The Silver Bullet to Stop the Corporate State Pillage
Shutterstock
Every year a certain number of our soldiers decide they'd rather not be
involved in shooting people they don't know so that ExxonMobil can have more
oil or Lockheed Martin can make more cash or MSNBC / Fox News can give their
hosts topics for their upcoming poetry books. Basically, these soldiers do
something horrifying, something terrible, something often called
"treasonous" . They - wait for it - think for themselves!
(Glass shatters. Woman screams. Baby cries.)
Nothing is more frightening for our endless war machine than a military
grunt who thinks for him or herself. They're supposed to do nothing more
than follow orders. They're supposed to ask a superior officer for
permission to wear a different color pair of socks. That's right - the
biggest, toughest gladiators in our society have to get authorization to
switch from boxers to briefs.
I'll get to what this has to do with our inverted totalitarian corporate
pillaging in a moment.
One of the more notable soldiers who stood up this year was Spenser Rapone -
a second lieutenant discharged on June 18, 2018, for disparaging the U.S.
war machine online and promoting a socialist revolution. (Clearly our
enormous globe-spanning military complex can obliterate any possible enemies
except independent thought, which promptly turns it to a mush akin to pea
soup.) Apparently reading about the true story of Pat Tillman pushed Rapone
toward the realization that he was a pawn in the middle of a massive lie.
"Pat Tillman showed me I could resist the indoctrination," Rapone said. "I
did not have to let the military dehumanize me and turn me into something
monstrous. When I learned how his death was covered up to sell the war, it
was shocking."
To sell the war. Why is it they would need to sell a war? Oh, I know -
because it's completely unjustifiable. For activities people naturally agree
with or enjoy doing, you don't have to advertise them. Like you don't see
ads saying, "Hey, feed your kids. . Don't forget." Or a commercial saying,
"Try having sex some time. It's fun!" That stuff comes pretty naturally. But
you do need promotion (Read: media propaganda) for our endless war games
because it does not come naturally to most of us. War comes naturally to
sociopaths, and then it's sold to the rest of us, much like a used car or an
ill-advised timeshare in Cleveland.
But the military is not the only place where conscientious objectors play a
role. It might be the only one where walking away can get you locked up in
prison spending your days sewing McDonald's uniforms, but there are a lot of
moments in our messed-up world when you can turn your back and do the right
thing.
For example, fewer and fewer people are willing to do the job of killing
millions of animals every year. A recent report "revealed that staff
shortages at slaughterhouses [in the U.K. were] threatening Christmas sales.
Some 10,000 positions are unfilled at major abattoirs. . The report explains
that for most potential applicants, the industry's low pay is not the
problem but that 'people simply do not want to do this work anymore.'"
Oh come on, you fragile snowflakes! "Ewww, I can't handle chopping the heads
off a thousand pigs a day. It hurts my feelings to end the life of hundreds
of sentient beings who haven't done anything to me to warrant such
treatment. WAAH! I don't like loading buckets of adorable chickadees into
the grinding colander so they can be turned into a meat milkshake that will
ultimately be served to a labradoodle or a puggle. BOO HOO HOO!" (I might
have made up the term "grinding colander.")
In all seriousness, working at the killing fields of a factory farm has
life-long impacts that no one talks about. (And by "no one," I mean the
media and our politicians and most everybody else.) As the Guardian
reported, "Slaughterhouse work has been linked to a variety of disorders,
including post-traumatic stress disorder and perpetration-induced traumatic
stress. One pig slaughterer said the 'worst thing' about the work is its
'emotional toll'. . A worker at a chicken plant said one of his colleagues
was 'hauled off to the mental hospital' after he 'kept having nightmares
that chickens were after him.'" (It's tough to say what the chickens
would've done with him had they caught him. Professional torture is made
difficult by a lack of hands.)
These workers who have walked off the killing floors should be honored as
conscientious objectors. They should be rewarded for realizing it's better
to get paid to hand out coffees at the coffeehouse than death sentences at
the slaughterhouse.
And conscientious objection happens in the big tech world too. This past
May, a dozen Google employees quit to protest the company's role in
drone-killing technology created for the Pentagon, and another 4,000 signed
an internal petition to stop the partnership.
There have been many great objectors in our police forces, too. Captain Ray
Lewis was in the Philadelphia police force for 23 years. Then he became an
outspoken critic of police abuse, militarization, excess force and the
inequality that has hollowed out our society like an aggressive virus. He
shows up to protests in full uniform and stands on the front lines to help
remind the other cops what they should be protecting - and it's not oil
pipelines or Wall Street banks. Perhaps most importantly, he does it all
with a mustache that looks like it houses squirrels in the winter. It's
quite possible that without the facial hair, not a single police officer
would give a shit. However, you can really reach a cop through his 'stache.
(Sorry, his or her 'stache.)
Ray Lewis, a retired Philadelphia police captain who is now a critic of
police abuse and militarization. (CaptainRayLewis / Facebook)
Conscientious objectors even show up in the grand hallways of the famously
lockstep mainstream media outlets. Just last week, veteran national security
journalist William Arkin left his job at NBC and MSNBC and basically blasted
them in an open letter ". for becoming captive and subservient to the
national security state, reflexively pro-war. and now the prime propaganda
instrument of the War Machine's promotion of militarism and imperialism." Of
course, anyone who regularly reads independent outlets like Truthdig would
probably say Mr. Arkin is roughly 30 years late to this realization. Yet it
still takes nerve, gonads and a spine to turn against your employer while
calling them out for manufacturing consent for hundreds of thousands of
innocent deaths. (Certain types of deep-water fish are made up of only
nerves, gonads and a spine, and they're constantly being insolent to their
employers.)
The truth is, we the people may not have that much power. We don't control
our democracy anymore now that every decision is based on money. We can't
instantly change the entire system. But we have one very powerful tool - we
have the power of our labor.
Millions of Americans, and hundreds of millions worldwide, work for
corporations or organizations that do evil every single day. This list
includes:
.People at the big banks that fund the destruction of our world
.Officials sent to steal children from their mothers and fathers
.People working at big oil companies, pushing papers while knowing we only
have 11 years left to completely change our behavior
.Soldiers told to drone bomb a guy they've never met before
.Merchants in charge of selling Kid Rock T-shirts
The list is endless, and ALL of these people have the ability to say "I
object. I will not help with your villainy."
If they all objected - we would see a different world overnight.
-
If you think this column is important, please share it. Also check out Lee
Camp's new comedy special at LeeCampComedySpecial.com.
This column is based on a monologue Lee Camp wrote and performed on his TV
show "Redacted Tonight."
Lee Camp
Lee Camp is an American stand-up comedian, writer, actor and activist. Camp
is the host of the weekly comedy news TV show "Redacted Tonight With Lee
Camp" on RT America. He is a former comedy writer for.
Lee Camp