Before we went into Iraq, I was running around saying that the War would ignite a fire that no one could extinguish. I had no idea how fucking evil the whole operation would turn out to be, but I did know there was a fucking HUGE scab we were picking at. The fire still burns: Iran and the US are staring across a border at eachother. We are going to build up our forces in Afghanistan and have our eye on Pakistan, which is one ‘galvanizing event’ away from the sort of chaos that would ‘force’ us to occupy the nuclear nation. Our takeover of central Asia will happen eventually, be it smash-and-grab or covertly. I oppose this on moral grounds: we have no right to kill people, steal property, eradicate culture and rewrite history for short-term goals and lazy policies, both foreign and domestic.
I’ve been thinking solutions to slow this down or stop it.
First I though about creating a ghost nation of pro-Western, anti-neocon ‘virtual cells’ to confuse and frighten them into a domestic overreaction. But apparently nothing is too ridiculously heavy handed for the American people. I think the time for that may have passed, as it would end up legitimizing their domestic rights violations.
Second, and I still think this is the right thing to do for now, I encourage tax revolt. Just turn off the spigot. Anyone that lends the US money under those conditions will be doing so knowing expressly that it will fund War. Ideally the tax revolt would spread to any nation that does so. Anyhow, you get the idea. A democratized solution. Problem is, when the rubber hits the road, folks capitulate and pony up their part because they don’t want to risk their family or personal wealth and security. All very understandable.
Now my kick is a little less radical and (IMHO) more elegant. How do you both cut off the GWOT money hose and actually convince people to participate in the mass movement necessary to do so (people are too scared to not pay taxes)? I think the answer might be simple: Federal Line Item Tax Allocation (Can someone come up with a catchier name? I’ll use FLITA from here on out).
[Details after the fold.]
What is FLITA? I imagine it working something like this: At the bottom of your US Form 1040 is a list of Federal Departments, Entitlements, etc. If you choose to do so, this is an opportunity to set the allocation of your tax payment by budget. Essentially, you would have 100 percentage points to distribute to the various budgets, setting your personal budget priority. Now what if no one puts any money to defense or education one year? Perhaps the ultimate allocation is a moving average between years, whatever.
The point is this is a simple, highly democratic, convenient way (we’re all paying taxes already) that everyone can legally participate in the cessation of Global Resource War, if they so choose, without risking their family’s welfare.
Sick of Congress doing squat or just the wrong thing? Sick of having to wait until the next cycle to try to elect someone with your priorities? Screw representative Republics. Democracy for the USA is the only way.
This idea probably exists somewhere, thought up 100 times before, but I haven’t heard it before, so let’s pretend it’s new.