EMAIL SIGN UP!
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
Let Your Life Be a Counter-Friction to Stop the Machine
I believe that we are coming to a crossroads as a nation.
Since 9/11, we’ve been traveling down a road bristling with guns, military technology, paranoia and fear. Though most of our aggressive energy has been aimed outside our borders, there has also been a steady preparation for mass violence within the U.S. as well. In the decade since 9/11, our national police forces have been armed with military hardware, and have trained extensively in riot control, with the results that we saw for the first time during the recent Occupy protests.
photo: Saint Huck
In the peaceful town of Fargo, North Dakota, report Andrew Becker and G.W. Schulz of the Center for Investigative Reporting, “Every city squad car is equipped today with a military-style assault rifle, and officers can don Kevlar helmets able to withstand incoming fire from battlefield-grade ammunition. And for that epic confrontation—if it ever occurs—officers can now summon a new $256,643 armored truck, complete with a rotating turret.”
Billions of federal tax dollars have been spent nationwide on this kind of military hardware for police, in the name of Homeland Security.
Security from what? Security for whom?
Short of an all-out military invasion by a foreign force, which seems hugely unlikely, these weapons can only be meant to confront an insurgency within our own borders.
Are we thinking about a civil war, then?
Are these police being armed and trained to protect the interests of the 1% against the raging anger of the 99%?
A year ago it would not have occurred to me to ask these questions. But obviously the Homeland Security crowd was already thinking ahead and planning for a time when such armor and weapons would be necessary to “maintain security” and “uphold law and order” on the home front.
Yes, they must have been aware, even as they were cashing in on our ignorance, that there would come a time when no more could be squeezed from the bottom two-thirds of American society. When there would be so many homeless, so many poor, so many disenfranchised, that these people would feel they had no other recourse than violence, and nothing left to lose.
A new report by the National Center on Family Homelessness found that “more than 1.6 million children – or one in 45 children – are homeless annually in America. This represents an increase of 38% during the years impacted by the economic recession.”
I’m sorry, but that is just unacceptable in this country, which likes to think of itself as the wealthiest and most enlightened society on earth.
When you add up all the trials and tribulations being visited on the poor in this country–and “the poor” is a vast category that gets bigger day by day–and you weigh billions in Homeland Security anti-terrorism outfits for police against dwindling food and shelter for children–well, something just isn’t right here. There’s something rotten in the state of America.
And yes, we are at a crossroads.
It may seem to some that I am over-reacting, but this is the way it feels to me: if we continue following along docilely on this daisy path that we’ve been led down by the architects of corporate capitalism, we are like the Jews of Germany in 1940, peacefully gathering our belongings and getting on that train to Auschwitz, or marching cooperatively out to the forest to be mowed down by machine guns into the mass grave.
We know enough now to know that the powers that be do not have our best interests at heart.
We’ve been sickened by their chemicals, and our health care system seems geared to treat sickness (at a profit) rather than to promote wellness. Our oceans, air, soils and drinking water have been contaminated and rendered toxic. Our taxes have been used for guns and landmines instead of schools and social welfare. Those who have gotten rich in this system have done so on the backs of the poor and those who cannot defend themselves: the natural world above all.
Are we going to continue down this path?
Or are we going to gather our courage at this crossroads, and strike off in a new direction?
A lot of people are asking this question now. Over on the New Clear Vision blog, Charles Imboden suggests that the Occupy movement has ignited a renewed “commitment to direct democracy and shunning of ‘representative,’ republican forms of decision-making (so often susceptible to corruption and corporate influence) [which] can be further strengthened as the foundation of the egalitarian, ecological society.”
As one of my readers commented today, what would happen if they held an election and we just didn’t show up?
I don’t know if there is a way to cut ourselves loose from the federal government and its taxpayer-supported state terror apparatus. Thoreau tried, back in the 19th century, and was promptly thrown in jail.
His letter from prison is worth re-reading today.
“Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men, generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. It makes it worse. Why is it not more apt to anticipate and provide for reform? Why does it not cherish its wise minority?
“If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth—certainly the machine will wear out. If the injustice …is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.”
Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine.
As we gear up for next year’s Presidential elections, we must take these wise words of Thoreau’s to heart.
