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PETE SEEGER

8/31/2011

Pete Seeger
    After army discharge in 1945 and back at Brooklyn College, a classmate with a guitar said he was forming a group. His name was Fred Hellerman and his group was The Weavers. It was my one degree of separation from Pete Seeger. In the 1960s I heard a piece of his banjo music, wanted to use it, wrote asking how much, to have him write back saying go ahead, no charge.
    A PBS documentary of Pete Seeger tells about his three-and-a-half years in the army and early struggles as an artist, not different from most except that Seeger never sought financial success. He quit the Weavers rather than do a cigarette commercial. And he always had a cause, whether marching for civil rights in Selma, or cleaning up the polluted Hudson River.
    Things got rough in 1955 when the House Un-American Activities Committee hauled him up for singing at concerts they thought were connected to communist organizations. When asked to answer questions on his sympathies, he said:
    “I feel that in my whole life I have never done anything of any conspiratorial nature and I resent very much and very deeply the implication of being called before this Committee that in some way because my opinions may be different from yours, or yours, Mr. Willis, or yours, Mr. Scherer, that I am any less of an American than anybody else. I love my country very deeply, sir.”
    I’m in awe of someone with the guts to say that to a passel of self-appointed hypocrites with power to destroy his ability to earn a living. But Seeger did not roll over as did, for instance, Elia Kazan and Jerome Robbins. He was black listed, and could not find work on TV for years, instead toured the country performing for schools and community groups, happy with the rough warm hospitality of farmers and home cooked meals.
    On a combat mission I watched flak explode, felt the tremor when a piece pierced the ball turret, another thumped into the leading edge of a wing. But I was there with my crew, one bomber in a flight of seven, one flight of an armada. That made it easier. Pete Seeger stood alone against a know-nothing committee of heartless hacks.
    In combat I fought for the kids I hoped to have. Pete Seeger fought for them too. My war ended in 1945. Pete Seeger’s went on until 1994 when a grateful nation came to its senses and awarded him the National Medal of Arts. In 2008 he sang at the inauguration of President Barack Obama. I didn’t quite realize it during WW2, but I was fighting for a nation that could breed people like Pete Seeger.

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POLITICAL TAPE WORM

8/30/2011

Political Tape Worm
    American political parties formed out of factions who differed on how the new nation should be organized. Federalists supported George Washington who feared that independent states would break into weak nations ripe for plucking by European powers.
Those opposing, first simply called Anti-Federalists, after lots of political maneuvering
became what is today the Republican Party, Grand Old Party—GOP. The word democrat
(small ‘d’) first a term of derision, was embraced by those who favored keeping the country unified, first Democratic Republicans, then just Democrats. These became our two major political parties.
    There have been many others, each with a cause: America First Party, American Nazi Party, Christian Liberty Party, Citizens Party, Constitution Party, Green Party, Labor Party, Workers Party, some fifty listed in Wikipedia. Ross Perot, a billionaire, ran as an Independent. Ralph Nader ran for president five times, twice as a Green Party candidate. No third party candidate ever won a national election.
    The present Tea Party began in 2006 as the Boston Tea Party, taking its name from an incident in 1773 when American colonists, protesting taxes, boarded a British ship and tossed bales of tea into Boston Harbor.
    Observers with bales of money but who hate to part with any realized that they could use this new anti-tax Boston Tea Party. But third parties don’t win elections, so they decided it should stay a faction, and enabled by the US Supreme Court decision allowing secret donations, got money from Scrooges like the Koch Brothers, whose political mercenaries inserted the Tea Party into the body of the GOP. But it wasn't content to lie there, eating GOP innards like a tape worm, so is constantly bursting out, like Sigourney Weaver's Alien.
    Secrecy is a potent weapon in an arsenal of deception that includes, subterfuge, false promises, influence peddling, pandering, and lies. But a squid-like ink of craziness betrays its presence.
    Rick Perry, who threatened succession as governor of Texas, bellows anti-science, anti-evolution, anti-global warming junk. Michele Bachmann claims that an East Coast earthquake and hurricane show that God is mad at easterners, probably because most of
them see her for what she is, a ditzy nut case. Sarah Palin divides “real” Americans,
meaning rural folk, from city folk, factory hands, and anyone else who doesn’t buy her
odious anti-Americanism that judges people based on where they live and what they do.
    The goal of Tea Party string pullers is trickle-up economics, sluicing more and more money into superrich veins where it pools, eventually to clot and cause a deadly thrombosis in the entire country. The Bush Depression was the first. If a second strikes, move over Third World, here comes the U.S.A.

