In The Time Of Their Time-With Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show In Mind

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Smokestack Lightning, Indeed- With Bluesman Howlin’ Wolf In Mind

 Smokestack Lightning, Indeed- With Bluesman Howlin’ Wolf In Mind

By Lance Lawrence  

[As of December 1, 2017 under the new regime of Greg Green, formerly of the on-line American Film Gazette website, brought in to shake things up a bit after a vote of no confidence in the previous site administrator Peter Markin was taken among all the writers at the request of some of the younger writers abetted by one key older writer, Sam Lowell, the habit of assigning writers solely to specific topics like film, books, political commentary, and culture is over. Also over is the designation of writers in this space, young or old, by job title like senior or associate. After a short-lived experiment by Green designating everybody as “writer” seemingly in emulation of the French Revolution’s “citizen” or the Bolshevik Revolution’s “comrade” all posts will be “signed” with given names only. The Editorial Board]

[Although I am a much younger writer I today stand in agreement with Bart Webber and Si Lannon, older writers who I admire and whom I have learned a lot from about how to keep it short and sweet but in any case short on these on-line sites. Originally I had agreed with both men as far as Phil Larkin’s, what did, Si call them, yes, rantings about heads rolling, about purges and would have what seems like something out of Stalin’s Russia from what I have read about that regime were  dubious at best. Now I am not so sure as I have heard other younger writers rather gleefully speaking around the shop water cooler about moving certain unnamed writers out to pasture-finally in the words of one of them.

In any case the gripe the former two writers appropriateness of this disclaimer above or whatever it purports to be by the "victorious" new regime headed by Greg Green and his so- called Editorial Board is what I support. As Bart first mentioned, I think, if nothing else this disclaimer has once again pointed told one and all, interested or not, that he, they have been “demoted.”  That I too as Si pointed out while I chafed as an Associate Book Critic and didn’t like it am now just another Everyman. Although this is the first time I have had the disclaimer above my article I plead once should be enough, more than enough.

In the interest of transparency I was among the leaders, among the most vociferous leaders, of what has now started to come down in the shop as urban legend “Young Turks” who fought tooth and nail both while Alan Jackson (aka Peter Paul Markin as blog moniker for reasons never made clear, at least to me) was in charge and essentially stopping young writer developing their talents and when we decided that Allan had to go, had to “retire.” (I am sure Phil Larkin will take those innocent quotation marks as definite proof that Allan was purged although maybe I should reevaluate everything he has said in a new light.) But I agree with Bart and Si’s sentiment that those on the “losing” end in the fierce no-holds barred internal struggle had taken their "beating" and have moved on as far as I can tell. That fact should signal the end of this embarrassing and rather provocative disclaimers. Done. Lance Lawrence}    

Sometimes a picture really can be worth a thousand words, a thousand words and more as in the case Howlin’ Wolf doing his Midnight creep in the photograph above taken from an album of his work but nowadays with the advances in computer technology and someone’s desire to share also to be seen on sites such as YouTube where you can get a real flavor of what that mad man was about when he got his blues wanting habits on. In fact I am a little hesitate to use a bunch of words describing Howlin’ Wolf in high gear since maybe I would leave out that drop of perspiration dripping from his overworked forehead and that salted drop might be the very thing that drove him that night or describing his oneness with his harmonica because that might cause some karmic funk. So, no, I am not really going to go on and on about his midnight creep but when the big man got into high gear, when he went to a place where he sweaty profusely, a little ragged in voice and eyes all shot to hell he roared for his version of the high white note. Funny, a lot of people, myself for a while included, used to think that the high white note business was strictly a jazz thing, maybe somebody like the “Prez” Lester Young or Duke’s Johnny Hodges after hours, after the paying customers had had their fill, or what they thought was all those men had in them, shutting the doors tight, putting up the tables leaving the chairs for whoever came by around dawn, grabbing a few guys from around the town as they finished their gigs and make the search, make a serious bid to blow the world to kingdom come. Some nights they were on fire at blew that big note out in to some heavy air and who knows where it landed, most nights though it was just “nice try.” One night I was out in Frisco when “Saps” McCoy blew a big sexy sax right out the door of Chez Benny’s over in North Beach when North Beach was just turning away from be-bop “beat” and that high white, I swear, blew out to the bay and who knows maybe all the way to the Japan seas. But see if I had, or anybody had, thought about it for a minute jazz and the blues are cousins, cousins no question so of course Howlin’ Wolf blew out that high white note more than once, plenty including a couple of shows I caught him at when he was not in his prime.         