But we must also be aware, as Thoreau certainly was, that there are other paths to take, outside of the machine.
We stand at a crossroads. Each of us must make up our own minds, in our own time.
How much longer will we continue to docilely feed the machine our tax dollars, and march peacefully where they lead us?
- Posted in
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
72 Comments so far
Show AllI think this proposal is key, but want to make a couple of points about it. One, I have managed to go all but two years of my life not contributing to the US government--because they were always using most of the money to kill and terrorize people, starting with Vietnam when I earned my first money. To not be part of the environmental problem, it is pretty much necessary to reduce consumption to the levels where you don't owe federal income tax anyway. On the other hand, setting yourself up to live comfortably in poverty--owning your own home, having a garden and chickens, solar panels or windmill or microhydro--can require a few years with higher income. Setting yourself up like that also gives you independence from corporations, both as employee and as customer, and sets you up in the event of a major crash.
But the other thing is that I think a tax revolt could be a key tactic for Occupy and the resistance movement generally--but it should not be merely a refusal to give the IRS money for destructive purposes. That's only half the equation. The other half is setting up an alternative, perhaps not on a national basis but on a regional or local basis, in which people can send the money they owe the IRS to an outfit that uses it for constructive public purposes: colleges, scholarships, farms, community gardens, low tech production centers...
I like your last paragraph. That kind of thing would begin to model the democratic use of tax revenue.The difficulty would be in organizing it. I too have deliberately lived at low income, and am moving toward permaculture with 1500 sq. feet of garden, mushrooms, blueberries, nectarines, and plans this spring for nut trees, apples, and pears.
There will never be an exact replication of 1940's Germany, but fascism with elections and a rotating executive is a more stable model and that is what we have now. We all know that that the MilitaryCorporate 2 Party Complex is firmly in control and has global military and economic power enforceable with annihilation. Also, it is cheaper and better suited to our constitutional mythology to ignore, or selectively repress the last taxpaying source of productively derived wealth than to completely block free speech and assembly. It lets off steam.
Money is just paper; our faith makes it work, or not. The government cannot make or control real wealth without the participation of the people. Our current arrangement is not wealth creating, but wealth destroying on a planetary scale. We are now destroying the habitability of the planet. Our military complex is the fundamental defender of that process and of the 1% or less who benefit from it. That military machine is dependent on taxes.
Considering our current historic reality, where the participation of the people is circumvented by the monied owners of Washington( 80% opposed bank bailouts,60 % want out of wars and cuts in Military spending, 65% want Medicare for all), what mechanism do you propose to re-found this country or parts of this country as one or more constitutional democratic republics with defined borders.
I see 2 options: 1) nonviolent tax refusal and general strikes with clear powerful reform demands 2) a 3rd party to do the same thing in electoral process. OWS must ultimately become one or the other.
I would like to hear what others think. Timing is a big issue. The more there is a plan or vision in place, the better prepared for he next economic collapse and bailout grab.
I think you're logically over-obsessing; Thoreau was a social philosopher, not a mechanical engineer, and his writing addresses human beings, not actual machines. Friction is counter to movement; therefore the social obstructionism he implores is implicit in the term "counter-friction".
Seems better to use the original language as written by the immortal and universally important author Henry David Thoreau, than the cramped and petulant whining of an anonymous logical obsessive-compulsive. Why don't you go read some Thoreau instead of syntax-checking him? You might relax that bunghole of yours and learn something about the world around you.
Just say what you say. The insults are not needed. I have read Thoreau. He has had important influence on how I live. I even used to teach American Lit. in High School. I just happen to think this is stretched and confusing language especially in the title of the article. What I wrote was an honest reaction, not an obsessive critique.
Actually I am prepared to lose this argument, since the Thoreau quote brought a different crowd to this article, with more back to the landers. So, uh, my bad. I still think it's a flawed passage.
Language usage has changed a lot in the last 150 years, as you should be aware if you have taught it, paticularly with the modern obsession of streamlining and reductiveness. You can't judge an archaic passage by modern linguistic standards, that's all there is to it; you must read the passage syntactically within its historical frame. What's next, easy-reader Shakespeare®? Sorry about the insult, it just gets to me when people start unnecessarily revising history. Double-plus good.
