The newest cover for the New Yorker magazine makes a brilliant comment on the relationship between income tax and war machines (so brilliant, in fact, that I conceived of a similar idea months ago, but more on that below). The image on the cover depicts fighter jets, tanks and battleships, whose surfaces are covered with the text and design from the familiar 1040 U.S. tax forms. While this connection between paying for war and income tax is obvious, I’m sure it’s not something most Americans think about as they rush to send out their tax returns in advance of the looming deadline.
Whether the artist of the cover, Christoph Niemann, intended anything more than a witty play on words (the title is "T-Day"), the image strikes a powerful chord. It reminds us that, as long as we pay taxes, we are all complicit in the innocent deaths resulting from the Iraq War. This is in spite of whether we voted against Bush, wrote daily letters to our congresspersons, or attended every anti-war protest since 2002.
I think many Americans either forget or willfully ignore this fact. They perform a kind of self-deception by reassuring themselves that their responsibility for U.S. military action ends at the Presidential voting booth — that once a leader is chosen through an electoral process, that all responsibility then lies with that elected official.
Wrong. The simple fact is this: while many democratic anti-war activists clamor (at present, in vain) for Congress to cut off funding for the war, each individual American citizen holds a powerful tool for direct action against war within their grasp. The President may be the Commander in Chief, and Congress may have control of the war treasury, but we, as the American taxpayers, are the ones who provide the actual funds. If Americans are sick of war, they can simply choose to stop paying for it.
The fact that taxation is mandated by law does not absolve us of our moral responsibility. Each American has a choice to make. Will we use our dollars for war, or will we use our dollars for peace?
For those interested in learning about the long history of war tax resistance, and helpful resources on the subject, visit warresisters.org/wtr.htm or nwtrcc.org.
[Regarding my own efforts at making artwork about the subject of war tax, a few months ago I created a digital sketch for an art installation, tentatively titled, "The Politics of Taxation: How I Unintentionally Bombed a Village," which was to be constructed out of 1040 tax forms and affixed to a wall. Perhaps it is different enough from Niemann’s New Yorker cover to warrant a future exhibition, I don’t know. An image of the digital sketch is here.]
>> Jason Laning is an artist, activist, blogger, and armchair theorist with a strong interest in political philosophy.
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