The photograph (and now video) that I was thinking of is one where he is practically eating the harmonica as he performs How Many More Years (and now like I say thanks to some thoughtful archivist you can go on to YouTube and see him doing his devouring act in real time and in motion, wow, and also berating father Son House for showing up drunk). Yes, the Wolf could blast out the blues and on this one you get a real appreciation for how serious he was as a performer and as blues representative of the highest order.

Howlin’ Wolf like his near contemporary and rival Muddy Waters, like a whole generation of black bluesmen who learned their trade at the feet of old-time country blues masters like Charley Patton, the aforementioned Son House who had his own personal fight with the devil, Robert Johnson who allegedly sold his soul to the devil out on Highway 61 so he could get his own version of that high white note, and the like down in Mississippi or other southern places in the first half of the twentieth century. They as part and parcel of that great black migration (even as exceptional musicians they would do stints in the sweated Northern factories before hitting Maxwell Street) took the road north, or rather the river north, an amazing number from the Delta and an even more amazing number from around Clarksville in Mississippi right by that Highway 61 and headed first maybe to Memphis and then on to sweet home Chicago.  

They went where the jobs were, went where the ugliness of Mister James Crow telling them sit here not there, walk here but not there, drink the water here not there, don’t look at our women under any conditions and on and on did not haunt their every move (although they would find not racial Garden of Eden in the North, last hired, first fired, squeezed in cold water flats too many to a room, harassed, but they at least has some breathing space, some room to create a little something they could call their won and not Mister’s), went where the big black migration was heading after World War I. Went also to explore a new way of presenting the blues to an urban audience in need of a faster beat, in need of getting away from the Saturday juke joint acoustic country sound with some old timey guys ripping up three chord ditties to go with that jug of Jack Flash’s homemade whiskey (or so he called it).

So they, guys like Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Magic Slim, Johnny Shines, and James Cotton prospered by doing what Elvis did for rock and rock and Bob Dylan did for folk and pulled the hammer down on the old electric guitar and made big, big sounds that reached all the way back of the room to the Red Hat and Tip Top clubs and made the max daddies and max mamas jump, make some moves. And here is where all kinds of thing got intersected, as part of all the trends in post-World War II music up to the 1960s anyway from R&B, rock and roll, electric blues and folk the edges of the music hit all the way to then small white audiences too and they howled for the blues, which spoke to some sense of their own alienation. Hell, the Beatles and more particularly lived to hear Muddy and the Wolf. The Stones even went to Mecca, to Chess Records to be at one with Muddy. And they also took lessons from Howlin’ Wolf himself on the right way to play Little Red Rooster which they had covered and made famous in the early 1960s (or infamous depending on your point of view since many radio stations including some Boston stations had banned it from the air originally).Yes, Howlin’ Wolf and that big bad harmonica and that big bad voice that howled in the night did that for a new generation, pretty good right.  

