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April 30, 2005
The Chatter of Sports Announcers
Viewing a ballgame in person is a much better proposition than seeing it at home for any of a number of reasons: the proximity of the seats, the smell of popcorn, perfume and cheap cologne, the out of doors. But the next best thing to actual attendance is to to turn the sound off on the television. One of the great joys of attending a ballgame is that you don't have to listen to the puerile, mindless chatter of announcers who are paid to not allow more than a second or two of silence, and are compelled to deluge us with drollery. Any parent who has had to listen to the chatter of children on a three hour road trip welcomes the ability to mute the sound.
Posted by Ronald at 02:02 AM | Comments (0)April 28, 2005
Why I Read Cornel West
When I was six years old my father took the family on a road trip to Washington D.C., and in preparation for it my mother taught my brother and I about all the important parks and monuments and establishments we would visit. I remember skipping and jumping around outside the White House and remembered looking with awe at that great mansion where the leader of the greatest nation, God's chosen people, lived. It was a warm sunny day and I would see the Washington Monumenent and the Lincoln Memorial and the Senate Building, the Hall of Justice...All of which my mother had talked to us about. I was too young to know what purpose they served, but growing up Catholic, I knew that monuments and statues inspired greatness, awe and respect.
My mother and father leaned against the concrete wall outside the White House while my brother and I stood looking at the White House. A few yards away a black couple sat on the wall and further on I could see scores of others sitting on the wall. So I jumped up on the wall and immediately a harsh, authoritative voice barked at me "get down off that wall."
I turned my head and a black police officer on a motorcycle was glowering at me. "Get down, I said!" So I jumped down, shaking and with tears in my eyes at being treated like that, because I watched as he zoomed off without even looking at anyone else on the wall. I was so angry, but not sure what I was angry at. The White House? The President? Black people? Policemen? Authority? America?
Thirty four years later I still don't care to look at pictures of Washington D.C. tourist attractions. It still makes me angry to see people in authority abusing their power. Just at the time the 60s liberation movements were supposed to be dead they had been planted in me.
I have heard some people say "if you don't like the country get out." I have heard that inanity since I was a boy. The voice of the quitters. The condemned. I have always thought it stupid to equate the beautiful land, the diverse ideologies, the framework that exists for a much better society with the voice of a mindless sheep. "You can't change the world," they say, hopelessly condemened to a world of consumption and production, a sort of nihilistic hedonism. But to accept this condemnation I had to be willing to accept their institutions- the cesspool of diseased social breeding called school, a place for the rich and connected to affect their stronghold-corporations, the place to jocky for authority over your fellow man by sucking up to the rich and well connected who scheme how to control the public-government. The place that holds you a slave for eternity by wielding authority over your ideology-the churches.
T.S. Eliot wrote "Yet if the only form of tradition, of handing down, consisted in following the ways of the immediate generation before us in a blind or timid adherence to its successes, 'tradition' should positively be discouraged. We have seen many such simple currents soon lost in the sand; and novelty is better than repetition. Tradition is a matter of much wider significance. It cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must attain it by great value."
And I have inherited a tradition that gives significance to social comraderie, compassion for each other, not the subjugation to immense wealth, not slavish activity that causes the worker to bump along the ruts of economic and mental destitution; fighting with the insurance companies to pay their claims, bowing to the manager's demand to put work before family, biting your tongue when others around you are belittling you for your religion and telling you how much they think you don't understand.
I remember my father's union going on strike just to peg their wages to an increase in cost of living, having to strike to keep the corporation from raiding the employee pension fund, and to provide health coverage for the workers and their families. As a family, we had to sacrifice new clothes, family outings, meat that was too expensive, just as all of the other workers' families. But we did this so we could all have a safe and nurturing environment to live in. And I recall someone from my past ridiculing this idea. "Yeah, but they don't have to strike, the thirty seven year old restaurant cook said. "Surely, there is a better way of getting your point across."
"What would that be, Tony?"
"I don't know. All I know is there's a better way to do things than strike," Tony said with marked ridicule.
I had no answer because he was a quitter, condemned to lead the life he was told. He was resigned to it and therefore I should be too. If you don't like the country get out. He was making one dollar above minimum wage, had no health coverage and was going thousands of dollars in debt at a University to get a college degree so he could get a job that would one day pay him enough so that he could barely afford to make the payments on his student loans-and he had accepted it. What you gonna do? That's just the way it is. By the way, he would later get a teaching job in rural Louisiana in one of the poorest districts of the country where his salary was less than that of an average factory worker in Michigan.
During one of the strikes the workers at the factory where my father worked were striking to save the worker's pension fund and to keep the company from cutting wages. It was a particulary brutal strike that lasted nearly a year. A local lawyer named Peter Secchia, who was a mouthpiece for the conservative establishment and suck up to the national rich, trying to get his own fame by hitching his fortune to the republicans as a party honcho, wrote a letter to the Grand Rapids Press where he condemned the workers for their greed and selfishness and that they shouldn't be given any time on the news or in the paper for their rebellion. Years later, while working for the City of Grand Rapids, a unionized workplace, I came into work one day and was greeted with a look of ridicule and contempt by Eileen, an opinionated woman who had read a letter in the Press that my father had written in response to another of Secchia's irresponsible, loathing and self aggrandizing letters to the Press.
"What kind of dealings has your dad had with Peter Secchia?" she said with scorn and a look on her face as though she were wearing a dirty diaper.
I had no desire, nor any need to explain anything to her. "He got himself involved in something he had no business in," I said. "Why, do you have something to do with Peter Secchia?"
"No. I just wondered what dealings your father has had with him," she repeated with the same ridicule and walked off.
The only effect her words could possibly have had on me is that of ridicule. She wasn't asking what the circumstances were. She was saying that someone like my father had no business questioning someone like Peter Secchia. What struck me was why would Eileen make such an idiot of herself to me when she was of the same background? Where did she herself belong if she wanted to separate herself from her own father's background, her own upbringing and yet didn't fit into the social circle of the suck ups in the bureaucracy? She had her cost of living increases, pension, health insurance because of the union she belonged to.
