Republicans Are Trying to Kill Americans
for tax cuts for billionaires
In the dead of night, and I do mean dead, Republicans in the House of Representatives voted for a big, brutal bill that will take health care away from millions.
Many of these Americans will die as a result of this. Many others will suffer needlessly.
The purpose of this ‘big, brutal bill’ is death.
This is a prime example of what a Cameroonian historian and philosopher Achille Mbembe calls Necropolitics.
Dr. Kwok Pui Lan, a public intellectual and a Distinguished Scholar at Episcopal Divinity School, referenced Dr. Mbembe’s work in a panel discussion we did yesterday at the Feminist Liberation Theologians Network. The theme of the bi-yearly meeting of the FLTN was our work on our Substacks. Dr. Kwok’s Substack is called Kwok and Roll. I highly recommend it.
She said, from a forthcoming journal article she has done, "One of the tactics of necropolitics is the confinement of specific populations in particular spaces and the militarization of the policing of border. Mbembe calls this 'caged humanity' and uses Palestine as a prime example."
The publisher of Necropolitics calls Mbembe “a leader in the new wave of francophone critical theory, theorizes the genealogy of the contemporary world, a world plagued by ever-increasing inequality, militarization, enmity, and terror as well as by a resurgence of racist, fascist, and nationalist forces determined to exclude and kill.”
I have immediately ordered the book. Mbembe outlines how “democracy has begun to embrace its dark side---what he calls its ‘nocturnal body’---which is based on the desires, fears, affects, relations, and violence that drove colonialism.”
Given the utterly appalling way Trump has just treated South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in an Oval Office ambush, the violence of colonialism is clearly embraced by this US administration.
President Ramaphosa, a protege of Nelson Mandela, handled it superbly. “I’m sorry I don’t have a plane to give you,” was his remark.
The Republicans passed this ghastly bill that declares war on the poorest and most vulnerable Americans by hiding from citizens in the darkest hours.
After Trump promised not to cut Medicaid, a sure sign from the liar that he would, they have cut it to ribbons.
It is the largest transfer of wealth from the poorest Americans to the richest. It will also impoverish the nation by adding $3 trillion to the budget deficit and give billions to the richest among us. All this is being done to extend the Trump tax cuts, which disproportionately benefit wealthy Americans.
This is certainly profoundly corrupt, but it has a distinct smell of sulphur as well. It is straight from the pit of hell.
I know you have no shame, but shame on you.
The smell of sulphur.