The Execution of Whitey Bulger
The Commonness of the Grotesque and the Macabre
The Grotesque Whitey Bulger Whitey Bulger has been reported to have been murdered in his cell, a few hours after he was locked-up in a new prison. Bulger is a famous gangster from Boston. Numerous Hollywood movies and documentaries have been made which chronicle his brutal career as a mobster/crime boss and mass murderer. While there is a minority of people who may understand him to be some kind of folk hero, the general public verdict on Whitey is that he was a despicable person.
He was convicted of murder, and sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole. He was transferred from one supermax prison to another, and within a few hours of his arrival in this new prison, and his new cell, he was found, with the unmistakable evidence leading to the conclusion that he was tortured, and then ultimately killed.
According to news reports, the inmates who were with him in his cell moved him out of the view of surveillance cameras “before pummeling him to death using a padlock stuffed inside a sock…” This is the testimony of law-enforcement officials. In other words, the infamous Whitey Bulger is being wheeled around in his prison cell on camera; after which he was beaten to death. His eyes were gouged out of their sockets. After taking his eyes out, they beat his head until it was mush. “They apparently tuned him up to the point where he was unrecognizable,” said one anonymous law-enforcement official.
The authorities and the national media are wringing their hands over this “breach of protocol.” Yes, he was sentenced to life in prison. Then, he was executed. This is otherwise known as an “extra-judicial” execution.
Given that very few of us have any sympathy for this known criminal/sadist/murderer, why does it matter that he was tortured in this most grotesque manner and then killed in his prison cell? It matters because no one should be monstrously tortured and then assassinated in prison. It matters because it is virtually impossible for anyone as famous as Whitey to be tortured for at least thirty minutes while on TV, and then murdered in a supermax prison without the wink and nod from the authorities. The latter phrasing is generous — there was no wink and nod; this was an outright execution perpetrated under the orders of prison officials. The logic of the most naïve elementary school child would be that the prison administrators, backed by higher government officials — state and federal — carried out his execution.
The Macabre John Geoghan The infamous serial child rapist, John Geoghan met a similar fate. The subject of, and for a time one of the leading protagonists in, the decadent saga about that now world-wide known factory for the production of sexually molested children, the Catholic Church, Geoghan worked his “magic” of raping young boys right in front of the highest, high Cardinals, Archbishops, Patriarchs, Popes and Bishops of one of the most wealthy Churches in the entire world over a thirty year period. It is now unmistakable that all of these leaders of world Catholicism were well aware that Geoghan was routinely raping children, if not on an hourly basis for thirty years, then at least daily. It has come to light that they supported him and his kind in this activity for numerous decades.
He was merely the lead rapist. There were, and are now, it has come to the attention of the world’s people, literally thousands of these rapists, in the official position of Catholic priests, roaming around raping children in their charge and those who weren’t/aren’t.
There has never been a time, even after the public outing of Geoghan’s career as a child molester, when the Catholic Church has denounced this world-wide system of sexual torture of children. After preliminarily agreeing to award $30 million to be split up among 86 of Geoghan’s victims, the Boston archdiocese pulled out of it, changed their minds.
Geoghan was publicly accused of raping over 130 boys. Ultimately, he was convicted in January 2002 of indecent assault and battery for grabbing the buttocks of a 10-year-old boy in a swimming pool. He was sentenced to nine to ten years in prison.
However, after less than one hour in his prison cell, while in protective custody at the maximum-security Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Lancaster, Massachusetts, Geoghan was strangled and stomped to death. It has been disclosed that he was placed in a cell with a known cannibal who promptly ate him for lunch.
How does the most famous serial rapist in the world get slaughtered, eaten alive within an hour of arriving in his prison cell? This is how: the Catholic Church officials placed a call to the Prison officials and told them to take him out.
Why is this important? It is important for at least two reasons: (1) Know that when they assassinate prisoners whom they do not like right in front of us, there are hundreds, if not more, Black and Latino prisoners, who are nameless and faceless, who are executed in this same “extra judicial” fashion, yearly, and nobody hears a word about it.
(2) It fits in with their current advance towards open fascism. They are inuring the public to the commonness of the macabre and the grotesque.
The Commonness of the Grotesque and the Macabre Think about it: A gunman breezes into a synagogue in Pittsburg and machine-guns down over a dozen worshipers and half a dozen police. The President’s first reaction is to ask how the World Series is shaping up. The media for their part, brings on the fascist president of the Likud Party in Israel… to address the American people on the correct way to respond to such a horrific crime; that correct reaction would be to … support Israel in their genocidal campaign against the Palestinian people, perhaps the most sustained and egregious genocidal campaign of our time.
