"The Matrix" and a place called Cabrini Green
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By Brad Spangler
"I'm going to hang up this phone, and then I'm going to show these people what you don't want them to see. I'm going to show them a world....without you. A world without rules and controls. Without borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible." -- Neo, The Matrix
It has been said before that The Matrix is a metaphor for our statist times. The release of the sequel, The Matrix Reloaded, makes this a good time to revisit that observation.
In the nightmare world of The Matrix, humans are kept in an electronically generated fantasy world - allowing their masters to proceed with using them as nothing more than unwitting resources. They are enslaved and do not know they are enslaved -- save for a handful of rebels who have heroically managed to see through the illusionary world most people live in.
Substitute the mainstream media for the virtual reality illusion of the Matrix, then substitute the State and its minions for the cybernetic oppressors in the world of the Matrix -- and you wind up with a pretty good description of the way the ruling class vampirically subsists upon the tax dollars and oppression of their fellows.
The system is a veritable meat grinder -- destroying Liberty, Capital, Opportunities, Dreams and Lives on a global scale.
Have you truly freed your own mind yet? Have you taken "the red pill"? Do you continue to believe that government is a "necessary evil" despite clear evidence to the contrary?
During the propaganda campaign to whip up hysteria for the Second Gulf War, otherwise reasonable people behaved like brainwashed automatons, swallowing obvious lies. The best evidence for Iraqi WMD that Bush Inc. could come up with during the media campaign for invasion was a ten year old term paper of some college student and some forged documents that were (in a way) disappointingly sub-par for the quality of work we have come to expect from the Mossad. I won't even get into the whole line of argument as to whether or not the US government should attempt to impose global scale gun control on other countries. The point is Main Street swallowed it all - hook, line and sinker.
Have you ever known someone in an abusive relationship? Ever notice the tortured logic they will sometimes use to try to excuse their abusers? The same phenomenon writ large is the obstacle we face. This isn't just a political battle. Like it or not, freedom lovers are locked in a psyops campaign with the PR equivalent of the Borg from Star Trek.
No illusion is perfect, though. All of the time, people run into things they are not prepared to deal with due to it falling outside the realm of what they have come to expect. They either ignore it -- or grow from it. The Second Gulf War has been such an experience for many Americans. They know they have been lied to and manipulated. They see friends and co-workers unable or refusing (or perhaps afraid...) to evaluate current events in a critical manner. They see Orwell's "groupthink" and although they don't know what to do about it yet -- they see it nonetheless.
Other people can not hold onto any illusions about the nature of government because they are not so lucky. Circumstances rub their faces in it. Try to tell a scorched and shattered Iraqi child in a charnel house of a "hospital" how benevolent government is. Go on -- I dare you.
There are Americans who also come face to face with the true nature of government on a regular basis. They have never been able to sleep the waking sleep of the slave who thinks he's free. The lash falls upon them to frequently for that. They don't know how to fix it yet, and sometimes they make the problem worse out of desperation and confusion -- but they have seen the rottenness of the system their entire lives.
I'm speaking of the urban American underclass.
Every Empire has an underclass. That is the nature of hierarchical systems of territorially monopolized coercion. The subjective criteria used to determine the membership parameters of that class are irrelevant on the large scale. Oppression, systematic denial of rights people have by nature of being human, is wrong no matter who in particular is being screwed.
Who suffers most from the status quo? Ask yourself whose lives are the most miserable in the United States right now. The State doesn't serve them. The State serves itself and can never be made to serve the interests of the oppressed. The State IS oppression. ANY State is oppression incarnate because engaging in systematic denial of the rights people have by nature of being human is the very definition of statism.
I'd like to call your attention to an event that happened recently.
At a public housing complex in Chicago called Cabrini Green on April 17th of 2003, a community of people fought back against the State during an unprovoked police riot. They stepped outside their modest apartment homes to bear witness to a serious incident of police brutality, vigorously denounced it at the top of their lungs and then marched two blocks to the police station to throw stuff at it when the police retreated.
"One of the young men who was in the van that was attacked at Cabrini had this to say: 'I was surprised and glad the community stuck together. It was a good thing, a beautiful thing. We were in that van thinking we were all gonna die. We could've been killed.'" The excerpt above is from an eyewitness account that describes a brutal police riot. You ought to read it. If you think that it being published on a web site named Revolutionary Worker Online means that it can't be believed, and I do encourage scepticism, then note how information is filtering out about the incident through other sources.
Is the spirit of Lexington and Concord more alive in the ghetto than in your own hearts, White America (thanks Marshall)?
The first step in resistance -- free your mind.
We all really would be better off with no government at all.
Copyright © 2003 Brad Spangler
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