Ted Rall: As The Country Falls Apart, It's Time for Our Revolution

As the Country Falls Apart, It's Time for Our Revolution

By Ted Rall article link

November 10, 2010 | Seven Stories Press | AlterNet

The following is an excerpt from Ted Rall's new book, The Anti-American Manifesto (Seven Stories, 2010).

You can feel it. Or maybe you can't.

It doesn't matter whether you feel it or not. It's happening. The story of the United States of America as we know it -- not merely as the world's dominant superpower, but as a discrete political, economic, and geographic entity -- is drawing to a close due to a convergence of emerging economic, environmental, and political crises.

Nothing lasts forever, empires least of all. And this one, which only began to expand in earnest circa the year 1900, doesn't feel like it has the staying power of ancient Rome.

Not at all.

But we're not here to talk about the vague possibility of collapse at some point in the future. We are here -- in this book and within this historical moment -- because the collapse feels as though it is currently in progress.

We are here because the U.S. is going to end soon. There's going to be an intense, violent, probably haphazard struggle for control. It's going to come down to us versus them. The question is: What are you going to do about it?

Definitions:

Us: Hard-working, underpaid, put upon, thoughtful, freedom-loving, disenfranchised, ordinary people

Them: Reactionary, stupid, overpaid, greedy, shortsighted, exploitative, power-mad, abusive politicians and corporate executives

In 2008, like the people of the Soviet Union in the mid-1980s, we put our hopes into a young new leader. He is the kind of fresh-faced reformer who just might have been able to do some good had he been put into power decades ago. "Black Man Given Nation's Worst Job," read the headline in the satirical weekly newspaper the Onion after Barack Obama won. He has failed. It is by design that internal reformers like Mikhail Gorbachev and Obama inevitably come too late to actually accomplish anything. Even if a leader like Obama were inclined to push for the sweeping reforms that might save American late-stage capitalism from itself, as did Franklin D. Roosevelt -- and there is no evidence that the thought has crossed Obama's mind -- his fellow powerbrokers, fixated on quarterly profit statements and personal position, would never allow it.

The media talks a lot about reform. But it's too late for nips and tucks. Reform can only fix a system if the system is viable and open to change. Neither is true about the United States of America.

A veneer of normalcy slapped -- sloppily slapped -- on top of a stinking pile of obviously out-of-control unsustainability can no longer disguise the ugly truth: The United States of America is finished. Shopkeepers still take our dollars, foreigners still fear our bombs, but watching the crazy federal deficits, the wildly expanding international military presence, the putrid joke that is our healthcare / education / employment system, and a natural world in free fall (mainly due to the crap pumped into the air and water by the people and corporations of the United States) makes the debate over whether Democrats are better than Republicans feel surreal.

Government exists to serve economic power. In the U.S. and globally, economic power is concentrated in business, namely the large corporations whose profits account for more than ten percent of the nation's gross domestic product. Corporations can't operate without the government. They are codependent, yet independent of and barely responsive to the nation. A nation goes on with or without its government, with or without the big businesses we take for granted.We are not the government that serves those companies. They are parasites, vampires, hideous monsters that underpay and overcharge us and get fat on the spread. Who are we then?

We are their victims. We are weak and pathetic. But only by choice.

We can wait for the system to collapse of its own accord, for the rage of the downtrodden and dispossessed to build, for chaos of some sort to expose and destroy it. But implosion might take a long time. And when it happens, we may find ourselves even more powerless than we are now. They -- the hardcore, racist, undereducated, fundamentalist Christian, anti-civil liberties Right -- are preparing to step into the breach, to seize power. They can't wait to unleash their venomous hatred on the city-dwelling commie hipster fags they despise. They are armed. They recognize that the system is doomed. They've seen this coming. They're organized and willing to merge their disparate brands of conservatism under a common leadership. Most importantly, they get it. They don't need to be convinced that everything is in play. They're putting it in play.

Christian fundamentalists, the millennial end-of-the-worlders obsessed with the Left Behind series about the End Times, neo-Nazi racists, rural black-helicopter Michigan Militia types cut from the same inbred cloth as Timothy McVeigh, allied with "mainstream" gun nuts and right-wing Republicans, have been planning, preparing, and praying for the destruction of the "Godless," "secular" United States for decades. In the past, they formed groups like the John Birch Society and the Aryan Nations. Now the hard Right has a postmodern, decentralized non-organization organization called the Tea Party.

Right-wing organizational names change, but they amount to the same thing: the reactionary sociopolitical force -- the sole force -- poised to fill the vacuum when collapse occurs. The scenario outlined by Margaret Atwood's prescient novel The Handmaid's Tale -- rednecks in the trenches, hard military men running things, minorities and liberals taken away and massacred, setting the stage for an even more extreme form of laissez-faire corporate capitalism than we're suffering under today -- is a fair guess of how a post-U.S. scenario will play out unless we prepare to turn it in another direction.

Although the U.S. has fascist tendencies, it is unlikely that an ascendant American right would embrace fascism in its classic form. But a post-collapse reactionary government would likely have some attributes of fascism. Robert Paxton, who was my history professor at Columbia and is widely regarded as the nation's leading expert on the field, wrote the book on the subject (The Anatomy of Fascism). As Professor Paxton told me in 1991, the United States is the nation that is the most likely to go fascist, the one that has the most of the necessary ingredients -- including distrust of parliamentary democracy, extreme militarism, and a highly industrialized society -- required for a true fascist state. As things stand, there will be no one to prevent this nightmare.

So this book is a call to arms. And an appeal to self-preservation to those who know we can do better.

If Not Now, When?

A war is coming. At stake: our lives, the planet, freedom, living. The government, the corporations, and the extreme right are prepared to coalesce into an Axis of Evil. Are you going to fight back? Will you do whatever it takes, including taking up arms?

History does not really repeat itself. No two historical moments are ever the same. The circumstances that govern a given street corner in Pittsburgh at 8:00 p.m. on December 9, 2011, will never recur.

Yet the motivations and needs of human beings remain constant. There are always parallels with the past, lessons to be learned, bits and pieces that will apply to present and future circumstances. There are even a few eternal truths.

Thinking about the present situation, the historical analogy that best seems to fit the current crisis is the collapse -- to be exact, the period shortly before the collapse -- of the Soviet Union. The parallels are instructive and scary:

* Overextended empire (U.S. forces currently fighting in Yemen, Pakistan, the Philippines, Colombia, Haiti, plus more than five hundred thousand soldiers and U.S.-funded mercenaries stationed in hundreds of bases around the world)

* Fiscal crisis (skyrocketing national debt owned by foreigners, insane military budget, soaring trade deficits, crash of credit markets, wildly imbalanced tax structure)

* Foreign quagmire (to wit, Afghanistan and Iraq) ! Rising rampant unemployment (unofficial rates over 20 percent)

* Lack of confidence of the citizenry in their government

* Increasingly out-of-touch rulers (government officials talking about economic recovery, declaring recessions over when they never talk about them starting, focusing on bank bailouts when everyone knows it would be more effective to directly help mortgage holders)

* Exceptionalist delusions (the belief that we're too big, different, and good to fail, which stifles any attempt to discuss problems)

* Widespread apathy (low voter turnout, disinterest in news and politics, drastically low newspaper readership but growth of hyperlocal media)

* Weak or nonexistent opposition

That last item is where you come in.

You must change that. You must become strong. You must organize. You must do whatever it takes to oppose the system.When you get the chance, you must destroy it. If you don't kill it, it will die nonetheless. But it will drag us down along with it. That is what happened to the Russians. Though some Marxist analysts attribute the events of 1991 to counterrevolutionary forces -- the politicians who gathered around Boris Yeltsin certainly fit the bill in some respects -- the Soviet government wasn't actually toppled. It collapsed. Broke and ideologically exhausted, its adherence to revolutionary socialist principles having devolved to mere lip service, the very idea of government as a viable and necessary entity withered and disappeared. Power decentralized. Without an organized group of opposition leaders poised to take the reins, the vacuum was filled by former factory managers and gangsters who backed the men who morphed into Russia's present-day oligarchs.

Today Russia is the world's biggest narcostate, a playground for biznesmeni (businessmen) and brutal men who murder journalists and anyone else who criticizes them. Disparity of wealth has soared. A tiny elite, one or two percent of the population, owns everything. There are slot machines in the Moscow metro.

