The Peace Dividend: A Time to Take Dead Aim and Attack
The Peace Dividend
The Most Controversial Proposal in the History of the World
Before addressing the details of the plan, let’s all take a quick multiple choice test. Pencils ready and go:
You live in the most powerful Empire the world has ever known. Its government is a cruel joke. A corporate/banking political duopoly dominates all public offices, with virtually all its elected officials nothing more than Wall Street lapdogs and cheerleaders for militarism. War for profit, coup d’etat, color revolution, and assassination its modus operandi. The people at the top will stop at nothing in order to gain complete control of earth’s resources, including the use of a vast nuclear arsenal. If their bombs don’t kill us all, their abuse of Mother Earth and resulting climate change will. These monsters must be stopped, and it’s up to you. How do you proceed? Do you:
C. Through social media, inform all U.S. Citizens that, in order to fund its war machine and police state, their government has been picking their pockets, and that if they vote for certain designated candidates, every man, woman, and child will receive a refund check in the amount of nearly $15,000?
Everybody ready? Pencils down! Now to grade your tests. If you chose A, you’re obviously suicidal, and I’d strongly suggest more conventional methods such as drug overdose or firing up the Toyota in a closed garage. If you chose B, you’re delusional, and must have the American public, at large, mixed up with a group that has a clue or gives a shit. If you chose C, you’re an astute judge of character, and an expert on exactly what motivates and excites people to action in a capitalist society. Plan C is the obvious best, and maybe only viable answer.
John Rachel’s Peace Dividend idea is all about changing the system from within. Breaking the stranglehold of the Two-Party System and the Mainstream Media which maintains it. Replacing all corporate congressional whores with a cadre of leftist, populist, anti-war outsiders, all of whom will have eagerly signed The Peace Dividend Candidate Contract. Incumbent Congressmen and Senators who refuse to sign on will be voted out of office, and replaced by Peace Dividend Candidates. See contract below:
Now if you’ve stayed with me thus far, passed the test, read the Candidate Contract, and haven’t written John Rachel or me off as being certifiably insane, you’re probably asking yourself: Where do these windmill-tilters think they’re going to come up with nearly five trillion dollars, which will be necessary to pay the tab for this unlikely and controversial proposal? The answer is simple. To paraphrase the man in The White House…we’ll drain the swamp. Cut the fluff, end the wars, castrate and defang Empire. GIANT cuts to The Pentagon Budget. Defund all current wars. Hack to pieces the budgets of the C.I.A., N.S.A., and The Homeland Security Agency. Eliminate tax loopholes for the wealthy and end corporate welfare. Raise taxes on the wealthy and the corporations they control. Place taxes on publicly-traded stocks. And issue Peace Dollars & Peace Bonds. A couple trillion bucks per year, at the drop of a hat.
Every time I ponder the viability of The Peace Dividend, I hear music playing in my head. Okay, so maybe I am certifiably insane, but sometimes it takes crazy people to change the world. That music is a 1989 release by Lou Reed, titled “There is no time”. Not sure what was going on in 1989 to inspire the lyrics, but it could have been written yesterday. Lou believed that:
“This is no time for circumlocution. This is no time for learned speech.
This is a time to gather force and take dead aim and attack.”
On the breakfast table of our current world situation, boys and girls, we’re all the pig, and our bacon is on the line. This is the time to gather force and take dead aim and attack. John Rachel has a viable plan. If you have a better one, time’s a wastin’, so spit it out. If not, let’s give The Peace Dividend a chance. If you agree, run it by your local Congressman, and see what he/she thinks of it. If they don’t sign on, maybe they should retire and pass the baton to you. As Patrice at The Greanville Post would remind us: “The idiot, the ignorant, & the indifferent outnumber us 100 to 1. What are you doing to improve the odds?”
About the Author JOHN R. HALL, Senior Contributing Editor John R. Hall is a street-trained agnotologist with an advanced degree in American Ignorance. Other hats include: photojournalist, novelist, restaurateur, mountaineer, grocer, nurseryman, and janitor. He’s written three novels which have been read by almost nobody: ‘Embracing Darwin’, ‘Last Dance in Lubberland’, and ‘Atlas fumbled’. An untrained writer and college drop-out, he began his short career in journalism writing the ‘Excursion’ column for The Jackson Hole News & Guide. More recently he penned the ‘Left Column’ for The Molokai Island Times; appropriately on the island once known as a leper colony. John currently resides, writes, and protests injustice in the shadow of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, and walks among the spirits of those who once occupied the 79 Disappeared Pueblos. Read more John Halls’s articles.
