What Can I Do?

This is the nine hundred and eleven thousand dollar question, isn’t it? Now that you know, what can you do about it?

Everyone I talk to seems to think that if they are not willing to go postal or to join a tax revolt, there is nothing that can be done. As you can see from the long list below, that is not true. If a majority of Americans got in control of their own lives and their own money, this revolution could succeed almost overnight, with no tax revolt, no jail time, and no shots fired. Do I think that will happen? No. Is it physically possible? Yes.

Even the bravest are so far doing nothing or next to nothing. That is why the powers that be are letting them be. They post articles, write books, make documentaries, give speeches. That was good for the first round, the first phase. We have to get informed. But we are past that. Most of the people who want to know now know. We are miles beyond that crucial 5% that was supposed to move history. People are already better-educated about 911 and all the surrounding issues than any counter-revolutionaries in history, and the percentages are far higher, too. Why is nothing happening? The mainstream press is still just testing the waters with a toe. The grassroots marches are still small. How is it that we can poll at 75% plus and still be completely immobile?

People are basically stunned. They are caught in the headlights. They know they must make some movement, but the muscles refuse to respond. These are normal people, many with children, most with jobs. They are in no position to be counter-revolutionaries. What can they possibly do?

Let me put it another way: they are part of the problem in so many ways that they cannot see how to get out. They are invested, financially and psychologically, to such an extent that they think divestiture would be fatal.

But it would not be fatal. In fact, it would be salutary in every way. Their bank accounts might take a hit in the short term (until we can get back all the money stolen by the government), but they would be saner, healthier, happier, and wiser. They would also be more virtuous, for those who still believe in that.

Let me switch gears now and ask them this question: what would it take for you to take positive action? If proof of 911 won’t do it, what would? What would cause a person with a job and a family to take positive action? Your government is spending your money to murder innocent people in many criminal wars, it is spending your money to kill your own neighbors and their children, it is attacking its own citizens and spending literally trillions of dollars to do these things, trillions of dollars that it cannot and will not account for. When it is not stealing and murdering in your name, it is finding other ways to steal from you, including rigging the stock markets, rigging the banks against you (via the Federal Reserve), laundering drug money, and price fixing everything from gasoline to prescription drugs to phone access to heating oil. This same government is acting like the Mob in other ways, controlling the drug trade, gambling, and the media. Parties are thrown aboard illegal offshore Casino ships and in Satanic groves and in the White House itself, parties where children of both sexes are bought and sold. This government is involved in worldwide prostitution, drug running, money laundering, and slavery, further enriching itself and acting in your name, with your tacit approval. It has shredded the Constitution, and you and your children may now be randomly searched, randomly filmed, arrested for anything or nothing. The military you fund may now be used to search you, question you, or arrest you, although this use of the military is expressly forbidden by the Constitution. Courtesy of the Patriot Acts, Homeland Security, and the Military Tribunals Act, you now live in a police state, where the police and military can do anything they want.

Are you waiting until it literally happens to you? Are you waiting for the knock on the door? The gun in the face? It is happening to your neighbors already. It will certainly happen to you.

Are you hoping to avoid any nastiness? Hoping to be “a good German”? How many regrets there were in Germany in 1946, how many there still are. Have you been to Germany, felt the guilt? I have. I have German blood in me, and Jewish blood, too. So my blood is not stupid, nor my ghosts, either. They remember.

Do you prefer to keep your nose clean? Do you prefer that to acting now? Probably the guiltiest Germans are the ones who did absolutely nothing. Who were never bothered by the Gestapo. At least those who were arrested can take some solace in that. There were three classes of people the Gestapo left alone. True Nazis, true idiots, and true cowards. In 2012, when this is all over, what would you give to not be in any of those groups? What action now will save you from that legacy, from that inglory?

We are still in phase one. Almost nothing has happened yet. We have had the action but no reaction. Even Ray McGovern and Bob Bowman haven’t gotten arrested. No one has stopped paying taxes or burned their passports or renounced their citizenship. No patriotic military men have refused orders or organized a coup and gone down in a hail of bullets. Even the whistleblowers have accepted their gag orders. There have been no heroes at the FAA or the DoD or the FBI or the CIA or FEMA or NIST or anywhere else. The greatest heroes so far have been emeritus academics and lone-wolf documentarians, but so far it is all talk. No wants to do anything. They all want someone else to do something. Everyone is petitioning everyone else to act.