DREAM and ESSENCE

8/29/2011

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Dream and Essence
    Le Combat Antique (The Ancient Battle), is a two-man mime piece by the French master,
Etienne Decroux. It depicts a battle between an old warrior and a young one, which the young one wins. James Joyce, after the death of his father and birth of his grandson, wrote a short poem, Ecce Puer (It’s a Boy). Here it is:
    Of the dark past / A child is born; With joy and grief / My heart is torn.
    Calm in his cradle / The living lies. May love and mercy / Unclose his eyes!
    Young life is breathed / On the glass; The world that was not / Comes to pass.
    A child is sleeping: / An old man gone. O, father forsaken, / Forgive your son!
    Both works spring from the same theme; each new generation displaces the one before. It
has a special meaning in the U.S.A. where each new generation expects to surpass the one
before, unlike countries where people can be born into a status or caste with no hope of escape. Immigrants to our shores learn with amazement and gladness that their kids can do better. It’s the core of the American Dream.
    It bloomed after World War 2, with returning vets, then their kids, the Baby Boomers,
and theirs, Gen X, even Gen Y. But with Reaganomics came trickle-down theory and huge tax
breaks for the rich. But the theory was false; wealth trickled up instead of down. Fewer and
fewer grabbed more and more. Today, for the first time, children have less opportunity than
their parents.
    Economics, for good reason called “the dismal science,” offers no solid proof for or
against trickle-down, so theories grow from ideologies. One bunch blames it on too much
government, another on corrupt incompetent government. Nut cases get into the act, but they can be smoked out, especially after hurricanes.
    As this is written, Hurricane Irene is sweeping New England after having given New
York City a brush. There’s flooding, trees down, power out, no subways. Yet people had been alerted, were stocked up on essentials, and shelters were open. The city and the state, ably captained by Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Cuomo, supported by a ready federal
government, coped well.
    In shocking contrast stands New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina, when a drowned and
helpless city was abandoned by a care-nothing administration who dispatched troops not to
rescue and minister, but to look upon victims as potential terrorists. If there’s no lesson to be learned from these contrasting attitudes and what followed, then the American Dream has a dim future.

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EPIC STRUGGLE OF THE 21ST CENTURY

8/27/2011

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Epic Struggle of the 21st Century
    Beneath the shimmering layer of America’s leaders lies a gray mass of followers, and below that, a dark morass in which some reach for a devilish opposite of greatness. I recall (with a shudder) a 16-year-old who’d been arrested for multiple murders, explaining it as a demand for respect. “They disrespected me so they had to go down,” he said calmly. In the teens, along with an emerging sense of self, comes an urgent need for respect.
    Early talk show host, Steve Allen, said he only wanted the respect of his peers. This is what awards like the Tony, Emmy, Golden Globe, and dozens of others confer. Yet some people want to prevail, to rule, achieved in a democracy by running for office.
    In prehistoric societies, cunning and brute force ruled. But never for long. Scientists studying the bones of early humans learned that very few males lived longer than 35. One can imagine pitiless battles to dominate, a youngster of 15 bludgeoning an oldster of 30, perhaps his own father, for leadership of group, gang, or pack. When family ties grew stronger, the old leader would thrust forward a son, saving his own skin in the process. This led to inherited leadership, and eventually to royal families passing kingdoms from father to son.
    That process is at work now in the failed attempts to hold power by Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi, and the ongoing attempt of Bashar-al Assad to hang onto Syria, handed him by his father, Hafez-al Hassad. It is successfully on view in North Korea, where Kim Jong Il owns the nation passed to him by his father, Kim Il Sung, and which he hopes to pass to his son, Kim Jong Un.
    This bizarre process may seem like something left from prehistric ages, yet is also happening here and now and in the U.S.A. And if there is no obvious mayhem and death, it is deadly on a far greater scale as a wealthy elite seeks to take command of an embattled middle class. Money is power, and power wielded brutally is brute force. This elite buys politicians, strategists, and advertising. The Koch Brothers, funded the Tea Party, which, playing upon fears, prejudices, and discontents, attracts many and threatens to capture the GOP. Opposing it are those who hope to keep power in the hands of the many.
    This is the epic struggle of the 21st Century.