My wife Julie just told me that we are living the life described here - "counter-friction".
Julie aslo said when she met me eight years ago I was an artist, like her, a broke mountaineer, beholden to no one, alive and free, and that's who she fell in love with.
This came out as I was saying I felt I had to do more than blog here and research the science of the environment - that I felt it was indeed all out war we were now engaged in - against John Gofman's diseased "power and privilege," though most people were still oblivious to this obvious fact - it's just too big and too surreal to see.
I wonder how many homely discussions like this are taking place in America, in Canada, and around the world?
The natural world, my penultimate sounding board, is indeed a dangerous and violent place, and also a peaceful place - a study in dialectical thinking.
Non-violence - such a fine thought - yet - so unlike the natural world of my experience.
I think Rio+20 is already a failure - like our civilizations.
Manysummits - in Calgary
========
I don't want to be argumentative for the sake of argument and I like your posts. But there is so much in nature and in the healthiest human affairs that is non-violent. The biosphere is transformative and aggressive but huge swaths of it are not violent. The plants, the fungi, the non-predatory animals, many protists, algae. We are omnivores who can choose our diets and we tend to adopt moral guidelines for human affairs, and for that reason I think we can choose to constrain our other appetites and live as do many individuals, tribal peoples and even some non-aggressive civilizations without reliance on aggressive war or destroying the health of our ecosystem. The war you are describing is real. It's entire strength and power derives from it's expertise in both human and environmental violence, of feeding appetites through weaponry, machines and unbalanced knowledge without wisdom. But there is another culture which is coexisting with the war machine which has studied and understood the antidote for the poison. That coexistant and fundamentally non-violent counterculture extends into academia, the sciences, agriculture, alt tech, the arts,economics and alternate lifestyles and has produced some articulate popular spokespeople, artists, practitioners and visionaries in many fields. What is needed is a unified society of resistance that is large enough and aggressive enough and creative enough and motivated enough and disruptive enough to become a rallying point for revolutionary change. I understand and have tremendous sympathy for monkey wrenching and the violent resistance to occupying armies, but so far it has only triggered a huge network of surveillance, infiltration and preparedness on the part of the MIC. Nonviolent resistance can operate openly and because its core power lies in persuasion it operates out of the power of truth. Best wishes and many more summits to you.
Hello Jonabark !
Very nice comment.
"What is needed..."
I would dearly like to know that - and to provide it if I could.
It seems we will have to await the awakening of the people - to the danger of the "perfect storm."
If it is then too late - so be it.
But, with a modicum of luck, and a lot of Wally-Trees (Direct Air Capture devices) - who knows?
Mike
====
"How much longer will we continue to docilely feed the machine our tax dollars, and march peacefully where they lead us?"
Reagan's Secretary of State Alexander Haig (formerly Nixon's Chief of Staff), famously said "Let them march all they want as long as they continue to pay their taxes"
"I don’t know if there is a way to cut ourselves loose from the federal government and its taxpayer-supported state terror apparatus. Thoreau tried, back in the 19th century, and was promptly thrown in jail."
Thoreau was but one man. If millions resist paying taxes for their own subjugation, the machine will cease to function. American's freed themselves from the British Empire by refusing to pay their tea taxes (our first anti-corporate action). I have refused to pay federal income taxes for 33 years and I am far more free than those of you who render to Caesar. Sever that umbilical cord and you will loose your chains as well.
How to vote:
1. Register.
2. Show up every time. All of the politicos have those records, and they know where every ounce of power is.
3. Monitor whether your state's election is being stolen again this year. Take careful polls just before the election. See if only the districts that count shift like crazy for the Republicans between the polls and the election.
How to vote with your feet:
1. Some people have left the U.S. They can't stand it any more.
2. A few go on long peace walks across broad swaths of America. Peace Pilgrim walked way over 50,000 miles, back and forth, across America for 30 years, starting at age 50.
3. Some people won't cooperate with something really immoral.
How to vote with your entire life, with your hands and your mind:
1. Be part of a cooperative. Keep our jobs here. Know your farmer.
2. Set up a nonprofit industrial group that drives down the cost of solar power for average people, and that breaks the Chinese monopoly on solar panels. Are you sure you can't do it? Better yet, invent something better and then, gasp, bring it to market. Take years of your life to set these things up.
