While area Republicans welcome Newt Gingrich and Democrats mope about the implosion of their party (or lack thereof), the rest of Southern Illinois can enjoy a laugh while taking comfort in the fact that someone out there really speaks for them.
That person is R.U. Sirius. Sirius, 46, is running for President of the United States in the 2000 election. He bills himself as "Chairing of the Revolution, a new political party dedicated to Victory Over Horseshit." 'Sirius will come to town Saturday, September 26 to deliver his "l5-Point Plan for Liberty and Justice in America" and "Post Modern Social Contract."
At 9 AM, WDBX's Light on the Law program will feature an interview with Sirius, followed by a 6 PM public reception at the Interfaith Center and an 8 PM lecture rally at Carbondale's town square pavilion. The Shawnee Green Party will sponsor Sirius' speaking engagement
Sirius' career in radical politics began in high school in the '60s, when he begat a publication called the Lower Left Corner. By 1970, he became a Yippie (Youth International Party) and publisher/editor of Space newspaper in his hometown of Binghamton, NY But it was in 1984, after helping found High Frontiers magazine, that Sirius earned his reputation as a prophet of the information age. The publication morphed into the first cyber culture magazine, Mondo 2000, in 1989, and Sirius served as its editor-in-chief until 1992. It was five years before terms such as "information superhighway," "internet" and "world wide web" became household terms, and Sirius was already dancing on the cutting edge, daring others to follow.
Along the Way, Sirius has authored or co-authored five books, including "Design For Dying (with Timothy Leary)" and "How to Mutate and Take Over the World: an Exploded Post-Novel", and penned articles for magazines such as Esquire, Time and Anarchy Today.
Despite these impressive accomplishments, Sirius has never taken himself or his work too seriously. His political literature is full of multi-leveled gags that recall the Church of the SubGenius, and he spices his comments with a pointed humor that would make Frank Zappa proud.
Here's an interview with the man himself, conducted via email in early September.
NIGHTLIFE: Let's start with humor. While the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky situation illustrates that politics is in itself ridiculous proposition ("heh, heh, he said 'proposition'), it seems Americans either don't get the joke or don't appreciate the humor. How do you think you can change this?
RU: I promise a banana peel in every garage. I guess Americans just don't think oral sex or sex with cigars is funny. I'll bet Fidel Castro thinks sex with cigars is hilarious. Americans probably think that sex with a football would be funny, but painful. But pain is funny if it's somebody else's pain.
Americans seem to be hung up on some Puritanical civilized notion of dignity. But they've got it all wrong. Look at the Brits. They're puritanical and civilized as all get-out, but they love to make cross-dressed, prat-falling fools out of themselves. We should be more like the English, then, except not like the Gallagher brothers.
N: Do you think that the admittedly hilarious approach you're taking (e.g. in the Post Modern Social Contract) will just tag you with the "political satirist" label, rather than someone who's using humor to make a serious point?
RU: Well, I think if Mark Twain had run for the President, he might have won. And we'd be better for it.
Everybody is walking around in a cognitive fog, in one degree or another. We're all in data shock. And the easiest way to deal with data shock is to instantly slap an oversimplified label over everything. That way we don't have to think. But I say: "been there. Done that. Don't go there. It's all good." Er... that is, I think proof that you don't take yourself too seriously should be a requirement for public office. People who take themselves too seriously tend to be authoritarian. Every swearing-in ceremony should end with a pie in the face.
N: How do you make sure that the point isn't lost in the laughter of the audience? Or that the decidedly non-conventional approach you're taking won't make people tune you out, though if they listened to you, they might agree with your ideas?
RU: When people sign up to become a volunteer or a member of the Revolution, I send them a questionnaire. One of the questions I ask is whether they were attracted by the prankster humor or the party platform. Nearly everyone said it had to be both, but the platform was more important. This tells me that there are some people out there who are able to navigate the complexity of having a serious message delivered as a joke, and vice versa. It may not be a majority, but all I've got to do is get on the ballot in enough states and then have my hacker friends electronically manipulate the election results.
N: OK.. so lets talk (or write) about the more important part, the platform. As you told one recent interviewer, it's a combination of traditional liberalism and a pure strain of libertarianism. Often, these are mutually exclusive ideas. How do you reconcile them into something coherent?
