Upon The 50th Anniversary Of The Death Of "King OF The Beats" Jack Kerouac-As Hometown Lowell Celebrates- On The 60th Anniversary Jean-bon Kerouac's "On The Road"- “Desolation Angels”

On The 60th Anniversary Jean-bon Kerouac's "On The Road"- “Desolation Angels”-Book Review

Book Review

Desolation Angels, Jack Kerouac, Coward McCann, 1965

I have been on something of a Jack Kerouac “tear” over the past year or so since I started re-reading and reviewing his works and thinking through their influence on my own literary tastes around the commemoration of the 40th anniversary of his death (and re-reading, additionally, those of his “beat” generation friends, among the most prominent, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Lawrence Ferlinghetti , Gregory Corso, and Gary Snyder who also helped form those tastes and who find their way, under alias and alibi, into Desolation Angels). As noted previously this “tear” got its start “accidentally” with a trip on totally unrelated business that I took last summer to his hard-edged, hard luck, hard-times, hard-visioned, seen better days, ram-shackled, big two-hearted Merrimac River, water-powered, dust-choking textile-spinning and tannic acid-fumed shoe old working class mill town, Lowell, Massachusetts.

There are a thousand old worn out working class towns like Lowell that, by now, dot the great American highway night, towns formed before the great American mid-20th century pre-Interstate highway night (roughly). The pink blue sky westward trek (and back, as well) hard thumb up traveling, shoe leather-beating, rucksack-hanging, good luck diner/gas station-finding, coffee slurping, highway and back road by-way Lowell towns night, as sang out in various “on the road” chapter passages of Desolation Angels formed Jack Kerouac’s vision. And he sang of that good night, as Walt Whitman sang of the great American 19th century night as those same now forsaken towns began to rise and spit out all manner of thing, for delight or approbation. That worn out working class town, always just below the surface of the Kerouacian word play, and its fellaheen-driven ethos, moreover, was just the kind of town that I grew up in so unless it is something in the water around here in Massachusetts then it is no “accident” that old “beat” brother Kerouac “speaks” to me. And “speaks” loudly. Desolation Angels, in any case, stands in that tradition.

You see then why, when the deal goes down, down and dirty, I know Jack Kerouac. Oh no, not the way his many “beat” writer friends did , at least those who peopled, as in Desolation Angels, his many tell-the-truth-fast, quick judgment, acid-etched observations on the fly fast, write what you see and write it fast, “real” novels. Not, for sure, like renaissance Raphael did(Gregory Corso), poet of the streets, the streets of San Francisco poetry renaissance as well as homeboy streets of hard ethnic New York City, of the fast poem buck, of wine and women, of the sing to the masses whether they like it or not, mad man of a poet. Or not like Bull did (William Burroughs) of the dark, drear, dope-infested ding-dong daddy, shoot-‘em-up daddy, walking daddy, gong, bong, hash pipe-heavy, opiated dream world hiding out in the open in Tangiers (although it could have been anywhere, dope follows no flag, New Orleans, Houston, somewhere, although not old home St. Lo) waiting with open arms for Kerouac to take his “on the road” show international. And not like super-mantra, om-om-om om-ish poet Irwin (Allen Ginsberg, of San Francisco garage yell to the America ocean’s floor and mountain’s top Howl and New Jersey mother, death-be-not-proud cadenced Kaddish fame), who also sang that Kerouac-like Whitmaneque song of good fellowship, of death to the machine, of death to the death-machine, of death to the cardboard night, of the break-out Patterson night (or nights), and the break-out machine America, as well. And most certainly not like Cody (Neal Cassady) foot-clutched, brake-pedaled, “look ma, no hands”, “road” warrior extraordinaire to the great American expanse, day or night. (Although by the time of this novel the Ti Jean and Cody trails were heading in different directions, very difefretn directions.) There were others who knew him back on those lonely, down-at-the-heel, provocative post-World War II New York streets, friends of Ginsberg, of Burroughs and assorted hangers-on. That interconnectedness is the stuff of legend but well before my time, although I heard the echoes of that struggle, that fellaheen “beat” struggle, in my own youthful efforts to break out of the straightjacket of the 1950s childhood when my time of my time came in the 1960s.

I know Jack Kerouac. Although not as a latter day academic prier into each Kerouac word ever written or even as a latter-day devotee of his spontaneous prose writing style. Certainly not as an adherent of his standoffish, sideline view of life and consciously apolitical (maybe, more appropriately, anti-political) lifestyle, as that was embarrassingly emphasized in a famous segment on old prep school chum William F. Buckley’s Firing Line public television show where he went out of his boozy, woozy, floozy way to dump on the counter-cultural movement (“hippies”, okay) of the 1960s. From early on in my youth I was more likely, much more likely, to be immersed in reading things like The Communist Manifesto (if only to dismiss it out of hand-then) and had no time for reading a simple “beat” travelogue like On The Road although I was personally struggling along those same lines to ‘find myself’ (sound familiar ?), to find that great American night. Later I would devour the thing (repeatedly) along with the rest of his major works like Dharma Bums, Visions Of Cody, Big Sur, Doctor Sax and others. None more so, after On The Road, than Desolation Angels.

I know Jack Kerouac. I know, like Kerouac did, as a youth painfully but now with a sense of deep pride, what being from the lower edges of the working class was all about. One does not easily shake off the slow incremental deathblows to the psyche of avoiding authority, avoiding challenges to the status quo, avoiding failure by being a non-starter and most of all avoiding negative public (read neighborhood) notice. I, moreover, know, physically and emotionally, the very constricted ethos of the old time New England mill towns and the working class quarters of Manchester, New Hampshire, Saco, Maine and in Massachusetts Waltham, Lawrence, Quincy and Jack’s own beloved river-divided, brick on brick-piled mill town of Lowell. Without going into great detail, after all this review is about Kerouac, I know in great personal detail the effects of that clannish French-Canadian and Gallic Catholic cultural gradient as it worked it way through the working class base of many of those above-mentioned mill towns. Moreover, some of that detailed knowledge of mine is directly linked to the city of Lowell that factored so much into Kerouac’s life and writings (and death, the city has a small urban park named after him in the center of town and people, I am told, still go to visit his grave there).

Most of all, though, I know Jack Kerouac because a generation, more or less, after him I was, like a million others who formed the “Generation of ‘68”, taking to the ‘road’, some road, in search of personal destiny, greater consciousness, some political wisdom, the truth, a little look at the great continental expanse, or just trying, and trying with both hands, to get out of the stunted, shunted, dark night, memory-fogged family house. The previously disdained apolitical “On The Road” became something of a personal bible for me in that minute, as like Whitman before him, Kerouac tried to do by interior monologue, but more importantly, by physically putting some space between the here of whatever was bothering him and the there of some inner peace (that he, at least from what I can tell, never found). The road I took then, or later, was not Jack’s road. Or Dean Moriarty’s road. But, thanks Jack for On The Road, The Dharma Bums, Doctor Sax, Visions of Cody, the present Desolation Angels, and a bunch of other books that got me through many a sleepless night as I tried to find the keys to the kingdom.

Here is the real “skinny” though. Jack, as media-proclaimed ‘leader’ of the “beats” (and, in retrospect, he really was the most talented and original of the lot) never overcame all those crooked river-flow, old time dusty mill town anxiety-producing, drawing on generations of suffering ignoble anonymity-beating down, Lowell night whispers. And the wheels, his wheels, driven as well by that old devil alcohol, came off. The effects of that cloistered, repressed working class youth, as surely as if he had spent thirty years in the mills, began to take its toll. The final section of Desolation Angels in which he travels, in "style" on a Greyhound bus (“on the road, part ten, part whatever”) with his mother (dear memere) from Florida to California in search of peace only to run back a few weeks later here reflect that inner drive to withdraw, to go home to mill town memere and quiet.

Moreover, a recent re-reading of some of Dharma Bums gives at least some clue to what else happened to this superior and innovative writer in that dark night sixties Jack by-passed American road. He was, after all, as the work that is remembered today will attest to, a young, very young, writer writing for the young about youthful experiences. There is only so much fresh inner-directed material that that market can absorb from one writer. The aging media celebrity Kerouac, sadly, could not, or would not, face the fact of aging and shift gears. I have already given my kudos elsewhere for that youthful work of his. That will have to do here.

Happy Birthday Keith Richards-From The Archives- The Cultural Contradictions Of The Generation Of '68

Commentary

Those who have followed this space over the past year may have noticed that I have spend some little time going back down memory lane some forty years to that decisive year of 1968, a year to which I have attached the term the 'Generation of ’68'-the generation who fought or fought against the Vietnam war and other issues of that day. Blame the misbegotten elections of 2008 for my preoccupations. I expected to spend more time on that presidential campaign but around June of this year I discovered that it was basically so much “ill wind” abrewing. So onward.

Of course the generic term ‘Generation of ‘68’, like that of our immediate forbears the media-crowned ‘greatest generation’, is as much a metaphor for what we attempted to do in those days on a social, political and cultural level as an actual definable structured phenomena. In the past I have mentioned that we, mainly out of innocence or better still ignorance (sometimes willfully so, as in the early rejection of Marxism as a guide to seeing things) made every mistake in the social, political and cultural book. We have, unfortunately, lived to pay for those essentially youthful mistakes with a forty year ‘blow back’ from the reactionaries who have had a free run of this country ever since.

If today, in December 2008, we have a little breathing room for our old time visions we best think things through better this time because, as it turns out, we are historically only given limited space and time to prove that we are capable of listening to “the better angels of our natures”. That said, as I have been at pains to point out in this space, not all of our long ago efforts should be dismissed out of hand. I nevertheless want to use this entry as a place to examine some of the cultural conceptions that, upon reflection, while they seemed very radical and progressive then seem kind of stale and ‘corny’ today. I intend this as a continuing entry through the next year or so. Feel free to add your "howlers" from the old days. Here’s the grab bag for now.

