When I talk to other Americans about what is going on, I see that they are puzzled, angry and addicted. They are confused that, even when they vote for liberal politicians, they get right-wing policies. They are angry because the alternative–voting for a conservative–would be even worse. But there they remain, stuck in a two-party trap to which they have become addicted. They know the Democrat-Republican duopoly isn’t good for them or the planet, but they can’t imagine anything different.
Please, people ask me, stop bashing Obama and the system and tell me what I should do. Me personally.
Fine. You are an addict. You are addicted to stupid capitalism and the political system that reinforces it. You need a 12-step program to recover.
1. Admit that under the Democrats and Republicans you are powerless, that things will never get better under them, that their system of capitalism is out-of-control, immoral and unsustainable.
2. Understand that a different way of organizing society, economics and politics could restore us to sanity.
3. Stop believing in the power or desire of the two parties to make things better.
4. Stop participating in or thinking about electoral politics, which are a waste of time and energy, a needless distraction.
5. Understand that we face radical problems, such as climate change and income disparity, that radical problems require radical change, and that radical change originates in the streets, never at the ballot box.
6. Understand that radical change is usually impossible without revolutionary overthrow of the state and the destruction of the ruling class and the stupid capitalist system that sustains it.
7. Accept that revolutionary movements require a combination of nonviolent and violent tactics in order to have a chance of succeeding.
8. Make common cause with anyone and everyone opposed to the existing order, no matter how repugnant, because nothing else matters until we have emancipated ourselves.
9. Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves, admit to the world our complicity in allowing the existing system to exploit, rob and murder their people and things.
10. Make amends to people of other countries wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
11. After the Revolution: Continue to self-assess, and when we are wrong, promptly admit it and make amends.
12. Try to spread the message of revolution, freedom and emancipation to other oppressed peoples, and to practice these principles in all matters.
Happy New Year!
(c) 2012 Ted Rall, All Rights Reserved
15 Comments.
Good suggestion Ted , but can you please list some specific things – especially non-violent ones, that people can do to work these steps? I might suggest that some of the people here put the time they spend trolling the blogs to writing several, not one, letters to their state legislators telling them that they are on their way out – that they have proven to be anti-American. I suggest that we stop buying anything that is not made in America as completely as possible. How about a run on the banks? – if you only have a few 10’s of thousands or less – it might as well be home for all the interest it is earning anyway. Why not a national – “no buy” day where no one goes to a store and buys anything new? Boycott products from the Corps that pay little or no taxes or have hurt our systems, like Monsanto, GE, etc. Stop using credit cards completely. We all need more information on ‘how to work the steps’ besides stuff like dragging legislators out of their cars or other violent stuff that little or no one is willing to do – especially those with family to support.
(8) troubles me. Living in the deep south, I can’t see how we could possibly benefit from aligning ourselves with the people I meet who are full of rage because our government is “too liberal”.
Yup – see what immediately happens? Lacking the ability to see the forest for the trees, most people immediately get focused on one small part of what you have said, and get wrapped around the axle over it. To me, the Deep South can often be a synonym for the deeply ignorant – not all, but most. Because most people are wrapped around the axle over one or another issue, they can’t free themselves to go further – so once again Ted – Can you list some specific actions that can address your list of “Steps” and how to “work” them?
No viable liberal candidates are running, so it isn’t correct to say it’s useless to vote for a viable liberal candidate, since they’ll just betray the voters who supported them, rather one should say that it is impossible to vote for a viable liberal candidate.
I remain unsure if Whimsical might be right. Humphrey promised to vigorously pursue the Vietnam War, even though victory was clearly unattainable, while Nixon promised complete victory, and Nixon won. Whimsical’s argument seems to be that, had we voted for Humphrey, that would have moved the establishment incrementally to the left, so the next race would have been between two somewhat better candidates, giving us a fractionally better choice. Eventually, after twenty or forty Presidential elections, we might have been able to elect a President who would not insist on his sovereign right to kill anyone, anywhere, anytime, for any reason or for no reason, and who would have found different culprits for the sub-prime crisis, unlike the incumbent who blames the entire crisis on those who were tricked into taking out sub-prime loans that they could not repay, and who has promised to punish them severely, while rewarding and protecting all those hard-working bankers (of course, those rewards are restricted to those bankers who are from the banks that are Friends of those in power).
All current politicians seem to be in the mould of the Eddie Murphy character in ‘The Distinguished Gentleman,’ selling themselves to the highest bidder. And there is no Hollywood ending where a good woman gets the politicians to reform: instead, the preferred partners of the politicians tend to be the kind who like the things that require the money the politicians get from selling themselves (and selling out the voters who elected them).
