7
The Great American Gulag
Over the years, I have suffered, on and off, with insomnia. When I was younger, I would sometimes have trouble falling asleep: onset insomnia. As I have gotten older, though, I've developed a bigger problem with waking up in the middle of the night at about three or four in the morning and not being able to fall back to sleep: maintenance insomnia. If you have ever had maintenance insomnia, then you know how frustrating it can be. I toss and turn and toss and turn until finally I decide I might as well do something constructive, so I get up and go down stairs to find something to read.
I cannot say everything about insomnia is bad. Over the years, the maintenance insomnia I suffer from on a fairly regular basis has enabled me to read some of the great books of history that most people never bother with, and these great books have enabled me to have a very broad view of human history. So, in a way, insomnia has an upside.
Every once in a while, though, I'll read an old, old book that is boring and not particularly insightful, and I won't have anything else to read that is interesting, so I'll flick on the television and watch some old movie or television show. One time, I was watching a movie from the 1970's or early 80's called Escape from New York. It starred Kurt Russell as the main character named Snake. It also starred Donald Pleasence as the President of the United States. As I watched this old movie, I thought the premise for it was perfectly absurd. It was set in the near future, and there were so many prisoners in the U.S. prison system that all of New York City had been turned into a maximum security prison. In the story, Air Force One had crashed into New York City with the President on board, and Kurt Russell, Snake, was hired to rescue the President from all of the nefarious criminals who were locked up in New York City.
As I watched this movie, I had to laugh at the preposterous storyline, which predicted a future that would become a reality if the trends of the 1970's and 80's continued and nothing changed. It was such a 70's movie with hokey action sequences, menacing characters, and cheap synthesized music, but, for some reason, I could not stop thinking about it over the next few weeks after I watched it. I would be doing some simple task like taking out the trash, and then the movie would pop into my consciousness. Finally, I realized why Escape from New York kept coming back into my thoughts:
The movie has come true.
There are currently over two million people incarcerated in the U.S. prison system. That's a gulag! Not even China and Russia combined have that many incarcerated in their prison systems.
Of course, the dictatorial, elite media in America will never call what we have here The Great American Gulag because to admit we have oppression and tyranny would undermine the elite media's ruling status, so they will never do this. However, this also means this empowered media institution, which is much more than biased (it has an agenda), is worse than TASS or Pravda ever were. TASS and Pravda were part of a massive ministry of propaganda - or a ministry of information. The elite American media is a ministry of disinformation because it refuses to label something for what it is. Every word this Svengali institution says revolves around its central goal, and its central goal is to maintain and augment its own power, money, and glory.
Since the message will always be based on its institutional agenda (to remain an elite), there is nothing to stop the numbers of prisoners in the U.S. prison system from skyrocketing from two million to three million to five million, and, well, maybe, even to ten million - or more. What's to stop it?
The American nobility will never admit they support tyranny and oppression, or they will attempt to legitimize it by blasting their message into every nook and cranny and orifice of the country - and the world! And since freedom of speech is not illegal, it is something far worse - it's impossible! - the message becomes a kind of truth. Alternative thinking is actively suppressed. And since the arrogant, misanthropic American nobility believes precisely the same thing that the arrogant, misanthropic state-controlled Soviet media and the Russian commissar believed (the people can't think anything except what we tell them to think!) free thinking is obliterated. Thought control works in the United States in precisely the same way as it worked in the former Soviet Union: through denial of voice. However, suppression of free speech and free thought will not work forever. Eventually, the distance between what is said and what actually is becomes so great that no one believes what those in power are saying. Empowered institutions become easily discredited and then universally despised.
As the modern economy continues to globalize, prison systems will be streamlined and privatized for cost effectiveness, and, eventually, there may even be international prison facilities with potentially huge numbers of incarcerated. Will New York City ever be transformed into a maximum security prison? Maybe the point of the film was never that it actually ever would be, but the absurd premise was a metaphor for a reality that has come to pass.
All of the prisoners in the Great American Gulag should be released immediately! - my fifth tweet.
Islam is hope! - my ninth tweet.
8.
The Global Billionaire Caste System
Power abhors a vacuum.
The American republic is designed to constrain politicians from ever getting too much power. This might seem like a very good thing, but power has simply seeped through the cracks in the wall, and it has created the world that now exists. Power abhors a vacuum.
Restrictions on political power and the nature and structure of democracy and the global economy have created a new power structure based exclusively on money. In this new power structure, it is not impossible but nearly impossible to move from one caste to the next in your lifetime.