The way I have come to understand judging others, hating others, being prejudiced against others is by evaluating myself. And that is what will ultimately end our mistreatment of others. I can't blame the President for my own actions. I can't blame black people for my own racism.
And that is why Cornel West is so important to me. He challenges the established scientifically advanced ideas of beauty, intellect and history. The nature of the man is known by the nature of the man he is at odds with. Professor West has set out on a lifelong journey of humble inquiry of himself and the ideas he holds, and why he has come to believe, or not believe, the things taught him. He teaches that existence is a lifelong process of education, but when their aren't any new insights, new educational input, the view becomes solidified and horrific. Through this solidified idea of existence and self comes the hatred and prejudice that we come to exhibit and expect from others because we don't accept any other logic. Like Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Professor West teaches that life is an art and there isn't really an end with a means to it. Rather, it's the path that is the goal.
The existential absurdity of life to me has always been stark, absolute, no matter how much the Horatio Alger Victorian realism, all the chatter from would-be life coaches, sermons from the enlightened downtrodden. As Dr West says "the myths of the noble savage and the wise commoner are simply the flip sides of the Enlightenment attempts to degrade and devalue everyday people." He says "The tragicomic sense-tragicomic rather than simply "tragic," because even ultimate purpose and objective order are called into question-propels us toward suicide or madness unless we are buffered by ritual, cushioned by community or sustained by art." This absurdity is also that of Camus at odds with the nauseating sense of being expressed by Sartre. And for the Negro, as Dr. West points out, without this sense of absurdity he is left to either nihilism or hedonism.
Dr. West's words speak to me as a white male, also. Thus for me it was nihilism or capitalism. So I too was to take the authoritative creed invested in me by my white heritage. I too would deign to communicate with blacks, though I didn't share the same sense of ugliness Dr. West talks about in the Greecian sense of beauty instilled in our European American culture which implicates the Africans as grotesque. I have always admired the incredible beauty of black women. But I have always been sensitive to the black man asserting himself in positions of authority. But to defend myself like that in society meant to make myself a perpetual victim in a cycle of one-upmanship that could never effect change in the lives of others or myself. So early on I was overcome with nausea and despair of such a comic existence that seemed to be no more real than a theatre production. Even some of the great black intellectuals have not been able to stomach a fight with the absurd contradiction of individual and cultural existence. Dr. West says of E.B. Dubois "Dubois was never alienated by black people-he lived in black communities where he received great respect and admiration. But there seemed to be something in him that alienated ordinary black people. In short, he was reluctant to learn fundamental lessons about life-and about himself-from them. Such lessons would have required that he allow-at least momentarily-that they were or might be as wise, insightful and "advanced" as he; and this he could not do."
The necessary ritual and community Dr. West speaks of, I find in the familial values and piety of Confucius, and it is still found in Chinese culture. Confucianism remains inherent within socialist context with selfless devotion, piety and ritual central to the ordering of the social family and extended family at the cruxt of daily routines in Chinese life. But our American sense of ritual toward family and community has eroded to that of an entertainment culture. Television shows are more important than a family meal, video games with friends are more important than visiting grandma, and the idea of a family reunion is enough to instigate any number of ailments that would prohibit going.
In his essay "Black Strivings in a Twilight Civilization, Dr. West writes: "Black self-hatred and hatred of others parallels that of all human beings, who must gain some sense of themselves and the world. But the tremendous weight of white supremacy makes this human struggle for mature black selfhood even more difficult. As black children come to view themselves more and more as the degraded other, the temptation of hate grows, (quoting Du Bois) "gliding stealthily in their laughter, fading into their play, and seizing their dreams by day and night with rough, rude turbulence. So they ask of sky and sun and flower the never-answered Why? and love, as they grow, neither the world nor the world's rough ways.'"
And so I recall the bilittling at the hands of the Calvinist boys on the school bus who parroted the supremacist, bigoted words of their parents towards me, the Catholic, the public school student. And so I was singled out by a fifth grade teacher, Mike Towers, and belittled in front of the class for going to Catholic Catechism class, an outrage I will never forget from that coward. How I endured the insults of the other students in Catholic Catechism class because I came from a working class background, and from that breeding ground of class distinction, bigotry and prejudice known as public school.
The bigoted insistence from the Protestants on the bus and on television that only there's was a true religion made me hate them, and I came to hate the Catholic church more because of their insistence that they were the only real church.
The secretary at 5/3 Bank-where I used to work-whose father was a minister, asked me if I was a Christian and I told her I didn't know, meaning that she had her idea of what it was and I had no intention of galvanizing her view. I was for Christ, but against christianity. But she refused to listen to this because she was bred to proselytize. I knew that and the other woman in the room knew. She could only insist on the speculation that to believe that Christ died for your sins was what made someone a Christian. But I cannot see the necessity of anybody dying for my sins, so it is an irrelevance. Later, the other woman in the room would tell me confidentially that this kind of talk is what turns her off towards religion. And I knew that she too wasn't turned off to Christ, only the religions and the proselytizers. I only felt pity toward the other woman who wanted to fight with me. She never had a chance to make up her own mind. Her life was ideologically boxed for her before she was born...she must've felt a superiority, a religious superiority quite like the white supremacist that glories in his own existence because he has the existence of billions of heathen as proof of his own superiority.
Inquisition as a definition has taken on numerous insidious forms in our culture. The ideology of the boss colors the ideology of the worker. The ideology of bigoted, hateful supremacists like Pat Robertson and Jerry Fallwell have influenced secular politics. Propaganda demogogues have reign over the news media and whitewash the public with spin and disinformation. All around us there are demigods usurping each other for authority over the collective opinion of the public. But as Dr. West writes, "Our tragicomic times require more democratic concepts of knowledge and leadership that highlight human falliblility and mutual accountability, notions of individuality and contested authority that stress dynamic traditions and ideals of self-realization within participatory communities."
From Richard Wright's novel Native Son, Wright narrates the story of Bigger, a black youth who murdered, "He had lived and acted on the assumption that he was alone, and now he saw that he had not been. What he had done made others suffer. No matter how much he would long for them to forget him, they would not be able to. His family was a part of him, not only in blood, but in spirit. He sat on the cot and his mother knelt at his feet. Her face was lifted to his; her eyes were empty; eyes that looked upward when the last hope of earth had failed." Bigger says "I hurt folks 'cause I felt I had to; that's all. They was crowding me too close; they wouldn't give me no room...I thought they was hard and I acted hard...I'll be feeling and thinking that they didn't see me and I didn't see them."
