“The atom bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki destroyed whatever claims the United States may have had to being either “democratic” or a “peace-loving” nation. Without any semblance of a democratic decision—without even advance notice of what was taking place—the American people waked up one morning to discover that the United States government had committed one of the worst atrocities in history.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were atomized at a time when the Japanese were suing desperately for peace. The American leaders were acting with almost inconceivable treachery by denying that they had received requests for peace, rumors of which had been trickling through censorship for months.

The atom bombs were exploded on congested cities filled with civilians. There was not even the slightest military justification, because the military outcome of the war had been decided months earlier. The only reason that the fighting was still going on was the refusal of American authorities to discontinue a war which postponed the inevitable economic collapse at home,* and was profitable to their pocketbooks, their military and political prestige, their race hatred, and their desires for imperialist expansion.

The “way of life” that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki (and is reported to have roasted alive up to a million people in Tokyo in a single night) is international and dominates every nation of the world. But we live in the United States, so our struggle is here. With this “way of life” (”death” would be more appropriate) there can be no truce nor quarter. The prejudices of patriotism, the pressures of our friends, and the fear of unpopularity, imprisonment or death should not hold us back any longer. It must be total war against the infamous economic, political and social system which is dominant in this country. The American system has been destroying human life in peace and in war, at home and abroad, for decades. Now it has produced the crowning infamy of atom bombing. Besides these brutal facts, the tidbits of democracy mean nothing. Henceforth, no decent citizen owes one scrap of allegiance (if he ever did) to American law, American custom or American institutions.

There is a tendency to think that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was an excess that can be attributed to a few militarists and politicians at the top. That is the easy way out. It enables us to express our horror at the more obvious atrocities of our civilization while remaining “respectable” supporters of the institutions which make them inevitable. But obliteration bombing by blockbusters, incendiaries and atom bombs was a logical part of the brutal warfare that had been carried on for nearly four years with the patriotic support of American political, religious, scientific, business and labor institutions. The sudden murder of 300,000 Japanese is consistent with the ethics of a society which is bringing up millions of its own children in city slums. The lives of 300,000 “enemies” are distant and theoretical to business and labor leaders who find excuses for enjoying $15,000 incomes (and $150,000 incomes) while hiring workers for less than $1,500. Workers who passively accept starvation wages, periodic employment and relief checks, at the order of private owners and civic authorities, will also accept orders to put on a uniform and mutilate their fellow men.

No, the evil of our civilization cannot be combated by campaigns which oppose militarism and conscription but leave the American economic and social system intact. The fight against military conscription cannot be separated from the fight against the economic conscription involved in private ownership of the country’s factories, railroads and natural resources. The fight against the swift destruction of human life which takes place in modern warfare cannot be separated from the slow debilitation of the human personality which takes place in the families of the rich, the unemployed and the poor. The enemy is every institution which denies full social and economic equality to anyone. The enemy is personal indifference to the consequences of acts performed by the institutions of which we are a part.

There is no solution short of all-out war. But there must be one major difference between our war and the war that has just ended. The war against the Axis was fought as a military campaign against people, with the destructive fury, violent hatred regimentation and dishonesty of military warfare. The combatants were conscripts rather than free men. Every day that war went on they were compelled to act in contradiction to the ideals which motivated many of them. Therefore, “victory” was predestined to be a hollow farce, putting an end to killing that never should have been begun, but entrenching white imperialism as the tyrant of the Pacific, and contributing unemployment, slums, and the class hatred to the United States. The American people won half the world and lost their souls.

The war for total brotherhood must be a nonviolent war carried out by methods worthy of the ideals we seek to serve. The acts we perform must be the responsible acts of free men, not the irresponsible acts of conscripts under orders. We must fight against institutions but not against people.

There must be strikes, sabotage and seizure of public property now being held by private owners. There must be civil disobedience of laws which are contrary to human welfare. But there must be also an uncompromising practice of treating everyone, including the worst of our opponents, with all the respect and decency that he merits as a fellow human being. We can expect to face tear gas, clubs and bullets. But we must refuse to hate, punish or kill in return. We must respect the owners, policemen, conservatives and strike-breakers for what they are—potentially decent people who have been conditioned by a sick society into playing anti-social roles, the basic inhumanity of which they do not understand.

This is a diseased world in which it is impossible for anyone to be fully human. One way or another, everyone who lives in the modern world is sick or maladjusted. Slick businessmen and bosses, parasitical coupon clippers, socially blind lawyers, scientists and clergymen are as much victims of “a world they never made” as are the rough and irresponsible elements of America’s great slums. The only way we can begin to break the vicious cycle of blindness, hatred and inequality is to combine an uncompromising war upon evil institutions with an unbending kindness and love of every individual—including the individuals who defend existing institutions.