Because elections cost so much money (over 100 million dollars was spent in the last Senatorial race in North Carolina between Thom Tillis and Kay Hagan), the political caste will always remain subservient to the billionaire caste. Add to this, the widespread belief that money cannot be constrained by anything and a brutally oppressive caste system is the result.
The Clintons, of the Bill and Hillary sort, not being stupid, (after all, they are Yale grads and Yale and Harvard are the grooming kennels for the political caste), realized this global caste structure and would have been the first ever to move from the political caste (break the glass ceiling) to the billionaire caste if Hillary Clinton had won the presidential election in 2016. (The Clintons! Those parvenus! Those parvenus!)
Here is the global caste structure or the global plutocratic system, (whichever is the most appropriate term):
Billionaire caste
?
Political caste
?
Media caste
?
Professional caste
?
Military caste
?
Working caste
?
Prison caste
Since the media caste will always support the political state that empowers it, this elite media, or imperial press corps, whichever is the most appropriate term (The press corps is the enemy of the people! - my fourth tweet) the propaganda this institution spews at everyone in the world is this:
"Democracy is bloosoming everywhere," the talking head will say with a beaming smile: thus, preserving the global billionaire caste structure through deception. Only the top three castes have any rights, representation, or voice. (The American people have no rights, no representation, and no voice - tweet # 11).
It is only a matter of time before the billionaire caste becomes the trillionaire caste since everything works to sustain this plutocratic system. Probably the world's first trillionaire will come from Silicon Valley (AKA a tech oligarch) as computer power becomes greater and gr
eater, and algorithms become more and more commonly used, and AI and robots put hundreds of thousands out of work - perhaps millions - and the zeros and ones crowd makes a killing, claiming they are the future - and they are. Although the French have a saying: the more things change the more they remain the same. And the future looks oh-so-much like the past.
So only one question remains:
Who's going to be the world's first trillionaire?
9.
To Act or not to Act (Part 4)
Everything has two meanings. I began to look at what was happening at Fort Bragg from a different perspective: This is a classic Soviet style purge! The state, IT, can destroy anyone for any reason. Soon the only men that can serve in the US military will be half-men, neutered men - like me! Everything has two meanings.
I decided not to take the sexual harassment seminar and see what happens. On a Friday, just before the end of the month, I received another email from the vice-president of the college that did not state outright that I would be fired if I did not complete the sexual harassment seminar by the end of the day but strongly implied it. So I was about to be fired not because I had sexually harassed anyone but because I had refused to take a humiliating online seminar. It struck me this was just another way to bring me down as a man and destroy me as a man - a classic Soviet purge!
"Catch a flight to Iran and freedom," I mumbled. "Don't take the seminar! Catch a flight to Iran or Syria or Palestine! Let them fire you!"
I had two hours to make my decision.
Although I was never really certain if I would ever actually catch a flight to Iran, I had begun planning for how I might do it. I had put together a list of the things I would need, and I had checked out the prices on Orbitz, CheapOair, and OneTravel. OneTravel consistently had the cheapest flights, but they didn't get very good reviews online. For the first hour on my computer, I looked online for flights out of Raleigh. It was illegal to fly to Cuba, at that time, but not to Iran - to my surprise. But then I began to reconsider. Come on, are you really going to catch a flight to Tehran? I thought. What would it prove? Do you really think the Iranians would embrace you with open arms even if you claimed to be a Muslim? And how much of a Muslim are you really? It's madness. But is it madness?
I had 55 minutes before five o'clock. I decided to go online to look at the sexual harassment training website. Once I was there, the training video automatically started. My computer did not freeze up. At three minutes to 5:00, I completed the training and passed the test. At two minutes to five, I sent an email to the vice-president stating I had successfully completed the training.
I was saved.
* * *
But not for long. Sometime in March my department chair approached me and told me I was to go to a meeting with the vice-president and the dean of the college. This meeting struck me as very odd, but then a cold chill ran through me as I suspected what was about to happen. When I walked into the dean's office, she had a small tape recorder on her desk. I'm about to be recorded? I thought as my anxiety grew.
They didn't waste any time. I was promptly told my contract would not be renewed next year and did I have anything to say about it?
I'm being recorded? Is that necessary? I thought. Although I had seen this coming for a long time, it was still a shock. I can't remember much else that transpired during that meeting, but I remember at the end of it I blurted:
"I'm flabbergasted." And then I left.
"Allah don't do this to me. Allah don't do this to me." I said as I sat down at my desk. I had determined long ago that if I was ever pushed around again or let go of my job at Robeson Community College for any reason that I would finally act. I had often wanted to act without any provocation, but I decided that would be stupid. "Allah don't do this to me," I whispered. Now Allah had called my bluff.
