Open Letter To Bruce--The Plan
Email exchange -- only slightly edited.
Dear Stephen,
I just re-read much of your DDL site again, and back to read DD Revival too. You have so much info it staggers the mind. But I was unable to find "a plan".
... I have in front of me two documents of despair, of disillusionment with the American political system that allows this criminal war to continue. Andrew J. Bacevich in his Washington Post op-ed column and Cindy Sheehan in her ["retirement"] statement on her blog express despair over the failure of the Democrats placed in power by an antiwar electorate to take firm measures ...
The illusion must be squashed that present methods of governing represent the best interests of the people of the United States.
So, do we (YOU) have a plan? From your writing, we have the "Power to Petition" and I expect if we have a strong number we could get a referendum to amend the US Constitution to provide Initiative and Binding Referendum.
I would like to write Cindy and Andrew with a plan to accomplish this. I think they would support it.
Now, I need you to provide the plan.
Is it time? Could we do it?
Still hopeful, Bruce
Bruce --
The med problems have slowed my plan's presentation on the DDL site, but I'm in the process of a DDL site reorganization that should do the job. And, hopefully, you'll find the plan better-presented on DD Revival. But I'm reorganizing the sidebar there to point up "The Plan".
The plan is primarily in "Open Letter To Susan". It gives the"null & void" project outline, the smash-mouth politics of the "Unity America" citizen action plan, and some standalone Constitutional amendments that we need to get passed.
Add a nationally organized "jury nullification" project to "Unity America" and we can hurt the predator elitists in many dimensions. Make no mistake, hurting them is absolutely necessary. Smash-mouth politics is absolutely necessary. We'll have no sensible, cogent reforms until we hurt them badly.
"Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without poughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning .... The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will." --Frederick Douglass (African-American slavery abolitionist).
Douglass had it right in the 1860s. In the study of comparative power structures, he still has it right. The "demand" must overmatch the power of whatever tyrants are at hand before they will concede anything.
Is it time? No, we're not there yet. The vast majority of Americans are still cocooned, still thinking the do-nothing politics of giving away their responsibilities to anybody, no matter how much of a criminal he-she-it is. But we're trending in the direction of good revolt. Keep the pressure on. Keep it on the politician criminals and on the do-nothing people.
Our do-nothing civil society is nothing new. If you go back to the history of Saul Alinski's wildly successful organizing , 1940s and on, you'll find that he and his troops faced the same do-nothing American people that we face today.
We've been taught for over two hundred years to give away our sovereign responsibility for political matters to elected representatives. We've been taught all that time that when anything goes wrong, it's because we failed to elect the right representatives.
It's one of the hugely successful sophistries in American politics. (Sophistry equals plausible falsehood based on unethical intent.) Not only are the politicians effectively unaccountable, but any lies they tell, any crime they do, is all the people's fault for not electing better.
And the sophism works. We've got about 50 million Democratic servile running around saying that we just must elect better representatives. They can't see that no representative can stand up to the corruption machines and vast majority of criminal politicians.
What a howler of ignorance, logical fallacy, and political stupidity. And now, the advocates of an Article 5 constitutional convention are running around saying we just must elect good delegates to the constitutional convention. The American people's ignorance of sophistry and power is just mind-boggling. The lack of critical thinking is just stunning.
The first law of life is that you always change a losing game. We've got about 100 million servile citizens, Repugs and Dems, who still can't grasp that their game is nothing but losing.
Aristotelian logic includes "induction". It is persuasion that results from a whole series of similar events from which the listener/reader can draw a single conclusion.
To the Cindy Sheehan and Andrew Bacevich induction series, you should add a spectacular quote from a recently deceased master of protest, Kurt Vonnegut. In a pre-Iraq-War warning to anti-Iraq-war protesters to go beyond what the Vietnam war protesters did, he said --
"We formed what might be described as a laser beam of protest, with everybody aimed in the same direction, focused and intense. This weapon proved to have the power of a banana-cream pie three feet in diameter when dropped from a stepladder five-feet high."
You can find the quote in context in Vonnegut's interview by Joel Bleifus, in "Kurt Vonnegut vs. the !&#*!@" on the ITT site, at--
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/kurt_vonnegut_vs_the/
Did the anti-war movement listen to Vonnegut? Oh, hell no. Sheehan's comments about the anti-Iraq-war movement, in her "letter of resignation", tell us that there's no change in the dipso culture of demonstrations from Vonnegut's Vietnam to Sheehan's Iraq. It's still do-nothing politics -- powerless parading to impress the criminal reps to whom you gave away your responsibility.
1st Law of Life -- ALWAYS change a losing game. Way things are right now, the vast majority of our do-nothing Americans will go to their political deaths -- and probably tens of millions to their physical deaths, Yellowstone or terrorist WMDs -- without a clue that their game is nothing but losing.
As it was with the political ignorance of Romans at the end of the Republic, so it is with Americans today. Got republican principles? Whaddya say? Can't hear you over the music.
Yes, there are hopeful signs that change might come. But it's still a long way off. We're not even to the point yet of significant recognition that the Bush-Cheney Regime is a catalog of legal matters. Our servile still think it's just a bad variety of politics-as-usual. And the hundred million or so who are withdrawn from politics are in some nuther world of political indifference -- rave parties, the really good-looking slut-jump-and-prance-around, worshipful celebrity heaven, crack pipes, religious dogma, or getting their piece of the economic pie. Got republican principles? Whaddya say? Music's too loud.
Keep the pressure on.
For all practical purposes, the dollar has already collapsed. The international central bankers, anchored here in the treasonous Federal Reserve, are keeping the illusion of it alive so that their profits will be more immense when the North American Union and the Amero currency become reality. The superrich will make billions in the changeover from US Dollar, Canadian Dollar, and Mexican Peso to the Amero. They'll make even more than they made in the changeover from the various European currencies to the Euro. What a gut-wrencher that was.
And make no mistake, The NAU and its Amero will become reality very soon. There is no way for ordinary people to stop it. All we can do now is hope to organize for the smash-mouth politics that will get us the fully independent citizen lawmaking with which we can repeal and reverse the NAU.
Please read everything you can find on the organizing successes of Saul Alinski and his old "Industrial Areas Foundation". His "iron rule" very much applies today -- "Never do anything for anybody that they can do themselves -- never." Two of his other rules are still good -- "see the world the way it is" and "fix on the world you want to have".
We've got a long way to go.
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ADDENDUM --
Some of us hope that the people will take up their political responsibilities aainst the 3-branch fascist despotism -- and against the superrich's corruption machines of the Federal Reserve, IRS, Business Roundtable, and Council on Foreign Relations, to mention only a few of the worst corruption machines. However, against the evidence of the people's continuing avoidance of responsibility, hope is certainly dwindling.
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Modified Thu 07 Jun 2007, at 9:50am CDT
© 2007 by Stephen Neitzke
