Reflections on Waco and What It Means for Our Present Reality

Reflections on Waco and What It Means for Our Present Reality

by Sean Jobst

April 20, 2015

"WACO: The Rules of Engagement" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4scgRAJxWc

I vaguely remember when this was happening, since I was only 7 years old when it happened. Yet, I remember watching this Waco documentary last year in a "Sociology of Religion" class and was profoundly struck by how much it seemed to have set a precedence which we are seeing now. I think in my mind of different signposts on the way, and leaving out history before that (for the sake of brevity), we see how on September 11, 1990, President Bush gave his infamous "New World Order" speech. While his government was delivering death and destruction to fleeing Iraqi troops and betraying the same Kurds and Marsh Arabs it had called on rebelling - all for the sake of propping up a repressive Kuwaiti monarchy - moves were being made domestically by the government, culminating in his successor Bill Clinton's administration and their blatant terrorist siege against Waco.

We cannot ignore the effects of racism, nor can we view history as anything other than a "boomerang", where everything you sow will be reaped. I am reminded of some of the wisdom I have heard from Native Americans, who have pointed out America itself has become one big "Indian Reservation" when it relates to the emerging Police State, the erosion of civil liberties and various other laws and the dictates of the bankers who are using government to loot the people, not to mention the looting done by foreign interests (foremost Israel).

These same Indigenous people have given us a huge piece of the puzzle which we only ignore at our own peril. That is, the same tactics which were first tried against Native people and then personified on reservations, were then exported abroad in the occupation of other countries and in the support for the death squads which murdered and repressed entire peoples in América Latina, the Middle East and other regions of the world. Those were the first two steps....

As for the third and last step, these tactics formulated against Native Americans and then "perfected" (a testament to our degraded sense of humanity nowadays that such a word is so often used with methods of death and murder of others) against peoples outside the U.S., are now a boomerang that is coming to be visited upon the American people themselves. The same elites behind this new oppression were the same ones behind the other oppression as well. Its just their propaganda that those people in whose name they claimed to fight and kill others, is now being dropped for a new, bold and blatant period of "revelation of the method," where they think their power is so entrenched they can cease with the phony "democratic" masquerades.

I call the world as I see it, as follows: Police brutality and killing black and Latino people has always been a racist reality that was ignored and tolerated by the broader society. Waco showed that now even white Americans weren't safe from indiscriminate murder (as for "white" Europeans overseas, the Allied fire-bombings of German cities, murder and starvation of German civilians and POWs after the war, and genocidal Morgentahu/Kaufman plans which all together led to the murder of MILLIONS of Germans, show "white" complexion wasn't an immediate immunity either).

So Waco in that sense was something unique, a sign of things to come. The Patriot Act that was signed into law by Bush, voted and supported by a bipartisan Congress, and consistently renewed by Obama, set the stage at the beginning of the 21st century. This was succeeded by the NDAA, which further saw drones being used on American soil which was now called a "battlefield" in the so-called "War on Terror." It was seen in the transition period between Bush and Obama, in the police suppressions of Occupy protests, the infringement on people's rights to protest at the corporate conventions of both the corporate political gangs, uh I mean political parties, symbolized by the creation of Orwellian "free speech zones" which limited "free speech" to a small area hidden away and not visible - and even this limited "right" was subject at any time to further infringement.

The war in Iraq which was pushed by the Neocons and AIPAC, domestically was the staging-ground for the further corporatization of the Pentagon, as the functions of the military were outsourced to mercenary "contractors" companies. If Randolph Bourne could warn in 1918 that "War is the health of the State," if the wise observation by Native American elders and activists about America itself becoming a reservation has come to fruition, then certainly foreign policies have become domestic policies.

This was manifested during Hurricane Katrina, when these same mercenaries shot mostly poor and black people "for fun"; black lives were cheapened and blacks dehumanized, in what was manifested last year in Ferguson (although this is ONLY one out of MANY MANY such police atrocities). These trigger-happy corporate psychopaths then volunteered their services for that evil Monsanto agribusiness, offering to infiltrate protestors and thereby make them appear as loons (similar to how police infiltrated the anti-WTO protest in 1999 Seattle and the corporate media obediently filmed those infiltrators who were looting).

These same mercenary psychopath groups hold most of the contracts for prison building and operations within the U.S. More prisons keep getting built, even while there is less violent crimes (if we don't count the legal variety committed by the State and its various goon squads). Just as there are corporations profitting from war, so too do corporations (often the very same ones) profit from building and operating prisons). Already filled with people whose very presence belies the myth of "crimes without victims" - oppressive drug laws and the return of debtors' prisons - the NDAA and other legislation is expanding the definition of "crime" and "criminal" in what would appear to be "Animal Farm" personified: Some are more equal than others.

I am an opponent of Marxist class-struggle theory; I stand firm upon a TRUE pro-free-market perspective that sees the government intervention and bankers' scams inherent to both Marxism and Capitalism (a dialectic which allowed them to merge the economic policies of corporatism with Cultural Marxism). Yet, I cannot but help observe a real class-based divide and conquer scam which has subjected people to lose their empathy towards their fellow human beings, and to lose sight of how "rights" are useless without responsibilities, until they lost even those rights:

The elites create fictitious crime "threats" and exaggerations, to strike fear into the middle-class, who consent to oppressive policies against the poor, even worshipping the State and its expanding police powers. And they seek to create a culture of dependency upon the poor, getting them to see the middle-class as their obstacle to advancement. And they get people of different races to dehumanize the other, certainly the way many white people (let's be honest here) are so willing to dehumanize black lives while supporting the Police State (and getting defensive for what police and government do) that will have its boot-heels on their own necks very soon, is very reprehensible indeed.

I can say the same about how murder against people in other countries was justified through dehumanizing them, with foreign policies consented by a people who generally blindly accepted the fictitious "threats" abroad even while not seeing the Police State in front of them. This was done by a war-profiteering media owned by a handful of corporations. Reflecting on Waco, the media was blatantly fanning the proverbial flames which ultimately led to the physical flames caused by the terrorist operation of the federal government.

The proverbial blood is dripping on the media's hands as well, even as it sought to hide the physical blood so as not to spoil the appetite for popcorn, soda pop and junk food for a public already accustomed - from the 1990-1991 Gulf War and the bombing of Iraq - to view killing as "entertainment." We ignore history at our own peril, even while our apathetic sadism - no matter WHOM it is directed against - allows us to revel in the present with ALL the murderous "entertainment" our cold hearts can desire.