Sunday, Jul. 20, 2003 - 8:46 p.m.

Coup, Sin, Itch

Tonight Anarchy Man and I attended a speech by Dennis Kucinich (pronounced coup-SIN-itch) who is a member of the US House of Representatives who is running for President of the United States. Both of us are pissed off and disgusted by his plan for a “Department of Peace” which we conclude is either the height of naiveté, or a grand Orwellian snow job. If a “Department of Peace” were created, I bet it would, by design or evolution, work cooperatively with the Pentagon to foster peace wherever peace is strategically advantageous to the war effort.

We were both fired up about this when we saw the poster yesterday, and we got inspired to each write anti-government diatribes to try to talk some sense into the well meaning liberals who have never considered that there might be something better than a progressive President. We wrote, proofread hastily, gave each others criticism, edited, and then ran to Kinkos to spend money we couldn’t really afford on copies which we handed out at the doorway to the event.

One Kucinich supporter returned mine to me saying, “I wouldn’t wipe my ass with this.” I guessed he was feeling angry because he was needing respect for our government.

I ran into the Slug Queen there. The Slug Queen is a big Kucinich supporter. I gave her a copy of my diatribe. I hope she doesn’t hate me now.

My goal was to perturb pacifists and liberals by laying bare the ignored but obvious truths about "legitimate" state violence. I knew that they probably would not become anarchists as a result, but hopefully I planted the seeds which will someday grow into nagging doubts that maybe government is not okay after all.

Man, even for a politician, his speech was lousy. To me, he came off as much more slick and manipulative and disingenuous than even someone like Clinton. Worst of all, during question-and-answer, I came up with the most damning question I could think of. The question was, “will you close all of the United States’ foreign military bases?” I figured that if he said no, which I predicted, he would have to come up with some lame excuse, which would damn him in the eyes of all the pacifists in the audience. If for some reason he realized how damning it would be to say no, and said yes instead, then he would represent a dire threat to the military industrial complex, and would probably be assassinated by the CIA. Either way, I would win. I raised my hand several times. Finally, he pointed directly at me. I hesitated a moment to ascertain whether he was really choosing me, or just someone near me whose hand was raised. In that moment, MY OPPORTUNITY FOR A QUESTION WAS STOLEN BY A BLIND MAN who spoke out of turn (to his credit, he had no idea who was being pointed to.) The blind man asked if Kucinich supported the solar hydrogen economy. I lost my chance to damn the candidate so that Kucinich could reiterate his stand in support of renewable energy WHICH HE ALREADY MAKES CLEAR IN HIS PLATFORM. Oh, well. He will have other stump speeches, and I and others will have more chances to damn him.

So here is what I wrote:

Dennis Kucinich fights for peace...

with all the coercive violence that government lets him use!

This paper critiques the the ten key issues of The Kucinich Platform. While America and the world might be slightly better off under a Kucinich regime, his reforms would be superficial, and would do little more than perpetuate a kinder and gentler-looking version of our homicidal, alienated status quo.

[1] Universal Health Care with a Single Payer Plan

Health care in America sucks. The costs are exorbitant, doctors are both overpaid and overworked, you get treated like a piece of meat, and the whole system is drowning in paperwork. Single-payer health care would make us dependent on the government and that’s too vulnerable a position to be in. A change in politics could take away the funding overnight, and that would leave us without care again. We need more resilient strategies for meeting people's need for health.

Why have the government take your money from you and then later spend it on your behalf when you're sick? Many health problems can be prevented or cured by natural and holistic do-it-yourself approaches. Reduce your dependence on doctors and hospitals by getting books on emergency health care and first aid. Get a group of people together who want medical care. Instead of paying with money, find a nurse and/or doctor who is willing to give care in exchange for having her/or his necessities of life being taken care of by your group. If you can’t find a nurse or doctor who would rather serve your group instead of getting rich in the medical field, then choose a member of your own group to receive medical training, and pool your money to pay for the schooling. That person could then share what they learn with the rest of the group. Pool the group’s money to cover catastrophic health emergencies, and presto, you need neither commercial health insurance nor a monolithic government program, you’ve had a much less alienating experience, and you’ve saved a lot of money too.

[2] Full Social Security Benefits at Age 65

Kucinich says, "Social Security is the basic covenant our society has with workers who have built our economy."

What kind of society expects every person to use up the most vital years of their life working in a job they probably don’t like and then puts them out to pasture in their twilight years when their spirits have been downtrodden for so long that they don’t know what to do with all the leisure? Is this a way of life worth fighting for?

Again, there’s nothing the government can do for us that we can’t do better ourselves by simply helping one another out. Since time immemorial, families and communities have supported their frail and elderly. Only since FDR has there existed the peculiar notion that this is the rightful task of government. When you get old, would you rather be helped directly by a community that knows and cares about you, or would you rather receive checks from a faceless bureaucracy to whom you are nothing more than a 9-digit number?