Back To The Archives, Please.

The Rolling Stones: Sympathy For The Devil, starring The Rolling Stones (1968 members), directed by Jean-Luc Godard, 1968

In an entry elsewhere in this space I noted my early youth allegiance to The Rolling Stones with the following remarks:

“I am not sure exactly when I first hear a Stones song although it was probably “Satisfaction”. However, what really hooked me on them was when I hear them cover the old Willie Dixon blues classic “The Red Rooster”. If you will recall that song was banned, at first, from the radio stations of Boston. Later, I think, and someone can maybe help me out on this, WMEX broke the ban and played it. And no, the song was not about the doings of our barnyard friends. But, beyond that it was the fact that it was banned that made me, and perhaps you, want to hear it at any cost….

That event began my long love affair with the blues. And that is probably why, although American blues also influenced the Beatles, it is the Stones that I favor. Their cover still holds up, by the way. Not as good, as I found out later, as the legendary Howlin' Wolf’s version but good. I have also thought about The Stones influence recently as I have thought about the long ago past of my youth. Compare some works like John Lennon’s “Working Class Hero” and The Stones’ “Street Fighting Man” (yes, I know these are later works) and I believe that you will find that something in the way The Stones presented that angry, defiant sound appealed to my working class alienation.”

Thus when I recently re-watched this Stones-based documentary, self-styled political manifesto and 'new wave' film by one of the cultural hero-directors of the 1960’s I expected to get as excited over its presentation as the first time I saw it. Well, here is the “skinny”. I still love The Stones’ song “Sympathy For The Devil” the production of which forms the core of this film. I do not, however, need to see the creation of this musical rock and roll gem over the course of an hour and one-half interspersed with one thousand and one of Godard’s pre-occupations of the day from Marxism to pornography to racism to Black Nationalist politics. In out youths we accepted anything that was new, different and haphazard as pure as the driven snow. Forty years later this reviewer may be a more little jaded but certainly less self-indulgent, as Godard should have been in directing this film. Some things from the 1960’s age very well like the social commitment to “seek a newer world”. Others are best left in the archives.

Strictly For Aficionados

The “Genuine” Basement Tapes”, Volumes 1-5, Bob Dylan and The Band (1967 members), Alternate Edge Productions, 2002

In a review of Bob Dylan’s “The Freewheeling Bob Dylan” elsewhere in this space I noted:

“In reviewing Bob Dylan’s 1965 classic album “Bringing All Back Home” (you know, the one where he went electric) I mentioned that it seemed hard to believe now that both as to the performer as well as to what was being attempted that anyone would take umbrage at a performer using an electric guitar to tell a folk story (or any story for that matter). I further pointed out that it is not necessary to go into all the details of what or what did not happen with Pete Seeger at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 to know that one should be glad, glad as hell, that Bob Dylan continued to listen to his own drummer and carry on a career based on electronic music.”

And I am still glad of that fact. What I am less enamored of is the virtual cottage industry that has grown up around various bootleg, basement, cellar, barn, attic or other odd location versions of Dylan’s work, electric or acoustic. This archival material is nice for folk, rock and cultural historians but I would argue that Mr. Bob Dylan’s usually well-produced albums are after over forty years more than enough to listen to without having to get into the minutia of his career. And, somehow, made to feel in the process that one has missed something without this other more esoteric material. In short, these five volumes of practice, outtakes, cuts, etc. done with The Band while he was “hiding” out in rural New York after his motorcycle accident are strictly for aficionados.

That said, for those who insist on getting their little hands on this material here is the “scoop”. From Volume One- “Odds And Ends”. From Volume Two- “Quinn The Eskimo”. From Volume Three-“Tiny Montgomery”, “Santa Fe” and “Sign Of The Cross (excellent)”. From Volume Four- “You Ain’t Going Nowhere”, “Confidential To Me” and “Bring It On Home”. From Volume Five (the album to get if you get just one)-“Four Strong Winds”, Joshua Gone Barbados” “I Forgot To Remember To Forget”, “Bells Of Rhymney”, “Spanish Is The Loving Tongue”, “Cool Water”, “Banks Of The Royal Canal”. These are all covers and very nicely done, if sometimes hard to hear.

Once Again, On Those Damn Tapes

The Basement Tapes, Bob Dylan and The Band (1967 members), CBS Records, 1975

Parts of this review were used in a review of The “Genuine” Basement Tapes. I make most of the same objections here for this set as I did there, except if you need to choose between the two the quality of the production values here is greater than on the former. Although the more I listen to Volume 5 of the “genuine” tapes with that “Joshua Gone Barbados” and hard to hear but mesmerizing cover of “ I Forgot To Remember to Forget” and a couple of others I am starting to waver.

In a review of Bob Dylan’s “The Freewheeling Bob Dylan” elsewhere in this space I noted:

“In reviewing Bob Dylan’s 1965 classic album “Bringing All Back Home” (you know, the one where he went electric) I mentioned that it seemed hard to believe now that both as to the performer as well as to what was being attempted that anyone would take umbrage at a performer using an electric guitar to tell a folk story (or any story for that matter). I further pointed out that it is not necessary to go into all the details of what or what did not happen with Pete Seeger at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 to know that one should be glad, glad as hell, that Bob Dylan continued to listen to his own drummer and carry on a career based on electronic music.”

And I am still glad of that fact. What I am less enamored of is the virtual cottage industry that has grown up around various bootleg, basement, cellar, barn, attic or other odd location versions of Dylan’s work, electric or acoustic. This archival material is nice for folk, rock and cultural historians but I would argue that Mr. Bob Dylan’s usually well-produced albums are after over forty years more than enough to listen to without having to get into the minutia of his career. And, somehow, left to feel that one has missed something without this other more esoteric material. That same sentiment applies to the virtuoso work of The Band in their heyday. And certainly to their joint work. In short, this two disc set of practice, outtakes, cuts, etc. done with The Band while he was “hiding” out in rural New York after his motorcycle accident are strictly for aficionados.

That said, for those who insist on getting their little hands on this material here is the “scoop”. “Tears Of Rage” ; “You Ain’t Going Nowhere”; “Yazoo Street Scandal” and “Odds and Ends” are what you are getting this CD for. That does not seem like enough given what I mentioned above.

*THE STREETS ARE NOT FOR DREAMING NOW-Norman Mailer's "Miami And The Seige Of Chicago"

Click on the headline to link to a "The New York Times" obituary for American writer Norman Mailer article, dated November 10, 2007.

COMMENTARY/BOOK REVIEW

MIAMI AND THE SIEGE OF CHICAGO, NORMAN MAILER, THE NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY, NEW YORK, 1968

As I recently noted in this space while reviewing the late Norman Mailer’s The Presidential Papers at one time, as with Ernest Hemingway, I tried to get my hands on everything that he wrote. In his prime he held out promise to match Hemingway as the preeminent male American prose writer of the 20th century. Mailer certainly has the ambition, ego and skill to do so. Although he wrote several good novels in his time like The Deer Park I believe that his journalistic work, as he himself might partially admit, especially his political, social and philosophical musings are what will insure his place in the literary pantheon.

With that in mind I recently re-read his work on the 1968 political campaign Miami and the Siege of Chicago -the one that pitted Lyndon Johnson, oops, Hubert Humphrey against Richard M. Nixon. This work is exponentially better than his scatter shot approach in the Presidential Papers and only confirms what I mentioned above as his proper place in the literary scheme of things. Theodore White may have won his spurs breaking down the mechanics of the campaign and made a niche for himself with The Making of a President, 1960 and his later incarnations on that same theme but Mailer in his pithy manner gives an overview of the personalities and the stakes involved for the America in that hell-bent election. I would note that for Mailer as for many of us, not always correctly as in my own case, this 1968 presidential campaign season and those conventions evolved in a year that saw a breakdown of the bourgeois electoral political process that had not been seen in this country since the 1850’s just prior to the Civil War.

The pure number of unsettling events of that year was a portent that this would be a watershed year for good or evil. Out of the heat, killing and destruction in Vietnam came the North Vietnamese/National Liberation Front Tet offensive that broke the back of the lying reports that American/South Vietnamese success was just around the corner. Today’s Iraq War supporters might well take note. In the aftermath of that decisive event insurgent anti-war Democratic presidential hopeful Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy’s seemingly quixotic campaign against a sitting president jumped off the ground. In the end that Tet offensive also forced Lyndon Johnson from office. And drove Robert Kennedy to enter the fray. The seemingly forgotten LBJ spear carrier Hubert Humphrey also got a new lease on life. I will have more to say about this below. Then, seemingly on a dime, in a tick we started to lose ground. The assassination of Martin Luther King and the burning down of the ghettos of major cities in its aftermath and later in the spring of Robert Kennedy at a moment of victory placed everything on hold.

That spring also witnessed turmoil on the campuses of the United States exemplified by the Columbia University shut down and internationally by the student –ignited French General Strike. These and other events held both promise and defeat that year but when I reflect on 1968 almost forty years later I am struck by the fact that in the end one political retread, Richard Milhous Nixon, was on top and the front of an almost forty year bourgeois political counter revolution had began. Not a pretty picture but certainly a cautionary tale of sorts. The ‘of sorts’ of the tale is that if you are going to try to make fundamental changes in this society you better not play around with it and better not let the enemy off the hook when you have him cornered. That now seems like the beginning of wisdom.

I have written elsewhere (see archives, Confessions of An Old Militant- A Cautionary Tale, October 2006) that while all hell was breaking loose in American society in 1968 my essentially left liberal parliamentary cretinist response was to play ‘lesser evil’ bourgeois electoral politics. My main concern, a not unworthy but nevertheless far from adequate one, was the defeat of one Richard Nixon who was making some very depressing gains toward both the Republican nomination and the presidency. As noted in the above-mentioned commentary I was willing to go half the way with LBJ in 1968 and ultimately all the way with HHH in order to cut Nixon off at the knees.

