in the time remaining, to help us understand how the man-made system of capitalism will lead to the extinction of our human species, and so many others.
We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up
Sunday, July 10, 2016
Why Dallas Happened
Roberts asks some very important questions and tries to understand this violent police behavior and the assault on the police as witnessed in Dallas. He comes fairly close (for a conservative) in the final paragraphs.
For those who understand that we live in a class structured society in which one self-serving class rules to the disadvantage of the other classes, the explanation is becoming obvious. The police as well as all official agencies of violent coercion exist ultimately to secure the interests of the über-class. This latter class is the capitalist class whose control over the world and its own nation is being threatened in countless ways, they are feeling increasing insecure and prone to violent solutions, and instilling fear in the population tends to increase the latter's support for more police actions and restrictions on civil rights.
Clearly they must be recruiting people who have a proclivity to violence and racism, training them to use force whenever it suits them, and assuring them that they can do this with complete impunity. There is evidence, some of which Roberts supplies, to support the second hypothesis, and the record over many years clearly shows that police rarely receive any punishment for murdering people. Actually they are rewarded with a paid vacation (paid "administrative leave").