Revolution, though bloody and terrifying, would have been easier than the slow convulsions of collapse. So it will be here.

If the U.S. government is going to collapse anyway, it behooves us to first replace it with something that can stand in its place. Unless we act, we'll have to deal with a post-collapse scenario, in which we'll have to fend off roving criminal gangs, hoodlums, predatory corporations, oppressive residual government entities, and an emboldened political right.

Mad Max, Not Ecotopia

The enemy is inertia. There are a zillion reasons not to do anything; indeed, we Americans haven't done anything -- hell, we haven't thought about doing anything -- for generations. So, at risk of repeating myself, I must emphasize that our current crisis -- economic and political collapse, a surging right poised to take over, with possible environmental apocalypse looming just around the corner -- is not going to resolve itself in a way that we like if we sit on our asses. The current U.S. government must be prophylactically removed. Our economic and social structure must be radically reinvented. These things can only happen by using force.

Though small in numbers, anarchists and "deep-green" anti-civilization environmentalists are highly influential in what passes for the American Left, publishing well-regarded books, magazines, and blogs that inspire many people. Deep-green types fantasize about a collapse scenario that will save the world without anyone having to lift a finger. They imagine an involuntarily deindustrializing economy that allows the earth to heal while people gather to form small clans and low-impact villages based on ideals of equality. Here is a quote from Jan Lundberg, a deep-green proponent of "peak oil" theory: "New social norms and tribal law will help break from the past and possibly outlaw incipient reversion to the failed system of exploitation of people and nature. In any case, the 'new' model of sharing and cooperation will outdo in productivity any vestiges of the old models of selfishness and trying to insulate oneself or one's family from the surrounding changed world."

That would be nice, but I don't see how the deep-green idyll could logically follow the disintegration of the United States government. Theoretically, people might form intentional communities (the current term for communes) and/or polyamorous clans of one hundred to one hundred fifty in Ecotopia (the term for a theoretical independent Pacific Northwest), living off the land, all local and sustainable-like. But these utopian societies won't be able to count on being left alone to live peacefully. The millions of partisans who follow Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and right-wing televangelists happen to be the best-armed people around, and they despise just about everyone who doesn't think and pray like them. They will see collapse as affirmation of their beliefs that secular liberalism is destructive. They will also see it as an opportunity to create a new, ordered world atop the ashes. They will act to stop teenage sluts from getting abortions, teach niggers a lesson, and slaughter those spics, dots, and everyone else who doesn't fit into their vision of what and who is right. Anarchists may opt out of revolution, but counterrevolution will come to them.

Collapse of the U.S. government will be a multidimensional disaster. People, infrastructure, and institutions we count on will be destroyed. How will we live without water treatment plants, heating fuel, and industrially-manufactured medicines? What will likely follow will be frightening and even more destructive: post-Soviet-style gangster capitalism, perhaps, warlordism in rural areas, a hard turn to the racist right, even genocide. Doing nothing will seal our doom.

So let's do something. Let's seize power now, before it's too late. Before they (the bad people who are waiting in the wings) do.

If you are old enough to remember the early 1980s, how did you feel when you watched the news and saw Polish workers rise up under the banner of the Solidarity movement?

When Chinese students took over Tiananmen Square?When the citizens ofMoscow took to the streets to put down a coup by Soviet officialsmeant to end perestroika? When you watched Afghan women burn their burqas after the 2001 U.S. invasion that deposed the Taliban? You were probably thrilled. After all, these news stories were presented by U.S. corporate media as officially approved acts of personal and national liberation. And there was some truth to that. These were acts of free will. Of courage. In defense of freedom. You had to have been happy.

I was. I was excited -- even though I knew there was less than met the eye to these news accounts. Afghan women, for example, got paid five hundred bucks each by major network television crews to burn their burqas. After the Broll had been shot, they bought new burqas for a buck and put them on. I was in Afghanistan at the time, so I know the truth. Yet the power of television is such that I am moved when I watch this (phony) footage. Even though it's bullshit. It's like the statue of Saddam Hussein being pulled down in 2003. It is known that the show at Firdos Square was staged3 by a U.S. Army "Psy-Ops" propaganda detachment. The men kicking "Saddam's" head were flown in from exile on U.S.military transports for the occasion; many of them weren't even Iraqi. Nevertheless, images of liberation are always intoxicating.

How do you feel when you hear about a revolution? You feel good. Oppressors have been toppled, justice has been served, and the people have taken control of their own destiny.

So why not you?

Why not us? Why shouldn't we free ourselves? Why shouldn't we seize the mansions and bank accounts of the rich/thieves? Why shouldn't we nationalize corporations? Why can't we take the CEOs who pay themselves millions while firing workers, put them on trial, and throw them in prison? Why shouldn't we bring home the foot soldiers of the military-industrial complex, close the bases overseas, end the wars, and use the resulting peace dividend to build schools and pay teachers decently and heal the sick?

Why let people in other countries have all the fun/take all the risks? Because the U.S. government is mean? Because its police and soldiers and security apparatus will shoot and beat and jail and ruin anyone and anything that opposes it? Cowardice is no excuse.

It isn't even viable. In the not-so-long run, taking no these bastards continue to screw up our country, our nations, and our natural world, we will die horribly anyway. Those in power are tenacious; if only to save ourselves from their now widely apparent excesses, we must be more determined and persistent and ruthless and violent than they are.

Revolution? Here's an App for That

No there isn't.When I showed early drafts of this manifesto to my friends, many asked: What should I do? Should I hide in the mountains? Learn how to shoot? Stockpile guns and canned food? Rob a bank? Or should I just live my life, remain alert, and train myself to recognize the revolutionary moment when it comes, so I can spring into action?

I get it, they told me. We're in trouble. We need a revolution. But there aren't any groups to join.What do you want us to do, Rall?

Well, that's not what this book is about. I don't want to lead a revolution -- not because I'm not willing, but because I wouldn't be good at it. I'm not wired that way. I've never even been a community organizer.

I want to kick people in the ass. To get them thinking. To get you thinking. I want you to understand the situation -- your situation. I want you to see that revolt is a good idea, and that it has never been more necessary. I also want you to size up the opposition (both the government and action is by far the more dangerous prospect. If we let the extreme right): They will never get weaker.We have as good a chance at taking them on as ever.

I want you to lead the revolution -- not by giving orders, but by choosing to revolt. Lead, in other words, by taking possession of yourself.

What should you do? Mao said revolution isn't a dinner party, meaning that it's often ugly, violent, and even unjust. I say revolution isn't like joining MoveOn.org or a Facebook group. You don't just click a link and authorize a PayPal donation. Revolution doesn't happen within the system; revolution is the act of destroying the system. Who are you? That's the first question.What you should do is one thing if you're a taxi driver, something else if you're an accountant who plays in a band on weekends, and something different entirely if you're a kid.

It's not like no one has ever had to figure this stuff out before.When France fell to the Germans in 1940, a significant minority of Frenchmen decided to resist the occupation. But they didn't know what to do,much less who they could trust. There wasn't a Resistance yet. So people went about their business, looking and waiting for a chance to do something. The first step, it turned out, was reaching out to other people.Would neighbors help? Or at least keep quiet? Sometimes the patriots judged incorrectly. Collaborators turned in friends, even members of their own families, to the Gestapo. The stakes were high: torture, death, possibly the murder of their families. Obviously, this isn't Vichy France -- but finding allies you can trust is a logical first step.

After they had formed cells, the next step for would-be French resisters was to decide what form their resistance would take. Some Parisian policemen tipped off Jews that they were about to be arrested. Train workers, many of whom were members of the communist labor union CGT, collected intelligence with a view toward passing it along to the Allies. Some women slept with high-ranking Nazi officers in order to collect pillow talk or allow a comrade to kill the officers during sex. In short, people did what they could.

What can you do? That's up to you. You know yourself. I don't. Figure it out.