In an age of greed and consumerism we are coerced into living a nihilistic existence of selfishness where the worth of our lives is determined by how satisfied we are with our entertainment, and using whatever tidbits our entertainment can provide us to distort or color our perceptions of ourselves and others. Our ridicule of each other is only a form of entertainment. Few are really interested in serious inquiry, only with aligning themselves with the accepted notions of the day and entertaining themselves by ridiculing others who don't fit the accepted ideology. Competition is by and large a form of entertainment that degrades into hostility from the alleged "loser".
We should never forget the determination of the SNCC in 1960, a determined bunch of young black students who peacefully, compassionately sought to make the world a better place for all people; to rid the world of a supremacy ideology that enslaved the minds of whites and the bodies of blacks. We should not reject the bravery of those who dare to speak out against war, and who dare speak out about the involvement of the American government in murder, genocide, and drug traffic around the world.
Dr. West writes, "Prophetic critics and artists of color should be exemplars of what it means to be intellectual freedom fighters, that is, cultural workers who simultaneously position themselves within(or alongside) the mainstream while clearly aligned with groups who vow to keep alive potent traditions of critique and resistance."
Dr. West teaches that we should all be true to our heritage, our culture and to ourselves. It is never to anyone's advantage to accept the official government statements and reports. It is never to anyone's advantage to accept a dull life of economic slavery, or the bullying of the rich and powerful. Power is gained and held through exploitation. No matter how much anyone is portrayed in history as exemplary, there are always those around them with a dissenting view. Remember, that asshole on the road who cut you off and then had the audacity to flip you a finger has people in his life who think he is basically a loving person.
The context taken from Cornel West: The Cornel West Reader, essay titled "Black Strivings in a Twilight Civilization."
Posted by Ronald at 11:30 PM | Comments (0)April 26, 2005
In Support of Maggie Gyllenhaal
Before we criticize Maggie Gyllenhaal we need to question the efficacy of the news that brings us our information. If our news consists of reports of official White House releases, statements by anonymous government officials, rhetorical statements made as though they were infallible fact, it is our duty to question. This is not a fundamentalist/liberal, democratic/republican debate. Maggie Gyllenhall is not an enemy. She is a compassionate American who is deeply troubled by the war ideology that has divided us Americans. Since 9/11, every issue is being framed by our congressional representatives and the president's administration in ways to divide us to the brink of an ideological civil war. When Bill Frist makes the filibuster a religious issue he is saying all of us must think as he and the conservative evangelicals, and that it is your fault for not agreeing, not his. And for your refusal to agree you are causing the schism between yourself and others, not him.
Ironically, the administration, conservatives in congress, and their evangelical backers are promoting a radical tyrannical agenda just as they want the public to believe Muslim fundamentalists are engaged in. We are in a modern day version of the crusades pitting religious armies against each other. Maggie Gyllenhaal shouldn't be criticized with vitriolic bellicosity. If anyone has criticism for her they need to find out what she said and ask why anyone would feel it in their best interests to attack us, and not believe some stupid propaganda line that they "hate freedom". Americans don't like it when other communities of the world show a hatred toward us. Why? Because we are a compassionate and peaceful people. So are Arabs, their governments, like ours, don't always do the things that represent them as a whole.
What Maggie Gyllenhaal did, what Cornel West did, Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky have done is to show that there are multiple view points to consider and nothing good can come from a lynch mob mentality. After you have done the research to find out what the Arab people themselves think about American involvement, what the world thinks, how the war is being reported around the world and the reputation we have gotten, what the intellectuals from around the globe think, and frame this information with an understanding of social theory than you have something to add to the discussion. Perhaps you can help others to understand social and political situations better. Otherwise, you are just news junkies with an ear to your favorite commentators.
Posted by Ronald at 10:59 PM | Comments (0)Propaganda Where It Belongs
Walking the aisle of books at the supermarket the other day I was disappointed. I saw cookbooks, fad books, presidential memoirs... I looked across the aisle and there was Sean Hannity's book, a book titled "Why Liberalism is a Mental Disease", and other mindless propaganda trash. Then my disgust turned to laughter as I spotted the large yellow sign above them with big bold letters: FICTION. Ah, someone knew what they were doing.
Posted by Ronald at 03:18 AM | Comments (0)Competition For Authority
Walking to the coffee shop today I passed a policeman in uniform, puffing his chest out which was difficult because his gut stuck out further than his chest. I gave him a smile, but a got a suspicious, stony glance in return. And this is the essence with the problem of our society of competition and divergence. Why? I was at least ten years older than this fellow. And I had to wonder about the idea of conservative fundamentalism, because one of the tenets of fundamentalism is a respect for one's elders and respect for the public one serves. It is the way of fascism to look with an authoritarian eye at the public, and not to look upon them as serving them, rather that you wield authority.
Posted by Ronald at 02:36 AM | Comments (0)Know History - No Joke
Back when I was working in local Government I used to bring text books with me to work and study on my breaks. One day I was reading an 800-900 page text titled "History of the World", and my Supervisor had a snicker on her face and said "ya sure they got all the history in that little book?" I thought for a few seconds and told her "no, but there's more than enough for me to think about in there."
Posted by Ronald at 02:19 AM | Comments (0)April 17, 2005
Jack Anderson's Prophecy
"Our government was not working. The FBI was chasing the wrong people. The Justice Department, instead of prosecuting white collar crooks, was helping them. Men who answered to neither Congress nor the electorate had seized the power of life and death over all of us. Knowledge affecting our destiny was kept secret under the guise of national security. Presidents and their agents, fearing the truth, deliberately lied to us. In hundreds of ways, government was enslaving a supposedly free people."
This quote is from Jack Anderson in his 1974 book "The Anderson Papers".
