I’m addressing this article to the “professional left” and to the typically white middle-class point-and-click political activists who are at the insular core of today’s peace movement. They do keep trying — we give them all the much-deserved credit for that — yet keep doing the same things over and over — wash, rinse, repeat — never pausing to look objectively at how ineffective they’re being.
[ Insert Einstein’s definition of insanity here. ]
Despite a slight surge of street protests since Trump ascended the throne — largely not specific to peace — the peace movement is essentially going backwards. Missives vital for the survival of the human race are not being heard because the folks currently advocating peace: 1) are drowned out by a militarized war-hungry media; 2) are mumbling worn out messages, rehashing stale slogans, pushing boring clichés, reciting sound bites that should have been retired when disco stopped being the rage; and 3) are lacking necessary focus, mojo and momentum.
It’s a veritable cacophonous roar out there these days. If what’s being trumpeted is not pitch perfect and outrageously spectacular, it’s just more white noise in the din.
To get people to pay attention, you need to get their attention. That means fresh, exciting new ideas; galvanizing calls to action; relevant, achievable payoffs. The peace movement can’t survive anymore on high fives, or peace sign t-shirts and bumper stickers. People just aren’t buying the old tropes.
Mind you, when I talk about ‘people’, I’m talking about tens of millions of people. I am talking about creating a true ‘people’s movement’ of ‘people power’, not just a marginal slice of the population which happens to have a lot of time on its hands. This unified bloc can change everything, especially if it is fashioned into a voting bloc.
I’m talking about the ‘people power’ of the bottom 160 million Americans who are hurting much more than you and I, much more than anyone who has the time and luxury of participating in marches and bake sales for peace, sit-ins, teach-ins, or online petitions. These folks are struggling and are those whose lives are most devastated by our war economy and pursuit of empire.
THESE FOLKS ARE FRUSTRATED, ANGRY, BEGGING FOR A COHERENT SOLUTION TO THEIR MISERY. They live paycheck-to-paycheck, day-to-day, just trying to survive. Am I imagining all of this? I direct you to the orange imbecile sitting in the Oval Office. The folks I’m talking about put him there. You don’t think they can make a difference in the political direction of the country? You don’t think they can be mobilized? You better guess again.
This is the principal reason why my Peace Dividend initiative targets Trump voters, the very same folks who are becoming increasingly disillusioned with the orange demagogue, as he blithely now jettisons the campaign promises he made to get their votes. With the unfolding Mad Hatter military confrontations in the Middle East and North Korea, the risky intimidation of Russia and China, the increasing likelihood of WWIII, and growing potential for nuclear annihilation, the urgency is obvious: We need EVERYONE on board!
The Trump supporters are, as they say, low hanging fruit. And there’s a lot of fruit.
By design the Peace Dividend strategy is about reaching HUGE NUMBERS of politically marginalized, dispossessed, previously ignored — until Trump came along — voters. The Peace Dividend talks their language, their needs, addresses their immediate concerns and growing rage with the system. And it does it honestly! Everything in my proposal is based on available data, most of it directly from government sources and speeches by our elected officials. I’ve taken the official data and the promises, just reconfigured it, reinterpreted it, refashioned it, turned it into a weapon to take apart the military machine. It’s completely legal, it’s in the best traditions of our alleged democracy, it’s completely consistent with the Constitution, in fact, it even reinforces much of what our leadership has stated in the past — Google ‘peace dividend 1992’ — at a time they found that particular version of reality politically expedient.
Most of the folks in the bottom half of the economy are not going to have PhDs in Political Science. We will confront some big differences of opinion, demeanor, vocabulary, basic courtesy, open-mindedness, instincts, mutual respect. It’s a rough crowd. Many will be racist, homophobic, superstitious, ultra-religious, misinformed, and just plain ignorant.
Granted, it would be nice to try to work out our differences in world view, our political philosophies, our sense of where the nation should be headed. But with the crisis we face right now, we don’t have that luxury. We must act immediately to stop the military madness, the march to war, the complete takeover of the country and its political and economic institutions by the menacing and deranged neocon/neoliberal junta. The Peace Dividend is a battle cry, it is a call to action to 200 million Americans to DO SOMETHING, TO ACT NOW, before it’s too late — if it isn’t already. It gives concerned citizens something specific they can do, starting today.
Moreover, as facts on the ground now alarmingly demonstrate, there is no longer much room for conversation. Effective, unbiased reporting has been abolished, public dissent increasingly is being squashed. More devastatingly, talk has become so cheapened, most of the people we need to reach, don’t want any more talk. THEY WANT ACTION!
It’s easy to blame Trump for the deterioration of the national conversation, relegating it to empty nonsensical utterances and abrupt Tweets. But let’s be honest. This degradation has been in the works for a long time and had a good head start long before he took office.
That’s neither here nor there. Here’s what we need to keep in focus.
