journalists, seizing and firing on unarmed and peaceful demonstrators and applying military-grade armaments to do so.

And, lest we forget, they have initiated this armed state of exception to cover up for and suffocate dissent against the gravest rights violation of them all: the police shooting and killing of a fleeing, unarmed black boy, who never received due process for daring to step off the sidewalk.

As the nation and the world watch, horrified, at what’s transpiring in Ferguson, we don’t need to ask whether there’s a racial element in play when an overwhelmingly white police force, strapped to the teeth, is exercising extreme state authority to corral and suppress the reactions of a black community mourning the inexcusable loss of one of their children. But how is it possible for this to happen in a nation that proclaims itself the world’s greatest champion of freedom and democracy? The answer, in part, is the logic of exceptionalism. ....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.salon.com/2014/08/16/this_has_always_been_america_ferguson_and_our_dangerous_delusions_on_race_and_democracy/

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1. Kick

[etherealtruth]

2. K and R for exposure

This is a really good article. thank you for posting.

[MohRokTah]

3. K&R eom

[Spitfire of ATJ]

4. White Middle Class Americans believe the myth that ANYBODY can make it if they TRY....

So it's your own fault if you can't make it.

The Right claims the Left has instilled a "victim mentality" to make "some people" feel they have to depend on the government. This also makes "those people" vote for Democrats because they want "free stuff".

The REASON this works is because a lot of White Middle Class Americans are fucking STUPID and KNOW it and their median $40K job was something they got almost as a matter of course. These are the people I used to describe as having the '12:00' blinking on the VCR because they couldn't understand how to set the clock. (The ones that didn't have blinking '12's had their kids set it.)

These are the people who buy a new car every five years and take the family to Wally World.

They think poverty is an excuse.

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5. Du rec

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6. K&R