A HANDBOOK FOR REVOLUTIONARY PRACTICE IN THE AGE OF IMPERIALISM

On The Anniversary Of The Russian Revolution Of 1905-

By Frank Jackman

For the attentive reader of this unabashedly left-wing publication which moreover not only takes history seriously but commemorates some historical nodal points worthy of attention today I have drawn attention this month of January to the 100^th anniversary of the assassinations of key nascent German Communist Party leaders Rosa Luxemburg, the rose of the revolution, and Karl Liebknecht the heart of the left-wing German workers movement. In that commentary I noted that history in the conditional, especially when things turned out badly as they did in Germany with the failure of the Communists to take power within a few years of the Armistice and aid the struggling isolated and devastated Russian revolution, is tricky business. There were certainly opportunities closed off by the decimation of the heads of the early German Communist Party that were never made up. That failure helps in its own way to pave the road to the Nazi takeover and all that meant for Europe and the world later. I also cautioned against stretching such conditionals out too far without retreating to an idea that the rise of the Nazis was inevitable. Give it some thought though.
History in the conditional applies as well to events that would in the future turn out well, well at the beginning in any case, and that leads to the role played by what many parties including Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky referred to as the “dress rehearsal” for the October Revolution in Russia in 1917. That was the Revolution of 1905 which although it was shattered and many of the leading participants either killed, exiled or banished still provided some hope that things would turn on that proverbial historical dime in the end. The key organization structure set up in 1905, the Workers Soviets, councils, which in embryo provided the outline for the workers government everybody from Marx and to his left argued for to bring socialist order to each country, to the world in the end almost automatically was reestablished in the early days of 1917. Who knows in conditions of war and governmental turmoil what would have happened if that organizational form had not already been tested in an earlier revolutionary episode. Again, let’s not get too wide afield on history in the conditional on this end either. Think about those episodes though as we commemorate that 1905 revolution. 


   





BOOK REVIEW

‘LEFT-WING’ COMMUNISM-AN INFANTILE DISORDER, V.I. LENIN, UNIVERSITY PRESS OF THE PACIFIC, CALIFORNIA, 2001

An underlying premise of the Lenin-led Bolshevik Revolution in Russian in 1917 was that success there would be the first episode in a world-wide socialist revolution. While a specific timetable was not placed on the order of the day the early Bolshevik leaders, principally Lenin and Trotsky, both assumed that those events would occur in the immediate post-World War I period, or shortly thereafter. Alas, such was not the case, although not from lack of trying on the part of an internationalist-minded section of the Bolshevik leadership.

Another underlying premise, developed by the Leninists as part of their opposition to the imperialist First World War, was the need for a new revolutionary labor international to replace the compromised and moribund Socialist International (also known as the Second International) which had turned out to be useless as an instrument for revolution or even of opposition to the European war. The Bolsheviks took that step after seizing power and established the Communist International (also known as the Comintern or Third International) in 1919. As part of the process of arming that international with a revolutionary strategy (and practice) Lenin produced this polemic to address certain confusions, some willfully, that had arisen in the European left and also attempted to instill some of the hard-learned lessons of the Russian revolutionary experience in them.


The Russian Revolution and after it the Comintern in the early heroic days, for the most part, drew the best and most militant layers of the working class and radical intellectuals to their defense. However, that is not the same as drawing experienced Bolsheviks to that defense. Many militants were anti-parliamentarian or anti-electoral in principle after the sorry experiences with the European social democracy. Others wanted to emulate the old heroic days of the Bolshevik underground party or create a minority, exclusive conspiratorial party. Still others wanted to abandon the reformist bureaucratically-led trade unions to their then current leaderships, and so on. Lenin’s polemic, and it nothing but a flat-out polemic against all kinds of misconceptions of the Bolshevik experience, cut across these erroneous ideas like a knife. His literary style may not appeal to today’s audience but the political message still has considerable application today. At the time that it was written no less a figure than James P. Cannon, a central leader of the American Communist Party, credited the pamphlet with straightening out that badly confused movement (Indeed, it seems every possible political problem Lenin argued against in that pamphlet had some following in the American Party-in triplicate!). That alone makes it worth a look at.

I would like to highlight one point made by Lenin that has currency for leftists today, particularly American leftists. At the time it was written many (most) of the communist organizations adhering to the Comintern were little more than propaganda groups (including the American Party). Lenin suggested one of the ways to break out of that isolation was a tactic of critical support to the still large and influential social democratic organizations at election time. In his apt expression- to support those organizations "like a rope supports a hanging man".

