***Poet’s Corner-Young America’s Walt Whitman’s “Leaves Of Grass”

Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for poet Walt Whitman.

DVD Review

American Experience: Walt Whitman, Walt Whitman and various modern commentators, PBS Productions, 2008

Sure, it is always appropriate to thumb through the pages of the 19th century poet laureate of democracy Walt Whitman’s “Leaves Of Grass”. After wading through Emerson, Longfellow, Whittier and the other Brahmin and Brahmin wannabe poets who dominated the 19th century ‘aristocratic’ European-influenced American poetic academy old white-bearded Walt is like a breath of fresh air. And let’s put it this way, while everyone has, and should, take a peek at those other 19th century poets, if no other reason that to compare work, it is old Walt that those of us in the 21st century WANT to read. Therefore, it is appropriate that PBS’s “American Experience" in 2008 produce a documentary that is, while filled with biographic information, centered on Whitman’s long struggle to produce his masterpiece, “Leaves Of Grass”.

This documentary does yeoman’s service in setting the context in which Walt Whitman had to work, including the trials and tribulations of his long suffering over his troubled working class family affairs; his free-wheeling experiences in breaking out of the family and establishing himself as a newspaper writer in New York City in the pre-Civil War period; his invention of himself as a 'proto-hippie' in that city’s bohemian milieu: his various, mainly homosexual, romantic experiences that eventually find themselves noted heavily throughout his master work; his dramatic and traumatic Civil War time nursing services to the Union wounded; the shock of Lincoln’s death; and, his post-war struggles to expand and deepen his poetic works. That sets the pace for the many ‘talking head’ academic commentaries about the meaning of Whitman’s work, his place as the poetic, warts and all, 19th century democratic champion of the fragile American republican experience, and the breakthrough nature of the more or less explicit sexual, erotic and homoerotic passages in his work.

Finally, poets like other types of writers, run through period of fashion and neglect. My recent road back to an appreciation of Whitman is a case in point. I have been running through (for the nth time) and reviewing the work of the 1950s “beat” writer Jack Kerouac (himself the subject of the vicissitudes of fashion) in this space. Kerouac makes clear (as do many other writers and poets) that Whitman’s poems, his lifestyle and his championship of the “common man” deeply influenced him in his early formative days as he struggled to write. That is a very common story when the name Walt Whitman comes up. So if you need a little refresher on Whitman this well-done documentary fills the bill. But, really, go read some of his poems


Walt Whitman - One’s-Self I Sing.

ONE’S-SELF I sing—a simple, separate Person;
Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-masse.

Of Physiology from top to toe I sing;
Not physiognomy alone, nor brain alone, is worthy for the muse—I say the
Form complete is worthier far;
The Female equally with the male I sing.

Of Life immense in passion, pulse, and power,
Cheerful—for freest action form’d, under the laws divine,
The Modern Man I sing.

Walt Whitman - To a Historian.

YOU who celebrate bygones!
Who have explored the outward, the surfaces of the races—the life that has
exhibited itself;
Who have treated of man as the creature of politics, aggregates, rulers and
priests;
I, habitan of the Alleghanies, treating of him as he is in himself, in his own
rights,
Pressing the pulse of the life that has seldom exhibited itself, (the great
pride of man in himself;)
Chanter of Personality, outlining what is yet to be,
I project the history of the future.

Walt Whitman - Pioneers! O Pioneers!


1
COME, my tan-faced children,
Follow well in order, get your weapons ready;
Have you your pistols? have you your sharp edged axes? Pioneers! O pioneers!

2
For we cannot tarry here,
We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger,
We, the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend, Pioneers! O pioneers!

3
O you youths, western youths,
So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship,
Plain I see you, western youths, see you tramping with the foremost, Pioneers! O
pioneers!

4
Have the elder races halted?
Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied, over there beyond the seas?
We take up the task eternal, and the burden, and the lesson, Pioneers! O pioneers!

