[Peace] Civil disobedience -- a BOGUS idea

[Bill Strutz]

      The moment has come for civil disobedience.

      Even after Democrats declared opposition to the Bush War in order to get elected on November 7 -- and even after they were elected -- American public opinion has swung even farther from the War.
      Yet ever since the election, the Democrats have backed away from their anti-war positions.  They are going to vote Bush $160 billion to fund the war for a long time to come; and (as The Decider and Commander in Chief, solely responsible for the conduct of war) he will ignore whatever limitations they try to put on the way that the money is spent.
       Why they don't just scale the request down (perhaps just a few months' of costs) I have no idea.

      Meanwhile, I've been thinking for a year or more about potential acts of civil disobedience.(1)

      A campaign of civil disobedience would have to address officialdom whenever it transgresses.  It would have to be ubiquitous.(2)  It would have to be totally non-destructive, and non-threatening.  It would have to spread like a virus, from person to person, without a deliberate information campaign.  
      It would be something like a joke.  If a person finds a joke to be funny, they pass it along.  Or like a viral advertising campaign.

      Look up "Kilroy was here" in Wikipedia.  As a boy, I heard about the ubiquitous Kilroy, and (although I am not a Libertarian) I read Ayn Rand's fictional version of Kilroy, the graffiti "Who is John Galt?"

Getting to the point:
       I remember being at the airport recently and seeing the sign that says that Homeland Security puts us on an Orange Alert.  
       I thought, what if someone made his own little orange sign on it?  A round, orange dot that said, "BOGUS"?
       It may take 40 words to explain something, and only take one word to deflate it.

       That would be defacing government property, of course; and airports are full of security cameras.  But what judge would consider it a severe offense if the dot did not prevent the poster from being read, and if it could be peeled off easily, without damaging the poster?  

       If people see a "BOGUS" dot on a poster, maybe 10% would think, "Yeah, that announcement IS bogus."
      And of the 10%, maybe 10% would think, "I know of another public posting that is equally bogus."
      And of that 1%, maybe 10% would think, "Those little orange self-adhesive dots are available wherever office supplies are sold, and I could run a sheet of them through a printer to put the word "BOGUS" on them. . . . Yeah, and I could stick some on the inside flap of my coat or purse, ready to peel off and stick on."
      That adds up to one person in a thousand.  Nationwide, 300,000 members of the BOGUS brigade.(3)

       The life expectancy of that first pioneering dot would be perhaps 15 minutes.  Someone would peel it off right away -- but not before it had been seen.
         The life expectancy of the next dot would be five minutes, and of the third dot, one minute.  But if it came to the point where an armed guard stands next to a sign to prevent someone from putting an orange dot on it -- then the guard himself IS the orange dot, proclaiming that the sign is widely considered to be BOGUS.

       Think about it.  And if THIS idea isn't good, recommend OTHER types of civil disobedience.  

       -- Bill Strutz

(1)  I'm a slow thinker but I arrive where I'm going, eventually.  For the entire preceding year, I thought about bumperstickers.  I realized that a bumpersticker doesn't convince anyone.  What it does is that it encourages others; it tells them, "There are more of us than you thought a minute ago."

(2)  Ubiquitous -- Carl, help us out here with a definition.  *wink*

(3)  Note to myself:  "Sell General Dynamics.  Buy Avery."


                                William J Strutz 

  People will be more readily accept your ideas if you say they're Benjamin Franklin's
"Whenever you feel listless, take quill and parchment to write one."  -- Ben Franklin

PO Box 11464,Champaign IL 61826       (217) 359-0598


















 
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