Dear antiMandate,

“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country . . . corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”
Abraham Lincoln, 1864

To quote economist Kenneth Arrow in many situations “we must simply act fully knowing our ignorance of possible consequences.” I realize now what it means to be granted your fifteen minutes of lame. Breakfast lunch dinner ice-cream next exit. It’s time we started to establish if we are different or not. Differences like: Webster and a Dictionary: both small and can fit in a backpack, both breathe words, but only one knows how to spell “Popadopolis.” Ironically this ethic fosters a bureaucratic culture supposedly the last bastion protecting us from the encroachment of our American lives. A manager is not a leader. A leader is someone who manages to get by at all costs. Tolerating the mundane stuff of life is a survival instinct that really seems to dominate the need for risk. That’s gibberish. There are only two types of situations: WIN-WIN and WIN-LOSE. Only two personality types: Once-Born and Twice-Born. Yet there was only a single song called “Once Bitten Twice Shy.” And when Hitler and Stalin linked up Socialism with incompatible software like Nationalism and Totalitarianism they fucked up the programming. It was not so long ago that Bert Lance President Jimmy Carter’s budget director and confidant declared, “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.” I say tolerate chaos and the only time to fix it is when it’s not broke.

“A nation never falls but by suicide.” EMERSON

Where do we go from here? We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with “now.” Take Democracy seriously. Talk about it frequently and seriously enough that others will listen. As corporate power expands to control much of the government itself, your constitutional right to vote outside the workplace becomes increasingly meaningless as well. As a struggling artist and writer I wrote to George W. Bush “You take my life when you do take the means whereby I live.” The spectacle seduces me by endowment of sympathy for I stand under a bridge wet from the rain windy from the train: troubled by a carnival Texan masked green violent and pink.

Absolve me,
Derek