It seems likely that at this point in history a decentralized organization -- a "group" that isn't a group at all, an organization without any leadership whatsoever, a group that is really a set of principles and ideas -- stands a better chance of successfully avoiding high-tech government spying and carrying out actions. The Earth Liberation Front, for example, includes among its principles that no humans or animals should be harmed while carrying out an ELF action. There are several other rules. If you follow all of them, congrats! You're "in" ELF. Other contemporary examples of decentralized organizations include the Animal Liberation Front, Al Qaeda, and the Tea Party. Al Qaeda famously allows itself to be "franchised." Though based in Pakistan and Afghanistan, Al Qaeda now has spin-off groups such as Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia (Iraq) and Al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula (Saudi Arabia and Yemen). Think of all the Al Qaeda "number two" men who have been killed or arrested since 9/11 -- Al Qaeda has only grown stronger. That's because personalities don't matter in a decentralized movement. Ideas do. The more a government tries to crush a decentralized resistance organization, the more moderates are radicalized by heavy-handedness. Now we even have the newly identified phenomenon of "self-radicalization," in other words, the process of reading and getting pissed off.

Action is preferable to inaction. But there's always a place for "sleepers" -- people who wait until the moment is right to strike. Maybe they want to see the early signs of a mass uprising before committing themselves. Or perhaps they're unwilling to participate directly yet are willing to provide passive assistance -- a safe house, say, or financial help or simply looking the other way when something is going down. Part of the revolution may be fought virtually, by hackers. These individuals are every bit as valuable as people who blow stuff up.

Will the United States ever generate a mass movement? Will thousands or even millions of people be willing to commit to militant action against the state? I don't know.

I don't think it matters. If everyone waits to see who else is willing to take the chance to resist before resisting himself or herself, no one will resist. As we saw in apartheid-era South Africa, the existence of even small, radical, armed cadres could move the national conversation toward action on the part of millions of others.

I can't hold your hand. I don't want you to buy into everything I say. It's not about me. I don't care if you agree with me. I MAY BE WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING

I want you to THINK dammit! Figure out for yourself what is wrong. Then, once you know what's wrong, don't just grab a beer and veg out, or go to a yoga class, or whatever. Act! Do something about it!

To paraphrase a woman who spent time in prison for her radical activities in the 1960s, once you choose the path of committed citizenship, of true patriotism, of standing up for yourself and your fellow human beings and other living things who can't speak for themselves, your journey can end in only one of three ways: victory, prison, or death.

Then consider the alternative. Once you commit your self to apathy, laziness, and tacit consent to mass murder and rampant injustice, your miserable, wasteful choice can end only with death.

Copyright 2010 -- Seven Stories Press: All Rights Reserved

Ted Rall is a syndicated cartoonist and freelance writer based in New York City. He is the author of The Anti-American Manifesto (Seven Stories, 2010). Visit Ted Rall's site for more.

© 2010 Seven Stories Press All rights reserved.

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Chris Hedges: A Recipe for Fascism

A Recipe for Fascism

by Chris Hedges article link article link

November 8, 2010 | TruthDig | CommonDreams

American politics, as the midterm elections demonstrated, have descended into the irrational. On one side stands a corrupt liberal class, bereft of ideas and unable to respond coherently to the collapse of the global economy, the dismantling of our manufacturing sector and the deadly assault on the ecosystem. On the other side stands a mass of increasingly bitter people whose alienation, desperation and rage fuel emotionally driven and incoherent political agendas. It is a recipe for fascism.

More than half of those identified in a poll by the Republican-leaning Rasmussen Reports as "mainstream Americans" now view the tea party favorably. The other half, still grounded in a reality-based world, is passive and apathetic. The liberal class wastes its energy imploring Barack Obama and the Democrats to promote sane measures including job creation programs, regulation as well as criminal proceedings against the financial industry, and an end to our permanent war economy. Those who view the tea party favorably want to tear the governmental edifice down, with the odd exception of the military and the security state, accelerating our plunge into a nation of masters and serfs. The corporate state, unchallenged, continues to turn everything, including human beings and the natural world, into commodities to exploit until exhaustion or collapse.

All sides of the political equation are lackeys for Wall Street. They sanction, through continued deregulation, massive corporate profits and the obscene compensation and bonuses for corporate managers. Most of that money-hundreds of billions of dollars-is funneled upward from the U.S. Treasury. The Sarah Palins and the Glenn Becks use hatred as a mobilizing passion to get the masses, fearful and angry, to call for their own enslavement as well as to deny uncomfortable truths, including global warming. Our dispossessed working class and beleaguered middle class are vulnerable to this manipulation because they can no longer bear the chaos and uncertainty that come with impoverishment, hopelessness and loss of control. They have retreated into a world of illusion, one peddled by right-wing demagogues, which offers a reassuring emotional consistency. This consistency appears to protect them from the turmoil in which they have been forced to live. The propaganda of a Palin or a Beck may insult common sense, but, for a growing number of Americans, common sense has lost its validity.

The liberal class, which remains rooted in a world of fact, rationalizes placating corporate power as the only practical response. It understands the systems of corporate power. It knows the limitations and parameters. And it works within them. The result, however, is the same. The entire spectrum of the political landscape collaborates in the strangulation of our disenfranchised working class, the eroding of state power, the criminal activity of the financial class and the paralysis of our political process.

Commerce cannot be the sole guide of human behavior. This utopian fantasy, embraced by the tea party as well as the liberal elite, defies 3,000 years of economic history. It is a chimera. This ideology has been used to justify the disempowerment of the working class, destroy our manufacturing capacity, and ruthlessly gut social programs that once protected and educated the working and middle class. It has obliterated the traditional liberal notion that societies should be configured around the common good. All social and cultural values are now sacrificed before the altar of the marketplace.

The failure to question the utopian assumptions of globalization has left us in an intellectual vacuum. Regulations, which we have dismantled, were the bulwarks that prevented unobstructed brutality and pillaging by the powerful and protected democracy. It was a heavily regulated economy, as well as labor unions and robust liberal institutions, which made the American working class the envy of the industrialized world. And it was the loss of those unions, along with a failure to protect our manufacturing, which transformed this working class into a permanent underclass clinging to part-time or poorly paid jobs without protection or benefits.

The "inevitability" of globalization has permitted huge pockets of the country to be abandoned economically. It has left tens of millions of Americans in economic ruin. Private charity is now supposed to feed and house the newly minted poor, a job that once, the old liberal class argued, belonged to the government. As John Ralston Saul in "The Collapse of Globalization" points out, "the role of charity should be to fill the cracks of society, the imaginative edges, to go where the public good hasn't yet focused or can't. Dealing with poverty is the basic responsibility of the state." But the state no longer has the interest or the resources to protect us. And the next target slated for elimination is Social Security.

That human society has an ethical foundation that must be maintained by citizens and the state is an anathema to utopian ideologues of all shades. They always demand that we sacrifice human beings for a distant goal. The propagandists of globalization-from Lawrence Summers to Francis Fukuyama to Thomas Friedman-do for globalization and the free market what Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky did for Marxism. They sell us a dream. These elite interpreters of globalism are the vanguard, the elect, the prophets, who alone grasp a great absolute truth and have the right to impose this truth on a captive people no matter what the cost. Human suffering is dismissed as the price to be paid for the coming paradise. The response of these propagandists to the death rattles around them is to continue to speak in globalization's empty rhetoric and use state resources to service a dead system. They lack the vision to offer any alternative. They can function only as systems managers. They will hollow out the state to sustain a casino capitalism that is doomed to fail. And what they offer as a solution is as irrational as the visions of a Christian America harbored by many within the tea party.

We are ruled by huge corporate monopolies that replicate the political and economic power, on a vastly expanded scale, of the old trading companies of the 17th and 18th centuries. Wal-Mart's gross annual revenues of $250 billion are greater than those of most small nation-states. The political theater funded by the corporate state is composed of hypocritical and impotent liberals, the traditional moneyed elite, and a disenfranchised and angry underclass that is being encouraged to lash out at the bankrupt liberal institutions and the government that once protected them. The tea party rabble, to placate their anger, will also be encouraged by their puppet masters to attack helpless minorities, from immigrants to Muslims to homosexuals. All these political courtiers, however, serve the interests of the corporate state and the utopian ideology of globalism. Our social and political ethic can be summed up in the mantra let the market decide. Greed is good.

The old left-the Wobblies, the Congress of Industrial Workers (CIO), the Socialist and Communist parties, the fiercely independent publications such as Appeal to Reason and The Masses-would have known what to do with the rage of our dispossessed. It used anger at injustice, corporate greed and state repression to mobilize Americans to terrify the power elite on the eve of World War I. This was the time when socialism was not a dirty word in America but a promise embraced by millions who hoped to create a world where everyone would have a chance. The steady destruction of the movements of the left was carefully orchestrated. They fell victim to a mixture of sophisticated forms of government and corporate propaganda, especially during the witch hunts for communists, and overt repression. Their disappearance means we lack the vocabulary of class warfare and the militant organizations, including an independent press, with which to fight back.

