"You're an idealistic and well meaning idiot"
I am absolutely tickled pink by this comment by my brother.
I look forward to hearing his counter-arguments, even if I am too thick to understand them.
I look forward to hearing his counter-arguments, even if I am too thick to understand them.
...defining "movement" as "more than one person", obviously. ;) I wonder how many people need to follow along before it qualifies as a movement?
It's mostly only famous folk who can agitate from in prison.
First, see moorlock's comment, that very few tax resisters end up in prison. Mostly what happens is nothing for a while, then attempts to extract the money against your will, via your employer. Threatening letters, certainly, because those are pretty easy to write and send. It takes a while before they get around to actually paying you a visit. By then, I expect it to be 2009, and as I said earlier, if Bush is still in office by that time, then our problems are so serious--as in, it should be obvious to everyone in that event that we no longer have representative government--that I'd happily go to jail to protest.
As to "only famous folk make a difference this way", I'll just ask this: How did Cindy Sheehan become famous? Did anyone know her name before she started traveling the country to protest the war?
I've thought about leaving the country. Some of my friends are doing exactly that, for the stated reason that they "want to live in a free country". I applaud their efforts, but disagree with their methods. My reasoning:
1) If everyone who disagreed with US policy left the country, that'd just create a strong majority of Jingoists in the people that remain. And I say "create", because I don't think they have a majority now. Bush's support is now less than a third of the citizenry. But leaving would take that number in the wrong direction.
2) Most of the world lives outside the US. Most of it dislikes what the US has been doing. They've been unable, though they vastly outnumber us, to sway US policy. Votes in the UN frequently go against the US, votes calling for all member nations to obey international law (because the US has just violated it again) and the US just vetoes them. Someday those other nations might rise up and unite against the US, as I've written about before--probably economically rather than militarily. But most countries treat the US with caution, because we are, after all, the world's only remaining superpower and have a shitload of weapons pointed at everyone. And are acquiring more, by moving ahead with the militarization of space, and not allowing any other countries to do the same. This leads to...
3) The US is on the road to empire. If US policy continues as it has under Bush, there will be more wars, more intimidation and threats, fewer controls on the military using torture and other immoral means to its ends, and a lot more US-based, multinational companies entrenching themselves in other countries' economies. The US complains loudly about its own sovereign rights whenever that's convenient, but is no good at all about defending anyone else's. Military spending, as I've said before, is at obscene levels. This is all about "might makes right", and other countries don't get a vote in what the US does. Moving to one of those other countries doesn't mean I'll be out from under the US's thumb. There is literally nowhere on Earth to hide.
I'm led to conclude that I have to keep trying to change US policy from within. I might conceivably go to prison and lose my vote, but Washington is already a Democratic-leaning state, and the votes aren't counted fairly anyway. My freedom's valuable to me, but if I'm too afraid to resist, then I've given that up to start with.
And, as I've told everyone else, this is just my current plan and I'm open to hearing better alternatives. I just don't think leaving the country is the right course for me, though it certainly may be for others.
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