The barrel of a gun

Mao Zedong (Chairman Mao) famously stated that “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun”. Political power, not freedom.

There are three types of gun barrel that the United States uses for this purpose:

• Firearms
• Television
• Hypodermic syringes

Clearly firearms are the weapon of choice of the United States. Whether it be suppressing dissent and protecting the one percent at home, or threatening and overthrowing governments abroad, America comes to the table with unlimited firepower. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, the United States government is “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today”. And almost unbelievably, we have become even more violent since he spoke those words in 1967.

A second powerful source of political power is television, whose original technology was based on the electron gun of a cathode ray tube. Whether it is creating historical fantasies for a befuddled public, spreading lies for political or financial gain, or just keeping us entertained and distracted, television has become an indispensable tool of the United States government. Together with their co-conspirators in Hollywood, they manipulate public opinion and manufacture consent to an extent that would probably astonish even Joseph Goebbels and Adolf Hitler.

The third powerful source of political power is narcotic drugs, often delivered through the barrel of a hypodermic syringe (“happiness is a warm gun” refers to drugs, not firearms). In spite of the media-led assassination by suicide of Gary Webb following his revelation that the US government was helping to market drugs in our cities, it should be clear to any thinking adult that “our” entire political-financial apparatus is a gigantic criminal enterprise that has no qualms whatsoever about selling drugs to its own children. What better way to fill our prisons with people who become non-voters than by making drugs as cheap and plentiful as candy? Maybe that explains why we have troops in Afghanistan and Pakistan protecting the poppy crop and the heroin industry, and why government agencies are supplying the drug cartels with assault rifles. It’s the modern version of what America did to the Indians: guns, drugs, and AIDS have replaced guns, whiskey, and smallpox blankets as America’s way of dealing with people who get in her rapacious way.

It won’t be enough just to take away everyone’s firearms. If we are ever to be truly free, we’ll also have to destroy everyone’s television and computers AND wean them off narcotic drugs. Any one of those would be extremely difficult; to do all three is going to be well-nigh impossible.

So when do we start?