I have spent a good part of the last forty years etching the lessons of that mistake in my brain and that of others. But as I also pointed out in that commentary I was much more equivocal at the time, as Mailer was, about the effect of Robert Kennedy the candidate of my heart and my real candidate in 1968. I have mentioned before and will do so again here that if one bourgeois candidate could have held me in democratic parliamentary politics it would have been Robert Kennedy. Not John, although as pointed out in my review of The Presidential Papers, in my early youth I was fired up by his rhetoric but there was something about Robert that was different. Maybe it was our common deep Irish sense of fatalism, maybe our shared sense of the tragic in life or maybe in the end it was our ability to rub shoulders with the ‘wicked’ of this world to get a little bit of human progress. But enough of nostalgia. If you want to look seriously inside the political conventions of 1968 and what they meant in the scheme of American politics from a reasonably objective progressive partisan then Mailer is your guide here. This is the model, not Theodore White’s more mechanical model of coverage, that Hunter Thompson tapped into in his ‘gonzo’ journalistic approach in latter conventions- an insightful witness to the hypocrisy and balderdash of those processes.

*Out In The Be-Bop Night- Fragments On The Ethos Of Working Class Culture- The Old "Beat" Town, Circa 2010-For Barbara, Class Of 1964

Click on the headline to link to an American Left History blog entry, Fragments On The Ethos Of Working Class Culture–Frankie’s Big Summer’s Day Walk, Circa 1960, dated Friday, August 13, 2010, the first entry in this series, to read the introduction to the series.

Markin comment:

Crossing the Neponset River Bridge from the Boston side these days, walking-sore-footed, ankle-ached, worn-out, scuffed leather shoes, rounded-heel shoes, soles thinned-out shoes walking-just as was almost always my mode of transportation, and maybe yours, in the old days, and sometimes for me in the not so old days-ain’t like it used to be. That new (1970s new, anyway), higher-standing , pot-holed patched, unevenly asphalt-paved even on good days, uninviting, if not just plain dangerous, walk-way, ugly slab-concreted, built by the lowest bidder, bridge that routes traffic, hither and yon, is not like the old one, “ walking to think things over friendly."

Not today, anyway, as I brace myself for a serious look see at our beat-up, beat-down, beaten-back, back-seat-taking, smudged-up, blood and sweat-stained, bitter-teared (very bitter-teared), life-drained, seen better days (although I do not, personally, remember having seen those better days, but people keep saying, even now, there was a such a time so let’s leave it at that), almost genetically memory embedded , character-building (yes, that old chestnut, as well), beautiful (yes, beautiful too, oddly, eerily beautiful, or as mad, shamanic poet Yeats, he of that that fine Anglo-Irish word edge, would put it, "terrible beauty a-borning" beautiful ), old working class home town.

It’s silly, I know, to get misty-eyed over it but I miss the old archaic pre-1970s drawbridge bridge with its ghastly-green gates to stop car traffic (how else could you describe that institutional color that no artist would have on his or her palette, and no serious professional business painter would stoop to brush on anything much less a gate) and the lonely stony-eyed concrete medieval fortress of a tower (and its poor, bored, had to be bored, keeper, or tender or whatever you call that “look out for the big boats coming and going” guy, and it was always some old guy who looked like he could swap stories, buddy to buddy, with King Neptune, and probably did) to let the bigger boats, courtesy of the law of the seas, make their way to dock.

Or, better, I hope, I fervently hope, for the boats to get clearance from that old codger, old Neptune’s brother, to race, to crawl, to put-put, to hoist sail or whatever such boats do to get to the open sea, the wide open blue-grey, swirling, mad, rushing, whirling dervish of a sea, out to beyond the breakwaters, out to beyond the harbor islands, to the land becoming mere speck, and then mere vanish, and more adventure than I could even dream of, or think of dreaming of. At least I hope those oil-stained, diesel-fuelled (including those awful faint-producing fumes), powerfully-engined, deep-drafted, fully–stocked boats that drove river traffic and stopped car traffic came back or went out in search of those adventures away from the placid wooden-lumbered doldrums docks up along the Quincy side of the river.

But, one thing is for sure, whatever happened to the boats, or on them, that old bridge, that old green-gate painted monster of a drawbridge, gave you a chance to pause mid-bridge, fright-free, not-having-to-watch-your-back-for-fast-cars-caroming-by free even, to look up and down midstream; to dream, perhaps, of tidal drifts and fair winds to the far reaches of this good, green planet, as far as you could carry yourself and your backpacked, bed-rolled belongings, or as long as the money held out; to bestir yourself afresh to think of oneness with the seventy-eight trillion life forms (hey, I didn’t count them, alright, this is just an estimate, a very rough estimate) that flow in the murky, and on some days very murky, depths right before your eyes down to our homeland, the sea; to dream vista dreams of far away picture postcard cooling ports-of-call in the sweaty, sultry summer day airs or churn madly with the flow of wild summer night airs that led from the old home town west, north, south, somewhere, anywhere; to dream the dream of dreams of misspent (no way, no way misspent), suggestive, very suggestive, radio-blared Lets Spend The Night Together or The Night Time Is The Right Time, whiskey-bottle in hand (or, maybe, beer-canned if dough was tight, or way back when and you were underage if your wino buyer didn't show that night), best-gal swinging (quaint, okay, but we are all adults and you know what I mean) Saturday nights; and, to think that one thought, that one midstream on the bridge-driven thought that would spring you from the woes of woe begotten, troubled-filled (for me, and, maybe, you) dear, (now dear, anyway) beat, ancient-ached, old timey, presidential graveyard of a growing-up home town.

This new one, this new bridge, as I stand mid-bridge and peek back to my left routes, if you can even call it that, traffic via a Daytona race track-worthy, curvy-swurvy ramp to the beach, Wollaston Beach, down the now, in places anyway, three lane-wide, freshly-paved and white-lined Quincy Shore Drive. That’s our old Wollaston Boulevard, down by shore everything’s alright, of sacred ashy memory. And as I watch the traffic flow, the car traffic I think not of vanilla, too bright, too light, too slight day time beach, for now, because I am flooded with visions of the “real” beach of my manic dreams- “the night time is the right time" beach. Enough of daytime, kiddish, bucket and shovel whines and childish butterfly daydreams, enough. Alright?

I just now, and you can follow along too, float dream of teenaged Saturday nights, or maybe even Friday nights, or both, cruising, nowhere, somewhere, anywhere, to the pink- blue, cloud-swollen, sun-devouring, Western nightdream skies, always just beyond our reach. Of you riding "shotgun" in your buddy’s car, a be-bop car, or, I hope, at least bop, late 1950s, and pray hard for a ’57 Chevy or something “cool” like that, borrowed from his old man, stopped at close by high school (remember), Merit gas station and filled, two-dollars-worth-of-gas-check the oil-please-filled. Or his own car, your buddy's, the old man's, leavings, given gratis, when that self-same old man stepped up to a new, bigger-finned, power-steered, rumble-engined, airplane of a car, a new sign that he had “made it” in hard dollar America. Of stolen sickly-sweet wines or breathe-soured whiskeys to ward off the night-forebodings, made sweeter or more sour by the stealing from that same old man’s, or maybe your old man's, liquor cabinet, if they had such an upscale thing, or else just from some dusty high cupboard shelf so the kids can’t get at it place. And, and, oh boy, visions of those moon-beamy, dreamy, seamy, steamy Saturday night beach parking, car-fogged, car-wrestled, “submarine races” watchings that were the subject of Monday morning boys’ rest room (okay, “lav”) roll call, recital and retailing (or, hell, probably in the girls’ room too, I bet, but the now women can tell their own tales). Whoa!

Beatified night-dreamed beach Quincy Shore Drive also routes, now that my blood pressure has returned to normal, to daydream summer sunbathing, or maybe even before summer sunbathing for early tans to drive away the fierce, ghost-like New England winter pales, in the real sun daytime down by the weather-beaten yacht clubs (tumbleweedy, seedy, paint-needy Wollaston and Squantum). Away, well a little away, from the early encountered mephitic sea grass marshes near the Causeway (you know where, right?-the old First National supermarket, now CVS drugs-for all occasions-store location), away from the deadened, fetid, scattered sea grasses and the muck, and in plain kid talk, away from the “stinks”, away from the tepid waves apologetically splashing on the ocean smooth-stoned dunes, away too from the jelly-fish (are they poisonous, or not?) spawning and spattered along the edges of the low tide line, and, most fervently, away, away from the oil-slicked mud flats of childish shovel and pail clam-digging adventures, clams squirting and screaming from their sand hovels that need not detain us here, that story has been told elsewhere by me, and often.

Once you have passed the fetid swamps, the mephitic marshes…, but wait a minute, who knows such un-childlike, or un-teenager-like, for that matter, words like fetid and mephitic and where, as a child, even if you knew the words, would you connect those words with pail and shovel digging to China, or some faraway place, beach; with tide-melting, furtive but fevered, sand castle-making, beach; with coolly and focused looking for treasure, somebody’s leavings, some body’s rich leavings so you think, beach; with learning about the fury of Mother Nature and the pull and push of tides first hand when old Mother (like womb mother) turns her fury on, beach; with later finger (or stick) sand-tracing of your name defying the tides to erase your brand as you fight, and fight hard, for your place in the sun (and maybe linking up your sweetie’s name, just for good measure, in that struggle with eternity), beach; with fellaheen digging for clams for fun or profit (or food for table, who knows) down at the Merrymount end, beach; with family barbecue outings, hot dogs and hamburgers, extra ketchup, please, beach. With, well, beach, beach. No, fetid and mephitic will not do, I like my dreams, my child remembrance dreams, cloud puffy and silky.

