Truth and Power

(1/one)

Meet The Kid From Brooklyn.
While I strongly disagree with some of his obviously post-911, NYC propaganda-infected views, his balls-out take on the injustices in his world are fuckin beautiful.
These days, when we so obsessively obsess about politically correct speech, when we pretend so hard that we Really Do Care whether or not we hurt other people's feelings, it's a wonderful thing to see a guy so joyfully, fuckin gleefully! sink his teeth into so many fleshy flanks. Not because he's afraid (as so many evangelicals and propaganda anchors are), but because he does not shy away from the sight of what he sees as injustice. He does not hesitate, at least in this instance, to speak truth about power.*

...And he totally says "fuck" way more than I do.
Color me impressed.

(2/two)

Concerning Truth and Power:
While Speaking Truth to Power is incredibly important,
I believe it is even more imperative to Speak Truth About Power.
To wit,
Power already has a pretty good idea how corrupt and malicious it is. I mean, it can dance the Verbal Justify all it wants; at the end of the day, it knows that both Side Effects and Results of its blind pursuit of questionable priorities are Remarkably Shitty for whatever's on the sidelines of its goals. Speaking Truth to Power is only so effective when Power knows the story already and has decided it doesn't give a shit.

Speaking Truth About Power, on the other hand, is actually starting to have some positive effect again. There was a time in 'Merican history when muckraking was viewed as a valuable service to the public.
Muckrakers went where the vast hordes of the public could not;
they exposed injustices and indecencies to which the public might not otherwise be privy;
they saved a lot of fuckin lives, when it comes down to it, and should have statues and plaques and fawning Thank Yous plastered all over every town square left in the corporation-infested, rotting corpses of our country's once diversely wealthy towns.
However,
since the early 1970s, I would say,
since Watergate,
folks speaking Truth About Power have become just another form of entertainment. They have been manipulated into just another tool of the 'Merican School of Instigatory Mockery. It's another part of what is now the Same Old ('Merican) Story: the Big Guys have finally figured out that fighting the Little Guys head on, hand to hand, isn't very effective. There's way too many of us Little'uns, and, really, there's only so many of us they can kill before we go all Freaked Out Angry Mob on their asses and start marching to our local Wal-Marts and houses of corrupted Government with torches clenched in our vilified and vitriolic fists.
Y'know?
Big Guys found out, most obviously during the 1960s and early 70s, that the best way to fight us is to delegitimize us between and amongst ourselves.
Single us out and make us appear to be crackpots with no discernible grasp on Reality (another thing they've recreated for us).
Turn us into clowns.
Into fools.
Into entertainment.

It's a divisive device that's been working for the Rich and Powered since the foundation of this country. ...Well, it's worked for lots of empires, large and small, for milennia before our inception, but the U.S. really has polished it up, made it shiny and marketably legitimate.
Divide and Subjugate was the big tool used to keep 'Merican slavery in place for so goddamned long. It's what keeps wage slavery in place now.
It's the prybar between skin colors and political parties and religions and all the town-to-country regions of this vast tract of land.
It is the smoke screen between Us and the Truth.
It is what makes and keeps us poor.
It is what destroys our communities.
Our neighborhoods.
Our ways, our means of living.
Our food.
Our health.
Our lives and our children's lives.

And now,
we're catching on
and we're getting pissed off.
We're finally starting to realize how much we've been lied to.
We're dying of the things we were told would save us.
We are beginning to wonder if maybe there's something to some of those crazy doomsayers and old-wives' quacks.
We're maybe, hopefully beginning to remember that,
no matter how vociferously anyone claims to have the corner on Truth,
Truth is always found in the eyes.
It is found in the bones.

::: And where are the bones of Propaganda? :::
::: Where are its shifty eyes? :::

Instead of listening to the Experts, to the Majority, to the Scientists,
we must listen to each other.
Instead of telling the corporations that have invaded our countryside and our cities, instead of telling them how much their practices are hurting our communities,
we must tell each other how we and our communities are being hurt and
we must take action to protect ourselves.
In this age of demonization of anyone who would stand up to power, we are finally beginning to revalue the Muckraker.
We are remembering that the Muckraker is fighting for us.
That the Muckraker is one of us.
Is
us.

Speak Truth About Power
between ourselves, between each other.
Where we can do something about it.
On a scale we can manage.
Speak Truth where it will count.
Where it will truly matter.
Where it will make a real difference.