I think you are on the right track. In 2006 we put together a coalition-style unity U.S. Senate campaign in Maryland bringing together the Populist, Libertarian and Green parties, independents and members of the two major corporate parties. Kevin Zeese, an internationally known advocate for ending the so-called War on Drugs, 2004 press secretary for the Nader/Camejo 2004 campaign, and leader in the anti-war movement was our candidate. Because he had years of experience working with Libertarians and Greens on drug policy, we were able to successfully approach both those parties for their nominations. As a founding member and leader of the Populist Party of Maryland, Kevin was also able to win the Populist nomination for U.S. Senate. I look at that campaign as a successful first step in building a new coalition of the so-called right and left. I think of it as a model others around the country can learn from.

The path we took was no bed of roses. There was opposition from the start in the Green and Libertarian parties. We in the Populist Party had initiated this coalition approach, and so there was no opposition in our ranks, but we spent a lot of time trying to convince members of the other two alternative parties with ballot status in Maryland. We began by going to the leaderships of the Greens and Libertarians. The Maryland Green Party leadership rejected our appeals flat. The Libertarian Leadership saw some merit in the approach and helped us to take the proposal to their membership. We ended up doing an end run around the corrupt Maryland Green Party leadership, going directly to the membership, which unlike their own leadership, chose Kevin as their nominee for U.S. Senate.

From the getgo, we drafted a list of common policies of all three parties, one that also appealed to independents and clear thinking Democrats and Republicans. The list included ending the war on Iraq and stopping any other illegal wars of aggression, and many other areas where we found common agreement between the three parties, such as, Energy,
Environment, Drug Policy, Election Systems in Maryland, Net Neutrality, Immigration, Taxes, Social Security and Retirement, Agriculture, Equal Rights for Women, Education, ending Corporate Welfare, Israel/Palestine, and Iran.

For more on the campaign, check out:
http://www.kevinzeese.com/

Another example of this coalition approach to electoral politics is the 2006 campaign for U.S. House of Representatives by John Murphy of Pennsylvania. In that campaign, sectarians in the Green Party were able to block John’s appeal for support from the honest rank and file Pennsylvania Greens, but he still got a lot of support from Green rank and filers as well as getting support from other parties and individuals from the two corrupt corporate parties.

What we are seeing in American politics today is a radical re-alignment of political tendencies in reaction to the crisis precipitated by an unpopular war abroad and a collapse of civil, social, economic and political infrastructure at home. This re-alignment offers the hope of building a new lasting majority coalition to challenge the corruption of the two major corporate parties. Those who recognize this opportunity and act upon it will prosper. Those who fail to recognize it are part of the problem we are trying to solve. It’s no surprise that we find opposition to the solution even within some of the alternative parties, but as we did in the Zeese campaign, we really need to start by doing our best to convince them of the error of their positions and if we are not successful, moving forward and leaving the backward elements behind.

For an example of the backward elements, take a look at those responding negatively to Josh Franks’ articles on the current implosion of the Green Party. It is no surprise to me that most of them are from the Maryland Green Party. Although they are vocal, they are a small group as a whole and as with all groups of reactionaries, they have aimed their fire at the progressive factions who are promoting this re-alignment of forces. Josh Franks has been an articulate chronicler of this new re-alignment and, as we would expect, is running into the flack all of us who travel this road are used to receiving.

Sincerely, Chris Driscoll, chairman, Populist Party of Maryland

Chiropractors claim to re-align horrendous sub-luxations in the spines of willing and paying human beings – the chiropractic paradigm. At least the chiros are always finding the subluxations and crunching the piss and vinegar out of them in order to get them into re-alignment.

Hosanna, the lietmotif of re-alignment and the cure. The faithful are delivered from their suffering and their money. Leitmotifs are literary tools and re-alignment is a magical leitmotif., okay?

Well; if chiros can do it with spines, why can’t new agers and deep thinkers alike do a similar manipulations ( magic trick ? ) with their minds? Re-alignment with the more better thoughts and away from the silly destructive thoughts. The web-like re-alignment kicks the livinshid of the empire bastards with all their lawyers, lying, and legal justifications. The re-alignment paradigm spreads and ushers in a sensible polity, sustainability, co-creation of more cos, and no mo wasteful chatter.

We gets our shid re-aligned and totally together. We brainstorm into the new economy free from fettering ideology. Indeed, although all is thought, our new thought won’t have any thought! Or maybe what we have is pure thought. Really pure thought is without thought, I think. It’s mystical and spiritual. What else?

Community nurtures the earth, as in early kibbutzim. We put our minds and tumescent gizmos to the foul gizzard of stupid thought thereby creating a wonderful and sustainable world for all. The old peace and justice prayer manifested, yes manifested, through the big re-alignment. Phew. Finally.

Hosanna, a cure for all the ages – both new and old agers. You would be a fool not to. What else you gonna do with your gizmos, hey? Tumescent gizmos are the key archtype, as in Jung but not Freud.