5
All the past we leave behind;
We debouch upon a newer, mightier world, varied world,
Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labor and the march, Pioneers! O pioneers!

6
We detachments steady throwing,
Down the edges, through the passes, up the mountains steep,
Conquering, holding, daring, venturing, as we go, the unknown ways, Pioneers! O pioneers!


7
We primeval forests felling,
We the rivers stemming, vexing we, and piercing deep the mines within;
We the surface broad surveying, we the virgin soil upheaving, Pioneers! O pioneers!

8
Colorado men are we,
From the peaks gigantic, from the great sierras and the high plateaus,
From the mine and from the gully, from the hunting trail we come, Pioneers! O pioneers!

9
From Nebraska, from Arkansas,
Central inland race are we, from Missouri, with the continental blood intervein’d;
All the hands of comrades clasping, all the Southern, all the Northern, Pioneers! O
pioneers!


10
O resistless, restless race!
O beloved race in all! O my breast aches with tender love for all!
O I mourn and yet exult—I am rapt with love for all, Pioneers! O pioneers!

11
Raise the mighty mother mistress,
Waving high the delicate mistress, over all the starry mistress, (bend your heads all,)
Raise the fang’d and warlike mistress, stern, impassive, weapon’d mistress, Pioneers! O
pioneers!

12
See, my children, resolute children,
By those swarms upon our rear, we must never yield or falter,
Ages back in ghostly millions, frowning there behind us urging, Pioneers! O pioneers!

13
On and on, the compact ranks,
With accessions ever waiting, with the places of the dead quickly fill’d,
Through the battle, through defeat, moving yet and never stopping, Pioneers! O pioneers!


14
O to die advancing on!
Are there some of us to droop and die? has the hour come?
Then upon the march we fittest die, soon and sure the gap is fill’d, Pioneers! O
pioneers!

15
All the pulses of the world,
Falling in, they beat for us, with the western movement beat;
Holding single or together, steady moving, to the front, all for us, Pioneers! O
pioneers!

16
Life’s involv’d and varied pageants,
All the forms and shows, all the workmen at their work,
All the seamen and the landsmen, all the masters with their slaves, Pioneers! O pioneers!


17
All the hapless silent lovers,
All the prisoners in the prisons, all the righteous and the wicked,
All the joyous, all the sorrowing, all the living, all the dying, Pioneers! O pioneers!

18
I too with my soul and body,
We, a curious trio, picking, wandering on our way,
Through these shores, amid the shadows, with the apparitions pressing, Pioneers! O
pioneers!

19

Lo! the darting bowling orb!
Lo! the brother orbs around! all the clustering suns and planets,
All the dazzling days, all the mystic nights with dreams, Pioneers! O pioneers!

20
These are of us, they are with us,
All for primal needed work, while the followers there in embryo wait behind,
We to-day’s procession heading, we the route for travel clearing, Pioneers! O pioneers!

21
O you daughters of the west!
O you young and elder daughters! O you mothers and you wives!
Never must you be divided, in our ranks you move united, Pioneers! O pioneers!

22
Minstrels latent on the prairies!
(Shrouded bards of other lands! you may sleep—you have done your work;)
Soon I hear you coming warbling, soon you rise and tramp amid us, Pioneers! O pioneers!

23
Not for delectations sweet;
Not the cushion and the slipper, not the peaceful and the studious;
Not the riches safe and palling, not for us the tame enjoyment, Pioneers! O pioneers!

24
Do the feasters gluttonous feast?
Do the corpulent sleepers sleep? have they lock’d and bolted doors?
Still be ours the diet hard, and the blanket on the ground, Pioneers! O pioneers!

25
Has the night descended?
Was the road of late so toilsome? did we stop discouraged, nodding on our way?
Yet a passing hour I yield you, in your tracks to pause oblivious, Pioneers! O pioneers!