We’d be a much healthier society if younger people could enjoy some of the wonderful leisure we reserve for senior citizens. Why work like a dog until the arbitrary age of 65, after which you’re written off as useless? The elderly are not all sick and senile; why have them sit around waiting for death? There’s lots that old people can continue contributing and there’s lots that younger people can gain by not working all the time. Let’s stop believing 65 means something, and instead let individuals, families, and neighborhoods choose more realistic, case-by-case approaches to work and rest.

[3] Withdrawal from NAFTA and WTO

We don't need a government making deals and deciding economic policies. We don’t need “government”, “deals”, “economics” or “policies”. Through growing and supporting our own local communities, mutual aid, and material self-sufficiency, all these greater abstractions of “government”, “NAFTA”, and the like would cease to be relevant to us.

[4] Repeal of the "Patriot Act"

Kucinich says it's okay for the government to snoop on our communications, medical records, library records, and student records as long as there is judicial supervision and probable cause or warrant. What this means in practice is that when some people in positions of power (judges) give their approval and sign the right pieces of paper, your rights will still be violated, only now it will look more "legitimate". “Due process” is no guarantee of justice. Why give strangers in robes, large bureaucracies, and people with guns (police) the power to attack your fellow Americans and deprive them of freedom? What goes around comes around, and someday you could be the victim of American "justice" even if you are innocent. The Bill of Rights is just words on paper; in reality you are free until someone else takes that freedom away. The Bill of Rights is a scam to get you to agree to surrender all your freedoms to the government in exchange for a promise that the government will return a few of these freedoms back to you. The USAPATRIOT Act will become a harmless piece of paper once we abolish the government of the United States.

[5] Right-to-Choose, Privacy, and Civil Rights

Without government, no one would have the power to take away a woman’s right-to-choose. Conservative Justices can only oppress women if people believe in and obey the Supreme Court. Lesbians and gays don’t have to depend on a “benevolent” government to bully homophobes into treating them fairly. They can have something more powerful: control over their own necessities for living. Affirmative action is only necessary when minorities and women are dependent on corporations and government. By taking back individual and local control over our own economic lives and learning, we won’t need a government to force racists and sexists to give us jobs and education. Kucinich will reduce the government’s emphasis on criminalizing drugs, but not eliminate it. Thus the drug trade will remain profitable, and drug lords will still have an incentive to create new addicts. Kucinich seeks an end to capital punishment, but regardless of whether it is achieved, the government will go on murdering people through people via the military, police, and prisons. Ending capital punishment will only be ending the official, ritualistic murdering of a few people on death row. Abolishing government, on the other hand, will end capital punishment, and all official murder, for good.

[6] Balance Between Workers and Corporations

American workers are working longer and harder for less pay than 20 years ago. What’s needed is a resurgence of individual and local group material self-sufficiency. Most Americans are wage-slaves, meaning they are dependent upon receiving a piece of paper (a paycheck) in order to use various material things needed to survive, in exchange for engaging in activities that they have no control over and chances are would not be doing if given a free choice (employment). We need to take back power over our own lives by eliminating our dependency on employment. Alone, or in small groups we must innovate ways to quit our jobs and break free of our dependency on corporations and government. This could involve voluntary simplicity to reduce one’s cost of living, home businesses, going off the electric grid, growing our own food, sharing with your friends and neighbors, etc. Work is much more fulfilling when you’re working for yourself and those you are close to, on your own terms, and taking leisure when you see fit.

Investing $500 billion to rebuild schools, roads, bridges, ports, and sewage, water and environmental systems will do more to simulate the government helping people with their needs, thus fostering dependency and the belief that we can’t live without services from our “benevolent” rulers. There are a multitude of ways to meet those same needs without resorting to government.

When people enjoy local self-sufficiency, and have direct access to, and control over, the necessities of life, then who will need “money” anymore? Why would anyone trade their lives away in exchange for numbers on paper when they can work for themselves and the people they know and care about? Who cares about “the economy” when they’re providing for themselves? A “living wage” will be meaningless and laughable when people are at the helm of their own economic lives.

[7] Guaranteed Quality Education, Pre-K through College

Learning is absolutely vital to the development of every human being. However, education is not the same thing as learning. In fact, education often prevents the very learning it purports to foster. Children are all curious, and from birth onwards they naturally learn about the world around them. Schools forcibly take them away from their loving families and confine them in an alien, bureaucratic environment for many hours a day. What most children learn in school is that learning is a drag. They learn to obey the arbitrary dictates of authority figures. They learn that they have no power, and that there’s no use fighting back or dreaming of a better life. They learn that democracy is something reserved for adults, and that even when they reach 18, all democracy amounts to is pushing some buttons in a voting booth to choose who will rule over you. Children in schools learn about social cliques, peer pressure, conformity, and bullying those who don’t fit in, or being bullied by those who do. As we adults are well aware, most of the subjects taught in school are things we don’t actually need to know in the adult world, while most of what we did need to know we had to learn outside of school. American compulsory public schooling was copied from how they were doing things in Prussia (Germany) in 1819. Compulsory public schooling was explicitly a method to condition people from the earliest age to unquestioningly obey authority, compete for extrinsic rewards (grades) and fear punishment, so that they would grow up to be pliant, unthinking soldiers, obedient workers in mines, factories, and farms, and citizens who thought alike on most issues. It was never meant to be about fostering democratic values. But it does numb you and make you able to accept dehumanizing employment as an adult.

