I am washed over in disappointment when I see the absolute mass of people going totally ape shit over Obama’s inauguration. I am utterly confused as to what “change” or “progress” everyone thinks Obama will bring to the white house. While I will not hesitate to admit it is nothing short of astonishing that Americans managed to elect a non-white president I can’t help to expect the change and progress to stop there. In all honesty, I hope I am wrong.
With those thoughts in mind, below is an entertaining piece by Nexus X Humectress from AnarchistNews.org
In my dream world, here’s how President Obama’s inaugural address would go. Imagine if you will:
[WILDLY UNREALISTIC FANTASY]
My fellow Americans, haven’t you had enough of this crap? I don’t mean the Bush administration, I mean all the administrations. Aren’t you tired of being administrated? Where has it gotten you?
So please allow me the honor of following up being the first African-American elected to the presidency with another historic first: the first president to up and quit on day one because the whole government is bullshit. Yeah, you heard me. I am not resigning, only to have Biden take my place, I am quitting in hopes that you will follow me by quitting too, and put an end to this entire played-out government gag. As president, it would have been my duty to enforce the government’s laws. The thought of using coercion, force, and violence to make people obey feels really icky to me, and I have too much belief in inherent human dignity to hold myself above anyone and allow my name to be attached to such a grand title.
If I could issue one final executive order, it would be: No More Imaginary Institutions. This means please stop believing in the existence of false idols, constructs of the mind that do not have any real existence in the physical world, phantasmic ideas that at best indirectly influence the real world. I’m not talking about that different religion practiced by that family down the street. No, I am talking about the god you worship every day: money! Quid pro quo exchanges almost always benefit one party over another, leading to a world where a relative small number enjoy power and comfort while a large number toil in misery for their very survival. These exchange relationships are made possible through the idea of property, where the State intervenes (on behalf of the wealthy) with coercion or violence when a dispute arises over use of an object. Property is another phantasm I hereby abolish. The property and exchange game is not what I would call fun for everyone. Let’s see what kind of world we can create out of giving gifts and helping each other out.
Also on my list are other imaginary things that do not exist in the real world, including, but not limited to: marriage, Christmas, graduation, Tuesdays, and, of course, elections, the presidency, and the United States of America.
I hereby call for a general strike. Workers of the world, relax! The jobs lost in this burgeoning depression we’re entering are not, in and of themselves, a bad thing to lose. Let’s face it, work sucks, and what’s worse, so much of it is unnecessary for the survival and comfort of humanity. We have been chasing this imaginary creature called the economy, and if we don’t stop, it’s about to lead us off a cliff. Instead of continuing to spend our lives’ energy doing inane things that we’d rather not be doing, just because it pays the bills, how about if we stopped doing useless but lucrative work, and replaced it with work that actually benefited someone in a direct way, in a society without bills. Of course, there are a few of those kind jobs in existence today. If you are performing a function where people are depending on you for their physical survival, please keep going to work, and you can have a break as soon as more people are trained to relieve you. For everyone else, let Inauguration Day be the first day of your permanent vacation!
If we are to survive Peak oil, the economy must be stopped. There are enough resources to go around for everyone, but only if we quell our mindless consumerism, stop building McMansions, and cut way back on driving. None of these things were sources of real happiness anyway, just ego-boosting distractions to muffle the desperate screaming in our heads. We are impoverished. I am not referring to our recent financial situation, but to a poverty of meaning that our culture has suffered under for a very long time. We now have more TV shows, video games, social networking websites, and cell phones than ever before, but how much of that nurtures what is most human inside us? America, it is time to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, building for ourselves a deeply meaningful inner life with the same tireless dedication with which our ancestors built strip malls.
When will we go back to our old jobs? I think it’s a fair question to ask whether we want to even remain an industrial society at all. Do the benefits of all our high-tech gadgets really outweigh the costs to the lives of the workers who make them, the costs to the environment, and the costs to our culture’s mental health? Do we even need to remain a civilization as such, or are there more fulfilling forms of social organization awaiting if but we apply our creativity?
The answers to these questions are not for me to decide. The future is up to all of you now. If we act wisely, the absence of government will not result in chaos and violence. New kinds or order will arise spontaneously at the grassroots. Let’s use the new tools of dialog and deliberation ( http://www.co-intelligence.org ) to explore these issues and come up with some new breakthrough solutions. Let’s start by asking one another, how do we want to live?