26
Till with sound of trumpet,
Far, far off the day-break call—hark! how loud and clear I hear it wind;
Swift! to the head of the army!—swift! spring to your places, Pioneers! O pioneers.

***Films To While Away The Class Struggle By- American Civil War General And President U.S. Grant- A PBS Documentary

Click on the title to link to a "PBS:American Experience" Website entry for President U.S. Grant.

Recently I have begun to post entries under the headline- “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By”-that will include progressive and labor-oriented songs that might be of general interest to the radical public. I have decided to do the same for some films that may perk that same interest under the title in this entry’s headline. In the future I expect to do the same for books under a similar heading.-Markin

This year marks the 149th anniversary of the commencement of the American Civil War-and the beginning of the end of chattel slavery in the United States.

DVD Review

U.S. Grant: American Experience , PBS Productions, New York, 2003

Late year in celebrating , rightly, the military exploits of General William Tecumseh Sherman and his “bummers’ who wreaked havoc all through the Confederacy in the waning days of the American Civil War I, perhaps, slighted the organizational and strategic battle plans of his superior, the commanding general of all the Union armies, General U.S. Grant. I attempt to make amends here as we mark the 149th anniversary of the commencement of that war.

This three hour plus PBS “American Experience” documentary tells the average viewer probably much more than they would ever want to know about the career, with all its successes and failures, of one Ulysses S. Grant. As always in a PBS production there are the “talking heads”, mainly historians here, who try to flesh the meaning of Grant’s career, the fistful of attributes that led him to successful military achievements and also helped shed light on his less than stellar presidency. And as always there is plenty of still photography, much of it not previously familiar to this reviewer, and re-enactments of the major events in Grant’s life.

There are few surprises here, although to my surprise a number of commentators noted that Grant, not Lincoln was the most popular American figure of the 19th century. As the recent bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth demonstrates that is clearly not verdict of history, at least for latter centuries. That said, there is a compelling argument to make, and that is made by some of the commentators here, that Grant was the prototype for the successful modern warfare commanding general once the increase in industrial production provided the massive resources necessary to wage such war and create widespread devastation. I would only add that only in the context of the sacred Union cause and its adjunct, the abolition of slavery does his rise make sense.

The documentary painstakingly takes us through Grant’s rough and tumble childhood; his early not very glamorous military career, including service in the Mexican War a touchstone for all later military leadership on both sides of the Civil war; his various business failures prior to the war; his slow emergence as the decisive military leader and strategist in the Western campaign culminating in the massive Union victory at Vicksburg; his subsequent elevation by an admiring Lincoln to commander of all the Union armies, including the decisive and costly final marches, like Cold Harbor, that haunted him and later historians and that marred his overall achievement particularly when the Southern school of Civil War historical interpretation was in its ascendancy; his post-Civil War actions as a military commander which tried to recreate a single nation; his two term presidency, including the various financial scandals that are forever attached to his terms of office; his earnest, and unsuccessful, attempts to integrate the newly liberated freedman into the Southern society, including his forthright actions against the Klan in the early 1870s; and, finally, his post-presidential life including a worldwide grand tour and the writing of his memoirs.

Nothing here will contribute to an argument for his outstripping of Lincoln as the decisive figure of the American 19th century. But know this: all labor militants and other progressives honor General Grant, and his subordinate General Sherman, for their military leadership in ending chattel slavery in this country. That was no mean task as this documentary amply demonstrates.

