The Blue Plague and Black Death
https://socialistaction.org/2020/05/29/the-blue-plague-and-black-death/
May 29, 2020
By GLEN FORD
George Floyd’s death by Blue Plague in Minneapolis was widely condemned
by the same parties that have encouraged and funded the spread of the
fatal contagion.
“The Blue Plague is a serial killer that dates back to the slave patrols
of the pre-Civil War South.”
The pathogen that kills Black people at two and a half times the rate
of whites took the life of 46 year-old George Floyd , this week in
Minneapolis. Floyd’s last words were, “I can’t breathe,” much like the
desperate utterances of plague victim Eric Garner , struck down in 2014
in New York City. Unlike the still raging Covid-19 virus, which is
virulent among Blacks of both sexes, the Blue Plague is especially
lethal to Black males of all ages. According to researchers at Rutgers
University and the University of Michigan, 1 in every 1,000 black boys
and men will be fatally stricken by the Blue Plague at some point in
their lifetimes – at ages ranging from 12 year-old Tamir Rice , snuffed
out in Cleveland in 2014, to 50 year-old Walter Scott , who fell victim
to the pestilence in North Charleston, South Carolina in 2015.
Covid-19 is categorized as a “novel,” or new, virus, having mutated
recently from wild animals. But the Blue Plague is a serial killer that
dates back to the slave patrols of the pre-Civil War South. Indeed, the
first vector of the Blue Plague has been traced back to Charleston,
South Carolina, which established a paramilitary force called the City
Guard in 1783, primarily to “police” Black slaves – although the term
police had not yet been invented. The City Guard helped suppress the
Denmark Vesey slave rebellion in 1822 – a success that is believed to
have led to the mutation of slave patrols into full-fledged vectors of
Black death in cities across the nation, not just the South.
“The Blue Plague is especially lethal to Black males of all ages.”
Researchers are hoping to find a vaccine for Covid-19, possibly within
the year, but the Blue Plague only grows more deadly over time and
enjoys a host of immunities. Although Black people had hoped that the
historic expansion in the number of Black elected officials would create
political antibodies to limit the spread of the Blue Plague, the
opposite has happened. In 2014, just months before Michael Brown’s life
was cut short by the Blue Plague, in Ferguson, Missouri, 80 percent of
the Congressional Black Caucus voted to continue funneling billions of
dollars in military weapons, gear and training to local infestations of
the plague, despite ample evidence that such infusions have made the
scourge even more toxic to Black life. Four years later, 75 percent of
the Black Caucus voted to classify the Blue Plague as a “protected
class,” further immunizing the disease from the possibility of cure. The
Protect and Serve Act of 2018 was “superfluous, since cops are already
the most protected ‘class’ in the nation.”
More radical thinkers, steeped in the struggle against social pathogens,
argue that the virulence of the Blue Plague can be weakened, at least
among concentrated Black populations, through Black Community Control
of the disease. A number of plague control formulas have been put
forward , but the Black Misleadership Class, deeply embedded in the
Democratic Party, fiercely resists any curb on the blue contagion, and
actively encourages the spread of the disease among the federal secret
police. In March of this year, two thirds of the Congressional Black
Caucus joined with a large majority of Democrats in support of the
wildly misnamed USA FREEDOM Reauthorization Act, which has since passed
the Senate , as well. Only 17 of the 50 full-voting Black members of the
House voted against the law, which was supposed to expire this year
along with other provisions of the infamous Patriot Act. As reported in
The Verge , the Act allows the FBI “to collect ‘tangible things’ related
to national security investigations without a warrant, requiring only
approval from a secret court that has reportedly rubber-stamped many
requests.” These tangible things include spying on targeted peoples’ web
browsing “without having to demonstrate that those Americans have done
anything wrong,” in the words of Oregon Sen. Wyden.
“The Black Misleadership Class, deeply embedded in the Democratic Party,
fiercely resists any curb on the blue contagion.”
The Blue contagion has spread around the world as the United States
deploys its vast military as a kind of global police force, backed up by
killer drones that carry out White House authorized executions in the
far reaches of the planet. President Barack Obama authorized a regular
schedule of snuff jobs on “Kill Tuesdays ,” but President Trump’s
timetable is probably more erratic.
This being an election year, George Floyd’s death by Blue Plague in
Minneapolis was widely condemned by the same parties that have
encouraged and funded the spread of the fatal contagion. The Democratic
mayor of the city fired the four cops involved in crushing Floyd’s neck,
and Joe Biden, the presidential candidate who brags that he “wrote” the
Plague-proliferating 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act,
tweeted that “George Floyd deserved better and his family deserves
justice. His life mattered.” But Biden and his party’s history as
vectors of mass death say otherwise.
In the absence of an immediate cure, it is certain that some endangered
Black males – and sisters, who are not immune to the ravages of the Blue
Plague – will resort to home remedies to ward off the pestilence, as did
Denmark Vesey, Nat Turner and, more recently, some brothers in Dallas
and Baton Rouge .
Glen Ford is Executive Editor of Black Agenda Report. This article was
originally published at BlackAgendaReport.com.
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Steven Pinker
“It's natural to think that living things must be the handiwork of a designer.
But it was also natural to think that the sun went around the earth. Overcoming
naive impressions to figure out how things really work is one of humanity's
highest callings.
[Can You Believe in God and Evolution? Time Magazine, August 7, 2005]”
― Steven Pinker