Our choices, decisions have brought us where we are is my motto. It’s not clear that there is a “way back” that is better than where we are since where we are is the culmination of those choices.

I do think alliances based on principle have a chance at a better way forward; i.e., rather than alliances of convince which creates the horror of unintended consequences.

Case in point, we build a new economy – not an ideology, nor one based on “anti” (capitalism). Such an economy would, of course be as sustainable as possible (which requires a reconfiguration of the current simplistic model of production and consumption), human-scaled (re: Manfred Max-Neef) and self-reliant. It would be community based not state based. Local businesses would be nurtured and fully supported by the communities they serve and who provide the important socio-economics of work. These would be cooperatives, community and in some cases worker owned. But the operative word is small with no legal edict (read: preditory corporation) for ominvorous grow. When a community business gets the urge to “grow” they instead build cross-community alliances to nuture and mentor other like minded community businesses, thus thwarting the cancerous desire for unimpeded hypergrowth that has wrecked havoc in the world.

What this starts is a web-like realignment with life forces rather than the hierarchical empire, consumption, and pathological route we take as the inevitable story. Until we break the pathology, the chatter will keep us in our ideological bliss unto the end. As the patterns of life change, so goes culture, our views of justice and how to best achieve it, our sense of polity and economic health, what a “good” education really means, and much more. There may be leverage points in the existing system which will allow for a true grass-roots beginning, one that allows co-creation rather than the top-down mandates of experts and powerful money.

Work or not, it is an alternative that has signs of promise.

Gary’s politics are essentially identical to my own. Gary and I, of course, have already “thrown off ” all the stupid, ignorant, and homicidal mind-forged manacles causing all the trouble – fear, greed, ignorance, and failure to grow up…etc.

Frank Gaffney, Elliott Abrams, Dick Cheney, Joe Lieberman, and James Woolsey are five major Israel/First murderers who are cheering for more murder as I type. According to Gary’s theory; they must have the causal “mind-forged manacles.” These well educated Ivy League bad boys aren’t murdering flies on window panes.

Their ethics are just plain – terrible! These boys suffer from “mental handcuffs” – another brilliant mentalistic metaphor to help us make the world intelligible and coherent. How to change the minds of our fellow humans whose ethics are just plain terrible , right?

With lots of helpful and revolutionary typing (see me type), they must ( will? ) “throw off” these causal “mind-forged manacles.” This will lead to a revolution in ( of ) their consciousness. I did it, for Crissake.
Whyancha get a new revolutionary consciousness and better ethics, guys!
Whadkinda shid did you learn in the Ivy League, hey?

Mr James Brooks, whose politics I also agree with, has a similar article at the top of DV today. Quoting ethicist, John McMurty, Brooks has also isolated the causes of the rampant homicidal murder syndrome. Brooks and McMurty found “the ascendance of a fanatical MIND-SET” that creates “the authoritative psychic space” to commit “unspeakable crimes” etc. etc.

It’s like brilliant jurists who find the law in their minds or psyches. For the philosophically inclined – it’s Kantian. For new agers and muddleheaded mentalists – It’s psychic, Man!

Fanatical Mind-sets and mind-forged manacles are not only critical metaphors; they are the heart of Gary and McMurty’s theory of social stupidity and social change. Almost everything is a metaphor or an image , especially when we want to stop the murdering?

Murder can be metaphor too as in the black timeless night delivered right in the belly of a bewildered Palestinian child by the terrible “ethics” and real bullets of the Israeli murder machine. The Israelis have the worsest mind-forged manacles that I ever done seen, Mama.
They be mean, hateful, racist, killers; Mama.

HEADLINE; Stupid IDEAS in human psyches thrown, shrugged, and jacked off. Free shoes for everybody. No more murder.
Who wants a filthy gizzard full of ignorance and genocide?

New ethics will get it, Man. Like I said it’s psychic, Man! Isn’t everything? If all this mentalism sounds too easy and downright magical, why do we always see posited by people who should know better.

“The ease with which mentalistic solutions can be conjured up on the spot should tell us how much attention we should pay to them. ”
Yeah, let’s all grow up and face the material reality of murder and death.

Personally, I think that the divisions you mention do need to get a different form and forums. Centralization really means Monopoly,
witness ‘Monotheism and Monetary’ edicts. All the gods of this n that.
I’ve always had a belief in the term. ‘a priori’, meaning, from the bottom
up (I think). Somewhere along the way I read that the Japanese communities have systems whereby local, as in district/suburb/precinct/area,– the people have direct participation
in their local affairs, like police/fire/hospitals. A main benefit would be;
“keeping an eye on them”. An example of this would be a ‘ barter system’, meaning no money per se is used. Wish I could be more prescient. Keep your good writing to us, and as we said in the ’60’s,
“Sock it to ‘em”.

Since Congress was quite open to an out-of-control growth of the power of the presidency, it might not be abiding by the Constitution in a legal sense that is needed, but a societal humility to abide by such a constraint.