This bridge, this too far bridge, this man-standing memory bridge, or however you named it, or whatever you thought of it, or wherever you were heading, destiny-heading, heading to your growing-up-like-a-weed town, heading just like a-lemming-to-the-sea town pushes the brain in a couple of directions. Heading south anyway, shore drive south, south to the rivieras, south to the old time kid’s Paragon Park. Rickety, always needed, desperately needed, fresh paint coat, landlocked, off-limits showboat bar-entranced (gay place, before gay word existed as a social category, but what did we know then, or care, just quarters for skeets, please, ah, please), ocean-aired, between-the toes-sanded, sun glass-visioned against the furious midday sun Paragon Park. Roller coaster Paragon Park (hey, maybe sick, before you got the hang of it, right), wild mouse (kid's stuff, ya I know) Paragon Park, cheap, colorful skeet ball points trinket prize, sugar high, lips smacked cotton-candy, stuck to the roof of your mouth, roof of the world, salt water taffy-twisted, hot-dogged (hold the mustard, no onions), pin ball wizard’d, take your baby to the carnival feel the tunnel of love, Paragon Park.(Or later, coming of another age, the Surf, and a whole other memory bridge of dreams, not for now though.) Or south of that south to some old time, unnamed, misty adventure, some ancient Pilgrim-etched mayflower rocky shored adventure, some ancient forebear's praise Jehovah plainsong heard whistling through some weed-filled granite slate graveyards, not mine; mine is of shanty Irish "famine" ships and old kicked out of England convict labor, hell-hole, "hillbilly" Appalachia work the coal mines, boats. Down along that old slow as molasses, take your time, wait at every just barely red stoplight, watch out for side-glanced cop cars, two-laned, white stripped, no passing (hardly), ocean-touched (in places) road. Memory-washed, memory-etched, memory south youth road, ah.

Yes, that cotton-candy dream is enough to stir even a hardened soul, but as I shift, stiffly shift, weight on my tired old high-soled, age-qualified, age-necessary, bop-bop shoes(no more of "young" fashionista statement, skinny-soled, fire engine red Chuck Taylor’s, now of sturdy, new age, aero-flow, aero-glow, aero-know, aero-whatever, for this heavy work, this airy memory work, bop-bop shoes), I stand straight up in mid-bridge balance and veer my head to the right. That move makes me focus my mind’s eye to the heart, the soul, the guts of the old growing-up town via a narrow, straight and narrow, slit in the road, a road constructed in such a way as if to say no cuts-ups, fops (quaint, again), or oddballs wanted here, as it swerves to the edgings, the bare edgings, amidst the gathering flotsam and jetsam as it piles up on riverside old Hancock Street and as it meanders along like some far-removed river of its own, river of its own sorrows, river of its own pent-up angers, toward the Square.

But more than sorrows, ancient sorrows, more than angers, angers of whatever age, I am attacked, and not just in my mind’s eye either, by the myriad mirror-glassed buildings, mostly office buildings, maybe some apartments or condos but I hope not, that reflect off each other in some secret Bauhaus bright light, dead of night pact, post-post-modern architecture I am sure, functional I am sure, although when future, future generations dig up the artifacts I am also sure they will be as puzzled by the idea of such forms of shelter and commerce as I am. And beyond those future subjects of artifact a picture, a picture to feed the hungry buildings, of tactless, thoughtless pizza shop, take-out or eat-in, of whatever name, donut shop, take-out or eat-in, of whatever name, hamburger shop, take-out or eat-in, of whatever name, Applebee’s family-friendly food named, now you-name-it-for-me, please, fast-food shop, mini-mart shop, fill-up gas-station of many names, Hess named, that dot, no, deluge strip mall-heavy Hancock Street up pass our sanctified raider red-bled high school. And beyond to dowdy, drowsy, dusty–windowed (really, I actually touched one once, not a white glove inspection but it, the window that is, didn’t pass muster even by my liberal standards), how do they stay in business against the pull of the major chains (or their chains), small-stored, small-dreamed business ownership, Norfolk Downs.

Norfolk Downs, the good old “Downs” (although we just called it plain, old, ordinary, vanilla-flavored, one-horse Norfolk Downs back in the day) anchored still by named pizza shop, Balducci’s. Balducci’s of after school pizza slices or after nightime across the street hang-around underground bowling alley hungers. Plain, please, no one hundred and one choice toppings, thank you, and coke (bluish-green bottled Coca-Cola, okay, for the evil-minded): of nickels and dimes dropped in one-armed-bandit jukebox to hear the latest Stones (or Beatles) tune, or whatever struck a chord in those jumping-jack times, maybe some mopey thing if girl desire was high; yes, but also of weary, so weary, lonely, so lonely night time standings up against the front door wall, waiting, waiting for...(and, maybe, someone, some guy, some long side-burned, engineer-booted guy, cigarette pack, unfiltered, rolled in tee-shirt guy, some time machine guy, is still waiting, still holding up that wall today. Nobody told him the world, the world that counts, the teen world, had moved to the malls). And beyond Norfolk Downs, up that asphalt river, on to the fate of a million small city centers, ghost-towned, derelict, seen better days, for sure, no question, no question, Quincy Center.

But I find myself , just now, as a stream of cooling air, finally, finally crosses my bridge-stuck, bridge-dreamed path, not in thoughts of jumbled mist of time high school-hood Saturdays nights (nor Friday nights either) in Norfolk Downs pizza parlors or bowling alleys, but of whirling past anciently walked, shoe leather-beaten (always leather-beaten, crooked-heeled, thinning-soled shoes that could be the subject of their own separate bridge-like dream thoughts), oceaned-breezed (just like the breeze crossing over me now , ‘cause that is where it is coming from, it has to be), sharp-angled memories: some of hurt, some of high-hatted hurt, worse, a few, too few, of funny kiddish, ding-dong dumb done things (ever when too old to hide under that womb-like kiddish umbrella), the memories that is, of Atlantic streets, of breezing Quincy bays, of oceans-abutted streets etched deep, almost DNA deep.

Name names. Okay. Well-trodden Appleton Street sidewalks, drawn like a moth to flame to some now-forgotten she, by flickering, heart-quickening, unrequited, just barely teenage, but self-consciously teenage anyhow, romantic trance longings, doggedly working up non-courage, yes non-courage a very common thing in those days, to speak, or better, to write that one word, that one word still now not easily come by, that would spark interest (her interest), as I turned from boy to the buddings of manhood; of the close-quartered, no space, no space for anything but small pinched, tightly pinched, dreams , no room to breathe, no room to breathe anything but small breathe, hacked up, asphalted-up, lawn-free yards to quench driveway car thirsting, two and three-decked Atlantic Street houses passed on quick high school cross country practice runs; of family relative-burdened, just getting-started in adult life, small, cramped five room and tiny bath apartment dotted Walker and Webster Streets; of the closely-cornered, well-kept small manicured-lawn’d, busily repair-worked, no beach parking on the street in summertime, working class cottage-mansions of Bayfield Road (I always forget which is North and which is South, but no matter the description fits both as they feed to the endless sea stopped by that infernal stop light that keeps you waiting, waiting beyond impatience, to cross to the much repaired and replaced seawall and view of seaward homeland.); of Atlantic Junior High School’d (ya, I know, Middle School) teen angst (under either junior or middle school names), mad, hormonally mad, teen-brokered years, world wised-up with some twists, but also world sorry, straight-up, Hollis Avenue; and on and on, through to the beach-drained, tree-named streets. Sanctified beyond name streets all; beat, beatified streets all; mist-filled dream streets all; memory-soaked streets all; be-bop, then real gone daddy, now hip-hop, big old pie-in-the-sky looking for the universe somewhere, streets all.

But enough of old dog-eared memories let me get moving, after all with this bridge, this “new” bridge, one has to cross with purpose, serious purpose, and maybe a wing and a pray that one can get back to the old home town in one piece or, at least, be able to think that one precious thought that drove me, lemming-like, here in the first place. I walk down the broken hand-railed, dirt-piled , drift winds-sent littered steps to get off the bridge and immediately stretched before me ; one million water-logged, stubbed cigarette-butts; one thousand stray, crushed, empty, cellophaned cigarette-packages blown around seeking their rightful owners; one hundred infinite brand-named (ice cold something pictured Bud Lite seems like the winner), crushed (or at least dented) beer cans; assorted, unnumbered, brown whiskey(or were they gin) bottles, mainly cheap from the look of them, a drunkard’s feast at one time; high gloss advertisement mailings(endless CVS drugs to take your world’s pain away, Shaw’s food to curb that incurable hunger that gnaws away at your stomach, Wal-Mart back-to-school trinkets, gadgets and throw-aways when the kids find out, and find out fast, that this crap is not “cool”, K-Mart holiday bargains, three for a dollar); yellowing, dated, newspapers (local this-and-that news, distant war drum news, more war drum news from some other earth corner, bad news badder, and celebrity relief news, Lady GaGa, or some such doings, that’s the ticket for our times) strewn every which way, discarded fast food packages of all descriptions that I have no time to describe. On to the street I step, the hard-scrabble growing up street. Home.

A Crockah Petreaus in the Morning- and the Afternoon too, Part II

Commentary

Immediate Withdrawal of All U.S./Allied Troops from Iraq!

Well, I do not know about you, fellow readers, but I definitely got a sense of being in a time warp with yesterday's, April 8, 2008, Senate Committee hearings. While it did not have the drama of those of last fall it had the same old actors from central casting, General Petreaus and Ambassador Crockah, eh, Crocker. And the story they had to tell had a very familiar ring. When all is said and done the situation will be almost exactly the same as it was in January 2007 when both the military ‘surge’ strategy took off and the Democrats took over control of Congress on a note of high expectancy about ending the war. A little over six months later and we could have just as well turned on the tapes or read the transcripts from last fall’s hearings.

