Dennis Kucinich

"What form does this spiritual blindness take? On the one hand, statist ideology must render the violence of the state invisible, in order to disguise the affront to equality it represents. Hence statists tend to treat governmental edicts as though they were incantations, passing directly from decree to result, without the inconvenience of means; since in the real world the chief means employed by government is violence, threatened and actual, cloaking state decrees and their violent implementation in the garb of incantation disguises both the immorality and the inefficiency of statism by ignoring the messy path from decree to result.

Yet on the other hand, the effectiveness of governmental edicts depends precisely on people being all too aware of the force backing up those edicts. Hence statism can maintain its plausibility only by implicitly projecting a kind of grotesque parody of the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation: just as bread and wine must be transformed in their essence into the body and blood of Christ in order to play their necessary spiritual role, whilst at the same time they must retain the external accidents of bread and wine in order to play their necessary practical role, so the violence of the state, to be justified, must be transubstantiated in its essence into peaceful incantation, yet at the same time, to be effective, it must retain the external accidents of violence. (This sacralization of state violence explains how proponents of gun control, for example, can regard themselves as opponents of violence whilst at the same time threatening massive and systematic violence against peaceful citizens.)

But to ignore or mask the violence upon which socioeconomic legislation necessarily rests is to acquiesce in the unconscionable subordination and subjection that such violence embodies. It is to treat those subordinated and subjected as mere means to the ends of those doing the subordinating, and thus to assume a legitimate inequality in power and jurisdiction between the two groups. The revulsion against such an arrogant presumption is ipso facto an egalitarian impulse. Those who feel no such revulsion should not expect their egalitarian credentials to pass unquestioned; they may revere equality in theory, but they fail to recognize it in practice."

Some claim to get great "hope" from Dennish Kucinich. I don't deny it, people got "hope" from the rantings of Mao Tse Tung, Adolph Hitler and Ayatollah Khomeni as well. It is the "hope" that one gets through associating one's self with huge omnipresent impersonal social constructs that are backed up by violence and force. It is the hope that one gets through avoiding expansive personal critique and self-re-evaluation and instead subsuming one's identity within mass abstractions like "government", "America" and "the welfare of society". It is the "hope" that one gets through blindly marching in lock-step towards some vague future ideal of "Progress", while paying no mind to the systemic genocide that "Progress" rests upon. It is the "hope" that one gets through re-discovering how to see the world in black & white again, no longer being troubled by shades of gray - with the concept of "color" being totally beyond comprehension. It is the "hope" that one gets through seeing a potential world of complete "unity" - the passion and unpredictability of individuality and self-determination being eliminated in hopes of acheiving "peace" and "harmony" through bland repetition and choreographed lives.

We "need" Dennis Kucinich like we need a gun to the head - and in fact, they are in practice the same thing. - (I)

I am not a Democrat, and elections and candidates in general are not something i bother with much, as there are so many other things that i believe are more important (see BuildingActivities). That said, Dennis Kucinich speaks enough sense that i support him for president of the UnitedStates in the 2004 election. --JohnAbbe

Why people are supporting him, in their own words

http://www.denniskucinich.us/

Official campaign site -- http://kucinich.us/

He stood up to power companies when he was a mayor in Ohio, with terrible short-term and wonderful long-term consequences. He's a vegan, and has initiated a bill in Congress to create a surprisingly sophisticated DepartmentOfPeace.

• http://mousemusings.com/weblogs/
• http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/
• http://markdilley.2ya.com
• ObBlog
• http://justone.stitchingforsanity.com/
• http://quintucket.blogspot.com/

Lights Out on Deregulation -- Kucinich on his experience standing up to the Cleveland area power company when he was mayor

DennisKucinich and HowardDean on the issues: http://www.bobharris.com/kucinichdean.html

February 17, 2002 speech, A Prayer for America -- video, transcript

Kucinich Komix: http://www.bobharris.com/kucinich.html

March 15 2003 speech, Imagine America -- http://www.kucinich.net/speeches/imagine.mp3

Rap (or rather, spoken word to music) -- http://www.ursaminor.org/media/audio/kucinich-dub.mp3

Video -- http://www.muzility.com/video/kucinich/moment

Early June 2003 speech from Take Back America (progressive Democrats conference) -- video: http://cms.ourfuture.org/media/kucinich.ram and transcript: http://www.ourfuture.org/document.cfm?documentID=1033

Kucinich on the Daily Show (~13 MB)

More videos and audios of speeches and interviews http://www.fluxrostrum.com/MindFlux/DennisKucinich

Break the spell.

