For the U.S. Establishment, Violence Is the Answer
Meandering Thoughts on Campus Protests against Genocide and Police Responses
College and university campuses across the USA are increasingly the sites of violence, but that violence is largely being committed by police units called in to disperse and arrest protesters. The police, I assume, are, as they say, just following orders. The question is: Who’s giving those orders? And the answer most often seems to be senior administrators at those colleges and universities. Welcome to your education in liberal values!
Police do what they’re trained to do, just as soldiers do what they’re trained to do. Soldiers aren’t freedom-bringers and diplomats: they are trained in the use of deadly force under the most violent of conditions. Police aren’t educators and negotiators: they are also trained in the use of suppressive force under violent conditions.
On campuses across America, police have done what police are armed and trained to do here. They break out their riot gear, their sniper rifles, their armored cars, their tools of behavior modification (e.g. cuffs, Tasers, truncheons, rubber bullets, tear gas and pepper spray), and they go to work. They literally kick ass and take names (and mug shots, fingerprints, and so on).
Police are here to protect and to serve, so we’re told. But to protect and to serve whom? And for what cause? Ultimately, police protect the powerful, those with property and money, because those are the ones giving them their orders. If and when police begin to refuse orders from above, that’s when the powerful will truly begin to worry.
It’s interesting that some student protesters, as at Columbia, are now being compared (as by MSNBC) to the January 6th protesters and rioters for Trump. It’s a sign of desperation by the establishment to equate anti-genocide protesters with pro-Trump rioters, but there you have it. Recall on January 6th that the police largely stepped aside and allowed protesters for Trump into the Capitol. I don’t see the police stepping aside on campuses or taking selfies with protesters, or even removing barriers, as some police did on January 6th.
The overly violent and repressive responses we’re witnessing across America to largely peaceful protests reveals the imperative at the heart of America’s political system. Recalling the movie “Rollerball,” the one thing you’re never supposed to do as a corporate-citizen is to question management decisions. America’s managers have decided to support Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and YOU ARE NOT TO INTERFERE WITH THAT. If you do, your protest will be suppressed, often quickly and violently.
There’s a reason America’s managers “invest” so much in the “thin blue line” of the police. They believe in violence as the way to uphold their power and privilege. It doesn’t matter that violence hasn’t always worked, especially in foreign wars (Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.). They’ll continue to use violence as long as it remains profitable to do so, whether economically or politically.
How long before people are killed or seriously injured in these police actions? How long before those who are killed or wounded are denounced as “bums,” as President Richard Nixon called the dead students of Kent State? How long before we hear that the “silent majority” supports Trump and/or Biden in their call for “law and order”?
How long before Israel renders Gaza Palestinian-free, as various U.S. police forces mobilize to render college campuses protester-free?
And how long before we’re told once again that America is the greatest, most exceptional, nation on earth because of all our freedoms?
Violence is the end state of the quest for obedience. So where in the Constitution does it say the purpose of government is to make the people obey? Nowhere, actually.
Bill, as you said, there is desperation in the establishment (or as I call them, the owners). I think they are desperate to stop what's been growing since at least 2016, and return to the rules-based forms they want us to obey.
I think the 2016 election was a watershed - perhaps for different reasons than just despair over the orange man. It was an election that was primarily about discontent and protest. Both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump spoke to the economic fears of the majority of our citizens. Didn't matter they didn't agree on specific problems or solutions, or even had a plan (certainly true of Trump). Something was brewing.
It was only the Democrats nomination of the despicable Hillary Clinton that kept it tamped down and prevented an open discussion and argument about the best ways to resolve the economic inequality that was beginning to crush most citizens.
January 6th was the first outburst to what might be called the counter-revolution election of Biden that was intended legally or illegally to return to the rules-based forms of the owners.
I suspect this year's election is another effort to continue a return to the rules-based forms. Biden is certainly onboard. Trump for all the hysteria, seems a much different man - more beaten down by the owners, and more than willing to obey in terms of support for both Israel and Ukraine.
Whoever wins the election is a lame duck - second terms are typically disappointments no matter who is elected. I see nothing to think that either a Biden presidency or a Trump presidency will change that.
But now comes the protests on the college campuses - it is starting with genocide in Gaza, and is already growing to include divestiture from Israel and US war profiteers. It wouldn't be a leap from there to talking about what began with Occupy Wall Street. And if they or the 1/6 protestors were to meet and talk - then the owners will have something to really fear.