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

Tuesday, November 14, 2017

Colin Kaepernick Is Righter Than You Know: The National Anthem Is a Celebration of Slavery

Click here to access article by Jon Schwarz from The Intercept.  (Updated with more commentary at 11 PM Seattle time.)

Strange, but I've never heard of this verse, or heard it sung. So, I googled it, and sure enough Kaepernick is right! Now I will forever associate that verse with the national anthem.
Almost no one seems to be aware that even if the U.S. were a perfect country today, it would be bizarre to expect African-American players to stand for “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Why? Because it literally celebrates the murder of African-Americans.

Few people know this because we only ever sing the first verse. But read the end of the third verse and you’ll see why “The Star-Spangled Banner” is not just a musical atrocity, it’s an intellectual and moral one, too.
Francis Scott Key, the author of "our" national anthem, was obviously from well-heeled and well-educated British stock who saw the US has any opportunist bourgeois of the era saw it: splendid opportunities to grow rich by plundering the American continent. And he apparently unconsciously accepted the Marxist axiom that all value comes from labor by casually accepting the use of human property to create value for this new class of capitalists. The latter just needed workers to work for them to help them plunder and clear the continent of those "savages" who were living there. They couldn't get enough workers from Europe to immigrate, so they captured, imported, purchased, and used Africans to produce their wealth. 

Meanwhile, the British tried to undermine the economy of the USA by offering slaves freedom if they could make it to their Canadian colony. What treachery! Those British scoundrels who taught Americans to believe in the sanctity of property were trying to steal American property!