These inactions don’t impress anyone. That is why Bush could just chuckle when he “got a thumping” in the election. His side is willing to act, and the opposition is only willing to write papers. His side doesn’t care that 75% are against them. If the opposition is only going to write papers and make movies, they can reach 95% and still be ignored. And voting doesn’t mean a goddamned thing, since the Democrats have been complicit all along. Except for about three people, the Democrats have done nothing but sing God Bless America with the Republicans. Even now, in 2007, they are planning to vote for more troops in Iraq. The handful of semi-heroes in Congress were silenced by the Anthrax scare, and even Robert Reich has admitted that Congress is obsolescent. Stealing votes is now no more than a game for the Republicans. They don’t even need to steal the votes in the election. They can just steal them later directly from Congress. No, even that is saying too much. Nader was naïve when he said that the platforms are indistinguishable. It is not that the Democrats have moved right, it is that the blue in Congress is just a painted façade, a color put there fool the people into believing that there are two parties. The only reason everyone isn’t in red is because that would look bad on CSPAN. It would be too obvious. The oligarchy has learned to camouflage itself with a two-color cape.

What has been made most apparent in this latest emergency of democracy is the cowardice of our leaders and elders. To give a specific example, I saw Sunsara Taylor on Bill O’Reilly last night. Sunsara is very brave and very intelligent, and she looks great on TV. She made O’Reilly look like an ogre in every possible way. But this is a woman who looks to be just out of college. She is already one of the top speakers in the anti-war movement. Why? Because she has very little competition. You could count the number of heroes on the left without taking off your shoes. Not only do we not have a Eugene Debs, we don’t even have a Bob Dylan. Bob is not Bob anymore. “I used to care, but things have changed.” When you go to rallies now, the microphone is always handed to somebody’s grandmother, or to some firecracker like Sunsara. Are there any men left in America? Is Bob Bowman the only male left in America who has enough personality to get mad? I am not taking anything away from Sunsara or all the very brave mothers and grandmothers. But, damn, when did men become extinct? When did the older generation get taken over by pods? Why is it up to the youth and predominantly to women to fight this battle? Yes, there are a few guys involved, and some older men from the establishment, but way too few. Way too few.

[I might also ask why we have to nominate avowed Maoists—Sunsara is a Maoist—to lead the anti-war movement in America, but that is another paper.]

As you finally decide to wake up and do something, you should be clear on one thing: your wording. Many people will be arrested before this is all over, I think, but most, hopefully, will actually achieve a trial of some sort, even if it is before a military tribunal. Notice above that I used the word “counter-revolutionary” when speaking of our movement. It is the rogue government that is revolutionary. When elements in the government become treasonous, it is not treasonous to resist them. Pay close attention to Bob Bowman’s wording. He ran for Congress not to overthrow the government. He ran for Congress to overthrow the illegal, treasonous, temporary, rogue government that threatens the United States. A set of people, whoever they may be, in whatever offices, that conspire to overthrow the Constitution, are governing illegally. They are treasonous. This is a Constitutional government by law, and they are existing outside that law. We are inside that law and intend to remain there, so that we are not revolutionaries, are not treasonous, are not guilty of sedition, and are not resisting a legal government. We are resisting an illegal government that has left the Constitution far behind.

Below I will list some of the things you can do. Some of them are pretty easy to do and some of them are very difficult to do. I don’t think I will have to tell you the difference.

