If an alien spaceship was to fly over North Avenue Beach this weekend during the Chicago Air and Water Show, undoubtedly some of the crew would laugh at the stupidity of the human race, madly applauding the spectacle of a display of weapons of mass destruction designed for the sole purpose of – destroying the human race. But it would be as likely that one member of their crew, in possession of a finer knowledge of the history of their own civilization, would point out to his comrades that “it wasn’t so long ago that we ourselves were struggling to evolve past the nuclear age”.
What you are witnessing this weekend is the singular spectacle of allegedly civilized human beings teaching their children to approve of our nation’s annual expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars on weapons systems capable of bringing about the complete extinction of the human race. It’s a snapshot of life in the United States as humanity struggles through our own nuclear age, hopefully to a higher level of civilization – if we don’t kill ourselves first.
We see our fellow workers and their families arrayed on North Avenue Beach in Chicago to celebrate the thrilling technology our nation’s military can use to slaughter our fellow human beings – right in the midst of the City of Chicago, the murder capital of the USA, where the city government is contemplating the deployment of the Illinois National Guard, armed to the teeth, to patrol the city’s streets in order to “prevent violence”. The citizens of this fair city, you see, are so “up in arms” about gun violence taking place in many of the city’s neighborhoods – “senseless violence” they call it – that they are considering overthrowing their own Constitutional protections against the deployment of military forces to quell domestic disturbances by deploying the military (whose own weapons make the pitiful arsenals of the city’s gangs look like a box of water pistols) to “stop the violence”. It makes us wonder if there is to be found anywhere on this planet a nation as dumb as ours is.
“Why are our children killing one another?” we hear our neighbors cry. “Where does this savage impulse to kill come from?” “What can we do to stop the violence that threatens us on our streets, in our schools and in our workplaces?”
Is it so hard to figure out? The violence comes from the class that runs this country – the US capitalist class – that takes our unemployed daughters and sons and gives them jobs as soldiers, pilots and weapons designers, and who deploy our children all over the world to protect their investments overseas, and to slaughter anyone who dares to oppose the robber barons of the US capitalist class. Our children are taught to accept violence – real violence, the military kind – every day in school, where ROTC programs recruit young women and men to join the military and live a life of “adventure” – adventure that consists of rampaging across the face of the Earth killing their fellow human beings in defense of the U.S. capitalist class and their global investment portfolios. The news media tells us that the most heroic of all our citizens are “our” soldiers who are all “heroes” for “defending our nation”. Hollywood churns out movies and TV shows extolling the noble sacrifice of our nation’s armed forces, deployed all over the world to “fight for freedom” and to wage war on “terrorism”. Our children are taught to believe, by the capitalist class’ bought-and-paid-for politicians, that the final solution to every seemingly intractable human problem lies in bombing those recalcitrant people into submission.
But it isn’t just the US capitalist class and its government and media conglomerates that brainwash our children into worshipping the “military solution” to all human problems; it is YOU, fellow workers! who are teaching your children, by taking them to this festival of the weapons of mass murder and showing them how exciting it is, how beautiful the weapons are, how powerful armed women and men are to change the world for the better, that a better life is possible for us all through mass murder! You, who would raise hell if a swimming instructor “inappropriately touched” your son or daughter during a swimming lesson, and who scream “CHILD ABUSE!” when advertisements are mailed to your home showing a beautiful woman’s (almost) naked body, who think nothing at all of bringing your young and even infant children to the Air and Water Show to praise the glory of our nation’s ability to rain death and destruction on our working-class brothers and sisters all over the world!
Why do you, fellow workers, living here in Chiraq – the murder capital of the USA – bring your children to celebrate weapons of mass destruction which are being used – as you sit there on North Avenue Beach, idiotically “oohing” and “aahing” – in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine and a host of other nations to butcher human beings – your fellow workers and their families?
Why do the same disgusting capitalist politicians like the odious Rahm Emanuel, in the middle of such violence taking place on the streets of Chicago, present to the citizens this festival of celebration of the revolting, savage aspect of the human race?
