Thoughts at Election Time

Vote against the forces of perpetual war and unilateralism, against the proponents of "We're the victims with a vengeance," "Damn the ecology, full speed ahead," "You're with us or against us." Vote against that. Where there is a Democrat who voted against the Iraq war resolution, please support that Democrat. Democratic control of the Senate and/or House will put some checks on the "victimage and vengeance" people who seem to really want more terrorist victims (nothing realistic is being done to close or protect nuke power plants) so they can have a freer hand to aggress abroad and repress at home. Where both candidates are clearly for war and a military-industrial complex grinding Gaia/us into dust, vote for any available alternative—Natural Law Party, Green Party, Libertarian—or, if there are no tending-toward-peace alternatives, write in your own name or your mother's.

After this election we need a new "long-term-thinking caucus" in Congress and a new Conservation and Constitution Party for the 2004 election. Jimmy Carter and John McCain need to get together with Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul for some strategic planning that includes Ross Perot, Michael Lerner and Cornell West, Barbara Lee, Native American leaders, Earth Charter people, scientific leaders from the Union of Concerned Scientists, and the "natural capitalism" and "eco-economy" think tank types. We need a new center or right-of-center party that will make its strongest appeal to the patriotic Republicans and Independents who love the Constitution and want to conserve values, conserve resources, conserve energy, conserve lives, conserve species, conserve capital, conserve democracy and our freedoms to think and speak and associate, conserve privacy, and conserve freedom. We need to conserve what we have and build sustainable, clean-production economies based on efficient, alternative energies. It is urgent that we create new businesses and millions of new jobs that can no longer wait.

We need to wage peace worldwide on about twenty global problems (creating a very different global economy) that must be solved if we are to reduce the number of terrorists to very near zero. Because we now live in an era where any one (not two, not a team, not a gang—but one) person can release the old smallpox, or cropdust anthrax plus, or mortar a nuclear power plant fuel pool and Chernobylize a region, or fly a big plane into the Hoover dam, or reinvent polio, or engineer a new smallpox, or poison a major city's water supply, or put an atom bomb or a "dirty bomb" in a cargo container (90% of which go uninspected), or … this list is endless, and is getting longer by the day.

War, least of all perpetual war, is simply not a rational option at this time. Unconventional weapons and new weapons of mass destruction, deliverable by hand or on foot, by mail or by robot, have made the old idea of war and preparations for war costly beyond measure and totally obsolete. The expensive high-tech airplanes and carriers are useless against a virus in the mail, a sniper in the ‘burbs, a garden hose siphon in the nuke fuel pool, a man with a mortar. We don't need the Pentagon anymore.

We do need small, tough, regional and international police forces capable of arresting criminals against humanity and bringing them before an international criminal court. And we must have a moral foreign policy serving peace and justice goals because it is the only practical, understandable, workable foreign policy.

Idealism has nothing to do with it. Self-determination of peoples is a practical necessity if we don't want one person (yes, one) bringing down the global roof on us all tomorrow, two months from now, or two years from now. Smallpox can easily spread from one airport to 90% of the world's population, undetected for days! Other viruses, prions and bacteria can spread undetected over much longer periods. As you read this, the supply curve of new weapons is rising rapidly, as is the intersecting and rising curve of religious fanatics, angries and crazies. Preparations for war and war itself can only magnify, leverage, increase the risks of apocalypse, and degrade the environment more pervasively.

Please take the time to vote. Please campaign for anti-war candidates. And after this election please take a few minutes to write a letter to Carter, McCain, Kucinich and Paul telling them what you think we need. Tighter controls on bioengineering, perhaps? Closed nuclear power plants? Blind copy your contacts on the web, and copy Michael Moore, Phil Donahue, Jim Jeffords of Vermont, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and Oprah and …

And many thanks for taking the time to read this.

P.S. — I would appreciate any response to these thoughts, however brief.