We believe, like the Spaniards in the 16th century who pillaged Latin America for gold and silver, that money, usually the product of making and trading goods, is real. The Spanish empire, once the money ran out and it no longer produced anything worth buying, went up in smoke. Today's use in the United States of some $12 trillion in government funds to refinance our class of speculators is a similar form of self-deception. Money markets are still treated, despite the collapse of the global economy, as a legitimate source of trade and wealth creation. The destructive power of financial bubbles, as well as the danger of an unchecked elite, was discovered in ancient Athens and detailed more than a century ago in Emile Zola's novel "Money." But we seem determined to find out this self-destructive force for ourselves. And when the second collapse comes, as come it must, we will revisit wrenching economic and political tragedies forgotten in the mists of history.

© 2010 TruthDig.com

Chris Hedges writes a regular column for Truthdig.com. Hedges graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. He is the author of many books, including: War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, What Every Person Should Know About War, and American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. His most recent book is Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.

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Robert A Bows: Fascism American-Style: How to Hold Them Accountable

Fascism American-Style: How to Hold Them Accountable

By Robert A Bows article link

November 5, 2010 | OpEdNews

"Of course we will have fascism in America but we will call it democracy." --Huey Long

"Fascism is not defined by the number of its victims, but by the way it kills them." --Jean-Paul Sartre

"Fascism ought to more properly be called corporatism since it is the merger of state and corporate power." --Benito Mussolini

The masters of the electronic voting machines have spoken

Preliminary analysis of exit polls (for senatorial and gubernatorial races) reported immediately after voting ended compared with the announced vote results show a statistically significant shift in favor of Republican candidates, the odds of which are about a million to one. [1]

This electronic theft is nothing new, but in the aftermath of this year's Supreme Court (5 to 4) decision giving the green light to unlimited campaign contributions, the blatancy is impressive. The strategy is simple: leverage the bottomless slush fund of corporate dollars and flood the nation's airwaves and mailboxes to twist enough minds to tighten the electoral races, so that those who control the software to the electronic voting machines can create the illusion of right-wing electoral success.

It's time to consider what can be done to drop the curtain on this charade and the policies that result from this illegitimate elevation of corporate shills to executive, legislative, and judicial office.

The American brand of fascism

There are as many varieties of fascism as there are examples, beginning with Germany (Hitler) and Italy (Mussolini) during the period leading up to and including WWII, followed by Cuba (Batista), Spain (Franco), Paraguay ( Stroessner), Nicaragua (Somoza), and Chile (Pinochet), et al.

The brand of fascism currently practiced in the United States by European and North American financiers and bankers--who control a major portion of the world's money supply, as well as the dominant military and intelligence apparatuses--has commonalities with many of its predecessors as well as a few important differences.

Commonalities include: control over the state by unelected persons ("the hidden government," as Teddy Roosevelt called them) or persons whose election is predetermined (through control of the currency, media, and voting process); use of intelligence and security forces to suppress opposition; abrogation of constitutional guarantees and international legal conventions; the justification of torture; and false flag events used to justify imperialism, to name a few.

As so eloquently expressed by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, the chief prosecutor of the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials following World War II, we must hold such behavior accountable:

If certain acts and violations of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them. We are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.

We are now prepared to invoke these rules of criminal conduct and align the crimes of U.S. fascism with the indictments at Nuremberg:

1. Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of a crime against peace (9-11, WMDs, etc.)

2. Planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression and other crimes against peace (Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.)

3. War crimes (Abu Ghraib, recent WikiLeaks, and attacks on civilians)

4. Crimes against humanity (massive Iraqi and Afghani civilian deaths and torture, plus ongoing state-sanctioned terrorism: 9-11, Gulf, 2008 economic contraction and refusal to replenish the money supply; sabotage of property and contract law [mortgage crisis])

But it is the differences between the American brand of fascism and previous iterations--particularly the illusion of choice and dissent (what social theorist Herbert Marcuse called "repressive desublimation")--that confuse many people into believing that the U.S. is simply a republic with democratic processes gone awry. This has led a range of critics to describe the situation as "inverted totalitarianism," "participatory fascism," "corporatism," or just "monopoly capitalism."

While each of these descriptions applies to a degree, the partial truths to which they call attention unnecessarily obscure the simple nature of the beast. Perhaps it is the erroneous notion that fascism equals Nazism (actually, the term originally referred to Mussolini's regime) that compels otherwise analytical people to deny what is going on here ("good Germans," all). But lack of intellectual rigor is no excuse to mislabel the ruthless abuses to which the world is being subjected. As Orwell so eloquently taught us, the price of removing, destroying, or distorting words and their meanings is that we lose our ability to know what freedom is.

Consider how one of our own presidents defined fascism:

The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism -- ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. --Franklin D. Roosevelt [2]

Gone are the abstract notions of the state as an embodiment of some ethnic or racial or historical ideal (our rulers are multicultural, at least at the level of government employees and the executive, legislative, and judicial branches; the upper echelons of our intelligence services are another story); instead, the state is simply a catalyst for corporate policy. Today's corporate state makes no attempt to legitimize itself even theoretically, as the Italian syndicalists did, by pretending that collective bargaining takes place between management and labor. Premeditated expansion and contraction of the currency is used to steal assets (the fruits of our labor) at fire sale prices. In the U.S., earnings per share for the stockholders and the maintenance of power by the financial elites are the main objectives implemented by illegal means through the so-called "legal" state.

Everything, including the ecology and sustainability of the planet and its inhabitants, is sacrificed to the Almighty Dollar and for profit therein. Oddly, those aligned in this lockstep greedy march often see themselves as religious, or even spiritual! Perhaps they do not understand that Judeo-Christian tradition does not support the idolatry of money (currency) or commodities, such as gold or silver.

It's easy to miss this point, given the disinformation spread by so-called religious leaders; regardless, you may recall that Moses had to break and restore the Israelites' covenant with G-d because of some tribal members who, in his absence, manufactured and worshipped the Golden Calf; and Jesus reiterated this principle when he said, "You cannot worship God and mammon." The lack of self-awareness over such misplaced obeisance (regardless of the religion to which they may or may not subscribe) renders our materialistic brethren oblivious to the immoral nature of their own behavior.

What to do?

Irrespective of the origins of their debilitation, these fascists, who place money and corporate interests above people, must be held accountable for their crimes, however daunting the task may be of facing up to a monolithic and morally blind cartel that controls most of the currency and guns on our planet . Even the most corrupt and devolved regimes come to an end. But the hour is late; so, how to hasten a new organizational paradigm?

Such was the question for Carol Brouillet, when she invited a dozen or so fellow activists to a retreat following the "Deep Politics Conference" in Santa Cruz, California, in May 2010. Brouillet explains:

"I hoped that the retreat would give us more time to think deeply about the roots of the problems that humanity faces today, and generate insights on how we could individually and collectively empower ourselves to assist in the conscious evolution necessary for us to survive, grow, mature, and thrive, in alignment with our spirits, which yearn for truth, beauty, peace, justice, health, not only for ourselves, but for all people and all life forms."

As one might expect, the debate was heated, but the group was comprised of enough veteran organizers, some going back to the Free Speech Movement and the Vietnam War in the "60's, that a solution was hammered out. As it happened, they chose to model their appeal on the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. -- That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, -- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government."

The Details of Accountability

Even though most of those assembled recognize that the current regime (the money cartel or so-called New World Order) has totally abrogated the Declaration of Independence (and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights) and that the social contract has been broken, the group decided in hopes of eventual accountability-- such as took place with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa to compile a list of grievances, as the signers of the Declaration did over 234 years ago. The group also offers solutions aimed at building alternative forms of organization that will be the framework for a sustainable and just world, to supplant the current system when it collapses from the weight of its intrinsic contradictions and lies (which, as Jefferson put it, run contrary to "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God").

The result is the Declaration of Accountability, in which the group declares, much like the document upon which it is modeled, "the causes which impel them to the separation." In addition to the grievances listed in the Declaration, the Problems and Proposed Solution section includes "Financial Accountability," "Electoral Accountability," "Media Accountability," "Corporate Accountability," "Legal Accountability and the Rule of Law," "9-11 Accountability," "Gulf Accountability," etc.).

