Let me tell you a story…it won’t take very long…about how far the Bushist doctrine of fear and power has spread.
How far, how deeply and how dangerously it has spread.
Security people at Charles DeGaulle airport broke the arm of the internationally famous jazz trumpet player Valery Ponomarev
last week…an American citizen for over 30 years…because he argued with the gate people at an Air India flight to New York when they demanded that he gate check his trumpet rather than bring it onto the plane. A trumpet that:
A-Fits with no problem whatsoever in the overheads.
and
B-Had been properly tagged as carryon baggage before he got to the gate.
Read on.
Now you must know that that musicians try very hard to get their instruments onto planes whenever they can do so. Baggage handlers are notorious for breaking things, and a broken instrument is painful in any number of ways. So is a lost or misrouted instrument. It’s not like you can just pick up another one before the gig and play at your usual level of competence. Even if you are lucky enough to FIND one, every instrument has its own quirks and personality, and most professional musicians own instruments that are not easily replaceable. Older instruments or ones that were custom built or modified to their specifications. And since 9/11 and the whole Homeland Security/Terrorism scare-scam, if you DO carefully pack an instrument in a special ape-proof flight case and allow it to be checked as baggage, the minimum wagers that are doing “security” work in the baggage depeartment are often capable of opening the case, taking the instrument out to see if it’s a bomb (Duh…a trumpet or violin REALLY looks bomb-like on an X-ray machine.) repacking it backwards and upside down and then forgetting to close the latches.
I have SEEN this happen.
So Valery…63 years old, maybe 5′ 5″ tall, 140 lbs…pitched a bitch at the gate when some pissed-off functionary at a loading gate decided to pull rank on him. They called security and four (as he so colorfully put it to me today when he told me the story) “giant asshole cops” took him someplace where there were no witnesses, tried to forcibly take his trumpet away and when he would not let go of it with his right hand, pulled his left arm behind his back and broke it.
And people sniff and moan when the word “fascism” is used to describe what is happening in America and in much of Western Europe as well.
Vaslery did not try to fight these people. As he related today (I wish I could reproduce his great Russan accent) “I grew up in Soviet Union under Stalin and Khruschev. I know enough not to try to hit a cop. Let alone four of them. Big, stupid motherfuckers.” (Here he stands on tiptoe and raises his remaining functioning hand as high in the air as he can.) “They were THS BIG!!! FOUR of them!!! I am not THAT stupid.”
And indeed he is not.
Here is a man who grew up in Russia when playing “jazz” was almost an act of open rebellion and got so good that Art Blakey hired him to join the Jazz Messengers in the ’70s. And if you do not know how serious THAT was…Blakey was possibly the only equal to Miles Davis in terms of hearing and hiring the best of the best in the post-bop era.
Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter…that level.
The BEST of the best.
So here we have this INSATIABLY positive little Russian guy, authentically playing in an idiom that had its genesis in the riot-torn black ghettos of America during the Civil Rights era. Moving to New York, getting his citizenship, re-starting a life here…a true “American” success story, when there really was such a thing. Now seriously crippled…they had to operate because it was a complex break…and unable to even HOLD a trumpet, because George fucking Bush and his handlers have decided that they are the deciders and we are their subjects.
I just thought I would bring this general “fascism” discussion down to a more personal level. This can happen to ANY of us who do not totally surrender on any level whatsoever to the madness of these people.
It’s their way or it’s their way.
One way or another.
It’s the cop way.
Do as we say…no matter HOW stupid it may be…or we will beat you down physically.
We have seen discussions of what “fascism” is. What the word really means. High level theorizing about the state and corporations, etc. Objections to the supposed trivializing of the word.
Well…I’ve got news for you.
THIS is “fascism.”
It’s their way or it’s their way.
One way or another.
It’s the cop way.
Do as they say…no matter HOW stupid it may be…or they will beat you down physically.
No recourse.
They will beat you down NOW.
And this is not just happening in America. It is now almost worldwide. It is spreading, this attitude. Not diminishing..These people are always with us, waiting for a chance to run their game. I have seen the same hard faces in Holland, in Scandinavia…in the most civilized places on earth. The same faces bolstered by the same weapons.
Waiting.
Slick or crude.
In high positions or in low.
Waiting for their chance to rule.
To TOTALLY rule.
“It’s my or or it’s my way. Step AWAY from your rights with your hands in the air.”
And we have given them their chance, now.
God help us all.
You doubt this idea? OK. Try to imagine the above story happening in 1996. Nope. End of argument. This was not “police brutality.” This was not some poor denizen of the lower depths of society being set upon by the bottom feeders that always make their living scavenging down there. This was an internationally recognized artist on tour.
It was a random act of fascist violence, and acts like this function in a fascist system as ongoing warnings to ALL. “Stay in line or else!!! You could be next.”
So when lefty theorizers start bitching and moaning about how theoretically imperfect politicians like Hillary Clinton are “no better than their opponents”, I get pissed off.
The fish rots from the head, and the soulless functionaries at the top of the international political food chain right now…from CheneyBush on down…are in the process of tearing apart nearly 800 years of attempted civilized progress. Say from the signing of the Magna Carta. They are doing a better job than did their teachers, the Hitler people.
MUCH better.
Because they are stealth stealers.
One little right at a time.
No Blitzkrieg necessary.
No Kristallnacht.
No burning of the Reichstag.
Just taking little bits of our souls.