That said, there is not need to say much more here except this- this writer last year screamed, shouted and got himself into a lather when he stated that the troops would not be coming home before the Bush Administration expired its last breathe. Yesterday we got out faces rubbed in that harsh fact. Moreover, from the prospective of a new administration on January 20, 2009, of whatever stripe, it does not appear that, left to their timetables, that there will be troop withdrawal before 2010. I say start talking to your young children and your grandchildren about the nature of war because it looks like they may need to know something about it before American imperialism hightails it out of Iraq. In the meantime we fight, and fight hard, around the slogan- Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops And Their Mercenaries From Iraq! Damn.

On the 40th Anniversary Year of the Vietnamese Tet Offensive And The 33rd Anniversary Day Of The Fall Of Ho Chi Minh City (Then Saigon)-TET- A Book Review

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the Tet Offensive of 1968.


Book Review

This Year Marks the 45th Anniversary of the Tet Offensive of 1968 and also this month marks the 38th Anniversary of the fall of Saigon in 1975. Two victories for our side.

TET!, Don Ordorfer, Putnam, New York, 1971

A new edition of this book was published in 2001 with, I believe, a new introduction by the author. I am using the old edition for my own political purposes. I will read the new introduction at some point and add comment at that time.

Recently I was listening to Talk of the Nation on National Public Radio and the subject concerned formation of political consciousness. One of the callers identified himself as an ardent 1960’s anti-Vietnam War protester and self-styled ‘hippie’ who in 1984 ‘got religion’ and saw the error of his ways. The formative point of this new found wisdom was a documentary on the Public Broadcast System (PBS) that indicated to him that the Tet Offensive of 1968 has not been a military victory for the North Vietnamese/South Vietnamese Liberation Front forces (hereafter NVA/NLF). Somehow along the way he had assumed, based, he said, on information from Walter Cronkite that it was a military victory. Well, this writer then as now, as we celebrate the 40th Anniversary of that event, can confirm for that caller that, indeed, Tet was not a NVA/NLF military victory. Here is the point, however, military victory or not, it was certainly a political victory for those NVA/NLF forces. In modern conditions, sometimes, political victories are more important that military ones. The book under review, whatever else it shortcomings might be, confirms this view.

Is this book the best one on the history of the Tet offensive? Probably not. However it has the virtue of having been written a short time after this major political event. Thus, although it is not the "first draft of history" it is close enough for our purposes. The drawback here is that it was written while the war was still going on so that the relationship between Tet 1968, Tet 1972 and then the final military victory in 1975 does not give the event its full impact in the overall scheme of NVA/NLF strategy and American/South Vietnamese counter-strategy.

The author hits all the high points of this decisive several month period from about the summer of 1967 when the NVA/NLF decided to make a major push against the South to Tet itself and its immediate aftermath. The author starts off his book with a description of the famous NLF raid on the American embassy, goes on to the discuss the strategic aims of the North Vietnamese and the American response to it, the personal saga of one Lyndon Baines Johnson, and the in-fighting in the old Cold war national security establishment about the proper American response and then the results and aftermath of the offensive.

Reading history with a purpose, in short, to learn some lessons is sometimes a chancy thing. Here that purpose can be encapsulated in the following few words- to draw the lessons of history of the Vietnam War in order to apply them to the opposition struggle against the Iraq war. Yes, the differences between Vietnam and Iraq, in the final analysis are probably greater than the similarities however the American hubris that led Lyndon Johnson to escalation in Vietnam and George W. Bush to occupation in Iraq is still in operation. In the end the author draws the conclusion that history will eventually draw on Tet 1968, and that today's American leaders seem to be willfully ignoring- in modern military warfare the political question is the question. From the NVA/NLF side that entailed heavy and dramatic losses but I would argue that their decision to probe American military and political resolve was essentially correct. Read on.

*A Short Look At The American Civil War- Professor David's View

Click on the headline to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for Confederacy President Jefferson Davis.


BOOK REVIEW

APRIL IS THE 147TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE START OF THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR- HONOR THE UNION SOLDIERS- WHITE AND BLACK

Why the North Won The Civil War, Donald Herbert David, Simon and Schuster, New York,
1962, 1996

I have used this space over the past couple of years to commemorate many events important in working class history, leftist history and just plain democratic history (hey, that is our heritage too). My idea, as explained in my profile, is to try to transmit to the younger generation of leftist militants a sense of the rich, if many times misunderstood, history of our movement. With that in mind, I have noticed recently that while I have spilled a certain amount of justifiable ink on honoring John Brown and his band at Harpers Ferry and on the personage of Abraham Lincoln, also justifiable, I have not spent nearly enough time on some of the other great issues of the Civil War period itself. I begin to rectify that error here. And it is an error. A lot of what the United States have become in the world, for good or evil, stems from the events of that period.

Some of the books that I review in this space as I introduce subjects that I think will be of interest are those that first got me interested in the subject. Thus, the books tend to have older copyright dates and, in many cases, have been superseded by more recent (and generally, better) work on the subject. But I still see value in them as a starting point. That is the case here. I distinctly remember, after having gone through the basics of the American Civil War in my high school history class, going out to buy this book in order to better understand the question posed by the title of this book- why did the North win the Civil War? Although this book does not directly address some of the reasons that I would give now for why the North succeeded it nevertheless gave some, to me, provocative thoughts about the issues then.

This short book is a result of a conference held in the late 1950’s at Gettysburg, in preparation for celebrating the Civil War Centennial, which discussed various historical points of view as to the basis for the Northern victory. Now there have been innumerable books on every conceivable aspect of the Civil War, from songs to sewing, so by this year 2008 so it is hard to say that this book sticks out. However this book represented the best thinking of the last generation of Civil War scholars on the general trends of the times.

The subjects delved into-Northern and Southern economics, generalmanship, diplomacy, effects of war- weariness, and Southern character defects have all been expanded on since. But here is a place to start an outline of the subject. This book also helps to understand one of the positive consequences of the Northern victory-the consolidation of a unitary trans-continental state. Of course, readers, let us keep our eyes on the prize- the real import of studying about the Civil War is to see how the great social issue of that day-the abolition of slavery got fought out to the finish.

The Paradox of the Sidekick Generation

Okay, I know I am going to get roasted once again by the old fogies of my generation, the generation of ’68, but I like the breath of fresh air that is coming from today’s youth. That, at this moment, gets its fullest expression in their support in sizable numbers for the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama. Now let me go through the numbers. No, I do not believe that the election of Obama is the solution to our problems. No, I do not believe that the Democratic Party is the vehicle for social change in the 21st century. No, I do not believe that youth as they have expressed themselves thus far are going to be able to solve the problems confronting us in the 21st century. Are we clear so far? A critical mass of youth though is forming that may just do that. That is what I like to think about today.

What I do not like about today’s youth is their expressed disdain for our old political visions. You know, the culture wars that we have been fighting for the past forty years to try to save a few human and civil rights from the demons of the right whose conception of society is that of a prison camp. We might not have been successful in getting our program through. We may have made every political mistake in the book in fight for such things as black civil rights, the fight against the death penalty, against war, for women’s rights, and so forth but we fought and that is the lesson that today’s youth seemingly has not learned. To create social change one must fight for it, tooth and nail.

A recent article in the February 3, 2008 Sunday Boston Globe brought this fierce truth home. The article interviewed students at Wellesley College and Yale University (admittedly not today’s average youth and selected because those were Hillary Clinton’s alma maters). Almost universally they were either dismissive or ignorant of the struggles of the past that we fought out. We were viewed as too confrontational, too argumentative and sin of sins, well, too political. I do believe we have some work to do here.

That said, what youth can do, or more particularly today a small section, is to take their first blush understanding that there is a need for social change and move on from there to find social, and thereafter socialist, solutions to the problems that ail us. Now back to my generation as a reference point. As the now numerous memoirs of some of the leading lights of the time have noted most of us took the election of John Fitzgerald Kennedy in 1960 as a signal that it was alright to fight for social change. Did we assume that we could do that solely by the parliamentary path? At first, probably. Did we think that Kennedy’s program would provide the answers? In the end, hell no, a thousand times no. As a comparison that is the significance of Obama. And it is significant. The winds of change do blow.

Below is a repost of a commentary that I did last year that in connection with the above commentary can stand together as the first shots of the political fight to win the youth to social activism.

On Political Trends Among American Youth

COMMENTARY

WELL, BACK IN MY DAY WE………

Although a number of my political efforts these days are linked to appealing to the youth to learn the lessons of our history, working class history, I make no bones about feelings of trepidation when I take up the subject of youth, their hopes and their aspirations. That said, I recently read an interesting review article based on polls taken of youth (18-24) and their political aspirations. The major conclusion of the article was that today’s youth are trending (the poll’s expression, not mine) to vote Democratic in greater numbers than previous youth generations. A couple of minor conclusions were that youth have more potential impact on politics today than my generation, the generation of 1968, and that the current more technologically savvy generation was not reachable by traditional methods of communication and thus political organizations needed to catch up with the wave. Fair enough. Let me make some observations.


The generation of 1968 made every mistake in the political book. And that ain’t no lie. In our defense I will add that we were in uncharted waters facing such legitimate political monsters as Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey and George Wallace who were fully capable of using all of the methods of political repression. Nevertheless we tried non-violent protest in the civil rights movement under Martin Luther King. We tried peaceful protest against Vietnam under Dr. Spock and others. We tried parliamentary politics under Bobby Kennedy and Gene McCarthy. We tried to drop out with Ken Kesey, Timothy Leary and other counter-cultural heroes. We tried to make music the revolution. When things started to get grim in 1967 we tried to ‘raise’ the Pentagon. When things got grimmer still we tried to act as a second front for the Vietnamese National Liberation Front. When they got really grim we were ready to declare revolutionary war on America. Ah, those were the days. We were, however, for a number of reasons, politically defeated. A defeat from which we still have not recovered.