Like those who have survived the continuing holocausts and war crimes around the globe, the group hopes to keep alive the collective memory of the ongoing crimes against humanity until such time that the perpetrators are brought to justice. According to Brouillet:

"I believe by signing the Declaration of Accountability, we are asserting people power over the abusive tyranny of corporations, illegitimate institutions, the deceptions and lies that for too long have paralyzed and confused people, and we consciously enable and empower ourselves to challenge the Era of Impunity and launch a new era of responsibility, in which we reclaim our future and manifest our dreams and hopes for a better world."

The group formally launched its website this October, with a list of prominent individual and organizational signers. As the author of the Declaration of Independence wrote:

"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." --Thomas Jefferson.

Be a witness for accountability.

[1] Josh Mitteldorf, "The Scoop on Election Theft 2010," OpEdNews.com, 11/3/10, .

[2] Franklin D. Roosevelt, "Appendix A: Message from the President of the United States Transmitting Recommendations Relative to the Strengthening and Enforcement of Anti-trust Laws," The American Economic Review, Vol. 32, No. 2, Part 2, Supplement, Papers Relating to the Temporary National Economic Committee (Jun., 1942), pp. 119-128, and "Anti-Monopoly," Time magazine, May 9, 1938.

About the author:

Robert Bows is a television producer/writer/director, playwright, theatre reviewer, political economist, instructional designer, yogi, metaphysician, and pseudonymous author ofwww.SolomonsProof.com and Solomon's Proof: A Psycho-Spiritual Journey to World Consciousness . He participated in the "Deep Politics Conference" referenced in the article and is one of the drafters of the Declaration of Accountability, as well as one of the editors documenting ongoing abuses.

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Gary Laderman: Hate, An American Voter Value

Hate, An American Voter Value

By Gary Laderman article link

October 31, 2010 | Religion Dispatches

God hates fags. Burn the Qur’an. The president is a Muslim socialist. Jews control the media. Immigrants are invading America...

Hate is as American as apple pie. A sentiment stitched into the fabric of national life from the early stirrings of Revolution in the colonies (they hated the old rulers across the Atlantic) to contemporary feelings about the government (we hate the rulers in Congress). What’s most striking about this embedded and endemic force circulating through the body politic for all these years is just how valuable hatred can be for some segments of our culture; so valuable that hatred can be sacred for some.

Perhaps religion itself, at some early evolutionary point in human history, emerged not as an outgrowth of altruism or loving bonds between community members, but rather as a result of hateful differences between groups. Religion has a rich history of promoting hate and gaining rewards from this hatred: more faithful adherents for sure, but also at times material wealth, political power, and social authority. The notion that religion contributes to the social emphasis on hate and plays a role in the effervescent energies devoted to stirring up hateful sentiment is elementary to many students and observers on the subject. In the U.S., hate is a driver constantly shaping and reshaping the religious landscape.

Case in point: Just look at how hate brought the religious margins directly into the mainstream, as was recently evident with the planned Qur’an burning in North Florida. While the church itself came from the fringe, it certainly resonated throughout American culture due, most likely, to a much larger and more widespread fear and hatred of Muslims. Hate can also bring the religious mainstream out into the convoluted lives of marginal characters who can inflict awful harm on those singled out as objects of hatred; as is the case in the recent brutal attacks on gays. The culture of hate emanating from many in the mainstream religious right—hatred of “Obamacare,” of government, Muslims, abortion, or gays—will continue to spur individuals to action bent on destroying the enemy in the name of… some higher principle, a sacred law, God?

Politics thrives on hate as well, though politicians get value-added, religious-tinged benefits from naming an enemy who is not simply one who disagrees with a point of view, but is identified as the most vital threat to public order, the moral good, and national life. What are the values added? Fear, a tried and true ingredient for consolidating social power and sharpening the line between insiders and outsiders; a scapegoat—if not for the sins of the community, then at least as a useful distraction from community failures and sins; and retaliatory possibilities—every crowd worked into a frenzy over whom to hate wants to be simultaneously protective and aggressive, while our gun-crazy, militarized culture points the way (in the name of God, blow ’em up!).

Hasn’t it always been this way? Pick any decade from American history and you can find political leaders encouraging hate—both to protect American values and interests and to strengthen the civil religious ties that are supposed to bind us all together. Hate the English, hate the French, hate the Spanish, hate the Japanese, hate the Germans, hate the Koreans, hate the Vietnamese, hate the Russians, hate the Iraqis, and so on for the so-called “foreign” enemies to fear. On the domestic side, the list comes too easily: hate Indians, hate blacks, hate Jews, hate anarchists, hate war protestors, hate government, hate the North, hate the South, hate the gays….

Aside from the raw political value of hate, think of the potential for media exposure when you are a religious hater. When the Dalai Lama comes to town (to start with a counter-example) with monks, cultural activities, and lectures, the fundamental core of his teaching—compassion—is a media buzzkill. Even with Richard Gere in tow, his visits are mostly ignored by journalists, bloggers, and news celebrities, as well as their audiences. Love for your fellow man and kindness to your neighbor just isn’t as appealing as calling your opponent Hitler or burning the sacred text from a different faith. Why is that? Maybe we should take a survey.

The media, of course, is not the only culprit in promoting a culture that values hate; though its unofficial motto, if it bleeds it leads, does suggest some degree of culpability. A brief glance across news shows and sites suggests that hate stories—not just hate crimes, a relatively new legal designation, but also stories that focus on conflict and hostility based on passionate dislike for the other—are staples in news media. Additionally and beyond the news, so much of popular culture is fueled by depictions of hate and difference overcome by cruel violence. Whether it’s the cowboys killing the savage Indians, the space hero destroying the ruthless aliens, or the soldier slicing the enemy’s throat, hate is elemental in the entertainment industry. Do we even need to bring up shooter video games like Bioshock, Resistance: Fall of Man, and Crysis in a discussion of the value of hate in media?

Though all this talk of hate and what seems like constant fighting and warfare has left me at a loss for words, these Clash lyrics seem to capture the essence quite nicely:

Hate and War, the only things we got today

And if I close my eyes

They will not go away

You have to deal with it

It is the currency

Hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate...

Gary Laderman is Director of Religion Dispatches and Professor and Chairperson of the Department of Religion at Emory University. Order his most recent book, Sacred Matters (The New Press, May 12, 2009), here. His full bio can be found here. Read his other articles here.

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David DeGraw: The Midterm Election Further Demonstrates The Need for Revolution

The Midterm Election Further Demonstrates The Need for Revolution

by David DeGraw article link article link

November 4, 2010 | AmpedStatus | Global Research

The Obama referendum came in and he got what he deserved. When you run on change and leave the same criminals in positions of power and don’t hold anyone accountable for obvious crimes, and allow them to continue to commit those crimes, you deserve to lose your power. This is what happens when you put Tim Geithner and Larry Summers in charge of the economy, and support Ben Bernanke for reconfirmation as Chairman of the Federal Reserve. This is what happens when you keep Robert Gates as your Secretary of Defense and General Petraeus in charge of your wars. This is what happens when you lie to protect the interests of BP over the American people. This is what happens when you bailout Wall Street and the health care industry and sell out everyone else. This is what happens when your rhetoric is the opposite of your actions. The past two years have clearly exposed Obama as a spineless corporate puppet and he deserves to be voted out in 2012.

Now, don’t get me wrong, most of the people who were just voted into office are just as bad, if not worse, as hard as that is to believe. This election marks the third straight time that the American public dramatically voted out the people who were in power. The fact of the matter is that these people are not voting for politicians that they like as much as they are voting against politicians they hate. Hopefully by 2012 the American public will finally understand that they must support Independent candidates and alternative political structures, and cannot vote for Democrats or Republicans, if they ever want to achieve the needed change. Both parties serve the same corporate masters. Yes, there are some differences between the two. The Democrats serve half of the top economic one percent, and the Republicans serve the other half. We have Neo-liberals to the left and Neo-cons to the right, leaving 99% of us without representation.