For The Late Rosalie Sorrels-Starlight On The Rails, Indeed-In Honor Of The Hobo King Utah Phillips

For The Late Rosalie Sorrels-Starlight On The Rails, Indeed-In Honor Of The Hobo King Utah Phillips   

If I Could Be The Rain I Would Be Rosalie Sorrels-The Legendary Folksinger-Songwriter Has Her Last Go-Round At 83

By Music Critic Bart Webber

Back the day, back in the emerging folk minute of the 1960s that guys like Sam Lowell, Si Lannon, Josh Breslin, the late Peter Paul Markin and others were deeply immersed in all roads seemed to lead to Harvard Square with the big names, some small too which one time I made the subject of a series, or rather two series entitled respectively Not Bob Dylan and Not Joan Baez about those who for whatever reason did not make the show over the long haul, passing through the Club 47 Mecca and later the Café Nana and Club Blue, the Village down in NYC, North Beach out in San Francisco, and maybe Old Town in Chicago. Those are the places where names like Baez, Dylan, Paxton, Ochs, Collins and a whole crew of younger folksingers, some who made it like Tom Rush and Joni Mitchell and others like Eric Saint Jean and Minnie Murphy who didn’t, like  who all sat at the feet of guys like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger got their first taste of the fresh breeze of the folk minute, that expression courtesy of the late Markin, who was among the first around to sample the breeze.

(I should tell you here in parentheses so you will keep it to yourselves that the former three mentioned above never got over that folk minute since they will still tell a tale or two about the times, about how Dave Van Ronk came in all drunk one night at the Café Nana and still blew everybody away, about catching Paxton changing out of his Army uniform when he was stationed down at Fort Dix  right before a performance at the Gaslight, about walking down the street Cambridge with Tom Rush just after he put out No Regrets/Rockport Sunday, and about affairs with certain up and coming female folkies like the previously mentioned Minnie Murphy at the Club Nana when that was the spot of spots. Strictly aficionado stuff if you dare go anywhere within ten miles of the subject with any of them -I will take my chances here because this notice, this passing of legendary Rosalie Sorrels a decade after her dear friend Utah Phillips is important.)

Those urban locales were certainly the high white note spots but there was another important strand that hovered around Saratoga Springs in upstate New York, up around Skidmore and some of the other upstate colleges. That was Caffe Lena’s, run by the late Lena Spenser, a true folk legend and a folkie character in her own right, where some of those names played previously mentioned but also where some upstarts from the West got a chance to play the small crowds who gathered at that famed (and still existing) coffeehouse. Upstarts like the late Bruce “Utah” Phillips (although he could call several places home Utah was key to what he would sing about and rounded out his personality). And out of Idaho one Rosalie Sorrels who just joined her long-time friend Utah in that last go-round at the age of 83.

Yeah, came barreling like seven demons out there in the West, not the West Coast west that is a different proposition. The West I am talking about is where what the novelist Thomas Wolfe called the place where the states were square and you had better be as well if you didn’t want to starve or be found in some empty arroyo un-mourned and unloved. A tough life when the original pioneers drifted westward from Eastern nowhere looking for that pot of gold or at least some fresh air and a new start away from crowded cities and sweet breathe vices. A tough life worthy of song and homage. Tough going too for guys like Joe Hill who tried to organize the working people against the sweated robber barons of his day (they are still with us as we are all now very painfully and maybe more vicious than their in your face forbear). Struggles, fierce down at the bone struggles also worthy of song and homage. Tough too when your people landed in rugged beautiful two-hearted river Idaho, tried to make a go of it in Boise, maybe stopped short in Helena but you get the drift. A different place and a different type of subject matter for your themes than lost loves and longings.  

Rosalie Sorrels could write those songs as well, as well as anybody but she was as interested in the social struggles of her time (one of the links that united her with Utah) and gave no quarter when she turned the screw on a lyric. The last time I saw Rosalie perform in person was back in 2002 when she performed at the majestic Saunders Theater at Harvard University out in Cambridge America at what was billed as her last go-round, her hanging up her shoes from the dusty travel road. (That theater complex contained within the Memorial Hall dedicated to the memory of the gallants from the college who laid down their heads in that great civil war that sundered the country. The Harvards did themselves proud at collectively laying down their heads at seemingly every key battle that I am aware of when I look up at the names and places. A deep pride runs through me at those moments)

