What Are We Doing Here?

WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE?

The critical and most difficult question: what do we think we are actually doing here? There is the fact it is self-gratifying to publicly express views we hold dear, our patriotism, our desire to see things promoted in our society like justice, honesty, and compassion. If that were all we wanted from this, there would be nothing wrong with that. If, however, we are out to have some kind of social impact, then just what do we think we can do, and what are we trying to do?

The key to doing anything is, in a word, exposure. Success could only result from getting masses of people finding what we offer as free reading online interesting enough that they will invest their time and their money in supporting whatever ARM is promoting, and perhaps even buying and reading what we write for sale. As I see it, there are three ways to make this happen, presuming our content is exciting enough to begin with. One, to pay for advertising to promote the site, two, to inspire people to propagate the site like a chain letter, and three, to do something else which gets enough attention that people will seek us out – like painting graffiti halfway up the Washington Monument, or kidnapping Barack’s dog Bo.

Hopefully, our primary objective should be to have a political effect. That, in a word, means votes. Next to selling artificial opium, pimping for Jesus, and bombing ragheads, the marketing of political candidates is one of America’s top industries. The key words here are again, masses and money. Millions of people, and millions of dollars. A dozen chatline fans and a few $10 donations just ain’t gonna cut it, much as we might enjoy having them. The American electoral system is 100% marketing. It all takes place on TV, or in media-generating mass gatherings. As has been clearly articulated by such brilliant even if amoral strategists as Karl Rove, we Americans do not vote what we are for, so much as what we are against. Karl observes that talking about yourself and your issues is political suicide, merely giving the other side grist for objection. You talk about your opponent, not yourself, and what is wrong with him, and you persuade the voter to find a reason not to vote for your opponent. It is not possible in our system to vote “against” anyone; you must vote for someone. If the voters can be made to hate or fear your opponent, then you get their vote by default, no matter who you are or what you believe. This is the basis of the “vote out the incumbent” idea, whereby it doesn’t matter what a candidate is, only that you vote for somebody other than the presumably crooked guy in office now. I think lots of this low-grade thinking is unfortunately motivating the so-called Tea Party.

Though it is very important that the positions and issues of minor third or fourth or tenth parties of the less-than-2% variety be publicly presented and debated, as election “leverage” they are actually powerless. Votes for them are simply meaningless, like voting for your Granny’s goat. Though the fringe parties' self-sacrificing statement-making votes might have some influence on which R-Ds are chosen by their parties to run next time, in most elections even very regional, the only votes that make a difference in who actually gets elected are those cast for the Repo or the Demo. Closest anybody ever got to pulling off a real independent win was Ross Perot, who did it by investing about $30 million of his own money, made by building super-computers for the CIA and IRS, and appealing to those who hate both the Repos and the Demos.

Suppose we actually succeed in getting somebody elected by arousing a sufficient vote. What can we then expect that person to do in office? There is only one thing they can do, and that is to vote for or against new laws, according to the rules and their job descriptions, and as Scott Brown quickly learned, knuckle under to the power. When the GOP openly declares it will simply vote as a bloc against the Demo, no matter what the issue or the law proposed, it clearly just doesn’t matter what any individual Republican believes in or stands for. They have reduced themselves to rubber-stamp automatons, each a lock-step vote without will or reason. The likelihood of them backing the ideas of an independent is incalculably small. The Democrats are more democratic, and likely to have diverse views, but they recognize they are forced to vote together, or fall victim to the GOP’s relentlessly united resistance. As long as we continue to use the same system of election, based on media power which must be bought, on voters who are propagandized by the calculated and sophisticated marketing techniques of the modern campaign, and we continue to fill the same offices and enact the same policies in accordance with the same premises, then no substantive changes are going to be made in the way life and law are conducted in America by changing the people behind the desks.

Though clearly there is nothing to be gained from organizing bands of armed angry men ready to blow up something and kill Americans, what can we realistically do in the face of the implacable and irresistible power of a highly evolved and interdependent infrastructure of government and industry? Is there really no option except trying to influence the way people vote? There is a point at which that begins to look like pissing in the wind.

