Some time in 1998, I decided to start “The Revolution” party and run for President. It was – as you might imagine – an ill-considered decision. Ironically, I was absolutely world weary at the time and little interested in participating in anything at all. But I had promised to write something for Disinformation and I was in such a dropped-out state of mind that I couldn’t come up with anything. So I cleared my mind completely and let whatever would emerge, emerge. And what should bubble up from the lower depths of my unconscious but this declaration and this one?

I thought the pieces kinda kicked ass while at the same time they were so fundamentally silly that they wouldn’t be perceived as an aggressive re-entry back into the activities of the world. So – despite my world weariness — I had no hesitation in putting them out there. People liked them.

In calling the party The Revolution, I thought I was being ironic. I had recently noticed that there was a sports team called “The Revolution” while glancing with only partial attention at my TV. The news had been running down some scores – (Was it hockey? College football? It doesn’t matter.) I was amused by the cheapening of a word that had so much juice for so many of us around 1970. The media had already declared “The Reagan Revolution.” Time Magazine had a cover story “Say You Want A Revolution?” with Bill Clinton on the cover during his first week in office in 1993. Then we’d had a “Gingrich Revolution” in 1994. So I thought it was kind of funny for a white yankee radical reformist with a strong sense of the absurd to adopt “The Revolution.”

Some joiners though took the moniker fairly seriously and I can’t completely blame them — I think I put out some valid ideas. I got a pretty good response and next thing I knew, some people were helping me change the original Revolting! into a site for The Revolution Party.

For awhile, I actually tried to organize this thing. After all, I was maybe the first to suggest liberaltarianism — although I didn’t coin the clumsy word, Kos did that, but I did suggest a liberal/libertarian hybrid. And a post-ideological, anti-authoritarian, counterculturally-inclined political organization did seem like something that should have happened (still reworking the concept, actually) – a pressure group that would balance out the cultural warriors of the religious right. But for all the enthusiasm that was expressed, it’s pretty fuckin’ hard to start a political party in America and The Revolution proved to be a party of slackers.

Still, when someone from “The Party” emailed me a few years ago to suggest that I really ought to be doing something with these ideas in the age of Bush, I briefly sketched out a concept for an organization called Question Authority that would be an informational and educational coalition of antiauthoritarian types.

I’ve got the feeling I’ll be saying more about that in the near future.