At long last, some good news from the much-troubled, nearly-moribund Indianapolis Peace and Justice Center (IPJC): finally, IPJC’s President since April, the consistently and roundly inept David Scott, resigned, and in his stead as interim President steps IPJC’s Vice-president, the able Jennifer Cobb. I’ve known Ms. Cobb for nearly two decades, and it is at last comforting to see a relatively young person (under 40) stepping into a leadership position at IPJC, an organization presently dominated by retirees collecting Social Security, with nary a real youth (someone under 30) in sight. After nearly 30 years of existence, the IPJC, notably under Scott, but earlier as well, under the complacent helm of immediate past Presidents Jim Wolfe and Jane Haldeman, seemed determined to go out “not with a bang, but with a whimper.” Though Cobb will have a very difficult time ahead trying to breathe life back into the IPJC, she does have the ability and, hopefully, the assertiveness to do so, and I offer my full cooperation and support to her in this endeavor.
Because, at bottom, the only good thing I can say at this point about the accession of Jennifer Cobb to the head of IPJC and David Scott’s much-justified resignation is “It’s about time!”
This was made particularly evident by Scott’s last activity as IPJC President, putting out the pathetic Winter 2011 issue of The Movement, IPJC’s putative monthly newspaper that hadn’t published since September, ostensibly for lack of funds, even though the time for publication of the October issue and beyond would’ve coincided with the IPJC’s annual fund drive; but needless to say, no financial information on the success or failure of that drive was granted to IPJC members, or as far as I know, even to its Board of Directors. David Scott simply told the Board that funds were not available, publication of The Movement needed to be suspended indefinitely at the very least, and that was that. Finis. End of discussion. Given the Board’s long-standing tradition of being an acquiescent rubber-stamp for which asking pointed questions of the President would’ve been a serious breach of comfortable cronyism, the Board’s craven collapse on the issue of publishing The Movement—which effectively eliminated IPJC’S voice to the broader Indianapolis community completely—was not at all surprising, even if deplorable. And that’s putting it mildly indeed!
But a very limited edition of The Movement was put out very late in December (I received my copy via mail on the 22nd), a patchwork of articles that had been sitting around gathering dust for the last couple of months, and whose publication now clearly showed their datedness. Bob Baldwin’s article on the Occupy Indianapolis movement referred to the state of that movement as it existed not later than late October or perhaps very early November. Debbie Peddie’s article on the execution of Troy Davis on September 21 was clearly written at that time, and not in the least updated to make it more relevant. Other articles in this issue of The Movement were even less edifying, the quality of writing was so pedestrian it made the average AP or Indianapolis Star news story look like a literary paragon, and the political tenor of the issue (if it can be dignified by calling it that) was confused, disoriented and unfocused. Further, the dearth of content was even more emphasized by that long-standing ploy editors of IPJC newspapers traditionally use when short on content to adequately fill a newspaper—set the whole thing in larger-than-normal type, which makes the paucity of content stand out even more.
Scott, as both Publishing Editor and IPJC President, published in this issue a “Letter from the President” that directly referenced its being written in November 2011, and obviously not updated. It was noticeably silent on his upcoming resignation, although perhaps that was not in the offing when he penned his cliché-ridden “Letter,” filled with vacuous ruminations on celebration and time-of-year change. But one of the things that was in the “Letter” was that Earth House, a supposed “activist organization” housed in a downtown church, and which had rented the IPJC its office there for nearly four years, was now calling on the IPJC to leave. While Scott was noticeably opaque about the reasons why IPJC now had to leave, offering only possible “philosophical differences” and another organization being interested in renting the space as reasons, he’d touted Earth House as a model of activist commitment not long before, and bandied about the notion that 200 activists from Earth House could find a friendly berth in IPJC—if IPJC simply followed along with Scott’s usually grandiose, unfunded visions of what IPJC needed to become. And now this same model of activist commitment was very firmly insisting that the IPJC had to leave!
So IPJC enters 2012 looking for another place to move into, to set up yet another vastly underutilized office that never seems to be able to attract enough volunteers to adequately staff it, and where, to reliable reports, IPJC can barely afford a telephone for such an office, much less provide personnel to answer it. But Scott was always long on vague visions, very much short on implementation; which is why IPJC essentially did nothing during Scott’s tenure as President except listen to his grandiosely vague language. Which seemed to be just the way David Scott wanted it.
