Crossposted from The Wild Wild Left
I read the Anti-Capitalist Meetup Sunday Essay by soothsayer this morning, Anti-Capitalism and Intersectionality: Race Class Gender Meet-Up.
I did not get through all the comments before an essay started to form in my mind, tied as usual to myriad thoughts seemingly unrelated. Like people? Thoughts too, are all related in my mind. Reading Al Osorio and Barefoot blogger's posts here on WWL this morning helped link the web for me.
A quote from the link above:
For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.
Let me start with a parable of my own making last week Tuesday, in helping my Son deal with the recent death of his Father, my Husband.
Jake was angry, he felt his Dad didn't try hard enough to live for us, that he gave up and stayed too negative. I had felt quite the same for a few days at first.
"Jake, first, we were never inside him, we don't know how bad the pain was nor how hard he struggled to even do what he did, and live as long as he did."
Mike struggled with depression in the best of times, and was a survivor of a Mother with dementia who abused him verbally from the day he was born until a few short months before he died. So, yes, it would appear to Jake that his lack of positive outlook was a factor in his own demise.
"You see, Jake, Dad never had the tools we had, the tools I am trying to give you. Lets say a sapling grew up in the middle of the lawn where we didn't want one. You and I were born with chainsaws. Or I retooled myself with one, anyway. We would walk up, cut it down and move on without a thought. Your Dad was only born with a spoon. That doesn't mean he didn't spend days and nights trying to cut that tree down, digging away with a spoon. He just had worse tools. We will never know how hard it is to cut down even the smallest problem with just a spoon. He may have tried as hard as he could, with the tools he had to overcome life's obstacles. We can't judge him by our tools."
We celebrated Mother's Day yesterday, a day set aside by the pressure of a few brave women in 1914 by Woodrow Wilson; a day soon co-opted by Hallmark and Flower Shops to make profits for the then predominately male-owned businesses; a day of tradition bastardized out of ancient tribal traditions of honoring the divine feminine long lost to a Patriarchal World.
I think about the tenets of the Iroquois Confederacy that our own Constitution sought to emulate... with exceptions glaringly made to make it Patriarchal. This was no less happenstance than the Lost Scriptures purging any mention of the Divine Feminine by the Powers that Be when creating the Modern Bible of the Christian Tradition.
The Iroquois model was no Matriarchy. It was a system that honored both the feminine and masculine, giving them equal say in decisions effecting the Peoples. The World over, this model has been replaced with a system in which half the human population has no, or far less rights than their male counterparts. There are states here, for example that will not "allow" a woman to have her tubes tied at 25 years of age... under the premise they may "change their mind" if the "right man" comes along, and are unable to make that decision until they are much older. Yet? Vasectomies happen on-demand.
No amount of lobbying, legislation or protests have changed this over-arching meme in the United States. In Africa, female genital mutilation still occurs. In the Middle East, women are denied education or the right to drive.
I will honestly say that I suck as a feminist. I have never been involved in working towards Women's Rights. I never fit the "female" role enough to totally understand the fervor so many women held. I do all kinds of gender-crossing things, from wrenching to construction type stuff to learning to fly planes when I was younger. I know its more endemic than that... I see the financial walls, the marginalizing of women who attempt to hold positions of power... Yet? The Class War and the State of Wars in general always seemed to be of more vital attention.
But perhaps? I am ignoring a tool, and using the tools they have allowed us by not acknowledging this more.
Women are shades, not allowed full access to be masters of our own destinies. We are given spoons.
Furthermore, it is not just gender-identity, which is also not black-and-white, as the PTB would have us frame it; there are walls of sexual orientation.
Gender identity and orientation are just as normative no matter how they manifest in the race of humanity. I think that most tribal societies honored and respected all in their society as valuable, without these illusory divisions that demand there is only "one" way to be. It is a tool of repression and division. I will point you to the Lakota's concept of "Heyoka" which literally means sacred clown, one who does things "backward"... but often included the "winkte" or two-spirited persons honored by many Native Americans. They were thought to be MORE than hetro's having the empathy of both sexes. They were revered.