Posted by Ronald at 04:22 AM | Comments (0)Daniel Flynn and Appropriate Venues
In a recent interview on CSPAN2, Daniel Flynn, author of "Intellectual Morons" was asked who the morons were and he rattled off the names Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn. He said they were intelligent men who let their own ideologies get in the way of their thinking. He gave as an example that Noam Chomsky had questioned the number of people being slaughtered in Cambodia in the late 70s as being over exaggerated when in fact millions were being killed, and that he had made this pronouncement because of an article that had appeared in the New York Times. He also said that Chomsky warned that from 3-4 million Afghanies would die if we went to war their and that the figure is closer to the hundreds of thousands.
Flynn mentioned that he had been banned from speaking on many college campuses and that during a speech at Berkeley Richard Perleman had a shoe thrown at him. He saw irony in the fact that when he was banned from the campuses their was little mention of it in the Press, but when a guy like Ward Churchill is banned from speaking on campus it is national news. He also gave some statistics that showed overwhelming campaign contributions made to John Kerry's nomination for the presidency compared to those given to the Bush campaign and pointed to that as proof that the University campuses are intolerant of free speech and skewed towards sociolist ideology. But this is not as much a question of free speech as it is a question of appropriate venue.
Maybe Flynn is more comfortable with a couple hundred thousand deaths in Afghanistan instead 3-4 million, but a couple hundred thousand is a couple hundred thousand too many. Flynn made some ridiculous claim that the figure could be as low as 3-4 thousand. Let's also not forget that Chomsky laid out the causes that COULD result in 3-4 millions of deaths and that he wasn't playing Nostrodamus. Afghanistan's number one crop last year was the largest crop of poppy ever, and it should be remembered the American government mentioned one of their aims was to rid Afghanistan of poppy production. In Flynn's world it is virtue that we spared the poppy production so the farmers had economic sustenance.
The Cambodia problem in the 70s wasn't widely known to the American public at the time and what Chomsky was really pointing to was the fact the American Government has used these types of matters as a pretext for spreading their own ideological wars in South Korea, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Chile, etc. At most, Chomsky was too quick to pass on his view of the situation regarding the killing, but his effect was to warn the people to not allow their government to use it as a pretext towards their global aims. His message was to learn more about it and get involved.
The statement about Howard Zinn is patently absurd and I imagine produced quite a few giggles. Zinn wrote, "a new radicalism should be anti-ideological." Those of us who have read Howard Zinn know what he truly stands for: "...look at the academic setting in which we live. We find that so much of what is called 'intellectual history' is the aimless dredging up of what is and was, rather than a creative recollection of experience pointed at the betterment of human life. We are surrounded by solemn, pretentious argument about what Marx or Machiavelli or Rousseau really meant, about who was right and who was wrong-all of which is another way the pedant has of saying I am right and you are wrong. Too much of what passes for the theoretical discussion of public issues is really a personal duel for honor or privilege-with each discussant like the character in Catch-22 who saw every event in the world as either a feather in his cap or a black eye-and this while men were dying all around him."
You have to have some intellectual offering to give to prospective listeners on a college campus. A Country Western band is only going to stir up hostility by playing at a Heavy Metal club. The real irony here is that Flynn excoriates the very establishment with which he seeks recognition when he publishes a book titled "Intellectual Morons" and then seeks recognition from the intellectual community. This is a simple baiting tactic.
Does the money given to the Kerry campaign seem to be driven by ideology? Yes, just as the large corporate donations given to the Bush campaign. But it would be inappropriate for Noam Chomsky to try scheduling a lecture at West Point and then claim freedom of speech violations when he isn't allowed to speak there. Universities have an obligation towards freedom of speech, but that doesn't mean they have to allow just anybody on their campus to lecture students. Just because you wrote a book doesn't mean that it should be assumed that what you wrote is worthy of discussion in every venue.
Posted by Ronald at 03:17 AM | Comments (0)April 16, 2005
Stony Faces of Passers-by
It was a warm sunny day and since we don't always have those in West Michigan I decided to go for a walk. There's a nature trail along the river where people ride bikes, rollerblade, jog, stroll with their baby carriages... As I left the house I passed a young woman who lives nearby pushing her baby carriage. I kept eye contact in order to show her I was paying attention to her in order to greet her. Unfortunately, she she turned her head slightly two or three times in order to look at me out of the corner of her eye with a sneer, determined not to exchange pleasantries. I had never talked to this woman. As I walked down the hill I was saddened again to realize that my impression of someone was determined by their passive aggression, while their impression was assumed out of defense.
In Michael Moore's documentary "Bowling For Colombine" he set out to understand why Americans kill each other at a rate of ten times that of any other nation in the world. He traveled to Canada to interview a number of different Canadians from a cross section of their population, all of whom shared the view given by one man from Toronto that the difference between Canadians and Americans is that Americans lock themselves away in their homes, fence in their property and post signs to warn trespassers. They look over their shoulders to see if someone is following them, while Canadians don't lock their doors. Canadians don't want to lock themselves away in fear. To live in such a state of fear is to denigrate themselves and their fellow Canadians.
As I walked the trail and passed all the people protecting themselves with stony looks on their faces, I thought of war and that this was what the war veteran comes home to. This is what the social advocates are up against who dare to speak out on behalf of a compassionate society. And I realized what incredibly strong men and women they really are.
Posted by Ronald at 05:01 AM | Comments (0)April 12, 2005
Public Accountability of the Press
In an April 12, 2005 editorial in the New York Times Nicholas Kristof discusses the decline of America's trust in the news media. What is particularly shocking isn't the distrust Americans have in the news media, but the reasons for that distrust. Recent revelations that the Bush Administration and it's private benefactors have been spending millions of dollars on disinformation campaigns to discredit any opposition to their views should've produced overwhelming public outrage but Americans feel powerless to deny the President, any President that capability. President Bush isn't the first to utilize the Nation's newspapers to spread fictionalized news. Cronyism has been a part of America since the first newspaper. My apologies to the New Hampshire Gazette.
Kristof mentions the plight of Jim Taricani, Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper, all of whom were arrested for not revealing information sources. This should spark large scale public protests, but it doesn't. The public has become so cynical of the news media that less than one in three believe in all of what they read or watch in the news media. (Of course, that is a skewed polling in that no one is going to believe every item reported in the press.) The New York Times itself is still scorned for its revelations a few years back that a few of its reporters admitted to fictionalizing the news. The result of that revelation was public scorn, fanned by remarks from government officials. Yet, not so much as a peep was reported by the Press when President Bush was asked about his Administration's use of fictionalized news and he simply remarked "it's legal."