The reason is twofold. One: to dull your innate sense of hatred and revulsion for the weapons of war, to awe you with the power of the ruling class that daily robs you and your family of the necessities of life in order to spend hundreds of billions of dollars of wealth generated through your own sweat and blood and used to slaughter your fellow workers overseas – all in pursuit of the US capitalist class’ insatiable lust for PROFITS; and Two: to scare the hell out of you and your children so you will not dare to fight for your rights against forces poised to be unleashed upon YOU and YOUR FAMILIES should you ever dare to rise up against your exploiters! In the final analysis all this weaponry is designed to defend the filthy rich US capitalist class from “all enemies, foreign and domestic” – including YOU should you dare to fight for higher wages, to defend yourselves from the brutal racist cops rampaging through the streets of our nation armed to the teeth and daily shooting down in cold blood anyone who stands up to their brutality! YOU, brothers and sisters are the source of the fear engendered in the cold hearts of the US capitalist class, who are deploying their weapons of mass destruction throughout the land to protect the 1% from YOU, the working class, who they rob every day of the blood, sweat and tears of your family and its labor in the factories and shops of the capitalist class and whose sons and daughters are sent out to kill and be killed so the US capitalist class can amass even greater fortunes for themselves while you struggle to feed, clothe, shelter, educate and provide basic health care services for yourselves and your families!
These weapons of mass destruction, these highly-trained teams of assassins and murderers the capitalist class and its media hacks teach you to believe to be heroes your children should one day strive to be like, this machinery of mass murder you applaud has, in the final analysis, YOU and YOUR CHILDREN in its sights! Because only YOU have the power to rip the guns out of the hands of the capitalist class and their cops and military – and the capitalists fear your power to do that above all else! It is your children who pull the triggers on the guns and cannon; it is YOUR children who fly the planes, drop the bombs, and kill innocent civilians – families just like yours! Only YOU can put an end to this repulsive national worship of the Pentagon’s tools of mass murder that is the REAL SOURCE of the violence on the streets of our nation!
We are revolutionary socialists – Trotskyists – and it is a principle of our political movement that the working class of the United States – and that of all nations – has no enemies, since we know that all of the people of this planet, of every skin color and every religion and nationality – are descended from common ancestors that lived about 100,000 years ago. Science has proven to us that, as Karl Marx said more than 150 years ago, “All workers are brothers and sisters”. The workers and peasants of China are not our enemies; nor are the workers of Russia, North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Iran, Palestine, Pakistan, Yemen or any other nation you can name. All the workers of the world we consider to be our sisters and brothers. We understand that the real enemies of the workers are not our fellow workers overseas whom our national capitalist class tries to get us to hate; our real enemies are the billionaires and millionaires on Wall St. and on Main St., who systematically rob us of the product of our labor every time we go to work, every time we purchase anything and who try to get us to hate our fellow workers overseas so that they can get us to send our sons and daughters into the military where they can be used by the capitalists to defend their hundreds of billions of dollars of foreign investments all over the globe. In Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, all over the world, the US capitalist class is trying to seize the mineral wealth of other nations for their own selfish personal gain; and they teach our children the dark arts of war in order to steal through military conquest what they can not or do not wish to pay for. It is tax money systematically stolen from your paychecks every week that is used to pay for these weapons of mass destruction you are cheering for that enables them to go around the globe raping the environment and slaughtering the human beings that stand between the US capitalist class and the natural resources that they seek to steal in order to feed their unquenchable thirst for more and more money!
You see the Blue Angels? Imagine that those jets were on their way to your neighborhood to drop bombs on your house because you were the head of a political movement trying to organize opposition to the US war machine. Imagine what would happen to your children if those Ospreys were used to attack your family while you were celebrating a wedding in your yard; imagine those Navy Seals attacking your friends’ house next door. Imagine that it was not a T.V. show or a video game, but a real-life massacre like those that have happened repeatedly to families in Afghanistan, Iraq, in Palestine, Vietnam, North Korea and all over the world where the US capitalist class has deployed these very same weapons of mass destruction that you sit there and applaud, with your children joining in – in imitation of you.