A right here, a thought there.
Until there is nothing left but obedience.
“It is our way or it is our way.”
“Whatchoo gonna DO about it, chump?”
Well…what ARE we going to do about it?
Inquiring minds want to know.
What are we going to do about it if the November Dream…“DEMOCRATS WIN!!! DEMOCRATS WIN !!!”…turns into the same wisp of smoke as have all the OTHER Fitzmasses Past?
What CHOO gonna do about it?
Motherfucker.
AG
And further…
MUCH better.
Because they are stealth stealers.
One little right at a time.
No Blitzkrieg necessary.
No Kristallnacht.
No burning of the Reichstag.
Just taking little bits of our souls.
A right here, a thought there.
Until there is nothing left but obedience.
“It is our way or it is our way.”
On the same general subject:
Well…what ARE you going to do about it?
if the electoral process does not work this time?
Hmmmmm…???
AG
Try this link for the Joe Bageant essay Carpooling with Adolf Eichmann if you have trouble with the above links like I did. Or this link at Joe’s home site.
………..
I guess no one knows what they will do when hope for change runs out. That is what is so scary about this regime. They throw hope out at us when it suits their needs. Notice gas prices lately? I’m hoping they won’t be able to steal enough elections to stay in complete power. And that there are enough Democratic congresspeople with souls left to make a difference. We’ll see.
I totally and completely denounce what was done to Mr. Ponomarev. I understand the relationship between a musician and his axe. I tripped and fell and broke a fiddle to smithereens about seven years ago. I cried. I played that fiddle for twenty years and I’ve never been able to find a ‘replacement’. If I had ever been asked to check my instrument into baggage, I wouldn’t have been nice about it either. Thugs don’t understand things like that, or if they do they hate you all the more for it.
Sorry about the link. 5AM writing. Thanks.
AG
Glad to help out.
Bet on it!
Thank YOU for an exceptional diary and a heads up to the awful attack on Ponomarev.
I agree with everything you said and with your call for action against the creeping stealing. I’m doing my part down here in backwards country as best I can.
We’re going to challenge the Police State next week:
We’re Marching-Permit, or no Permit
One small victory to report.
The NYPD did an aboutface and has granted a permit to UFPJ to march across the street from the UN afterall! Kinda strange. Does anyone else smell a setup? Either way, backing down never solves anything. Maybe I won’t need bail money afterall.
OMG Arthur. This is too sad a story for me to celebrate the evolution of your diary writing to this level of excellence.
I never miss one of yours and am always grateful when you send me to read Joe Bageant – another virtuoso.
Since you’re in Manhattan, are ya busy next Tuesday morning…or what?
I will be out of town.
Good luck.
And…be careful.
There is a fine line bewteen successfully confronting these motherfuckers in an attempt to awaken the sleeple and becoming propaganda fodder for hustlers like Rush Limbaugh.
A FINE line.
AG
gonna give up their power now. Does anyone really believe we can trust voting machines? The gig is up. We are screwed unless we do what they do in other countries…overthrow the stinking fascists in power.
No, I don’t trust the voting machines, or anything else about this terminally corrupted political system that is not even run by real human beings anymore, but by inhuman corporate entities in an incestuous relationship with religious extremists, and power mad neocon organisations.
All of them are inhuman entities who have no heart, no soul, no conscience, and no concern beyond feeding their own insatiable appetites. They are skilled at picking out the worst t among us, the greediest, most corruptable, like the Bush/Cheney Cabal..who are more than willing to their bidding, while pounding thier empty chests and waving the American Flag all the while.
It has not come to that.
Not yet.
I do not believe so, anyway.
This November will be a good reading of where we are really at.
If it is a total bust…things are changed forever, and what happens next is not going to be pretty.
If it is a total win…both houses of the legislature…then the next two years show promise of some real hope.
If, as is most likely, it is something approaching a draw…the Dems win one house by a slim and threatened margin, etc. etc. etc….then we are still in step-by-step territory, and there will be two MORE years of uncertainty.
Followed by another watershed election.
If after THAT one nothing appreciably changes…then the path will become really clear. Armed resistance will arise within the US…it will HAVE to arise out of the need for sheer self-protection on any number of levels of the society… and we will come under defensive attack from without by much of the rest of the world.
That’s how I see it, anyway.
Buckle up…it’s going to be a rough ride no matter WHICH way the wind blows.
Later…
AG
I saw this yesterday searching for something from Patrick Fitzgerald. Thought you might be interested.
The whole world is mad as hell now.
It does seem at times that humanity has gone barking loonie.
Thanks for telling us what happened, Arthur.
Great job – sad and scary story.
posting privileges…I was bumped off there once too often to EVER return…post a short diary about this thing. Maybe quote from some of my post with a link here.
There are still many well-meaning people on Dkos, and I would like to spread this story as broadly as possible. Maybe someone will be able to help Valery or possibly the story might even get picked up by the mass media.
He could use all the help he can get.
Anyone care to take the plunge?
AG
What an awful awful story. I am appalled and disgusted by this. I will post this, with a link, over on DK. I don’t diary there much, I’m more of a snarker, but this is way too much to ignore. With your permission, I will link to this and recap. Please let me know.
Do you have a link to this story? Links make a big difference on DK, as I’m sure you know. š
This IS the story.
From the horse’s mouth to your ears. Valery related it to me personally on Thursday 10/14 at a rehearsal for his band.
AG