by Juliet Buck and Rob Williams
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“Ideas are bulletproof.”
—V For Vendetta

“There is no idea like an idea whose time has come.”
— Victor Hugo

First.
Turn off the TeeVee. Stop reading the newspaper and the mainstream media (MSM) outlets on your computer and tracking device (a.k.a. “smart phone”) for a while. Give yourself a break from being constantly marketed to, cajoled, lied to, and manipulated.

Then.
Read a nice long book about this stuff, something from Matt Taibbi or Chris Hedges that digs deliciously deep or some classic like 1984. Give yourself the mental space to stop rationalizing your role in perpetuating an imperial system that is crooked and unjust.

Next.
Come out of the closet. Write a letter to the editor calling bullshit on some aspect of this ruinous empire, use the word Empire in it, and sign your real name. Keep doing this. Then speak the truth whenever the lies come up. Yes, this means you can’t make polite political small talk at parties anymore. You’ll be “that person.” Embrace it. Most important, stop saying “I can’t do anything!”

Once you’ve been doing this a while and are comfortable being a contrarian tempest of awesomeness, why not try to BE THE MEDIA? This is what we do at Vermont Commons. If the MSM won’t tell us the vital stories that need to be told to understand twenty-first-century life in the empire (and they most assuredly do not, because they are owned by the very transnational corporate commercial interests that profit from the dissonance and manufactured conflict of ignorance and misinfor­mation), then it’s our job to find these stories and put them in front of eyeballs. Our job is to inoculate people with unburnished reality, steel­ing them to become immune to imperial propaganda.

Hands. Head. Heart.
Do something with them, other than clacking away at a computer keyboard. We all need to prepare ourselves for “the Great Re-Skilling” ahead—grow a plant, raise an animal, rediscover hand tools, and get outside as early and as often as you can, both alone (solitude is in increas­ingly precious supply in our wired age) and in the company of people whom you care about, and who care about you.

Last.
Please support Vermont independence by supporting the folks doing the work of independent media and civic journalism every day. Here at Vermont Commons and among all our allied organizations, we labor sincerely in the service of the best interests of our neighbors; laying the groundwork for a successful, maybe even joyous, transition from empire to independence. A little money goes a long way in an organization like ours, filled with smart, motivated people doing their heart’s work to advance ideas that can work.

Visit us online—www.vtcommons.org—to learn more.

And let’s raise a glass (because the beer here in the Green Mountains is UNREAL), and drink to a free and independent Vermont, in loose and mutually beneficial voluntary association with the rest of the Untied States.

Juliet Buck, Editor
Rob Williams, Publisher
Vermont Commons: Voices of Independence