What is obvious is that the public holds the news media to a higher standard than they do their politicians. The public knows the politicians lie to them and mislead them. It's old news. Politicians know this and by fostering a partisanship through the media they create a division among the people. Liberal and conservative are mercurial terms. By identifying with one label or the other a person's capacity to understand is greatly diminished. But more frightening is that when a person gives himself a label he gives the government a mandate to direct his own reason. He knows he is being misled, but feels it is hopeless to struggle against it. Consequently, when he is exposed to news media he feels as though he must belong in one camp or the other in order to identify with what he is reading. The average American reading the paper resents this manipulation of the material presented to him. There is little to be gained from the news except as entertainment value, and since we want more from our news media than that we are more cynical towards the Press than we are with our own government.
The Bush Administration has succeeded in creating an atmosphere of War, and war has traditionally created what Michael Parenti calls "Superpatriots". Nazi leader Herman Goring had this to say about war: "Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war, neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along. The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
In the late 19th century during the public unrest over economic and working conditions and while other civil issues were fermenting, the government and its wealthy benefactors, along with their mouthpiece, Teddy Roosevelt sought a war to galvanize super patriotic chauvinism and divide the public against itself. Mckinley succeeded with his little war, Reagan in Grenada. In a Plutocracy such as we live under, the foreign aims supercede the public agenda. The Imperialist grab for ever increasing profits and power supercedes civil demands. Most Americans are patriotic, and the news presented to them has a dubious quality. Time and again the Superpatriotic fervor is stirred up through the news media outlets and the nation is ready to take up arms again, only to learn that the situation wasn't quite what the press made it out to be. The Press can talk about how it was reporting the information they had attained, get all of the people with a litany of credentials they can find to debate the matter with the end result that the public has been misled again. And the public holds the news media responsible for this. The public doesn't care that the news journalists and reporters were misled. We still want accountability for the news we receive.
The news media can come a long way in regaining public credibility by stepping out of the political box and stop associating every issue of our day with either conservatism or liberalism, right wing and left wing. I grew up around some of the most conservative people I have ever met who are pro Unionist, and I know many who love guns and describe themselves as conservative because they don't like the idea of homosexuality but in reality are quite liberal. The news media has come to capsulize the individual and cause him to identify himself with a label; he becomes an entertainer for his social compatriots to show his comraderie. It's ironic that Americans have been taught to decry communism for this very issue.
The news media acts as mediator between the government and the people, reports of local disasters aside. When the media is coerced into being a mouthpiece for governmental control it betrays the public. The American public has long since understood the betrayal of our plutocracy, but it is powerless when the news media has also accepted it and serves as little more than a government agent.
Posted by Ronald at 04:36 PM | Comments (0)April 09, 2005
War Veterans on Bicycles
When I was growing up in West Michigan kids would gather at a park to smoke pot, bullshit with each other, maybe go for a swim. And there was an older guy in his thirties who would bicycle to the park and hang out. We used to call him Charlie in reference to his service in Vietnam, though I'm not sure anyone knew what his real name was. He said he didn't drive because it was too much of a hassle, people were always putting money into their cars to keep them up, paying government for licenses. That was the cruxt of many of his arguments for seeming to buck some established societal code. On principal, he rejected any payment or activity that supported the government economically or socially, and he would rail about government iniquities, lies and criminality. Of course, in the middle of his discourses he would be interrupted by us talking among ourselves about chicks, cars and guitars. I considered that rude and at least waited until he had to silence himself to take a hit from the joint before interrupting him.
When someone would introduce a new buddy to our circle he would inevitably ask Charlie the question: "did you kill anyone?", which would send Charlie into a rage. "Whaddaya askin' me that for? I don't know you. Ain't nunna yer bizness." Then he would get on his bike and leave. For us kids it was the excitement of the unknown. To know someone that had killed another man was an awesome thing, at least in the 70s. We were all a few years removed from playing army in the back yard and making believe we were killing Germans or Vietnamese. Some of us still read comic books, Sergeant Fury, Sergeant Rock.
But for Charlie it was a question of absurdity. To him, he was just like the kids on the playground compelled to fight because of the circle of other kids around them cajoling them to fight. While the nation of bankers, politicians and tycoons spreading the Nationalist jingo, conjured up the enemy, justified their own hegemonic intentions and encouraged hatred, he, Charlie was over there, in the jungles, struggling to kill or be killed. The screams of children in the arms of their dead mothers, mothers crying over the bodies of their sons, the stoic look of men that had no choice but to accept it, and the frenzied faces of those who couldn't. The heads of American soldiers on fences, schools full of children blasted an bombed, the look of terror on an enemy soldier as he was gunned down. And all the time the men in their suits with their patriotic pins as though they were part of it all were giving their sons lectures on American moral and military superiority, the heroic patriots sent to murder the enemy to make the world safe for democracy...at least American Democracy. And nobody was exactly sure why there was a threat to American Democracy. But one thing is certain: after the police actions (after public disapproval for these wars the political leaders lost their appetite for the word "war")America was flooded with cheap textiles and many jobs in America were lost.
Oh, Charlie received a pension for his troubles. He was judged to be too unstable for the workforce. But he had already determined that for himself while he was in Vietnam.
Posted by Ronald at 05:35 PM | Comments (0)April 06, 2005
The Competition Society
A young couple moved in recently to the neighborhood and I had a brief conversation with the fellow. They were renting a large unit with a sunroom and a deck, and had two newer cars between them. Their landlord had mentioned that they were college students. The young guy reminded me of the young new hires at the bank I used to work at in Grand Rapids in that they all had an outgoing confidence about them, presumably something impressed upon them in their business school education and by their parents, that confidence necessary to compete. That is an inheritence of our Capitalist society where competition and increased production is the goal, not the means. Goals are simply points to be attained through the dispersion of energy. Goals change, but the drive, the ambition to push ahead economically and produce without regard to need, that is the engine of capitalism, not the fuel. The fuel is the rhetoric we listen to by employers, teachers and peers, the rhetoric that goads us to achieve and go beyond what others have achieved.
