BY JOE MOWREY
5/30/07
Everyone is carping about the betrayal of the antiwar movement by the Democrats. It won’t take more than a few paragraphs to state the obvious. We no longer live in anything resembling a democracy, and we haven’t for many decades now. We live in a corporate-fascist theocratic oligarchy, or whichever multi-syllabic label you want to tack onto our current laissez faire capitalistic religious-extremist nightmare. If you need to have this explained to you in more depth, then you are probably one of those dreamers who did volunteer work for some Democratic candidate last year. Get over it. You’ve been duped again. No big surprise.
It is not now, and hasn’t been for at least the last 100 years, a question of which party holds power. Both parties are branches of the same form of governance. Those of you out there who think this is about a good system gone awry, look again. The system is working just the way it was intended to. The power elite who controls and operates corporations profit from labor exploitation, war and environmental devastation. This is not new information. But it seems to be the most difficult news for the peace and social justice movement, or whatever you want to call those who claim to be antiwar human rights activists, to come to terms with.
All that pissing into the electoral wind the “progressives” did in the lead-up to the November ‘06 elections has just rather unpleasantly blown back in their faces. Nancy, Harry and the rest of the gang in Washington have done exactly what they were paid to do. They have implemented the policies of their primary constituency—the multinational corporations. The occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan won’t be ending any time soon. Either accept that, or get ready to take the real actions that need to be taken to end U.S. imperialist warmongering.
There are many millions of us out here who understand this situation and know exactly what to do about it. It’s time for a little R & R—remove and replace our system of government, peacefully and nonviolently. I call it the two-percent solution. If a mere two percent of the American public (six million heroes) were to show up, half in Washington D.C., the other half in New York City (in order to take control of the major corporate broadcast media outlets) determined not to leave until the federal government is dissolved and the truth is begun to be broadcast to people in this country, we could change the world overnight.
Don’t expect any rational organizational structure to be in place to implement this plan. This is the left, after all. We need to show up and let the chips fall where they may. It’s time for a little abject faith in the processes of the universe. How much more insane is that than putting your faith in the “democratic” process? There have been nonviolent revolutions in major countries before. Let’s not consider ourselves so unique that we are immune to historic upheaval. But out of this ramshackle demonstration of collective outrage could come a new paradigm.
We could hold a People’s Congress—continue necessary operations of federal and state infrastructure while beginning the process of writing a new constitution and holding publicly financed and internationally monitored elections. We could revoke the charters of every corporation in the United States (and the Cayman Islands) and require them to undergo a process of reapplication and review. We could establish a Truth Commission to bring us to a collective acceptance of the horrors the United States of America has visited on the globe over the last 230 years or so. We could abandon the corrupt “American Dream” in favor of a universal dream of human dignity, justice and compassion.
Would the ensuing chaos and cathartic social revolution be pretty? Not likely. But look at where we are and where we are headed. Each day that passes brings us closer to environmental, economic and social disaster. The sooner we dismantle this juggernaut of mass destruction we call a government, the sooner we can begin to construct a new social order.
It has to happen eventually. There have been very few if any examples in history of totalitarian systems being dismantled via the ballot box. Despite this fact, many on the left continue to embrace such an absurd notion. We can do this now, while there is still some semblance of functionality to our core infrastructure, or wait until we experience economic and political collapse, martial law and the imposition of a true dictatorship in this country. The former alternative could conceivably be done without arms. The latter will require decades of insurgence and armed resistance which in the end will result in little more than a changing of the guard. Have you read much about global climate change lately? We don’t have decades to spare.
Either we act now or give up completely and hunker down to watch the end of the world on the evening news, replete with theme songs and spectacular graphics. Tough call? Think about it.
Joe Mowrey is a peace and social justice activist living in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He can be contacted at . Among his other relentlessly futile endeavors, he is one of a small contingent of diehards who have maintained a presence at a major intersection in town every Friday for the last four and a half years in opposition to the illegal and immoral invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. He also manages the database and produces the graphics for the Iraq/Afghanistan Memorial Installation, a 550-foot-long (and growing) series of 3 by 6 foot vinyl banners displaying the names, faces and obituaries of the U.S. military personnel killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Installation is a project of The Duck & Cover Coalition.