They are inuring us to the commonness of the grotesque and the macabre:
· A CNN reporter is strangled to death immediately as he enters the Saudi embassy in Turkey. His body is thrown in a barrel, and gallons of acid are poured on it, disintegrating it. The Saudi officials say they have no idea where he is. The President of the United States says… “Hmmmm, that’s a plausible explanation. Think about it, you red-blooded Americans: We are receiving billions of dollars for our weaponry — and, after all, it’s the best weaponry in the world — from the Islamic theocracy [which is nothing but a scarf worn over the head of a military dictatorship]. Given this hard evidence, they must be… telling the truth…”
· Two Saudi girls have their bodies wash up on the shore of the Hudson River in New York City. Though the bodies, which were duct-taped together in this grisly murder, were discovered three days before the synagogue massacre, the authorities failed to mention it, fearing it would add to the “discomfort” of the people of the country, still reeling from the massacre of White Americans in Pittsburg;
· The people of the country were not reeling from the execution of two Black grandparents in Kentucky two days before the synagogue shootings, because the national media took the incident off the airwaves in favor the of the Pittsburgh massacre. After the white supremacist shot these Black shoppers in the parking lot of the mall, he was given a teddy bear and a therapist because the authorities thought he was mentally ill;
· The President speaks for hours on the subject of the Central Americans fleeing endemic poverty and violence in their own countries, calling them rapists, murderers, criminals, gangsters and terrorists. On national news he called for the army to shoot on sight when they decide that some little boy is throwing a rock at them. Understand, the average Black man who is executed in the street by police is not being shot for allegedly getting ready to throw a rock at the police. They are being gunned down for running away from the police.
They are preparing us for Marshall Law. They are trying to make ghoulish murders, which they commit, so common that the average American will just take a few deep breaths, and keep on slaving for them.
They are whipping up into a Nazi-like frenzy, the most backward, delirious elements of the most racist/misogynist among the US population, and preparing the rest of us for slaughter… which we are supposed to sigh and moan about … until it’s too late for us to stand up and fight.
Stand Up and Fight But stand up and fight we must. We are the large majority. The people of this country who benefit not at all from demonizing…ourselves — we are the large majority. It has been pointed out that Trump and his ilk do not even like most White people.
Think about the sections of the population which the ruling group, with Trump as their mouthpiece, is attacking: African Americans and all People of Color, immigrants, women, children, Muslims, the elderly, workers, people of Jewish heritage, the disabled, the infirm, poor people, the LGBTQ community; you can add your own section — name it, they hate us.
It is our task to find our common ground; to support each other — to defend each of these groups, even as it may not be your own. This is a mandatory social/political regimen for all of us.
Another of the work that is facing us as the majority is to not only understand and act on the knowledge that it is us, the majority who must take action. We must also know that it is not the Demoblicans or the Republicrats who can get out us out of this mess. We can try to put a finger in the dike by electing some Democrats, but the history of the development of fascism inexorably teaches us that these well meaning liberals will ultimately create the conditions by which the fascists continue their ascendancy.
Though Trump, the personage, is a buffoon, so, his handlers, the ruling class of this country, are far from buffoons. They are studying; they are researching tirelessly. They are finely tuning their advance on the rights and security of the masses of the people of this country and others. Their plan for us is either slavery or annihilation.
They do not look at study as an elastic task. Yes, Trump may be semi-literate, but the people who really run this country are not. They trotted out Benjamin Netanyahu to address the American people - when I say “they,” I’m saying all TV and radio stations, including that stinking corpse of liberalism, NPR. If you do not know what it means for them to do that, it means that you need to study history.
Study is an Inelastic Task The time has passed for us to wring our hands and moan. It is time for us to get organized. At the center of our organizing is the inelastic task of study. A revolution is not made by some extremely intelligent heroes. It is a change made by the decisive action of the people in our millions.
It will not do for a few of us to study, and then tell the rest of us what time it is. It behooves every one of you to do your part. We must look closely at the process by which fascism rises to power — how does it happen; by what means do they fool the majority until there is no one left to defend us? How is it that most people have been ignorant to the fact that Black folk, Native Americans, People of Color have been living in, at the very minimum, semi-fascist conditions for our entire time in this country. Failure to understand that, on our part, and on the part of our White American allies, will lead to disastrous results.
We must study and organize … together.