3. Go on Quixotic quests. Run as a Republican for President (gasp!) or as a Democrat (also gasp! these days) or as an Independent (good luck chump!) just so that ordinary people have someone real to vote for in the primaries, and so that the movement gets out there. Be inside the convention causing trouble, as opposed to being outside causing trouble. Maybe it's the same difference, and you have to be crazy to do either one these days.
Like your style.
"How much longer will we continue to docilely feed the machine our tax dollars, and march peacefully where they lead us?"
As long as there are people who pretend "peace" on the one hand while practicing war and abuse on the other, the answer is LONG ENOUGH until it is too late. The rest of us who are busy working towards peaceful solutions and alternatives will likely continue to do so no matter how many out there write us off. Protest peacefully on the streets and work with peace in mind. That is all I have to say in addition to giving this article a thumbs up.
Wow, she nails it with this article... I'll have to say, more journalist, bloggers etc have begun to mention the big bad word...."revolt' or at least describe it's equivalent... very brave...I do however, think that it will take even more middle class americans, to loose what they have and feel desperate, before they follow this path.... preferably, it will be to just "lay down and not paritcipate in the "machine" .... not participate in the industrial devastation of our earth and our own souls.
People seem to be catching up to the level of emotion and conclusions I presented here more than two years ago. Maybe in another few years people will think it a good idea to replace the USA with an entirely new nation or nations, and will think it was their original idea.
Trylon
It's New Year's Eve. Maybe, to compliment Thoreau:
---------------------------
"One night when I had tasted bitterness I went out on to the hill. Dark heather checked my feet.
... Overhead, obscurity unveiled a star. One tremulous arrow of light, projected how many thousands of years ago, now stung my nerves with vision, and my heart with fear. For in such a universe as this what significance could there be in our fortuitous, our frail, our evanescent community?
But now irrationally I was seized with a strange worship, not, surely of the star, that mere furnace which mere distance falsely sanctified, but of something other, which the dire contrast of the star and us signified to the heart. Yet what, what could thus be signified?
Intellect, peering beyond the star, discovered no Star Maker, but only darkness; no Love, no Power even, but only Nothing. And yet the heart praised.
... I sat down on the heather. Overhead obscurity was now in full retreat. In its rear the freed population of the sky sprang out of hiding, star by star.
... I perceived that I was on a little round grain of rock and metal, filmed with water and with air, whirling in sunlight and darkness. And on the skin of that little grain all the swarms of men, generation by generation, had lived in labour and blindness, with intermittent joy and intermittent lucidity of spirit. And all their history, with its folk-wanderings, its empires, its philosophies, its proud sciences, its social revolutions, its increasing hunger for community, was but a flicker in one day of the lives of the stars.
If one could know whether among that glittering host there were here and there other spirit-inhabited grains of rock and metal, whether man's blundering search for wisdom and for love was a sole and insignificant tremor, or part of a universal movement!"
"Star Maker", Olaf Stapledon, 1937.
================
"How much longer will we continue to docilely feed the machine our tax dollars, and march peacefully where they lead us?"
As long as we buy into the notion served up to us by both parties (but in all truth issued by the global financial system in their own interest) That limiting government and balancing the budget are the solutions to any problem.
As long as we stand back and let our kids be fed the false patriotic fervor that motivates them to enlist and kill in the name corporations and banks.
As long as we demonize workers, any workers (domestic or immigrant) while celebrating the 01% that neither work nor reside amongst the rest of us.
As long as getting "mine" is more important than providing for "everyone.
"Since 9/11, we’ve been traveling down a road bristling with guns, military technology, paranoia and fear."
Since 9/11? I don't recall a time when this wasn't true.
I agree Artemis.
Now that the incredible evil of Capitalism seems to be known wider and wider, one can only hope that the underlying, basic, fundamental ideology of patriarchy with its inherent suppression of 51% of humanity will rise to the foreground.
But I wont hold my breath for that massive piece of enlightenment, or even a small Ah-Hah! to arise.
Yes, Daly had it right.