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WHAT MATTERS

8/26/2011

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What Matters
    Most days this blog is focused on the coming presidential election, yet today is given to the poignant drama of two people whose health has interrupted their stunning lives. One is Steve Jobs, stepping down as CEO of Apple, the other Pat Summitt, one of the great basketball coaches of history.
    Steve Jobs, an innovative and entrepreneurial genius, will be ranked with Thomas Edison and Henry Ford. Pat Summitt, coach of the Lady Vols, the basketball team of the University of Tennessee, changed the lives of all she touched. The world would be poorer had either not come into it.
    Jobs will continue as Apple’s chairman of the board, Summitt, as head coach, assisted by the staff she built over the years. Both are at ages, Jobs 56, Summitt, 60, when a person in good health has physical and mental energy plus experience attained only by living. The prime of life. Their premature loss is a reminder that we will all vanish, as will our planet one day be vaporized by a dying sun, and humankind, perhaps confined to this solar system, perhaps dispersed into the stars, will inevitably merge with the timeless abyss of infinity. Does it matter in the end whether one is a snarling grabber for power, or lives a life dedicated to one’s fellow beings?
    Whatever the choice, at this moment, the impending loss of two outstanding
human beings calls only for quiet contemplation.
                                                                                                        ***
    May not post again until after Hurricane Irene pays it visit to New York City. Stay dry!.

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DEMOLITION DERBY

8/25/2011

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Demolition Derby
    Except for one, the present field of Republican presidential candidates resembles a Demolition Derby, a weird event in which junk cars ram each other until the last one able to move is declared winner. At this juncture the one who stands apart, perhaps hoping to watch the others run each other down, is Ron Huntsman. What drives the rest, and what makes people watch is material for a doctoral dissertation in psychology or mass psychosis.
    Last night, David Letterman asked guest, Rachel Maddow, to describe how the country would have fared had John McCain won the last presidential election. She shot back, “At least we’d have Sarah Palin to cheer us up.”
    She got laughs and shudders. Palin, who couldn’t finish out one term as Alaska’s governor, draws cheering crowds when she emerges from her wayward bus to speechify, putting on a spectacle of nastiness and idiocy that ought to make McCain, whose political judgement is questionable but whose loyalty is not, thankful that he lost in 2008. He came uncomfortably close, carrying 22 states, 46% of the vote, some 58 million people marking their ballots for McCain/Palin, sort of like having a planet- destroying comet miss by a hair’s breath.
    Whatever the psychological virus, it entices grotesques like Donald Trump. During his brief stint as a pseudo-candidate, his glowering, “You’re fired!” demeanor drew crowds. Reporters asked him questions about matters that had clearly never entered his head, which he answered with a shot from the hip rarely related to the question. Cornered on the tarmac of a small airport, when asked about a rival, he snarled that his own “net worth” was ten times greater.
    Perhaps there’s another genuine candidate lurking in the background, to emerge when the carnage ends. What’s happening now is a dreary spectacle, and no way to run an election in a country that purports to be the leader of the free world.