Strictly speaking, a small plurality of voters voted for Democrats for the House (49%), but the ravenous gerrymander ate enough of their votes that the House ended up solidly Republican (with only 48.3% of the vote). This is the one slender sliver of hope.
The fact that far too many Americans think that 9/11 was caused by South Asians (and some push South Asians in front of New York subway trains for justified vengeance) makes this a remote hope. The counter-factual that South Asians were responsible for 9/11 is now widely accepted as true by virtue of the official announcements that, under ‘enhanced interrogation’ Khalid Sheikh Mohammed confessed as much. And far too many Americans fully support the drone strikes, and think those strikes, rather than killing 98% innocent women and children and thereby serving as an irrefutable recruitment tool for those who hate the US, believe the strikes only kill jihadists determined to kill all Americans, and kill those jihadists in the cheapest and most efficient manner with minimal danger to our brave US troops.
Ultimately, I see little hope. Whimsical can’t get people to vote for anyone to the left of Obama, and Obama is to the right of Reagan. And Mr Rall doesn’t have enough support to achieve a revolution, with or without violence.
The fact that a small plurality of voters wanted a Democratic House–and were told they could not have it–does provide the only ray of hope that I can see. Can that ray be magnified enough to start a flame? I wish I believed in an affirmative answer to that question.
Happy New Year
Two things: First. Rikster. Most of your list made sense. But the National “No Buy” Day idea is bogus. Here’s why. Every company in the world can handle a slow day. What a company cannot handle is the notion you bring up of boycotting the corporations that pay little or no taxes.
Imagine a sustained, national, open-ended campaign that has everyone refusing to buy gas from BP. The campaign ends when BP goes bankrupt in the United States. The impact to the economy will be minimal, it will be easy to do, and the message for the corporations is that the people can organize in such a way as to ruin a company that stops playing by the rules.
Second. Michaelwme’s post indicates the problem’s source. The populace is no longer being sufficiently educated in civic matters. This will only accelerate as the media finishes dying off. Today’s NY Times, for instance, had a piece about FAA rules on cell phones in planes and how those rules make no sense because cell phones do not cause the interference that is attributed to them. At no point, however, did the writer actually explain the real reasons we aren’t allowed to use cell phones on planes.
And that reason? It isn’t electronic interference, and the answer is in front of anyone’s face to see (anyone who lives a normal life).
1. A cell phone during take off or landing is a projectile if something goes wrong. Talk to WWII flyers about what “ditching” meant. It meant you threw every small object out the window or stowed it safely because even a small light object can become deadly. Your “superlight” iPhone? If it hits someone in the face, it could break their nose or injure an eye.
2. A cell phone is a distraction. “Everyone! Evacuate! Now! The engines are gonna blow!”
“Hang on, girlfriend, the waitress is shouting something and these two people to my left are carrying on like the plane’s on fire.” Takeoff and landing are the most dangerous periods of the flight. Yes, your attention needs to be on being ready to react immediately.
3. A flight is already annoying enough. The attendant does not want to compete with you and 30 other people to be heard.
But, if the airlines “ask” people by telling them, “Although your phone will not harm the plane in any way, we ask that you not use them so that we can get the plane off the ground safely, make the legally necessary announcements, serve you drinks and such, and then land the plane in one piece. Would you help us with that?” most people will simply whip out their phones before the fifth word.
@Rikster: You ask some examples of things that people can do in order to bring about these steps. Well obviously each step is different. At this point, I think most Americans are still on steps number one and two. These really are things that are involved in your own mind. Just simply stop thinking about the two-party system as a solution. The things that you are talking about, are parts of building a revolutionary movement – specifically the nonviolent parts. Generally speaking, the revolution will begin 100% nonviolently, then move through a period as it becomes more violent – for example, 80% nonviolent, 20% violent – and so on, until, in the final clinch, it is 100% violent. All of the tactics that you mention – boycotts, strikes, insurgent moves in the streets against bank, etc. – are all honorable and effective and proven historically.
@Russell: number eight troubles me as well. However, there really is no other way. Whether you are the French resistance fighting against German occupation or any other outgunned organization, you have to find everyone who is willing to join with you and pull together until victory, and then you can fight each other for final control. The power of the state is simply too awesome to resist in small fragmented groups.