And the saddest part of all, the system is now so rigged via campaign finance, lobbying and the revolving door that it is almost impossible for people who represent us to even get into office, let alone stay in office and enact policies that will bring change. Two politicians in Congress who actually fought for us against the Economic Elite just lost their reelection bids. Alan Grayson and Russ Feingold lost because record amounts of cash went to funding the candidates who ran against them. Even their own party’s leadership didn’t support their reelection efforts. The bottom line in this money rigged system is that you cannot run against the most powerful corporations and win. They will just pour unlimited funds into defeating you, and your own party will desert you.

The truth that many so called “Independent” news outlets will not tell you is that this government is now beyond repair. You won’t hear many calls for Revolution because even the more “Independent” news outlets are dependent on the two-party system. It is absurd that these outlets still play into the obsolete Republican versus Democrat dynamic. The only reason why they do it is because they are dependent on grants from foundations and political organizations that will not fund them unless they bow to Democrats and bash Republicans, or vice versa.

I can speak from personal experience. I’ve lost a vital grant to fund my work because I wasn’t willing to focus my attention on blaming Republicans for our problems. Our problems are a result of the two-party system. When you engage in bashing one party in favor of the other, you become a pivotal cog in the machine that is killing our country. I will not be part of the disease. The stakes are too high now. America is burning and both parties are pouring gasoline all over it.

Most Americans have only a vague understanding of the collapse that we have been set up for. If you think the past two years were bad, they were just a warm up to what is coming our way. After analyzing the policies in place and the current political environment, I can assure you that the next two years will be worse that the previous two. 52 million Americans have already been driven into poverty, 30 million are in need of work, millions of American families have been foreclosed upon and the inequality of wealth is the most severe it has ever been in the history of the United States. And this is just the beginning phase of the decline. Millions more will be added to these totals and the social safety-nets that have held our society together are breaking down. Cuts to vital social programs are going to be severe across the board.

Our paid-off government is not going to fix our problems, they are making them worse. Don’t you think it’s time for you to start representing yourself? Don’t you think it’s time for you to start defending your family’s interests?

These are questions that I’ve already asked myself and deeply considered. I made my decision and have dedicated myself to building a wide-ranging network of alliances across the political spectrum and have drafted a common ground platform that we are building off of. I’ve analyzed power politics very closely over the years. I know how the game is played and I know who our enemies are. I’m going to do everything I can to end the two-party oligopoly.

I’m not saying that you should follow me. I’m saying that it’s time for YOU to lead. It’s time for YOU to get involved. Build your own army. Once you start paying attention and put in some time to do the research, you will clearly see for yourself that both parties are working against your interests. You will also see how critical the situation is and realize that you can no longer be passive and expect to keep living a healthy and secure lifestyle. We are going to be tested in ways we have never been tested before. We cannot get away with being apolitical anymore. It’s time for us to pay attention, to become directly involved in the decision-making processes that guide our life. I know this is something that most people don’t enjoy and don’t want to do, but the consequences of our inaction will be much worse than anything we have ever experienced.

Yes, I sound extreme, but these are extreme times. I’m not going to sit quietly as our future is ripped out from under us. I will not let my family’s well being and our country’s fate be decided by short-sighted greed addicted forces that have looted the global economy and brought poverty, death and destruction throughout the world.

I see the path we are on and I intend to change it!

It is evident that the overwhelming majority of the population has become cynical and feels that it is useless to try to change things. If these people would just realize that they are the overwhelming majority and take action, we can change things. We have power in numbers. We are 99% of the population. If we organize on common ground and fight back, we will win!

David DeGraw is the founder and editor of AmpedStatus.com. He is the author of TheEconomic Elite Vs. The People of the United States of America, and his forthcoming book is The Road Through 2012: Revolution or World War III.

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Global Research Articles by David DeGraw

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Our Imperial Vote

by: William J. Astore article link article link

November 03, 2010 | The Huffington Post | Truthout

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William John Cox: The Last Generation of Mindkind on Earth

The Last Generation of Mindkind on Earth

by William John Cox article link

Febuary 21, 2007 | The Voters

The following essay was written many years ago and, although a little lengthy for the Internet, it is posted here for those who like to mix a little philosophy with their politics.

Should the citizens of the United States engage in a peaceful political rebellion to avoid economic disaster and future wars founded, not upon wishful thinking and hopeful denial, but on a simple and specific agenda for effective collective action?

Is not the desire for freedom a universal trait of all sentient beings? Otherwise inequality of opportunity forever retards the intellectual evolution of their species.

Discussion: Once the melody of freedom's song is raised in democratic harmony, it echoes throughout the heavens for all to hear, as there is but peace in all of the universe, and it has been that way for all of eternity. No being, truly thinking, makes war instead of exploring the stars, for without peace, no being can fly far from their birth planet. They can only foul their nest and peck their siblings to death, thinking conditions beyond their nest are the same as surround them, never knowing that there's no Star Wars, except in the blind fantasies of those who never learn to see.

Danger. If there is but peace in all the universe and it has been that way for all of eternity, what then must we do to have any voice in our fate? Are we to continue living in fear of atomic-tipped missiles in the former USSR? Is there a more real danger that one day some small dispute ignites a financial war and China dumps its dollars or OPEC begins to trade its oil in Euros? Or, what if some other tiny economic turmoil twists the stock, bond, currency, and real estate markets into a chaotic contractual tailspin, and for whatever reason, in a single day, paper and electronic money simply cease to have economic relevance and virtually all legal wealth is eliminated? Then, only gold and other metals will have any real value; not silicon, plastic, or credit ratings.

Quick. Then, when there's no gasoline for sale, nor cabs to call, my spare change will be worth more than your former millions, and my bicycle will get me farther than your BMW. Without electricity and wave transmissions, your telephone, computers, televisions, DVDs and stereos are worth less than my knife. If all houses are for sale and all apartments are for rent, all titles are worthless, and all property is available for the taking. If everybody is looking for work, nobody will be hiring. If everything worth stealing has been stolen, you will find nothing to eat, no matter the caliber of your gun, or the number of your last few bullets.

Much like the Earth being struck by a giant asteroid, perhaps one-third, half, or even three-quarters of us, billions all over the world, could all be dead in a matter of months. No possessions, no livestock, no grain, no fruit, no game, nothing: Nothing to eat but the flesh of our own kind, starting with the babies, who will be the first to die.

Dirty. Will it be a blessing if the troubles are prolonged? Unless something is done, unless we, together, take positive action, things will steadily get worse instead of better. Negatives will multiple negatives, violent crime will continue to increase, and the social ills which compel the forgotten to riot will remain uncured.

Fires, floods, earthquakes, and other disasters will not cease to occur, but our governments will cease to do anything to help anyone. At first, as now, our governments will cut to the "basics," and finally will do nothing but collect taxes, sacrifice our youth fighting local warlords, and impose the death penalty for all crimes, either immediately or through forced labor.

Lost Knowledge. The downward spiral may be less steep but just as deadly, for we will soon lose the collective genius of the last two or three generations of accumulated race knowledge. As we gather here together at the threshold of galactic awareness, we stand to lose all we've learned and conceived of in just the last century. Once the last skulls that once contained our vast database of information and experience are laid in the ground – at that moment, the flame of our collective intellect will flicker and die.

When the daily quest for food leaves no time in the day to teach the little children to read, the last surviving texts will be of small value except to start a fire. And, at that precise moment, when the last of us who can read these words and comprehend their meaning, sleep our last dream, we, who once shared these thoughts, will cease to be; our words will be silenced and our learning lost, and our tears and toil will have been for nought.

The Last Generation. Along with our concrete castings, twisted girders, ancient carvings in stone and other megalithic artifacts, eons from now, a few scraps of our language may be found to identify us as the last generation of one of Gaia's children, an aquatic primate, known as human, who once climbed out of the lakes, through the trees and along the rivers, sailed in boats and settled distant shores and waterways around the world, harnessed the atom and flew to the Moon.

There the story will end, and across the universal field of mind and along the eternal corridors of time it will be whispered of how the human infant's first few breaths in the breeze of wisdom were smothered by the wasting virus of deception, hatred, and war. Of how it lay struggling in its earthly crib, looking up with fevered eyes through the cosmic window, fighting with all the strength of its existence, fortified by the antibiotics of knowledge, and its healing properties of wisdom, yet still too weak to see. Nothing more can be said, for we were stillborn.

