The Difference Between Old-Timey Fascists and What We Got Today

Hitler? Mussolini? Franco? Salazar? NONE of them are here?  #$%@!

There are fascists and then there are fascists, just like there are Baptists and then there are Baptists.  You know what I mean- the Baptists with the nice, big, whitewashed churches and friendly congregations of about 100-150 regulars don't have much in common with the Mega-Churches, which in turn have almost nothing in common with the strip-mall storefront "churches," who all look down their noses at the donated-trailer-with-the-misspelled-sign-on-wheels-just-off-County-Road-114a.  Oh sure, they all profess similar beliefs, are all lead by charismatic figures who do their best to support their ministries  by any means possible --my Dad used to call it "fleecing the flock" --but besides that, they differ by class, race, degree of involvement in their respective communities, reach of ministry, etc.

Likewise with fascists.  The tiki torch-carrying Proudboys of today really don't have much in common with the originators of the fascist brand.  And who and when and where were those proto proud boys of old, Ex Prof? -I hear you cry?  Come with me to Europe before, during and after The War To End All Wars, which totally almost was except for the fact that human beings are basically apes who wear clothes and really really reeeeeely like killing each other.  We will meet fashionistas who wear black shirts, fasionistas who wear brown ones, Italians, Austrians, Germans, and may even have a surprise visit from Babu Frik.

He-Heeeey, I Babu-Frik!*

*Babu Frick is a copyrighted character by Disney (who owns every-frik-in thing)

 and has NOTHING whatsoever to do with fascism, past, present, or a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away

Umm, ok, let's go to Italy where all this fascist stuff started. In the early to mid 20th century, Italy's Fashista party emerged from an unlikely alliance between the Christian right, corporate elites, and ultra-nationalists. Their message of a "Mutilated Peace" found fertile ground in the hearts of Italian nationalists who were dissatisfied with the terms of the Versailles Peace Treaty, particularly with the disposition of the city of Fiume, an absurdly complicated problem which will be the subject of my next 40 pound book.  Out of this morass, a glib journalist and ex-socialist named Benito Mussolini emerged, and fascism was born.

Mussolini had a couple of talents that made him the ideal guy to drive the relatively new country of Italy --only in business since the 1870's --completely red-eyed, mouth-foaming, stiletto-stabbing bat shit crazy.  For one, he was a journalist who followed in the footsteps of Count Camillo Bensi di Cavour and the poet Gabriele d'Annunzio, both of whom had a knack for inflaming the hearts of people already awash in nationalistic rhetoric.  What Mussolini brought to the table was fear- specifically, fear of a Bolshevik takeover in Italy.  After all, the Bolsheviks had taken over in Russia after the Great War, followed by a horrendous civil war; Communist parties in the former Turkish Empire, the United Kingdom and the United States had been founded and were proving very popular with their respective proletariat populations; and a Red revolution was expected daily in Wiemar Republic Germany.  So who would keep Italy safe? Mussolini and his Blackshirt followers answered: they would.

That would be the other thing Mussolini brought to the table: Il Milizia Volontaria per la Sicurezza Nazionale, a.k.a the Blackshirts (guess what color shirts THEY wore), a paramilitary group that included pissed-off retired soldiers, pissed-off unemployed guys, pissed-off guys that like beating other guys up, and one dude named Luigi Verconti who liked cannoli filled with sweet ricotta and thought that Mussolini's March on Rome in March in 1922 was just a bunch of guys on the hunt for better cannoli than could be found at his local pasticceria -which had run out of them anyway --so he just tagged along with them for the next 23 years.  Actually, the March on Rome was the critical confluence of fear, hatred,violence, ultra-nationalism, militarism and blind obedience.  Once it was over, King Vitorio Emanuel III cashired the current prime minister and asked Mussolini and his Fascist party to form a government.  The wolf was now in charge of the sheep.

It's-a me, Benito, back whenna I had-a
hair!  Woo-Hoo!