By the way, I have been trying to work with Stephanie McMillan to produce a book about how to organize a revolutionary movement, but it has been a real uphill battle to find a way to get it published.
To michaelwme:
That “no viable liberal candidates are running” is a symptom of the problem under discussion.
It is NOT an independent factor, the reversal of which might change the problem.
Exactly so, Falco. The fact is, liberals aren’t allowed to run for office in the United States, and if they slip through now and then, they are not allowed to win, and if they are allowed to win, they aren’t allowed to govern effectively. But usually, you never get past step one. Because that’s the nature of the system, to constantly move it further to the right.
Ted, I agree with you in principle, so I went back and reviewed my DVDs from
Emile De Antonio.
In the Year of the Pig, Underground, and Mr. Hoover and I.
In the Special Features was a 3-Part interview with De Antonio.
He concluded that the revolution cannot succeed because
we are no match for the para-military units, drones, FBI, CIA etc
which will be used against us.
So it boils down to give me liberty or give me death,
and that’s just what our fascist government wants us to do.
They out smarted the woman’s movement, the civil rights movement —
they crushed all previous anti-war and populist labor movements.
So I believe we have to wait until capitalism destroys itself before we can
start our revolution. Hopefully, there will be no FDR in the future to save capitalism.
With all due respect to your DVD collection, what really matters is history. No revolution has ever been one by revolutionaries who enjoyed superior technology or weaponry. Technology has increased, and the challenge is no doubt daunting. But it always has been. Besides, technology always cuts both ways. Anything that they can build and use against you can be stolen and used back against them.
Ted, you’re awesome. Thanks for doing what you do.
Unfortunately, I think we are far more likely to experience a Limbaugh/Jesus Freak/White Power revolution than a leftist one. They have the guns, they are pissed off, and they just might be crazy enough to actually do something.
What to do, when they come down your street in a jacked-up 4×4, 4 bubbas in the back with assault rifles?
[i]4. Stop participating in or thinking about electoral politics, which are a waste of time and energy, a needless distraction.[/i]
This massively overstates the issue. Electoral politics are useful, they’re just only useful in a way that rightwingers and establishment-types (read: rightwingers calling themselves liberals) hate. And by hate, I mean frothing-at-the-mouth loathing.
The proper way to handle an election is visciously. Your job is not to elect “your guy” — if your guy could get on the ticket, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Your guy was fucked from jump — insofar as that is true, Ted’s point is true. However, “your guy” being out of the picture means that electoral politics are about something else: [b]completely annihilating a broad-based spoils system[/b].
The cliched version of an important American election is that those with the most privilege win, but those with significant amount of privilege also win — the spoils system ensures that minders get a cut, too. This is how, for example, blacks get thrown under the bus on various issues in democratic politics: the republican threat means that only the biggest winners of the democratic-side consistently win out.
The logical response to this is to back the worst candidate, where “worse” means, specifically, the one with the narrowest appeal of all. If both candidates would happily kill you and dance on your grave, back the one that would make the most graves. Liberals don’t have friends on the left: they have enemies. It is only by denying enemies any solace that they can become friends. . . mostly because they have to.
This isn’t pie-in-the-sky theorizing: the republicans pulled this shit off in the eighties. Remember moderate republicans? What happened to them? This shit. The hard right not only stopped going to the polls, they’d pull stunts where they’d actually vote for the dem if it meant a moderate republican lost. We know this works because it gave their faction control of the republican party of today.
[i]6. Understand that radical change is usually impossible without revolutionary overthrow of the state and the destruction of the ruling class and the stupid capitalist system that sustains it.[/i]
a) We aren’t a capitalist society and b) capitalism isn’t very important as a result. Seriously. We’re an aristocracy with minor democratic inputs. We bail out criminal business failures and sandbag small businesses in favor of big, inefficient business. That is the literal opposite of capitalism. Capitalism isn’t an inherent good — it doesn’t deserve much in the way of cheerleading — so I’m not defending it. That said, the worst parts of our economic system could easily be found anyplace where you have an above-the-law authoritarian polity. If we got rid of what you’re calling capitalism and kept our aristocracy, we’d still be fucked.
[i]8. Make common cause with anyone and everyone opposed to the existing order, no matter how repugnant, because nothing else matters until we have emancipated ourselves.[/i]
WTF? There are plenty of people who, screwed over by this system, merely hate the fact that the system hasn’t screwed over the objects of their hate more thoroughly. Here’s the thing: if you don’t want fascism, you don’t join hands [i]with the fascists[/i]. Even if the fascists themselves are oppressed. You delegitimize them, making it vulgar to be them in every walk of life. Telling blacks that they’ll need to make common cause with white supremacists, isn’t just tactically stupid, it rushes speedily into asshole-territory. The French Resistance didn’t join hands with pro-German quislings. Again: wtf.