1) Shut down the mainstream media. You can do this by not buying it or buying into it. It is that simple. This is one of the easy ones. It is like shutting down Hitler’s propaganda machine. Cancel all your subscriptions to magazines and newspapers. They have all failed miserably. Many of them are criminally complicit and the rest are criminally negligent. This includes lefty things like Counterpunch, Democracy Now, The Progressive, The Nation, and so on. If the rag you are reading is not calling for impeachment, trials for war crimes, massive firings, long jail terms for thousands of people, drastically downsizing the FBI, CIA and DoD, and abolishing the Federal Reserve, then that rag is itself treasonous. 911 is a great litmus test. Anyone who is still denying or hedging is complicit or absurdly uninformed. You should quit watching the TV news. The Nielsen ratings of all the news shows should go to zero. Even Keith Olbermann is not talking about 911. Jon Stewart, avoiding it. NBC is as good as state-owned; the differences between it and FOX are only cosmetic. If you need news, go to Infowars or alternate media online. Don’t go to mainstream sources online either. Don’t go to Yahoo, AOL, MSN, or any of the other mainstream news gatherers, since they are all lying to you and cheating you. Avoid other CIA mouthpieces like Wikipedia and Google. Don’t fund or buy products at any of these places. Don’t even surf there, since their advertising money comes from hits. If you have to surf mainstream sources, try to do it in Europe or Canada, where American sources will not benefit from your money or your hits.

2) Don’t buy anything you don’t need very very much. Buy directly from the producers when you can, from small local sources. Boycott all large companies. In general, boycott the present in all ways.

3) Kill your TV and your cellphone and every gadget that is not critical to your daily life. If you have to watch TV or see a movie, see something decent, which usually means something old. Modern programming is too loud, is paced too fast, is morbid, vulgar, and pathological in every conceivable way. Programs like CSI and 24 make you mentally ill. Boycott Disney and CGI, both of which are nefarious. CGI is a plastic world that is preparing your mind for a plastic and infinitely vulgar future. Resist it. Also resist contemporary music, which is mostly garbage. Drum machines turn your brain to mud and repetitive lyrics make you stupid. Boycott anything that PDiddy even gets near. Boycott remade songs and sampling and techno music. They are all encouraged and used by those who want your brain cells to malfunction and your synapses to rot. Entertainment is one of the biggest businesses on the planet. It steals your money and brainwashes you at the same time. It enriches the corporations and impoverishes you in every way, financially as well as mentally. Notice, for instance, how many times terrorism is mentioned in the top shows like 24, CSI, Navy NCIS, and all the rest. These shows could not be more useful to the status quo if they were written by the CIA, and many of them probably are. Remember that the CIA is pre-reading the New York Times; why not pre-writing CSI?

4) Boycott all international banks. Use small local banks, or, even better, don’t use banks at all. Don’t buy insurance of any kind. Don’t use credit cards. Don’t use preferred customer cards or shop at stores that require them—and tell them that you are avoiding them for that reason. It is a way for the store and the government to collect data and to avoid having a general markdown for everyone. It is basically a markup for guys, who statistically refuse to deal with such things.

5) Don’t use drugs—not because they are evil, but because your money is being used to support the CIA and globalism. If pot is that important to you, grow your own. Don’t use prescription drugs either—they are evil. If you need an upper, try sex or organic coffee; a downer, try a local beer or organic wine. Sleep more, no matter what doctors or surveys tell you. Your dreams act as natural uppers and downers, in a natural dose.

6) Don’t gamble. You might as well mail your paycheck directly to the mobsters and save yourself the time and frustration. Don’t play the lottery, which is just a tax on stupidity.

7) Get out of the stock market. It is gambling and it is evil. It is direct financial support of corporate America and directly funds the corruption and crime, including murder, slavery, genocide, kidnapping, and sex crimes. Invest in small companies directly, by buying their products and by loaning them start-up money at low or no interest.

8) Quit thinking in terms of investment. Investment is money for nothing. What makes you think you have a right to make money for doing nothing? Let the people who are working in the company make the money. If you want to make money, offer the world a useful product. Create something.

9) Don’t go to malls or shop at chains or franchises. Especially avoid the chain bookstores, which are all controlled just like the newspapers and magazines they sell. Don’t support the major publishers, either. Buy used books, old books, second-hand books, library seconds, and if you have to buy a new book, get it from a small locally owned shop, even if you have to pay a dollar more. Spend some time being sure that as little of your money gets blood on it as possible. Do not give it to anyone who is connected to the crimes, no matter how distantly. What you spend is even more important than what you pay in taxes, since most people still spend more than they are taxed. If everyone were able to be in control of every penny they spent, the revolution could succeed without a tax revolt.