Through unschooling we can reverse this process and unlock every child’s innate passion for learning. If we choose to continue using schools, they will be strictly voluntary places where children can share the learning process with one another as well as with adults. But the whole wide world is full of opportunities for learning, so there’s no reason to keep kids locked up for 6 or more hours a day. Unschooled children have been proven to score better on standardized tests, and they are still accepted into colleges. We don’t need no education. We don’t need no thought control.

[8] A Renewed Commitment to Peace and Diplomacy

America has a global military empire, far larger and more powerful than the Roman Empire of antiquity. The U.S. acts like it owns the world. The U.S. has military bases in 80 other countries (no other nations have military bases within the U.S.) and the U.S. Navy patrols every sea. The U.S. attacks other countries whenever it feels like it and drops bombs on civilians even without a declaration of war. The U.S. overthrows the democratically elected governments of other countries and then installs puppet regimes because it looks less like an empire that way. We can feel better about ourselves that way because outright conquest is no longer fashionable in this age. That’s also why the U.S. goes to war as coalitions through the United Nations, NATO, or whichever nations the U.S. can bully or bribe into joining it. But it’s still tyranny through violence. All this has been going on long before George W. Bush came to power.

All empires are evil empires. It cannot be any other way. Peaceful, cooperative people do not and would not build military empires. If the Roman Empire had started a Department of Peace (without dismantling their empire first), wouldn’t we laugh at it now? If Nazi Germany had instituted a Department of Peace after conquering half of Europe, would it not have been a twisted, disgusting joke? A Department of Peace in the United States can be nothing but ineffective and blatant hypocrisy until we abolish our aggressive Department of Defense and the CIA.

War is the health of the State. What makes a nation a nation is its ability to make war on other nations. War is not possible without government, so if you’re truly against war, you must be opposed to the source of all wars, government. Violence is the organizing principle of all nations; violence, internally, to make people obey the laws out of fear and to pay taxes out of fear, and violence externally in the power to engage in organized defensive or offensive war. If a government truly established nonviolence as its organizing principle, it would cease to be a government; instead it would be more like a think tank that would give its recommendations to the public, but without the will or ability to enforce those recommendations. This think tank would subsist solely on voluntary contributions, or by selling its goods and services like any other business. Such a nonviolent post-government could not claim to be the sole representative of the people either; there would be nothing stopping rival think tanks in the same land from claiming equal legitimacy. If you are free to disregard the laws if you choose, and uniformed people with guns or clubs never try to scare you into obeying, only then can you claim to live in a nonviolent society.

Kucinich’s proposed “Department of Peace” will be funded through taxation. Americans pay taxes because they are afraid that men with guns, who we call police, will take them away and lock them in a cage, which we call prison. How is that nonviolent?

The real path to peace is through disobedience. If no one volunteers to be a soldier, there can be no war. If the people refuse to pay taxes, the government cannot pay for a war. If no one volunteers to be a cop, a draft cannot be enforced, and neither can taxation.

[9] Restored Rural Communities and Family Farms

If you must buy food grown by others, only buy food grown by people you know personally. If everyone did that, corporate agribusiness would go broke, rural communities and family (and communal) farms would flourish. If you care about the safety of your food, you would do well to know firsthand where it is coming from rather than trusting a faceless bureaucracy (be it government or corporate).

[10] Environmental Renewal and Clean Energy

Take some responsibility and boycott petroleum to your greatest extent possible. Not just in fuel you use directly but also think about the petroleum needed to manufacture and deliver the other things that you buy. Implementing renewable energy in your home and workplace not only helps the environment, it also gets you closer to being independent of the global power-mongers who control oil and other centralized resources.

If you’re materially self-sufficient, you won’t need a job. You won’t care about tax incentives if you are refusing to pay taxes altogether.

Kucinich, who may actually be a nice guy who sincerely wants to help people nevertheless is trying to achieve that aim through a strategy which entails a lot of violence. The office of President would put him in charge of enforcing legislation (through threats of violence) and would make him Commander In Chief of the Armed Forces (in charge of international violence.) If Kucinich were to renounce all violence, he would be unable to perform the duties of President.

The path to peace and harmony can never lead through government.

Let us resolve not to be ruled by George W. Bush. Let us also resolve not to be ruled by Dennis Kuchinch or anyone else!

Further reading:

The following websites and people do not necessarily agree with the opinions expressed in this paper:

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