But enough grousing about David Scott, who will certainly not be sorely missed, if missed at all. IPJC has many other problems, many of which existed yet remained unaddressed even before Scott took office. David Scott merely compounded many festering problems that had long remained buried and hidden within the IPJC’s good ol’ boys network of tired churchgoing pacifists and their satraps, the vast majority of whom are well over 60, and anyone who is obviously under 35 a real rarity.
This, then, is the IPJC now dumped into Jennifer Cobb’s lap. As I mentioned above, I’ve known her for nearly two decades, and regard her as an able person. But she won’t be able to turn IPJC around on her own, and will find most of the Board members, as well as those precious few in the Indianapolis community who identify in any way with the IPJC, unwilling to commit or to act, preferring instead to just sit back and let Jennifer do it. But she will need to push, prod, cajole and otherwise agitate those persons despite this if she wishes to accomplish anything, if she wishes to be effective as the interim President and establish some sort of firm ground on which IPJC can stand when it elects a President at its annual April meeting. Although her e-mail address contains as first part “BlessedtheMeek,” she dare not be meek, but must be assertive and proactive, if IPJC is in fact to even have another year of existence other than as an empty shell. (Indianapolis has a way of generating do-nothing organizations that somehow manage to meet, even if accomplishing nothing; and, simply by meeting regularly, thus perpetuate themselves long beyond their useful lives.) As I also indicated above, I extend my offer of active cooperation to her, and as a first step, offer the following as strong suggestions on what must be done (obviously, not all at once):
• First, prod IPJC’s octogenarian Treasurer, Garnett Day, to provide a full, complete report on the state of IPJC’s current finances and fund-raising.
• Second, revitalize IPJC’s monthly newspaper, The Movement, as an ongoing publication committed to journalistic excellence as its mainstay in presenting itself to the broader community, complemented and supplemented by its organizational webpage and blogging site, both of which exist in sadly moribund states. Despite one of David Scott’s friends filling the post of web moderator, neither the webpage nor the blogging site have been kept up-to-date, let alone becoming sources of timely information and discussion that can actually generate interest in the IPJC. While the IPJC’s webpage has been partially updated, its blogging site has remained unchanged and unmoderated since October 31, 2011, and both are amateurish in content and layout. The interested reader can see for him/herself; the webpage address is www.indypeaceandjustice.org, and the blog site address is http://indypeaceandjustice.wordpress.com. On this latter I posted a “comment” that’s still “awaiting moderation” since December 1, 2011!
• Third, to revitalize The Movement will require making it both writer-friendly and under the editorship of high-quality editors and staff who will work with writers and guide them in constructive ways, not simply putting in articles because they arrived via e-mail close to the time of editorial preparation, and thus filled space, or because they fit in with the IPJC President’s predilections, regardless of merit. The Movement, and its predecessor, the Indianapolis Peace and Justice Journal, did have such a person involved who excelled on both counts, and I’m glad to say I had the honor of working under him: Managing Editor Jack Kaufman-McKivigan, who hopefully will become more involved in 2012 after stepping away from The Movement in late 2011.
• Fourth, the editor of The Movement must not be the IPJC President, or beholden to him/her for the position, but be staffed independently, and, while ultimately answerable to the President and the Board of Directors, needs to be regarded as an independent professional who makes editorial decisions on sound journalistic practice, and who must be given sufficient leeway to do so; all too often the editorial functions of IPJC publications have been undermined because of petty political gripes, or because someone who was an officer of the IPJC, or sat on the Board, or both, had an ax to grind. The same goes for the moderator of the webpage and the blog site.
• Fifth, editor and writers must work together in a constructive partnership; this is best assured by a proactive promotion of journalistic excellence on both sides. Both editors and writers for IPJC publications and webs must be committed to professionalism and professional standards, even though they will probably not serve as paid professionals. Further, while the editorial decisions of editors and moderators should be regarded as essentially final, there needs also be an effective ombudsman who can hear appeals and render fair decisions that will be regarded as such, even by the losing parties. IPJC publications and webs have been plagued by censorship in the past; in the interests of providing a true free speech forum, this must not be allowed to happen again.
• Sixth, the IPJC President must be accountable to the Board of Directors, the Board of Directors must be accountable to the President and officers, and ultimately, Board members and officers must be accountable to the membership. Recall and referendum on the part of the membership should be provided for; also, more extensive use of online and mail voting, so that decisions are made that reflect the membership as a whole, not simply those who show up at meetings.
• Seventh, the IPJC must declare itself a membership organization of individuals open to all who support its principles and commitments and who pay the annual dues, with one vote per member. It must stop the charade, long a dead letter, of somehow also having organizations as members, when none such have participated for as long as I’ve been involved in the IPJC, which goes back to just a few years after its founding in 1982.