10) Always buy used or second hand, if you can. This immediately cuts the profits of the major corporations in half. It also saves you a bundle. The amount of good used equipment and merchandise in the US is incredible. You could go the rest of your life without buying anything new, and still live like a rich person.

11) Avoid all plastics, including PVC, Styrofoam, fiberglass insulation, shrinkwrap, plastic bags, and all excess packaging. They harm you in any number of ways, not least by being ugly and smelling bad. They cause interior air pollution just sitting there and exterior air pollution when they are discarded and burned. By being cheap they add extra profits to corporations—who should be making products from decent materials instead of toxic paste.

12) If you are working for an evil company, quit your job. Do something that needs to be done. Even collecting welfare or unemployment is more virtuous and useful to the future of the earth than working for the devil. Put a crowbar in the gears any way you can.

13) Boycott all advertising. Do not work for advertisers. Do not watch news videos online that begin with an ad. Do not put ads on your site. Do not buy products that are advertised. If a product is advertised a lot, boycott it just for that reason. Do not let ads be placed in schools or on school busses. Boycott businesses with large or bad signs and tell them why you are doing it. This will make you saner and will make cities less ugly and dirty. And it is one more monkeywrench in the system.

14) Drive less, travel less, don’t commute. Either don’t take a job too far from your house, or move closer to your job. Common sense. Many jobs can be done from home. You have to think about your situation and control it, instead of accepting the short list that is offered you. Buy a bike. Walk. Take the bus or the train. Boycott taxicabs, which are too big, too fast, and too inefficient. All these things directly impact the oil industry, which relies on your complicity. They could not make record profits if you did not give them record profits. Big companies are out of control because people are out of control. You could not have one without the other.

15) Turn down your heat and your air-conditioning. Not only are you destroying the biosphere, you are further enriching and empowering the power companies and oil companies. Your body is healthier when it is not overheated or overcooled, anyway. Make your body burn a few of those calories to stay warm.

16) Move out of the country. If you don’t want to open yourself to charges of tax evasion, there is one legal way to never pay taxes to the US government again. Leave the country and give up your citizenship. Canada would love to have you, or New Zealand or Australia or Mexico or Venezuela. This kind of tough love may be the greatest patriotism of all, short of going to jail. You must cut off the money supply to the addicts, and this is the only way to do it without a visit from the IRS goons. Mail your ripped or charred passport directly to the White House. That is one message they may understand. But keep your eyes open wherever you move to. It is not called globalism for nothing. Canada is being annexed right now; you can run but you can’t fully hide.

17) Don’t allow you or your family to be illegally searched. Do not agree to random searches or inspections, do not volunteer any information, and know your Constitutional rights. Read the Constitution and memorize it. It is short and simple. If your public school is terrorizing your kids, remove them from it. Put them in a private school or hire a tutor. Many people are now hiring private teachers to lead small classes for groups of children. Several families splitting the costs makes it very affordable.

18) Boycott all air travel until security returns to 1970 levels. Bankrupt all the airlines, if that is what it takes. They should have resisted this security hoax from the beginning, just like the New York Times should have resisted the torching of the First Amendment. If these companies can’t act in our interest or in their own, they should be bankrupt. The whole security scare is manufactured. It is simply the first step in getting people used to being illegally searched. Roadblocks and sobriety checks were the second. Demand probable cause or a search warrant at any random check and be prepared to spend a night in jail. Then file a suit for unlawful imprisonment. They cannot legally keep you in jail or charge with anything, they are just testing you. If they have to arrest people from a long line of cars, they will give up the madness.