You’d better think about it, because, more and more, the police forces of the United States are being given military-grade weapons; helicopters, grenades, machine guns and all the weapons of war necessary to defend the interests of the US capitalist class from what they KNOW is an inevitable struggle by the working class of the US to fight for higher wages and better working and living conditions. They know that, sooner or later, you are going to be forced to fight for your rights at work, and that you will seek to create political parties THAT THEY CAN’T BRIBE OR CONTROL to defend your rights as workers. You don’t realize this yet – but they do. And they are getting ready for you, as you can see every time the workers of Chicago try to oppose the machinations of the US capitalist class. The deployment of heavily armed police forces in military formations, armed with weapons of mass murder in the cities and even the small towns of the United States is not happening by accident. The capitalist class knows what it wants, and it knows how to get it – and it isn’t always going to be by asking nicely first – and then sticking it to you like they did to Chicago’s teachers last year. As the police response you’ve seen this week in Ferguson, Missouri proves (where the entire police force consists of only 53 cops): even in a tiny town like Ferguson, the police possess weapons indistinguishable from those given to US military units overseas – and they’re trained and willing to use them, children! The class war is coming home, and it is headed for your front door, brothers and sisters. The Obama Administration has even gone so far as to obtain from the US Department of Justice the legal authority to order the assassination of US citizens for writing things and for hanging around with people the US capitalist class doesn’t like! And why has the capitalist class given the NSA the green light to spy on every single phone call, Internet search and email you and your family sends to anyone, anywhere? Are they afraid of you, the loyal members of the US working class?
Now that we’ve drawn your attention to the reality of what it means to celebrate the weapons of mass destruction that the US capitalist class and their mass-murdering military, we’d like to put you on the spot and ask you: knowing all that we’ve told you, do you still wish to wave the flag of U.S. imperialism and teach your children to worship the U.S. war machine? If the answer is “yes”, then you – by your support of this war machine that is being unleashed every day against your fellow human beings – declare yourselves to be the enemies of human civilization and have absolutely no right to complain when you, personally, are held accountable for the war crimes being committed every day in your name. By supporting the U.S. war machine you must accept responsibility for the murders of civilians being committed every day, all over the world by the U.S. military and the C.I.A., who use the very same weapons of mass destruction you have bought, paid for (and which you worship) to commit mass murder and the assassination of untold thousands of your fellow workers around the world – and who now are even assassinating your fellow citizens!
Now that you’ve read this article, you know that the real reason why the U.S. military is deployed all over the world is not to “defend your freedom” – neither Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, China, North Korea nor Cuba possess any means of attacking the United States, and the workers of those countries have never attempted to do so – but to defend the current and planned future foreign investments of the U.S. capitalist class in all these nations – investments being made not to improve your lives or the lives of the people where the investments are made, but simply to make the tiny number of U.S. billionaires and millionaires who own half our nation’s wealth – just that much more obscenely wealthy. Now you know that the very same U.S. capitalist class that uses its war machine to commit mass murder around the world is the same gang of greedheads that robs you and your family blind every time you go to work or purchase anything from toothpicks to land mines – and you support this!
And here’s another bit of information for you who worship your own exploiters and their weapons of mass destruction: now that you have read this article, you can no longer pretend to your friends and family that “you didn’t know” the truth about the U.S. capitalist class and what they are really about and what they are really using their military for! By having read this explanation of precisely what it means to applaud and to teach your innocent children to applaud the murderous, repulsive war machine that the U.S. capitalist class uses to physically destroy every worker in the world who dares to oppose their global thievery – and in spite of this knowledge, still continuing to support the U.S. capitalist class and its war machine – you have become, now, a CONSCIOUS ENEMY OF THE HUMAN RACE! Congratulations!
One more point we’d like to make before we let you go: you may think that the U.S. war machine can be counted upon to protect you from the very justified wrath of the workers of the world whom you declare to be your enemies by supporting the U.S. capitalists’ war machine that murders them… but know this: the United States of America represents just 4.5% of the world’s population! If you believe that there is a future for a nation that represents just 4.5% of the world’s population yet that thinks that it can – through sheer military brutality – force the other 95.5% of the world’s human beings into a state of abject surrender, you are wrong – and you and your nation are doomed to suffer the fate of the last genocidalist capitalist class which dared to attempt such an exercise in futility: the universally-hated German capitalist class that financed Adolf Hitler’s rise to power!
Enjoy the show!
IWPCHI
Independent Workers Party of Los Angeles 