• Eighth, the present Mission Statement and statement of editorial policy for The Movement must be scrapped; these pitiful inadequacies are the creatures of David Scott, and were passively accepted because no one had the spine to challenge Scott (except perhaps me, but I’ve always been regarded as “contentious,” even when my “contentiousness” has been proven both right and necessary!), but simply went along with him in “lazy-faire” fashion, as befits a good ol’ boys network of incestuous cronies that has been at the helm of IPJC far too long, and which has led to its present crisis.
• Ninth, while certainly IPJC should be inclusive and embracing to those in the Indianapolis area who are truly for peace with social justice, (both meaningfully defined) it simply cannot be all things to all persons, so “inclusive and open-minded” (as the statement of editorial policy for The Movement puts it) so that it includes both socialists and activists in the Indiana Tea Party, and where it opens its doors so wide that anybody who proclaims being for “peace and justice” can enter and be a part of IPJC, even Tea Party reactionaries, Blue Dog Democrats, and John Boehner/Eric Cantor Republicans! Such an all-embracing inclusiveness is absurd and unworkable for an organization that actually wishes to do something to achieve peace with justice.
• Tenth, while IPJC should continue to uphold its commitment to nonviolence, it should not conflate this, as it has done so many times in the past, with pacifism, or worse, become beholden to those approaches that have defined (and limited) the traditional “peace churches.” Quakerism especially has been far too uncritically embraced by the IPJC, with a chilling effect on peace with social justice activists who questioned the applicability of consensus in all situations; or who rejected the notion that some sort of “natural harmony” in human affairs existed, or could be brought into existence, despite the palpable conflicts of race, gender, sexual orientation and socio-economic class that have proven to be endemic, and stem more from oppression and inequality than from “disharmony.” Furthermore, IPJC has been far too beholden to theistic perspectives on peace and social justice, also with a chilling effect on those who support peace with social justice but who are atheists, agnostics, secular humanists, Marxists, consider themselves not religious, or who question certain religious beliefs and dogmas. What this all means is that IPJC needs to strive to become what its goals and principles actually tend toward, a secular organization of an inclusive center-left that is not just pro-peace and antiwar, but actually strives for, tries to put into societal practice, a vision of social justice that encompasses economic equality, respect for cultural and political differences, is democratic and participatory in decision-making, and is proactively supportive of the aims, aspirations and struggles of the 99% against the 1%, to express this last in Occupy movement terms.
As a useful guide to what this might entail, especially in regards to the ninth and tenth points, I refer the reader to my article, “Slandering Nonviolence,” which was originally published in the Indianapolis Peace and Justice Journal of October 2008, and was later revised and published on the New Politics website on September 15, 2011, accessed at http://newpol.org/node/510. I think it, and the ensuing discussion of the article posted below it, will be found not only interesting, but also highly valuable, relevant and appropriate in understanding why I make a crucial yet necessary distinction between nonviolence and pacifism, and why one can be nonviolent without necessarily being a pacifist.
This is a very good place to stop, and to wish Jennifer Cobb all the luck and pluck she will need in her job as IPJC interim President. She certainly has the ability to do excellent work, and I am glad to extend my hand to her in cooperation. I hope the rest of those who consider themselves a part of IPJC, or sympathetic to it, will do likewise.
Sunday, December 25, 2011
Thursday, November 24, 2011
TODAY I STARTED LOVING YOU AGAIN?
An informal, experiential reflection on capitalism and capitalists, socialism and socialists.
I’ve never read former-leftist-turned-leading-neoconservative Irving Kristol’s essay, “Two Cheers for Capitalism,” but some recent, very wrenching, bouts with left sectarianism and dogmatism have made me wonder seriously about left efficacy. And when I think about it, much as I really am committed to the socialist ideal as offering a positive alternative to the quagmire of global economic and social crises, and as much as I really am at heart opposed to capitalism in its present form, I have to admit that in many ways capitalism has been better to me, better for me, than many a leftist group, and many a leftist “comrade.” Considering the results of my interactions both with capitalism and with socialism I have to say “One-and-a-half cheers for capitalism.”
These recent bouts with left sectarianism and dogmatism aren’t much worth going into; just suffice it to say they involved Marxist groups acting out that “revolutionary” ersatz that renders contemporary activist-group “Marxism” as something scripted by another type of Marxist, Groucho, in collaboration with Franz Kafka! But they have made me reflect not only on socialism and capitalism as abstract entities, but also on my life with real capitalism and real capitalists, and with real socialists of my acquaintance, and see that my real life experiences with capitalism haven’t always been negative, and my real life experience with socialists and other leftists haven’t always been positive.