Its another spoon.
I cannot even see the horrors wrought by racism as a spoon. White people seem to begrudge giving people of color a cracked plastic spork. I say this as a white woman as fully aware of the "privilege" of my color as I can be from this side of it. As I look at the morning news while writing this tome, I get why some of my neighbors are blinded to it. The Detroit area new is anchored by mainly Black Journalists. There is a Black President. Having never been pulled over for "DWB" (driving while black) or been followed by security in a mall, nor walked into a business for the first day of work as a technical specialist, have the receptionist point you towards "housekeeping" before you could finish your sentence.
They just don't get it. It like thinking all white people live like "Dynasty" because you saw it on TV. I am thrilled my son will ever think it normal to look up to his President, and not even consider color a factor. (though President Obama has proven himself a Capitalist Shill) I pray that he learns to judge a man by his actions, not by some construct of "race." There is only the Human Race, and there is only What We Do with this life we are given. But to the clueless around here, they have no basis of comparison for what life is like for non-whites here or world-wide. A few news-people given jobs on the basis of their capabilities, demographically balanced for the area they serve does not an experience make.
My Brazilian coworker cooks where I waitress, and is fluent in 3 languages and learning a 4th - Chinese no less. He would like a job as an interpreter some day. Yet, I have seen more than a few treat him as stupid. Its insane.
Then there is the framing of People's of Countries not in the "Western" (read US/European/White) Worlds as "lessers," as "primitive," as in need of our guidance and unable to govern themselves.
This is wholly a result of propaganda, and the product of Exploitation Capitalism.
Why is South American history rife with revolutions and bloody revolts? Not because they are "unable" to govern themselves, in fact EXACTLY the opposite. It is because the Western influences have continually created and propped up dictators that will oppress their own people, and let them suffer so that the interests and PROFITS of the West come first. It is because we have not, are not, and never will let them Govern themselves in their own best interests.
It is the exact same scenario we see unfolding in Northern Africa and the Middle East. People want autonomy and democracy and the ability to ensure that their citizenry has reasonable rights to share in their resources. The US and its allies seem to pay only lip service to this while keeping the status quo. In some instances, we pointedly turn a blind eye to those begging for our help.
We see this racism rising to full boil as the attempt to demonize the Peoples of the Oil Rich Countries becomes necessary for the Elite Classes of the West to drive the taste for Warfare so their hegemony may continue.
But this in no way diminishes the fact that within our own Borders, a country based on the genocide of the Native Population (arguably 90% of the est 10 million in the US) and built by Slavery - that racism is still epidemic, real and unfathomably brutal to the people who must endure it. People of color endure widespread poverty here and elsewhere to an exponential degree than white people do.
A broken plastic spork indeed. You cannot dismantle the master's house with tools he has given you - his tools.
Which leads me to the most insidious of tools, the imaginary tool. There is no spoon, brother. Once you understand there is no spoon, you realize that is the hardest tool to remove from our arsenal.
Religiosity, as Bill Maher framed it.
This is the misguided idea that if there is a Supreme Being, that he or she only talked to and loves "Our" group, and that all others are fucked - that same Supreme Being that created the "others" hates them unless they follow "our" rules in regards to interacting with that Supreme Being.
It is a matter of History to have found that people in dire circumstances tend to be susceptible to charismatic leaders and/or Messianic Cult behaviors. The more oppressed? The further the Extremism is driven. Surely, the thinking is, we must appease the God in order for him to lift our suffering. Or, surely we are only being tested, since we are the One True Faith!
This psychological trigger has been used for millenia to maintain control of the masses. The three bastard children (Islam, Judaism, and Christianity) of the Prick God of the Old Testament have truly used this invisible spoon to ensure that their populations looked to, supported financially and allowed themselves to be ruled by MEN made leaders of these religions... Men who have embraced power and riches for themselves at the expense of their populations.
