Don’t Boil My Blood, Bro
[Note: I attempt to refrain from delving into overtly political discourse on my blog because, well, I find it rather banal. But...]
Nothing gets my blood boiling faster than an undeserved police beating. I hate gawking at them. I spend a good deal of energy trying to NOT be pissed off at the state of the world, at brutality, injustice, oppression and the like. It ain’t easy, as many of you know. But now that witness to unwarrented police violence in America is more readily accessed than in Rodney King dayz, I have a hard time staying calm. This latest video making the rounds got me thinking. And because tasering incidents are a dime a figgin’ dozen on YouTube, because America tends down a path of self-destruction, because we lose control of our freedom more and more every day (and Lord knows I love my sense of freedom), I feel like this is a good time to bring up some of my all-time heroes, the White Rose movement:
White Rose was a non-violent group of German philosophy students in the early 1940’s, who, against all odds, printed out and distributed dissenting literature against the Nazi regime. With their friends and neighbors being carted off by the truckload to concentration camps, these kids had the cohones to try to do something. Anything. No, they weren’t going to stop the Nazis. But at least they didn’t just accept things and turn a blind eye. Here’s a film about them.
This gets me thinking about the importance of speaking up. About the power of self-publishing - blogging and video blogging - in an age of a censored corporate mass media. About how we should protect this neutral Internet with our lives. About how everyone should be learning how to use these mediums for when the time comes. Because if you ask me, it’s coming.
You might be interested in giving Naomi Wolf’s new book a read. Here’s her thesis - the ten steps all dictatorships have taken in a quest for power:
- Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
- Create a gulag
- Develop a thug caste
- Set up an internal surveillance system
- Harass citizens’ groups
- Engage in arbitrary detention and release
- Target key individuals
- Control the press
- Dissent equals treason
- Suspend the rule of law
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September 23, 2007 at 9:00 pm
[...] Sep 23rd, 2007 by Ryan Lanham Don’t Boil My Blood, Bro [...]