I had a serious debate with myself when I came back from vacation and saw how low on the page this was. I knew it would probably scroll off before I could get the time necessary to generate a proper reply, and as a result, it was highly likely that no one would see it.
In the end though, I had to make a reply for my own piece of mind, because this is not just nonsense, it’s dangerous, playing-directly-into-the-hands-of-the-right-wing-nonsense.
“1. Admit that under the Democrats and Republicans you are powerless, that things will never get better under them,”
Understand that this is a lie. This is a lie thought up by those on the right, and repeated by their clueless enablers on the left. It is a lie with one purpose and one purpose only- to get you to do this:
“4. Stop participating in or thinking about electoral politics, which are a waste of time and energy, a needless distraction.”
Because when you do this, you give up the only power you have. You take your voice out of the conversation, and as a result, are completely ignored. Which is what the right wants (and a major reason the country has drifted so far right over the past 40 years). If you are not out there on the front lines (and that includes, but is not limited to electorally) fighting to make things better, you are actively complicit in making things worse.
Which is what the right wants. With the help of their misguided enablers on the left, they have been making things worse for 40 years in order to bring about:
“6. Understand that radical change is usually impossible without revolutionary overthrow of the state”
The right WANTS you to overthrow the state. They are TIRED of play-acting at Democracy. They want a revolution, because they know they will WIN, and get to establish the fascist theocracy that has ALWAYS been endgame.
The only thing a revolution will guarantee is that something much worse than the current system will arise in its place. Ted even admits this is true, but says he doesn’t care, because in a 100 years the country will be better for it.
I’m not willing to put the next few generations through hell because the left can’t pull its head out of its own ass. And for the record, my prediction is its more like 1000 years, not 100.
” 8. Make common cause with anyone and everyone opposed to the existing order, no matter how repugnant, because nothing else matters until we have emancipated ourselves.”
The right laughs at you when you do this. Here’s a clue- as soon as the system is overthrown, the right will turn on you in order to put their own agenda in place, laughing all the while. Ever watch a movie or TV show where someone makes a deal with the bad guy? It NEVER ends well for them. Making common cause with the right to overthrow the system will not end well for any of us.
“3. Stop believing in the power or desire of the two parties to make things better.”
Understand that this also is a lie, designed to trick you into beliving you are helpless. One party are sociopaths(Republicans can be best described by a line from The Dark Knight:”Because some men aren’t looking for anything logical, like money. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.”). One party just wants to keep their jobs, and would be willing to make things better if it means they keep their jobs.
Sadly, the failed electoral policies of the left (see ass, head-stuck-in) have instead sent the message that the best, if not the only way to keep themselves in office is for politicans to make things worse.
“2. Understand that a different way of organizing society, economics and politics could restore us to sanity.”
Understand that a different electoral strategy could restore us to sanity with a much lower cost. But given that the main cost is that it would keep those on the left from feeling smug and superior, it seems they’d rather esnure the right wing gets to complete the destruction of America.
“5. Understand that we face radical problems, such as climate change and income disparity, that radical problems require radical change, and that radical change originates in the streets, never at the ballot box.”
Understand that radical solutions are never found at the ballot box, but the systems naecessary to implement those solutions most certainly are.
“9. Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves, admit to the world our complicity in allowing the existing system to exploit, rob and murder their people and things.
10. Make amends to people of other countries wherever possible, except when to do so would injure (OURSELVES OR) them or others.”
With my little parenthetical addition, these are the only two points that are not incredibly feckless, foolish, dangerous and ultimately detrimental pieces of advice.
“11. After the Revolution: Continue to self-assess, and when we are wrong, promptly admit it and make amends.”
After the revolution (when you’re in a prison cell as the right remakes the country) it will be far, far too late to self-assess why you were suckered into destroying the country by the lies of the right wing. I suggest taking a good long look at yourself now: Why are you willing to cling to a strategy that has not worked for 40 years, is not working and will never work? Is it just because you get to bash Democrats and let Republicans off the hook? Why is that more important than making progress on all these goals you claim to want? When did it become easy to cry “Revolution, and DAMN the consequences!” rather than putting in the decades of hard work necessary to acheive real, positive change? Why are you so broken that you’d rather see the country end then fight to make it right?