Looking for a
few good… people who want to defend the American Republic against the Greed-heads
and Con Men-You have allies-Vietnam Veterans Seth Garth And Ralph Morris Are
Afraid For The Fate Of The Republic And If They Are I Am Too-Count Us In
By Frank
Jackman
Politics and
our relatively new site manager Greg Green are hard task-masters. The politics
part is simple or relatively simple since the Republic is in some danger these
days starting right at the top with the POTUS, his hangers-on and his assorted
lackeys and enablers which I will go into detail more below. But first to the
“why” of why I am I am writing this screed at this time a couple of years
before the 2020 Presidential elections (if it was merely the Congress that was
the problem, which it is, then we could comfortably wait until 2020 but these
are urgent times so now is the time to wade into this mess). Recently Greg
wrote a short, well maybe not short if you had to read the damn thing, piece in
this publication summing up his take on what had happened after the first year
of his regime. (See From The Archives Of
“American Left History”-An Analysis And A Summing Up After His First Year By Site
Manager Greg Green, dated November 18, 2018) In that piece Greg noted that
he had perused the publication archives since 2006, since the operation went
totally on-line for financial reasons after many years as a hard copy then hard
copy and on-line combined.
After
spending some time on the mistakes he had made, notably his hare-brained attempt
to draw a younger demographic by catering to film, book, music reviews lite, he
drew two major conclusions about the drift of the on-line publication under long-time
former site manager Allan Jackson. The first was the joined tendencies to move
away from film, book and music reviews that had animated the early days of the
operation and rely more on what Greg called “nostalgia” pieces about coming of
age in the 1950s and 1960s by the older writers, Allan’s contemporaries, and some of the younger writers called
“prison” since they were either too young had not even been born when all of
this happened and when they dragooned
into the work they had to ask parents, grandparents and those older writers
about what had happened back then. Under the old regime I had the official
designation “political commentator” since abolished so l rarely delved into
reviews except when some political angle came up and it made sense for me to
put my two cents in.
The second major
comment, which very much concerned me, was his surprise that since 2006 the
amount of primary political commentary, meaning original articles and not
material grabbed “off the wire” as we call it from other sources making us more
of a clearing house for generally progressive and left-wing groups and
individual views. He particularly noted the still-born series that I had
started in about 2007 as I was getting ready to comment on the forces gathering
for the 2008 presidential elections. (See Rolling
The Rock Up Just To Have It Come Tumbling Down-Prometheus Chained, dated
March 8, 2008) I had assumed since 2008, like 2016 and unlike the upcoming 2016
elections that with no incumbent that the fireworks would be worthy of serious
commentary. And for a while it was until early 2008 when, despite a heated contest
between Hillary Clinton and the successful Barack Obama and a fistful of
candidates on the Republican side, particularly one Mitt Romney who I has
skewered endlessly when he was Massachusetts governor and more after when he
became “Mr. Flip-flop” when he got the fire in the belly to be POSTUS, tweet
speak if you must know, and realized he was out of step with the reactionaries
in the Republican Party that the whole thing evaporated in thin air. That any
time spent on the ins and out of what I call, and more and more others do as well,
bourgeois politics was so much wasted space, so much as some young radicals
would say back in the 1960s when the idea of voting only meant encouragement to
those evil forces that what they said had meaning.
Greg cornered
me at the water cooler one day and mentioned that he thought the series had
even if truncated been some of the best , and funniest, political writing he
had seen from me and wished me to take another stab at it for 2020 since a big
part of what is coming up will be who will wind up facing the wicked witch of
the West, the senile old hag Trump if he goes the distance and is not wearing some
form of prison garb for high crimes and high misdemeanors come that November. I
gave him several very valid reasons for not doing so from that old-time theory
of not feeding the animals, trolls in modern speak, not encouraging what will
be by any standard, any modern standard an undignified street fight. If I
wanted that I would have long ago continued on my youthful dream of being a
power before the throne after the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy threw me
for a loop rather than move away, way away with my nose covered from that kind
of politics. (The being dragooned into the Vietnam War against people I had no
quarrel with also helped in that decision no question.) So for a while I was
able to hold Greg off on any commitment to the kind of reportage that ruined
Theodore White and subsequently Doctor Hunter S Thompson’s careers when they
got catch in the whirlwind trap of every four years having to debase themselves
by giving, for serious pay granted as against the pittance received here, their
pithy remarks about the progress of such vapid campaigns.
Enter Ralph
Morris, of the famed Ralph and Sam Stories which were recently given an
encore presentation by Greg with introductory remarks by the slightly
“rehabilitated” back from Siberian exile, Babylonian captivity or whatever you would
like to call his purge and its aftermath former site manager Allan Jackson as
editor. Ralph, a much-decorated fellow Vietnam War veteran who like me went
over to the anti-war side as a result of what he did, what he saw others do and
most importantly what his government made him do to those benighted people in
Southeast Asia. Ralph along with Sam Eaton are both members of the “street
cred” wise Veterans for Peace
organization and men ready at the drop of a dime to march against war
and any number of social justice issues cornered me one day at Jimmy’s Grille
in downtown Boston and asked me whether it was true or not that I had turned down
Greg’s idea of starting up another series on the election campaigns. I said
yes. He came storming back first saying hey the 2020 campaign had already
started the night the midterms were over, maybe before for some like Elizabeth
Warren who already had “the fire in her belly” for a while and was just pacing
the floor for now. Started telling me to get in on the ground floor of what will
be something not seen in this country since the time of blessed Robert F. Kennedy
and his vision-and bag of dirty tricks which is why I loved the guy when the
deal went down in 1968 even if that Irish poet bastard McCarthy from Minnesota led
the fight before Bobbie got his courage up.
More importantly,
and in this Ralph, Sam, me, and maybe everybody east of the Mississippi and not
a few west of that tidal pool as well know we are living in the secular version
of end times these days. The times of cold civil war ready at the drop of a hat,
ready at will be some seemingly obscure event, ready to turn hot and nasty like
the brothers and cousins war of the 1860s. This is the way Ralph put the matter
to me, with Sam backing him up which surprised me a bit because of the pair Sam
always seemed a little more radical, a little readier to bring fire and brimstone
down on any sitting government in Washington. Ralph said that he too was as
ready on any given day to call for bringing the sitting government down as not
and gave the classic example of that first effort on May Day, 1971 to end the
Vietnam by attempting, unsuccessfully attempting to bring the Nixon government down.
Now, 2018 now, after two years and more of flame-throwing by those who would close
the door on the Republic he was fearful, as fearful as he, they had been back
in 1971 when the Republic was in the balance that once again that awful end time
kind of thing was in the wind. Practically that meant that he was ready to
unite with anybody, including the devil, Jimmy Higgins, Johnny King and whoever
else was ready, to defend the Republic. By any means necessary even jumping into
some presidential campaign like I had back in 1968. Whee!
Thus who am I
to say as I did in 2008 a pox on both, on all, of your houses and will for
Ralph and Sam’s sake try to revive that commentary which I had begged off of
from Greg. Enough said.
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