Rosalie Sorrels as one would expect on such an occasion was on fire that night except the then recent death of another folk legend, Dave Von Ronk, who was supposed to be on the bill (and who was replaced by David Bromberg who did a great job banging out the blues unto the heavens) cast a pall over the proceedings. I will always remember the crystal clarity and irony of her cover of her classic Old Devil Time that night -yeah, give me one more chance, one more breathe. But I will always think of If I Could Be The Rain and thoughts of washing herself down to the sea whenever I hear her name. RIP Rosalie Sorrels 

DVD REVIEW

American Experience: Riding The Rails, PBS Productions, 1998

Growing up in the 1950’s I had a somewhat tenuous connection with trains. My grandparents lived close to a commuter rail that before my teenage years went out of service, due to the decline of ridership as the goal of two (or three) car garages gripped the American imagination in an age when gas was cheap and plentiful. In my teens though, many a time I walked those above-mentioned abandoned tracks to take the short route to the center of town. As an adult I have frequently ridden the rails, including a cross-continental trip that actually converted me to the virtues of air travel. Of course, my ‘adventures’ riding the rails is quite different than that being looked at in this American Experience documentary about a very, very common way for the youth of America to travel in the Depression-ridden 1930’s, the youth of my parents’ generation. My own experiences were merely as a paying passenger. Theirs was anything but. The only common thread between them and me is the desire expressed by many interviewees to not be HERE but to be THERE.

This tale of a significant number of youth in the 1930’s is held together by film footage of the time, some nice background music from the likes of Jimmy Rodgers and Doc Watson that evokes the ‘romance of the rails’ and ‘talking head’ interviews with the itinerant travelers, male and female. Despite various motives, from the desire to leave the parents’ house to being thrown out during those tough times, the stories they tell are of cold nights in open box cars, overcrowded jails, beatings by the ever present railroad "bulls" and the struggle to find a little work in order to be able to move on to the next locale and maybe some ‘peace’. Mainly this was the eternal heading West of the famous Professor Frederick Turner Jackson thesis- with this proviso- by then the land had run out and maybe the possibility of the dreams. A few interviewed are still driven by the lore of the rails, many had no regrets but mainly this is a very interesting trip down memory lane in a time before the automobile became readily accessible to teenagers.

No review of the life of the rails can omit the special jargon developed by those on the road, the ‘class distinctions' (hobo, bum, and tramp) between them and the rough and ready ‘code of honor’ of the rails (honored more in the breach than in the practice from what I can gather). This tradition has survived best in song by the likes of Woody Guthrie in any number of his songs written in the 1930’s, the classic Elizabeth Cotton song "Freight Train" and the work, including a song with the same title as the headline to this piece, of the recently deceased old Wobblie, folksinger, writer and rail rat extraordinaire Utah Phillips. Starlight On The Rails, indeed!

Daddy What's A Train? Utah Phillips

Daddy what's a train? Is it something I can ride?
Does it carry lots of grown-up folks and little kids inside?
Is it bigger than our house? Well how can I explain
When my little boy and girl ask me "Daddy what's a train?"

When I was just a boy and living by the track
Us kids would gather up the coal in big 'ole gunnysacks
Then we heard the warning sound as the train pulled into view
The engineer would smile and wave as she went rolling through

She blew so loud and clear, we had to cover up our ears
And we counted cars just as high as we could go
I can almost hear the steam those big old drivers scream
A sound my little kids will never know

Daddy what's a train? Is it something I can ride?
Does it carry lots of grown-up folks and little kids inside?
Is it bigger than our house? Well how can I explain
When my little boy and girl ask me "Daddy what's a train?"

I guess the times have changed, kids are different now
'Cause some don't even seem to know the milk comes from a cow
My little boy can tell the names of all the baseball stars
I remember how we memorized the names on railroad cars

The Wabash and the TP, Lackawanna, the IC
The Nickel-Plate and the good old Santa Fe
Just names out of the past, I guess they're fading fast
Every time I hear my little boy say

Daddy what's a train? Is it something I can ride?
Does it carry lots of grown-up folks and little kids inside?
Is it bigger than our house? Well how can I explain
When my little boy and girl ask me "Daddy what's a train?"

