Jack-boots in PDX
Just now I was taking a return trip on the streetcar from Powell’s back down to PSU in SW PDX and coming up from behind I got a real wake-up when I saw eight pigs in black riot gear riding shotgun on a SUV cruiser. They were decked out in plexi face shields and they reminded me of Hitler’s SS so much I got a sick feeling in my gut. What the fuck are these Nazis doing in PDX? In the deep South, maybe, but PDX? There aren’t even any demos going on as far as I know. Oh yeah, I forgot. It’s May 1, Labor Day. Gotta keep those wage slaves obedient and shopping, gotta beat ‘em down if they even think about a strike or protest.
Everyone who lives here seems so calm, so un-bothered by this display of raw fascistic extremism. Why is everyone so docile, so accepting? Maybe it’s the familiarity. After awhile no one notices. People get used to it. I have to think this is exactly the way it was in pre-war Nazi Germany. Everyone is so caught up in financial and personal shit, living in their own heads it seems.
There was an Iraq symposium down in a PSU cafe earlier today, but the college rag refused to publicize it in advance, so not that many people showed up.
I wrote elsewhere about Cheney’s plans to nuke Iran. There is all sorts of buzz about this everywhere–talk radio and the Net, mostly. With the price of oil topping $120 a barrel, the attack seems imminent. And it won’t be small scale, because Iran, unlike Iraq, is armed to the teeth and can defend itself against invaders and occupiers. So this could be the ramping up of losing what’s left of our rights as bush implements his directives and locks us all into a true dictatorship.
Yup, after 911, the cons have had their way with Americans, have stripped us of our rights, finances, services, privacy, and just about everything else. Where are the citizen’s means to fight back and defend ourselves? And if this is to be a global nuclear holocaust over oil, then the human race has been a supreme failure and we get what we deserve, right? Wrong. The human spirit must rise in these dire times, must evolve into something we’ve never known before, and it must do it soon, or else we will all surely perish in shame, grief, and ignorance.
