Corvids count

It is a curious fact that, even among the opponents of democracy, the vote is considered important. That is why there is so much effort to persuade people not to do it, to persuade people to vote for candidates who can't possibly win, to prop up splitter candidates, to make it difficult to get permission to vote, to revoke people's permission to vote, to lose people's permission to vote, to falsify the vote, to not count the vote, to claim the vote isn't valid. Your vote counts, and your political opponents know it--that's why they don't want you to do it.

Croak!

Small Government

An old friend has attacked me in a political discussion. I'm disturbed and saddened. It got me to thinking, though. Some of the people who comment in his LJ sound like criminals--a combination of hostility, lack of empathy, and love of violence. They make the libertarian "small government" arguments. I think they oppose government the way criminals oppose policing; they only freedom they care about is their freedom to abuse other people. No wealthy, powerful nation has ever had a small government. In the end, the only way to achieve government "small enough to drown in a bath tub" in the USA is by a number of deaths, and a level of human misery, beyond any tyranny in history. And that is why, in the final analysis so many of the more vocal libertarians sound like criminals: they are in love with death and human misery. More food for us corvids...in the short term. Caw!

Blessing

I don't believe all the hate that the McCain/Palin election is spreading is going to win them the election.

"With the election being only a couple of weeks away and with more and more incidents of voter fraud coming to light, we don't believe that we can trust the results of this election," said Pennsylvania Republican State Chairman Robert Gleason yesterday.

We are for-sure going to be hearing about how Obama won because--gasp!--black people voted for the next two decades. How far are the Republicans and, especially, the radical right going to take this? No coup, I think. The military leadership will not support them--nothing like losing a war messily to make you unpopular with the officer corps and the general staff. But domestic violence, perhaps even domestic terrorism? Likely, likely. I'd hoped that the election would be the end of this. But then where would all that lovely negative energy go? Much, I think, will depend on Obama's conduct after the election. He is going to have to work very hard to defuse this horror. May he prove a Barack indeed--a blessing.

The Agents of History and Madness

Discussion on a friend's blog recently turned to William Ayers, so I researched him a bit. The material isn't secret, and there's a lot of it--Ayers, now an academic, is still writing. One of the things I found about Ayers is that his goal was sabotage and propaganda rather than terrorism; especially after the Greenwich Village disaster, the Weatherman took careful steps to avoid injuring people in their attacks, and in fact no-one was injured. Maybe this was because of those cautions, or maybe the Weatherman (the name of their group, after Dylan's line "You don't need a weatherman to see which way the wind blows") was just lucky. Ayers was another one who, like the northwestern anarchists in Seattle three decades later, had gotten impatient and was going to try to bring about the new world by force. Then and now, it didn't work. It has never worked. The state, the entrenched, corrupt powers--they have more force than any small activist group can match. In the end only persuasion and sacrifice seem to work and the work takes more than a single lifetime.

And, like a wolverine at the gate, we have the Alaska Independence Party--Joel Vogler, Mark Chryson, and Todd Palin, Sarah Palin's husband. Talking violence, with violent associates and ties to white supremacists and (yes!) the Islamic Republic of Iran, this group also wants to bring about a new world and has embraced, rather than renounced, violence against people in its aims. No lofty goals here--they want to make money by destroying the land and water of Alaska. Vogler was a gold miner. They want to become the state, they want to be the entrenched, corrupt power. With Sarah Palin becoming governor of Alaska they succeeded, at least in part. I think back to the nazis and fascists of the last century. Coming from the fringes of society, they took their petty desires for wealth and power, came to power, and failed in some of the most oppressive regimes and one of the bloodiest wars in history.

But it is all about power. My title is from Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle a contrafactual or alternate history novel in which the Axis won the Second World War.

They want to be the agents, not the victims of history. They identify with God's power and believe they are godlike. That is their basic madness. They are overcome by some archetype; their egos have expanded psychotically so that they cannot tell where they begin and the godhead leaves off. It is not hubris, not pride; it is inflation of the ego to its ultimate--confusion between him who worships and that which is worshipped. Man has not eaten God; God has eaten man.

Let us save ourselves from the agents of history and madness.

Spread the word

Max Blumenthal and Dave Neiwert, on Palin in Alaska. It reads like the early bio of a fascist leader. BTW, for those of you who think her support of firearms is positive, it's pretty clear that what she's supporting is the right to threaten with the open carriage of firearms. That is no part of freedom.

Teresa Nielsen Hayden pulls together lots of information on John McCain's failings. Caw!

The Problem of Hate Rallies

It seems that Sarah Palin has been exhorting to people to shout their hatred during her speeches, and they are shouting. From there, it's a short step to physical violence. It's a grim thing, bringing back memories of the infamous lynch mobs, and violent mobs throughout history. In itself, this probably will not raise McCain/Palin's electoral chances. If they take it to television or talk radio we might see actual mob violence. I don't think a month is enough time to establish a full-fledged hate campaign, one that could actually bully its opposition into silence. I don't think hate media can even swing the election, this late in the game. But hate rallies or hate radio could trigger some violent incidents before the election, at the polls, and even after the election. Which means... More food for corvids! Caw!

Waiting for the New World

It occurs to me that the reason I set out these mostly grim visions is because I am early, waiting for the new world. I came of age in the early 1970s, at the tail of the transformations of the 1960s. And there's so much to hope for! Even now, even in this dark time. The better world is near, nearer than we imagine. Freedom, peace, plenty. Oh, I know we won't get there in my lifetime. But we can be on the path. Even now, even today--we don't have to be monsters. And--if we make it at all--that world will be. But not today. Perhaps not for centuries.

I used to live in Eugene, Oregon. Some of my neighbors were the anarchists who made Seattle so interesting a few years ago. They were the children of the old hippies, they got tired of waiting for the Revolution, and decided to go out and make it. Well. No, not well. It was ill-done, overwhelmed and scared the Seattle authorities, and it's going to take a generation for the right to protest to be recovered. But they were trying to bring the new world. And so am I. All these things I write about--they are barriers on the way. In a different, saner world I would be wishing us on that way. Instead, I write to point out and to help tear down barriers to it. And out of frustration. Why is it so hard for people to imagine a better world? How long?

Not what you expect from this grim old corvid, is it? But corvids are smart birds. No, really. We can count, and our calls are almost language. We only go hungry when the world is starving.

So we work, and hope. Maybe, it will be enough.