Tuesday, October 29, 1996
CRITIQUE:
Progressing from the examination of America’s ills to
suggestions of positive change"Who’s the real patriot / the Archie
Bunker slobs waving flags? / Or the people with the guts to work/
for some real change?"
 Dead Kennedys, Stars and Stripes of Corruption
If any of you have been keeping track of my columns, you may
have noticed a trend of heavy criticism of current
institutions.
Of course, it’s easy to criticize without offering alternatives
or solutions. Not wanting to take the easy way out, I will offer
some ideas that I think would make the United States a better
place. I am neither Republican nor Democrat; if I need a political
label, try one of the following: communitarian, dissident,
revolutionary, socialist, anarchist.
I honestly don’t believe that an ideal form of government
exists; any society must simply flop around between dictatorship
and mob rule.
This will be my State of the Union, of sorts. Whereas the
official State of the Union consists of the president pointing out
all his successes and pointing out all his wondrous future plans so
that everyone will pat him on the back, mine will simply be a list
of potential solutions for some of the nation’s ills. Each solution
has its own costs and benefits, just like everything in life. Feel
free to write me to discuss, argue or criticize. My e-mail address
is at the end of the column.
We’ll start off simple. On a daily basis, we are not affected by
the actions of congressmen or presidents; our most common contact
with the law is at the hands of the police (whose main job is to
protect private property, an interesting concept … ) Many people
are quite disappointed with police departments as of late, with all
the scandals of racism and brutality and all. Perhaps part of the
problem is that the public has no say in who will guard them and
their streets. I recommend that people have some sort of veto power
over who will police their neighborhoods, or at the very least some
sort of monthly or yearly review board largely made up of the
citizens in that district. Let the public servants be held
accountable to their masters.
On the subject of law and order, I have two potential changes in
drug policy. The first will receive mixed response: make marijuana
legal and alcohol illegal. Look at the relative dangers of the two:
alcohol is addictive, increases aggressive behavior, impairs
judgment skills, breaks up marriages and families, and can lead to
death; pot makes you silly, mellow, hungry and at worst can help
cause lung cancer. No one has ever overdosed on pot. If our goal
regarding drug policy is to consistently prohibit dangerous drugs
and maintain two less dangerous ones, then this is the only
rational path.
Unfortunately, if we did proscribe alcohol, the American Empire
would crumble. Beer companies own a shitload of stuff in this
country (including poor old Shamu). Imagine no alcohol sponsorship
of sporting activities, no mega-salaries for Shaquille and the
gang, the decline of spectacular players, the decline of interest
in American sports, a loss of advertising revenue and no superstar
endorsements. Don’t forget that this would also mean the total
failure of beer companies, disaster for Nike and company, the end
of many small sporting goods stores, mass unemployment and so on.
Economic hell in a handbasket.
My alternate policy would be the ever-popular "legalize
everything" plan. All drugs would be legal, including experimental
medicine being tested by the Food and Drug Administration. All drug
products would need a little FDA label listing its effects, both
positive and negative, and the drugs that the Feds feel are safe
can get a big shiny gold stamp of the FDA Good Housekeeping Seal of
Approval.
Drug-related crime would decrease, and if Gore Vidal is right,
the number of addicts will decrease (his research shows that the
rate of alcoholism was higher during Prohibition than it was before
Prohibition).
Legalization would eliminate the need for the Drug Enforcement
Administration, freeing up its gargantuan funding, as well as
freeing up a jillion dollars from police budgets and we could
finally reap the peace dividend from the end of the War on
Drugs.
And if the government wanted to cash in a bit on all the drug
sales, they could just start mass marketing their already popular
product, CIA Brand Crack ®.
National income tax should be abolished and replaced with a
national sales tax. This frees up funding from IRS bureaucracy and
saves the average Joe from hiring expensive accountants to fill out
complex tax forms. Rich folks wouldn’t escape payment through
loopholes. The sales tax is progressive by nature. If you spend a
lot of money, then you pay a lot of tax; if you spend only a little
money, then you only pay a little tax. At present, the government
doesn’t see a dime of tax on illegal revenue, but they would get a
portion of any ill-gotten gains spent on legal products.
Of course, since the rich tend to get around all rules if
they’re cunning enough, perhaps this maneuver would only deter them
for a short while. It’s the best I can do for now.
Another tax reform would be to tax religion. Right now,
religious organizations like churches are exempt from taxation, so
long as they don’t dabble in politics (many of them do anyway. The
televangelists have gone nuts, nearly equating Bill Clinton with
Lucifer). I realize that many churches are legitimate community
institutions, but some are opulent corporations masquerading as
spiritual leadership.
Now, my personal feeling is that Christianity is a rather vile
religion. I don’t believe in it, and even if I did, I couldn’t
worship that self-proclaimed "jealous and wrathful" prick Jehovah.
I think that Jesus and His Holy Pop are playing a celestial game of
Good Cop/Bad Cop with all your souls. But your beliefs are your own
business (to any of you scandalized by this segment, be thankful
for its brevity. I was a coin toss away from nixing the present
article for a more belligerent one entitled "All I ever really
wanted was to be was the Antichrist"). "Do what thou wilt."
Back in his day, Alexis de Tocqueville predicted that America’s
most severe problem would lie in its racial discord. That was
around 200 years ago. Where are we now? We’re not doing real
well.
All the talk of diversity and multiculturalism seems a flaking
facade to hide the fact that people hate each other. Instead of
discussing these festering sores, we argue over affirmative action.
