Resolved: Go to Jail!

Am I allowed to say Happy New Year? Is that taking the Christ out of the holiday? Happy One Week after our Savior's birth? Or, Happy New Year of the Lord?

Or maybe the point is, what's so happy about it?

I'm hearing a lot of holiday cheer from friends saying that things seem to finally be moving our way and that the Bush regime is being thwarted on all fronts. A prime example is the fact that they finally found a crime Bush committed that people covered on mainstream television will call a crime.

The war crime of an unprovoked attack on a sovereign state didn't count. Violating international law in Guatanamo, Abu Graib, and dozens of other secret hell holes of torture didn't count. Using the white phosphorous, defined by the Pentagon as a chemical weapon when Saddam Hussein used it, didn't count. Defrauding Congress by presenting information that was either knowingly false or in reckless indifference to the truth didn't count.

Spying on Americans in violation of his own Orwellian Patriot Act, it seems, counts. Thank Intelligent Design for small favors. Not that it will really make a difference in the end. Which leads me to my first New Year's resolution.

1) Stop hoping for Democrats to do anything important. I'm sure that many bloggers on this site will be saying exactly the opposite about 2006. Congressional elections, afterall, would seem to offer the prospect of real leverage. If the Democrats could win the house, why, then, impeachment might become a real prospect. Maybe it's just a long life of experiences having altered the serotonin levels in my brain, but I don't think so. Is it because they're spineless, gutless, principle-less scum? Maybe they are all that, but that's not the reason. Is it because there seems to be less and less doubt that between Gerrymandering and computer fraud there's not much chance the Dems will actually regain the house? Possibly true, but still not the reason. It's because they're in all Bush's shit up to their own eyebrows. They can't really fight the war because they supported it. They can't really go after him for wire tapping because they knew about it. The bottom line, to me, is that except for the left wing fringe of the party (you go, Ron Dellums!), Democrats BELIEVE in the basic assumption of Republican foreign policy: that it is right and necessary to do whatever is necessary to ensure US economic and military domination of the planet earth. As long as the argument is really about how that domination should be achieved and administered (not trivial concerns, by any means, I agree), the Democrats will always find themselves too deeply compromised to make a real fight out of anything. To bring down the Republicans will always mean bringing down themselves.

Which leads me to my second resolution for 2006.

2) Get arrested in an act of civil disobedience against the US Government. Now, I'm not talking about going to the next mass demonstration and joining one of the splinter groups of studded anarchists (not that I'm putting them down—more power to them!—but that's not what I'm talking about). I'm talking about the stunning truth I read earlier this year on the wonderful website The Black Commentator: There can be no movement without civil disobedience. Blog till your fingers bleed, baby. Fill the streets with protestors, pal. Rally all night, Ralph. It isn't going to get the job done until we're ready and able to go to jail in mass numbers. To start things off, what is needed, it seems to me, is the kind of thing that was organized around South Africa divestment: regular, repeated, high-profile, civil disobedience involving at least a few celebrities (I feel dirty just typing the word). But that would have to be just be a start, to legitimize the notion in the culture at large. Thousands going to jail, every month —nothing will really change unless we can find a way to do it. Having said that, I hurry to point out that most New Year's resolutions are honored in the breach. (On New Year's 1981, in a fit of pique after Reagan's election, I resolved not to sleep for the rest of the decade.) This grand plan I've just outlined would require that many many people show more dedication, resolve, and ingenuity than I have personally since I was a sophomore in college. But if someone builds it, I swear I will come.

That's it. Two resolutions. I was thinking of adding "Lose 20 pounds" and " battle my "Law and Order" addiction, but why not stick to things that are at least remotely possible?