By OcJim

Even Jim Crow laws in the South in the form of poll taxes and intimidation at the polls, which suppressed black voting for a hundred years after the Civil War, were not as universally imposed, or laser-focused against opposition voting as the anti-voting laws being passed in over twenty Republican-controlled states, said to be stopping over 5 million from voting.

Jim Crow laws in the South were intended to put down southern blacks in a twisted states-rights government, and thus were racist in intention. Recent legislation passed by Republican-controlled states is totally anti-democratic, with the sole intention of disenfranchising those who largely vote for Democrats.

Literally we have a war against democracy in all of its forms.

Right-wing justices have already legalized the strangulation of democracy through the Citizen United ruling by the Supreme Court, this by permitting the rich to choke off anti-right-wing candidates through television attack ads, and making identification of the perpetrators behind those commercials impossible. Now the right-wing is working on the further assaults against democracy by forbidding the balloting by those who would vote for pro-people candidates.

The US once had the means to fight tyranny: three branches of government, executive, legislative and judicial, intended to give us checks and balances against it – but 40 years of focused attacks have compromised all three; the media, which used to inform and reveal graft and corruption – but it is almost wholly owned by plutocrats who now control information; voters, which at one time comprised an informed citizen’s army – but currently conservative forces are suppressing the vote and warping voter reason through propaganda, in effect, infusing the media and our culture with program pulp.

The slanted use of mass media by its corporate owners demonstrates modern technology’s morphing of more simple media manipulation in earlier times: Roman gladiator contests were designed to mollify the unruly poor and the idle, guiding their frustrations and rage toward selected targets.

The popularity of the so-called Republican debates is a curious consequence of a divide-and-conquer strategy, creating an audience of beleaguered, unemployed, and rancor-driven, narcissistic spectators.

We have a polarized populace nurtured by Republican politics, a divisive, rancorous and fear-driven class of people, fed through right-wing media outlets. We have a Republican drive to sabotage the economy and create an army of unemployed and homeless. We have a corporate-led exportation of jobs and industry. We have the corporate media feeding viewers tasteless spectacle fantasies to television audiences — entertainment news, reality shows, violent drama, and celebrity watches.

Feeding the frenzied debate audiences are Republican candidates with sociopathic utterances that demonize the unemployed, deride homosexuals, mock the needy, ridicule empathy, scorn education, label immigrants vultures, label all Arabs, terrorists, and propose enslaving children with low-paying jobs.

In effect, Republican candidates are ruthless gladiators like the picture above, stomping on the weak and vulnerable, and when ready for the kill, viewers are turning their thumbs down, happy that someone lower than themselves is punished.

Proof that empathy and goodness still survive, we have the Occupy Movement representing the majority. Because democracy’s traditional methods are stymied, a large contingent of the 99%, including the unemployed, retired, and debt-driven students, take to the streets, but the movement is under attack by police forces pushed to protect property and plutocratic interests.

But what is disturbing is that local law enforcement has been given over $500 million worth of military-grade weapons, much of it used against Occupiers, America’s own peaceful citizens.

The question might be, “Is this the ultimate face of tyranny, another military operation to suppress its own citizens, however peaceful?”