John Rachel

I just looked at my last five posts and they are all about the same topic.

Listen, folks.  I truly get it.  A lot of people think I’m becoming a tedious bore.

But they’re wrong!  I’ve always been a tedious bore.  Sometimes I’m able to disguise it better than others, dress up my dull, monotonous discursives a bit with some clever photo — like the pandering one to the right.

But I can hear the recent cries of anguish from my readers.

“Jesus H. Christ!  Yet another article on candidate contracts?  Is this guy a one-trick pony?”

Actually, the last time I checked I had thousands of tricks.  The thing is, two in particular stand out spectacularly from the rest.  So maybe I’m a two-trick pony?

These particular two stand out, because as far as I can see, both of them offer necessary tactics and solutions to the existential threat ripping our nation apart.  It’s one huge, ugly monster with two heads:  Autocratic rule by a rich and powerful elite and psychotic levels of militarism and imperial aggression.

It’s been a real interesting ride these last five years trying to promote candidate contracts and the Peace Dividend refund concept, both targeting the oligarchy’s sinister, iron-fisted authoritarian grip on our politics — and just about everything else — and the creation of a military/security state to further tighten and reinforce that grip on the American citizenry and any other country which holds valuable resources ripe for plunder.

I’ve made my case in three books, and literally hundreds of articles.  With this much time invested, and a firm belief that despite a lack of much encouragement I’m onto something of value and positive potential, I’m not giving up.  Sometimes you go with your gut.

Both the candidate contract strategy and Peace Dividend concept have had more than their share of detractors.  Yet I forge on like a punch-drunk old boxer because no one — NO ONE — has come up with anything resembling a coherent, decisive reason why either of these detailed battle plans is not viable, why they’re dead ends, why they’re lost causes, why I should pack it in and live in a Yurt with some nomadic tribe in Mongolia.

I’m serious!  Any criticism dances around them like they’re made of depleted uranium.

I get self-assured quips like:  “It’ll never happen.”  Wow!  That crushed five years of hard work in a single blow.

Or:  “I don’t like contracts.”  Which is a semi-literate version of, “Your idea sucks, dude!”

One very famous activist — I won’t name him because everyone who would bother to read this knows this guy — ripped my book, Candidate Contracts: Taking Back Our Democracy to shreds.  I’ll give him credit for putting a lot of time into his demolition project.  He sent me a long email listing in great detail seven flaws in my approach.  The only problem was, not one of the seven things he targeted were even in my book!  I am dead serious.  Not a single one of the seven gaping holes in my plan were in my plan.  As I suspect happens a lot, he saw ‘candidate contracts’, then proceeded to dissect what he thought a candidate contract strategy would be about.  Talk about arrogant posturing.  And this guy is very famous!  Progressives from all over flock to his side for his sage advice.  God help us!

I beg people to give me constructive criticism, any kind of criticism, a bombshell that takes my ideas out like they’d just been hit by a MOAB.  Hey, put me out of my misery!  I’ve got four novels I’d much rather be working on.  PLEASE!  Give me your best shot.  Deliver me from all this yelling in an anechoic chamber at ghosts who are hologram doppelgangers for activists in a coma.

I’m still waiting.  How many articles have I written here, at OpEdNews, The Greanville Post?  Hundreds!  Now go through the comments.  A lot of the real critical stuff is self-aggrandizing bloviating, the rest irrefutable evidence that either they didn’t read the article, or they must have put their brains in a fruit blender before they tried to read it, because obviously they didn’t understand anything of what I was saying.

Often I’ve thought:  Maybe it’s you, John.  Maybe you’re not expressing yourself very clearly and that’s why people don’t get it.  (I spend a lot of time alone, so it’s not that unusual for me to talk to myself, though usually it’s a little more upbeat than this.)

The result has been the vast output of a variety of articles, each coming from a slightly different place, offering a different pitch, trying to find that magic winning formula for getting the ideas across.  I’ve even resorted to doing videos, despite the fact that if I had the money, the first thing I’d do is hire an actor with a great voice and reality show-host good looks to deliver a more seductive version of the message.

Mind you, I have a phenomenal life here in Japan.  Except for the gnawing aggravation and frustration associated with my long-distance dedication to activism, I live a fairy tale life in a beautiful, traditional, rural community situated between Osaka, Kobe, and Kyoto — each one of those comes with its own distinct personality and host of urban attractions.  My beautiful, talented Japanese wife and I travel extensively, with her showing me the splendors of this fascinating country which I now embrace as my home.

But when I look back at the “homeland”, I want to scream!  What has happened to the U.S. is a nightmare of a nightmare of a nervous breakdown.  In my worst moments, I see the whole world — including my charming town — being plunged into a nuclear holocaust, a war driven by pride, hubris, arrogance, ignorance, insensitivity, delusion, demagoguery, pathological levels of disregard for decency and human life.  In my better moments — fewer and farther between these days — I just see America being consigned to the septic tank of history, plunged into the dank, degrading stink hole of a Dark Ages Redux.

But there’s three compelling reason why I’ll continue pushing — at least for a while — my two apparently incomprehensible strategies.

1. There’s a pivotal election coming up.  Progressives — real progressives, not the fakes and frauds that MSM calls ‘progressive’ — went down in flames in 2018.  So now we need to focus on 2020, though there’s a good chance we might not even make it to 2020.  A lot depends on whether the accelerating implosion of our country and the decline of the fortunes of everyday people continues, or it finally meets its Waterloo.  It’s up to each of us to try to fix the mess and that’s why I keep fighting.
2. Very recently I’ve had some encouraging breakthroughs.  One gentleman in Lancaster, Pennsylvania bought 20 print copies of my Peace Dividend book, handed them out to all of his friends and fell0w-activists.  Now they regularly discuss the strategy in their peace planning sessions.
3. There’s talk about turning the Peace Dividend strategy into a full-length feature film!  Picture a Michael Moore-style movie narrated by someone slender and beautiful — no, I’m not talking about myself — laying it all out so that anyone with a pulse can grasp it.  Lots of visuals, fascinating interviews and commentary, a guest appearance by George H.W. Bush from the grave, cheerleaders, fireworks, the largest floating pizza in the history of the world on Lake Superior.  We’re pulling out all the stops.

[Author stops, spots a frog stuck to the window next to his chair, prompting him to reflect:  Is this as tedious as I think it is?  Maybe I should wrap this up.  Ah!  I’ll throw in the old non-sequitur.  That always gets them where the rubber meets the cerebellum!]

1st Rule of Fight Club:  Don’t talk about fight club.

1st Rule of Propaganda:  Repeat lies so often people eventually believe them.

1st Rule of Activism:  Repeat truth so often people start paying attention.

Alright, enough.  My mind spilleth over . . . and it’s a mess.

Having said all of the foregoing — are you still with me? . . . doubtful but as a tedious bore, I’m used to rejection — I’m going to take a short break.  The next two or three articles will not be hard-core political ravings . . . but instead, family-friendly fluff.

Just because I can.

Or is it by popular demand?