The point of this essay is not that the Global Warming Death
Fast is correct or not, though it is correct.
The point of this essay is to illustrate that central, always and
completely central to the potent unviolent warriors throughout history is that
they choose their battlefield, as every great warrior does, extremely
deliberately, and the essential characteristic of the battlefield they choose
is that it is an ultimately unassailable moral high ground – what eventually,
if stood and fought on long enough, will necessarily be seen, organismically,
as unassailably moral: ‘Oh, it is moral
that women not have the right to vote?’ Uh, no.
Ultimately this is a DNA given conscience question for which the answer
has to finally be, uh, ‘no.’ And same
with – ‘really, we should balance our current warming fuels economy on the
backs of our kids and grandkids?’ Uh,
no. And ‘I should pay the global warming
wreckage costs of the guy next door with the McMansion?’ Uh, no.
And ‘Mubarak should brutally rule 10’s of millions of Egyptians, like
brutalized children, for how many more years?’ Uh, no.
These are moral arguments, BUT THEY CAN’T BE WON IN VERBAL
ARGUMENT. And they can’t be defeated in
verbal argument. They are won with the
pure and powerful form of unviolent warfare – We are simply here to claim what
is rightfully ours, and if the price is our lives we will happily pay
them. How many does it need? We’ll pay. So the argument for sanity must be in paying,
joyfully, with our lives, few of which are ever accepted, before we win. The ‘argument’ against might be physical too
- prison, torture, death, but again, usually few. And verbal arguments against, can’t win
against the moral high ground. Oh,
really, my children should pay your wreckage costs from burning fossil
fuels? Really? Explain that to me again please? They can’t win when people unviolently,
clearly, are dying for sanity, for what conscience ultimately dictates, and
this is where, and only where, the unviolent warrior fights.
Finding this clear, unassailable, perfect moral high ground
requires enormous vision, insight, study, pondering, Personal Training… to
imagine beyond eons of status quo thinking and propaganda. This is what the unviolent warrior dedicates
themselves to – figuring out, and then embodying the morally perfect demands -
Most powerful force in the universe.
[GWD.F]
THE NEAR AND PERFECT FORM of all, powerful, unviolent warfare
in history is the following: I am here
in to claim what is rightfully ours, and if the cost is my life I will happily
pay it. This was the marchers on the salt works in India, some of whom were
killed by unviolently approaching the salt works and being clubbed to death, or
near death, by soldiers under the control of the British. This was the claim of
the freedom riders including Congressman John Lewis, who went on buses and were
beaten within an inch of their life to claim a seat in a waiting room that was
marked 'White.'
I'm here to claim what is rightfully ours, and if the price
is our lives we will happily pay it.
If you haven't seen the movie, the PBS special 'Freedom Riders,'
see it, today. It's online free. Go to either of my blogs Start Loving or
Tracking Plan B, look in the library there, you'll find it. Also look at the
companion one hour special done by Oprah Winfrey. It's a lesson in humanity
like few I've ever seen. It's the form of unviolent warfare that the second
wave of freedom riders, college students going to their final exams embraced,
in Nashville, who learned that the first wave of the freedom ride busses had
been interrupted. Even one of Kennedy’s senior officials who was
in Mississippi, I believe it was Mississippi, had been clubbed, was struggling
to get the first wave of freedom riders out alive; no pilot would fly them out
from the airport. The students learned that the ride was being interrupted.
Instead of going to their college exams, many of them were first generation
college students, they then that night signed their last wills, many of them
expecting to be killed, and got on buses to claim what was rightfully theirs; a
seat at a bus terminal with the label 'Whites Only' above it. We’re here to
claim what is rightfully ours, and if the price is our lives we will happily
pay it.
Rachel Corey, blocking an American Caterpillar right-wing
Israeli driven bulldozer to destroy the house of someone she considered her
brother; by the way she considered everyone her brother and sister, Israeli,
Palestinian; in this case it was a Palestinian pharmacist and his family. I am
here to claim what is rightfully mine, the unmolested house of my brother, and
if the price is my life I will gladly pay it.
This was the action of the young people in Tahrir Square a
year and a half ago: We're here to collect what is rightfully ours, a country
not under the brutal rule of a dictator, and if it costs us our lives we will
joyfully pay it.