Obviously, every political generation will find its own means of expressing itself in a world that it has not made. Also fair enough. However, after a few years of opposition to this Iraq war I find that the current ‘youth’ generation seems much more politically passive and lacking in political imagination than the poll mentioned above would indicate. One of the most striking points about the survey is the apparent faith that today’s youth have in letting governmental agencies and officials resolve certain questions. By this I assume that Mr. Bush or his successor, probably Hillary Clinton at this point, is duly appointed to resolve the conflict in Iraq and such other questions as the on-going genocide in Dhafur.

In my day, while we had more than our share of illusions in the good graces of the government we were much more ready to face it down than rely on it. As a case in point, someone like Hillary Clinton (nee Rodham) who may have passed for a ‘radical’ at sedate 1960’s Wellesley would not even have gotten, nor should she have gotten, a hearing from the more thoughtful radical political types in the Boston area of the time. The time of waving the Vietnamese National Liberation Front flag at the front of anti-war marches was not Hillary’s time. Her time, if it is now, is the time of many, many defeats for progressive movements and a time of youth ‘trending’ Democratic. To put the situation in perspective I would argue that the political development of today’s youth was about what my generation’s was in 1962. Plenty of spunk, a desire to serve humanity, and plenty of illusions and faith in the ‘fairness’ of the democratic process. But, which way will they jump?

Seemingly each generation develops their own tribal language, fashions and other such cultural gradients to distinguish it from the OTHER. Once again fair enough. The survey mentioned above made an express point that today’s youth cannot be reached by traditionally methods of communication and/or advertising. And that makes sense about a generation nurtured on iPods, e-mails, chat rooms and cell phones. In short, today’s youth are light years ahead of my generation on the information super-highway. Or are they?

No one can reasonably deny that the Internet has a great potential as an aid to political development and organization. However, it is no substitute for face-to-face polemics and argument to develop strategy and to clarify political positions. From my own personal experience I find that one can spent so much time on the Internet that there is little time to get out and do the necessary political spade work. Multiply that by ubiquitous cell phone and iPod use and where is there time for organizing real people in real time. And that brings us back to that point I made above about the political passivity of this generation. If the revolution will not be televised it will also certainly not spring forth from a laptop. More on this later.

***At The Dawn of American Capitalism-Shopkeeper's Millenium

Book Review

Shopkeeper's Millenium, Paul E. Johnson, Hill and Wang, 1978

In any truly socialist understanding of history the role of the class struggle plays a central role. Any thoughtful socialist wants to, in fact needs to, know how the various classes in society were formed, and transformed, over time. A lot of useful work in this area has been done by socialist scholars. One thinks of E.P. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class, for example. One does not, however, need to be a socialist to do such research in order to provide us with plenty of ammunition in our fight for a better world. Shopkeeper’s Millennium by Paul E. Johnson is such a work.

One can disagree with Professor Johnson’s conclusions, and perhaps aspects of his methodology that relies very heavily on the interpretation of governmental and church records. He has nevertheless written a very interesting case study of Rochester, New York as a prime example of how America in the 1820’s and 1830’s, that is at the infancy of American capitalism, turned from a wilderness into an important new center of capitalist development as the Eire Canal became a cog in the transnational transportation system. Johnson has also provided some useful insights into the role that religion, especially the ‘born again’ evangelical religion that we are familiar with today, helped form the prevailing capitalist ethos that drove this expansion forward.

Professor Johnson uses the well-known sources (city directories, tax assessments, censuses, Church registries) to flesh out his argument. One can take exception to some of his conclusions based on rather scanty data (and on the reliability of such data in a very mobile and transient environment). However the overall thrust of his work makes the important point that this period turned this part of America away from a sleepy agrarian/mercantile society to a rather dynamic capitalist one within a relatively short time. And, moreover, the social preconditions that fostered such growth were not merely accidental but represented the expansion of an already stable elite ready to take advantage of the new mode of production. In short, as we have seen at other previous nodal points of history (and today, as well) the rich and able have a leg up when the new riches are to be distributed.

Religious indoctrination, strict social mores, intense social pressure and flat out coercion are detailed here as ways in which the budding capitalist class dominated the society. Religious revivals, anti-Masonic struggles and various social reform campaigns, particularly the fight against 'demon' whiskey, play their part. As does plain old-fashioned politics that we are very familiar with. Perhaps not as familiar is how political sides were chosen in various local fights, like the closing of dram shops, despite common religious affiliation.

The key struggle in forming the capitalist mode of production was the effort to discipline a reluctant workforce to the tasks at hand. That was achieved in Rochester by many of the old tricks like coercion, ostracism and shunning that we have seen elsewhere at the rise of capitalism, particularly in England. In an interesting sidelight Professor Johnson details the change over, in a fairly short period of time , from workers being housed under the paternalistic supervision of their employers in their homes to the establishment of separate working class quarters. This is a big step in the forming of class-consciousness, both ways.
Such details are the stuff that makes this an interesting study.

Is this what today’s working class looks like in a ‘post-industrial’ American society? No. However many of the same techniques of domination still hold sway. Read this book about the days when American capitalism was a progressive force in the world. And begin to understand why it needs to be fought tooth and nail now.

Political Bric-A-Brac

Every once in a while I find myself at something of a lost in trying to get a handle on the trends of the day. Today is such a day. Sure, there is plenty of news to talk about, especially political news on the campaign trail but that ‘space’ has been done to death by the chattering classes. These American presidential nominating contests have taken the air out of the fight to talk about more substantive issues. Like those damn wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They are no closer to being ended than at this time last year despite any rhetoric emanating from the campaign trail. Today we make just a few haphazard comments while stewing about the situation.

The American Commanders in Iraq Are Getting Skittish

Of necessity the lead comment today, as has usually been the case over the past five years, is the situation in Iraq. The presidential candidates may have effectively banished it from serious discourse, the media may have placed it on page fourteen, Congress has taken a dive on ending funding for it, the bulk of the American population may have sent it under the radar but the damn thing still goes on at about the levels of troop engagement of five years ago.

According to the military analysts the ‘success’ of the surge over the past several months has permitted steady troop reductions that will reduce the American presence to fifteen brigades by summer. Now, however, there is serious talk by military authorities of a ‘pause’ to evaluate the progress of the surge strategy. That, my friends, is short hand for hedging bets that the Iraq military and/or police are up to the task of policing their own country. The long and short of this is that the Bush Administration has left the next presidential administration an immediate decision before it on the question of further withdrawals. Thanks, President Bush. To help the next administration along on its way let me give a lead on this – Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan.

It’s the Economy, Stupid!

In light of the remarks in the above paragraphs I have to take a political slap on the face for somewhat missing the extent of the rise of the economy as the central question before the public. Since last year I have believed that foreign affairs would be central to the American presidential campaign. Although I will not give up my persistent advocacy that Iraq and Afghanistan are the burning questions of the hour it is hardly irrational that the many individuals and families that are facing the wall on mortgage foreclosures, unemployment or the ability to just pay the bills see economic recovery as their primary issue. Okay, so it is the economy, stupid!

Mark this, however, where and what are the proposed just solutions to the problems of the vast inequalities of wealth in America coming from? The Republicratic candidates? Hell, no. They all are committed to ‘free markets’ and, one way or another, the international capitalist globalization of those markets. This would be a great time for those of us with socialist solutions, that is, social solutions to the economic problems of the day, starting with the need for a planned economy, to take the floor. And link the fight against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with the war against the working class and poor here.

Israeli Supreme Court Approves Cut in Gas Supplies to Gaza

In a commentary a couple of months ago concerning the lead up to the Middle East Annapolis meetings and President Bush’s pollyannaish belief that he could gain a peace treaty between the Israelis and Palestinians I mentioned that I HATE to comment on the Israeli-Palestinian confrontations because there is so little sense that, this side of paradise, there is any rational and just solution to the long time controversy. A recent decision by the Israeli Supreme Court on cutting gas supplies to Gaza is a case in point. That august body has determined that using this weapon of limiting vital gas supplies to the residents of Gaza by the Israeli government is correct in its fight against the ‘terrorists’ who rule there (by that they mean Hamas). The reasoning of the Court, however, will be hard to square with any sense of traditional Solomonic judgments, the vaunted rule of law that Western civilization touts as the cornerstone of its existence or simple humanity. Once again I throw down the challenge- Is there really any solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict short of a socialist one in the context of a wider Middle Eastern solution? To ask the question provides the answer.


Okay, now that I have gotten the serious commentary out of the way I can move on to American presidential politics. What would one expect from a confessed political ‘junkie’, anyway? At this point most of this campaign is of real interest only to technicians but here are some observations from afar. As always, I preface my remarks with the comment that, thankfully, I do not have to vote for any of these candidates.

In Mr. Bill’s Neighborhood-South Carolina.

The long time notion that Bill Clinton had been the first ‘black’ president, a comment made as much or more in the past by blacks than whites, got sorely tested and justly upended by the campaign in South Carolina. Clinton in attempting to prove that whites can use the race card as well as blacks, especially when ‘wifie’ is a candidate, got his head handed to him on platter. When the deal went down Mr. Bill turned into just another redneck hillbilly from the Ozarks and blacks judged accordingly. The fallout from this is far from over. Mr. Bill is being openingly mocked by younger blacks that I run into as just another white honky. If one really looks at what Clinton did during his reign, eliminating welfare as we know it, making the death penalty easier to impose and putting more police on the ground in black neighborhoods that is a perfect description. Playing jazz saxophone and having a few black friends on Martha’s Vineyard does little to cut the other way these days.

The Talk Around The Water Cooler

Maybe it is the winnowing process at this point in the campaign. Maybe it is just the momentarily whirl of politics but around my work water cooler there has been a very dramatic shift in political talk. About a year ago nobody (except me, of course), white, black or Hispanic talked about anything or anybody but Hillary. Today that talk has significantly shifted.

