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Election Or Revolution? An Open Letter To The People
Of The United States
Sep 25, 2016
War. And its victims.
Robert J. Burrowes
As citizens of the USA with a presidential election
approaching you have a wonderful opportunity to ponder whether to participate
in this election or to participate in the ongoing American Revolution.
Your first revolution might have overthrown the
authority of the British monarchy and aristocracy but the one in progress must
remove the US elite which has executed a political coup against your
government. And you cannot remove elite coupmakers in a fraudulently conducted
election in which the ‘choice’ is essentially between two violently insane
individuals, each of whom represents the violently insane US elite. See ‘The Global
Elite is Insane’ and‘Why Violence?’
The real value of this second revolution, which moves
along steadily with routine outbreaks over a multitude of peace, environmental
and social justice issues and occasional ‘uprisings’, such as the Occupy Movement
in 2011 which spawned a range of new and visionary initiatives, is that it
could give citizens of your country the chance to finally reclaim the Republic
for those people who genuinely care about ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness’. And, just as importantly, have sufficient vision to regard these
aspirations as something to be shared with the entire US population, starting
with Native Americans, and even those of us in the rest of the world including
those countries that are currently victims of US elite violence, whether it be
wars, drone strikes, coups, economic exploitation or ecological destruction.
Such a revolution might rewrite your constitution and
replace the second amendment ‘right of the people to keep and bear arms’ with
the right to live free of the fear of gun violence. It might result in a form
of social organization that distributes wealth equitably (perhaps by actually
taxing the wealthy and outlawing the use of offshore tax havens) while
reallocating the annual military (killing) budget to life-enhancing projects
such as poverty alleviation, affordable housing, free education, free
healthcare, clean water, renewable energy technologies, and a substantial
budget for compensation to those countries that the US elite has systematically
exploited or simply destroyed during the past 200 years. This would allow the
50 million US citizens who live in poverty, and another billion people around
the world who also live in poverty, the chance to live a decent life.
Now, you might ask, ‘How are we, the ordinary citizens
of the United States, even with our handguns, rifles and assault weapons, going
to take on the US military and police to remove elite control of our
government?’ Well, the answer is that you do not need even one weapon for this ongoing
revolution and, in fact, you are vastly better off without them. Weapons have
only one use – to kill people – and any revolution worth the name has a more
profoundly ambitious aim than this.
What you need is intelligence, commitment, courage and
a sound nonviolent strategy. The US elite controls your government and has
crippled your republic because, over successive generations, you have let them.
Every time you cooperate with the elite, because you are scared, by paying your
taxes (more than 50% of which finances US wars and other military violence),
putting your money into their corporate banks, shopping at their corporate
shopping malls, buying and consuming the ‘news’ presented by their corporate
media, rationalizing their policies as reasonable, participating in their
unjust and violent legal system, fighting (as an enlisted person or as a
mercenary) in their military forces, working in their prison system, accepting
exploited employment of any kind, eating their poisoned and genetically mutilated
foods (GMOs), going along with their endless attempts to divide you along
racial, class, religious and other lines, you simply consent to their control.
Why?
You have a simple alternative. Consciously and
systematically participate in the ongoing nonviolent revolution that is already
taking place and give it added life by your presence. Remake the US republic as
you want it by withdrawing your cooperation with elite structures and processes
while creating alternatives that meet your needs and the needs of those around
you.
Join those US visionaries who are creating
cooperatives where people are both managers and valued workers, take your money
out of elite banks and put it into financial organizations that exist or which
you create to serve the interests of their members (or, if you prefer, use
LETSystems), refuse to participate in or pay for (with your taxes) US
imperialism (and win friends all over the world), grow or buy healthy
locally-grown organic/biodynamic (and, if you are concerned about the climate
catastrophe as well, vegetarian) food, read progressive news outlets so that
you know what is really going on in the USA and the world, read literature that
deepens your understanding and concern for humanity and doesn’t just offer you
a distraction from the horror in which you live, and support or even become one
of those many fine nonviolent activists in your country who take personal risks
in the struggle to create a better world.
If you want more of what you have, then you should
vote and/or buy a gun. They have an equivalent outcome: they both legitimize
elite violence and exploitation directed at you and those you love.