However, as part of my political experiences in America around election time I have run into any number of ‘socialists’ and ‘communists’ who have turned Lenin’s concept on its head. How? By arguing that militants needed to ‘critically support’ the Democratic Party (who else, right?) as an application of the Leninist criterion for critical support. No, a thousand times no. Lenin’s specific example was the reformist British Labor Party, a party at that time (and to a lesser extent today) solidly based on the trade unions- organizations of the working class and no other. The Democratic Party in America was then , is now and will always be a capitalist party. Yes, the labor bureaucrats and ordinary workers support it, finance it, drool over it but in no way is it a labor party. That is the class difference which even sincere militants have broken their teeth on for at least the last seventy years. And that, dear reader, is another reason why it worthwhile to take a peek at this book.

When The Bolsheviks Went Into The Trenches To Stop Russian Continued Participation In World War I, Circa 1917

When The Bolsheviks Went Into The Trenches To Stop Russian Continued Participation In World War I, Circa 1917

By Lance Lawrence    

[Sam when he was telling the story, Frank Jackman’s story, to his longtime companion Laura who knew some of the outline of Frank’s military service,  had to bring her up to speed on some of the specifics which the reader may as well be interested in although Frank a few years early had written a detailed summary of the whole affair for the Progressive Nation magazine when they were doing a series on Vietnam veterans and wanted the perspective of an anti-war soldier who while in the military became a military resister. (While every serious civilian peace activist then, or now, honors those who “got religion” as Sam likes to call it on the issues of war and peace after their military service was completed the military is the special category that marks off this story from theirs.) 

Here in quick outline is what Sam told Laura. Frank had been drafted in 1969 in the heart of the Vietnam War, had allowed himself to be inducted with a slight anti-war feeling but not enough to do anything else about so accepted induction in the Army. (Sam, just to set the record straight had been drafted in 1968 had served a year, actually thirteen months with a month R&R in Hawaii, in Vietnam as an 11 Bravo, an infantryman, a grunt, “cannon-fodder” as Frank would say, and saw other do, and he did things which still cause restless nights.)  

About three days into basic training down south down in notorious Fort Gordon near Augusta, Georgia which all recruits go through Frank realized that he had made a big mistake, a very big mistake, since whatever seemingly slight anti-war feeling he had previously expressed had actually been a pretty powerful opposition to war but only had been awakened by the actual experience of Army life. Frank would always tip his hat later to those draft resisters who had formed their powerful opposition to war before facing induction and under the threat of several years of federal prison. Nevertheless, being no place where he could seek help and not sure what help he needed he went through both basic training and, and this is important, Advanced Infantry Training, the same training that Sam had gone through about a year earlier, meaning training as an infantryman, grunt, “cannon-fodder” as he came to call it. That meant no question in the post-Tet summer of 1969 when the Army was desperate for replacements after suffering heavy casualties and the only place on the good green planet when 11 Bravo skills were in anything like serious demand was in Southeast Asia orders to Vietnam. At the end of that training with a month’s leave before reporting to Fort Lewis, Washington for transit that was exactly what happened.                     

While home, still not sure what he was going to do, he got in touch with the Quakers up in Cambridge who he had found out were doing counselling for G.I.s in exactly his situation. The option presented which applied to him out of several not good paths to choose from, after a technical AWOL (absent without leave, a no no) to get dropped from the rolls for not reporting to Fort Lewis, was to turn himself in at the nearest Army post which was at Fort Devens out in Ayer, Massachusetts and apply for Conscientious Objector (CO) status. A long shot as the counsellor made clear but the route he had to follow if he expected relief. At that time the Army was turning down virtually all such applications whatever basis for the beliefs, sincere or not. Frank was turned down on the basis of his Catholic just war theory and moral and ethical objections none of which then were viable as reasons for discharge, and as the next step the Quakers had gotten him a lawyer who was very interested in testing these kind of Army turndowns in federal court on writs of habeas corpus. That was one strand of the Frank case which in the end would be the way that he got out of the Army via granting of a writ in civilian court and received an honorable discharge as a result since the court ruled the Army had acted arbitrarily and capriciously in turning down his admittedly sincere application.   