What motivates people these days to vote? There is taxes. We all want less taxation, but the simple fact is that short of just printing the stuff up, taxation is the only way the government can obtain money to do anything. We all claim we want less government spending, but the fact is we all have things we believe the government should do, from buying bombers to saving the little brown babies of Katrina. The working class are motivated by fear the corporations that employ them will be taxed out of existence, and by the idea they will have to pay more taxes themselves. The lower classes are motivated by hope the government will give them a few of the crumbs that fall from the tables of the rich. The rich want the workers taxed, and the workers want the welfare to the unemployed cut off. The sad truth is that we all wish the government would cut off the other guy’s benefits and fund our program. The other sad truth is if we taxed everybody 99%, including the rich, it would still take two generations to pay for what has been borrowed in our names in the last 20 years. And if we did pay it, who gets the money? The same banks to which we are indebted now, who can only do one thing with it, and that is to lend it back to us. The people who run things now are aware of this. They know we have reached a point where the amount of the debt is meaningless, and the value of everything is abstract. Everything is done on borrowed money, and all the IOUs are backed up only by the promise of keeping the labor forces working and taxing them. This fact is global, whether we ideologically agree with “globalism” or not.

There is freedom. Though we use the word, and dare anyone to deny it is sufficient justification for anything, it is only a platitude. Though many of us have called for decades for the personal freedom to use our own bodies as we choose, for our habits, sex life, use of our property, trade for our labor, etc etc, Americans seem much more likely to vote for someone who will act to prohibit things they don’t do themselves, and would prefer other people be forbidden to do. Such freedom they decry as license to sin, and condemn it, calling for “freedom from sin.” The control-freak patriots call for “freedom from crime.” The so-called Right Wing uses the word to justify invading and destroying other people’s countries, for economic and religious reasons, calling it “freedom from tyranny.” I think the organized pro-hemp and pro-homo and the civil rights folks will all find common ground with us on most things, and could be encouraged to vote for a candidate with our views on those issues, of either party.

There is religion. Though it is nominally excluded from our electoral process and our government, the fact is that a huge and well-organized cabal exists in US government today striving to use the power of lawmaking to enforce the taboos and prejudices of the most extreme Christian mystic factions, the authoritarian and puritan fundamentalist charismatics and Pentecostals, the born again and called by God to office. These are people who are not moved by reason or even by the hard facts of reality, but only by their “faith” in the idols of their sect. They are willing to make demigods of preachers who claim, for example, that God creates hurricanes to punish homosexuals, and will make them happy and rich if they will bow down to the altar of Jesus, and leave a little gift. They command an enormous number of voters, and no election in America today is free of their influence. I think it fair to say that none of us here on ARM today, whatever our view of the truth about God, is willing to pander to their occult superstitions, prejudices, and beliefs (as the major party candidates do) to get their votes. They will not likely be swayed from their beliefs by rational discourse, so for anyone who stands for the free exercise of our Constitutional personal liberties and the rule of reason, they are the enemy, lovely people though they may be. It is they whom our candidates must defeat, though they have Jesus leading their parades.

Should we then be attempting to establish some kind of reasonable platform that people of both the Left and the Right would leave their own parties to support, and those who take their God to be more reasonable and tolerant might appreciate? What kind of platform might that be? Having such a platform, do we then attempt to locate or create a candidate who can motivate enough public attention that the media will pick him up, shower him with millions of dollars so he can put on a big enough show to get people watching their commercials, as they have done with the manufactured celebrity Palindoll? Should we be promoting just the ideology, and hoping we can find existing candidates that will leave their party to stand for it as independents? Should we be organizing public meetings, making speeches, and chartering jets to fly from one city to another, passing out fliers and living on pizza and Jack? Should we be seeking corporate sponsorship to pay for the PSAs and the jets? Ok, I’m not expecting to be doing anything that big, but as a matter of visualizing what direction we are going, and what the terrain looks like, you see what I’m saying. Are we bringing a mule to a Nascar race?

I do love expressing what I think, and reporting honestly and literally as I can how things look to me, hoping somebody will read it and feel elucidated by it. I would certainly love to see the effect of it in our society, but I confess I do not see a clear path to accomplishing a particular end here. What we need now is to arrive at as clear, comprehensive, and direct MISSION STATEMENT here at ARM as we can. Like I asked at the beginning: “What the hell do we think we are doing here?” We are here to motivate a movement, not to recruit a corps, so it is a meaningful question, not a rhetorical opening to a policy briefing.

James “Lancer 17” \:--]