{"id":14476,"date":"2020-05-02T11:09:35","date_gmt":"2020-05-02T18:09:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=14476"},"modified":"2020-05-02T11:12:17","modified_gmt":"2020-05-02T18:12:17","slug":"romance-is-the-new-realism-eugene-debs-and-the-age-of-corona","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2020\/05\/02\/romance-is-the-new-realism-eugene-debs-and-the-age-of-corona\/","title":{"rendered":"Romance Is the New Realism: Eugene Debs and the Age of Corona"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

May 01, 2020 by Common Dreams<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this pandemic-era, it has become increasingly clear that we are only as healthy as the least insured\u2014hence the poorest\u2014in our society. <\/h4>\n\n\n\n

by Danny Sjursen<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 8 Comments<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Eugene<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Eugene Debs delivering a speech in Chicago in 1912. “I can see the dawn of the better day for humanity,” the famous socialist leader once said. “The people are awakening. In due time they will and must come to their own.” (Photo: Wikipedia)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was first exposed to Eugene Victor Debs through Kurt Vonnegut novels<\/a>. That sci-fi social critic was a lifelong fan and referenced Debs in several of his books. Since then, mine has been a whirlwind historical love affair. The passion and eloquence of this former worker turned labor leader, and eventual five-time<\/a> Socialist candidate for president is undeniable. His work and example have spoken to me in different ways at various points in my life\u2014but never before has Debs seemed more relevant. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“While there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His lifelong fight for social justice, and an end to war, did not come without costs. It rarely does. In 1918, Debs was arrested<\/a> under the Sedition Act\u2014a recent statute that criminalized<\/a> constitutionally-protected speech\u2014after he delivered peaceful oratory opposed to America\u2019s entry into World War I. Later, just after he\u2019d been sentenced to a decade in prison, Debs proclaimed<\/a> before a Cleveland federal court that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Sounds a bit like something Christ might reputedly have said<\/a> in the early Synoptic Gospels<\/a>, no? Of course, Debs has always been a secular saint, of sorts, in progressive left and nascent antiwar circles. Still, my love for Debs\u2014and personal penchant for plastering this particular quote on t-shirts and social media<\/a>\u2014has struck many critics as naive. That is, until now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Corona\u2019s empathy-gift amidst the mass of lonely<\/a> death is that it demonstrates\u2014in a rather concrete sense\u2014that none are better than the \u201cmeanest\u201d (or \u201csickest\u201d) among us. Even the prosperous cannot forever hide, or wall themselves off, from the inequities<\/a> of the global system. After all, it is often forgotten that Debs, and the socialists of his day, had a distinctly international vision that transcended the illusory boundaries, and \u201cimagined communities<\/a>,\u201d crafted by the powerful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this pandemic-era, it has become increasingly clear, per another Debs-enthusiast<\/a>, Bernie Sanders<\/a>, that we are only as healthy as the least insured\u2014hence the poorest\u2014in our society.  The same may be said of those recently released from behind (domestic) bars or the prison-like boundaries of America\u2019s cruel worldwide sanctions<\/a>-stranglehold regime. For ours is a technologically mobile world in which the virus respects no borders and \u201cspeaks<\/a>\u201d Mandarin just as well as Italian or English.America\u2019s\u2014and the world\u2019s\u2014corona response will be put to this \u201cDebs-test,\u201d and heaven forbid it be found wanting. A Lower Class<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The COVID-19 outbreak has exposed the liability of carrying a permanent domestic underclass\u2014particularly given the peculiar, ineffectiveness of America\u2019s employer-based healthcare system. These under- or un-insured folks also tend to serve the food, pump the gas, and pack the boxes for online delivery that the more privileged in society have come to expect with immediacy. Workers are, so to speak, no longer invisible. The poor can infect and spread disease just as (perhaps more) rapidly as the rich.