But what is sacrificed in this business school society is the inheritance, recognition, courtesy and respect of our fellow man. Long since gone are the days when a man was respected by those younger than him. Today, the young only respect those older if their earning power is more.
When I read Confucius I am very much aware of a heritage passed on to me, a tribal comraderie that dictated familial ethics, ethics that began with the family and spread across the community as extended family. It was an ethics that dictated deference to those who were older, despite their economic condition. So much is lost during youth when egoism has a stronghold on the young mind, drunk with neophyte awareness and feelings of power. Most men in America, when they get older wish they could have the intelligence gained through the years and go back and relive early adulthood. But this isn't necessarily so in a Confucian society that still has respect for older generations and the wisdom they have to give.
This tribal value is also in our own roots. America is European offspring, but we have been a more open society in that our competition demands it. In America, people are commodities, and all commodities have a value. We are all selling ourselves and competing against each other for the highest bidder. In this environment everyone is an adversary. And it is an environment that causes distance between us and our fellow citizens, and makes it possible for those who have attained a level of livelihood to lack concern for those who haven't. This environment is what allows us to justify charging money for healthcare and deny it to those who can't pay for it. This environment is what allows us to justify killing of any kind, to not allow patients with acute pain to take the drugs necessary to alleviate that pain and then condemn them for committing suicide, and allows us to imprison people for having divergent ethical and moral beliefs.
Just because we have made the transition from agrarian societies, industrial societies and technology based societies doesn't mean the values of our forefathers have disappeared. The ethics of Confucius weren't much different than those of the Teutonic agragrian ancestors and most tribes everywhere. To read Confucius is to point the way to our own ancestry, and not the warriors we read about in the history books, and whose exploits we have become so indundated with that we tend to forget the familial virtues of our inheritance.
Posted by Ronald at 02:50 PM | Comments (0)
April 05, 2005
A Passive Aggressive Kung Fu Call
The phone rang and I answered. "Hell-lo," my teacher said in halting english. "Jest a min nit. I give you phone to friend. Jest a min nit."
"Hello," a harsh voice announced. "I don't know why I am talking to you, but he wanted to call you."
"Who is this?"
"C_"
"Okay. Well, what does he want?"
"He says to tell you to call his Accountant. He said you and he talked about some matter and that you should talk to his accountant."
"Okay."
"He also wanted to know how much your airplane ticket was."
"About a thousand."
"He says that's cheap. Where is your flight leave from?"
"Here in Michigan, Gerald R. Ford Airport."
"Huh," I could see the sneer stretching his lips. "I didn't know Michigan had an International Airport."
"Detroit and Gerald R. Ford."
"You named the airport after him?"
"Where is this call coming from?" I had had enough of this person's aggression.
"Where is it coming from?" he repeated, challengingly. "New Hampshire. I used to live in Michigan. But then I got out of there and moved here."
"Who are you to Master Zhang?"
"I'm one of his students. I promote him here."
"Oh, right. Can you give him the phone? Thanks."
"Hell-lo?"
"Master Zhang?"
"Yes."
"I will see you in China, okay?"
"Okay. Good."
"Oh, and Master Zhang?"
"Yes."
"No more give phone C_ call me. Understand?"
"Yes, yes."
"Okay. Good. See you in China."
News Entertainment Shapes the Minds of the Public
It was revealed some time ago that the George W. Bush Administration has been spending 10s of millions of dollars creating its own fake news items and the news entertainment industry continues to air these pieces. Wealthy conservatives have also set up a disinformation group to discredit AARP with all sorts of propaganda and lies to win the hearts of minds of the general public for W. Bush's grab at the money in the Social Security system on behalf of the same plunderers who stole trillions of dollars from the public with their so-called tax cut. When W. Bush was asked about these fake news items he dismissed it with a casual smirk and a reply that it was legal. As if simply getting away with it makes it all right.
Americans are lied to on a daily basis and it is hoped by the wealthy in this country that the general population will just be good little sheep and go to work making the cheap products and exorbitant profits for the economic slavemasters. They expect us to watch network news and read mass circulation newspapers controlled by them so that we are properly indoctrinated with their ideology. So politicians, athletes, entertainers and Professors are paraded before the camera to spout their views.
In a recent interview in Playboy I read an interview with a professional wrestler whom I will admit I have found to be quite entertaining in the past. The wrestler was asked whom he voted for in the past election and his answers led to his stating that he believed that Americans should be loyal and not speak against the country. And this is typical rhetoric from many famous entertainers and politicians. This sort of blind allegiance, a willingness to let others form your mind, is exactly the sort of fervor political leaders hope the entertainers and other influential voices in society will promote because they have the ears and eyes of so much of the public.
But to not say anything, to give blind loyalty is unpatriotic. To not question authority, to not hold it accountable. That is unpatriotic. If the voice in support is allowed, the voice of condemnation must of necessity be heard. The country was founded by protestors. The country was founded on individualism. The country was founded on tolerance. (Although, by tolerance it meant the right of the individual to practice intolerance.)
What was particularly embarrassing was the announcement of some commission appointed by W. Bush denouncing the Intelligence community for not having more knowledge of Iraq as a nuclear threat. This after numerous investigations proved there never were any weapons of mass destruction and therefore the entire global community has denounced the invasion and murder of thousands of Iraqis on a false premise. Bush then announced some stupid propaganda nonsense in the everyday language that so many people identify with: "we will do better." Yeah? At what? Inventing better fake news items? I for one have been waiting for you to do better at that for quite some time.
There is a comedian who talks about how country western singers should shut up and realize that their fan base is the most patriotic, and that they should support the troops, and I would like to slap this guy on the back and give him congratulations on behalf of all those who harbor ambition for leadership. For it's in people like this guy and the professional wrestler I mentioned that the ambitious leader can count on for support of whatever propaganda catch phrases are in vogue. It's people like that comedian that are the backbone for the political fake news pieces and propaganda.
Tom Wolfe wrote about this happening in the 1950s with the Astronaut program and how the news entertainment media found in John Glenn a centerpiece to wrap the entire event into a battle for the heavens, and how John Glenn brought attention to himself with his image of church going family man, driving his old car, dedicated to ideology.
