These Protests were Predictable af: It's Time to Party

I haven’t made this article pop. It’s not filled with pictures of protestors and burning cities, of cops with their shields, nor of people running from tear gas (one of those being my sister). I don’t want to feed into the pornography of protests and the fetishization of conflict, however just it might be. I just want to talk.

Racial tensions have existed since the US was founded and have never really gone away. They’ve grumbled and groaned at every election. Dog whistles (sometimes dog trumpets) let loose the hounds even against a president. Until the whistle blowers are back where they ‘belong’. Racial tensions caused football players to kneel during an anthem (bet people are wishing for that now). Racial tensions had hip hop royalty putting their hands up and surrendering to their enemy in a biblical act of defiance (but soooo factually inaccurate, because that’s what matters, not the murder of an unarmed black man).

I’m not black and I don’t want to comment too much on racism. I don’t feel like it’s my place except to state the obvious: it exists, it’s pervasive and built into the structures of power, and we need to do our best to eradicate it. The election of an African American president, didn’t help anything and in fact may have stoked people’s racism even further. 

Race is the centre of this protest, the inciting event and original sin of American — and I would argue European — injustice. From that original sin though, so many have sprung up. Classism being one of the most insidious and damaging to the health of the nation. 

Tens of millions of Americans, and tens of millions of non-Americans, are without jobs. Maybe a hundred million, maybe more, were barely scraping by when they did have jobs. The ones who were doing a little better than just getting by were just recovering from the 2008 crash, until the 2020 crash. Student is at 1.6 trillion dollars (if you believe Forbes) and the job market couldn’t be worse, unless of course you’re applying to be a debt collector.

Let’s not forget a cultural establishment that is venal and subservient to its conformist political masters. The alphabet soup of ‘news’ outlets that spew out talking points from their owner’s favourite politician have completely betrayed their role as the fifth estate. The Hollywood machine’s pervert gatekeepers, so thoroughly exposed, pushing their agendas, use whatever populist trend they can co-opt to fill their bank accounts. But please, let’s all listen to their multimillionaire employees sing ‘Imagine’-starring, by the way, a millionaire ex-IDF soldier (you think the irony was lost on her?).

Add to all that a global pandemic. A pandemic that was shrugged off by the leader of the free world. A pandemic btw affects the poor (disproportionately African-American) who have no or limited access to primary care and poorer health-risk factors for complications of COVID-19. People who can’t ‘shelter in place’ because they needs a paycheque. Or maybe they lost their service job because the rest of us can shelter in place and order our shit online to make ourselves feel better. So now they’re broke with no prospects in cheek by jowl housing.

And all that was before a dickhead cop decided he was going to crush an African- American man’s neck with his knee. There’s a lot of kindling and a tank of gas under that spark.

Are we really surprised that alienated from politics as we are, alienated from the establishment culture as many people are, broke, frustrated by social isolation, facing a pandemic that’s just exposing the vulnerability of people who can’t access health care and of course living in a country in which there have been racial tensions since founding, there are riots? To think that this wasn’t inevitable is privilege. There’s white privilege. There’s also rich privilege.

So what now?

The political class have betrayed us and the corporate state never cared for us. The tech giants have the power to makes us or break us and the desire to do neither yet. We need a new party.

The republicans are led by a man that, well, what more can be said about him that hasn’t been already? And initially, the Democrats chose a woman everyone hated and who’s tenure as Secretary of State was burned in Benghazi and spent into the Clinton Foundation. They decided to up the ante and choose a man who appears to be in the throws of cognitive decline. Also fuck them they’re corrupt and shitty and the Republicans are dumb and corrupt and shitty. Watching Nancy Pelosi and her minions kneel with those African scarves around their necks is nauseating. As if they don’t get rich and powerful off the backs the people they claim to represent. Gimme a break. 

It’s time to cut ourselves loose from the left/right paradigm and to cut ourselves loose from the two parties that are imprisoning political thought. It’s time for a third party and a fourth and maybe a fifth. Let these two go the way of the Whigs. At the end of the day one got it’s knee on our back and the other’s got its knee on our neck. 

Despite the plagues and civil unrest, we don’t live in the world of the founders any more. We are surveilled, the police have military style weapons, and the government is the biggest thing in the country. Need I mention that we also have TikTok and Twitter and Instagram and whatever thirteen year olds are playing with now that will be the “public forum of the 21st century”. We’re on the cusp of another technological revolution with AI. And the rules are made by people who probably have trouble finding their teeth in the morning. 

I can’t even begin to touch the race problem in America and that’s a big caveat. Not being African by descent, I can’t comment on how things should change just that they should. I’ll leave that to wiser heads than mine.

Make no mistakes the protests will end — everything does. What does it look like afterwards? When all the glass is cleaned up and the charred remains of peoples’ cars dragged off, maybe the president will be less orange and the police force less white but unless there’s an organized push from honest, politically minded people, the wheels of government will still be turned by the same old hamsters. The men wearing the lab coats will still have corporate tags.

If we want change — real change — we need to vote. With our actual votes and with our dollars. America needs to get together as a society and make a concerted, organized effort to radically alter it’s political landscape. And that only happens at the ballot box. 

Liberal, progressive, libertarian; the vast majority of people are fed up with Congress and fed up with the revolving door of think tankers pushing neo-liberalism.

Vote out these fucks, and start a new party. It’s the only way.

Alex Byron writes about lifestyle, culture, and politics.