For example, among the books that make up the Tea Party canon is Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. Alinsky’s 1971 book was almost a hornbook for those on the left who were willing to work within the system, for “the Have-Nots on how to take [power] away.” Now, the Tea Party looks to it as a primer on community organizing tactics.

I was reminded of it again last month by a new book that set forth the following definitions:

Us: Hard-working, underpaid, put upon, thoughtful, freedom-loving, disenfranchised, ordinary people

Them: Reactionary. stupid, overpaid, greedy, shortsighted, exploitative, power-made abusive politicians and corporate executives

No one would be surprised to see that in a Tea Party tract. But these come from Ted Rall’s new book, The Anti-American Manifesto. Rall, an award-winning author, syndicated columnist and syndicated editorial cartoonist, is plainly on the left side of the spectrum. In fact, in 2004 he wrote Wake Up, You’re Liberal!: How We Can Take America Back from the Right, which challenged liberals to step forward and lead this country to the promise it offers. From the impressive opening “Credo” to the concluding chapter, “The Manifesto for a New America,” I was so impressed I made sure to get a personally autographed copy.

So, six years later there’s a president of color in the White House who ran and was elected on a campaign of “change.” So what’s Rall thinking now? He thinks it’s time for a revolution right here in the good old U S of A.

I don’t think Rall’s gone off the deep end. Instead, his book is an example of how people across the political spectrum have no faith in the ability of America’s existing political and economic system to change the country for the better. That’s certainly contributed to the popularity and success of the Tea Party. It’s just that Rall takes things a step further. He says it’s too late to reform the country or the government because the existing system is not viable or open to real change. Revolution, he writes, is preferable to collapse.

“The current U.S. government must be prophylactically removed,” he writes. “Our economic and social structures must be radically reinvented. These things can only happen by using force.” Yet The Anti-American Manifesto doesn’t suggest the revolution start on the left. In fact, he invokes the adage “the enemy of your enemy is your friend, urging people to “reach out to anyone and everyone who is willing to take on the existing system.” That also means, somewhat maddeningly, that Rall isn’t specific about what will follow revolution. Although he still hews to many of the ideas expressed in Wake Up, You’re Liberal!, he believes the first priority is to get rid of the current “zombie system of government.” Only then should we begin to “split ideological hairs” on what will replace it.

Rall believes Americans have 10 essential rights: shelter, food, basic clothes, education in accordance with your abilities and talents (through college), medical care, retirement benefits, transportation, communication, competent legal counsel if charged with a crime, and job training and rehabilitation if incarcerated. Although only one of these is currently guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, an argument can certainly be made that what Rall advocates are crucial elements of the unalienable rights of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” described in the Declaration of Independence. Only a revolution can help protect such rights because the governmental and corporate structure that has evolved in America is incapable of doing so, he contends.

Unless you’re hopelessly self-deluded or stupid, you have to accept the painful truth. Under the current triumvirate of state power currently presiding over our lives — governmental, corporate and media — you have no more ability to change anything important — e.g. the way the economy is managed, or which countries and people are being attacked by the armies you pay for — than a medieval serf or a German under Nazism did in the past, or a detainee in a secret CIA prison somewhere does now.

Rall has never shied away from impassioned rhetoric or even hyperbole, whether in his writing or his art. Nor is it reserved for the government. For example, he says that if BP and other oil companies “could extract oil from the crushed skulls of newborn babies, they would.”

Rall, quite simply, seems to have reached the end of his political rope. Not only is necessary change not coming, he believes it never will. Rational people, then, have only one choice, which is to take things into their own hands and start over. Even if people don’t, the system is going to collapse on itself and revolution will be forced upon us. He believes it better to be proactive than reactive. Whether that call to action will succeed is another question altogether.

In the book, Rall notes he “hated” the title of Wake Up, You’re Liberal. I would quibble with title The Anti-American Manifesto. Rall isn’t anti-American. He’s anti what America has become. Yet calling the manifesto “anti-American” doesn’t get that point across. In fact, it may tend to divide rather than unite the enemies of his enemies.

Second, I understand Rall wants to avoid infighting among those are willing to tear the system down. I’m on the opposite side of the question of having aims and goals for any revolution. Without them, fear of the unknown will always outweigh throwing the bastards out and then splitting ideological hairs. Like our government, corporations and media, Americans want to know “What’s in it for me?” before committing to even quasi-radical action. Some essential common principles likely need be expressed.