Song of Mindkind. Or, celestial history may record that we, the last generation of the second millennia following the time of Jesus, fifteen centuries after the teachings of Muhammad, were the last generation to suffer war and who survived birth as Children of Mindkind on Earth. Then, songs will be sung and stories told of our joining minds in a powerful signal of freedom, of the moment our souls sensed the secret and soared with the Spirit of Wisdom to vibrate the waves of eternity with the melody of our children's voices, so they may be forever heard to harmonize in the Universal Choir of Peace.

Reality of Now. As glorious as that image may be, now is now, and let's face it folks; things are bad and the future is looking worse. So, what can we do?

First. We must overcome our fear, and the anger and distrust it compels, and recognize the actual and potential power available in the relatively free, well-educated and communicating society we still enjoy in the United States. We must concentrate our individual vote into its most powerful political focus ever, for if we don't use it with responsibility, we are certain to lose it with alacrity.

Next, we must see us for who we really are. Much like the old advertisement for Ivory soap, we are 99.44% pure. If we look at the totality of the billions of human decisions made every day, worldwide, including all the software, blueprints, CAD drawings, business plans, PERT charts, budgets, contracts, planting of crops, even deciding in the morning what to wear to work, or what to eat at lunch, we will find that we mostly tell each other the truth and closely cooperate to get most things done with the help of others we trust. Otherwise, things simply wouldn't work; you couldn't drive down a highway without striking another car, and you couldn't put your children to bed in the evening without whimpers of hunger.

Travel anywhere in the world and visit any home, and you will only find families struggling each day to live and who love and cherish their babies. They all want a better life for their children, and they mostly teach them the best way to earn it is to tell the truth and work hard.

From the moment we struck the first flint and created language to teach the making of fire and tools, our species has been defined by our ability to mentally synapse beyond the limitations of instinct, acquire and expand knowledge, and to teach the tool of learning and the value of exploration to each new generation. Now, as we learn to step from the fertile fields of Earth into the mind field of time, and to surf the waves of information along the seashores of space and to cast our net upon the wisdom of eternity, we must continue to trust and increasingly respect one another's thoughts on various subjects, though opposed to our own. For, they may be based upon better information or different insights, and even if wrong, we will all profit more from civil, constructive discussion, than from dissension, deception and destruction.

Though some are so sly as to forever lie, and the ability to deceive and disassemble will forever be seen by some as a value in achieving group or individual goals, and though many will forever respond to fear with a violent hatred of others, and real fear once felt can never be erased, and although everyone may forever try to cheat on their taxes, these emotional matters of conscience are but a weak pathology on our physiological soul, best cured by the light of truth and the balm of understanding.

Courage. Each of us must find within ourselves the individual courage to perform one simple rebellious act and elect to decline protection of the computerized secret ballot. Instead of responding like lab animals pushing a touch screen in response to the latest ten-second television smear ad, we can each take a little longer to vote and to carefully consider the candidates presented on the ballot by the various parties and factions who vie for our vote. Once we decide, we can demonstrate our literacy by carefully writing in our personal choice for president of the United States, whether or not his or her name is or is not on the ballot.

Presently, half of all voters don't bother to go to the polls. But, if only 15 to 25% of us were to write in our vote, trust that the politicians will be scrambling to ensure that all votes cast for them are legally counted, as they should be for anyone registering a willingness to accept votes cast in their name for any office of public trust.

Uncomplicated statutes should ensure that existing parties would continue to provide consensus for people with similar political views and the organization and resources to promote those views, and all Constitutional institutions, including the Electoral College would continue to function as intended. There would only be a simple adjustment in who does what. Instead of being offered phoney political platforms, devoid of substance or clearly defined policy, we the people would debate and express our desired policy and elect those candidates most committed to enact it.

National elections could become festive and joyous events, with real political parties to celebrate the end of electioneering and relief from hired advertising. Perhaps there could be a paid holiday and voting could extend over a three-day weekend. It might even take a week to count all of the ballots, and there might have to be a run-off and debates between the top two candidates.

Who can know for sure what may happen? But, surely, the election process which evolves will have to be better than the one we have now, when media exit polls decide elections by the morning coffee break in Iowa, and the loser concedes by lunch time in California. But, by more effectively achieving a better personal understanding with our government and those we elect to represent us, we citizens would gain greater control, our lives would be less restricted, and our vote could become a sacrament of social and civic freedom.

Confidence. Next, we must insist that the ballot include for our vote the twelve most relevant and critical issues facing our government during the upcoming four-year term. Our vote would be an expression of our collective judgement in the making of our own national policy. We would not make law: That is what our elected assemblies are for. However, the voice of a 51/49 percent split would be far different than the roar of an 89/11 vote in curbing the influence of powerful and wealthy special interest groups. If we simple voters are smart enough to earn money and to figure out how to pay our taxes, we are also smart enough to collectively express basic policy to guide our government, and to personally vote for whomever we consider most qualified to act in accordance with our desired policies.

Duty. Everywhere in the universe, on every planet with sentient life, in every nation on Earth, and in every society, every person has a universal right and duty to act, individually and collectively, to secure essential freedom for the nurturing and education of their children. Otherwise, if we, individually, sit around doing nothing except wait for the leadership of our politicians, whose only idea of making policy is to increasingly proscribe otherwise legal behavior, increase penalties, and take away rights (except when they are caught), we will find ourselves alone when our individual worlds collapse around us.

Options. The Voters agree only that inherent in any right to vote is the option to not vote, or to vote and to nullify the election if no viable alternatives are offered. They agree to politely disagree on all other issues and elections. Thus, The Voters takes no position on the various questions which are offered as a sampling of political issues that could be addressed in a National Policy Referendum.

Choices. Should we imagine, however, that all policy questions were thoroughly debated, and such a large margin of voters answered as to be an undeniable expression of desirable public policy, and that sympathetic representatives were elected to work out the best ways to implement those policies, we can for a few moments reflect upon the kind of life we might enjoy here in America, or in any other nation, country, state, or society whose free electors so elect.

Family. The society which evolved from such an election could not be a utopia, for the daily problems of life never go away until solved, and parents will always have to work hard to raise their children and to teach them to survive. But, the society could be one in which our government becomes more compassionate and caring about our family needs and less concerned about itself.

Every citizen, irrespective of wealth or status, requires certain necessities every day of their life, and for those with responsibilities of family, matters of health, education and freedom of travel are essential to social survival. To meet these core needs, all citizens could be equally helped by the resources of national Health, Education and Energy Corps. Each Corps would have its own national service academy, with admission by congressional appointment, and would commission officers dedicated to serving the citizens of a free society and their families.

Then, every parent and every child's burden of caring for the illnesses and injuries of family members would be lightened by the compassion and basic care provided by their Health Corps. Each of your children would receive a minimum community college education, to absorb the vast knowledge that challenges their comprehension and receive better training for employment, and each would be personally encouraged and tutored by the data and resources of their Education Corps. Third, you could treat your family to a inexpensive annual vacation, visit distant relatives, and explore National Parks across America, using free electro-magnetic energy along the interstate highway system fueled by the pool resources organized by your Energy Corps, which draws upon massive micro-wave energy from space collectors and supplies excess capacity to local power companies.

Except for staple food stamp and school lunch programs to help preserve our national agricultural capacity and reserves and the health of our children, the role of the federal government in public welfare would be sharply limited. The primary responsibility for individual and family assistance would be borne by state and local governments, and sustained by the sharing society of the American people and their friends and families.

The work ethic and the essential value of individual labor would be instilled in all students, and those who elect to be sponsored and trained by the Education Corps to contribute, without compensation, at least one year of valuable public service upon adulthood, would earn a baccalaureate education.

The tremendous intellectual energy released by providing equality of opportunity to all children would manifest itself in solutions to our problems which will otherwise never be found. The most imaginative cures for diseases and creative scientific discoveries will be envisioned, not by the children of the wealthy and intellectual elite, but by those who would otherwise never have had a chance to learn. Only unimaginable power has the energy to propel us to the meaningful places within our universe and into its related dimensions – not the puny machines of war we are presently wasting our money on.

A Just And Civil Society. As the virus of deceit and hatred can never be completely eliminated from all who have become infected, personal violence and other serious crimes will continue to be inflicted upon justice could be more finely focused on the most serious crimes, with alternative family courts having the primary responsibility for resolving most cases resulting from alcoholism, drug addiction and other situational offenses.

