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  Can Disobedience Remain Civil In a Lawless State?
Now that the health care reform nonsense is all but dead and buried, it is time to move on to other matters. I am actually kind of relieved. I can finally stop ranting around all pissed off at the latest sell out by Obama and the Democrats. Oh, haven’t you heard: WE LOST. I know the last nail has not yet been driven into our coffin, but who needs to stay up late to watch CNN’s report of the latest incident of Obama and the Democrats knuckling under to the demands of Big Pharma and Big Insurance? Please!
Want to know how it ends, Mister and Misses Amerika and all the ships at sea? The Congress will deliver us all into the greedy clutches of Big Insurance with mandated health insurance that we all will have to buy. The so-called legislative reform of the private insurance companies’ abuses will, in the final twist, turn out to have rubber teeth. Big Insurance will triumph with even more power and impunity than before. The health-seeking public will be more profoundly screwed than they ever were before, thanks to Obama and the lily-livered Democrats. May the gods save us from our “friends.” Now that it is all but over, I can finally say “I f**ing told you so.” Damn! I knew it was all over six months ago. I suppose I will never learn to stop wasting my time on these Children’s Crusades.
Now to get on to something of real importance:
For some time now I have been struggling with a paradox. Ever since I went up against the raging, frothing brownshirts at Claire McCaskill’s Health Care Town Meeting on August 26th, I have been asking myself whether my commitment to non-violent civil disobedience is not more akin to these people who seem to feel (rightly or wrongly) that the only way they can change things is to trash the first amendment and destroy all chance of civil dialogue in the land.
My own commitment to civil disobedience can be framed in the following statement: As long as steps are not taken to bring to justice President Bush and other high level members of his administration who framed, planned, acted out, supported, excused and covered up high crimes and misdemeanors, we will continue living in what is essentially an illegal state governed by unlawful authority. Yes Virginia, Obama is, by virtue of his complicity in not prosecuting these criminals, now a criminal as well. As a symbolic expression of my outrage at this state of affairs and my frustration at being unable in any way to affect such a restoration of law and order, I plan on carrying out the following actions whenever I find myself in the presence of any of the former members of the Bush Administration:
I will remove and gently tap said criminal on the head with my shoe. If I am not close enough to do that, I will throw my shoe at him. I have fairly light shoes and do not expect this action will involve any physical harm. The purpose is not to cause harm but to stage a non-violent assault. Or finally, if I am not close enough for either, I will still remove my shoe and point the sole in his/her direction. In all cases I will shout the following (in honor of Muntadhar al-Zaidi the hero of humanity who threw his shoe at President Bush during a press conference in Iraq.) “This is a farewell kiss from the American people, you dog!” If time, and the Secret Service permits, I may add. “May you never pollute the air of free people with the stench of your presence again!” The candidates for such an attack include, but are not limited to George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzalez, John Ashcroft, etc. I will not actively stalk these people, but if I happen to be at an event where they are present, they will not escape my footwear.
I am ashamed at my countrymen, great and common, who allow these vile miscreants to freely go about in public without being accosted or even shunned. This is not civility on the part of the Amerikan public, but cowardice. The fact that some are even able to retain handsome speaking fees is an embarrassment to our humanity. Even O.J., when he was a free man, was shunned and insulted on a regular basis whenever he dared to show his unworthy face. His heinous crime pales in comparison to those these Bush people committed.
This elaborate exposition describes my own, small, symbolic way of attempting to escape from the collective guilt I feel is now the legacy of each and every Amerikan. If I am able to actually carry out this strategy, it will of course end my life as I know it. I will essentially lose all I own and I may have to spend prison time for an assault of a public official. It is ironic that someone who assaults a criminal of this caliber should suffer the full consequences of what passes for law in this land, while the offended scoundrel suffers no such pain. I hate it that I must live in a country where the preservation my moral dignity requires me to possibly suffer the loss of everything.
This legacy of collective Amerikan guilt is as old as the founding of the white civilization on this continent. Up to now it has been possible for many to be blissfully ignorant of the dark roots of genocide, racism and Gaian rape upon which our prosperity and continued world dominance depends. Paradoxically, Bush, in his criminal insanity, overturned the rock and laid bare the serpent for all to see. As a result, we are reaping the whirlwind like never before in our history.
This lawlessness is most expressed these days in the new disrespect and violence the Right has added to its vocabulary of protest. It is ironic that meek, little Obama is now the object of this anti-government anti-authoritarian rage. These people never reared their conservative constitution-supporting heads when Bush was shredding the First Amendment and Habeas Corpus and lying literally millions to their deaths.
Since Barack Obama announced his intention to seek the presidency, there has been a gradually rising tsunami of racist, xenophobic, hysteria that has finally culminated in the present raging attacks on the President and the so called Liberal establishment.
This Right Wing insanity is something that could literally make us not just the brutal, corrupt, Imperialist country (we have always been) but an entirely psychotic entity as well. Of course the over evidenced lesson of Hitler's toppling of the Weimar Republic comes to mind -- again.
My thesis here is that, the Radical Right Wing and the Progressives are both responding (in vastly different ways) to the malignant Zeit Geist of all the corruption that has been unredeemed in our history. Of course they are both dong it in radically different (and the Right in largely unconscious) ways. Is not this discontent stemming from the same roots: genocide, slavery, racism, fascism, Capitalism, Imperialism, etc?
One true thing the insane Right understands is that all bets are off. Largely because of the illegality of Bush, the fragile fabric we call the social contract has been rent beyond repair. “Do what thou wilt” shall now be the whole of the law of the land. Unless these miscreants from the last administration are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law -- every man-jack of them, there will be no way the timid Democrats will ever be able to restore order in this country, let alone govern with authority. I’m afraid that in this, as in the health care reform debate, expectations for the Democrats to be self-righteous and fierce are as doomed as are expectations for the Republicans to be rational and compromising.
 Robert Boldt an editor of MWC News, is a freelance film/video producer living in Jefferson City, Missouri. He is active in local politics, worked on the Howard Dean and John Kerry campaigns and is a cofounder of The White Rose Collective. Articles by Bob Boldt at MWC News http://mwcnews.net/bob-boldt |
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