After all, even though capitalism and the present recession it’s caused have resulted in my being seriously underemployed, it’s also that very capitalism that’s offered and given me employment—which I have to contrast to the great majority of my leftist “comrades” who, when I’ve been really down and out, wouldn’t even give me the time of day. My apolitical friends have been far more generous to me than my left political ones, and that’s simply a fact. It’s my apolitical friend John who pledged that “George, I’ll never let you starve or go homeless,” and he’s followed through on it with his limited funds, funds far more limited than those of many a left “comrade.” All too well do I remember the leading leftist here in Indianapolis saying to me back in 2009, when I was at a nadir of employment and desperate for funds to live on, “I wish I had your time for reading.” Somehow not noticing that the “time for reading” was more taken up with concerns about how I was to meet the rent and put food on the table, not to mention taking from that “time for reading” essential time to somehow find a nonexistent job. Hell, this leading leftist couldn’t even bring himself to buy me a cup of coffee as I outlined my economic difficulties to him!
But back to capitalist perks. While I make it a point to shop for groceries at a particular large chain that is unionized, I do so equally because I find its prices reasonable, even in this time of grocery price surges. Moreover—and this is important—also because I can get a 10¢ a gallon discount off the gasoline I buy at that same chain’s gas outlets. But I also shop at a certain convenience store/filling station chain, even though it’s owned by a vehemently anti-union oil company which treats its employees badly; something I know firsthand because I once worked for it myself. (In fact, even wrote and posted an article on my mistreatment: http://politicalaffairs.net/a-worker-s-vignette-suspended-for-being-sick/.) Not that I have a whole lot of choice in where I fill up my car’s gas tank, but generally this convenience store outlet has lower prices than others; also I get points for purchases both of gas and other items that add up for perks, and one of them, the one I regularly use, enables me to get 10¢ a gallon off my gas purchases there as well. Who doesn’t want 10¢ a gallon off their gas at today’s prices? Further, the office supply chain store I regularly buy my computer printer ink cartridges from gives me both discount coupons plus a points program that also leads to monthly discounts on purchases. So, despite my regular capitalist exploitation as a consumer, something I readily admit, I get some of that money back—on a tight budget, as almost all of us are now on, who doesn’t relish that?
Like most workers I have credit cards, and yes, those payments can indeed be onerous. But despite that, I’ve regularly made them, which has resulted in my being rewarded with increased credit lines on several of them. Not only that; because of my improved credit rating due to those payments, for the past two years I’ve also been rewarded with new lower monthly premiums for my state-required auto insurance. Not a whole lot, but it adds up.
Contrast that to the local leftists often denying me any financial assistance, even when it’s really urgent, because at the time I’m considered “politically incorrect.” But these same leftists will provide such assistance when I’m viewed as “politically correct.” Like so many other personal relationships on the left, it becomes a water faucet: sometimes turned on, sometimes not; sometimes with what comes out being scalding hot, other times icy cold, and sometimes comfortably warm, depending on the “comrade’s” judgment of my “political correctness” at that particular time. Then there are those “comrades” who provide me with long-term financial assistance due to my lack of steady employment (the vicissitudes of the job market here in Indiana have made me a permanent temp for the past ten years), but with a high rate of psychological interest charged. I wish I were kidding, but I’m not. One particular example comes to mind of a rather sanctimonious Quaker woman, now deceased, who gave me a monthly stipend of over $200 a month, but expected in return I not criticize her, even though she’d actively blacklisted me and backbit me to all her local “progressive” friends here in Indianapolis for the previous 26 years, but had a moderate change of heart the last three years of her life. For which she wanted total forgiveness, even for her only half-hearted attempts to make amends—which she was willing to make as long as she didn’t have to go so far as to admit to the fellow “progressives” she’d severely misjudged me, something which would’ve damaged her aura of goodness and infallibility. As my friend John mentioned above said to me, “She thought she owned you.” Her monthly stipend had supposedly paid for me and my silence as though I were a slave, and here I now irritated her by deserved criticism; in her eyes I was acting like an “uppity
n—r”!
So there really is something positive, something to give one-and-a-half cheers for, in what Adam Smith expressed in the Wealth of Nations: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” A similar thought was expressed succinctly in a left magazine: “As a pragmatist, I frankly don’t care about Edison’s politics, or Bill Gates’ economic theories. I want to know if the electricity works and if my computer program will run.” (Michael Hogan, “Green Revolution or Scorched Earth? Mexican and Cuban Responses,” Political Affairs, February 2006)
Milton Fisk, Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Indiana University-Bloomington, titles a section in his book Toward a Healthy Society: the Morality and Politics of American Health Care Reform (University Press of Kansas, 2000), “The Decline of Compassion and Solidarity.”