The other more important strand, the one which makes sense of why Frank startled Sam by affirming his pride in what he had done in the military one night soon after he had gotten out and more recently reconfirmed several weeks ago was his increasing commitment to the cause of peace, to stopping the massacres in Vietnam. One day he decided not without feelings of extreme anxiety to join a demonstration those Quakers from Cambridge were putting on at the front gates to the fort. During the duty day and in uniform both illegal. That action lead to his first special court-martial where he drew and served a six month sentence, or rather almost six months with a couple of weeks chopped off for good conduct. Sam had to Laura explained some of the specific details of that case previously about how the military authorities pretty high up in the fort conspired to try to ship him off under guard to Fort Lewis for transit to Vietnam something that

was only averted by a time temporary restraining order from that federal court in Boston. Also explained how Frank in his defense of his actions in open court had read into the record Bob Dylan’s searing Masters of War which drove the judges apoplectic.  

Stockade sentence one down Frank had clearly what he called “gotten religion” about war and peace during this whole process and almost immediately after he got out one Monday morning early on the weekly parade field where everybody lined up he came storming out of the barracks in civilian clothes carrying a sign “Bring The Troops Home.” That brought a second Special court-martial in which he drew another six month sentencing serving almost all of it before the writ of habeas corpus came through releasing him from the Army’s clutches. Otherwise Frank had mentioned one time he might still be in the stockade the way he was feeling and the Army was obliging him in his determination to break the chains holding him to the Army.

Another night Frank would tell Sam and some other friends that after he first turned himself in long before he served serious time he had felt relieved of the fear that troubles most people into thinking twice about doing what their heart tells them to do for fear of incarceration. He, not having been entangled with the law previously had had to stay in a naval prison cell in Boston subsequently a State Police holding cell before being transported to a short pre-trial detainment cell in the post stockade, after turning himself in as an AWOL. That very few days of initial imprisonment acted as a catalyst since a lot of the fear of jail time, which is nevertheless hard time to do no matter what anybody says, is a fear of the unknown and of stories heard from childhood about not doing this or that unless you wanted to wind up behind bars where they might lock you up and throw away the keys. The first taste relieves that anxiety. He made everybody laugh that night when he related how every freaking dumb-ass drill sergeant in basic training and AIT would warn their charges that any willful misconduct would wind them up in Fort Leavenworth, the maximum security hard-ass hard time place for the incorrigible. After surviving that first small bout, that mere taste Frank recalled that he would keep repeating to anybody who would listen- “hey, what do you want to do wind up in Leavenworth” when they threatened to put him away for keeps. A strange way to lose your fear of being locked up in the slammer but a nice cautionary tale. Lance Lawrence]

******

You never know, especially if you have lived in this wicked old world long enough, when some ancient memory long buried will come up and bite you. Not literally but make you sit up and take notice nevertheless. Take the case of one Frank Jackman, a writer, something of an inventor, and for our purposes one of those guys whom he, when in writing mode, has called a member in good standing of the Generation of ’68, a turbulent war time, roller coaster of emotion time which deeply formed many a baby-boomer. Oh yes and for our purposes since we will be speaking of war and what the hell to do about stopping it as we approach the final year of the 100^th anniversary of the First World War, the so-called war to end all wars, a full-fledged Army veteran. A veteran of a certain type not to be found in the cheap dollar a hard liquor drink bars adjacent to your local American Legion or Veterans of Foreign Wars meeting hall.        

This is the way Frank told Sam Lowell, a friend from high school down in North Adamsville, south of Boston also a veteran but of the more traditional type, except also minus the cheap bar stuff one night over a couple of drinks at The Grotto in downtown Boston near the Seaport District. (A story Sam would tell his longtime companion Laura, Laura Perkins as well after setting up the story with a brief Frank Jackman introduction outlined above.) Frank had, as mentioned previously, startled Sam by opening up the conversation with a statement that he had always been understatedly proud of his Army record, what he had done for the cause of peace in his very small individual way, when, using old familiar language from their growing up poor Acre section of town, the deal went down. (Sam had automatically thought after hearing that sentiment that Frank should be rather than understatedly have been “understandably” proud of that record wishing he had done something similar when he time had come to face his demons.)