This is total war. But it is a war in which our allegiance transcends nationalities and classes. Every act we perform today must reflect the kind of human relationships we are fighting to establish tomorrow.

*I was wrong on this one. The collapse didn’t come until much later than I had anticipated. “

Van Jones, “Why They Win & Why We Lose” (Summer 1999)
The title is self-explanatory. The Right doesn’t keep winning because they have more guns and media than we do, though that’s part of it. They largely keep winning because the Left doesn’t have a winning strategy or attitude. Van touches on just some basic ways of thinking that plagues the Left and which we must overcome in order to win.

Zack Exley, “The New Organizers, Part 1: What’s Really Behind Obama’s Ground Game” (Oct. 8, 2008)
Obama’s campaign is a fricken machine! And the Left should be learning from it. If we are interested in building a new popular organizations, some of which include an electoral arm, the Obama campaign is a model we can learn from for being innovative and reaching out to new audiences.

George Lakoff, “Don’t Think of a Maverick! Could the Obama Campaign Be Improved?” (Sept. 11, 2008)
We need to be message warriors! Learn from George Lakoff as he points out where Obama, as a case study, is succeeding in winning hearts and minds - and also where he is failing (and why).

Matt Stoller, “Obama’s Consolidation of the Party” (May 7, 2008)
Unless something major happens that propels McCain to a comeback victory, Barack Obama will be the 44th President of the United States. What does that mean for the Left? Matt Stoller outlines how Obama has consolidated power within the Democratic Party, effectively creating a new tendency with him in charge. He’ll have the power to make policy, a fundraising base that will force Democratic candidates for House and Senate to come to him if they want to win, and all branches of Government behind him. Where will this help progressive forces in the U.S.? Where will it set us back?

The remix is called “So You Think You Can Be President?” I recommend it to everyone who wants a real critique (not to mention eight minutes of laughs) of Obama and McCain’s frighteningly similar positions on energy issues and increasing attacks against the Afghan people. Check it out!

Since the Reagan electoral victories of the 1980’s, Democratic candidates have used one of two strategies in their attempt to regain control of political power in the United States. Candidates like Bill Clinton successfully won the White House by moving to the right on issues such trade policies, dismantling social programs, and the economy. Candidates like Al Gore and John Kerry attempted to take the White House by winning in “blue states”, trying to flip “swing states”, and largely ignoring most of the rest of the country. Bill Clinton had to move to the right on economic and foreign policy issues. And in the most blunt and straightforward indictment of the Gore/Kerry electoral strategy, one analyst rightly said: “Democrats just don’t seem to be able to count.”

Even though the majority of the South identify as Democrats, their own party refuses to court their vote. In fact, has Bob Moser routinely points out, in order to win Southern Democrats, the Democratic Party would have to move left on economic issues, not right as many coastal Democrats often assume. In the Southland in particular, but also across the entire country, lies the opportunity for tremendous growth of the political Left.

The ideology of the Democratic Party has consistently prevented it from moving to the left on a wide range of issues. The Party is a center-right to moderate grouping with some slightly liberal leaders (though mostly on only a few issues each). It is thoroughly pro-capitalist and is organized is such a way so as to prevent any challengers from coming to power within the party.

The ideological commitments of the Party prevent it from building power in the central way a progressive political party can: by moving politically to the left and actually relating to people on the issues that matter to them.

The Left can gain tremendous ground by capitalizing on this fundamental weakness of the Democratic Party. In the coming decades, if Democratic strategists learn anything from the Obama campaign and the shifting demographics of the American Southland (especially the Southwest), they will begin to attempt to compete in so called “red states”. If a progressive political party actually started building power in the South, it could force the Democrats to move to the left on certain economic and military issues or risk being permanently irrelevant. Like all dilemma situations, this could lead to two positive outcomes for the Left: the Democrats could actually improve their positions (a win) OR a new progressive party or political bloc could gain ground and adherents in a new geographic location (which could happen either way, and also a win).

As revolutionaries serious about winning the struggle for political power in this country, we can learn a lot about what the Left would need to do in order to compete in the South by reading Bob Moser’s new book Blue Dixie: Awaking the South’s Democratic Majority. Much of the same advice Moser tells Democrats can be applied by progressive organizers interested in organizing a left alternative.

The stagnation of the American Left can be ended if we actually begin to map out our nation, region by region, state by state, community by community, figuring out where we can gain ground, on what issues, and how. When we start to think how we can strategically build a new world, we’ll actually start to get there. It seems simple enough, but its worth repeating often.

