Something Easy YOU Can Do About The Election

[I first wrote and published this piece on December 4th, 2000 on several progressive and Democratic websites. It was probably the most popular political article I ever wrote. It certainly received the most responses - and those responses gave me a valuable lesson on the practicality of reforming the Democratic Party from within. I've removed the links to the Democratic Party.]

Mon, 04 Dec 2000

American? Liberal? Mad about the Bush junta's coup d'etat? There's something very easy and effective that you can do about it:

Go to [Democratic Party link] and sign up online to be a volunteer for the Democratic Party. They're looking for online activists, and if you're willing to spend some time being non-virtual they'll also steer you to your local party headquarters. Bring your friends!

Some progressives have been saying that there's no point - that the Democrats won't fight hard enough, or aren't liberal enough, or are just overmatched by a mass media that's grossly slanted towards the interests of the rich and powerful.

But if even a small fraction of us volunteered and got active, we could change all that OVERNIGHT. Want to improve the Democratic Party? Join it, and change it from the inside! Otherwise, you're free to complain about your lack of representation until the cows come home - or until the Bush junta and the Christian Coalition take away your right to complain.

If Bush wins this thing, a lot of us are going to be depressed, angry, and afraid. But if enough of us click on the Democratic link and follow through, it'll be the GOP that's in fear! It's all up to you. And it couldn't be any easier. Just point, and click.

[Link redacted]

Pass it on!

Me again, writing in 2003. I thought you might like to hear what the response was to the previous two articles, which were, of course, far less silly than my usual stuff. I actually got a lot of responses - I was quite surprised. I was also surprised, and eventually horrified, to hear what happened to every single person who tried to volunteer: they were told to leave their names and addresses so that they could be asked for funds later, but flat-out told that there was nothing they could do. Some even went in person to their local Democratic headquarters, and were asked for money and then shown the door. The Democratic Party leadership squandered the perfect opportunity to build a nationwide network of passionate, committed activists, a network which could have grown and built all sorts of connections over the following years.

The Republicans have the advantage of money. They always will. The advantage that the Democrats have is people. There are more Democrats than Republicans, and of the unaffiliated population, the majority support traditional Democratic policies, not Republican ones. And yet the Democrats threw it all away. Why? I don't know.

I find it interesting that Howard Dean is now having a huge amount of success by building a network similar to what I urged the Democrats to build four years ago. And yet the Democratic party leadership apparently views Dean as a threat. I'm not a Dean supporter, but I find this all very disturbing.

2017 - And so attempts to #DemEnter in 2000 proved that the Democratic Party apparatus was firmly under the control of the party elite - and they simply wouldn't allow progressives in the door. In the 17 years since they have, if anything, become even more hostile to progressives. And Howard Dean, of course, sold us out.

So why do we need to learn that lesson again?

A CALL TO ARMS

I wrote this article on November 15th, 2000. I posted it on several progressive sites at the time, and it received some positive feedback.  It seems even more relevant now, particularly in the face of the #DemEnter groups that have been popping up lately.


Thu, 16 Nov 2000
 
It's 9AM on the morning of Wednesday November 15th, and at this moment we don't really know who will be the next President. Perhaps George W. Bush's friend and campaign co-chairwoman will manage to block the hand-counts in Florida, and win the Presidency for her man. Or maybe the Florida Supreme Court will require that all votes be properly counted, quite possibly giving a victory for Al Gore. Right now, we just don't know.

But it doesn't matter.

Don't worry, I'm not going Nader on you. Who wins this election does matter, matters a lot - and there's a huge difference between Bush and Gore. Should Bush win, this country's headed for very dark times. Remember Reagan? Remember how the reality was so much WORSE than we feared?

But no matter who wins -- Bush OR Gore - it's time for progressives across the country to stop bickering, stop wasting their energy in solo endeavors, and QUIT FUCKING AROUND.

That's right. There are a hell of a lot of people - I could name ten that I know in the real world without straining even slightly - who are passionate in their belief that the GOP right wing is a threat to every basic American value. They hate what's been done to this country, and desperately want to help to take it back from the hate and lies that have been rising in every state for twenty years.

But even though they all talk about it amongst themselves, even though some of them subscribe to liberal magazines and have contacted their local Democratic party, not one of them - NOT ONE - had ever been contacted by the Democrats other than for money. Not one of them has ever been given the chance by ANY organization to do anything other than maybe ring doorbells and make phone calls -- and that damned rarely.

These are intelligent, compassionate, motivated people. They're a huge potential force for good out there, and they're being completely wasted. No matter who wins the Presidency, it's time to do something about that. These voices need to be heard.