We climbed into the car, drove down into town
Right out the depot house, but no one was around
We searched the yard togheter for something I could show
But I knew there hadn't been a train for a dozen years or so

All the things I did when I was just a kid
How far away those memories appear
I guess it's plain to see they still mean a lot to me
'Cause my ambition was to be an engineer

Daddy what's a train? Is it something I can ride?
Does it carry lots of grown-up folks and little kids inside?
Is it bigger than our house? Well how can I explain
When my little boy and girl ask me "Daddy what's a train?"

Starlight On The Rails

This comes from reading Thomas Wolfe. He had a very deep understanding of the music in language. Every now and then he wrote something that stuck in my ear and would practically demand to be made into a song.
I think that if you talk to railroad bums, or any kind of bum, you'll see that what affects them the most is homelessness, not necessarily rootlessness. Traveling is all right if you have a place to go from and a place to go to. It's when you don't have any place that it becomes more difficult. There's nothing you can count on in the world, except yourself. And if you're an old blown bum, you can't even do that very well. I guess this is a home song as much as anything else.
We walked along a road in Cumberland and stooped, because the sky hung down so low; and when we ran away from London, we went by little rivers in a land just big enough. And nowhere that we went was far: the earth and the sky were close and near. And the old hunger returned - the terrible and obscure hunger that haunts and hurts Americans, and makes us exiles at home and strangers wherever we go.

Oh, I will go up and down the country and back and forth across the country. I will go out West where the states are square. I will go to Boise and Helena, Albuquerque and the two Dakotas and all the unknown places. Say brother, have you heard the roar of the fast express? Have you seen starlight on the rails?




I think about a wife and family,
My home and all the things it means;
The black smoke trailing out behind me
Is like a string of broken dreams.

A man who lives out on the highway
Is like a clock that can't tell time;
A man who spends his life just ramblin'
Is like a song without a rhyme.

Copyright ©1973, 2000 Bruce Phillips


FREIGHT TRAIN
(c) 1957 by Elizabeth Cotten. Sanga Music

Chorus:
Freight train, Freight train, run so fast
(rep.)

Please don't tell what train I'm on
They won't know what route I've gone

When I am dead and in my grave
No more good times here I crave
Place the stones at my head and feet
Tell them all that I've gone to sleep.

When I die, Lorde, bury me deep
Way down on old Chestnut street
Then I can hear old Number 9
As she comes rolling by.

*From The Archives- POLITICAL CORRECTNESS AND THE 'G-Y' WORD

Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for Mormons.

RUMBLINGS FROM iPOD /MP3 NATION

FORGET DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS AND GREENS- BUILD A WORKERS PARTY THAT FIGHTS FOR A WORKERS GOVERNMENT!

Readers of this space know that this writer centers his commentary on ‘high’ politics, usually lambasting the bourgeois politicians, especially Democratic Party politicians for being eunuchs or worst on the war in Iraq and other pressing social questions. And I am entirely comfortable with that, after all we are all adults in this game and it comes with the territory. While I am waiting to comment on what promises to be another ugly Democratic somersault on the upcoming war budget fight however another little issue has crossed my path. Believe me I enter this dispute with more fear and trepidation that I have ever had in my ‘adult’ battles for it involves the mysterious ways of teenagers. I had enough trouble trying to survive my own teenage years to be wary, very wary, of the trials and tribulations of teens a couple of generations behind me. But here goes.