If you want to participate in this second and ongoing
American revolution, then spend your time participating in the wholesome activities
that many grassroots organizations already offer and in creating its next
manifestations in your own neighborhood. It is the powerful conscience-based
choices that you make as an individual that define your Self. And it is these
choices that will have most impact on your family, neighborhood, community
organization, trade union, religious organization and elsewhere and that will
help decide the future of the USA and its role in the world.
Now you might say, I do some or even all of the sorts
of things you mentioned above, so why not vote too? My answer is simply this:
Voting is an act of disempowerment. It’s essential message is ‘I appoint you to
govern for me’. I prefer to govern myself (both meanings intended). And you?
So what of those who present the ‘lesser evil’
argument: one candidate is so bad that it is better to have the other. This
‘argument’ is not worthy of scrutiny. If you are deceived by this argument, you
will vote forever in the delusional hope that you will one day get a choice to
vote for someone genuinely decent. In 2008, Barack Obama was supposed to be the
candidate of hope and change. Did you get that hope and change? Are you going
to get it with Clinton or Trump? Of course not. Elites simply ensure that
change via the electoral system cannot happen; its function is to absorb and
dissipate our dissent.
If you vote you are saying that you endorse this
system of electoral exploitation. The tragedy is that even third-party
candidates, who may be people of genuine principle, have no chance. Even worse,
they add a veneer of legitimacy to your corrupt electoral system.
In essence, if you vote for the ‘lesser evil’ you are
still voting for an ‘evil’ and, more importantly, you have participated in and
endorsed an ‘evil’ system: one which denies you a genuine ‘free and fair’
choice to vote for a candidate who actually represents your interests and views
and has a reasonable chance of winning. And, having won, is then able to
actually implement their policies (rather than be stymied by a power structure
that has no intention of letting this happen). Given your circumstances, ‘the
only winning move is not to play’ their corrupt game and to put your energy
into a genuinely winning move: working for the regeneration of American
society.
Look at it this way. If there are two rotten eggs,
would you choose the one that is less rotten and eat it? Presumably you would
seek another option and only after you have identified and fixed what is
causing the problem in the first place. The point is this: Unless you spend
your time deeply contemplating the nature of the society in which you want to
live and then devoting your time and energy into creating that society, you
will never have it. And you have betrayed yourself.
The reality is that either Clinton or Trump is going
to be president of the USA for the next four years and a lot of people (both in
the US but particularly in foreign countries) are going to die because of it
(through US military violence and corporate exploitation). What we can do is to
invest our political energy into creating a United States in which, at some
point in the future, the likes of Clinton and Trump, and those they represent,
no longer drive outcomes in our world.
To reiterate: I am not saying ‘Don’t vote and do
nothing’ (as so many people do already). I am suggesting that you ponder the
dysfunctionality of your society, do some research into the secretive ‘deep
state’ (or military-industrial complex or power elite or the 1% or however you
wish to describe it) that controls your ‘republic’ with its electoral system
designed to delude you into believing that you have a say in governing your
nation, and then consider how you want to engage politically and act in accord
with your conscience in doing so. It is only by doing this that we will have
any chance of getting the society and the world that we want, even if it is
beyond our lifetimes (and assuming we can avert extinction at our own hand in
the meantime).
In summary, profound change only occurs from the
‘bottom up’ when enough ordinary people take the initiative to remake their own
society. And if you are really interested in doing this, one important place to
start is by reviewing the way in which you nurture children. See ‘My Promise to
Children’.
Other straightforward options, in addition to those
mentioned above, include participation in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’and signing the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a
Nonviolent World’.
But for those of you who are serious strategic
thinkers, I have outlined a strategy for removing coupmakers on the websiteNonviolent Defense/Liberation
Strategy which is a
straightforward presentation of the more detailed explanation offered in the
bookThe
Strategy of Nonviolent Defense: A Gandhian Approach.
Is our destiny in our own hands? Only if we have
enough people of courage to accept responsibility for it. Are you one of them?
***
Biodata: Robert has a lifetime commitment to
understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since
1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a
nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His email address is flametree@riseup.net
and his website is here.
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