(Image: Lauren Walker / Truthout)
The United States will never be at peace with itself until it resolves the fact that it was birthed through injustice, exploitation and genocide. America, as many call it, was never great for everyone. Now, as problems that have existed since the earliest days of the US project boil over yet again, we should be prepared for what is to come. It shouldn’t be hard to imagine what we can expect next from a reactionary state apparatus, when we know what’s happened before. Activists and those who resist oppression and the state’s attempts at social control should be prepared for the coming repression.
Late last year, I wrote that the question wasn’t whether the police would use robots to kill Black people, the question was when. Now, some months later, the police in Dallas have used a robot to kill someone for the first time, and that person was Black, as I felt they likely would be. The suspected Dallas shooter, Micah Xavier Johnson, was also apparently a frustrated Black military veteran of the war in Afghanistan. Last year, I also wrote about the frustration Black military veterans feel when they return to a nation plagued by police violence and realize that their Blackness detrimentally outweighs any military service they can provide to this country. Both of these pieces that I’ve mentioned were written based on looking at US history and juxtaposing it with the present. Therefore, it’s not hard to foresee what I believe is an unnerving impending doom. With that said, there are necessary steps that can be taken.
The state encourages violence only when one is fighting in the name of empire, and not against it.
The state, government and its various arms are currently subject to international derision. The US is once again exposed, not as a beacon of hope for freedom and justice, but yet again as a hypocrite. Black people are not free here, and the failure of the state to use its hand to ensure at least some advances in equality calls the…