If you were an average Italian in March of 1922, you might have seen things differently.  You would have been really afraid of the violent strikes that shut down the Fiat automobile plant and saw workers occupy major factories in Rome, Turin and Milan during the so-called Red Two Years (1919-1920).  If you were a practicing Catholic, the prospect of atheistic Communists ruling Italy was especially appalling.  You might also have had a problem with the Versailles Treaty.  Itally did not get nearly as much as France and Britain did, yet they did most of the dying along the Austrian front during the war.  You may have liked the talk of reviving Italy's greatness (remember the Roman Empire?) and you probably would have welcomed those Blackshirts with their long knives as saviors.  Really.

Across the Alps, Germany was desperately trying to come to terms with some rough terms.  Under the Treaties of Versailles, Germany had to give up quite a lot: her overseas colonies, air force, big-ass battleships, most of their army, and- here was the bitter pill- the province of Alsace-Lorraine on the French border.  Ok ok, Germany had gotten this real estate originally from France after the Franco-Prussian War in 1871, but hey, most of the people who live there spoke German and wasn't it a part of the Holy Roman (i.e. German) Empire back in the day?  But to the proud Germans, the very worst term in the whole treaty, the part roundly hated by Bavarians, Prussians and Holsteiners alike, had to be the so-called "war guilt" clause.

Article 231 of the Treaty stated:

"The Allied and Associated Governments affirm and Germany accepts the responsibility of Germany and her allies for causing all the loss and damage to which the Allied and Associated Governments and their nationals have been subjected as a consequence of the war imposed upon them by the aggression of Germany and her allies."

Any student of history will tell you that history class really sucked.  They'll also tell you that there were a bunch of causes for WWI including three wars in the Balkans, colonial rivalries, pan-Slavism, militarism, socialism, social-Darwinism, antidisestablishmentarianism, and plagiarism (ok maybe not the last two).  The point is that the Allies were total dicks in putting this clause in when they were just as much to blame for WWI as the Central Powers were.  Add this rage to the post-war German zeitgeist of fear, disillusionment, anger and resentment and you've got a toxic social/political cauldron just bubbling away.

...and furthermore, we shall all use Article 231 as bum-wadden for our Scheisses

Into this morass drifts an Austrian national, Adolph Hitler.  Everything about his early career had "Future Loser of the 20th Century" written all over it.  He hated school because he was constantly beaten for breaking the strict rules.  He hated his father for beating him because he broke school rules.  He hated the technical school his father later enrolled Hitler in because he wanted to be an artist.  He hated Vienna because he failed to get into the Arts Institute so he could become a painter.  He hated the menial work he did; hated the flophouses he lived in.  The only things he seemed to like were operas by Richard Wagner (the composer of Die Valkuri, the opera that gave us the immortal expression, "It ain't over 'till the fat lady sings")  Lucky for Hitler, WWI was about to give him something else to like, and lots of someones  to hate.

"Laaaaaa...! Nope, not yet! Laaaaaa!"

For some weird reason, Hitler served in the German army during WWI instead of the Austro-Hungarian army -remember he was an Austrian citizen -but Germany let him anyway.  A brief aside here: the Austrians are often called the smartest people in the world because they made Beethoven (German) an Austrian, and Hitler (Austrian) a German.  But I digress.  In the army, Hitler's job was a dispatch runner, carrying orders and official stuff from headquarters to the forward trenches.  He saw action in some pretty hairy battles, was wounded, got awarded a couple of medals,  and by all accounts liked being in the army.  Which is why Germany's defeat hit him pretty hard.  It was about this time that Hitler probably began to believe the "Stab in the Back" conspiracy theory, which ran something like this:

1. Germany is great, so Germany always wins; but
2. Germany lost WWI; so
3. Germany must have been stabbed-in-the-back by
   a. Communists
   b. Jews
   c. degenerates
   d. Jews
   e. Jews

To be fair, lots of people believed this and lots of people were talking about it, and Germany had a long, well entrenched history of hating the Jews ever since the Jews first wandered into Germany probably as slaves or Roman mercenaries or merchants or bakers specializing in bagels, rugelah, challah bread, matzohs, chocolate babka -pardon my drool -so that makes it ok, right?  Nope, hating someone hard and long enough eventually makes you think it's ok to hurt or kill them, so STOP  HATING EVERYBODY RIGHT FRIK-IN NOW!