Finally, to some extent The Anti-American Manifesto has echoes of the late 1960s. Despite the youth culture and cries of revolution in the street, today we are in an arguably worse state of affairs. The America to which Rall is speaking is likely less receptive to such ideas than four decades ago. This is particularly pertinent when Rall himself admits, “It is better to do nothing than to stage a half-assed revolt.”

It’s not surprising Rall has reached his limit. In fact, he says he’s thought revolution was necessary before but was afraid to say so. In fact, in the “Credo” in Wake Up, You’re Liberal he said, “Radical problems require radical solutions.” The last item in that “Credo” is also relevant six years later: “I reserve the right to change my mind.”

Ted Rall, The Anti-American Manifesto

You see, the website is produced by the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of International Information Programs, as was a “Rumors, Myths and Fabrications” blog that was active from May 2008 until September 11, 2009. (Could that date alone be conspiratorially significant?) But why would anyone take a government at its word when its trying to debunk claims of government conspiracies? And the rationale for the site won’t suggest a different conclusion to those inclined toward these theories. “Conspiracy theories exist in the realm of myth, where imaginations run wild, fears trump facts, and evidence is ignored,” it announces. “As a superpower, the United States is often cast as a villain in these dramas.”

The site lists nine “popular conspiracy theories” with very brief summaries in each area containing links to additional information. The most specific summary by far is 9/11. Not only does it have the longest summary, one of two large links on the site is to debunking911.com, a site whose owner is unknown and who recognizes that alone “is evidence to conspiracy theorists that I’m a ‘government shill’.” (Give the government credit, though, for making the other large link to Snopes.com.) The State Department site also offers a photo gallery of the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon. The other conspiracy theories are more broad: health, military, outer space, economic, “U.S. Domestic,” U.S. and Islam, U.S. and Latin America and, of course, “Others.” The site also has three short videos on conspiracy theories, “Debunking,” “What, Why and How” and “Consequences.”

As it is produced by the State Department, the site certainly would seem aimed at a foreign audience. But are those inclined toward jihadists, for example, likely to believe what the government says about whether it is waging a war on Islam? Likewise, is anyone outside or in the U.S. who wonders if the government was involved in 9/11 going to rely on this site for information?

I think I have it figured out, though. The site is part of a deeper conspiracy. It must be the work of the Bilderberg Group, the Trilateral Commission and their fellow travelers as part of a masterful disinformation campaign to direct attention away from themselves and the shadow government that actually runs the country and the world. And, of course, we all know these groups are themselves only fronts for the evil shape-shifting lizard-people from the 4th dimension that actually control the world.

Dennis Miller, I Rant, Therefore I Am

My political ideology, such as it is, is heavily influenced by the era in which I grew up. In my pre-teen years, a school program hooked me up with a pen pal in the Marines in Vietnam. The letters and photos he sent stopped after about a year and he no longer responded to my letters. Rather than making it back home to Chicago, he was killed in Quang Nam province on February 6, 1968, during the Tet Offensive. While I have among the world’s worst memory capacity, I know that because I remember his name to this day and made a special point of finding it on the Vietnam War Memorial.

It wasn’t that much later that I was watching the chaos of the 1968 Democratic Convention on TV. Even a 12-year-old kid had to wonder what was going on and what Vietnam was doing to Americans and America. Add in what else was happening in the nation over the next couple years and some of the music I would stay up late to listen to and I was on the path to a fairly committed left wing political ideology.

Had Kent State never happened, it’s likely I would have stayed on that path. Still, to this day I remain shocked, sad and disheartened by what happened there 40 years ago today. A kid can understand a soldier getting killed in a war. It’s also easy for a kid in a lily white state to wonder if there’s some political propaganda when the Black Panthers claim the cops are killing them. Blame for the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy could be laid at the feet of a couple lone wacko gunmen. But when the government starts shooting college kids protesting the Vietnam War, the bridge I was crossing seemed to be in flames behind me. I don’t know that I ever looked back again. The disclosures of the coming years — the Pentagon Papers, COINTELPRO, Watergate and Nixon’s “enemies list,” to name a few — gave me little reason to.

Granted, any loss of innocence to which Kent State contributed is far less than what those involved suffered. Still, it deepened the chasm between what I had been taught America was about and what was happening in the world. America wasn’t supposed to kill citizens who disagreed with the government. Now some of my views may have stemmed from being naive, but I’m proud to say some of that naiveté remains, along with a strong anti-authoritarian streak to which these events contributed.

To this day, thinking of May 4, 1970, brings back both sorrow and anger. There is no doubt it always will.

Neil Young, “Ohio”