I learned everything I need to know about the United States when I saw that picture of the young Vietnamese girl Kim Phuc running down the road with napalm burning through her skin to her bones. I finally in 1980 began questioning whether I wanted to spend my life paying for the death of other human beings and the destruction of the biosphere. At that time there were actual human beings involved with the IRS and a guy came up from our local small city, Wenatchee, Washington, to tell me that ‘taxes were a form of love.’ I pictured a ball of fusion-fire incinerating a Soviet city–the Russians were the enemy of choice in that particular decade. His statement was a nice try but no cigar. We had a friendly conversation and he went home and was never heard from again.
By 1990 I was withholding 50% of my income tax–the portion that goes to killing people and destroying the planet via dropping high explosive bombs on it— and trying to communicate with the IRS. But, the fact is we live in an authoritarian state and they aren’t interested in communication, just in telling you how you must conduct your life. We just happen to have appropriated enough of the world’s resources to keep the majority of Americans fat and happy, so they do as they are told to do, without thinking about the moral and ethical ramifications of killing large numbers of innocent human beings . Anyhow for the past ten years I haven’t even filed a so-called income tax return. The United States government is a “non-stop killing machine” (in the words of Vietnam Vet Mike Hastie) and I have zero interest in paying their bills in my short time on the planet.
Post by Dana Visalli – Twisp, WA