If Kucinich is the "hope of humanity", then I am ready to start passing out the kool-aid. What is it exactly that gives you "hope" here - is it the dancing clown or the gun to everybody's head? - (I)

Here are some anarchist articles about him. They're great, because the first elaborates on anarchist alternatives to Kusinich's statist vision, the first two go into the inherent contradiction, hypocricy and lie of claiming to support "non-violence" while using a State, and the third one is a musing on the State and statist culture. I urge you to read the articles yourself instead of only taking my word for it. - (I):

"Dennis Kucinich fights for peace... with all the coercive violence that government lets him use!" By Nexus X Humectress - http://www.infoshop.org/inews/stories.php?story=03/12/20/4822336

"Kucinich and the Politics of Nonviolence" by Roderick T. Long - http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/long4.html

"Children of the State" by Roderick Long - http://www.strike-the-root.com/3/long/long9.html - (I)

Clearly, he is not a proponent of AnArchy as most understand that term. Thanks for posting these. --JohnAbbe

I don't see Kusinich as being a "proponent of AnArchy" as *anyone* understands the term! The guy is a *politician* seeking to become a *head-of-State*, for crying out loud!! -(I)

(raises hand) I'm that someone. First, separate from anarchy, i believe that Dennis Kucinich has NonViolence cred. Why? Because his proposal for a (sadly, state-based) DepartmentOfPeace reflects a surprisingly sophisticated understanding of violence - in particular by relating the personal, local and global scales. More importantly, though i have not met him myself i have the opinions of two people i trust who have met him, are deeply involved in NonviolentCommunication, and believe he is genuine about nonviolence.

Many people who have a real interest in NonViolence or AnArchy do not fully grasp the ideas, in my opinion (i know, i have more to learn too :). I see the two as in essence the same thing. Therefore i see anyone who is genuinely engaged in either as being engaged in both. In this admittedly stretched sense, Dennis Kucinich is pro-anarchist, even though much of what he advocates is not, and even though he himself might deny it!

I feel like i ought to come up with an example from one of his policy proposals, but i'm dead tired right now. Please feel free to bug me to write something like that. Thanks, this much has been fun, and if we continue i expect we'll have made a good start on AnarchyEqualsNonviolence??.

--JohnAbbe

Kucinich could be the messiah with large grassroots support and he would still destroy social services more as that is the purpose of the democratic party in this point in history. This started with Carter and continued under Clinton. Weird enough, the republicans are enforcing the welfare state for the ruling class, going against their principles as well, and during the cold war era, they defended the welfare state, like Nixon. This isn't because every individual is into double speak and are evil in anyway, this is the demand that capitalism places upon the state if the ruling class is going to continue to supporting the state. If Kucinich did actually attempt to put in place policies that the ruling classes disagreed with, several things could occur. Kucinich could be rocked by scandals and other defamations, he could be assassinated, his regime could be overthrown in a coup or capital flight would goto Europe, Japan and Asia, strengthening other nations and making the U.S. subservant to another nation like so many nations are subservient to the U.S. now. Voting is a waste, no matter the candidate. -HPWombat

Sounds like you're hopeless, and not sure what would make a difference? --JohnAbbe

Understanding the workings of the capitalist/statist/imperialist world that we live in does not necessarily make one "hopeless". If anything it can *inspire* hope - never again will one be duped by wannabe tyrants like Kucinich! - (I)

Cool, i'm glad you're inspired. So, what are you up to these days that inspires you most? Separately, understanding the the capitalist/statist/imperialist world can still lead some people to strategies that involve interacting with state-involved or even "powerful" people.