Peace and Freedom

In 1969, at a time quite like the present, the reigning genius of the "underground" comics movement, Robert Crumb, produced "Despair." It's an outstanding classic of the genre, intended to pummel all hope out of anyone still naive enough to have any in that dark and violent time.

I sympathized then with people tempted to despair, and I still do. We've got a million valid reasons for abandoning hope and lashing out violently against the evil people and the insane thinking that got us into this state: waging perpetual war against those countries whose people hate and oppose us, against our own people so inconsiderate as to be sunk into indecorous poverty, and even against the earth herself.

But despair produces nothing except nihilism, and what little religion I have forbids me to abandon hope. I'm not advocating naive cheerfulness or passive resignation, but the kind of tough insistence that it's only by "Keep(ing) (our) eyes on the prize," as the old civil rights slogan said, that we can salvage anything worthy out of the present situation.

The "prize," of course, is simply transforming everything we have now into its opposite: instead of war and hostility, peace and freedom; instead of class warfare, education and accommodation; instead of mindless consumption and environmental destruction, technological innovation that stresses recognition of our biological limitations; instead of incessant economic and population growth, the maintenance of sustainable levels.

Are these goals attainable? Yes, but not easily. They all depend first of all on overcoming fascism, and that's not an easy task.

Fascism, in the final analysis, is completely dependent on mass media to maintain its position. If enough people refuse to be stupefied by endless torrents of fear and hostility, such as we've seen unleashed by our corporate-owned mass media over the last three years as it acted in the service of the corporate-military state, the underpinnings of fascism collapse. Without popular support, or at least grudging submission, fascism melts like butter on a hot stove.

The other possibility is for the revolution to capture the mass media -- the ideological equivalent of a revolutionary movement getting the army to abandon the regime and come over to its side. And since the job of the media is to tell the truth, getting its guilt-ridden troops to switch sides is easier than recruiting an army to the revolution.

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"Fascism" and "revolution" are emotionally-laden terms, but they needn't be, if you think about it. Leached of their emotional baggage, "revolution" simply means the replacement of one form of government with another. Sometimes, as in the present-day U.S., "counter-revolution" might be a better term: restoration of a form of government which has been usurped.

"Fascism" is a technical term which refers to a strictly modern form of rule by the combined forces of plutocracy (or wealth), government bureaucracy, and the military establishment, facilitated by a conventional religious establishment and a plutocratically-owned mass media which serve as the necessary organs of the corporo-military state's propaganda.

It's time to undertake a serious and dedicated revolution against both our fascist government and the culture of fascism which has been on the rise in this country for the last fifty years. The rules for participation are simple:

*Always tell the truth. Lies are the enemy's chief instruments of repression.

*Always remain non-violent. There is never a good enough reason to engage in violence against another human being, no matter what he's done.

*Don't despair. Nothing good can come of it.

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It might be time for me to take a walk -- a walk for peace: peace outside our borders, peace inside our borders, peace along our borders, peace with the earth we live on.

I was thinking of walking from where I am now to Washington D.C. Doris Haddock did it when she was 90, but I'm probably not as tough as her.

Such a walk might begin next March. We'll see.