While I think few of us on the left (and I regard myself as on the left) would dispute that’s the prevailing reality in our society as a whole, it’s a reality that’s also prevailing on the left today, and has been for a long time. Again, the old water faucet. And also, the notion that friendship, compassion for others simply because they are human in and of itself, is suspect, is a form of “right opportunism,” “liberalism” (as in Mao Zedong’s essay, “Combat Liberalism”), or “bourgeois sentimentality.” Because when “correct” politics are everything, there’s no room for anything else—certainly not something that might be perceived as “wavering” or “weakness.” After all, as Bukharin infamously wrote, there’s the “the necessity of breaking an egg to obtain an omlette.” And as so many of us on the left ruefully know, some of the least considerate, least compassionate people on the left will speak fulsomely of their love and devotion to persons of color, and in the Third World; the “good Quaker” mentioned above was one to these, which drew the cynical observation on my part, “The oppressed who are geographically and culturally distant from oneself are truly oppressed; the oppressed who are geographically and culturally ‘in one’s backyard’ are merely pests.” But as I’ve also expressed, “Cynicism is often the beginning of wisdom.”
This ugly reality was especially brought home to me back in 2005, when my very employability was at stake. At the time I was a long-term outpatient at a local mental health center, one of those “liberal, helping, social-safety-net agencies” that so many “socialists” and “progressives” have uncritical high regard for as “problem solvers” for the troubled and dispossessed—not realizing just how illiberal and unhelpful the actual “help” is (because they’ve rarely had to use them; or when they did seek psychological/psychiatric counseling, their wealth and insurance enabled them to utilize the private sector, rather than the classist “services” set aside for the indigent). Further, they tend to be blind to the fact that bigotry toward those who aren’t “quite right” expresses itself not just in hostility, but in condescension as well.
But at that time I was eligible for SSDI [Social Security Disability Income] as a “disabled” person (even though I was actually working, albeit only as an irregularly-employed temp, at a job I not only loved, but one that required my college degree); but in order to get it, I had to go through my dumb, computer-illiterate case manager who wasn’t getting it right, even after four months of supposedly trying. He would say he was trying but, “It’s not working. I don’t know why.” Needless to say, he would never tell me what he was doing or not doing that wasn’t working. After all, as a genuine “nutto/wacko/fruitcake” I had to be stupid as well. As this progressed, I became more and more anxious, as I really needed that SSDI income, and it was showing at work; not only causing me anxiety, but also absenteeism. Finally, after being prematurely “liberated” from my work project, I went to my case manager’s office to see just what was going on that wasn’t working. He went through his usual process, and I stood there dumbfounded. The case manager didn’t even know how to properly enter the mental health center’s name onto a website! (Instead of entering the full, official name, he entered only part of it, which naturally the completely literalist computer would reject, and had been doing for the last four months.) So I correctly entered the name and address as he stood there uncomprehending, as though he were an eight-year-old boy watching Daddy do what he couldn’t figure out, and voila! it all went through, and the whole process of applying for SSDI was now completed within the next 24 hours, and on the phone at that—so that, had I known what was going on, I could’ve corrected him over the phone, and not lost my job. (This case manager, named Bell, obviously didn’t have intelligence ringing clear as a bell; so I gave him the moniker, “Dull Thud.” Later, he would say with the usual condescending chutzpah so common among the “helping professionals,” “If I hadn’t messed up, would it have made any difference?”)
Needless to say, the local left wasn’t concerned about this problem. The “good Quaker” woman above had assured everybody that I was “blowup George,” hopelessly unstable, someone to be shunned; and that my anxiety and anger at what I was going through was just further confirmation. But this “instability” was somehow “overlooked” by my apolitical co-workers and supervisors, as they not only liked me, they also respected me as a highly intelligent, capable person! This especially came into play when the company that hired us temps through the temp agency on-site wanted me permanently removed from employment for my alleged disruption of the work environment. But my “capitalist pig” bosses knew that my behavior caused by all this was highly atypical, was not my usual excellent work performance—so the general manager of the temp agency, along with two of my immediate floor supervisors, voluntarily, on their own initiative, went to bat for me and saved my job!—a job I loved, where I had friends, and was respected. It should be added that the loss of this job would’ve not only rendered me unemployable, it would’ve absolutely destroyed my mental health altogether. But the mental health center literally didn’t care. (I’ve written and posted on the realities of psychiatric treatment, especially as available for those without money; see “Once a Nut, always a Nut?” at www.transformation-center.org/resources/recoverystories.shtml.)