Be it a Rabbi who calls for the shooting of anyone who rents to an Arab, a Dominionist who murders a Dr Tiller or burns a child to death in Africa for being a witch, or a Muslim who tried to murder a Jewish baby by decapitation.... these extremists are symptoms of the societal illness of repression. They have been taught to FEAR one another, a fear reinforced by generations of warfare, the suffering of families killed and vendettas returned in a never ending loop. A loop fostered by, nay, encouraged by the Elite Classes who fear nothing more than the unity of People that would mean the demise of their privileged way of life.
I see people equating the most Radical of any of these Religions as being different than "normal humans" (making them un-human) and saying that the fear of these factions is so real as to delegitimatize an entire people as being too unreasonable to determine their own fate. The most glaring use of this dualistic thinking is in how the Radical Right in Israel is steering their population into abusing Palestine and her peoples while calling it security. I have seen cries saying, "Why cannot a Jew live anywhere?" as they colonize the West Bank and Jerusalem's other side...all while having armed guards ensuring no Palestinians may enter, let alone live in those neighborhoods without comprehending the glaring hypocrisy of those two fact. Only us, we can go anywhere, but not you, you are inherently bad via religion.
You cannot reason with Religulous people who think that God has determined them "Chosen" and all others damned, no matter WHAT creed they espouse.
The only way to disarm the most Radical from having any influence at all over the People is to ENSURE that they are treated better by the reasonable among you than the Radical leaders themselves.
In other words? Happy, well fed, educated people don't follow whack jobs. Only the oppressed generally do. The few others become marginalized.
There may always be "Joel's Army" types, Reconstructionists and the Michigan AMWAY people seeking money and power to force their own version of Religiosity on the World.
Yet? How many would follow these charismatic charlatans if they had Good Jobs, and a bright future in a World without War?
The invisible tool is the hardest to replace because it intentionally crosses all rationality and goes to the visceral response of "They are trying to": a) Eliminate my Faith! b) Impose their Faith! c) Kill us All!
In a post-capitalist world, I cannot help but postulate that while these fears could not be eradicate for a few generations; they would greatly diminish as each individual in the World was treated with respect, autonomy and all their needs met.
People won't look for the spoon that is no-spoon when they have the tools to survive.
All allegiances are constructs by agreement.
Countries are arbitrary lines drawn on a Map, to which you fell between usually by the lottery of Birth. You have more freedom and use more logic in choosing allegiance to a Sports Team than you do a Country.
It is a Pavlovian trick, and a tool of the Master's.
There is only one answer, and its simplicity always makes people dismiss it as the impossible.
We may have been born with spoons, but we can choose to retool ourselves, retool ourselves with chainsaws to cut through the bullshit an illusions.
There is no race, gender, sexuality, religion or Nation that divides us.
We are all related, all human and all completely entwined with the planet that carries us.
We cannot win with their tools, we cannot tear down the house while we agree they HAVE a house. They have no house but the ones we allow by collective agreement.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal, they say, but I for one will never again vote for anyone of the D or R kleptocracy. That is not the solution, anyway.
The solution is to not-work, not-do, not-buy, until they crumble. We do-feed, do-clothe, do-care for every other person like they are family, until we are.
The solution as they have become Global Oppressors is to realize the Unity we have as Global Liberators.
Not one in Darfur suffers another bullet or rape without us standing in the way, not one Klan member abuses a Black with out us standing in the way, not one Nazi attacks a Jew without us standing in the way, not one Palestinian dies of a simple lack of anti-biotic without us standing in the way, not one teacher loses her job without us standing in the way, not one young gay man gets beaten without us standing in the way, not one of us goes another DAY doing without while the Elites prosper without us ALL standing in the way.
We are ONE. Division is really THEIR only tool, not OURS.
There is no spoon.
But there sure as fuck should be chainsaws cutting through the illusion that there are.