The same is even more true of the online liberal community. In fact, it's hardly a community at all; just thousands upon thousands of isolated individuals, all with strong feelings and much to say, but no way to ACT to promote their beliefs. Sometimes we come across each other in a random chat room or forum, and many read Bartcop and laugh, or Online Journal and get angry...but it's just not enough. Laughing and raging mean nothing if you don't DO something about the problem. And that's exactly what we need: a way to get together and fight back.

Put a hundred isolated individuals up against an army of 50 who've been trained to work and fight together, and the army will win every time. That's the modern political situation; conservatives are organized, active, working together to spread their daily talking points and media spin. They recruit others who feel as they do, and propagandize to convert as many people as possible. Since almost all mainstream media (including so-called 'public' media) are heavily conservative and pro-wealth, they have a lot of fertile ground to work with: uneducated and misinformed human minds.

We desperately need an organization of liberals, by liberals, for liberals, to fight for what WE believe. And the web is the place to start it. Once it's begun web progressives, organized and active, can reach out to liberals who aren't online - bypassing a mainstream media that is deeply under the influence of money and power.

I'm no expert. I guarantee you that there are a lot of people out there with better ideas than mine, and I'm hoping to hear lots of them. But at the least we need an organization to:

• Help liberals to locate each other in their districts
• Supply useful plans of action for small local groups, both for mobilizing
  others and for getting media attention
• Recruit online and offline liberals into effective working groups
• Train investigators to use the Freedom of Information Act and other techniques to acquire, analyze, and PUBLICIZE information about GOP and corporate corruption - as well as the personal lives of prominent individuals. It's long past time to take the gloves off. Larry Flynt is just one man in a wheelchair, and he's been forced to go it alone for WAY too long.
• Enable ordinary liberals to chip in a small amount - say $5 a month - by
  credit card to support group activities (but no donation of funds should be
  accepted without a personal commitment to action, as well)
• Organize national campaigns: media, political, educational, and other.

Much of this should have been done by the Democratic party, of course, but hasn't been. Since the official Democratic party doesn't seem able to help itself (at least not enough to make the difference), it's up to liberals to help it - and ourselves.

So what's the next step? What do we do to get an organization going? I'm not the one to say - I mostly write jokes. But I'm hoping that some smart person or persons out there will come up with some ideas. In the meantime, I'm sending this off to every online liberal organization and writer I can find. If you know any others, please pass this around, or write up your own ideas. And feel free to clean up the dirty words if necessary. :)

"If we don't hang together, we will surely all hang separately". The events of recent days have proven that this is more true than ever. No matter who wins the election, it's time for us to start taking the battle to the other side. And kick some ass.

If we don't, we can kiss the future goodbye.

More.

Imagine a fight. Two opponents battling. Call one Red and the other Blue, if you like.

If the two are reasonably well-matched, you'd expect to see a fairly close contest. Sometimes one might be winning, sometimes the other. If it's a long battle, the lead might go back and forth many times.

But suppose that one - let's say Blue - suddenly changes their approach. Rather than trying to win, they start fighting a purely defensive battle. They never try to land a blow. At most, they try to make it look like they're trying to win, without actually ever attempting to be a real challenge to their opponent. What happens? The purely defensive side will inevitably be defeated. What was once a fair battle between equals becomes a slaughter and a charade.

Of course you've seen through this metaphor. I'm talking about the American two-party system. Ever since the Clintons and the DLC gained control of the Democratic Party, ever since they shifted their fundraising focus (and therefore their loyalty) from the public and labor groups, the Democratic Party simply stopped...trying...to...win.

Think of the major political and social initiatives of the twentieth century. Child labor laws. Food and drug safety. Environmental protection. The forty-hour workweek. Social Security. Medicare and Medicaid. The New Deal. The Civil Rights Act. The Great Society. The Equal Rights Amendment. Can you name any initiative supported by the Democratic Party leadership after 1980 that even approached the same level of significance?

If so, my comment section is open to you. But I'm not holding my breath.

In modern American history, all the passion, all the aggression, all of the initiative has been with the Republican Party and the financial elite - the 1% - that they (and the Democrats) serve. They want control over every state, every legislature, every branch of government. They want to ban abortion, eliminate environmental protections, wipe unions and labor rights out of existence, ban Muslims from immigrating, build a wall which would rival the Great Wall of China, eliminate the social safety net, shove gays back into the closet, end Social Security, allow unfettered religious discrimination by (but never against) right-wing Christians...the list is endless. And behind it all is the never-ending lust of the 1% for more tax cuts and more cash from the public till.