“Alas, we/Who wished to lay the foundations of kindness/Could not ourselves be kind,” wrote Brecht in his 1938 poem “To Posterity”—a rather telling indictment of the left from a leftist, but one all too true all too many times. Even though he qualifies it in the lines preceding, “Even the hatred of squalor/Makes the brow grow stern./Even anger against injustice/Makes the voice grow harsh” and ends with the plea, “But you, when at last it comes to pass/That man can help his fellow man,/Do not judge us/Too harshly,” there’s something disingenuous, something that smacks of special pleading, in this. For if we of the left “Who wished to lay the foundations of kindness/Could not ourselves be kind,” who else is going to be kind in our stead? And isn’t kindness, compassion and solidarity part of what’s going to make socialism better than capitalism, something that’s going to provide that necessary equality and self-determination that removes those capitalist shackles that bind us, those shackles of profit-oriented, bottom-line, subordination in the name of “economic-efficiency”? That makes for a better, more humane world as well as one where the wealth created that’s shared by all provides a greater material abundance for all as well? Isn’t it correct to state that such humane and humanistic goals require not only humane and humanistic means, those means need to be carried out by humane and humanistic persons as well if they are to be effective? Such persons as are not all that prevalent on the left as we’d like to believe? (I’ve written and posted something that expands positively on this, “Alas, we who wished to lay the foundations of kindness . . .,” http://newpol.org/node/493)
In conclusion, in stating what I’ve directly experienced from both socialists and capitalists as leading me to give one-and-a-half cheers for capitalism, am I perhaps echoing Merle Haggard, “Today I Started Loving You Again”? Not entirely. I still dislike and distrust capitalism, but I also like getting good things from what’s possible at the moment. And my socialist temperament leads me to truly believe that “An injury to one is an injury to all,” with “all” defined in an all-embracing, humanity-affirming way, not in a “politically correct” Orwellian way, where all are equal, but some are more equal than others. Capitalism is something we socialists have to improve on; but it’s not going to come from osmosis. It’s going to come from our being actively humane and liberatory ourselves.
I’ve never read former-leftist-turned-leading-neoconservative Irving Kristol’s essay, “Two Cheers for Capitalism,” but some recent, very wrenching, bouts with left sectarianism and dogmatism have made me wonder seriously about left efficacy. And when I think about it, much as I really am committed to the socialist ideal as offering a positive alternative to the quagmire of global economic and social crises, and as much as I really am at heart opposed to capitalism in its present form, I have to admit that in many ways capitalism has been better to me, better for me, than many a leftist group, and many a leftist “comrade.” Considering the results of my interactions both with capitalism and with socialism I have to say “One-and-a-half cheers for capitalism.”
These recent bouts with left sectarianism and dogmatism aren’t much worth going into; just suffice it to say they involved Marxist groups acting out that “revolutionary” ersatz that renders contemporary activist-group “Marxism” as something scripted by another type of Marxist, Groucho, in collaboration with Franz Kafka! But they have made me reflect not only on socialism and capitalism as abstract entities, but also on my life with real capitalism and real capitalists, and with real socialists of my acquaintance, and see that my real life experiences with capitalism haven’t always been negative, and my real life experience with socialists and other leftists haven’t always been positive.
After all, even though capitalism and the present recession it’s caused have resulted in my being seriously underemployed, it’s also that very capitalism that’s offered and given me employment—which I have to contrast to the great majority of my leftist “comrades” who, when I’ve been really down and out, wouldn’t even give me the time of day. My apolitical friends have been far more generous to me than my left political ones, and that’s simply a fact. It’s my apolitical friend John who pledged that “George, I’ll never let you starve or go homeless,” and he’s followed through on it with his limited funds, funds far more limited than those of many a left “comrade.” All too well do I remember the leading leftist here in Indianapolis saying to me back in 2009, when I was at a nadir of employment and desperate for funds to live on, “I wish I had your time for reading.” Somehow not noticing that the “time for reading” was more taken up with concerns about how I was to meet the rent and put food on the table, not to mention taking from that “time for reading” essential time to somehow find a nonexistent job. Hell, this leading leftist couldn’t even bring himself to buy me a cup of coffee as I outlined my economic difficulties to him!
