Lyndon LaRouche in a nutshell

Barack Obama isn't the only anti-war politician who thinks we're at a pivotal point in history and is inspiring young people to rally to his cause. There's Lyndon LaRouche. Outside the Obama rally at Seattle Center last week, the LaRoushies were handing out brochures of their leader's prose, as they do at various locations around town including my friendly neighborhood market. I've been amazed at how many young people have signed on to his cause, but try as I might, I've been unable to grasp what LaRouche wants to accomplish. Which probably makes me, in LaRouche's terminology (perhaps echoing the Bill Gates of old), an "idiot." Spend some time trying to work your way through a piece – even a paragraph – of LaRouche literature and you'll find yourself buried in an avalanche of predictions about the looming end times. Civilization, he says, will collapse this year. To make the case, he offers wearying details, historical asides, and an account of the international conspiracies that brought us here. His rants are peppered with a dizzying array of references to international accords made or sabotaged: the Bretton Woods Agreement, the Maastricht Treaty, the Peace of Paris of 1763 – and don't forget the 1647 Peace of Westphalia! They are also spiced with insults and conspiracy theories. Al Gore is fat and the "exemplification of evil." Dick Cheney's wife, Lynne, really wears the pants in the family and Dick is merely her puppet. She takes her orders from The Fabian Society and is a British spy. Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is "owned" by fascist sympathizers. And the Anglo-Dutch alliance that helped Mussolini to power is seeking to put New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger at the head of a new totalitarian regime. At least, I think so. LaRouche – like Ross Perot – also likes charts and graphs, including one he called "The Triple Curve." The gist of them is that we're issuing too much money, productivity is declining, and the whole world is about to enter bankruptcy court. Only an agreement on a new financial system between the U.S., Russia, India, and China can help avert complete disaster. Unfortunately, America's youth isn't rushing to the rescue because they are being trained to kill by our corporate masters via computer games or being brainwashed on social networking Web sites. The perennial presidential candidate is not running this year, but he is leading a "movement." Just don't expect any MySpace meet-ups. Though time is short and the situation dire, LaRouche cannot bring himself to explain what's happening in simple terms. Civilization will likely collapse long before Larouche has finished expounding on the nature of the crisis. You can blame Barack Obama for being short on specifics, but not Lyndon LaRouche.