I grew up on America’s first rocket base in New Mexico, watching my Dad and his pals shoot off the last of Von Braun’s V-2s. I was a patriotic young Republican, a CAP Cadet, and a science fair winner. I always sang in the choir in church growing up, and again on the bases where I served in uniform. I have close family today in the space business, and also in uniform on active duty. Good American roots.
After my tour in Vietnam in ’68, I was ready to go back, up for promotion, highly decorated and gung ho. I was apprehended on the beach smoking the local Panama Red with the daughter of the High School principal. To avoid embarrassment to the Army, I was declared by the unit psychiatrist to be morally unfit to lead troops into combat, and offered resignation of my Warrant if I would waive trial, accept Article 15, and quietly go away. I did, and instead of getting my new Cobra gunship and going back to the DMZ, I found myself at Woodstock.
I’ve said going from Khe Sanh in 1968 to Woodstock in 1969 was like pushing the hyperjump button on a computer game and finding yourself in a different universe. Having been thrown out, I dropped out, and over the next decade learned to live a personally free lifestyle that few people who are integrated into the structures of our society are able to comprehend, much less defend the rights which make it possible. These two widely separated viewpoints produce a heightened sense of perspective, just like having two eyes gives you a sense of depth you cannot get from either one by itself.
Whether we are watching Fox or MSN, most Americans these days pick one or the other, and see things only one way. If you use your Right eye, you get one set of “news” stories, and if you use your Left eye, you get the opposite. Both images are being sold to you by the same corporations, down the same tube, like 3D movies with two-color glasses. Each will tell you what is wrong with the other, and the Libertarians will tell you what is wrong with both. They are all correct, which makes them all believable. As long as you are wearing a Red State shirt or a Blue State shirt, and buying tickets to their elections, they win. We will fight over which of them gets to wear the Big Hat this year, and what new powers and privileges they will give to each other, but it will be one of them who gets elected, incumbent or new young lion.
On all sides of the political spectrum, Americans are more and more disturbed and dissatisfied with our system of government. One-eyed, we point fingers of accusation at whatever we perceive ourselves to oppose. “It’s the Liberals!” we shout, or “It’s the Christians!” Some of us shout, “Throw out the Incumbents!” and some even suggest we should go for the root, and cry, “Throw out the Congress!” Whatever we think we want to throw out, we often as not end up taking our justification from some line we quote from The Constitution, or The Bible, insisting there are things we have now that we don’t want to lose. We’re unhappy with what is going on, but we really don’t have much idea about how things might be different.
With respect to ARM’s activity in this regard, two big questions come to my mind. First, how do you make a movement happen, and second, besides voting for individuals without the power to draw mainstream voters, what do we expect to accomplish?
Making movements happen is what the big political marketers are best at. It takes a lot of money, a lot of media expertise, technical and editorial, and the vast resources of man-hours of thousands of organized people. It is practically impossible to organize a political movement without that movement taking place among the present-day politically powerful. If an idea isn’t already a contention among the existing leaders, it isn’t likely to generate much real power to move large numbers of people, as a “movement” implies.
I have long been fascinated by the “chain-letter” or “geometric” forms of marketing and propagating ideas. Like today’s “viral” videos on the internet, these things will take off and spread themselves, without anyone having to force-feed them with money or structured organization. This is clearly our best shot at creating an American Reform Movement. How do we get people to spread it? Obvious: the content. Content, and comment on content, an active controversy. It has to be about what we are saying, and that has to be what people wish they could say for themselves, so they will send it to their friends… or their enemies, as appropriate. Also obvious: the flag-bearer. Politics is a game of celebrity, and as commercially-made celebrities from Lady GaGa to Sarah Palin make clear, you’ve got to get out there like Billy Mays and sell yourself to accomplish that. I did not say you have to sell out, but you’ve got to have somebody out front pitching the product and yelling, “Follow me.” In that regard, our ARM man on the ground is Bill Taylor, aka The Centurion, whose name we hope shows up on many ballots here and there.
As for our objectives, that’s pretty tough to get a real grip on. It is clear to me that as long as we have the same system of elections and the same government structures as defined by our Constitution, then the same kind of guys are going to keep getting elected. Oh, there will be an endless line of new pinheads ready to put on the peaked hats, but it will be the same hats they keep putting on. Worse, there is no changing the fact that the big celebrity campaigns require hundreds of millions of dollars, and both the incumbents and the challengers know the only place to get enough money to do that is by selling influence to the big lobbying industries. No matter who gets elected, they get to office beholden to somebody for the necessary money. It is an unavoidable prostitution that eventually every candidate must accede to, no matter how sincerely, and it is a vice which lends itself most to the most willing. Those who love the pay-to-play way have a real advantage at winning office, again and again.
If all we are doing is influencing voters to vote for candidates with no reasonable chance of winning (Libertarians and Independents are each less than 2% of the vote), and our candidates if they won would still have to face the Old Boys and entrenched powers of the huge industries, and the huge agencies, then what might we think we are accomplishing? If we are to create a movement, clearly it first of all must be a movement in the way Americans think, and not just a kneejerk reaction to rally the confused and angry to throw stones at the castle and drag Senators to the guillotine, whether they be villains and whores or merely hopelessly hopeful idealists trying to do some good in a crooked game.
The best I can do is try to make sense of it from my cross-the-spectrum perspective, to keep yelling into the wind from my tower in the wilderness, to defuse unnecessary conflicts among Americans if I can, to protect the rights and liberties of every individual, to support things that promote the common good, and to try to remind everyone that we are not here to tear down The United States Of America, we are here to make it work.
Right-Or-Left politics is not enough. It has to be Right-And-Left, led by a clear head with both eyes open. So open your other eye. You’ll see what horrors the One-Eye merchants of chaos are peddling to us, on both sides. It could be mind opening, and illusion banishing. It could change the way you look at elections. What then? Tell us how it looks from where you are. Given enough such viewpoints, our collective perspective brings about a new focus, and new movement. We won't have to tell you what to do. You will see what to do.
James N. Post "Lancer 17" 101st ABN '67-'68
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