But back to capitalist perks. While I make it a point to shop for groceries at a particular large chain that is unionized, I do so equally because I find its prices reasonable, even in this time of grocery price surges. Moreover—and this is important—also because I can get a 10¢ a gallon discount off the gasoline I buy at that same chain’s gas outlets. But I also shop at a certain convenience store/filling station chain, even though it’s owned by a vehemently anti-union oil company which treats its employees badly; something I know firsthand because I once worked for it myself. (In fact, even wrote and posted an article on my mistreatment: http://politicalaffairs.net/a-worker-s-vignette-suspended-for-being-sick/.) Not that I have a whole lot of choice in where I fill up my car’s gas tank, but generally this convenience store outlet has lower prices than others; also I get points for purchases both of gas and other items that add up for perks, and one of them, the one I regularly use, enables me to get 10¢ a gallon off my gas purchases there as well. Who doesn’t want 10¢ a gallon off their gas at today’s prices? Further, the office supply chain store I regularly buy my computer printer ink cartridges from gives me both discount coupons plus a points program that also leads to monthly discounts on purchases. So, despite my regular capitalist exploitation as a consumer, something I readily admit, I get some of that money back—on a tight budget, as almost all of us are now on, who doesn’t relish that?
Like most workers I have credit cards, and yes, those payments can indeed be onerous. But despite that, I’ve regularly made them, which has resulted in my being rewarded with increased credit lines on several of them. Not only that; because of my improved credit rating due to those payments, for the past two years I’ve also been rewarded with new lower monthly premiums for my state-required auto insurance. Not a whole lot, but it adds up.
Contrast that to the local leftists often denying me any financial assistance, even when it’s really urgent, because at the time I’m considered “politically incorrect.” But these same leftists will provide such assistance when I’m viewed as “politically correct.” Like so many other personal relationships on the left, it becomes a water faucet: sometimes turned on, sometimes not; sometimes with what comes out being scalding hot, other times icy cold, and sometimes comfortably warm, depending on the “comrade’s” judgment of my “political correctness” at that particular time. Then there are those “comrades” who provide me with long-term financial assistance due to my lack of steady employment (the vicissitudes of the job market here in Indiana have made me a permanent temp for the past ten years), but with a high rate of psychological interest charged. I wish I were kidding, but I’m not. One particular example comes to mind of a rather sanctimonious Quaker woman, now deceased, who gave me a monthly stipend of over $200 a month, but expected in return I not criticize her, even though she’d actively blacklisted me and backbit me to all her local “progressive” friends here in Indianapolis for the previous 26 years, but had a moderate change of heart the last three years of her life. For which she wanted total forgiveness, even for her only half-hearted attempts to make amends—which she was willing to make as long as she didn’t have to go so far as to admit to the fellow “progressives” she’d severely misjudged me, something which would’ve damaged her aura of goodness and infallibility. As my friend John mentioned above said to me, “She thought she owned you.” Her monthly stipend had supposedly paid for me and my silence as though I were a slave, and here I now irritated her by deserved criticism; in her eyes I was acting like an “uppity
n—r”!
So there really is something positive, something to give one-and-a-half cheers for, in what Adam Smith expressed in the Wealth of Nations: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” A similar thought was expressed succinctly in a left magazine: “As a pragmatist, I frankly don’t care about Edison’s politics, or Bill Gates’ economic theories. I want to know if the electricity works and if my computer program will run.” (Michael Hogan, “Green Revolution or Scorched Earth? Mexican and Cuban Responses,” Political Affairs, February 2006)
Milton Fisk, Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Indiana University-Bloomington, titles a section in his book Toward a Healthy Society: the Morality and Politics of American Health Care Reform (University Press of Kansas, 2000), “The Decline of Compassion and Solidarity.”
While I think few of us on the left (and I regard myself as on the left) would dispute that’s the prevailing reality in our society as a whole, it’s a reality that’s also prevailing on the left today, and has been for a long time. Again, the old water faucet. And also, the notion that friendship, compassion for others simply because they are human in and of itself, is suspect, is a form of “right opportunism,” “liberalism” (as in Mao Zedong’s essay, “Combat Liberalism”), or “bourgeois sentimentality.” Because when “correct” politics are everything, there’s no room for anything else—certainly not something that might be perceived as “wavering” or “weakness.” After all, as Bukharin infamously wrote, there’s the “the necessity of breaking an egg to obtain an omlette.” And as so many of us on the left ruefully know, some of the least considerate, least compassionate people on the left will speak fulsomely of their love and devotion to persons of color, and in the Third World; the “good Quaker” mentioned above was one to these, which drew the cynical observation on my part, “The oppressed who are geographically and culturally distant from oneself are truly oppressed; the oppressed who are geographically and culturally ‘in one’s backyard’ are merely pests.” But as I’ve also expressed, “Cynicism is often the beginning of wisdom.”