I gazed up at the bulletin board above my desk where I had tacked a few poems and important school information. One poem was by W. H. Auden called The Unknown Citizen, but what caught my eye was the paperback edition of a play on my bookcase to the right of the bulletin board. It was the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare. I lifted it down and glanced at the page that had a book marker in it. It opened to the famous soliloquy: to be or not to be. "How appropriate," I mumbled while chuckling slightly. However, as I thought about this soliloquy, it occurred to me it really wasn't about to be or not to be, but it was about to act or not to act. In the play, Hamlet is nearly destroyed not from action but from inaction. Of course, he had good reason not to act. If he killed his nemesis, the whole country would probably erupt, and his life would never be the same. Certainly, I was not in the same predicament as Hamlet, but I realized my life would never be the same if I actually did catch a flight to Teheran. The character of Hamlet nearly goes mad not with action but with inaction.
While I was thinking about all this, my department chair was gracious enough to come up to me and ask me if I wanted to talk about what had just happened. Obviously, she knew beforehand my contract would not be renewed. Her gesture, though, allowed me to let some of the emotional air out, so I simply said, "I live in the professional world, and I know how these things work." Then she walked away.
I had other plans - chimerical plans maybe - but I was done sending out resumes. THAT I WAS CERTAIN OF. I would not spend one more instant of my life doing that, and I began planning for my flight to Teheran. I looked at all of the popular websites for flights from Fayetteville, North Carolina to Teheran, Iran. I would have to purchase tickets with my credit card at the beginning of the next month so my wife would not get the bill before I left. I started to make up a new list of all of the things I would need to do. I had on my iPad hundreds of tweets I had saved over the years that I intended to launch at the US government and the American nobility if I ever did decide to fly to Teheran and ask for political asylum, but I had no followers on Twitter. Nevertheless, there were ways to add followers. I would also need to update my photograph on Twitter. I had about 400 friends on Facebook, so the plan was to launch an incendiary tweet every two days once I had left and then repeat the tweet as a post on my Facebook page. My house was not far from the Greyhound Bus Station, so while my wife was away at church on a Sunday morning I would pack up everything I needed and catch the bus for Fayetteville and then a flight to Teheran. This was the note I had already prepared:
???????????????????????????????????????????????????
Hang on, Luv. Hang on. I'll be back as soon as I can.
"If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what is within you will destroy you." - The Gospel of Thomas.
???????????????????????????????????????????????????
The flight I was looking at left on a Monday morning from Fayetteville, North Carolina to Washington, DC to Austria, then to Tehran. When the flight landed in Washington, DC, I would use the airport Wi-Fi to access my email at Robeson Community College and send out this campus-wide message:
Subject line: Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!
Message line: Fear of thinking is the greatest cowardice.
Then I would launch my first tweet and also post the same tweet on Facebook: America's future is very bright - as the brightest star in the constellation of Islam.
I knew from the Edward Snowden revelations that every email, text message, and phone call was being monitored by the secret police, the FBI or the NSA, but I figured I was very low in their super-algorithm's database. I knew Big Data was watching everyone in the world (Big Data is watching you - tweet # 8), but I figured because I had remained a Muslim in secret, which I felt was an absolute necessity for modern Muslims, I was very low on their watch list, so by the time the secret police had figured out what was up I would already be in Teheran. There was the possibility I would be arrested in Austria, but that was a chance I would have to take.
Then once I
got a hotel room in Teheran, I would throw a chair through the window in the lobby, get arrested, and ask for political asylum. This was the crazy plan, but I knew I had no political voice at all. So what else could I do?
I surmised I would not be removed from the RCC email account until the end of May, so the first Friday in May I would purchase the flight tickets, and everything would be set.
On the Wednesday, before the first Friday in May, a message was left on my home phone from the Human Resources Department at Halifax Community College. I had almost forgotten many months ago (before I was sacked at RCC) I had sent a resume to Halifax Community College. I knew what they wanted - or I strongly suspected what they wanted - but I had already made my plans. Don't listen to it, I told myself, but, of course, curiosity got the better of me. It was what I suspected. They wanted me to come for an interview. Don't go! I told myself determined to stick to my plan.
Then, that night, my sleep was fitful. I kept tossing and turning, but I did fall into a light sleep with bad dreams until about four AM. Then, I awoke suddenly, and my mind immediately jumped to my flight plans. I got up and went to the kitchen for a glass of water. This Teheran stuff is pure fantasy! I thought. Do you really think the Iranians will welcome you with open arms?! They will probably toss you into the loony bin and then ship you back to the United States in a strait jacket! Nevertheless, I was determined to go ahead with my plans.
10
Cerberus Must Die!