We Need To Act NOW - Part 2 of 2

The speaker suggests that it is unlikely for the government to pass amendments on important issues like campaign financing and healthcare. They propose using the provision in the Constitution to convene a national convention and propose amendments. They argue that this is a better alternative to revolution and that it would empower the people to make changes. The speaker emphasizes the need for strategies and organization to make this happen. They also highlight the urgency of addressing climate change and other crises, as well as the government's inability to handle them effectively. The speaker concludes by urging action and self-reliance to address these challenges. And to do that, that they're never going to pass an amendment that permanently and radically reforms campaign financing or in everything else I just mentioned, they're never going to do that. We can never expect them to. So why don't we dust off the old constitution, take it out and actually practice some of the powers that we have. We can sit here and argue about who's to blame, but it seems insane to expect them to do something different. Like that's just not going to happen. So the only thing I should be hearing from people is different strategies in order to get to convene a national convention to pass an amendment, to propose an amendment, to be ratified. That should be what everyone's talking about. That should be the only thing people are talking about until it happens. And it's not a left or right thing. If we choose as a focus for an amendment, we choose a topic that's not partisan. I mean, I think campaign financing isn't that partisan. It shouldn't be. That might be a perfectly reasonable thing just to run with right from the start. I don't know. And if it doesn't seem to be enough, it doesn't have enough emotional appeal to it to get two thirds of the states to call for, well then something that does, that everyone agrees to, but for some reason Congress isn't doing, like healthcare or the drug war. Those would be two that I think enjoy, you know, 70 plus percent support among the populace. But for some reason, not the same amount of support in Congress. So that would be a massive demonstration of our ability to circumvent them. It would be very empowering. Yeah, I think it needs to happen. We need to discuss strategies on, it's never been done. We've never done this, but they had enough foresight. We love them or hate them. Our forefathers, founding fucking fathers, whatever the fuck, they had enough foresight to see a time when they themselves might become the tyrants that they were so terrified of. They just fought a war trying to get away from, you know, living under a tyrant. You know, there's not a lot, the constitution is not that complicated. The thing that they clearly all agreed to and agreed about was that tyranny was bad and they were afraid of a situation in which there'd be another tyrannical government running amok and what that might've looked like to each of them was probably different. But anyway, they did write in a provision for the government itself to be circumvented by the states. I think it's time to try that out. Why haven't we ever even tried? We haven't even tried. Before there's a revolution, we can stop all larping about revolutions, OK? That's not going to go well and it's going to drag the whole world down with us. We have 12 fleet carriers. What are you going to do about, your AR-15 isn't going to do anything against, you know, an M1A1 Abrams battle tank, Chobham armor, Chobham, can your AR-15 pierce Chobham? I think that's how you pronounce it. Look into it. It can't. We're not going to fucking overthrow the government, OK? But we don't have to. It's insane. Why would we? There's a provision right there. It's written into the constitution. We are empowered with the ability to circumvent them. We can amend the constitution in any way we want. So it's insane to even talk about revolution. If you have enough support for a revolution that might win, you know, more than half the country, you would have to have a lot more than half, right? For that to be successful, right? Well, if you have that much support, you can just amend the constitution. Without the approval of Congress, you don't need it. So I don't understand why people are even talking about revolution. It's insane. And why isn't anyone talking about national conventions to amend the constitution instead? Maybe because we've never done it. I think, I think it would be very empowering if we do and it succeeds. And I think it would make it much easier to do the second time. There's not a reason why it should be hard. It shouldn't require massive amounts of money or capital. And why? It's just a decision. It's just a thing we have to decide to do it. It's all organizational. Yeah. I mean, I get that it would have to be advertising. I mean, there's going to be costs. But instead of dumping your money into some doomed campaign, just in this, you know, fucking hopeless struggle to, well, maybe we can get one more progressive in. We can swap out this person with this person. And that's what we've got to do. We've got to just do the work. Just get their local and build up the, you know, grassroots. You just got to, okay. All right. Huffing and puffing and huffing and puffing and climbing that hill, climbing that hill and climbing that hill. And meanwhile, every time you get a success and you managed to get one more in, two have fallen out and that's insane. That's not ever going to get, we're never going to get there. It's like, it's like pushing that ball up and you're pushing that ball up. Oh God. And you get up there and it just rolls back down and then you go back down and you got to get the ball and you got to push it back up. It's crazy. What are we doing? We don't have to do it that way. There's a better way. There has to be. We have to look at why it keeps rolling back down. Why is it that by the time we get the ball up there, you know, suddenly someone that used to be progressive is now suddenly, meh, I think we should listen to the, you know, the Republicans more. I think, come on. We all know why they're doing that. It's just, they've gotten corrupted. Power corrupts. It does so at a pretty predictable rate. It's not, you can't set a clock to it, but we're never going to, the rate that we're able to get in fresh progressives is never going to surpass the rate that the people are corrupted by power. Unless we manage just like a fluke, we managed to get like a whole shit ton of them in at once. I mean, there is, you know, momentum can happen. It's a thing and it's not an impossible task and we shouldn't give up on it. But, but expect, there's too much riding on it. You know, we can't expect it. It'd be great if it worked out that way. It'd be fantastic, but I think it'd be naive to just put all our eggs in that basket and there's too much riding on it. You know, climate catastrophe is, I mean, we're in serious trouble. Even if we managed to just, all the ducks line up and we managed to, you know, amend the constitution and we do all the things we need to do, like we're still going to be contending with some serious fucking problems. And we don't have time. Our time's up. The scientists have been telling us this for a long time. Time's up. Our country has demonstrated that it's not capable of handling even minor, relatively minor catastrophes. I wouldn't even say it's a catastrophe. COVID was a, it was bad, but it's going to get a lot worse than that. Are you kidding? Like it's coming. There's going to be more. There's going to be worse ones. There's going to be bigger disasters. There's going to be more diseases. There's going to be wars. And they're practically inviting all four horsemen of the apocalypse over for breakfast. I mean, they're puffing their chests and posturing over Ukraine. They're not going to do what needs to be done. We have to recognize it and we need to start taking steps to do it ourselves. That's all I have to say.