More. That's what it is. They want more.

And what do the Democrats want? Why, they're just playing defense. They want to preserve those things that the 1% and the Republicans want to destroy. But gosh darn it, they just keep failing. And yet they still keep collecting those big checks from Wall Street. You'd almost think they were losing deliberately!

And that's why it was such a shock when Bernie Sanders announced the first major initiative to expand the public good in decades: his proposal to make public colleges and universities free for students. It's not a terribly radical idea, in hindsight. If we can do it for grades 1-12, why can't we do it for the four years following? And any economist (or anyone with an ounce of common sense) knows that it would be a profitable investment of taxpayers' dollars: a better-educated people produce more, earn more, and pay higher taxes.

And infinitely more important, they form an educated population which is the basis of a successful democracy - and a free nation.

Progressives have lost the habit of asking for more. We've become good at cringing, and panicking, and despairingly trying to salvage scraps from the leavings of the 1%...but we've forgotten that in the end, it's the people who are the majority. Not the 1%. Not the political masters of either party. We have the power, if we choose to use it. All it takes is for the people to wake up.

But they won't be woken by pale, pathetic visions of slightly ameliorating the apocalypse. It takes a grand vision, or better still many of them, to inspire a downtrodden people to rise up and overthrow tyrants. Free college is just the start. Single payer is just the start. Why shouldn't the American public enjoy all of the privileges that our European cousins enjoy? More vacation time. Shorter work weeks.

And more! A guaranteed basic income for all. Proper mental health care for every citizen. And dental. Lifetime educational opportunities - not just mealy-mouthed "job retraining", but education to enrich the soul and improve the mind. We're not just economic units; our lives mean more than money!

It's time for us to demand...more.

Fear

I know that a lot of people are really losing their minds right now. They're absolutely terrified by the election results. I'd just like to remind you of something: For the past half-year or so, the media has been been doing everything they can to create and maximize that fear. It was a cornerstone of the Clinton campaign, indeed THE cornerstone. The Terror of Trump was the primary selling point for Hillary.

At the same time they and the media were doing everything they could to boost Trump in the Republican primaries, their intention was to terrorize the American public with the prospect of Trump, the New Hitler. Billions of dollars have been spent to scare the living shit out of you. How you feel right now is at least in part the product of that massive campaign of terrorism.

Now, I'm not saying that the American situation isn't bad. It is. It already was, in fact, and has been for decades. The elite has been firmly in the saddle ever since 1980 or so, and they're driving the world to complete collapse. Fear and anger are a rational response to the reality of our situation.

But at this point, bad as Trump may be, we really don't know just HOW bad he'll be. It's almost impossible to judge the possibilities, given the haze of media-induced terror that we're living with right now.

What I'm trying to say is, please try not to panic. We survived eight years of George W. Bush. Whatever happens under Trump, it's our responsibility to join together and fight back to save the planet for our descendants.

But panic and frenzied hate won't help in that fight. So please consider taking some active steps to try to dial back on your fear. This is not the Apocalypse; or rather, if it is, it's an apocalypse that has been ongoing for at least forty years now. And it's not as if the slow, steady slide of America into destruction was going to be averted by electing Hillary.

The simple fact is that the system is hopelessly corrupt and in the hands of an elite that doesn't seem to think that 99.9% of the Earth's population deserves to live. That's not going to be fixed by casting a vote. It's going to take work, hard work, for the rest of our lives. And our children's lives.

We can work to create the just and compassionate society that the human race and the Earth need. But panic is not a part of that process.

A Letter to Victorious Hillary Supporters

Congratulations! It looks like your candidate is very likely to become President. Those of us who support Jill Stein and the Green Party will continue to do so, but it would be very unrealistic not to admit that the odds for Jill look poor - as they always did. Without media coverage or participation in the debates, it's almost impossible to get any traction.

But I have a request for 2020: if by that time, things are as bad or worse than they are now, please take a long look at the Green Party and any worthy independent candidates. Consider their platforms. Think about the possibility that the two-party system and the media, in service of the 1% (or the political-economic elite, or the military-industrial complex if you prefer) has been playing a deadly game with American democracy.

If wars are still ongoing, the surveillance state has expanded, and the media has become more meaningless and more concentrated in the hands of power;

If income inequality has increased, and the middle class has continued to disappear;

If people are still being killed and abused by the police, with little or no consequences to the officers who do the killing;

If the environment is getting worse instead of better, and there's no sign of meaningful action to save future generations;

If education remains underfunded and overcrowded, and college is increasingly out of reach for anyone who isn't already rich;

If the corruption and secrecy of the voting system hasn't been effectively addressed, so that every American can know that their vote is being honestly and verifiably recorded;

Will you honestly and seriously consider joining us in the fight to restore democracy in 2020? And no matter how awful the Republican candidate is, will you at least think hard before supporting the "lesser of two evils"?

