“They Are All Bound on The Wheel . . . .” Reflections on The Death of George Floyd and Its Aftermath

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COMMENT: Dis­cussing the events of the last week should be under­stood by listeners/readers as com­ing from some­one who–for more than forty years–has researched, broad­cast and writ­ten about the dynam­ics grip­ping the U.S. and the world.

Those dynam­ics have crest­ed in the wake of the Floyd killing, val­i­dat­ing the decades of research archived on this web­site. 

In that con­text, I will dis­pense with the edi­to­r­i­al “we.” 

The feel­ings I have are best expressed through a poem I have read ^[5] in a num­ber of pro­grams:

“Be Angry at the Sun” by Robin­son Jef­fers

That pub­lic men pub­lish false­hoods
Is noth­ing new. That Amer­i­ca must accept
Like the his­tor­i­cal republics cor­rup­tion and empire
Has been known for years.

Be angry at the sun for set­ting
If these things anger you. Watch the wheel slope and turn,
They are all bound on the wheel, these peo­ple, those war­riors.
This repub­lic, Europe, Asia.

Observe them ges­tic­u­lat­ing,
Observe them going down. The gang serves lies, the pas­sion­ate
Man plays his part; the cold pas­sion for truth
Hunts in no pack.

You are not Cat­ul­lus, you know,
To lam­poon these crude sketch­es of Cae­sar. You are far
From Dan­te’s feet, but even far­ther from his dirty
Polit­i­cal hatreds.

Let boys want plea­sure, and men
Strug­gle for pow­er, and women per­haps for fame,
And the servile to serve a Leader and the dupes to be duped.
Yours is not theirs.

It might appear to younger readers/listeners that my feel­ings lack com­pas­sion or “engage­ment.”  It may strike some as jad­ed.

It is impos­si­ble for me to feel sur­prise about what is going on, past a point. As dis­turb­ing as things are, they are any­thing but unex­pect­ed.

How can peo­ple pos­si­bly be sur­prised?

There is con­sid­er­able evi­dence of white suprema­cists and Nazis inflam­ing polit­i­cal pas­sions in the upheaval fol­low­ing the Floyd death to advance their own agen­das. For many years I have dis­cussed infor­ma­tion ^[6] about white supremecists/Nazis/fascists ^[7] infil­trat­ing police and mil­i­tary estab­lish­ments.

The cast of char­ac­ters in the Min­neapo­lis dra­ma rings famil­iar: Jesse Jack­son ^[8], Al Sharp­ton ^[8], Min­neso­ta Attor­ney Gen­er­al Kei­th Elli­son ^[9], Dr. Michael Baden ^[9](who endorsed the Mag­ic Bul­let The­o­ry for the House Select Com­mit­tee on Assas­si­na­tions “inves­ti­ga­tion” of the JFK assas­si­na­tion) and what the late Cecil B. DeMille would have called “a cast of thou­sands.”

A sig­nif­i­cant part of the posts and pro­grams I have done over the years con­cern events and forces impact­ing the African-Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ty. 

Just a few of those, and there are many:

1. AFA #8 ^[10], deal­ing with the assas­si­na­tion of Mar­tin Luther King. 
2. FTR #46 ^[11], high­light­ing the mur­der of Dr. King a decade after AFA #8 ^[10] and again on the 50th anniver­sary of the event. Note that the Spe­cial Forces “A” team that was a back­up unit to the civil­ian sniper who killed Dr. King had been deployed in the U.S. fol­low­ing wide­spread riot­ing in black ghet­tos in Amer­i­can cities in 1967 and 1968. (Ahem.)
3. FTR #21 ^[12] ana­lyz­ing the behav­ior of Louis Far­rakhan in con­nec­tion with the assas­si­na­tion of Mal­com X.
4. AFA #23 ^[13], detail­ing intel­li­gence agency oper­a­tions in Cal­i­for­nia, inter­faced with local, state and fed­er­al law enforce­ment.
5. FTR #39 ^[14], exam­in­ing Mark Fuhrman’s polit­i­cal white suprema­cist asso­ci­a­tions and behav­ior in con­nec­tion with the fram­ing of O.J. Simp­son.
6. Numer­ous pro­grams set­ting forth infor­ma­tion about the O.J. Simp­son case, includ­ing FTR #‘s 10 ^[15], 11 ^[16], 12 ^[17], 13 ^[18], 14 ^[19], 15 ^[20], 22 ^[21], and 23 ^[22].
7. AFA #13 ^[23], focus­ing on the Ku Klux Klan.
8. FTR #977 ^[24]and AFA #7 ^[25] pre­sent­ing infor­ma­tion point­ing to the Peo­ple’s Tem­ple of Jim Jones as an intel­li­gence oper­a­tion.
9. FTR #691 ^[26], chron­i­cling the author­ship of the assas­si­na­tion of Abra­ham Lin­coln by the Con­fed­er­ate Secret Ser­vice.
10. FTR #‘s 444 ^[27] and 605 ^[28] ana­lyz­ing the Port Chica­go explo­sion.

Just over two years ago, on the 50th anniver­sary of Dr. Mar­tin Luther King’s assas­si­na­tion, I spent 10 hours re-broad­cast­ing AFA #8 ^[10] and FTR ^[11] #46 ^[11]. At the time, I was struck by the absence of sub­stan­tive dia­logue about the real­i­ty of Dr. King’s well-doc­u­ment­ed, cold-blood­ed assas­si­na­tion at the hands of key ele­ments of our gov­ern­ment. That lack of inter­est was shared by the African-Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ty, as well as the so-called pro­gres­sive sec­tor. 

How can peo­ple who have come to calm­ly accept Dr. King’s exe­cu­tion get exer­cised about the death of George Floyd?

Polit­i­cal mur­der is an estab­lished way of life in this coun­try. The poseurs in the so-called “pro­gres­sive sec­tor” who blovi­ate about “extra-judi­cial killings” remain blind to the ongo­ing dynam­ic that end­ed King’s life, as well as those of many oth­ers before, and after.

For that mat­ter, how can peo­ple who have ignored and–at times–derided the irrefutable evi­dence of the descent of fas­cism on this coun­try and the world be sur­prised at one rel­a­tive­ly small out­crop­ping of that dark­ness?

Per­haps it is because “They are all bound on the wheel . . . .”