He-Heeeeyy, I Babu Frik*

*Babu Frik is a copyrighted character from the Star Wars universe which Disney owns (yup, a whole frik-in universe)

 and is in NO WAYat ALL associated with hate against any sentient being(s) in the entire multiverse, 

even the bits that Disney doesn't own -yet.

Still in the army and living in Bavaria after the war, Hitler came across a political party that didn't have any members -it only had a board of directors- called the National Socialist German Worker's Party (the DAP).  Tasked by the army to infiltrate its ranks, Hitler discovered two things: one was the DAP shared his antisemitic beliefs; the other was that he had a way with words.  My Arizona cousin would tell you that Hitler "could talk a buzzard off of an entire Interstate's worth of roadkill."  This was exactly what the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei needed more than anything: members.  After hearing Hitler speechify, the crowds in the Bavarian beer halls where the DAP did most of their recruiting literally fell all over themselves joining up.  The time seemed right for bold and divisive action: The DAP would overthrow the Bavarian state government and... I guess take over the world next?  What could possibly go wrong with such a brilliant plan?  -are you thinking the same think I'm thinking, Pinky?

I think so Brain, but what would
Megan Markle do with so many
pounds of  Gorgonzola? Narf! Poit!

It turns out, everything that could have gone wrong actually did go wrong.  Hitler and his DAP buddies were arrested, tried, convicted and sent to prison.  Seems that the Bavarian police were competent enough to notice an armed coup happening in broad daylight, and the state prosecutor agreed to finish his beer and schnitzel after Hitler was locked up, so now Hitler had plenty of free time to write a book, Mein Kampf, wherein he planned in horribly specific detail how to take over the world.  Cue the "Pinky and the Brain" theme music.  

It was also partly now, partly later, that Mussolini and Hitler both begin to actively work out just what it means to be a fascist.  Mind you, lots of other people from lots of other countries had a hand in fleshing-out this new 20th Century abomination, but let's give credit where it is due.  Fascists are, first and foremost, nationalistic, way-way-way too nationalistic in fact.  Not only would they die for their country --they'd kill for it too.  Lots of people.  All people who weren't as ultra-nationalistic as they were.  Or were different, either racially or ethnically.  Fascists were thus really crazy about identifying just who is US and who is THEM.  This is an important distinction, because the US are the masters, and the THEM are the slaves.  In Italy this played out mainly in North and East Africa where Italian armies tightened their grip on Libya and defeated Haile Selassie's less mechanized army in Ethiopia.  

"So what if the Italians have tanks and planes? We've got... wait, what?  I'm out."

German fascism took the US and THEM distinction further, however and added a new category: NOBODY.  This group of people didn't even count as people.  They included Jews, Romani, homosexuals, mentally and physically retarded people.  German fascists held that these were not people in the strict sense- they were corruptions of humanity -and as such should be exterminated less they pollute the so-called pure Nordic Aryan race that German fascists believed were humanity's master race.

Fascists were also expected to do their duty with unquestioning loyalty.  The fascist state, through its supreme leader, is what informs people of what their duty is, and also what punishes people for not doing their duty.  In order to accomplish this task, the fascist state must be able to know what its citizens are doing at all times, and must be able to communicate to its citizens constantly.  It does this by using lots of police, both regular and secret police, and a larger network of domestic spies and informers.  Communication is done on a massive scale and is usually one-way, using print, photographic, cinema, architecture and the arts.  A society that exercises such a great deal of control over its citizens has been termed Totalitarian; however, not all totalitarian societies have fascist governments.  China, North Korea and the former Soviet Union are communist totalitarian countries, whereas Germany, Italy, Portugal and the puppet-states that Nazi Germany created all over Europe were fascist totalitarian states.  