Is affirmative action the best way to achieve the goals of racial
equality and harmony? I don’t know, but no other options get put
out into the political spectrum.
Perhaps some form of massive public discussion should get
started to figure out the best solution. I’m not exactly sure how,
as this country is so huge: the Internet, television conferences,
surveys with answers read aloud on the radio, something. Race
matters in this country are too vital to leave to a bunch of
politicians seeking to keep their jobs; the expertise of the public
should come into play. But I feel that affirmative action should be
maintained until equality is achieved or until a better program is
implemented.
Essentially, affirmative action is a mild form of economic
redistribution; better education and better jobs lead to higher
income for the minorities benefited. If economic redistribution is
the goal, then I think that race shouldn’t be the determining
factor; economics should. The primary determinant of one’s status
is their wealth (I’m not sure how things rate after that. It’s
either race or physical attractiveness).
In a capitalist society, wealth naturally flows upwards from
poor to rich; some form of economic redistribution is necessary to
prevent the poor from rising up and redistributing some wealth with
shotguns and crowbars. Eliminating welfare only hastens the coming
revolution. And all of this anger toward the poor and unemployed
simply must stop; the Federal Reserve intentionally keeps interest
rates at a level that will keep unemployment at about 8 million
people at any given time to prevent rising wages and inflation. If
we subsidize farmers to not farm as a method of maintaining crop
prices, then we should also subsidize workers to not work to
maintain "labor prices."
My previous two columns have dealt with the American news media
and the election process. Just to clarify, my essential point in
the voting article was that we have surprisingly little say in our
own government, and that fact should be appalling. So instead of
just criticizing, I’ll offer a method of change (besides the
obvious solution: violent revolution).
It involves a restructuring of US communications policy. The
Federal Communications Commission is supposed to regulate broadcast
media to best serve the public interest. They must be using a
different dictionary than I am; they seem to think that "public
interest" means "allow big corporations to use broadcast media to
make zillions of dollars in advertising revenue." A smattering of
public service announcements seems to offset big business’s
primarily selfish usage of "public property." In other countries,
there are movements to democratize the media. The government would
take control of the media and dole it out to the average citizen,
thus giving the citizenry some mastery over "their" property (it’s
interesting how true democracy and socialism often go hand in
hand).
At the very least, I call for this reform in media and politics:
the creation of a political channel that would be devoted only to
governmental issues and concerns. It would not be exciting or
glamorous. Candidates would be allowed no campaign funds, they
would simply be allocated time on the Political Channel to speak
their message and state their views. This plan would certainly
serve the public better than, oh, say, the programming on UPN.
Now here is a sticky issue: to dismantle the CIA or to leave it
intact.
You see, the CIA is a supremely evil organization. It is the
only branch of government with no checks and no balances; they are
accountable to no one. They don’t even have to show an itemized
budget to Congress, the sole exception. They have free reign to do
whatever they feel is in the "interests of national security." They
assassinate world leaders, overthrow governments, sell weapons and
drugs, train terrorists and mercenaries, etc. If there is a
Christian god, I think it’s safe to say that anyone affiliated with
the CIA is going to hell, even its former director, your former
president, George Bush (and do you believe that everyone thought he
was a wimp? You have to be a cold- blooded, black-hearted bastard
to run the CIA. Some folks think that the whole "wimp" rumor was
spread by Bush’s people to offset his CIA background).
The United States does a bunch of wicked, inhuman stuff all
around the globe, mainly through its red right hand, the CIA
(incidentally, this is the subject of my next column, a short
history of U.S. atrocities and covert actions).
Despite the fact that the CIA is evil, does that mean that it
has to go? I mean, Americans tend to not care about the rest of the
world anyway, right? What do we care about a few million dead
foreigners, so long as we reap the benefits?
Now I don’t know exactly what the CIA is getting for us, but I
am willing to give it up sight unseen.
Fuck the CIA. Its death is the breath of life to people around
the world.
And while we’re at it, let’s cut the defense budget. A lot. Our
military spending is more than that of the next seven countries
combined  and five of those seven are our allies (at least
according to this guy I heard on NPR the other day). The last war
on American soil was the Civil War, and we haven’t even been
attacked since Pearl Harbor.
Of all the things that a government can do for its citizenry
(provide roads, regulate trade, print currency) I’d have to say
that the most important thing that it can do is to KEEP THEM
ALIVE.
Maybe I’m out of line here, but I think that some or all of the
money allocated to city beautification, changing street names and
other associated frivolities should go to feeding hungry people. I
know that some people argue that handouts increase the dependence
of the recipients, to which I reply that the only proven way to
stop someone from starving is to give them food.
And while we’re trying to keep people alive, let’s give health
care to everyone as well. We are the laughing stock of the entire
world due to our lack of universal medical coverage. Everyone
bitches as though socialized medicine was the fifth Horseman of the
Apocalypse, but you never hear them complain about "socialized
roads," or "socialized law enforcement." Let’s worry about
everyone’s life before worrying about their liberty or pursuit of
happiness.
Well there ya are, Jake’s State of the Union. Write me, we’ll
discuss all this stuff: jsexton@ucla.edu
Today’s Recommend Reading: Many of these ideas belong solely to
me, but you might want to look up works from some of the folks
who’ve influenced me. Look for Gore Vidal, Abbie Hoffman, Bad
Religion, Noam Chomsky, Jello Biafra, Lenny Bruce and others I
can’t remember.
Jake Sexton
Jake Sexton (a.k.a. JK-6) is a piece of random-word generating
software in the Daily Bruin office. Its output appears on alternate
Tuesdays.