"Like what you like, enjoy what you enjoy, and don't take crap from anybody"--The Guns and Dope Party official motto.

I've been watching the California recall governor's election with mild amusement (after all, I don't live there). It's about time our political process has finally caught up with our television programming. Among the dozens of candidates, easily the most interesting was author Robert Anton Wilson running as a write-in candidate for the Guns and Dope Party.

Wilson, best known for his novels such as Illuminatus! (with Robert Shea) and the Schrodingers Cat Trilogy, describes himself as a "futurist" and a "stand up comic." He has been accused of being the head of the dreaded Illuminati, a charge that he denies. Wilson said, after refusing several entreaties to run, he finally decided to enter the race because, "why should I remain the only nut in California who ain't running?"

While the California elections aren't generally of direct interest to us Seattle residents, Wilson said that the "major goal" of his first term would be "California secession," with "Oregon, Washington State, and BC invited to join Freetopia."

Wilson said his "first order of business on assuming office" would be to "fire 33% of the legislature (names selected at random) and replace them with full-grown adult ostriches, whose mysterious and awesome dignity will elevate the suidean barbarity long established there." Which, apart from not knowing what "suidean" is, sounds better than most modern political programs and certainly no worse than any of them. [It's not in my dictionary, either--Ed.]

According to Wilson's first position paper, the Guns and Dope Party supports "guns for everybody who wants them; no guns for those who don't want them" and "drugs for everybody who wants them; no drugs for those who don't want them." This obviously wacko platform was seen by Wilson as one of his major strengths. "Both the pro-gun people and the dopers (medical, religious, and/or recreational) feel like minorities," but he says "in California both groups woikin' together make a majority." And this potential alliance really does hold the key to many such other political alliances in the future among otherwise uncomfortable coalition partners, as in, "we'll tolerate their hobbies if they'll tolerate ours."

As if that weren't enough, he says that God himself had endorsed his run for office, "speaking through an ostrich named Olga who starred with Orson Wells in a thriller called Southern Star."

Wilson wants to "abolish Tsarism and restore constitutional democracy" first in California (and hopefully along the rest of the west coast). "If our example inspires the other 49 states, so much the better."

Tsarism, and the "Tsarist Occupation Government (TSOG)," which Wilson says is currently running the USA, might be unfamiliar terms, though we are all familiar with their effects. Wilson offers the example of America's "Drug Tsar" (those paying attention should by now be fully aware that almost all of the idiotic concepts in the War on Terrorism were first tested out in the War on Drugs). "Allegedly, this omniscient official knows what drugs, herbs, compounds, etc. you should use for your medical problems better than your doctor knows! Even more magically, the Tsar knows this without doing any physical examination of you, blood pressure readings, other scientific tests, etc. that your doctor does, and often from a distance of 3000 miles--and the Tsar does it without even looking at you."

And he says that the Tsarist US government "spends more and more of our tax money financing 'faith-based organizations.' Without faith we might relapse into scientific or rational thinking, which leads by a slippery slope toward constitutional democracy."

Robert Anton Wilson, while admittedly a minority at the moment, might very well be the first truly 21st century politician. And if we are going to find a way out of the humorless closed system that we have allowed ourselves to wander into, something like the Guns and Dope Party's call for "extremists of both left and right" to unite behind their shared goals is probably going to become necessary (and let's not forget the ostriches). I predict that by the time November 2004 rolls around, we'll want somebody like Wilson to counteract the black magic of corrupt and dull politics as usual.

And there's this helpful reminder from Walt Whitman found on the Guns and Dope Party website, "to the States or any one of them, or any city of the States: RESIST MUCH, OBEY LITTLE, once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city of this Earth, ever afterward resumes its liberty."

--Troy Skeels. You can find out more about The Guns and Dope Party at www.maybelogic.com/rawgov.html