To eliminate the gigantic profits which feed organized crime and public corruption, and to end the "War on Drugs" against our own society, medical doctors could be authorized to prescribe low-cost drugs for those who become addicted and who elect to participate in an educational recovery and treatment program. Concurrently, local communities could be authorized to collect fees and issue permits for the growing of a few marijuana plants for personal use and for controlling the agricultural cultivation of hemp for the commercial manufacture of clothing and other lawful purposes.

Confinement for serious offenses could be both swift and consistent with the preservation and enhancement of all existing Constitutional guarantees. The judicial exclusion of relevant evidence as a Constitutional remedy for Fourth Amendment search and seizure violations by law enforcement officers could be replaced in those states which enact an alternative civil remedy which provides minimum damages for violations, irrespective of the crime or its punishment, and concurrently within those communities which establish Peer Review Councils, consisting of public and police members to peacefully act together as peers to resolve complaints of police misconduct and to formulate the policies which guide the actions of their local officers.

The primary responsibility for law enforcement would continue to be borne by the people in local communities working as peers with those they appoint to exercise the restraint of police authority and empower to legitimately lay hands on those of us who violate the freedoms and rights of others. The motivation and manner in which we apply physical restraint to ourselves defines, perhaps more than any other single factor, the very nature of justice in any society and the probabilities of its survival.

Personal ownership of firearms can never be entirely prohibited, but legal and civic responsibility for licensing, registration and reasonable purposes would be established by state and local statutes which balances individual protection with community concerns.

Ultimately, in every society placing a supreme value on life, the final responsibility forever rests, at law and in conscience, upon each who elects to possess or use a firearm in detriment of the rights of others and who, without justification, either pulls the trigger, or doesn't.

The role of the federal government in criminal law enforcement would return to its historic place of being restricted to those offenses clearly having a national effect. However, the United States must continue in its responsibility to provide leadership in matters of justice by assisting local and state authorities, as requested, and by establishing a national Justice Academy, along with those of Health, Education, and Energy. Officers of all corps would first be schooled together in the values of a free society, before being specially educated to serve as professional health, education, energy, police, probation, court, and correctional administrators.

With equal access to a fair and impartial justice system, a more civil society would emerge. One in which people are more likely to respect the rights of others and to treat them with dignity, and in which individuals are less likely to respond with violenceand anger when their own sensibilities are offended.

Foreign Adventures. As a matter of principle, we must renounce the use of military and economic warfare against the peoples of other nations as an instrument of foreign policy, except in response to an armed invasion or nuclear attack. For other provocations, the president should present the evidence to Congress and identify the individual offender who presents the gravest danger and who controls the threatening instruments of power.

Rather than asking for a Declaration of War, the president could request a simple resolution of Congress naming the accused in a Warrant of Apprehension, demanding he present himself at the World Court of Justice at The Hague to personally answer charges brought there under International Law by the United States against the nation whose government he purports to represent.

Should the accused fail to appear, he would be declared an outlaw, a sizeable reward offered for his apprehension, and we could begin using the most effective media available to inform the people of the outlaw's nation of our grounds for concern and to reassure them that we mean them no harm. We would ask only that they distance themselves from the target of our apprehension and the anticipation of authorized means to secure his personal submission, including the use of deadly force, in whatever form or fashion.

Every member of the United States military service would first receive basic training as emergency medical and rescue technicians by the Health and Justice Corps to become skilled in the performance of their first duty to care for themselves, their compatriots, and the lives of we citizens they are sworn to protect.

Intermediate military training would field a coherent, mobile, well-equipped, and tactically facile force of fighters capable of kicking a** in multiple languages, each individually committed to the home return of all who share the risk of death. Advanced justice training would enable those most capable of more refined individual discretion to work more independently in exercising authority of force outside the United States in actions not requiring group weapons and tactics.

Allied with the Health Corps and the airlift capacity of its large fleet of hospital aircraft used to shuttle patients and relatives to advanced treatment centers, and equipped with the technological spin-off generated by a free and exploring society, the actual use of military force would likely become increasingly rare, but would forever remain rapid in its deployment tactics, and decisive in its strategic effects. For, rather than waiting in the barracks, every position would be staffed by two fighters, with one near home and in training on a yearly rotation, each poised to respond worldwide to any disaster, natural or military, that excites our common concern.

Our military and national intelligence assets exists only to protect and inform us, and have no legitimacy when used within our borders against we citizens of the United States, not for law enforcement or any other aggressive purpose, for no such authority was ever granted by the states to their union, a reservation enshrined by the Second Amendment.

Free Enterprise. No organization or business would ever again have to worry about health costs or worker's compensation claims, they would only have to join hands with their workers in a truly free enterprise system where the interests of labor and capital are balanced in the workplace through negotiation for the greatest service or production at the least cost.

Social Security would continue to provide all workers with the mobility to shop their services throughout the national job market and to retain existing minimum retirement and disability rights. And, states would continue to ensure that their businesses and workers insure for temporary disability and unemployment compensation.

Workers should have an election to also voluntarily participate in a supplemental independent retirement pool funded by untaxed individual savings and union pension plans to primarily invest in the small businesses of America and the municipalities of its citizens, and with insured minimum investment limits.

The role of government in litigation and regulation would largely become one of passively establishing fair and objective standards for use as rebuttable presumptions by injured or aggrieved plaintiffs, rather than having government intervene as an opponent against individuals and their organizations.

For the long haul, American businesses could obtain supplies and ship products throughout the continental marketplace and to the best ports for export over the interstate highways, paying only a fair commercial toll to draw upon the low-cost reserves of the Energy Corp's space power pool.

Fair Transaction-Tax. In our seven-trillion-dollar annual economy, all this could be easily paid for by a fair tax of less than ten percent on all spending, that is, a simple toll on each use of the economic system. Since the poor, working, middle and small business classes have fewer and smaller financial transactions, the wealthy and their multinational corporations, who've always had to spend a lot of money to avoid having any taxable income, would share proportionally in paying the toll for their traffic on our economic highway and their use of our courts to enforce their contracts.

A fair exemption from taxation on spending for those who elect to provide their family with health and education services, and on the cost of basic food and housing, for those not on welfare, would allow the free market to largely provide these necessities.

Money placed into legitimate savings accounts and its earned interest would not be taxed until it is withdrawn and spent. Gifts and bequests of money would not be spending by the donor, but the transaction tax would be paid by the beneficiary when the gift is spent, if not saved.

Foreign Trade. To the extent they are owned by American citizens, businesses, corporations and other organizations would not pay a toll on their payroll, as salaries would be directly passed through to their employees to spend. The additional tax paid by foreign owners would be the price of access to the services of our healthy and well-educated workers and our system of justice.

Inasmuch as imports are first sold at the border, tariffs could be replaced by the up front collection of the toll-tax when foreign corporations first sell their products to their American corporations to sell to us.

Foreign registration and ownership of U.S. patents, copyrights, and other legal protections would also carry a toll on all protected transactions, allowing non-citizens to share the cost of our courts to enforce their rights.

The Search. Lastly, as we cast about in space for sources of safe energy and the knowledge and wisdom to use it, we will become privileged to participate in the peaceful exploration of our universe and its related dimensions, so our children can play the eternal game of mindfully searching for the rarest find of all: A small blue, white, and green planet, with a slight tilt and a large stable moon in warm orbit around a long-lived, medium yellow star, a tiny speck of light, gently sheltered midway to its gaseous giant Jovian siblings, waltzing in the stardust along the whispering wisps of lonely virginal spiral galaxies, shyly waiting to be noticed. Once found, these cradles of life are so precious as to never be lost sight of, or to be forever infected by the virus of deception, hatred and war.

The Discovery. We will never be invaded from space, and our natural disasters cannot be prevented. We will be lovingly watched until we learn the truth about the cause of the disease which infects our minds and troubles our souls. Then, when enough of us learn the use of love to soothe the reptilian instinctual fears existent in all of us, we will we be able to seize the courage to peck through the shell of our ignorance and to soar on the winds of time. But, if we've been birthed prematurely and lack strength to evolve, then here someday the dolphins or another of Gaia's children will learn to fly, and may wonder of we and why?

William John Cox is a retired prosecutor and public interest lawyer, author and political activist. His 2004 book is, "You're Not Stupid! Get the Truth: A Brief on the Bush Presidency" is reviewed at http://www.yourenotstupid.com. He is currently working on a fact-based political philosophy.

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