I have seen, the desperation and disorder of the powerless: how it twists the lives of children on the streets of Jakarta or Nairobi in much the same way as it does the lives of children on Chicago’s South Side, how narrow the path is for them between humiliation and untrammeled fury, how easily they slip into violence and despair. I know that the response of the powerful to this disorder — alternating as it does between a dull complacency and, when the disorder spills out of its proscribed confines, a steady, unthinking application of force, of longer prison sentences and more sophisticated military hardware — is inadequate to the task. I know that the hardening of lines, the embrace of fundamentalism and tribe, dooms us all.
BARACK OBAMA, preface to 2004 Edition, Dreams of My Father
I will channel their frustration and despair into my own civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded as the US military, and sic them on any of “the powerful” who displease me. Occupy Forever!
A half century ago, this society did not sanction poverty as an excuse for immorality.
It does now.
“I know that the response of the powerful to this disorder — alternating as it does between a dull complacency and, when the disorder spills out of its proscribed confines, a steady, unthinking application of force…”
If he’s aware he’s doing it, then why doesn’t he just stop?
Bill Ayers is actually a good writer.