Michael Parenti writes in "Inventing Reality": "If Big Brother comes to America, he will not be a fearsome, foreboding figure with a heart chilling, omnipresent glare as in (Orwell's) 1984. He will come with a smile on his face, a quip on his lips, a wave to the crowd, and a press that (a) dutifully reports the suppressive measures he is taking to save the nation from internal chaos and foreign threat; and (b) gingerly questions whether he will be able to succeed."
Posted by Ronald at 12:41 PM | Comments (0)April 02, 2005
A Campaign Performance
Mumbo! Mumbo mumbo jumbo! That’s what this campaign is all about. Fingers pointing, uproarious hooting. Mumbo….en om gonna beat Al Gore lika drum! Yeah, yeah who hoo! Raise the hands, smile. Mumbo, mumbo jumbo. …en gve the guverment back to th’peeeepplllle! Yeah! Woo hoo. Makin/ monks give up there vow of poverty and sacrifice their thousands for the Clinton campaign, disgraceful. (And to think they could’ve eaten better than they have for the last thousands of years) …en give the guvement back to da peeopppllllee! Woo hoo, yeah! Mumbo, …and give you a tax code you kin unnerstand,! Woo hooo! Point the fingers, lower the voice. ‘But I can’t do that unless one thing happens. Dramatic effect. Quietness from an audience that knows its role. ‘You and all the people across Ohio and this great country of ours has to elect me as President.” Woo hooo. I say stand and say woo hoo!
Posted by Ronald at 11:10 PM | Comments (0)We Are the Slaves
Yeah, I feel the pain. I feel it in my roots. I hear the songs of my ancestors, not so romantic. Just songs of the stifled soul. Living Pangloss’ reason. What is is. There they were in the feudal colonies. There they were serving their lord, and their landlord. Their pope spoke to their landlord, and their landlords held court for their pope. They farmed the land, tilled the land, harvested the land and put the foodstuff in the storehouses of their landlords. Their houses were the landlords’, their food was their landlord’s, their clothes were made from the materials the landlords allowed them to purchase. And they fought for the landlord, to preserve the land of the landlord so their landlord could allow them to live on his land. They protected the landlord. Landlord was god’s representative.
They were emancipated by the great wars and left to fend for themselves and to band together for protection in the future wars. To escape the wars, to escape the edicts and the economics of war, the great economic engine of war they left for America. They escaped the age of reason and pompous sincerity. They kicked against the pricks. They were commoners, farmers, the faithful. Here they tended their fields, here they harvested their crops and milked their cows. Here they built their houses and spoke in their dialects. Here the large families had children for slaves to milk the cows, to plow the fields, mend the fences, churn the butter. And here they came to tend the sick for a living.
Then they too were freed. The boys didn’t have to plow the fields any longer, the girls didn’t have to sew their dresses any longer, mothers didn’t have to tend to their own children any longer. Dads didn’t have to watch over their own children. They were emancipated. The government freed the slaves!
Now everyone was free to serve any master they wanted. The factories and banks provided a new breed of master. The tax collectors, the bill collectors, the policeman, the preachers all provided their own level of mastery. The well connected lawyers and politicians crept along and took hold. The state became the land and they the landlord. They the feudal lord. Government for the people, by the people. And those people feel themselves grand, the representatives of the lord, born to be leaders of men, born to have control. We serve you each and every day, master. For the preacher tells us you are god’s representative. And for that you don’t tax the preacher. Praise be to god!
Roadkill
In Henry Miller's "Air Conditioned Nightmare" he describes the impoverishment of large pockets of America ignored in the news media. And the despair Miller portrays in this book mirrors the gloom I have seen for years now. There's quiet desperation all around me as I watch people gamely live out their lives in economic and ideologic fear. There is a brutal tyranny that subjugates us to adhere to establishment, control, judgement.
Theres a tendency among the critics to think of a story as maudlin, or sentimental or romantic if there are too many tears, too much nostalgia, or too much despair. But is maudlinism so terrible? The very lack of public show, putting a good face on the ugly side of existence is the cause of an overrought, seering discharge of emotions in private. In public, everything is on the veneer, artificial. Every thing is like a formica top with its contents rotting underneath.
On my way to work one morning, after a weekend of leisure, reading, writing and conversing with those close to me, I got in my car and drive in from the country through the mass tangle of cars. As I pass the dead cat on the road with the crow picking at its guts I think of the poor child whose kitty died. I think of the gaggle of turkeys, feathers strewn, body parts everywhere, and know that anyone who would hit those turkeys like that would hit that cat with the same gusto.
Once, while I was driving a paper route I came around a bend and saw two cats carousing. It was four in the morning and my headlights were shining in their eyes, and I watched in horror as one of them suddenly ran out in front my car and I flattened him. That was twelve years ago and I still feel the thump of that cat under my bumper.
A few years before that, in a state of emotional turmoil I floated three cats off to their deaths in a pond without knocking them over the head first. At times I have to look at myself and wince at the things I've thought and done to animals, but my feelings are hardened towards people. The reason we don't act with more than the ridiculous passive aggression towards each other is that we don't have that sense of maudlinism. The great sense of sorrow I have over what I did to those cats is the same compassion I only get a glimpse of in my daily interaction with humans.
We go to work. The phones are ringing. People are demanding. There's deadlines, reprimands, cajoling. But also gentle kidding and laughter if your lucky. But it would be maudlin to point out those little things that make the day bareable, so we pass the day among people whose deaths won't mean as much to each other as the deaths of those cats I drowned meant to me. The paradox here is that I don't want my death to be gut wrenching to anybody, but somehow knowing that it won't be leaves me feeling very empty.
