The World Can't Wait - Thoughts on Driving Out the Bush Regime

Revolution #007, June 26, 2005, posted at revcom.us

Every day I think of Dilawar. I picture his 22-year-old body chained to the ceiling of a U.S. military prison in Bagram, Afghanistan as the seconds stretched on into days until finally he couldn't wait any longer. Neither can we.

As men are blindfolded and dragged from their homes in Iraq, as Arabs and Muslims are rounded up and detained in the U.S. without charges, and as youth from South Central to the South Bronx are imprisoned in record numbers, brutalized by police, and targetted for correction by Laura Bush: the world can't wait.

As villages are emptied of people by AIDS in Africa and China, as families in the ghettos and farmlands of the U.S. lose children in a war based on lies, and as immigrants are hunted by racist vigilantes on the Mexican border: the world can't wait.

As religious fundamentalism threatens to enslave women, treating them like incubators and denying them the right to make the most intimate and profound decisions about whether or not to have a child, as gay couples are denied marriage and their children are harassed, as the rule of law is replaced by religious dogma and the rule of the Bush regime, and as science itself is suppressed at great risk to the planet: the world can't wait.

THE WORLD CAN'T WAIT!

THE PEOPLE NEED TO DRIVE OUT THE BUSH REGIME.

Now I know a lot of readers are thinking 'if only we could.' and I can just see some people shaking their heads and saying 'that communist girl has really gone over the edge this time.' But being a reality-based girl-- who is coming from a scientific place in terms of how we are going to emancipate all of humanity--I have some reality- based ideas on how this could be possible.

And one of the most important things people need to do in order to even imagine the possibility of accomplishing such a monumental task is to break out of the confines of the political-process-as-usual.

Everyone who does not want to live in the "world according to Bush" needs to break out of the dynamic where the terms and the issues and the leaders are defined and limited by various representatives and defenders of this bloodsucking system. And progressive people and oppressed people really need to break out of the confines of the institutions, organizations, and political thinking dominated by the Democratic Party.

Frankly, too many people are suffering from the disease of looking-for-leadership-in-all-the-wrong-places. And as a result, too many people who want to change the world remain locked in a dynamic that stifles their ability to really see a whole different world, squanders their energies, and channels imagination into dead-end paths of conciliation with intolerable injustices.

And it is so very urgent that millions of people break out of the death-grip of all this politics as usual and come together to do something really unprecedented. Millions of people need to un-clip their wings from the Democrats and from the strategies that give backing to their efforts and take independent historic political action .

Together we need to create a whole new dynamic based on acting on principle, telling the truth, doing what's right and actually mounting a real fight to save the future and the planet!

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Reality check: More than a million people defied a stifling jingoistic atmosphere, repeatedly and courageously taking the streets against the Iraq war. Yet the debate in the presidential election remained over who could make the best Commander-in-Chief, how the war started, and how to continue the occupation of Iraq. Kerry never once said the simple and obvious fact that millions knew in their hearts: that Bush had lied through his teeth about everything .

Over a million people marched in D.C. in a March for Women's Lives and to defend abortion. Yet the debate in Congress and Senate and among presidential hopefuls remained over how much to restrict abortion and how strongly to condemn it, and not a single voice spoke up to say a world where women are reduced to incubators is intolerable!

82% of the country objected to Congress and the President intruding upon Terri Schiavo's deathbed. Hundreds of towns passed ordinances against the Patriot Act. In over 100 cities people organized protests against the end of the filibuster. And yet both ruling parties came together in Congress to pass a "Palm Sunday Compromise" to intervene around Terri Schiavo, to legitimize torture, and to accept a filibuster "compromise" which paved the way for openly racist judges and judges who want to impose biblical law.

What does this tell us? It is time to wake up to reality. Because the world can't wait.

This article is posted in English and Spanish on Revolution Online
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Some have spoken of a pre-civil-war atmosphere in the U.S. And millions of people are really distressed about how the Democrats are unwilling and incapable of mounting any serious opposition to the Bush regime on anything that matters.

My thinking on this whole situation has been informed by the analysis of Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, and based on a scientific analysis of the world situation, he has made a powerful case for the need and the possibility for the masses of people to wrench a dramatically different future out of this dire situation.

Bob Avakian has analyzed the major changes in the world and transformations in U.S. society that have created a situation where the Republican strategy for how the U.S. empire should dominate the world has a certain edge within ruling class circles. These underlying economic, political and ideological factors in the world--combined with an aggressive, arrogant and relentless drive to impose their agenda-- have led to the situation we face today where the Bush regime has cynically used the events of 9/11 to hammer into place a global reality suited to the interests of their bloodsucking system. And they are on a roll.

So the way I see it, either the people in this country remain locked in a deadly dynamic, while all around us a rising crescendo of Christian fascist foot-soldiers provide chilling glimpses of their nightmarish "new normalcy." Or, people urgently and decisively establish OUR own dynamic based on the understanding that the world can't wait and the people must drive out the Bush regime. a different dynamic based on principles, on seeking the truth, and rallying millions to take independent historical action.

We need to spread a spirit of being " politically at war"--which means a commitment that there is no common ground with intolerable injustices and literal horrors. We need to be building mass protest and upsurge against everything this Bush regime stands for. And we need to develop communities of resistance that can have each other's backs and withstand the counterattacks that are sure to come.

On November 2, when the Bush regime will be strutting and celebrating the anniversary of their re-election and bragging about how they are remaking the world in their image--we need a nationwide outpouring to declare: THE WORLD CAN'T WAIT. We need to send a message to the world--that a new movement of resistance has arrived to DRIVE THE BUSH REGIME FROM POWER.

The world can't wait. We need to start now, building a solid core of people whose real and profound discontent, anxiety, and anger about the whole direction of society and the world trumps their commitment to remaining confined within the existing political framework. I am firmly convinced there are today millions and millions of such people. And on the basis of that solid core, through our creative energies, imaginations, and courage, we need to be constantly expanding and drawing in people from every sphere of society and every part of the country--and saying to millions more: "Come with us. We know where to go and we know how to get there!"

We have a choice to make. The world can't wait. Its time to drive a regime from power.