While I was at Hofstra University for the debates this past Wednesday, I was in the audience for the Brian Lehrer Show. One of the guests on the show was talking about his book, which focused on paranoia and conspiracies, and how the occurrence of both greatly increases in the U.S. as totalitarian in the U.S. increases. If this is true, I think its very possible that that’s what this film is catering to.

Quarantine ended up being an extremely strange movie. It was filmed similar to the Blair Witch Project, but in this case it was through the lens of a reporter and cameraman who were following around two firefighters. There’s a 10 minute introduction where they are just doing interviews around the firehouse. They then receive a call and go to the building where the main story begins.

They enter the building, go up a few flights of stairs, and slowly enter the apartment where the incident is occurring in. The apartment is dark (the entire building seems to be only dimly lit). Since it is filmed to appear as if the only surviving record is the cameraman’s video, the film is somewhat shaky.

Inside the apartment, there is a woman, in the dark, who isn’t speaking at all. She’s standing in the dark with her hands hanging at her side. After a few minutes of the police and firemen trying to talk to her, and her not responding, the woman lunges as one of them, biting one of their necks. They quickly leave the apartment, running downstairs.

By the time they get to the bottom floor, the front door is locked. As they try to leave, authorities on a megaphone tell them not to panic and that people will be in to let them out soon. All the doors are locked. Some windows are soon guarded by soldiers with machine guns and snipers. Inside, the characters are attacked one by one - by infected humans and dogs.

A veterinarian suspects that its some form of rabies. But he doesn’t understand how people are becoming infected so quickly or how it is making them so violent. He ominously adds that there is no cure for rabies: its 100% fatal once you are infected.

The police officer notifies them that the CDC is coming, and that everyone will be able to leave soon. Everyone in the building just needs to get a blood test to make sure they aren’t infected. The veterinarian doesn’t understand how this is possible. The only way to test for rabies is a brain sample.

Eventually agents from the CDC come. They are dressed in white hazmat suits. They go into the backroom where some of the infected victims are unconscious. They lock everyone else out while they do their tests. The reporter and camera man enter into the next room in order to look through a hole in the wall. They see the CDC agent drilling into one of the victims’ heads to get a brain sample.

Soon after one of the CDC agents tells the remaining characters that they followed the infection from a dog at a local veterinarian whose owner lived in their building. That is the only explanation the Government gives throughout the entire movie.

The film has zero conflict resolution. Everyone dies - everyone. You never find out what the disease / virus / bacteria is. The Government isn’t held responsible for locking everyone in the building, nor are you introduced to any Government agents at the end who explain what happened. Once the reporter, cameraman, and firefighters enter the building, they (and you watching on their camera), never leave. You are locked in by the Government with the infection inside.

The film reminded me a lot about the U.S. Government’s “war on terrorism”. You have an intangible enemy which is never seen, never explained, and never caught. You have a government which will do literally anything to supress the “threat” (all of which they are never held accountable for). You have a government which provides little, if any, explaination for their actions or what’s going on in the world. And while you have an intense distrust of authority, you are instead lead to a feelings of paranoia and helplessness.

It wasn’t a particularly good movie. It was a good for a few jumps and screams, though I wouldn’t recommend the movie, except if you really enjoy human suffering, or perhaps if you want to make the connections to what’s going on in our world.

The Saw series is different. I get sick to my stomach every time I see an ad for the new film or hear a reference to it. A month and a half ago a schoolmate of mine, Kevin, was brutally murdered in Chelsea, NY. His unremorseful killer watched the movie Saw before leaving Kevin’s apartment.

That’s how fucked up our system is. It fucks us all up, feeds us perverted propaganda, pushed us all over the edge, and then does’t provide us with the healthcare we need to keep us all sane members of society. And it takes a death - or some other powerful shift in consciousness - to see how every aspect of our institutions and social relations is designed to maintain the death system.

Now I’m sitting in one of the debate watching parties in Hofstra’s student center cafeteria. There are a few hundred students here. Theres a lot of excitement in the air. More blogging to come in a few…

So be forewarned! In the event of civil war, nuclear holocaust, or revolution (do rightwing revolutions count?), you’re going to have to buy a new phone. Mindboggling…

From the people who wrote the book on running progressive electoral campaigns:

“We’ve put together all our campaign know-how into a practical, hands-on guide for progressive grassroots candidates and their campaigns on how to win.  This latest offering was written by Jeff Blodgett and Bill Lofy with Erik Peterson, Sujata Tejwani, Ben Goldfarb and others at Wellstone Action.”