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s more, corona has laid bare the immense leverage of the working class\u2014especially those in the service industry\u2014over the bourgeois and wealthy stratums in society. Moving forward, the potential power of a general<\/a> service strike could be profound. Sure, Jeff Bezos and his\u2014or others\u2019\u2014bureaucratic \u201ccompany men<\/a>\u201d can immediately fire<\/a> Christian Smalls, a strike leader at a Staten Island Amazon warehouse, but his indecently superfluous billions can\u2019t counter the moral and rational weight of the striker\u2019s position. One wonders if that genie can ever be stuffed back into what was always a rather narrow nozzle of the proverbial bottle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Can the U.S. afford to continually don the blindfold, bow to the Pentagon fiction that endless war has any other real enemy than the fear of falling military-industrial-complex profits, and ignore the human costs of unnecessary American conflicts of choice?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So too for the foreign indigent in countries and societies utterly unprepared for pandemic. In Africa, for example\u2014where 85 percent<\/a> of the population still survives on less than $5.50 a day\u2014many national governments are turning<\/a> to overt civil liberties squelching because, in addition to being power-opportunists, they know implicitly that they are unprepared for even a modest outbreak. Will the obscene global wealth distribution<\/a>\u2014whereby the richest 10 percent possess 85 percent of the total, and the bottom half claim barely one percent\u2014seem sustainable if and when shattered societies produce refugees on a scale that puts those<\/a> from the \u201cArab Winter<\/a>\u201d to shame?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Furthermore, war, of course, has shown its true colors as history\u2019s great epidemic exacerbation<\/a> device. Can the U.S. afford to continually don the blindfold, bow to the Pentagon fiction that endless war has any other real enemy than the fear of falling military-industrial-complex profits, and ignore the human costs of unnecessary American conflicts of choice? After all, in this moment\u2014though one must question the long-term sincerity\u2014even the very \u201cmeanest\u201d among the world\u2019s states, the theocratic Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, has called a corona-induced ceasefire<\/a> to its American-complicit<\/a> terror war on Yemen. There has never been a better\u2014or more imperative\u2014time for the U.S. to deescalate its own countless far-flung wars, scale-down<\/a> its national security posture, and prioritize diplomacy and humanitarianism.A Criminal Element<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

All too often America is\u2014per its long-standing claims\u2014exceptional, only in all the wrong ways<\/a>. No other country wages as many aggressive overseas wars, or imprisons<\/a> quite so much of its own population, as the USA. Seen in this decidedly inconvenient light, Uncle Sam is as criminal as any other nation. The COVID-moment, however, is a time for rare self-awareness, an historical knowledge of national self. As South Africa\u2019s post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission<\/a> illustrated, only an honest accounting of past crimes opens a clear path to future redemption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Victim and victimizer become inextricably linked in the folly of foreign war and domestic repression. To channel that Nazarene stoic<\/a> again, the U.S. must place its own past and present house in order before it \u201c\u201d of dispersion at even the most flawed \u201cenemy\u201d states. Allow the great corona-equalizer to establish and hold our government to account through a sort of humanitarian litmus test, and one finds the U.S. doesn\u2019t stack up so well against Cuba<\/a>, for example.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nor, according to the United Nations<\/a>, and just about every human rights<\/a> or medical<\/a> organization, does Washington\u2019s \u201ceconomic warfare<\/a>\u201d sanctions regime\u2014which is quite literally killing<\/a> innocents\u2014live up to America\u2019s promise. Finally, lest we forget that unnecessary, aggressive wars of choice\u2014which no nation today wages with the alacrity and consistency of the United States\u2014are, according to the postwar Nuremberg Principles<\/a> (which Washington had a decisive hand in molding), the supreme<\/a> \u201ccrime against peace.\u201dOur Souls in Prison<\/strong> Even with America\u2019s uniquely draconian-, inmates usually return to society, bringing with them the scars of institutional violence, mental health deterioration, the scarlet letter<\/a> of employment barriers, and now, potentially, the coronavirus. Prisoners eventually come home. Even with America\u2019s uniquely draconian-, inmates usually return to society, bringing with them the scars of institutional violence, mental health deterioration, the scarlet letter<\/a> of employment barriers, and now, potentially, the coronavirus. It can be distinctly difficult to socially-distance while incarcerated, and so terrifying is the likelihood of an outbreak in these prison petrie-dishes that many inmates nation and worldwide are literally going<\/a> \u201cover-the-walls\u201d because it is a living nightmare\u2014or \u201cdeath sentence<\/a>\u201d\u2014inside. What can be said about a nation that embarks on a self-proclaimed \u201cFreedom Agenda<\/a>\u201d abroad whilst simultaneously locking up a higher proportion<\/a> of its population at home than any other country in the world\u2014including such \u201cenemies\u201d as Russia, China, and Cuba? The hypocrisy is so stark it provokes pure bewilderment. That the U.S. incarcerates at such insane rates leaves the rational man or woman with the stark realization that either there\u2019s a uniquely American predisposition to crime, or, far more likely, that the nation\u2019s criminal justice system largely invents \u201ccriminals\u201d and inherently lacks \u201cjustice.