Sam was a bit confused by Frank’s comment nevertheless since while both men were Army veterans and whatnot they seldom of late had talked about those experiences much less what lessons Frank as the more political type of the two had drawn from that experience. He asked Frank why he had brought up that point since they long ago had agreed that Frank had done the right thing during his Army time (and that Sam to his everlasting regret had not but nobody pushed that point then or now). What had caused that recollection to surface once more was a recent “controversy,” what Sam usually called “a tempest in a teapot” when whatever the problem was it was minor in the great scheme of things. This would prove the case as well but Sam could see where Frank would be incensed by the implications of what went as a result of that minor event in the great scheme of things.

Of all things almost fifty years later the big deal was over Frank’s discharge, his official DD214 which for all military personnel is the summation of one’s service time and discharge. What enabled you to be called veteran by friend and foe alike, and what entitled you to certain governmental benefits reserved for those in veteran status. If you can believe this would come up with what you already know from above about whether he was even a veteran. Sam gasped in disbelief but held up comment because he wanted every gory detail of this charge.

Both men, each from a different place but each having “gotten religion” on the issues of war and peace, began shortly after Frank’s discharge which was later than Sam’s to work with various anti-war veteran groups like the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). Sam did that kind of work for a while and even today if Frank asks him he will show up at an anti-war rally against American aggression in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan or the ever-growing threat of war in places like Iran and North Korea. But mostly he was bogged down with work, with three ex-wives and a parcel of kids who almost broke him with college tuition and left the politics to Frank. Frank as well would have periods of political inactivity due to a lot of the same reasons Sam had except he would stick with it more for the long haul-those periods of inactivity he called an “un-armed truce” with the war-monger. Particularly Frank (and Sam for a longer while than usual having finally gotten that parcel of well-behaved kids through college which had nearly broken him having a little more free time) became incensed and energized over the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld Iraq invasion of 2003 and wound up joining the local chapter of another veteran’s peace group, Veterans Peace Action (VPA), in Boston. And that is where “the rubber hit the road” as one of Sam’s expensively-trained at his almost breaking point expense college boys would say.      

Frank, as anybody who read the introduction could see a mile away, once he is committed to something is in “all the way.” That was his approach to VPA once he decided to join up. That joining up process as previously with VVAW and other later organizational affiliations meaning no paper membership but an activist’s commitment and for a few years, several years actually, there was no problem, no political problem. When Frank had joined he had specifically joined the local VPA chapter since there was an option to join the local, the national organization or both. He opted for the local since he felt, and still feels that the national organization is something that he would be merely a paper member of which did not interest him in the least. Things seemed okay until a local member with ties the national organization who let’s call him as Frank did “the Inquisitor-General” began an individual campaign a few years ago directed mainly at Frank declaring that he was not a member of VPA since he has not, had never, paid dues to National (he did faithfully to the local chapter as well as contribute extra funds for various campaigns another usual step when he was “all in”). The Inquisitor-General as it turned out was right when Frank checked that matter out. Was right as far as that fact went although the local held to its long-time which was reaffirmed in their subsequently enacted by-laws that one could be a local member without being a National member as long as one, with various hardship exceptions, paid local dues. Mostly bureaucratic hokum as the whole thing drifted like smoke from his mind.

