Typically, a banana republic has a society of extremely stratified social classes, usually a large impoverished working class and a ruling-class plutocracy, composed of the business, political, and military elites of that society.
You have to have a video. They will never ever ever punish a police officer for doing wrong unless you have a video.
–Dounya Zayer
The ruling-class controls the primary sector of the economy by way of the exploitation of labour.
It’s really sad to see what’s happened to you.
-Piers Morgan
A banana republic is a country with an economy of state capitalism, whereby the country is operated as a private commercial enterprise for the exclusive profit of the ruling class.
At best, these blurts of indignation exist as an honest way of allowing us to let off some steam; at worst, they fool us into thinking an action has occurred when nothing of the kind has taken place, thereby inhibiting genuine activism.
–Tim Sommer
Such exploitation is enabled by collusion between the state and favored economic monopolies, in which the profit, derived from the private exploitation of public lands, is private property, while the debts incurred thereby are the financial responsibility of the public treasury.
We have to improve life, not just for those who have the most skills and those who know how to manipulate the system. But also for and with those who often have so much to give but never get the opportunity.
-Dorothy Height
Nothing is guaranteed Good Reader. Nothing ever was but as long as we got ours we could go on. Surviving the America has been a treaty in name only with the Pig Nation. Which isn’t to say I’ve been grossly affected. The standard of living is lower, something I’ve felt the effects of since ’09. After the crash I found myself in direct competition with college grads for jobs they wouldn’t have considered only 8 years before. Since my last column, I’ve collected 2 checks and while not in roses I’m well fed and hardly ever out of the dark coffee I drink, coarsely ground–hot, black and honey-sweet. The worst of my fighting has been on the socials though maybe you too are starting to figure out the outcome of these exchanges–the posturing, banner waving, the push-button release of anger, while serving as catharsis in my daily life, hasn’t advanced the People’s agenda. Doesn’t mean the outrage isn’t real or we shouldn’t be using these technologies and tools of the new media. We know who we are and we’re connected now, for boon or bane. I’ve kept Right Wing Gene as a friend way longer than I ever would have even just last year, though I’ve blocked the Candace Owens fangirl repeating how she “built 38 villages in third-world countries.”
These are the New Dumb Hunter Thompson warned us about. Under George W. Bush a faction developed, ok with razing the economy and diminishing civil liberties in exchange for a common enemy. Obama’s presidency was ushered in on the heels of W.’s negligence and what amounted to an 8-year cashout (a trend this current administration picked up right where he left off). For his part Obama did nothing but bail out the banks. Thrillingly, the new media was developed during his tenure, but the 112th Republican-led House only used it to foment a hateful and healthcare-bashing base. As much as healthcare and same sex marriage softened my own cynicism, our first black President did nothing to reform an obviously racist and increasingly violent Police force. Finally it was the broken electoral college that put Trump in office, 3-million popular votes shy of his opponent, but with this rabid base of the New Dumb guaranteeing him that many. Bush’s efforts to consolidate media and Obama’s lack of any push back against the Patriot Act are damning, but the advent of internet technologies has afforded us, the People, a small window of access and control.
I started Going For The Throat during Arab Spring. I was empowered by the new media and I still am. I’m not sure what I should’ve expected from a democratized media but it’s looking like shock doctrine from the top down and flag waving all-around. I was reduced to arguing with folks who’ve no basis in logic but now I’m back and fortified on this, personal journalism and the new media. We wouldn’t be here without it, though I don’t think there’d be any less of a class rift, that life in the final century would be any less contentious, nor the weather any less rank or foul. Life would be as horrible as it is now. We just wouldn’t know it. That is the power of media. There’s fighting out on the street. The police are beholden to the rich and ruling class and have forfeited their humanity. The police are in our way but new media is our way through. Cole Noppenberg, Butch Hamaday and I have started Consolidated Press&Wire Service. It’ll be a hosting site for content and independent coverage from outposts in Krakow, Baltimore and right here at The Office of Jim Trainer in Austin. We’ve no illusions about changing the world. We’re probably not going to change anybody’s mind either. We will, however, document. Rather than refute, we’ll report. Rather than find news stories to support our narrative we’ll let the streets speak. That’s where the truth is.
Our scope is singular and that is to see for ourselves. Period. The documenting of change will be the change. The decades I described above? These were my 20s and 30s I spent, hiding out from a wretched disease and living off the fat of a cannibalistic and Capitalist system because I could. I’ve told you before, on these very pages, bearing witness is all that’s required. Bearing witness can be revolutionary. That’s exactly where we’ll be coming from and the free media we’ll be promoting at Consolidated Press&Wire Service (CP&WS) during these dim days of the blood-soaked Final Century. Change is happening and I’ll be honest Good Reader it doesn’t look like the good kind. Blogging from my apartment though, and getting through another week of days so inured and angry I can hardly shit or sleep isn’t doing anything for me, or the cause. What we’re witnessing is history. The fact that we are seeing everything black and brown people have been saying for decades is a truth both gruesome and liberating, as the truth so often is. Instead of wasting any more time turned away we are going to focus in, get it down and on film and put it up on the wire. They can cry ‘fake’ from their armchairs until November. We’ll be the ones with H2s in gas masks and we’ll see you from out on the streets motherfucker.
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