The Procrastinationist

[This message is dedicated to my new myspace friend Becky from my high school, with whom I'd rarely ever spoken to until commenting on a bulletin she recently posted. In the last month we've been writing each other a lot about what's going on in the world, and her support of my writing is a big reason I'm now posting regularly to my blog. Thanks Dumpy!]

Becky wrote me a letter today expressing her appreciation and admiration for my writing, which was a first for me. As you can tell by my archives, I’ve only been doing this steadily for about one month, so I was quite taken aback. It was only recently I realized that I’ve very much been in the closet about my concerns for the health of this country. Oh sure, if you hang out with me long enough at a bar I’ll start spouting off about this issue or that, or every 6 months I’ve timidly fired off a somewhat passionate email to family and friends. But indignant speeches a dark bar and late night rants are a far cry from rallying cries for action in the sober light of day. Now as I said, part of the impetus for writing more in depth and personally about my views was her encouragement, but in recent days I’ve realized that it truly arises out of fear of allowing this country to slip out of our grasp.

Now if I’ve never I talked politics with you personally before, it’s important that you understand that I am not talking about partisanship, but merely our obligation as a free citizenry to hold our leaders accountable. It does not matter if a D or an R follows their name, the whole point of the Bill of Rights and our system of checks and balances was to ensure that power was dispersed. The United States was formed in order to throw off the bonds of a tyrannical and repressive system which allowed no means of criticizing its leaders. It was not formed to spread that democracy elsewhere, it was not formed to promote the will of God, it was merely a system by which ordinary people could decide if their leader was doing a good job or a bad job. The end is the means, and it in no way can come at the end of a spear.

So. That’s a shitload of lofty rhretoric, but it came out of me fairly effortlessly so I will let it stand. The reason that I can express myself so easily right now is because when Becky wrote me today to say how “lucky” I was that I could write the way I do, I was immediately compelled to call her and tell her that I’m not lucky, just scared out of my mind at what this country has become. Actually, what really scares me is that no one in the establishment media seems to be having a serious discussion about it. We have an executive branch that has made broad attempts to politicize the Justice Department, legalized torture, disabled Habeus Corpus, misled us into a war that has cost over 4,000 American lives not to mention untold Iraqis (estimates range from 100,000 to over 1 million, but our government can’t be bothered to count those brown fuckers), and the current cost is at $524,943,204,345 (at the moment of this posting, to find out what it is by the time you read this, click here), and oh by the way did you know that Bush can declare martial law at any time under the Defense Authorization of 2007?

Yeah, martial law fun conspiracy theory shit, right? This was an actual amendment to the Insurrection Act which gives the power of the president to federalize all troops. Here’s a fun key change in what can trigger this authority. Originally, the president could only enact martial law under these conditions:

insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy

natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition[emphasis mine. Yeah, that's not vague at all]

…but don’t worry, because this can only happen if:

domestic violence has occurred to such an extent that the constituted authorities of the State or possession are incapable of maintaining public order.
[Hmmm, so like if all of the National Guard was stuck in Iraq this could happen, but then who would actually deal with this crisis? If only we had a privatized army run by a hardcore partisan Republican that was accountable to no one... Oh yeah, Blackwater! Whew!]

And here’s the key passage for me:

opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws.

Now as I’ve tried to explain, the whole problem here is that ALL KINDS OF TERRIBLE SHIT IS LEGAL! So am I technically an insurrectionist if I believe in organizing people to take action en masse to repeal the Military Commissions Act, or the PATRIOT ACT? After all those are laws. What if a natural disaster or epidemic breaks out, Bush declares Martial Law “to restore order”, only just like Iraq it turns out him and his crew are fucktards and no order gets restored, when do we get to say ENOUGH? I don’t know about you, but this fact alone will prevent me from getting a good night’s sleep until they are completely out of power.

So at this point I hope you are pissed off in some way. If you disagree with my interpretation of where we are at as a country, please tell me your reasons. If you’re pissed because you haven’t read this in the papers or in the media, you should be. My main impetus for writing this is because we have relegated the discussion of what is important in our lives to a professional class: the punditocracy and the career politicians. The only thing that fixes this is for all of us to start talking about it with each other. Given everything that you know about what this administration has done to subvert the rule of law and the sovereignty of the people, do you really expect them to give up their battle without a fight? I don’t, and I won’t breath a sigh of relief until they are out of office or held accountable, but I personally don’t understand how the two can be mutually exclusive.

Now, as you can tell by the title I’m a fan of democracy, and that’s what will save us in the end. We just have to remember that democracy is not voting once every couple years, it’s talking to each other about these issues, now more than ever. So here’s my suggestions for some critical, yet simple actions that we all can take to reinvigorate and strengthen our democracy:

1. Fax your congressman and Senator often. Don’t call since there’s no paper trail and I dunno about you but I get nervous talking politics to total strangers. Letters get screened and usually unopened since the anthrax bullshit. I don’t care what the issue is, just fax them. Congress lives by the ratio of 1:13000, which means that for every 1 person who contacts them about an issue, they figure there are 12,999 more who care just as much but for various reasons can’t send the fax themselves. As we all know politicians are pretty spineless, the only problem is that right now we’re not the ones with our foots on their collective throat, the defense contractors are. Time to change that. If you’re really excited by this action item but don’t have a fax, try this out all you need to do is upload a PDF.
2. Pimp the shit out of current.com to everyone you know, and encourage participation. Not a lot of people are aware that right now a cable news outlet exists which is devoid of mindless punditry and allows the community to vote and post stories. Since I’ve started using the site, I’ve had many of the stories and comments I’ve posted gain extremely favorable responses, and my very first video comment was picked for airing. This is people-powered media, and we need everyone to help ensure it’s viability. Even as an avid news reader, I’m amazed at the stories I’ve been exposed to since becoming active in the community that I hadn’t typically come across so easily. Plus everyone’s super nice, I’ve had more private correspondences with total strangers who appreciated my thoughts in 2 months on that site than in the 6 years I’ve been participating at dailykos.com
3. Start blogging. Even if you’re just posting links and brief descriptions, it still gets it out there in the ether. The more links that point to an important article or posting the better. The unbiased popularity of the Internet may well be the only thing that saves us.
4. On a similar note, If there’s one non-partisan and essential topic that I’d say you’re obligated to learn about and spread the word on, it’s the importance of network neutrality. http://www.savetheinternet.com Read up on that.
5. Learn HTML. That’s just good advice. If the economy ever turns to complete shit, HTML will be the new factory job.