What differentiates the communists from the fascists is macro-economics.  Fascist governments enforce private property rights, even though productive capacity may be called on to serve state ends.  In Germany, Alfred Krupp's vast iron works made all the heavy armaments the fascist state used during WWII, but the iron works themselves stayed in Krupp's hands.  And yes,l Krupp got obscenely rich as a result of all those munitions orders.  In communist USSR, the state owned all means of production and distribution, so no individual factory owners got rich off of Society Red Army tank orders.  But neither did the workers, either- they made just enough to keep them alive and working.  

No bourgeois exploiters of the proletariat were enriched by these lovely weapons.

Now, onto the difference between today's fascists and those of yesteryear.  Today's fascists really like the pageantry and a lot of the rhetoric of mostly German Nazi fascism.  Try as I did, I wasn't able to find much love for Mussolini amongst the 8-chan and dark-web hate group crowd.  What the current crop falls for are all the bogus racial theories and antisemitism.  In the USA, African-Americans and Latino-Americans have been added to the list of sub-humans, as well as practicing Muslims of whatever racial background.  Some groups also hate on Indians (East and Native), Chinese, Mongoloid Asians, and Pacific Islanders.  Extermination isn't as popular a solution, however; contemporary hate groups are down with individual murders, mass deportations and wholesale exclusions.  Thankfully (?) their "Final Solution" features a big-ass wall between the U.S. and Mexico instead of gas chambers.  21st Century fascists also like alpha-dog leaders, which helps to explain the appeal of Donald Trump and the current rogue's gallery of  tin plated dictators around the world.  

There are a number of frightening developments, however.  Remember the alliance between capitalists and fascists in Germany and Italy?  Those industrial capitalists were at their collective wit's end in the 20's-30's with the Great Depression.  Today's capitalists personally hold more wealth than even our friend, Albert Krupp had if you adjust for currency inflation.  These capitalists have enacted laws, bought lawmakers and judges, and even launched their own propaganda blitzkrieg.  In America today, there is an attack underway against legitimate media outlets, an attack lead by the current President.  At the same time, low-level fascist messaging and authoritarian rhetoric is spewed-out on talk-radio and cabel tv's Fox News.  The President's lies and attacks on American democratic institutions are aided and abetted by so-called conservatives and the so-called religious evangelical community. 

"F is for FOX News.  -and for Frickin' Democrats and f*ckin' lying CNN"

HehHEYYY!  I Babu Frik!*

*Babu Frik is a copyrighted character
totally frik-in owned by Disney and
has NOTHING to do with FOX "News"
or Don "The Con" Trump

Just as in Germany and Italy, the U.S. President came to power in an election, with one important difference: he had the advantage of Russian intelligence help.  While there was already a groundswell of support for Trump's brand of authoritarianism, there are doubts as to whether or not he would have been as successful without Russian aid.  There are parallels here to V. I. Lenin getting material help from Germany in 1916-1917 for his return to Russia which ultimately lead to Russia pulling out of the Allied side in WW I.  Although this German success did not end in ultimate German victory, it was a success nonetheless.  And while Trump has not given Russia as free a hand in the world as they would like, he has succeeded in tying up U.S. aid to the Ukraine, a move that resulted in his impeachment.

Trump also has allies in Congress and the Judiciary.  House and Senate Republicans mostly toe the Trump line because they are afraid they'll get tweeted-at and face political backlash at home from FOX News-brainwashed voters.  Trump's judicial support stems from the great number of federal judges he has appointed, all of whom were vetted by the ultra-conservative pressure group, the Heritage Foundation.  And since the Senate, which is Republican controlled at the moment, has the power to confirm judicial appointments, an alarming number of judges within ultra-conservative credentials and authoritarian leanings are in place at a number of levels within the federal judiciary.  This fact alone will influence American civil life for a generation to come.