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STYLE AND SUBSTANCE

8/24/2011

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Style and Substance
    The blog titled Days of Yore elicited this comment from reader, DS, about Senator Ron Paul: "He's a vicious, ideologue wolf in populist sheep's clothing."
    My point was that Senator Paul’s policies, if enacted, would destroy the U.S. Yet I feel Paul believes what he says, unlike demagogue, Rick Perry, who believes in nothing but himself, or Mitt Romney, who believes in nothing at all.
    “The style is the man himself,” said George-Louis LeClerc. I can like a person while disagreeing with what he says. It’s left to each of us to separate substance from style.
    A public figure whose mild manner could not conceal viciousness, was Donald Rumsfeld, George Bush’s Secretary of Defense. Soft spoken, with contempt for his critics, he came across as bored and impatient, whether talking about downsizing the army or water-boarding prisoners of war. Listening to him felt like being in the fourth grade with a substitute teacher.
    This morning, on the radio, Rep. Leonard Lance, (R) New Jersey, calmly said that the “overwhelming motivation of those in the Tea Party is fiscal responsibility,” delivered as if stating that the earth is round. If Lance really believes it is responsible to reduce services to the middle class while not touching a dollar of the millions being passed to billionaires, he should join up with Ron Paul.
    Another style is the hellfire-and-brimstone thundering of Rick Perry, the echo-chamber howling of Michele Bachmann, the thuggish army-latrine profanity-laced bellyaching of Donald Trump. Although each has individual bumps, it’s one style: strident, raucous, substance pre-agreed, audiences there to be fired up, like professional wrestling, which ex-wrestler, Governor Jesse Ventura, called “an art form.” in both, the audience comes for the madcap buffoonery, performers and audience pandering to each other in a serio-comic dialogue, almost a game.
    Americans, it is said, are more swayed by emotion, which worries Obama backers. Capable of a stirring speech, Barack Obama is firmly planted in sweet reason. The Radical Right is ready willing and able to topple the U.S. from the world’s moral high ground. The Loopy Left, also ready and willing, is able only to cripple the coalition that elected Obama in 2008. From legitimate Left to sensible Center to reasonable Right, the choice is clear.

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OBAMA'S WAR

8/23/2011

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Obama’s War
    Obama bashers who were calling the Libyan Revolution “Obama’s War,” have changed their tune now that it’s on the verge of being won. But instead of celebrating success, they act like they were hoping the U.S.A. would lose, so they could blame it on Obama. Their mean-spirited bleating exhibits the most contemptible characters outside of a Charles Dickens novel.
    TV host, Lou Dobbs, described Obama as “desperate” for a foreign policy success. If desperation is what it takes, what a shame George Bush lacked it, just swaggered like a frat boy in a G-suit on a carrier deck under a “Mission Accomplished” banner. All he accomplished was a devastating loss of American lives, an endless military occupation, and a permanent mid-Eastern setback for the U.S.A.
    Mitt Romney, shape-shifting as usual, had first asked, “Who’s going to own Libya if we get rid of the government there,” now warns that it is imperative to extradite the Lockerbie bomber. If that doesn’t happen, wonder who he’ll blame? Rick Perry could only warn about how hard it will be for Libyans to form a government, while Michele Bachmann, opposed to any American role, hoped we’d soon be out altogether.
    John McCain had called for American bombing of Gaddafi. Had we knocked the tyrant out a bit sooner (the war has lasted only six months), it would have stolen victory from the Libyans and left us with another impossible occupation. Now McCain, still saying it took too long, churlishly credits NATO. McCain’s heroism as a POW has taken him far, but as a U.S. senator he is out of his depth.
    The USA flew only observation and support missions. On the day an American F-15 came down with mechanical failure, its crew bailed out to be welcomed by Libyans, and returned into American hands.
    Winning without American boots on the ground is a form of leadership that’s been called “leading from behind,” also used by Bill Clinton in Kosovo. It takes tactical and strategic smarts, nerves of steel, and the character to ignore no-nothing armchair critics. Obama has it all, plus a steadfast restraint that brought triumph without one American soldier lost. As important, no occupation, and the Libyans, who fought and died, own the victory and have a powerful motive for re-building their nation.
    Obama’s war, yes, absolutely.