\u201d Nor does the United States of Incarceration<\/a> end at the ocean\u2019s edge. The prison-industrial-complex is a two-way street. Mass incarceration is the \u201cempire come home<\/a>,\u201d and vice versa. The Islamic State was largely conceived<\/a> in America\u2019s Iraqi prison farm, and U.S. detainee abuse in Saddam Hussein\u2019s old jails helped make \u201cterrorists\u201d<\/a> out of countless Arabs and Muslims from West Africa to Central Asia. So, in these pandemic times, let us finally admit that Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib are Riker\u2019s Island<\/a>, and the police murder of Eric Garner<\/a> is the military murder of Diluwar of Yakubi<\/a> at Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan. Finally, as Americans ponder the implications of coronavirus\u2019s spread within their jails, and in the carceral state that is the world under U.S. military hegemony, it\u2019s long past time to consider\u2014per Dostoyevsky<\/a>\u2014exactly what \u201cthe degree of civilization in\u201d American society \u201ccan be judged\u201d to be after \u201centering its prisons.\u201d A \u201cKinship with All Living Beings\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eugene Debs lived out, quite literally, the second and third stanzas of his oft-quoted courtroom declaration.  Official branded a \u201ccriminal element,\u201d for a time he was \u201cnot free.\u201d  He\u2019d ultimately serve<\/a> three years of his ten year sentence in Illinois, West Virginia, and Atlanta\u2019s Federal Penitentiary. Nevertheless, in 1920, with a certain ironic flair unique to the man, Debs ran, again\u2014this time from the inside of a cell\u2014on the Socialist ticket for president of the country that jailed him. His campaign buttons<\/a> sported a photo of a weathered Debs clothed in prison garb in front of his ubiquitous cell bars. The caption read: \u201cFor President, Convict No. 9653.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So beloved was this \u201ccaged bird\u2019s<\/a>\u201d song, that he still received<\/a> over 900,000 votes\u2014during the height of the First Red Scare<\/a>\u2014when it was genuinely dangerous to support such \u201cradical\u201d figures. It was the highest vote tally<\/a> in U.S. history for a Socialist Party presidential candidate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet today, as a deadly pandemic\u2014that respects neither class nor imaginary national boundaries\u2014rages and exposes the systemic rot<\/a> of America\u2019s domestic structures, and puts the lie<\/a> to the absurd fiction that far-flung forever war ensures homeland security, my guess is a new Eugene Debs would garner millions more votes. Bernie Sanders may have disappointed his movement\u2014in the interest of not ending up<\/a> like Ralph Nader<\/a>\u2014by endorsing<\/a> the former \u201csenator from MBNA<\/a>,\u201d Joe Biden, and left Americans with the paltry choice between a billionaire race-baiting demagogue and a corporate stooge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, call me crazy, but precisely a century after he had the temerity to run from prison, this moment\u2014and the future\u2014may belong to Eugene Debs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Danny<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Major Danny Sjursen<\/strong><\/a> is a U.S. Army strategist and former history instructor at West Point. He served tours with reconnaissance units in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has written a memoir and critical analysis of the Iraq War, Ghostriders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge<\/a><\/em>.  He lives with his wife and four sons near Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

May 01, 2020 by Common Dreams In this pandemic-era, it has become increasingly clear that we are only as healthy as the least insured\u2014hence the poorest\u2014in our society.  by Danny Sjursen  8 Comments Eugene Debs delivering a speech in Chicago in 1912. “I can see the dawn of the better day… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14476"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14476"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14480,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14476\/revisions\/14480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}