Not so the Inquisitor-General (let’s call him to save cyberspace I-G for simplicity’s sake hereafter). He would periodically badger Frank about his “non-membership” usually via e-mail since while the I-G may have been an organization stickler he played other than poster child “thorn in the side” no active role in the local organization. Had his base of support to the extent that he had any in the national office VPA bureaucracy.  Then about a year ago the I-G amped up his campaign, decided for his own nefarious reasons or his own delusions, or maybe both, that if Frank didn’t apply for National VPA membership which required proof of military discharge, that vaunted DD214 that he was “hiding” something ( that proof of discharge a requirement of the local chapter as well but being a looser not as well organized volunteer organization with fewer resources and less procedural hurtles had never asked Frank, or many others for that matter, for discharge papers upon becoming members). He was hiding something, something nefarious in a veterans’ organization of any stripe, that he was possibility not a veteran. Frank sensing a twisted turn in events in order to protect himself had quickly contacted the State Adjutant-General’s Office to get a copy of his discharge since he no longer had a copy at home. A few days later it came via e-mail and he forwarded that copy to the local executive committee which was the appropriate place to verify his status under normal circumstances. End of story as Sam was famous for saying.

Not quite, actually not by a long shot. The I-G as far as Frank could tell never pressed the issue further that year. Several weeks ago the I-G again pressed the issue not only to Frank but to the Executive Committee once again defaming Frank as possibility not a veteran. The executive committee or the members who overlapped from the previous year told the I-G that they had seen Frank’s discharge and that was that. As you now know that was not the case. The I-G essentially defaming the committee in the process wanted a copy of the discharge which he as a merely marginal member of the local VPA was emphatically not entitled to view for privacy reasons among others. He kept up a drumbeat including to Frank to produce the DD214 although Frank had a long-standing policy of not responding to anything from the I-G for any reason after few blow-outs a few years previously. On this particular issue Frank was adamant that he needed no “good conduct certificate” by the I-G (or any other entity including the local and National branches of VPA) as a stand-up anti-war soldier. Without going further into the silly rather continuously repetitive details at some point not yet concluded the Executive Committee started expulsion proceedings against the I-G and Frank has retained a lawyer to begin a defamation suit in Massachusetts court.           

         

During this whole nightmarish Kafkaesque/1984 process Frank had a chance to think through not only his pride in his individual actions against the American war machine during the Vietnam War but his changing attitude not toward the personal actions themselves but to their effectiveness. That is in a sense the real reason, if one was necessary since the question of discharge for him was finished the day he received his discharge back in February of 1971, Frank had kept his personal history “on the low” as they say in another context. That leads us finally to the title of this piece, the why of the Bolshevik way to stopping war in its tracks at the soldier, grunt, cannon-fodder on the ground.        

You see, and the first time Sam heard Frank mention this he freaked out, Frank has come to believe that pride or not he should have when ordered to Vietnam gone there and seen what he as an anti-war soldier could do to stop the war “in the trenches” taking a phrase from World War I. His later model the Bolsheviks, at that 1969 time their anti-war policies unknown to him, who Frank thought correctly ordered their male members if inducted or dragooned into the Czarist armies to accept that induction under penalty of expulsion from the organization (a policy of later Bolshevik-descended organizations including the Communist and Socialist Workers parties in their better days in the United States).

Not for the Bolsheviks the refusal of the draft notice as occurred in America with wide-spread refusal on an individual basis. Refusal by the kind of politically adept young men whom if they had been inducted and accepted orders to Vietnam en masse could have perhaps shifted the balance. Shifted it even more drastically than in the actual case where the American Army in Vietnam in 1969 no end in sight, no victory in sight, nothing but useless deaths in sight was half-mutinous. Had, as individual soldiers Frank met in VVAW and VPA would confirm from refusal to go beyond the minimum ordered march to FTA on their helmets to laying wasted under marijuana and other refined killer drugs. Was an army even to, maybe especially to, the top generals, a spent force and which would take an all- volunteer and several years to put back into fighting trim.

Such actions by those young men, by Frank, might have shortened the war by years. Of course such speculation would depend on whether such numbers would have been permitted to go, whether in Frank’s individual case he would have landed in a unit that would listen to him, whether he might like many others have landed in mutinous Long Binh Jail (LBJ). One thing Frank knew as this 100^th anniversary of the last year of the First World War was coming into focus collective action beat individual acts of conscience six, two and even. He laughed as he thought about how insignificant the I-G’s nonsense mattered in the great scheme of things except he had to be stopped in his tracks like any other miserable wannbe big fish in a little pond. Somethings never change.