Prisons, Torture and the ‘American’ Way

If there is no intellectual or actualized honesty, there will be no fundamental or systemic change.

When liberals and so-called progressives in this nation dare, even peripherally, to address the quagmire of prisons and torture carried out by U.S. authorities, more often than not, they do so from the fallacious premise that the U.S. prison gulag system, and concomitant torture, are somehow not integral parts of a long established and ongoing pattern of “American” hypocrisy right here in this country.

To feign surprise at the inhuman and despicable manner in which non-U.S. citizens are treated by U.S. authorities at Guantanamo and elsewhere is the height of hypocrisy; as even U.S. citizens themselves have long been dehumanized and tortured within the state and federal prison systems within this nation. Both psychological and physical abuse [de facto torture] are routinely practiced in the burgeoning U.S. prison gulag system. Angola prison in Louisiana, and Pelican Bay prison in California, are two examples out of many throughout this nation, wherein psychological and/or physical torture are routinely utilized against prisoners.

U.S. police torture and murders in this nation, far from being incidental, are very much the norm as amply demonstrated by the horrendous torture used against the San Francisco Eight [SF 8], and the brutal and foul police murders of Sean Bell in New York City, and Oscar Grant in Oakland, California. Everyday Black, Brown, Red, White, and Yellow people throughout this nation are the daily victims of police brutality, imprisonment, and torture. Especially is this the case with economically poor Black, Brown, and Red peoples.

U.S. political prisoners such as Herman Wallace & Albert Woodfox, Lynne Stewart, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier, Jamil Al-Amin [aka H. Rap Brown], Sundiata Acoli, Hugo “Yogi” Pinell, Eddie Conway, and so very, very, many others are essentially either ignored or savaged by the pathetic corporate clone, “news” media of this nation. Moreover, it is poor and economically disenfranchised people of all colors in this nation who make up the overwhelming and growing underbelly of the U.S. prison population. None of this is by coincidence. It is all by systemic design.

The Myth of the “American” Way

The very notion of there being a so-called “American” Way is nothing more than institutional and self-serving corporate propaganda for the purpose of imprisoning the minds of the people.

This mythology is akin to the ongoing insult of referring to and pigeon-holing the indigenous native peoples as the original “Americans,” when in fact they were (and are) so much more than that. They were (and are) the original peoples of the so-called north, central, and south “American” geographical regions. They lived and thrived in these regions long before any such entity known as “America,” and long before even the birth of the European Amerigo Vespucci, after whom North, Central, and South “America” have been so arrogantly and inaccurately misnamed, as if the indigenous peoples did not exist and had no language or geographical names of their own – prior to the supposed “discovery” of them by Europeans. This is the kind of dangerous mythology that continues to be perpetuated to this very day by the government and corporate media, to imprison the minds of the people.

As the late and incomparable Frantz Fanon, in years past, so correctly penned, “Two centuries ago, a former European colony decided to catch up with Europe. It succeeded so well that the United States of America became a monster, in which the taints, the sickness and the inhumanity of Europe have grown to appalling dimensions.”

[Reference chapter 6 of the book titled, The Wretched of the Earth, by Frantz Fanon].

Torture, prisons, police brutality, an internal police state, the bloody U.S. military wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere, judicial hypocrisy & injustice, home foreclosures & homelessness, joblessness, corporate greed & blood-sucking, racism, and environmental degradation are all interrelated. They are all a reflection of the “monster” of capitalism that has turned in upon itself [i.e. the people of this nation] even as it is the scourge upon all of humanity planet-wide.

The so-called “American Way” has become synonymous, both at home and abroad, with hypocrisy and – the way of the monster. It does not have to remain this way.

We have the opportunity to regain our humanity, to start anew. But first we must heed the words of the former black slave Frederick Douglas, when he said, “Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning.”

We must engage in consistent agitation and organizing in order to bring about real systemic change. We must be creative revolutionaries who understand that the powers that be will not hesitate to utilize the “thunder and lightning” of subterfuge and increased political repression, but we cannot expect to bring about much-needed systemic change without the revolutionary plowing of the soil. Coming columns will delve more into this.

Meanwhile, agitate, educate, and organize! Onward sisters and brothers! Time is of the essence and there is much work to be done. Onward!….