By OcJim

In 2008, many feared that the Bush administration would somehow stay around for a third term by staging a terrorist event and declaring martial law rather than holding elections. Accordingly, many believed they were saved with the advent of Barack Obama’s election. While Bush’s departure proved that America was not yet a proto-fascist country, Obama’s corporate course during his presidency has demonstrated that political control by the rich will not be extinguished through a constitutional vote.

We have come to recognize that we are a plutarchy, a combination of plutocracy, rule by the rich, and oligarchy, rule by a small segment of society, who are distinguished in our country by wealth.

As the plutarchy has taken hold, it has worked to perpetuate itself with its own brand of monarchy, making sure wealth is passed on to its own elite – elimination of what their adherents call “the death tax” is accomplishing that. Furthermore, dissent cannot be tolerated. Its latest threat — and victim — is the Occupy movement.

Thus, one of the biggest oppositions to plutocratic hegemony and philosophy was struck down by attacking its logistical base of operations to disrupt communication and organization. While this was happening, their strong-arm envoys forbade video reporting by anyone, especially the media that was there to capture the moment, including the police brutality at some Occupy sites. Crushing Occupy was akin to a military operation, using militarized local police forces against non-violent Occupiers — and its manifestation continues.

As a bullying charge against Occupy, hoping to set Occupiers up as aggressive malcontents, Chicago’s Mayor Rahm Emanuel directed the city council to pass a city ordinance slamming the door on Occupy’s freedom of speech, requiring demonstration permits that hamstring protest with red-tape, and then punish potential demonstrators with fines and imprisonment.

Plastic netting, “free-speech zones,” bans on weapons such as pens, and beefed-up police forces face demonstrators in Tampa and Charlotte. Billionaires like David Koch and Sheldon Adelson look on in satisfaction as threats of the federal government imposing more stringent national security laws loom as well.

Plutocratic agents have already dried up financial and material support, while destroying any resources Occupy already has, including a Occupier property at Zuccoti Park — computers, generators, tents, and thousands of books, a crime that will go unpunished.

Rival organizations like the group “Stand for Oakland” have been created. Infiltration of the movement to foster internal divisions and rivalries seeks to discredit and purge the rebel leadership. Fomented or staged, vandalism and physical confrontation is designed to alienate the wider populace, and dispatching criminal elements and the mentally ill to Occupy gatherings is coordinated.

Then you invent rapes and other atrocities and plant the stories in mainstream media. Andrew Breitbart, right-wing envoy and Washington Times reporter, who has appeared to be drunk in video clips aired on Current TV, was caught irrationally yelling insults at Occupy participants. His lieutenants subsequently released 17 invented cases of rapes involving Occupy on his website. None of the 17 was proved credible, and at least half were noted when Occupy members were actually the victims.

Occupy’s transparency, non-violence and truth had enough impact – and support — to be reported by the mainstream media. With its threat to the 1%, it would appear that the tools of the government were used to sever it from the mainstream.

The coordinated attacks last fall demonstrated synchronization using Homeland Security and FBI resources. Certainly security forces of the government helped with the effort; for a security and surveillance state, after 9/11, has amassed a vast arsenal and array of tools to spy, using veiled organizations and agents to track all activities. Activist movements seem to draw a larger percentage of spying resources than terrorist activities.

Militaristic suppression is always a lethal threat when used against democratic dissent. The unbridled use of power, money and control can easily run amuck. Civil rights protests in the 1960s and 70s saw deaths of 4 peacefully demonstrating students, with 9 others wounded, when the National Guard fired into the crowd at Kent State University in 1970, for example.

Puppets of the rich and religious pretenders, Republican candidates, Romney, Santorum, Paul, and Gingrich, are proclaiming “Nearer our God to Thee,’ mimicking sanctity as they grapple in the media mud, each kept afloat by his own billionaire backer.

What we might ask as we watch and listen, “Is our democracy like the Titanic, considered unsinkable but still a victim, as we watch them and their rich backers take to their plutocratic lifeboats while we sink beneath the waves?”

Or we could support the common good, represented by Occupy, to fight the ruthless individualism preached by the right.