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DAYS OF YORE

8/23/2011

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Days of Yore
    Senator Ron Paul looks and sounds like your favorite uncle. He believes what he says, says what he believes, and hasn’t a deceitful cell in his body. Next to a fulminating phony like Rick Perry or a shape-shifter like Mitt Romney, he’s a breath of fresh mountain air. If George W. was a good guy to have a beer with, Senator Paul is perfect for Thanksgiving dinner. I’d want him to carve.
    Watching a video of him before a small audience in Orlando, Florida, he radiated sincerity, folksy charm, and presented a consistent Libertarian view. He wants to abolish the IRS, the Federal Reserve, the Patriot Act, draft registration, laws against guns, alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, cocaine, and all drugs, abolish unemployment insurance, Medicare, you name it.
    As president he would bring the troops home “as quickly as I could get them loaded onto ships.” He spoke against “Obama’s constant wars and attack on civil liberties,” saying that “Government is failing around the world.” His audience (one wore a tricorne, the three-cornered hat popular in the 1700s), applauded throughout and gave him a standing ovation.
    Well why not restore liberties cherished in the 1800s? Why not bring all troops home, seal the borders, and settle into splendid isolation from a fractious, frightening world? It’s not enough to say that we are deeply tied into that world. Senator Paul would cut such ties.
    But can an industrial nation of 300 million live like an agrarian nation of 5 million? Can a multi-ethnic country divided into constituencies, states, counties, districts political, police, and school , businesses small, medium and huge, agri-businesses, unions, corporations with interlocking boards of directors, and every other organized entity that has evolved in the past two centuries, also contending with technologies that can blow up and poison the entire world or connect people anywhere and pinpoint many within two feet, revert to a vanished agrarian Eden?
    If Senator Paul, a sweet man I greatly respect as a human being, were ever to find himself holding the levers of power, I’d hope that the band would quickly strike up because in very little time our ship of state, like the Titanic, would have its hull ripped open, and sink.

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THE ENTREPRENEURIAL IMPERATIVE

8/22/2011

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    My last post, “Know Thine Enemy,” may have upset some who consider it offensive to characterize Michele Bachmann as anti-American.    Charles Lindberg, after his historic solo flight across the Atlantic, visited Germany, returned pro-Nazi, yet never considered himself anything but a patriot. Pre-WW2 German-American Bundists portrayed themselves as super patriots despite direct links to an outlaw Nazi government.
    Michele Bachmann and her followers, also Grover Norquist and those who sign his anti-tax pledge deem themselves patriotic Americans. That is their right, as it is mine to look at their statements and demands, and make a different judgement.
                                                                     ***
The Entrepreneurial Imperative
    The urge to create art or an enterprise lies within. In rigid command economies, entrepreneurs turn to black markets and barter In free economies, the ultimate entrepreneurs are inventors and experimental artists who produce products for which there is no demand and create markets where none exist.
    Americans would feel suffocated in a country without both democracy and capitalism. Yet we know capitalism can exist without democracy. In the most brutal tyrannies, business owners serve tyrants in return for advantage and wealth. And we are experiencing a very aggressive kind of capitalism from China.
    Free societies need to serve the entrepreneurial imperative yet not allow it to run amok. Repression leads to black markets and crime. When Prohibition was enacted, capitalism took a virulent form: organized crime. When Prohibition was repealed, it could not repeal organized crime which plagues us still.
    Yet under-regulation, oddly enough, leads to something similar—the Enron effect, where an enterprise turns outlaw—the PG&E malignancy, where an enterprise poisons both the body physical and body politic, or the toxic asset bank debacle that kicked off the Bush/Cheney Depression. Keeping a balance between over and under regulation is far harder than walking a tightrope,
    Some politicians today call for a return to freedoms lost when the U.S. grew from a nation of independent farmers to a complex technological society straining at the limits of its resources. Longing for simpler days of yore is tempting, yet presents deadly dangers. More on Days of Yore tomorrow.
                                                                    ***
    A web site named www.Spectacle.org begins, “Democracy is the process by
which we get ourselves organized to perform capitalism.” It seems to state that the
basic reason for democracy is to make capitalism possible. For the whole essay,
check http://www.spectacle.org/496/demo.html

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Author (Yuma, AZ, 1944)

Being 90 years in this world, with great kids, great grandkids, great wives (two, one at a time) and great memories, I wonder why some people seem to have stopped loving the U.S.A.? I will wonder in print right here. If you wonder too, or can provide some answers, please comment.
Stuart Hodes

       With my friend, Nero.
             April, 2012.
    Photo by Ray Madrigal