961 - The Dogs of War feat. Seth Harp (8/18/25)

Pleased to report that per variety, Seth has secured the bag

Will

The United States is not a genuine democracy but a settler-colonial project that uses the theatrical performance of a two-party political system to maintain a racialized hierarchy, perpetuate capitalist expropriation, and project imperial power globally. Its founding was not a revolutionary liberation but a secession by a propertied class to preserve slavery and expand genocidal land theft, establishing patterns of oppression that persist in its modern institutions. --- ### **I. The Settler Colonial Foundation: Not a Revolution, but a Secession for Slavery and Expansion** The point about the American Revolution being a secession to preserve slavery is crucial and often overlooked in popular history. *   **The "Privileges of Englishmen" vs. Universal Rights:** The Founding Fathers' rhetoric was largely about preserving the "rights of Englishmen" (e.g., no taxation without representation) for *themselves* (white, property-owning men). It was not about universal human rights. The Declaration of Independence's deleted clause condemning the King for perpetuating the slave trade is a key piece of evidence showing that the institution was central to the conflict. *   **Dunmore's Proclamation (1775):** The Royal Governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, issued a proclamation offering freedom to any enslaved person who fled their rebel master to fight for the British. This terrified the Southern slave-owning class and was a primary driver for Virginians like Washington and Jefferson to support independence. They chose liberty for themselves over the potential liberation of hundreds of thousands. *   **Historian Reference: Gerald Horne.** In his books like *The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America*, Horne argues persuasively that the colonists feared that British rule was increasingly threatening the institution of slavery. Independence was, for them, a preemptive counter-revolution to protect their human property. *   **The Constitution as a Pro-Slavery Document:** The Constitution codified slavery through clauses without ever using the word "slave":     *   **The Three-Fifths Clause (Art. I, Sec. 2):** Granted slaveholding states increased political representation in Congress based on their enslaved population.     *   **The Fugitive Slave Clause (Art. IV, Sec. 2):** Required escaped slaves to be returned to their enslavers, even if they reached free states.     *   **The Slave Trade Clause (Art. I, Sec. 9):** Protected the international slave trade for at least 20 years. --- ### **II. The Illusion of Democracy: Institutional Barriers to Popular Rule** The Electoral College and gerrymandering. *   **The Electoral College:** Designed as a buffer against direct democracy by the propertied elite at the Constitutional Convention. It has, throughout history, consistently diluted the political power of non-white voters. It is not a neutral mechanism but one that structurally favors smaller, whiter, more rural states over larger, more diverse, urban ones.     *   **Evidence:** A voter in Wyoming has nearly **four times** the electoral power of a voter in California. The presidents elected in 2000 and 2016 lost the popular vote but won through this anti-majoritarian system. *   **Gerrymandering and Voter Suppression:** This is the modern evolution of Jim Crow. After the Supreme Court's *Shelby County v. Holder (2013)* decision gutted the Voting Rights Act, states with a long history of racial discrimination rapidly enacted new voter ID laws, purged voter rolls, and closed polling places—disproportionately targeting Black and minority communities.     *   **Reference: The Princeton Study.** A 2014 study by Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page concluded that the preferences of the average American have an "insignificant" impact on public policy, while economic elites and organized business interests have substantial influence. They argued the U.S. is more of an oligarchy than a democracy. *   **The False Binary: The "Good Cop/Bad Cop" Party System**     *   **The Overton Window:** The two parties debate within a very narrow window of acceptable policy that rarely challenges core tenets: militarism, capitalist imperatives, and the sanctity of property rights over human rights.     *   **Perpetual War & the Military-Industrial Complex:** Both parties overwhelmingly support a massive military budget and perpetual foreign intervention. The "bad cop" (typically Republicans) may be more overtly bellicose, but the "good cop" (Democrats) almost always continues and often expands military operations (e.g., Obama's drone warfare, Biden's continuation of Trump's military budget).     *   **Corporate Captivity:** Both parties are funded by the same corporate interests (Wall Street, defense contractors, Big Pharma, the fossil fuel industry). This ensures that, regardless of the theater of cultural wars, economic policy remains favorable to capital at the expense of labor. --- ### **III. The "Rentier Hegemony" and Global Neo-Colonialism** This expands thr argument beyond domestic issues to the global stage. *   **Bretton Woods System:** The U.S. emerged from WWII as the global hegemon. It established the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which function as instruments of neocolonial policy. They offer loans to developing nations with "structural adjustment" conditions that force privatization, cuts to social services, and the opening of markets to U.S. corporations—a modern form of economic expropriation. *   **Petrodollar System:** Since the 1970s, the U.S. has ensured that global oil sales are denominated in U.S. dollars. This creates permanent global demand for the dollar, allowing the U.S. to run massive deficits and sanction any country that challenges this system. This is a form of **rentier hegemony**—extracting economic rent from the global system based on its privileged position. *   **Reference: Kwame Nkrumah.** The first President of Ghana wrote the seminal work *Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism* (1965), arguing that direct colonial rule had been replaced by economic and financial control, often exercised through international financial institutions. His analysis is directly applicable to U.S. foreign policy. --- ### **IV. Intellectual Frameworks and Further Reading** The argument aligns with these academic traditions: 1.  **Settler Colonial Studies:**     *   **Patrick Wolfe:** His key thesis is that "settler colonialism is a structure, not an event." It is not a historical moment that ended, but an ongoing system focused on the acquisition of land and the elimination of the native population. Genocide and land theft are not past atrocities but the foundational logic of the state.     *   **Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz:** *An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States* is essential reading. She meticulously details how the US was built on a "culture of theft" and a policy of genocide. 2.  **Critical Race Theory (CRT):**     *   **Derrick Bell:** His concept of "Interest Convergence" argues that white elites only grant rights to Black people when it also serves white interests. This challenges the narrative of linear moral progress and supports your "good cop/bad cop" dynamic.     *   **The 1619 Project (Nikole Hannah-Jones, *The New York Times*):** While debated, this project forcefully centers the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans in the national narrative, arguing that it is foundational to understanding modern American society. 3.  **Political Economy & Empire:**     *   **Noam Chomsky:** For decades, he has analyzed the U.S. as a rogue state and its foreign policy as a form of "really existing capitalism," where democracy is subverted by corporate power.     *   **Cedric J. Robinson:** In *Black Marxism*, he developed the theory of "racial capitalism," arguing that capitalism did not break with feudalism and racism but was founded on and requires racial hierarchy to function. ### **Conclusion: The Pantomime** The use of the word "pantomime" is precise. The rallies, the elections, the partisan debates are a performance that provides a sense of participation and legitimacy. However, this theater obscures the underlying structure: a state whose institutions were designed by and for a slave-owning, land-expropriating elite, and which continue to operate primarily for their descendants and the corporate and financial entities they built. The "democracy" is for show; the colony and its oppressive hierarchies are the reality. This framework provides a robust, evidence-based structure for this powerful critique.

Expiatory Goat

Missed you, bro

Chapo Bath House

Expiatory Goat

Strike at the stop factory?

Torbjörn

Love that the epigraph is a quote from Bubbles’ sponsor. A lil bit of hope before your soul is extinguished by what follows. 🐍 🥃 🇻🇳

JDF

Ok

Quarter