I have recently read about the case of a Mormon girl out in Santa Rosa, California, Rebeka Rice, whose parents have taken school officials there to court over a reprimand and notation in her record that she received as a freshman in high school a few years ago. The gist of the case is that at that time some fellow students, as is the nature of such things, razzed her about her Mormonism by asking whether she had ‘ten mothers’. In response, Rebeka stated that their comment was ‘so gay’, meaning to her stupid. And she was right, it was stupid. However, in the interest of ‘political correctness’ local school officials, assumingly well trained in how to ferret out real gay-bashing hate speech , and apparently with plenty of time on their hands decided to take a forthright stand for gay liberation over the statement and took the above mentioned action. As is the nature of the times the parents thereafter filed suit. And they were right to do so, as well.

Hello, school officials. Apparently someone has been living in a bubble. Haven’t these august school officials been out to the malls in Santa Rosa lately? As least here I have. And assisted by a foreign language translator, a necessity in such situations, I found out that indeed common usage and understanding by teens is on Rebeka’s side. If one wants to use hate speech toward gays and lesbians there are other more robust forms of expression that I will not bother to repeat here. Moreover, in the present case the school’s hypocrisy trumps its supposed virtue. The local school officials passed on taking action on the really hateful expression in the exchange-the other students’ taut about Rebeka’s religion which is clear and unmistakable. In my teenage days, back in the days when the world was ‘young and gay’, that kind of statement would have been the equivalent of ‘your mama’ or ‘your mother’ and would have been fighting words, with fists flying. But, dear readers, we live in a kinder, gentler more civilized age with the requisite peer counseling, arbitration and, of course, the ubiquitous liberal ‘thought’ police to smooth things over.

Okay, okay. Yes, we live in an age of victimhood. And damn there is more discrimination against gays, lesbians, transsexuals, women, the aged, blacks, Hispanics, the mentally-challenged, immigrants, teenagers and X oppressed groups that we can shake a stick at. But, something is desperately wrong when the everyday language of teens (or any other sub-culture) is subject to official governmental inspection and sanction allegedly in the interest of making bourgeois society ‘nice’. Where did we go off the rails on this part of the ‘culture’ wars? Well, one place to look is the 1960’s. I have written elsewhere about the fun, even for teenagers, of being alive at that time and imbibing in the whirlwind of the changing cultural currents.

But, my friends, we were politically, socially and, in the case of some groups like the Black Panthers and Weatherpeople, militarily defeated by the forces of reaction in this country. A response by some of my generation was either to deny that reality and drop out of the political struggle or turn into ‘cultural guerillas’ and head for the jungles, oops I mean, universities and try to create some kind of politically and morally correct ‘small’ universe there. That is at least part of the genesis of this ‘correctness’ mania.

Unfortunately, moral gestures will not change this sad old world but only by changing the material base of society so that NO ONE has a vested interest in hating anyone. But that requires political struggle against the current forces that want to keep each oppressed group separated in a 'divide and conquer' strategy that works so well for them. If you want to really fight against gay discrimination (and all the other discriminations) then you had better be prepared to do a lot more than play ‘cop’, even if for ‘do-gooder’ motives. In any case, I hope even in a communist future where no one will have a vested interest in ‘razzing’ anyone that the teens then will still have their own ‘tribal’ language as they try to figure out there place in the world. In the meantime-VICTORY TO REBEKA RICE!

*Stay Alert!- A Look At The American Radical Right- A Guest Commentary From "Fresh Air"

Click on the headline to link to a National Public Radio (NPR) broadcast of Terry Gross' "Fresh Air" program, for March 25, 2010, of a report on the rise of the radical right in America , including the militia-types since the election of Barack Obama.


Markin comment:

As I stated in the headline this rising threat from the ever present radical right in America is something we must be aware of the defense of our communist perspective. Hell, even for the defense of simple democratic rights. There is a storm of some magnitude brewing out there. This edge of militias, survivalist, nativists and Nazis is the breeding ground for those who we will have to face down in the streets, if it ever comes to that. This report should be a goad to get our side properly organized, and pronto.

*From "The Rag Blog"-So Long American Dream- A Guest Book Review

Click on the headline to link to a "The Rag Blog" book review, "The New Class Society"