I’ve always liked and admired political cartoonist Ted Rall.
He’s actually much more than a cartoonist, and his articles and books are
no-nonsense, take-no-prisoners progressive rants of the highest order. He’s got
a new book out, “The Anti-American Manifesto,” and, in an excerpt I read on
AlterNet, it’s classic Rall, but uniquely important at the same time. In this
book, Rall spells out clearly what so many progressive writers and thinkers
have been dancing around for years now, myself included: The American
government is going to collapse soon. There will be a power vacuum, and the Tea
Party/gun nuts/militia groups/crazy Christians are ready and poised to step
into that vacuum if no one else does.
Rall stands up and says it out loud: Progressives need to
start the revolution now, before the actual collapse, or we will find ourselves
shackled, imprisoned or worse.
“We can
wait for the system to collapse of its own accord, for the rage of the downtrodden
and dispossessed to build, for chaos of some sort to expose and destroy it. But
implosion might take a long time. And when it happens, we may find ourselves
even more powerless than we are now. They -- the hardcore, racist,
undereducated, fundamentalist Christian, anti-civil liberties Right -- are
preparing to step into the breach, to seize power. They can't wait to unleash
their venomous hatred on the city-dwelling commie hipster fags they despise.
They are armed. They recognize that the system is doomed. They've seen this
coming. They're organized and willing to merge their disparate brands of
conservatism under a common leadership. Most importantly, they get it. They
don't need to be convinced that everything is in play. They're putting it in
play.”
Strong stuff, but we all know that he is right. It is time
for resistance, action and effort. Rall doesn’t offer any easy answers to the
obvious question, “What should I do, Ted?” He claims his role is to get people
to think, and then choose their own course of action.
I’m in total agreement with Rall, and I admire his courage
writing this manifesto, but I also live in this world, and I look around me
daily at the people of the Twin Cities and I don’t see any revolutionaries. I
live in an economic strata of people who are focused on families and careers,
working harder than ever, but still able to afford a new car when they need one
or to go out to dinner when they want to or take a summer vacation.
For a variety of reasons, the coming calamity we are facing
in America is not on their radar. If I was to have lunch with anyone I know
here at work and tell them that we need to start a revolution, they’d smile and
discreetly move to another table. I can only speak for my own experience, but
the people I know will only be motivated to act if (when) the economy goes
south in a big way and they are deprived of the things that they now take for
granted. Then, and only then, will the ground be fertile for planting the
desperate idea of revolution.
Raising political
awareness among the masses is extremely difficult at the moment. The corporate
news media is keeping the average American woefully misinformed of the
political realities in this country, and while many people have a vague
uneasiness about what’s going on in Washington, very few truly understand the
gravity of the situation.
Rall is right
in his evaluation of our current dilemma, but I don’t think there will be
much movement or support for the idea of revolution until we reach a critical
mass of economic discomfort among people in what’s left of the middle class. I
hope I’m wrong about this.
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