Alright, America, this is how it's gonna be.

As you know, I'm an artist, and I don't get paid much. I don't even make enough to live on, let alone to pay for health insurance.

I'm thirty-four. Sometime in the next ten years I will almost certainly have a major medical incident. Unless I stumble onto that one-in-a-million project that makes a fortune, I will not be able to pay for it.

This will leave me with four choices: dying slowly of whatever condition it may be, borrowing money that I will never be able to repay, forcing my family and loved ones to pay for me, and suicide.

None of these are acceptable to me.

So you have a year. My brother's getting married in France about a year from now, and I'm going. And I might stay. I don't really want to stay -- I want to live here, in the land of my birth, with the people that I love. But you don't give me any options.

Either fix health care by next September, or cede me enough money that I can buy health care for myself. I would prefer the first, but am willing to accept the second.

If you don't, I'm going and I can't come back. I can't force my family to pay outrageous sums for something that should be free, or watch me die for something completely preventable. I have to live somewhere where life is respected enough that I can survive.

I'm sorry it's come to this, America. I really do love you.

How Nonviolence Protects the State, by Peter Gelderloos.

First, I have to say that this book makes one very good and overwhelming point; we have to do something, and soon. It can't happen soon enough.

But.

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I dunno. I guess he was trying to find a situation where he could be judge, jury, and executioner. Here's another one: "burning down the office of a magazine that consciously markets a beauty standard that leads to anorexia and bulimia."

"You know," Amy said, "when I was pedicabbing I was down on Sixth Street all the time at night, and I would watch these women, you know, normal, healthy women, and they would squeeze their feet into these tiny little shoes and they couldn't walk. The guys would have to get things for them, and hold doors for them, because they couldn't, since there was something wrong with their feet. So they were basically, you know, crippling themselves. So that men would find them attractive. How crazy is that? Why do women hurt themselves so that men can feel strong?"

"Well," I said, "that's a very good question. I'd never thought about it like that. But," I continued, "you know, he's talking about burning down an actual building. With actual people in it."

"Oh," said Amy. She clearly missed that part.

If you know Amy you may find this as shocking as I did. Amy, long story short, is not one to countenance the burning down of buildings, for any reason. Amy is not one to countenance the squishing of spiders. As lovely and peaceful a person as exists on this earth, yeh she was willing to consign the women's fashion industry to hell and she thought there was plenty good reason.

I was fascinated by this reaction and mentioned the situation to several other women. I have not asked one single woman yet who does not want to burn down the offices of Cosmo.

This level of resentment was news to me. Women do not usually want to burn buildings down, in my experience. Amy doesn't, at least. Whatever it is that these women's magazines are doing, it must be pretty bad.

Nevertheless, I still don't think we should burn them down. They'll just build a new one and you'll poison the groundwater. Though apparently you will impress women.

Oh god, please don't burn down a magazine and say that I told you it would impress women. That would be mortifying.


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Reporter: What do you have to say about the windows that were smashed in today's protest?

Goofus: Our organization has a well-publicized nonviolence pledge. We condemn the actions of extremists who are ruining this protest for the well-meanning people who care about saving the forests/stopping the war/halting these evictions.

Oh, no, Goofus! Don't carry their water for them! Stay on point!

Gallant: It pales in comparison to the violence of deforestation/the war/these evictions. [Insert potent facts about the issue].

Yay Gallant!

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I am done with this book, and if you want it you can have it. Send me your address and I will mail it to you. Only one condition; You must sincerely believe that you are going to read this book. It can be false hope or habitual self-delusion, I am not in a position to judge you. All I ask is that you honestly believe, at least for a minute, that you are actually going to read this book if I mail it to you.

If you're going to write in the margins, I didn't leave much space. You'll want a red or blue ink pen, or maybe a pencil.

A much better and more insightful critique of this book is available at http://www.contextflexed.com/revgelderloos.html -- it's plain-old brilliant sometimes, even though it's academic and a little obtuse. It's also incredibly long, as is this post. Say what you will about Gelderloos, he inspired a lot of thought. Every once in a while somebody needs to come along and ask the dumb questions, just so that everyone else can be very precise in the way they say "NO!!!!~!~!!~!~!"


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I participate in American culture mostly in self-defense. It's like judo to the modern world. By participating I feel that I am controlling the uncontrollable. Or at least in good position to jump.

Microscopic control of my perceived cultural space -- one way to deal with the existential terror of modern life. Whatever you say about our world, there is no doubt that we are in a new realm, and nobody knows what will happen next. What we have in America right now is essentially an existential crisis, where the people of conscience are literally paralyzed in the face of insane aggression. Never in history have the crimes of government been so obvious. But we are frozen, always trying to reason our way through. There is little doubt in anyone's mind that our forefathers and foremothers would never have stood for this. They've had revolutions for a lot less than this.

But pacifism and existentialism and zen have combined to deprive us of our greatest weapon; violence.

And it has to be that way.

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We have to renounce violence. There's no violent way to do that. To everybody who says, "Oh, just one more war, then we'll quit," I say "bullshit." Quit now. The last few wars didn't work out for you. "But this will be a good war! The right people will win!" Bullshit.

If George Bush had got psychiatric help he would have been a better president.

And that's the real point. We have to get him help. We should have gotten him help a long time ago. We have to be better at this. When someone says on national TV that he hears voices, that's a cry for help. Someone should help him.

Here's a parallel example, involving another celebrity. When Kurt Cobain wrote that song, "I Hate Myself and I Want to Die," it was probably a cry for help. Seeing as he killed himself a little bit later. Hmm. Now, I have no idea how I would stop Kurt from committing suicide. But I bet somebody, somewhere could have thought of something.

Sure, Cobain and Bush, a totally different thing, but I'm just pointing out that sometimes a cry for help can come from someone you don't even know. I never met George Bush in my life. But he doesn't seem happy to me.





If anyone needs a list of all the stuff they have that makes violent revolution a practical impossibility, it's included below.

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This already feels naive and hopeless to me. Next I'll try to modify this into something much less bleak. I really don't mean it in a bleak way. I just want to understand the stakes. This is why I don't think violence works. Next is why somebody else thinks it does. Hopefully after that will come a compromise and synthesis of the two.