For our children's and grandchildren's sake, I hope that you will.

"Are you okay?" It's nothing."

If you've ever seen a zombie movie - any zombie movie - odds are you've seen this scene:

Zombies attack the hero and companions. After some chaotic close-quarters fighting, the zombies are destroyed. But during the battle, one of the companions gets bitten - not too seriously.

Nobody else notices. They cover up the wound and keep it secret. In a while, though, they start feeling sick and acting strangely. It's around that point that someone notices that they're uncomfortable, leading to the classic exchange:

"Are you okay?"

"It's nothing."

Which of course eventually leads to the companion turning into a zombie during a crisis, and all the ensuing zombie carnage that makes life worth living for zombie movie fans.

If you've participated in a progressive online forum - particularly one supporting the Green Party, or open to such support - odds are you've lived through this scenario:

A few people start making posts that are...odd. A little off. They tend to focus on fear of Donald Trump, and do so to the exclusion of anything else. Sometimes their posts are based on identity politics ("think what he'll do to [some group]!"). Often they simply assume unspoken apocalyptic qualities.

Others start making mildly positive posts about Hillary. These become gradually more and more blatant. When the posts are reported to the forum moderators, they're sometimes deleted - but the posters are not kicked out.

Accusations of trolling increase, and are met with hostility and counter-accusations. Moderators mostly lie low, emerging once in a while to remove particularly vicious exchanges or make preachy pronouncements about everyone getting along. Meanwhile, the tenor of the forum has changed. There's no longer much friendliness or positive discussion about ways to take action or share useful information. Instead, memes and clickbait are posted - often the same ones over and over. Old, out-of-date stories are posted as if they were new. And the trolling increases.

Finally, the day of change arrives. The forum owner announces that Green supporters are too rude and offensive (echoing complaints in the past about "Bernie Bros" and "Obama Boys"), and that he is "cleaning up" the group. The purpose of the group is revised from supporting progressive goals, to supporting Hillary and the establishment. Any moderators who question this are banned. Members who oppose the change are silenced, their threads deleted, and banned. Meanwhile the admin and compliant moderators continue to reassure the membership that they are only removing fanatics and troublemakers.

The purge continues. Some members quit. More and more are kicked off without warning. Once the active opposition has been purged, the moderators begin purging members who had ever expressed opposition to Hillary.

Rumors fly. The administrator sold his account and control of the site to Hillary's Correct the Record PAC, or was a plant all along. There's no way to get a solid answer. And what does it matter? What's left is a shattered, demoralized group and thousands of ex-members who are isolated. Some join "refugee" groups, but the damage has been done. However it was accomplished, Hillary will gain votes - and some votes that would have gone to Jill Stein will instead be wasted in one way or another.

I've lived through this scenario several times. Long before this electoral cycle, I went through the same experience on the Daily Kos - now a stalwart Clinton site. It's a tired old story, as obvious and stale as the zombie bite that's kept secret.

It's a problem. The power of money to corrupt is overwhelming. On the other hand, it does tell us that we have the potential to be a threat - because if we didn't, they wouldn't spend millions to disrupt and control us.

The fact is, effective action requires recognizing trolls, and eliminating them - quickly and cleanly. Some will make a free speech argument. I sympathize, strongly; the First Amendment is not adequately appreciated or understood in the modern USA. And as political speech has moved from public to private forums, the First Amendment is at risk of becoming irrelevant. It should not be. If all effective forums for speech are privatized, free speech will no longer exist - unless we, as a nation, extend some form of First Amendment protection to privately-owned forums. This is not impossible. Businesses which are open to the public are not allowed to discriminate, for example; why shouldn't the same principle apply to the internet?

And of course since the internet was developed by the US government, there is no reason that it should be allowed to be dominated and controlled by private interests in any case. But that's another article.

The point is, we cannot be effective without places in which to plan, discuss, and work together without being subject to constant attacks. Free speech is sacred, but that doesn't allow anyone to break into a private conference, an air traffic control tower for example, and verbally assault the people working there. Both private forums and public ones are necessary for a healthy society.

The first step, though, is to establish safe and secure groups in which progressives can plan together for effective action. And that requires moderators who can spot the first tentative troll posts - the first signs of zombie infection - and do what needs to be done.

Blow their brains out.

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