Appendix
By John Rachel
Buy at Amazon and other bookstores.
$7.99 kindle / 12.99 paperback
What will it take to bring America to live according to its own self image?
The Most Controversial Proposal in the History of the World
Before addressing the details of the plan, let’s all take a quick multiple choice test. Pencils ready and go:
You live in the most powerful Empire the world has ever known. Its government is a cruel joke. A corporate/banking political duopoly dominates all public offices, with virtually all its elected officials nothing more than Wall Street lapdogs and cheerleaders for militarism. War for profit, coup d’etat, color revolution, and assassination its modus operandi. The people at the top will stop at nothing in order to gain complete control of earth’s resources, including the use of a vast nuclear arsenal. If their bombs don’t kill us all, their abuse of Mother Earth and resulting climate change will. These monsters must be stopped, and it’s up to you. How do you proceed? Do you:
C. Through social media, inform all U.S. Citizens that, in order to fund its war machine and police state, their government has been picking their pockets, and that if they vote for certain designated candidates, every man, woman, and child will receive a refund check in the amount of nearly $15,000?
Everybody ready? Pencils down! Now to grade your tests. If you chose A, you’re obviously suicidal, and I’d strongly suggest more conventional methods such as drug overdose or firing up the Toyota in a closed garage. If you chose B, you’re delusional, and must have the American public, at large, mixed up with a group that has a clue or gives a shit. If you chose C, you’re an astute judge of character, and an expert on exactly what motivates and excites people to action in a capitalist society. Plan C is the obvious best, and maybe only viable answer.
John Rachel’s Peace Dividend idea is all about changing the system from within. Breaking the stranglehold of the Two-Party System and the Mainstream Media which maintains it. Replacing all corporate congressional whores with a cadre of leftist, populist, anti-war outsiders, all of whom will have eagerly signed The Peace Dividend Candidate Contract. Incumbent Congressmen and Senators who refuse to sign on will be voted out of office, and replaced by Peace Dividend Candidates. See contract below:
Now if you’ve stayed with me thus far, passed the test, read the Candidate Contract, and haven’t written John Rachel or me off as being certifiably insane, you’re probably asking yourself: Where do these windmill-tilters think they’re going to come up with nearly five trillion dollars, which will be necessary to pay the tab for this unlikely and controversial proposal? The answer is simple. To paraphrase the man in The White House…we’ll drain the swamp. Cut the fluff, end the wars, castrate and defang Empire. GIANT cuts to The Pentagon Budget. Defund all current wars. Hack to pieces the budgets of the C.I.A., N.S.A., and The Homeland Security Agency. Eliminate tax loopholes for the wealthy and end corporate welfare. Raise taxes on the wealthy and the corporations they control. Place taxes on publicly-traded stocks. And issue Peace Dollars & Peace Bonds. A couple trillion bucks per year, at the drop of a hat.
Every time I ponder the viability of The Peace Dividend, I hear music playing in my head. Okay, so maybe I am certifiably insane, but sometimes it takes crazy people to change the world. That music is a 1989 release by Lou Reed, titled “There is no time”. Not sure what was going on in 1989 to inspire the lyrics, but it could have been written yesterday. Lou believed that:
“This is no time for circumlocution. This is no time for learned speech.
This is a time to gather force and take dead aim and attack.”
On the breakfast table of our current world situation, boys and girls, we’re all the pig, and our bacon is on the line. This is the time to gather force and take dead aim and attack. John Rachel has a viable plan. If you have a better one, time’s a wastin’, so spit it out. If not, let’s give The Peace Dividend a chance. If you agree, run it by your local Congressman, and see what he/she thinks of it. If they don’t sign on, maybe they should retire and pass the baton to you. As Patrice at The Greanville Post would remind us: “The idiot, the ignorant, & the indifferent outnumber us 100 to 1. What are you doing to improve the odds?”
Appendix
Buy at Amazon and other bookstores.
What will it take to bring America to live according to its own self image?