So,
I finished reading The Anti-American Manifesto by Ted Rall and I have some things to say about it. After all, I am a blogger and saying things is what I do. Here are some takeaway points from the last couple of chapters.
First, it's a book written by a liberal aimed at getting other liberals off their couch and into action but the specific actions apply to absolutely everyone. It's a call to arms for everyone that isn't making a shitload of money at the expense of everyone else in the country (and most of the world). That's about 300 million of us.
People with a voice can no longer be silent about the corruption and violence. We can't pretend that it's not there or that it's going to just go away or that things are going to get better. Welcome to the greater depression, this is as good as it gets under the current regime. All of the gimmicks have been played out and now it's just going to come down to open corruption and oppression. If you see it, you have a duty to tell everyone around you until everyone sees it. Not just sees it but gets really pissed about it. We are being screwed and people should be angry about it. Apathy is not an option at this point.
Here's a side-note (because this just wouldn't be my blog without a side-note or four). Rall points out that as evil as huge corporations are painted, they are only able to operate in the way that they do because of the government. This is a point I have tried to repeatedly make in this blog. They are able to rent the government's guns to get what they want. They also pass off the riskiest parts of their business to taxpayers while keeping all the rewards. Rall didn't say that part but it's true. If Exxon and BP had to pay all the bribe money to the puppet dictators in the Middle East and fund the operating costs of a couple of aircraft carriers to lay the smack down when needed, they would not even be able to come close to affording it. However, with a little bit of bribe money, they have the entire United States military behemoth at their beck and call and a printing press for unlimited bribe money. If you want to curtail the power of corporations, you have to put an end to the United States government.
Here is the most beautiful part of this book written by this liberal.
Whichever team you are on right now doesn't matter. There are only two things that really matter.
#1. You value principles over any group affiliation. Don't try to get too organized. Create your own cells and take whatever action you think will work. The spontaneity is harder to plan against and the lack of a clear organization makes it impossible for the government to name names and fight a winning a battle. Do you think they will ever destroy Al Queda (even if that was their goal)? The government might be able to destroy an organization but it will never be ever to destroy a principle.
#2. Even if you have a group affiliation, you accept any help from anyone that has the same "Step 1" of reaching their goal. "Step 1" being the dismantling of the current corrupt and violent government with no hint of "changing the system from within the system."
After reading some of my blog posts, a friend of mine asked me if I had heard of the Venus Project. Most people are probably more familiar with the term, "The Zeitgeist Movement," which is the promotional arm of the Venus Project. I have heard of them (in fact, I'm on their newsletter list) and they have a lot of good ideas. If governments stopped holding people back, technology would advance so quickly that we can't even imagine what it would be like in 10 years. So many of the problems in the world today would be solved but governments don't want them solved and fight against people who want to solve them. The problem I have with the Zeitgeist Movement is the government they want to put in place after dismantling the current one. This however won't stop me from traveling along with them during step 1.
Rall spends the first half of the book showing all of the things that are wrong with the current government, which if you have been paying any attention to the world at all, you should already know. You would also know these things if you have been a regular reader of this blog for a while.
I'm not going to recap them all here. Suffice it to say that the United States government is the most murderous organization in the world and that politicians have been completely bought and paid for and are never going to do anything to help people if it hurts them, their rich friends, or multi-national corporations. By "hurt," I mean, "reduces profits."
Rall and I are surprised that more people aren't angry about this. Rall wants people to be angry about it because they should be angry about it. At some point, the anger should over-ride the apathy and the sooner the better. Every day that people sit on their couch, the US government kills another batch of people that are in the way of monetary profit.
The seeds of anger should bloom into violence against the government. Here, Rall and I differ on the approach.
Not that I'm going to condemn him or anyone else that uses violence against the government. It's morally justified, obviously. Using violence in self-defense or defense of a third party is a valid use of force. Since the current government kills people on a daily basis, anyone on the planet has a right to come to their aid and kill US politicians.
My concern is more about the collateral damage, gaining more supporters, and the final outcome.
Too many times, when people "attack the government", they pick targets that don't change anything. If you fly a plane into an IRS building and kill a couple of peons that believed in the system because they didn't know any better, you don't actually alter the actions of the people making all the decisions. When people take up arms against the government, they need to take it to the highest level. Don't take out the local tax bean counter. March to where Qadafi is and start there, taking out anyone who chooses to stand between you and him.
Even when a politician is the target, if you kill innocents just standing around (especially children), you're going to come off as the bad guy. You will get the attention of the other politicians to be sure but since they have a lapdog media system, they will be able to spin it against you and it might be harder to get more people to join your cause. There is no way that the US government can stop 300 million people who decide that enough is enough but you have to pull those people into your cause.
The last thing that concerns me is that using force to destroy the government will lead to the creation of a new government, which of course will be based on force. The good news here as far as Rall's book goes is that while he says what kind of government he would like to see formed in the first half of the book, he admits in the second half of the book that people and technology have evolved to the point where some completely new form a society could emerge on the other side.
I completely understand the desire to destroy the current government with violence. It's might be much quicker than other alternatives and gives people an outlet for their rage.
I, however, would offer a different solution, although violence would undoubtedly still be involved.
I'll discuss that next time and how this solution addresses my three concerns.