More puzzling is our fascist dog-whistler's popularity with Evangelical Christian groups.  One would think that a political figure with his documented moral lapses would have no religious support at all.  If one digs a little deeper into these insular, authoritarian-friendly groups, the picture becomes clearer.  Evangel Christians in the U.S. are even more splintered than the Baptists at the beginning of this post, but they have a few core beliefs in common.  The first and foremost is an abiding distrust of the U.S. government, which they see as either in the thrall of zionists, or is at least unfriendly towards their brand of Christianity.  While this is not new --Mormons fought pitched battles against U.S. soldiers in the 19th century --the degree of distrust has broadened and deepened.  Another core belief is in forgiveness.  The way this plays out with Trump is they see a massively flawed figure who needs only to confess his sins, act contrite, and then then, through the grace of God, he will be worthy to lead them.  Fascist dictators are adept at exploiting this simple faith: as long as they parrot religious rhetoric and declare opposition to, say abortion, then he can count on their support.  Evangelicals also feel threatened by the science and education communities- science because it contradicts their literal reading of the Bible, and public education because of their inability to teach the Word.  This is a feeling shared by fascist dictators.  A citizenry of well educated people are difficult to control.  And scientists are just as difficult, because they are really good at seeing through a dictator's lies.  

"And while it IS true I hate educated, sciencey dipshits, I love Liberty U. because it's just a diploma mill for idiots"

Lastly, evangelicals believe in a flaky scenario called the End Times.  We supposedly live in those times right now.  Essentially, it's John of Patmos' scary pop-up Book of Revelations come to life.  I encourage you to read it while smoking weed.  All kinds of strife and turmoil will happen, as well as some crazy A.F. shit straight from the special effects department, all ending in Jesus Christ coming back and ruling (over a vastly depleted human population and a totally destroyed planet Earth) for a thousand years.  And Trump figures into this frickin' nightmare somehow.

Finally, old-timey fascists were all confined to Europe, but today, thanks to the Internet, fascists are spread out all over the world.  The good news is that fascism is still an unpopular political belief- that whole WW II thing.  The bad news is that with the growing rise of authoritarianism in the West, fascists are feeling emboldened to come out of the shadows.  It is beginning to feel more and more like the end of the world just MIGHT be at hand, what with an authoritarian leaders in Russia, North Korea, China, Iran, and the United States all having the ability to launch nuclear missiles.  I'm pretty sure that even the neo-fascists of today don't relish the prospect of dying in a hydrogen bomb blast.

I know that I sure don't.  And probably that frikkin guy down there doesn't want to go that way either.

"HehHeyyyy, I Babu Frik!"*

*Babu Frik is etc.  etc.  yadda-yadda
and is definately NOT Jesus the Christ.
Really.  wink-wink

5 Things You Can Do To Make the U.S. Government Work

Since not every reader has a spare couple of billion bucks to splooge on advertising for the candidate of your choice (hint: do this before Citizen’s United gets repealed!), I thought it would be a fun exercise in civics to list five things that you, Oh Great and Terrible Blog-Reader, can do in order to fix all the crap that’s wrong with government these days.  That, or you could just sit on your couch watching Fox News and bitching about Obama and how shitty things are today.  Or move to Idaho and dig yourself a survivalist shelter, and stock it with tons of canned food and ammo for your legally protected firearm.  Ready?  Spoiler alert: all of these things will require you to actually interact with another human being, perhaps even talk to them face-to-face and in the same room!!!  Hey, republican democracy is a fully interactive, participation required sport, so I ask again: READY?!?

1. Get to Know 5 Elected or Appointed Officials in your Hometown.  The late, great Thomas “Tip” O’Neil once said that “all politics is local.”  No, he wasn’t a white gabacho trying to sound all Latino-like and say it’s all loco; he meant that the most important politics take place right at the local level.  Do you know who the Registrar of Probate is in your county?  Do you even have the tiniest inkling of what that dude does?  No?  Then ferChristsake, find him or her and actually have a conversation with them.  Here, I’ll give you some talking points:  a) Hey dude(ess), I’m fill-in-your-name-here.  So, you’re the Registrar of Probate for Essex County, huh?  No shit!  What do you do?  Uh-huh.  Uh-huh.  b) Cool!  So, how do you like it?  c) What do you see as your greatest challenge?  d) What would you change if you could?  e) Would you like my assistance in making that change?  f) Do you like sport peppers, onions, mustard, relish and poppy-seed buns on your hot dogs, or is that just a weird Chicago-thing?

