If the U.S. slide toward becoming a totalitarian state is to...

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

...be stopped and reversed from within (as opposed to a foreign invasion), our collective citizenry must follow the teachings of MLK and Gandhi and undertake massive, well organized, and sustained acts of nonviolent noncooperation with the current regime.

Do you consider the above statement to be true?

And secondly, if so, do you believe enough U.S. citizens are approaching a point where they will be prepared/willing to participate make the meaningful sacrifices required for this kind of organized nonviolent opposition to take form and have a chance to succeed?

-----------------------------------

“ The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing, would suffice to solve most of the world's problems... ” ~M.K.Gandhi

http://www.wildewildeweb.com/gandhi/

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. Not yet

but we're getting closer every day.

[zonmoy]

2. I am no longer certain that nonviolent action will work against

these fascists. I fear that the time for nonviolent action has come and gone.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

7. It's never too late for nonviolent noncooperation...

...just imagine what would happen in China, for example, if somebody like Gandhi put their citizenry together in sufficiently massive numbers and initiated well conceived tactics of sustained noncooperation with their oppressive government. Yes, the military would be called upon to conduct highly visible brutality exhibitions in order to frighten the masses back into cooperation mode, but suppose this didn't work. Suppose the citizenry accepted the losses and continued with the noncooperation. The brutality exhibitions would almost certainly be stepped up in a desperation attempt to regain control. And again, let's suppose the citizenry refuses to be cowed by this and continues with the noncooperation. The Chinese government would fall.

I don't mean to make this sound easy. It may be simple in concept, but it would require real sacrifice on the part of a great many and the ultimate sacrifice on the part of some.

What other good options do we now have?

[bdamomma]

13. me too. time to up the ante.

[KillCapitalism]

3. Different point of view here.

I'd say first we need to follow the teachings of Marx and Lenin, THEN we can work toward the teachings of MLK and Gandhi.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

4. No regime can function without...

...the willful cooperation of the vast majority of it's citizens -- take this away from them and their power ceases to exist.

[The2ndWheel]

5. Stop going to work, stop paying taxes

And no, there's not a chance that happens.

[endarkenment]

6. Not until we have nothing left to lose.

And then perhaps it will be too late. The seeds of the dictatorship have been well sown and they are growing a healthy crop of believers, that 25%. Think "Jesus Camp" and multiply that by thousands. Consider Blackwater. We are disorganized, unprepared, and mostly naive or willfully ignorant about what we are going to go through.

That said I think we will win in the end.

[The2ndWheel]

10. We're paying for our dictatorship

Which means we don't even need a dictatorship.

http://www.cartome.org/panopticon1.htm

"Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power. So to arrange things that the surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its action; that the perfection of power should tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary; that this architectural apparatus should be a machine for creating and sustaining a power relation independent of the person who exercises it; in short, that the inmates should be caught up in a power situation of which they are themselves the bearers. To achieve this, it is at once too much and too little that the prisoner should be constantly observed by an inspector: too little, for what matters is that he knows himself to be observed; too much, because he has no need in fact of being so. In view of this, Bentham laid down the principle that power should be visible and unverifiable. Visible: the inmate will constantly have before his eyes the tall outline of the central tower from which he is spied upon. Unverifiable: the inmate must never know whether he is being looked at at any one moment; but he must be sure that he may always be so. In order to make the presence or absence of the inspector unverifiable, so that the prisoners, in their cells, cannot even see a shadow, Bentham envisaged not only venetian blinds on the windows of the central observation hall, but, on the inside, partitions that intersected the hall at right angles and, in order to pass from one quarter to the other, not doors but zig-zag openings; for the slightest noise, a gleam of light, a brightness in a half-opened door would betray the presence of the guardian. The Panopticon is a machine for dissociating the see/being seen dyad: in the peripheric ring, one is totally seen, without ever seeing; in the central tower, one sees everything without ever being seen."

[On the Road]

8. The Republicans Will Lose Power in Jan 2009

Whether America continues the march toward an authoritarian state depends on how thoroughly the Bush legacy is repudiated. Personally, I do not want the next president to make peace and bury the crimes of his predecessors. It is important that there be some followthrough, prosecutions, and convictions, no matter how much the media screams "political vendetta."

[SoonerPride]

9. And then we get a "democrat" King

I don't want ANY FUCKING KING from either party.

I don't want secret wiretaps.

SCREW THAT.

[On the Road]

11. Right -- That's Why There has to be a Repudiation of the Practices

rather than just a change in parties. Some of this happened after Nixon's resignation -- for example, Frank Church's legislation to throw light on CIA abuses. There needs to be similar light shed on Bush's abuses, and a new consensus on what the boundaries are. That requires some leadership, and I don't really know who the best candidate is to provide that.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

12. Kick for larger sample. nt.

[Firespirit]

14. This does not and will not work in the U.S.

It worked in Europe because the Soviet Bloc nations were all comparatively small. It was possible for a substantial population of citizens to protest and demonstrate in the center of power, and literally shut down the country.

This, one must note, did NOT work in Soviet Russia. Even though most of the population resided in western Russia, the sheer land mass even of western Russia was too great for people to have a way to congregate. That system collapsed when it could no longer maintain itself.

China has become a dictatorship for the same reason... huge physical size, huge population without the means of getting to the power center easily. China will be a dictatorship for the foreseeable future.

It's the same problem in the United States. The sheer geographic size of this country, and its large population which is widely scattered far from the center of power, make it all but impossible for protesting to affect things. Right off the bat, we have 100 million who agree with this crap and apparently will not budge in that opinion. Of the remaining 200 million, how many are close enough to Washington that it would not be a major financial hardship to get there and stay there until something was accomplished?

And who's to say that if this did somehow happen, that the neocons wouldn't sic Blackwater on Washington with instructions to kill? The infrastructure is in place for them to do just that.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

15. I'm no expert on all the different forms of...

...nonviolent noncooperation, but I'm not sure they always necessitate a mass gathering. Mass participation, yes, but mass congregation, I'm not so sure. For instance, if fifty to a hundred million wage earning adults in the U.S. refused to pay federal and state incomes taxes, began bartering with each other and carrying on all kinds of trade without remitting sales tax or keeping books that can be audited by authorities, got rid of their ID's, and just simply refused to voluntarily do many basic things that are expected and needed of us by government, what would happen?

I can't say with any confidence that I have any idea how a scenario like this would play out, but I know this: BushCo, like any other authoritarian regime, must have our mass cooperation to be successful. I think we should start looking at creative ways to withhold it.

[marions ghost]

19. creative idea...

but I'm not sure how you'd get people who don't trust each other and don't have a strong bond to begin with suddenly bartering with each other. We live in a fractured, stratified society.

In Russia, people are doing this --not paying taxes, etc--and the result is hospitals are going broke etc., the average life span is dropping there...it's backfiring.

[The Stranger]

16. By any means necessary.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

17. Kick for larger sample. nt.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

18. Kick for larger sample. nt.