Word to the Pepper Sprayers: Those Who Do Not Learn from History Are Doomed to Repeat It (with visual aids)

Casually Pepper Spray Everything Cop Images
You can click to enlarge this portion of the webpage. Onsite, each of the images can be enlarged. (See below.)

by Noah

Just 11 kids. Just 11 students at UC Davis, all unarmed, all engaged in a simple act of civil disobedience, just sitting on the ground. Just 11 against a force of well-armed, armored, jackbooted and visor-helmeted police, cans of military-grade pepper spray in hand.



I guess the idea that those mere 11 students represent is just too terrifying to the Republicans among us.

The police threatened to shoot the students if they didn’t move. In their warped form of logic, I suppose that all of us should be glad that they didn’t. After all, my generation of students had Kent State and Jackson State to remember. Stay tuned on that one. You know that the righties are itching for that one again. It’s what gets them hot. Porn for righties looks a lot like film of Tiananmen Square or tanks rolling into Prague.

Gingrich, O’Reilly, and the other usual suspects are hard at work on the dehumanizing strategy. The first tactic of fascists is to dehumanize your victim, propagandizing your public so the public won’t object when the fascist solution is at hand.

The Newts, Bill-Os, and other Archie Bunker types have called for baths. They tell the occupiers to take a shower and look for a job while their corporate masters call for moving all of the jobs out of America and push for putting flammable gas in the shower water. Congressman Walsh from Illinois, among others in Washington, even says occupiers are un-American and military vets who join them are socialists -- demeaning words to righties. This from a man who doesn’t pay his child support. To House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, the occupiers are just a mob. Fox News shows their viewers what are obviously flu-shot syringes and talks about occupiers being just a bunch of drug addicts. To Hannity fans, they are thugs. First you dehumanize and degrade. You know what comes next.

Military-grade pepper spray is this decade’s high-pressure fire hose. The fire hoses of the 1960s didn’t stop an idea. Neither will the pepper spray that causes victims to vomit blood or causes nerve damage. What the conservative mind can never grasp is that their actions can cause a bigger opposite reaction. The image of storm troopers with spray cans will last and last. It will serve to rally the occupiers and increase their numbers. It’s a galvanizing image. The webpage of which a portion is reproduced at the top of this post has gone viral. (Here's the link again.) It’s already a part of pop culture, something the conservative mind has never understood and never will.

The cop who provided this galvanizing image, UC Davis campus security cop Lt. John Pike, has been put on paid leave for his "transgression." His boss has been placed on paid leave as well. The media presents this as some sort of punishment. In fact, it is a free, paid extended Thanksgiving vacation, a reward. What a farce! Yes, we have quite a system! It’s surreal. In Ohio and Wisconsin, good cops who do their jobs properly are fired by their governors.

All of this goes on while the Wall Streeters, politicians, and banksters, the true criminal element in our society, the people who have deliberately and malignantly caused such unfairness, inequality, and misery, walk free, un-arrested and un-pepper-sprayed. Such things are proof that we now officially live, fully immersed, in the Republican Bizarro World. Meanwhile, I guess Penn State is saying, “Thank you, UC Davis!” I can hardly wait till next week.

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