Even the notion of a Republic has its cracks as we can see in the growing power of special interest groups. Fortunately, the Internet has lowered the cost of learning of the consequences of the special agendas to some extent.

(And the importance of the Internet’s role in the prervation of freedom in modern times is touched on in the backstory of Winkless’s movie.)

The formidable critic and social historian, Stephen Lendman, has a recent article in which he reprises the work of Ferdinand Lundberg, especially Lundberg’s book, “Cracks in the Constitution.” (http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2007/08/reviewing-ferdinand-lundbergs-cracks-in_06.html)

Lendman’s/Lundberg’s inescapable conclusion: that lofty document we’ve been genuflecting before for ages is rife with problems; it was bequeathed to us by slave-owners and aristocrats who devised various schemes for curtailing the power of the people. Our mythic system of “checks and balances” has been often undermined by wily politicians and corporatists. In its apportionment of “war powers,” the Constitution has always been rickety. Our Supreme Court appointees are often politcal favorites (sometimes hacks), rather than a council
of sages. The Constitutional balance of power between the president and Congress is easily upset by a wily executive–or in the present
administration, a Machiavellian vice president.

So, we’ve got a lot of re-thinking to do on that document–as with all our other inherited suppositions.

That is one of reasons I like the upcoming low-budget cautionary tale by Terry Winkless: Nightmare City 2035. I don’t think it will offend people on the left or the right, but it is clear that the agendas of the bad guys include both left and right elements.

It is important to restore the presidency to its constitutional role, restoring it to a position of honor. This limitation would apply no matter who is elected, whether from the left or the right.

Although I despise the Libertarians theories of economics and property trumps all greed, a coalition with them around civil liberties, scaling back the police state, and opposing imperial wars sounds like a fine idea. And I agree with them that gun control is a stupid idea when we are facing a neo-con cabal that wants to take over the world. Did the Spanish anarchists of 1936 disarm, h*ll no. I’ll say on the whole that I find more to agree with, with sincere Ron Paul type conservatives than slick corporate puppet Dims like Hilary Clinton.

Abu Nurah

Your deeply reasoned prescriptions for delivering us all from the mind-forged manacles that keep us enslaved must have terrified the treacherous war party thugs. My enemies too, but you may have gone too far. I’m just writing shid. Those yuppie boys and girls don’t care about shid. They know that is just typing.

Have the CIA and FBI taken you away and put electrodes on your private parts, and that is why you can’t type anymore.

“Okay smart ass, Corseri, tell us more! You wanna show how to demolish the scam? Where did you learn how to do it , hey? Don’t try blaming it on Thoreau either. We want the names and the specific literature classes that you done took to make you so smart ”

Literary geniuses who type and expose the power structure are big dangerous, as you know. Telling how to “throw off ” the bastards is big trouble in the citadels of power and literature city. These guys have real jails, and they don’t let you keep your laptop no matter how many lawyers you got.

Anybody who dares to show the schmuckery and the un-lettered how to unite the political left and right are dangerous beyond the rules of polite discourse. Some discourse is too discoursive and divisive, as you know. Telling new agers to ged-their-shid-together is inflammatory
and actionable at literature and law.

Whatever you do, don’t tell them about me. I dunno shid, as you can see.

Most importantly, the forge metaphor is the explanatory root cause of our; “fear, greed, and ignorance that enslave us.” Sick and tired of enslavement? Who needs it?

It is the metaphorical, explanatory, and un-operationalized Spaniard in the works keeping us from peace and justice and earth community.

Memba Jesus El Pifco from his filthy fascist slum in Barcelover who labored for the fookin Laird of McAnus?
Out damned Spaniard – ye fookin bastard and take your bloody mind forged pestilences with ye, ye dastardly prick ye.

Anyway, if all the pestilence, sin, cornholing, meaningless writing, and doubletalking must be exorcised in order to usher in the revolutionary changes, you gotta get to the root causes forged in the mind or psyche. Logical. No way out!

Memba your Mum going through the changes – it’s not like those changes. It’s more like the changes in Phil Ochs song about changes. Not to be mixed up with the changes from the Chakras. The Chakras make some powerful imagery, but that imagery won’t work here because we don’t know where the chakras are forged. Just because some well educated literary types say that they know, they are just “showin off” as
youngsters often do in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

Sweet Jesus, I love to write, right?

1. Okay, first you locate the manacles in your mind or psyche. Joseph Campbell told Bill Moyers that, It’s all in the psyche!”
So seek, find, and change.

2. Then you throw off (some smart people shrug brusquely) the strangling manacles (silly ideas) that you have found.

3. The revolutionary change in consciousness is completed, at least for you.

4. Hire the Rubenstein peeyar Group to pitch your breathtaking revolution in consciousness.

5. Shazam, The Great Awakening, or Great Turning, or Great Transformation of World Mind magically ejaculates from your mind.

6.Everything is mental, right?