Posted by Ronald at 09:51 PM | Comments (0)Trouble with Attitude
On the way to work every morning I used to be passed by a truck with a bumper sticker that read 'Trouble With Attitude'. Then at night I would see the same vehicle cutting in and out of traffic, tailgating, nudging over to the shoulder to see what the hold up was when traffic slowed. And I remember how I would always look at that bumper sticker and sneer because it represents an alienation from society. It represents suicide to a degree, because in an effort to make a statement of one's own existence, to stand out, to announce oneself to society by putting up a defensive shield(stand back, I'll show you what trouble is), your individuality is actually discounted and illegitimazized. It becomes simple mania. To use your individuality to embrace others is to legitimize it. And it's this embracing that Mr. Trouble With Attitude craves. We are all Trouble With Attitude from time to time, and we use it as a defense, a shield against mean spiritedness, passive aggression, ignominy. It is a way of saying "I refuse to be beaten down, but I am tired of all this passive aggression I see every day. And at this moment I don't care too much how others view me. I am proclaiming my independence.'
Posted by Ronald at 09:51 PM | Comments (0)Lu Zi Jian
It was a four hour drive at ninety miles per hour from Chengdu, the provincial capital of Sichuan and Chongqing, where Chiang Kaishek had moved his government during the Japanese invasion. I was with my teacher, Zhang Yuan Ming and my wife, Zhang Xia, the niece of Zhang Yuan Ming. With us was a teacher from a Chengdu wushu arts school and a chauffer. The highway was brand new, only a year or two old, and we passed more people leading cattle and on bikes than cars.
We arrived at a banquet room in Chongqing in the afternoon and sat at tables facing each other as my teacher took out some magazine articles from his briefcase and gave instructions to Xia as she held his video camera. A very old man with a powerful build and long, white beard sat and passed out cigarettes and chain smoked while my teacher and each of the five other men took turns speaking.
The old man was asked to get up and give us a demonstration and he ran through a short bagua sequence as though he were spinning silk. He then came over to me and invited me to pry his arms apart as he held them in front of his chest. He stood there grinning as futilely struggled to budge them. After the old man sat down and gave a speech we all got into cars and went back to his house.
The old man took a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and handed a cigarette to me and then offered one to everyone in the house. About six of the others accepted and the crowd of 12-15 milled around the old man's house. The walls were decorated with numerous awards and pictures and paintings, artifacts of homage to the great achievements of his life. In the front of the house was the exercise room where he still practiced daily the Kung Fu that had made him an icon. The room had a few large stands of spears and other weapons. The wall had racks of various swords. A heavy bag was on a stand on one side and one of his students with a pot belly kicked it a few times.
I walked through a hallway with books and manuscripts and boxes lining the walls to a corner room in the back with windows that overlooked a courtyard. This was the old man's sanctuary. It was his own personal museum and shrine. There was his altar with its statuary and incense holder, his personal swords, laminated certificates, aged pictures of himself at various points of his life at tournaments and with dignitaries, antique jade objects and an ancient red velvet throne. In the corner near the windows was a large desk cluttered with calligraphy brushes, paintings and a large ash tray filled with cigarette butts.
The old man lit another cigarette and continued to talk with my teacher as my young wife filmed the room at the instruction of her uncle. Zhang Yuan Ming took out his camera and took pictures of the room and the old man doing calligraphy, then he asked the old man to get his photo identification out and show me. The old man smiled and took it out of his pocket and laid it on the desk, and I raised my eyebrows when I read the year of his birth-1893. The old man was 111 years old!
The old man put the identification back in his pocket and lit another cigarette. My teacher ushered him over to his throne and the old man obliged. Xia obediently listened to her uncle and continued taping the event as the teacher got on his knees and bowed before the old man. After getting up and telling Xia to take his picture with the old master he reached into a pocket and handed the old man a huge wad of cash. At first the old man refused, but my teacher insisted and the old man took it and handed to an old woman holding a cigarette who took it somewhere out of sight.
We walked back into the inner room where the rest of the group was discussing the paintings and calligraphy and took seats in a circle. Someone passed out more cigarettes and we all took turns passing them out as we listened to the old man talk about kung fu. Afterwards, we all went to a local restaurant and sat for 3 hours, gorging ourselves and toasting each other, passing around cigarettes and talking about Kung Fu. The old man ate very light, but had with him two crafted tobacco pipes which he filled many times as he talked and lectured and explained to the group that Zhang Yuan Ming had integrity and wasn't teaching Kung Fu for money. By the way, that old man's name was Lu Zi Jian.
Posted by Ronald at 02:50 PM | Comments (0)Bums in San Francisco
To me the most difficult process of human existence is the treatment we afford one another. It tells a lot about ourselves that so many people can pass a dying person on the street without so much as a notice. I arrived in San Francisco mid-evening on a cold mid-December day. A bus took me and other passengers from the airport to various destinations in the city. What struck me more than anything was that amidst the flashing neon signs were so many homeless people wandering along with vacant eyes. They were everywhere and came from all walks of life. Of course, so very few people decide that when they grow up they want to beg change from passersby, set up a box in front of City Hall or a bank and crawl inside to keep out of the wind. The homeless leered from closed store fronts, out from under tattered scarves wrapped around their heads, out of the stairwells to the BART. I arrived at the hostel, slipping away from the driver before he could turn toward me in expectation of his undeserved tip(he berated a fellow passenger and humiliated him in front of the rest of us). I walked past several homeless bundled in doorways in the one block to the hostel with its gaudy green sign glaring amidst the sea of flashing signs of the strip clubs.
In the morning I went back to the hostel office to get a bagel and a cup of coffee and the young woman asked me how I liked San Francisco. So I told her that it looked better during the day. "Oh, what do you mean?" she asked in a somewhat condescending way. "Well, back home we don't have so many bums on the street," I said. "Oh," she said, affecting a superior attitude, "it must be nice to live somewhere where there aren't any homeless people." "We have homeless, we just provide them with a place to stay," I said. She wasn't happy with that exchange so she asked me where I lived and I told her Michigan. "Well, she said, "we don't regard the homeless with fear here. They are just a part of the City." So I gave her what she wanted, condension. "There is a lot of fear everywhere. Maybe that's what keeps me from having fun. I'm going to go out and have a good day," I said, with all the enthusiasm I could muster for the performance. And she urged me on with all of her enthusiasm. But it was all I could do to keep the tears back as newspaper scraps whisked past me when I opened the door to the street, and the heavy energy of sorrow dropped from my solar plexus into the pit of my stomach.
Posted by Ronald at 01:05 AM | Comments (0)