As Trump’s neoliberal/neocon assault troops continue to wreak havoc — picture coming military conflicts and the inevitable crash of the economy this year or next — the masses will be singularly outraged, hungry for REAL ACTION. They will be crying both for heads to roll and for something to be done. All of the necessary incentives will be there to get them on board with constructive activism.
The Peace Dividend offers a simple, direct, decisive plan of action. It’s as simple as voting.
You’ve seen how it forces a total transformation of the federal budget.
You’ve seen how it can engineer a complete changing of the guard.
This is our chance for a non-violent coup d’état. We need to be prepared. We can’t squander this opportunity by being safe or boring. We must be bold and decisive, yet affable and receptive, sensitive and sensible. We need to listen, then talk to others in their language, on their terms. We must play down differences, seek understanding, unite in a common purpose. Most of all, we need to welcome everyone who shows the slightest interest. We need everyone on board to defeat a determined and ruthless enemy . . .
A bloodthirsty military and their ruling class puppet masters.
A few hours later in a separate announcement made by White House Press Secretary, Sean Spicer, media representatives were informed that emergency follow-up studies are set to immediately begin to determine if this surge of whale gayness also afflicts Hawaii and the waters off the coast of Alaska.
Now that whale gayness is acknowledged as an attack on American values, it has stirred up quite a few members of Congress. Calls for a complete investigation are gathering tremendous support, driven by speeches on the floor of the Senate just today by senators John McCain and Marco Rubio. It will focus on possible Russian involvement in the horrifying shift in sexual preferences among large mammals. Can we expect to see a corresponding escalation in coming out parades of pink elephants? Gay hippo same sex mud parties? Gay gorillas?
But it’s no longer a joking matter. It’s now the newest battle cry in President Trump’s noble struggle to make America great again.
Dealing With A Serial Killer
There’s a serial killer loose in town. Eight to ten people a month have been murdered over the past several years. They’re dropping like flies!
Well, they’re not actually dropping like flies. Flies usually fall on their backs, their legs do this happy feet dance, they expire with little fanfare or ritual, then dry up and blow away.
On the other hand . . .
This homicidal monster has some strange fetishes. He ends a person’s life immediately by driving an axe in the face, then cuts the dead body into various size chunks. The entrails he drapes in trees around town, the finely-carved fillets of flesh from the meatier parts of the body — thighs, calves, arms, backs and stomachs if there’s a nice balance between fat and muscle — are fed to stray dogs by tossing them in alleys around town. More delicate parts — eyes, ears, lips, tongues, genitals — are stuffed into bubble mailers and arrive in mailboxes in the nicer neighborhoods. They’re marked ‘Something Special Just For You’. Finally the bones are stacked on the hoods of parked police cruisers.
It’s a horrifying, gruesome mess that has pushed the entire community to near insanity.
So . . . what do you do?
I got it!
You put an ad in the local paper: Stop killing people! We don’t like it!
You get people together for marches. They go through the business district during the busiest hour of the day carrying protest signs, chanting anti-serial killing slogans, and singing Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall.
You sell t-shirts that say: “Serial killing is bad for humans and other living things!”
You get experts on TV talking about how the killing really should stop, how the violence and fear is tearing the community apart, what bad effects this has on the kids growing up in this type of environment. There’s unanimity on all the panels discussing this. No one comes out in favor of serial killing.
We mount a campaign to send emails to the serial killer — don’t ask me how but somehow we got hold of his AOL email address — and his In box is flooded to capacity with messages decrying his butchery: ‘People are really upset. You’re a sick man!’ ‘Burn in Hell, MF!’ ‘What is wrong with you? Don’t you know killing is bad?’
We call his office — again, don’t ask me how we got his phone number but we did, he has an office somewhere in the city — morning, noon, and night. It’s organized through the Code Blue Mothers Against Murder ad hoc committee, and 800 to 1,000 calls a day pour in to his office. Every once in a while, we get a live person. Boy, do we give her an earful! But usually, we get an automatic answering device with a menu: If you’re against serial killing, please press #1. If you’re for serial killing, please press #2. If you wish to speak personally to a member of our staff, just stay on the line and someone will be with you shortly [ bleep click ] Expected wait time to answer your call 2 hours and 15 minutes.
We set up a Town Hall Meeting. It’s attended by thousands of angry, concerned citizens and they can’t all fit into the high school gymnasium where it’s being held. The serial killer appears on a video screen — with his hockey goalie mask on, of course — and people vent and express their outrage. When things calm down a bit, people ask questions and plead with the serial killer. He explains he has difficulty controlling his temper, but he says he can see people are upset, so he’ll try harder.
There are no killings for a week. Then they start up again.
So finally, we pull out the big gun. Yes . . . a petition!
We circulate a petition both in person on the streets, and online — it’s up on MoveOn.org and Avaaz. We get tens of thousands of signatures! In fact everyone — well, everyone who hasn’t been murdered yet — signs it. Our signature drive is a complete success.
Yessiree! We’ve really got this psycho by the balls!
Now we wait.
For some reason the killing hasn’t stopped. Three more this week.
Where did we go wrong?
Hmm.