I don't know about you, but the status quo just isn't cutting it for me. While I'd like to believe progressives are going to sweep the nation and usher in a new area of engaged, pluralistic, egalitarian democracy. . . I have my doubts.
It's when I am most doubtful that I become more radical. As I am not sure I'll ever reach the Molotov-cocktail-tossing stage, my radicalism is confined to ideas.
Radical ideas.
You don't have to agree with all of them...
1. End the GWOT by shipping Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Pearle, Wolfowitz, and Rice to the Middle East. Just drop them off with little notes attached to their backs. Something like "we give you these criminals in exchange for a new era of global democracy." Would that not be a sign of good faith? Or was it a better idea to sacrifice all those American children...Iraqi families? I think there the numbers speak for themselves. You can have these 6 and we'll stop killing you and you can stop killing our children, mothers, and husbands.
2. Pay every country in the world 1 billion a year not to attack us. We take the remaining 200 billion or so from our defense budget, and we send every world leader to Mars. After the initial settlement, we will give them 50 billion a year to develop Mars into a habitable world, as penance for what they are trying to do here. We take 149 billion a year and we use it to solve a few issues: poverty, AIDS, water, energy, and stupidity. We take the final billion a year and we use it for a media campaign reminding the planet why we sent these criminals to Mars in the first place.
3. Fire every professional athlete. Read that twice. Fired. We then move the collegiate industry into the professional industry and the high school programs (where the most important work is done anyway) to the college level. Our school systems are now funded. You may play at the collegiate level as long as you maintain a B average. Otherwise, you'll have to go out and do something for the people who provide you with the space to play. Join the National Guard maybe. Or, gasp, become a teacher and a coach at the high school level.
4. Kill every heterosexual couple. In order to end the greatest threat to global democracy, we have to prevent homosexuals from ever being born. No? Something more radical? We could spay and neuter the entire population. Too radical? Then let's create a nationwide test for couples/partners who want to have children. If you get an A on the test, you can copulate or adopt regardless of what you do with consenting adults when the American Taliban can't see. This may have the effect of breeding stupidity out of the general population, which will leave us with citizens who realize relationships and marriage are about more than fucking.
5. Start a progressive bank. People, really. Soon there will be a hundred thousand of us. An initial deposit of $100 each gives us an amazing resource for reaching out to help people. How about 2% loans to families trying to start a business? We could decide, on this board, where the money goes and how it gets spent. Eventually, we could make deposits here with 2% interest, knowing that the real goal isn't to make money, it is to help others participate in our growing democracy. Why continue to support the banks and credit card companies that further rampant consumerism and gross, consumptive capitalism?
6. Build a terrarium. Do you remember terrariums? Little ecosystems enclosed in glass? We have forgotten what we live in. We have forgotten that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Or at least some of us have. 100,000 terrariums deposited throughout the nation's capital. Fill one with tiny soldiers. Fill another with gas so you can't see in. Fill another with water and nothing else. Another with sand and nothing else. Another with trash. You get the picture. Perhaps, in the biggest terrarium of them all, we put two children, playing a game, smiling...
7. Remember that you are the government. Conservatives want to say government this and government that and all government is bad. NO. Conservatives are sailing this ship and have no one to blame but themselves. The longer we allow them to sail, the more complicit we are in the ensuing disaster. Many of you lurk and linger, many post and respond...Few, I fear, as does Markos, are boots on the ground people. We need to become those people. The government is us and it is time to act like we believe it. We have to encourage others to get active, and we must do so by example.
These are 7 radical ideas. You may not like all of them; radicalism works that way. Should you find one or two acceptable, that may be a sign that coalitions can form. Should coalitions form, there is the potential for action. Should there be action, there is the potential for reform.
It's radical to believe this stuff, ain't it?