Blacks, who last year thought that Obama was too white, now are making it a question of race loyalty to support him. And by their lights this makes sense. Obama may be mixed but in race-conscious America he is BLACK. Hispanics, and in this particular case I am talking about Hispanic males, are talking up Hillary. This reflects the tension between the black and Hispanic communities that get a full workout over the question of immigration and other issues that separate these communities.

As for whites, again especially males, there is now actually less talk about the presidential campaigns. The great secret of this campaign at least on the Democratic side, a secret that will become more apparent now that John Edwards is out, is that white males for the first time in Democratic Party history do not have one of their own to vote for. For those old enough to remember the old days this is indeed a strange turn of events. The main point here, from a socialist perspective, is that if either Hillary or Obama wins the presidency that has to be a significant development in this country. Is that enough? Hell, no but it is significant.

John Edwards and the Working Class

The recently ended campaign of former North Carolina Senator John Edwards is a case in point for the proposition that while you may come from the working class that does not insure that you are a working class candidate. And that, my friends, is the problem with today trying to run a populist campaign out of the Democratic Party. In order to do so you must put it in terms of the middle class, a very nebulous and slippery concept. However, the middle class in this country is not the working class. If you are going to fight for the poor of the Ninth District in New Orleans (and that is very definitely a good thing to fight for) then you cannot mix up your message. But what you really need to do is get the hell out of the Democratic Party and fight for a workers party. Then you can, like I am, be a proud son of the working class.


The Revenge of John McCain

Republican presidential candidate Arizona Senator John McCain staked his campaign on the premise that the surge strategy in Iraq would work. Those of us on the left who have argued that it would not have to take our licking on this issue. At least in the short haul the surge has worked and that success has worked to McCain’s benefit. We concede the point for now. But as stated up in the first comment we still fight for immediate withdrawal from Iraq no matter whom the next president will be.

The Torch Passes

In my youth I cut my political teeth on John Kennedy’s presidential campaign. Elsewhere in this space I have freely admitted to having had my first political love affair with Robert Kennedy. Recently long time liberal icon Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy and John Kennedy’s daughter Caroline went out of their way to endorse Senator Obama. As John Kennedy said in his 1961 Inauguration speech the torch had passed to a new generation. That thought is being echoed here. I have also mentioned in this space that I sense the need for and welcome that change. The question remains, however, what programs and what policies will the next generation take hold of to ‘seek the newer world’. In my dewy-eyed youth it was enough to use a few sweeping phrase for a politician to state his (or her) case. In my old age I want a specific program that fights for the interest of working people. To date I do not see that. Enough said.

Anyone Can Run for President, Right?

Most of us remember as kids the old democratic political adage that any one (or almost anyone-look at the constitutional limitations) could run for President of the United States. As we matured we became painfully aware that that adage was less than the truth. In recent decades this has become even more painfully clear, as the cash nexus has driven the price of presidential politics through the roof. That brings me to the question of buying your way to the presidency. One multi-millionaire Republican candidate ex-Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has literally kept his campaign alive by dipping in his own funds. New York City Mayor Bloomberg, if he decides on an independent run, apparently would finance such an endeavor by tapping into his personal fortune. I can only say this when the fight for a workers party wins us a workers government it will not be the color of one’s money but the worth of one’s political program that will be decisive. Or you will get the boot, pronto. Again, enough said.

A Bomb A Day Keeps Bush In Play

COMMENTARY

IMMEDIATE WITHDRAWAL OF U.S/ALLIED TROOPS FROM IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN!

A couple of recently published developments should have all anti-warriors shaking in their boots-and shaking their fists in rage. First, in the year 2007, along with the increase of American troops on the ground-the ‘surge’- came a dramatic increase in the amount of American aerial bombing in Iraq (and needless to say in Afghanistan, as well). I do not know how reliable the figures are but in the article I read a comparison has been made with 2006. In 2006 there were about four bombing runs a week. In 2007 about four per day. Even if the numbers are somewhat shaky, as is always the case with war numbers, this was a dramatic increase by anyone’s account. Of course, what this means in human terms is that more villages were destroyed, more buildings destroyed, more civilian casualties. You know that ugly little term-collateral damage. And along with this more recruits to the insurgents. As for Afghanistan where there are, by most military estimates, not nearly enough troops American/NATO bombings and the consequent civilian casualties are an acknowledged fact of life. (See below).

The second, and perhaps in the long haul the more decisive, recent development concerns the attempts by the Bush Administration and its toadies in Iraq to sign a “treaty” that is not a treaty to keep an American military presence in Iraq until the cows come home. The reason for the quotes around the word treaty above is that a treaty needs to be ratified by the Senate. As usual the Bushies are trying to do an end around to avoid that unpleasant reality. More on this as it develops over the next few weeks. In the meantime- Immediate Withdrawal of U.S./Allied Troops and Their Mercenaries from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Added January 28, 2008

Apparently the Bush Administration, at least in their appearances before various Congressional committees, is playing this Iraq "treaty" that is not treaty as another garden variety agreement that America has with about 100 other nations where there are military or other such types of bases. Of course those agreements, aside from the fact that there are 100 or so of them and thus a strong argument for the imperialist nature of the American state, concern leasing arrangements and the like. Or what to do when American soldiers go wild in their locales on a Saturday night.

This "treaty" with Iraq is of a whole different order no only calling for what amount to a permanent American presence there but commits American troops to the defense of the central government in the case of civil war. Christ, I thought I was being merely rhetorical when I was yelling for the past couple of years that our grandchildren will be fighting in Iraq if we do not stop these madmen (and women). With these scenarios that may very well come to pass.

Below is a repost of commentary from Spring 2007 dealing with the Afghanistan portion of this bombing issue.

With the recent flurry of activity by Congress in Washington over the Iraq and Afghanistan war budgets and the ‘surge’ strategy in Iraq Afghanistan has fallen below the newspaper fold. That is a mistake. In one of the ironies of history Afghanistan was the pivotal start of the whole ‘war of civilizations’ going back to the fight by the Soviet Union in the 1980’s that was fought, at least partially, to bring Afghanistan into the 20th century (or maybe even the 19th). If the Soviet Union had waged more than a half-hearted fight then world history might have looked significantly difference today. The Islamic fundamentalist forces, notably those committed to Bin Laden and an Al Qaeda strategy, got their first taste of blood there. And they liked it.

The current political situation in that benighted country is that the Karzai government’s writ does not extend outside of Kabul and that the U.S./NATO presence there is the only thing propping up that government. And that is the rub. There has been a recent spate of articles on the fighting in Afghanistan centered on the allied forces indiscriminate bombing of various outlining villages and the killing of innocent civilians. While not now a matter of widespread public knowledge the American strategy in Afghanistan is essentially the same as in Iraq.

In order to defeat the Taliban (and other) insurgencies those allied forces have relied on the old tried and true imperialist method of bringing overwhelming military force and then letting “God” separate out the innocent from the guilty. Of course, this nice little strategy has its blowback effect as previously disinterested Afghans have now begun, on their own, to fight against the imperialist presence. One village that was bombed by the United States during the past week did just that. One can expect more to come.

American imperialism, for public consumption, will bring out the candy bars and soap to win the ‘hearts and minds’ of the local populace but when the deal goes down the bomb is the persuader of choice. So much for all those vaunted pacification programs. In justification for the aerial bombing policy one of the Allied ground commanders stated that without the use of such power hundreds of thousands of additional ground troops would be necessary. Nobody in the political and military establishment in Washington, or anywhere else, wants to, at this point, get into that hornet’s nest. The long and the short of it is that while we keep the fight against the war in Iraq on the front burner we had better bring the demand for immediate withdrawal in Afghanistan up to the front as well. In fact, United States Hands Off The World!

*POLITICAL SLOGANS AND TIMELINESS- ANTI-WAR SOLDIERS AND SAILORS SOLIDARITY COMMITTEES

Click on the title to link to an "Under The Hood" (Fort Hood G.I. Coffeehouse)Web site online article about the "Oleo Strut" Coffeehouse, an important development in the anti-Vietnam War struggle. Hats off to those bygone anti-war fighters.

COMMENTARY

Recently a reader asked me why during the last few months I have not highlighted the slogan for creating anti-war soldiers and sailors solidarity committees in my commentaries on Iraq. Fair enough. As noted in the headline, and as commentators seemingly from time immemorial have noted, much of politics is about timing. That is as true for a left wing political propagandist as it is for those today mired in any of the bourgeois party nomination processes. In fact, an argument can be made that it more important for us as openings in the political process, particularly in this country, are far fewer and therefore we need to be judicious. The long and short of it is that today, December 5th 2007, and for some time prior to this date, it has not been appropriate to raise that slogan.

Let me draw some distinctions around the question of the uses of political slogans. There are two basic, although sometimes overlapping, uses of political slogans. One is to make propaganda points about some crying political need that is not immediately possible. The propaganda fight for a workers party falls into that category. That slogan has general applicability in this period and only a radical and militant turn in the labor movement, like in the 1930’s, would, perhaps, render that slogan inappropriate. To not get too far from today’s reality the various ‘universal’ health care proposals, mainly from Democratic presidential contenders, are at this stage propaganda fights. The other use of political slogans is agitational-for immediate action. The slogan for Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal of U. S. Troops and Mercenaries from Iraq falls in that category- from day one of the Iraq War buildup.

So back to the slogan for creation of anti-war soldiers and sailors solidarity committees. There are many continuously appropriate slogans in the fight against American imperialism but that slogan is not one of them. For example, given the fact of an all-volunteer American army, in say the year 2000, we would not have raised such a slogan. It would have made no sense and, in any case, would have fallen on deaf ears in ‘peacetime’. For that matter raising it in 2003 would have made no sense, given the patriotic hysteria, even though it was a political necessary corollary to the fight for immediate withdrawal from Iraq. The same sense of timing holds true for the slogan calling for labor strikes against the war. Yes, that slogan is nice and necessary but the realities of the American labor movement at the time meant that it would not have intersected any real political movement.