19) Boycott Congress. Stop petitioning these people to do the right thing. You are wasting your breath and that has been made very clear. What do you need, a sign in bold letters? Thoreau said that we shouldn’t need to petition our representatives to do the right thing. That is why they are there in the first place. We don’t have to petition the cook at the restaurant to make a sandwich—that is his job. But it is even clearer now. In Thoreau’s time Congress had not yet completely crawled into the President’s pocket, looking for coins there. Now, you couldn’t find 535 bigger non-entities, non-heroes, if you scoured the entire planet. A majority are explicitly complicit and the rest are implicitly complicit. If they weren’t complicit they would be on the steps of the Capitol every morning with a megaphone, shouting out the truth. They would be on CNN and MSNBC raising hell noon and night. John Conyers is the most outspoken, but even he is not doing his job. He is not stating it plainly enough, loudly enough, or often enough. He should be like Eugene Debs, writing letters to the New York Times from his jail cell (after being hauled off for using a megaphone on the steps of the Capitol). These Congresspeople know of corruption and crime that may surpass even those things Debs was addressing, and yet they sit there and pass meaningless resolutions and rubberstamp laws to protect the criminals and themselves. These people are not representing you, never intended to represent you, and never intend to begin representing you. They will have to step down when the executive steps down. The whole lot should be impeached together, along with the Supreme Court. What we need are general articles of impeachment against the entire government, including but not limited to the CIA, the DoD, the FBI, the Joint Chiefs, the Federal Reserve, the IRS, FEMA, NIST, and so on. These articles of impeachment must therefore come from the people. We need 50 state propositions and 50 million signatures. We need a government that represents the people, not big corporations and super-wealthy titans. To get that, we don’t have to “overthrow the government.” We have to demand the government that the Constitution guarantees us. To solve the current crisis, we don’t need communism or anarcho-syndicalism or Maoism or anything else. We just need people to obey the laws we already have. We need the President to quit stacking up illegal signing statements. We need Congress to quit passing unconstitutional laws. We need the people to quit agreeing to this quick slide into fascism. Historically, you may need a revolution to create a Constitutional government, but we already have a Constitution. We don’t need a revolution. We need those who have stolen the government to give it back to us. We are not the revolutionaries, they are. They have performed a silent coup in order to destroy the Constitution.

20) Join every march and group that you can. Be seen and heard, but behave with dignity. You are a representative of the truth and of the positive future. Emotion and anger are OK, but even the emotion and anger must be informed and directed. It must not be chaotic or presage chaos. Your emotion and anger should give others hope, not the reverse. [see worldcantwait.net]

21) Be prepared to join the big march, when huge numbers of people go into the streets for a general strike. This has happened in other countries and it may happen soon in the US. You must be prepared to join it at an instant’s notice, so stock up some food. You don’t have to build bunkers, tape the windows, and store a year’s worth of toilet paper, you just have to be prepared to feed yourself for a few days. Plan ahead just a tiny bit and it will save you some inconvenience and some begging from neighbors.

22) This is where it gets hard. Here we graduate to tax revolt. You become a conscientious objector to the crimes, like Thoreau or Gandhi, and you go to jail. This action doesn’t make sense unless you coordinate it with a lot of other people. It is sort of like self-immolation or hari-kari. The message is bright but short-lasting, and it takes a lot out of you. To succeed, you need numbers. If you coordinate it with thousands or millions of other people, it can actually be fun. You bring your own protection to prison, and you have some friends there to pass the time. Right after the next fake terrorist attack would be a good time for this one. Five or ten million people going into the streets and saying no more. No work tomorrow, no taxes, no busses, no trains, no airplanes, no TV, no business as usual. Odds are, the number would be 50 million by the end of the week. The rogue government then attacks 50 million people and puts them in concentration camps or it steps down. After that, we fish the Constitution out of the trash and start over.

23) Don’t get too far out in front of the pack. Those are the ones picked off first. You don’t need to be a martyr. Tax revolt and other bright spectacles require numbers to be effective, as I said. Getting arrested for any reason, beyond questioning an illegal search or something, requires numbers to be effective. Questioning a police officer is a trumped up offense, but tax evasion is a defined offense (despite the 16^th Amendment). Don’t do something crazy and get yourself locked up for nothing. We could use some high-profile people in jail—that would be proper PR. But unless you are famous, we need you free as long as possible. Jail should be a group project. The only point of jail is to overwhelm the jails, so that jail is no longer a possible method of governance.

Numbers 21 and 22 are likely to be the real solution. But while we are waiting for the rest to get informed, or informing them, we can do the other things, too. These other things are both moral and effective. They make us feel better and make it more difficult for those we resist. They also discipline us for the more difficult times ahead. It is coming. There is no doubt of that. So you best be ready. As Kurt Vonnegut put it, “Anything that can be done, will be done, so hunker down.” That can either be scary or it can be fun. Probably it will be both, like everything else.