Nope- even people from Essex County, Massachusetts
loves them some good ol' Chicago-dog!

àWhy this will work: most elected or appointed town officials interact with the public only on those rare occasions when there is a contested election (meaning, an election that has a different human being running for the same office) and don’t deal with the public the rest of the time.  Why is that?  Mostly because they are busy doing the job they were elected/appointed to do!  Our local officeholders labor on for the most part in lonely obscurity, occasionally gaining nationwide fame because they’re refusing to give a same-sex couple a marriage license, despite the fact that the SUPREME  FUCKING  COURT of the UNITED  STATES of AMERICA  basically told them they had to.  Your little visit with the Registrar will in all likelihood make his day, if not his entire week.  It will also remind him that he works for you.  It’s good to remind our officeholders of that little fact.  Even the President.  Especially him (or her?)

2. Vote.  Then make everybody in your family vote.  Then shame all of your friends into voting.  Then volunteer down at the Senior Center to drive the old folks to the polls on Election Day.  Did you know that just before this country was founded, one needed to be white, free (as opposed to an indentured servant, which was kinda like a white short-term slave), male and, in Virginia at least, Episcopalian AND own enough property to qualify to vote?  Right after the revolution, things got WAY more equal: all the above qualifications remained, except for the Episcopalian one.  Even Jews were allowed to vote, provided that they were white, male, free, etc. etc.  It took a fucking  CIVIL  WAR  to get the vote to black folks, then the repeal of poll tax, then the Civil Rights marches, Martin Luther King Jr., the Seneca Falls Convention, the Women’s Suffrage Movement, Edith Bunker standing up to Archie on “All In the Family,”  the Vietnam War, the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee, and the whole 1960’s student protest movement, to get where we are today.  Every citizen over 18 who registers to vote may do so.  So GO  AHEAD  AND  VOTE, you lazy dumbasses!  And if you’re concerned that it will be too hard or take too long, then you might want to share your concerns with the Afghan voters who, in their latest election, braved Taliban fighter attacks and waiting lines TWO  DAYS  LONG in order to cast their vote.

And if you didn't you're an IDIOT, gosh!

àWhy this will work: incumbents count on the fact that roughly 15-30% of potential voters, and 20-40% of registered voters will show up for Election Day, so guess what they do?  They make sure that every one of their friends and their friends and so-on actually show up and vote for them, meaning that they go into the election with a stacked-deck and count on voter apathy to keep them in office.  This works great if the official up for election is actually doing a good job.  If they’re using the office as a cash-cow and as a way to get their entire extended family government jobs, and not even bothering to show up and pretend to do the work they were elected to do, you’ve only got your own lazy-ass self to blame for the fact that they don’t get voted out of office.

3. Get educated about the Issues.  From more than one source.  This item is deceptively hard, because for every Fox News, there’s an MSNBC and a PBS.  And, for every message, there’s a media: billboards, blog posts, newspaper and magazine articles, pop-ups, TV and radio commercials, blimps and skywriting.  And thanks to Citizens United, those political messages will be EVERYwhere, literally screaming at you in an attempt to get your attention.  And heaven help you if you live in a state or district that is considered politically up-for-grabs.  I lived in New Hampshire for a while, and the media avalanche during the Presidential Primary Season just about buried me.  So, how do you do it?  How do you educate yourself?  Use the computer you’re on right now for something other than reading Cracked.com or scoring the coolest Star Trek coasters on Amazon.com.  Start with Google and Wikipedia, then go to wherever the answers lead you.

OMG, WHY is mom researching Immigration Policy?
Does that mean we have to move AGAIN?!?