No so for the solidarity committees in late 2005 and early 2006 when I, and unfortunately too few others, raised this slogan as an agitational response to the continuing American occupation in Iraq. At that point it was clear the Democrats were basically sitting on their hands hoping for a favorable result in the midterm 2006 elections. Furthermore, the bankruptcy of the ‘anti-war’ Democrats and their parliamentary strategy of piecemeal chipping away at the Iraq war budget and setting timetables for troop withdrawals was being laughed at by the Bush Administration and ignored by everyone else. Most importantly, the visible and vocal stirrings of opposition from the rank and file troops in Iraq and more forcefully by those who had returned after serving there gave an objective basis for anti-war opponents to link up with the rank and file troops to try to shut down the war.

What has changed in the political situation to make that slogan no longer an agitational demand (although the jury is still out on its propaganda use)? It’s the ‘surge’, stupid! We need to recognize that General Petreaus’s strategy has ‘worked’, in the short haul. American causalities are down, violence has been reduced, the Iraqis are making ‘nice’, etc. That is the political reality we work with now at least until the spring when the troop attrition rate will make the situation clearer, one way or the other. In any case, the rumblings, mumblings and grumbling by the rank and file troops have drastically fallen. Nothing could demonstrate this more clearly that a question that I put to the ‘street’ journalist Noel Troett about troop morale in Iraq and the question of the committees. (See archives in this space). He dismissed the idea out of hand in today’s Iraq. Why? The troops smell ‘victory’. That is not a predicate for turning the world upside down. Right? Will the slogan for anti-war soldiers and sailors solidarity committees be raised again if the situation turned for the worst in Iraq next year? Good question. Probably not, the slogan is by its nature conjunctural and it is hard to see the troops getting uppity again any time soon. The only things I see in my crystal ball now are that Bush will leave the Iraq mess behind him for the next administration to deal with and the next administration will hem and hew about not letting the Iraqi security situation deteriorate by withdrawing troops. Raise hell about withdrawal now but better start getting your banners and posters ready for January 20th 2009, as well.

PULLING THE HAMMER BACK ON IRAN

COMMENTARY

HANDS OFF IRAN!

Anyone who thinks that we do not live in nightmarish times-think again. The latest news out of Washington is that the Bush Adminstration has decided to pull the hammer back on Iran. For those without a sense of recent history that means the trigger is ready to be pulled. Bush proposes a series of unilateral actions under the aegis of the ‘war of terrorism’ aimed directly at the military capacity of the Iranian state. These include essentially outlawing the Revolutionary Guard and putting the Quds Special Forces units beyond the pale. Frankly, these are acts of war, and should be treated as acts of war by the Iranian military. The only thing that I can say about this situation is that if I were an Iranian military leader I would be working 24/7 to get that nuclear program in place becauae the Americans, or their agents, are coming. For those with any savvy the only thing that can keep the American wolf from the door is such nuclear capacity. For all those who thought that Bush would not dare to open a three front war strategy-think again. The question really is whether we oppositionalists are capable of a three front anti-war policy. For now though- U.S. Hands Off Iran!

Here are some previous entries I have posted to round out this sorry story as it has developed over the past year.


Commentary

The recent swirl around Iran makes me nervous. Every since Seymour Hersh’s article on White House Iranian war preparations in the April 2006 New Yorker I have been taking sideway glances at developments around that issue. I do not like what I see right now. Let me just summarize the litany here.


• Over the past several weeks Admiral Fallon, the head of U. S. Central Command (that means the Middle East), has been knocking on or kicking downs doors all over the capitals of most Middle Eastern countries giving the word on American intentions toward Iran. Fallon, like all top American military officers, is not known for ‘blowing smoke’ (or, at least, too much)when war is in the air. He is also not known, when the deal goes down, for being slow on the trigger.

• The French Foreign Minister has ‘accidentally’ mentioned that the military option was not off the table in order to resolve the Iranian situation. His boss, Sarkozy immediately reigned him in on and then turned around and basically said the same thing at his speech in the United Nations. The ‘cat is out of the bag’ now.

• The United States Senate, the same people who couldn’t muster up the energy to pass the placid Webb amendment on ‘troop rest’ has this past week gone out of its way to vote to label the nefarious Iranian Revolutionary Guard that sprung forth from the United States Embassy takeover in 1979 a “terrorist” organization. That means something, unlike the non-binding tripartite partition of Iraq resolution. I note that leading Democratic presidential contender Senator Hillary Clinton voted for the designation. Thus bi-partisan support for any future actions against Iran has a running start. This time it would be nice if Senator Clinton and the others at least read the documentation and 'intelligence' reports before they vote for war. Vain hope.

• The periodic talk, recently louder, about the Iranian role, and the need to call them to account for it, in providing powerful IED’s that are claimed to be the number one of death to American troops to both Shiite and Sunni factions in Iraq.

• Reports that Iran is shelling in northern Iraq in an effort to break one of its internal oppositional guerilla groups based in that area.

• The ongoing international pressure to increase various sanctions against Iran in order to halt its nuclear development program. Many of these types of embargos and boycotts are ‘acts of war’ under international law.

• The recent visit of the cunningly bizarre Iranian president to New York where he was cheered and jeered, mainly jeered with a frenzy that matched some of the buildup against Saddam Hussein (remember him) before the occupation of Iraq. Whether the president is anything more than a front man for the mullahs on the Supreme Council or not he is still the ‘face ' of Iran to the international public.

• Finally, the key to the whole situation, one George W. Bush and his coterie. Bush, already in a neck and neck race with Millard Fillmore for the title of least popular president, has nothing to lose. He is probably thinking why shouldn’t he go out in a blaze of glory. And if he is not up to it, his puppet master Karl Rove, oops, fellow draft dodger Vice President Dick Cheney certainly has the appetite for it.

There are some impediments in the way like a depleted American army in Iraq but where there is a will there is a way. In some ways there is a hell of a lot more going on concerning Iran than before the run up to the Iraq war. Yes, I am definitely nervous. A three front war strategy is in the air. We better have a three front anti-war strategy. Better dust off the old slogan-Hands Off Iran!

Lest anyone think that I wish to ‘coddle’ the Iranian leadership I have posted a commentary from around the time of the Hersh’s article from my blog. Hersh’s intelligence report probably needs some updating but the thrust of his article and my comments still retain their validity.



YOU DON’T NEED SEYMOUR HERSH TO KNOW WHICH WAY THE WIND BLOWS.

In the wake of Seymour Hersh’s revelations in the New Yorker concerning the Bush administration’s potential military plans, including a possible nuclear option, toward Iran there has been a hue and cry in political circles against some of the rasher aspects of such action. From the traditional opponents of such an action plan -the Left? No! From liberal politicians? No! If anything those types have been more belligerent and to the right on the issue of Iran than the Bush administration. The cry has come from conservative think tank magazines and hawkish political commentators like New York Times writer Thomas Friedman. After the disastrous consequences of their support for the adventure in Iraq as least a few of the more rational conservatives have learned something. Whether they continue to hold out once the onslaught of patriotism and so-called national interest comes into play remains to be seen. However, their self-made dilemma is not what interests me.

As I write these lines the paint has not even dried on my poster in opposition to the continuing Iraq occupation for an anti-war rally. Now that the newest plans of the Wild Boys in the basements of the White House, Pentagon and State Department have been “leaked” I have to add another slogan to that banner- Hands Off Iran! Overreacting one might say. No!! If we have learned anything in the last few years from the Bush Administration it is that the distance from “war games” and “zero sum game theory” to front page newspaper and television screen casualty counts is a very, very short elevator ride away.

That, however, begs the question of whether the current Islamic leadership in Iran is a threat. Damn right it is a threat. This writer opposed the Shah of Iran when he was an agent of American imperialist interests in the Persian Gulf. This writer also opposed the rise and takeover by the Islamic fundamentalists in 1979 when many Western leftists were, overtly or covertly, supporting these elements as ‘anti-imperialist’ agents of change. Unfortunately, many Iranian militants also supported these same fundamentalists. That did not stop the mullahs from rounding up and executing or imprisoning every leftist or militant worker they could get their hands on. The fate of the Western leftist supporters of the ‘anti-imperialist’ mullahs was almost as tragic. They, at great personal sacrifice, mainly went on to careers in the academy, media or parliament.

So let us have no illusions about the women- hating, anti-Enlightenment, anti- post 8th century hating regime in Teheran (Except apparently, nuclear technology. Did anyone else find it surreal when a recent photograph showed several thousand heavily- veiled Iranian women demonstrating in defense of a nuclear facility?). However, do we really want to outsource “regime change” there to the Bush Administration (or any administration in Washington)? No!!! Just as working people cannot outsource “regime change” in Washington to the liberals here this job of ousting the mullahs belongs to the Iranian workers, students, poor slum dwellers and peasants.

Let’s be clear here though. If the United States, or an agent of the United States, moves militarily against Iran all militants, here and worldwide, are duty bound to defend Iran against such imperialist aggression. Even with the current mullah leadership? Yes. We will hold our noses and do our duty. Their ouster is a separate political battle. We will settle accounts with them in due course.

The anarchists and others have it all wrong when they confine their slogan to Class Against Class in a conflict between capitalist states. Yes, in the final analysis it will come down to that. The problem is today we are dealing with the most powerful military power, relatively and absolutely, the world has ever known against a smaller, almost militarily defenseless country. A victory for American imperialism is not in the interest of the international working class and its allies. Thus, we have a side under those circumstances. And we certainly do not take some ‘third camp’ pacifist position of a plague on both your houses. IMMEDIATE UNCONDITIONAL WITHDRAWAL FROM IRAQ! U.S.HANDS OFF IRAN!! BETTER YET- HANDS OFF THE WORLD!!!