RU: Actually traditional liberalism was largely libertarian, going back to the concept of "the rights of man." Traditional liberalism is libertarian in the sense that it supported an expanded view of civil liberties, and opposed excess state intrusion in the personal lives of individuals. Modern supposed liberalism veers toward authoritarianism in its defense of state powers. In contrast, '60s radicalism at its best was leftism with an anarchist bent. We very actively increased individual liberty in terms of the free speech movement, sexual liberation, freedom to question the cultural and religious dogmas that were handed down, freedom of youth to defy their parents, even freedom to go naked in some circumstances. At the same time, we were involved in collective political actions geared toward greater community and compassion.
So I think this perception that these two philosophies are contradictory are a reflection of two things. First, it's a reflection of the lack of any articulation of a traditional liberal vision within most of the media. And secondly, it's a reflection of the confusion wrought by the absolutist right-wing libertarians who are represented by the Libertarian Party. If we stay away from absolute liberty on the one hand and absolute equality on the other hand, and instead focus on simply increased liberty and equality, we can start moving in that direction. I certainly think the Revolution's program points the way.
N: One of your platform planks is to "stop policing the world." On one hand, it's a great idea--Most US foreign policy revolves around corporate, not defense, interests, and results in terrorist attacks against America. Yet don't we have a moral obligation to stop famine, genocide, and human-rights violations whenever possible?
RU: I would guess that U.S. isolationism, in terms of military action, would be altogether better than what we do currently. But I think it would be even better if there were an international policing force with the very limited task of dealing with those situations you mentioned. I would put people who are closely involved with human-rights issues and organizations in the positions of secretary of state and UN ambassador and then tell them that they're sort of on their own. We're not going to arrogantly wave around our military might or even our economic might. But you can use information, moral persuasion and the United Nations to try to bring about needed changes. And we'll do our part within the UN, but we won't offer our young adults as the primary international policemen or use our tax money to maintain the armed forces necessary to keep the peace worldwide. That task has to be spread out globally. I also think that just ending our role as the world's primary weapons supplier in itself would make the world about 20 per cent safer than it is now.
N: Most of your other platform planks I have a hard time criticizing or even questioning, at least in principle. It's like supporting Jesse Jackson or Jerry Brown for president, however, you want to fight the good fight, but eventually you want to have a realistic shot at winning. Without the benefit of billions in PAC and other contributions, how do you expect to get your platform to the American public for consideration, And once there, how do you expect to sell your platform to the American public?
RU: I'm just hoping to make an incursion into the political discourse, and it's one that's qualitatively different from Jackson or Brown or Nader. You never hear them talking about liberty or rescinding laws against victimless crimes, for instance. But more than that, I believe that there's a sort of inchoate cultural gap in America. It's like where I said that people don't have the political language to defend their enjoyment of hip-hop, Tarantino, marijuana and South Park. I'd like to help articulate at least part of that defense... defend the fact that American pop culture belongs to the rabble. I don't know. Maybe it should be Ice-T instead of me. In some ways, I'd welcome that. But I also have a fairly serious progressive political program to offer at the same time.
America is a rebellious nation, and there's an enormous reservoir of disaffection. There's a permanent young underclass, a permanent rabble. Nothing has been changed by the alleged upturn in the economy under Clinton. From what I can see, things seem worse. I actually presume that they're manipulating the statistics. Anyway, there's a sort of economically and culturally "disappeared" in America. It's racially polyglot, and where it's young, it's basically culturally hip in one way or another. They don't vote, they don't get polled, in some cases they're not even included in the census or in the unemployment figures since you have to be collecting unemployment, on welfare, or actively registered as looking for work to be counted. I hope I might afford that disappeared group the opportunity to make a statement. In combination with the more elite sort of non-ideologically aligned freedom lovers who dominate the internet and the activist political progressives, it could wind up making quite an explosive statement, although I will admit that I'm ill-prepared to actually win at this point.
For more on R. U. Sirius and for the complete text of his 15-Point Plan
and Post-Modern Social Contract, check out his website at
http://www.revolting.com