àWhy this will work: despotic rulers, demagogues and really fiendish douche-canoes rely on an uneducated, apathetic, easily intimidated population in order to impose their will on the masses.  What works for a Hitler or a Mao also works for politicians within a democratic republic, albeit in smaller doses, and without all the killing.  If you’re uneducated about a particular issue, you just might believe whatever line they’re singing about it at the moment.  And really well funded politicians have ads, focus groups, and talking heads who can increase the volume level and coverage of any politician’s message.  So figure things out for yourself first. This will help you to sift through the mountain of crap-ola that invades the mediasphere every Election Season.

4. Make your own laws.  I live in Massachusetts, which has as one of its quirkier laws the one that says citizens have the right to propose laws, and their representative in the Great and General Court, our legislature, is required to introduce the proposed law for debate and a vote.  Lots of states have these laws on the books, generally known as initiative laws.  If not, your state might have a process for putting petitions on the ballot.  This is how a lot of citizen-laws are made.  There’s nothing so magic about it.  Sure, it’s a good idea to have a lawyer draft it, and you’ll probably have to get a lot of signatures to get your question on the ballot, but at the end of the process, you will have made your own law.  Just make sure the law is a good one, not a selfish or silly one, like making every May the fourth “Star Wars Day” on your state.  Even though it SO  TOTALLY should be!

...or get stabbed by this totally phallic pen!

àWhy this will work: hey, if the old laws aren’t working for you, maybe your new law will be just the right fix we all need.  This is what democracy is all about.  The people, demos in Greek, rule, “cratia,” also Greek.  This is because democracy was invented in Greece.  We practice it here in America, kind of.  We have a Republic, the Roman’s take on Greek democracy.  Res Pvblica means “the people’s business,” which is actually done by our elected officials so that we, the people, can devote our energies to our jobs, families, and our wacky, borderline hobbies like turning the living room into an exact replica of the USS Enterprise (TNG)’s bridge.  However, sometimes we the people have to take matters into our own hands and “do it like Greeks.”

5. Revolt and start from scratch.  Did I mention I lived in New Hampshire for a while?  Those wild Granite Staters have as part of their state constitution the Right to Revolt.  I kid you not.  If you live in the 603, a.k.a the “Live Free or Die” state, you can revolt against New Hampshire, overthrow the government and start from scratch.  There are a few caveats, however: you have to try all the peaceful  (and legal) ways of change first.  You then have to overpower the state police, the National Guard, and all the 2^nd Amendment gun-nuts way up north.  THEN, your revolution MIGHT succeed, unless the United States of America intervenes (which they might), so it’s an iffy prospect at best.  In that case, how about having a revolution outside of New Hampshire that has a chance at succeeding?  Why not call a new Constitutional Convention and draft an entirely new system of government, one which takes into account all of the info-tech improvements that have happened since the first American Revolution in 1776.

àWhy it will work: ok ok, this one's the hardest to pull off (don't try this alone or at home!), but the case can be made that it's time to have a new government here in the United States.  Back in 1776, the fastest a message could go was limited to the speed a person could sail in a boat or ride on a horse.  Today, information travels at light-speed.  This means that the citizens can, in fact, exercise direct democratic rule, a-la Athens during the Age of Pericles.  Why not have a nationwide broadband channel that broadcasts just public policy questions that must be voted on.  Bribe the citizens into participating by giving tax credits for every vote cast.  Run government this way, and we can eliminate Congress and the Senate.  We'll still need an executive department and head of state, so the President stays.  And we'll still have to have a highest court in the land, so The Supremes can stay.    

Clarence Thomas isn't smiling because he didn't get the memo to "Go Commando" under the robes for this year's pic

If this sounds far-fetched, remember that our Founding Fathers convened the first Constitutional Convention with the limited purpose of making changes to the Articles of Confederation.  They ended up scrapping the whole enchilada and creating the federal government we enjoy today.  Or don’t enjoy.  And there is, in our Constitution, a procedure to allow us to do the same thing they did to the government they created.  If you want to look it up, it’s in Article V.

So now that you know how to make government work, go out there and DO something about it!  If you don’t, I don’t want to hear any of you whining about how crappy our government is, because, you slacker, you refuse to do anything at all to fix OUR government!