The claim of this death fast is morally unassailable. This
death fast does not claim the end of burning fossil fuels, it does not claim
that anyone’s lifestyle change, it does not claim the tar sands not be
exploited, it does not claim that no more coal is burned, it does not claim
that no more oil is burned. It makes two claims and two claims only: exploit your
tar sands, the dirtiest energy on the planet, mine your coal, burn your coal-fired
electricity, drive your SUVs on oil or tar sands, but I'm not paying the
wreckage fee and my children and grandchildren are not paying your wreckage
fee. Demand 1. You will pay your wreckage fee.
There was no clear moral claim to tell people not to smoke.
There is a moral claim to ask people not to smoke, to implore people not to
kill themselves with smoking, but there’s no clear moral claim to tell people
not to smoke. But there is a clear moral claim to say "I and my children
and grandchildren are not paying your healthcare costs. You will pay your
healthcare costs.” And there's now 2, 3, $3.50 dollars a pack added to every
pack of cigarettes to pay that healthcare cost.
You may burn what fossil fuels you want, you may use corn
ethanol. You may de-forest. But I and my children are not paying your wreckage
cost, which is four times more than what you're currently paying. A fee of $20
per ton, incrementing by $20 the next 10 years, at the mine, at the well, at
the Tar Sands, at the ethanol plant, the corn ethanol plant, at the forest
being burned, and at the import depot will be collected from the exploiter,
from the miner, from the driller, from the country of origin, if they lack a
similar policy. They, in turn will mark that up and pass it on in the price of
their product, to the consumer, raising toward true cost the warming gas
emitting fuels. So the consumer will pay the fee, and not one nickel of the fee
will go to the government, not one nickel of that fee will be decided upon by
an all-too-corrupt government, currently destroyed by the lunatics on the right,
and the apathetic citizens on the left. For the first time in my life, the
Democrats in congress are doing a decent job, but, it's destroyed by the
lunatics on the right, my brothers and sisters all.
Not one penny will go to them. The wreckage fee that's collected
from the deadly fuel suppliers (that they in turn collect from their consumers)
will be 100% distributed to every legal resident of this country quarterly,
%100. $20/ton added per year, that's $200/ton by year 10. The equivalent of a
two-dollar increase per gallon of gas by year ten. I am here to collect what is
rightfully mine - the wreckage costs of your burning of coal and oil so that if
I want I can put it toward protecting and restoring our children's future and
enabling them to pay for your wreckage costs of our cities, of our weather, of
our health, our wars, in the future.
Perfectly, morally, unassailable. Who can stand up and say
"Oh no! no, your children should pay my wreckage costs! Your house is
solar, you’re getting wind electricity, you're driving a plug-in hybrid, but
your children should pay my wreckage cost!” Who can make that argument and
stand? No one. It's perfectly morally unassailable. And the other part of the
demand is - We are not going to pay anymore to destroy our children's future.
We are not going to pay 70 billion dollars a year to the coal and gas industry
to wreck our children's environment. That money is going to be allocated to
Earth-creating, Earth-sustaining funds, the first of which are to our heroic
fossil fuel workers, coal miners, oil drillers, rig workers, to transition to
the green economy, treating them the way our returning soldiers should be
treated, and secondarily to any companies or industries that cannot reasonably
make the transition fast enough and otherwise become uncompetitive in the
international marketplace. By the way, the twenty dollars per ton is collected
on all import goods as well, if from country’s not already collecting it.
Totally morally unassailable. The lunatics can try to argue
against it. Oh boy, they can't win the
argument, if with our lives, we get it on the table.. They can't win it
"Oh no! We need to continue to subsidize the wreckage of our children's
future!” It can't be won, they can't argue it. So ‘we need to balance the
future on the backs of our children. It'll murder our economy today, we need to
balance it on the backs of our children.’
Huh? And few of them, if the argument is made through this death fast,
will want to argue it. It will cut through even their insanity, even their
denial, many or most of them. Evil,
insanity, cannot stand, cannot survive, the direct view of itself.
This is the holy grail friends. This is the salvation of
humanity on a platter.
Are there a thousand people in this country who love humanity,
who love their children more than they love their own lives? More than they
love their own stupid, wasted lives on pleasure? I highly recommend it,
friends.
We'll see; and if there are not 1000, we're no longer a
viable species.
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