American Goon Staat

Thugs from the Department of Homeland Goons debarked in Portland to quell the protests, disturbances and riots that have taken place over the last month.  Shocked and awed, complacent liberals have woken up to the reality of Goon Staat Murka.

This was nothing not foreseeable.  Back in 2008, Barfo discussed (and decried) the militarization of the police forces.  [The New Constables]

But this militarization of the police forces was the inevitable concomitant of a national foreign policy based on  full spectrum "power projection" around the globe.

In 2002 and 2003, Barfo wrote a series of articles parsing Neocon-speak and analyzing the elements of its brutal foreign policy. Barfo observed that "power projection as policy is fundamentally antithetical to the cellular structure of civilization."   Part III of "Thug Politik" concluded as follows:

"It also follows fom the entire “security-based” mentality. “Security” begins at home and since the Homeland is the preeminent zone of democratic peace, it requires its security environment to be shaped as much as any other

"If the neocons are willing to turn U.S. soldiers into drugged up killers, they will see no objection to pharmaceutically enhancing domestic security forces. The images we see in Guantánamo, Afghanistan and Iraq today are a foretaste of the Homeland tomorrow. It will be so."

It was obvious.  What one does abroad one ends up doing at home.  Not because "what goes around comes around" but because what one does one becomes.  The images of goon staat in Portland is what we, as a country, have become and we did so of our own conscious or indifferent choice.

When the mayor of Portland takes to the airwaves to decry Trump's using DHS goons as his "personal army" for "political purposes" he misses the point and is simply using the outrage to score partisan political points.

The phenomenon -- the image of the state as a boot in the face -- well antecedes Trump.  It was a national culture nurtured by the Flawless O'Bambi as well as by Chimp, Clinton, "GHW," and Reagan.  The first SWAT teams were put together by L.A. police chief Gates in 1967.  In 1981 U.S. Congress passed the Military Cooperation with Law Enforcement Act, giving police access to military intelligence, infrastructure, and weaponry in the fight against drugs. Reagan subsequently declared drugs to be a threat to U.S. national security.  Federal assistance, training and cooperation followed. 

Even before Barfo started his blog, he decried slogans like "war on crime" and "war on drugs."  The reason ought to have been obvious: a state of war is not compatible with civil society which is premised on trust, friendship and cooperation.

People said Barfo was quibbling and being pedantic. "It's just a slogan."  Plus ça change.  Americans are as indifferent to "how you say it" as they are towards everything else except the number of axe cuts to fell a tree. But how you say it determines how you think it and how you think it determines how you behave.  Le voilá.

The Kevlar-encased thugs on the streets of Portland feel no social kinship with the people they are "containing."  They wouldn't think twice about breaking your wrist or shooting your grandma.   They have been likened to "invaders."   Indeed, in Thug Politik, Barfo labeled the neocon movement as an "invasive disease."  He was wrong.  There was nothing invasive about it.  In the 18 intervening years Barfo has come to realize that the end-stage of the neocon national security thug staat is implicit in what this country always was.  The truth is we only become what we are.

In 1788 the Count of Aranda wrote a memorandum to King Charles III, decrying the American "pygmy" which he said would soon turn into a devouring colossus.  He understood that in 1776 the English Colonies in the Americas had embarked on empire, notwithstanding the pretty and magical words they used to cover their shame.  Words which the Flawless O'Bambi never tired of intoning...

The predictable Amurkan response will be: well what's wrong with that?  Rome was an Emipre and Rome was cool! Well... listen to what Saint Augustine had to say about that:

In the first place, man is separated from man by the difference of languages.... heir common nature is no help to friendliness when they are prevented by diversity of language from conveying their sentiments to one another; ...  the imperial city has endeavored to impose on subject nations not only her yoke, but her language, as a bond of peace,   This is true; but how many great wars, how much slaughter and bloodshed, have provided this unity! And though these are past, the end of these miseries has not yet come.  the very extent of the empire itself has produced wars of a more obnoxious description-social and civil wars-and with these the whore race has been agitated, either by the actual conflict or the fear of a renewed outbreak. If I attempted to give an adequate description of these manifold disasters, these stern and lasting necessities, though I am quite unequal to the task, what limit could I set?

Less charitable was the German leader, Arminius: "Rome creates a desert and calls it peace."

Yes, by their nature, empires impose "bonds" of custom, law, language, commerce and this, in itself, is a good thing of sorts.  But it is a deceptive good because it is founded on violence and the holder of the Faustian Bargain will always demand to be paid in the end.

The vainglory of those who puff up with pride at the analogy of a Pax Americana  (as neocons certainly do), might have second thoughts if they actually thought about the analogy being made.

In short, the images of the Goon Staat in Portland were first depicted in the Colonial raids on French and Indian villages in the Ohio Valley.  The forbidden end always begins with a first step. 

What is needed is not simply "reform" of the police, not simply voting Trump out of office,  but national reckoning and repudiation.

©Barfo 2020