This ugly reality was especially brought home to me back in 2005, when my very employability was at stake. At the time I was a long-term outpatient at a local mental health center, one of those “liberal, helping, social-safety-net agencies” that so many “socialists” and “progressives” have uncritical high regard for as “problem solvers” for the troubled and dispossessed—not realizing just how illiberal and unhelpful the actual “help” is (because they’ve rarely had to use them; or when they did seek psychological/psychiatric counseling, their wealth and insurance enabled them to utilize the private sector, rather than the classist “services” set aside for the indigent). Further, they tend to be blind to the fact that bigotry toward those who aren’t “quite right” expresses itself not just in hostility, but in condescension as well.
But at that time I was eligible for SSDI [Social Security Disability Income] as a “disabled” person (even though I was actually working, albeit only as an irregularly-employed temp, at a job I not only loved, but one that required my college degree); but in order to get it, I had to go through my dumb, computer-illiterate case manager who wasn’t getting it right, even after four months of supposedly trying. He would say he was trying but, “It’s not working. I don’t know why.” Needless to say, he would never tell me what he was doing or not doing that wasn’t working. After all, as a genuine “nutto/wacko/fruitcake” I had to be stupid as well. As this progressed, I became more and more anxious, as I really needed that SSDI income, and it was showing at work; not only causing me anxiety, but also absenteeism. Finally, after being prematurely “liberated” from my work project, I went to my case manager’s office to see just what was going on that wasn’t working. He went through his usual process, and I stood there dumbfounded. The case manager didn’t even know how to properly enter the mental health center’s name onto a website! (Instead of entering the full, official name, he entered only part of it, which naturally the completely literalist computer would reject, and had been doing for the last four months.) So I correctly entered the name and address as he stood there uncomprehending, as though he were an eight-year-old boy watching Daddy do what he couldn’t figure out, and voila! it all went through, and the whole process of applying for SSDI was now completed within the next 24 hours, and on the phone at that—so that, had I known what was going on, I could’ve corrected him over the phone, and not lost my job. (This case manager, named Bell, obviously didn’t have intelligence ringing clear as a bell; so I gave him the moniker, “Dull Thud.” Later, he would say with the usual condescending chutzpah so common among the “helping professionals,” “If I hadn’t messed up, would it have made any difference?”)
Needless to say, the local left wasn’t concerned about this problem. The “good Quaker” woman above had assured everybody that I was “blowup George,” hopelessly unstable, someone to be shunned; and that my anxiety and anger at what I was going through was just further confirmation. But this “instability” was somehow “overlooked” by my apolitical co-workers and supervisors, as they not only liked me, they also respected me as a highly intelligent, capable person! This especially came into play when the company that hired us temps through the temp agency on-site wanted me permanently removed from employment for my alleged disruption of the work environment. But my “capitalist pig” bosses knew that my behavior caused by all this was highly atypical, was not my usual excellent work performance—so the general manager of the temp agency, along with two of my immediate floor supervisors, voluntarily, on their own initiative, went to bat for me and saved my job!—a job I loved, where I had friends, and was respected. It should be added that the loss of this job would’ve not only rendered me unemployable, it would’ve absolutely destroyed my mental health altogether. But the mental health center literally didn’t care. (I’ve written and posted on the realities of psychiatric treatment, especially as available for those without money; see “Once a Nut, always a Nut?” at www.transformation-center.org/resources/recoverystories.shtml.)
“Alas, we/Who wished to lay the foundations of kindness/Could not ourselves be kind,” wrote Brecht in his 1938 poem “To Posterity”—a rather telling indictment of the left from a leftist, but one all too true all too many times. Even though he qualifies it in the lines preceding, “Even the hatred of squalor/Makes the brow grow stern./Even anger against injustice/Makes the voice grow harsh” and ends with the plea, “But you, when at last it comes to pass/That man can help his fellow man,/Do not judge us/Too harshly,” there’s something disingenuous, something that smacks of special pleading, in this. For if we of the left “Who wished to lay the foundations of kindness/Could not ourselves be kind,” who else is going to be kind in our stead? And isn’t kindness, compassion and solidarity part of what’s going to make socialism better than capitalism, something that’s going to provide that necessary equality and self-determination that removes those capitalist shackles that bind us, those shackles of profit-oriented, bottom-line, subordination in the name of “economic-efficiency”? That makes for a better, more humane world as well as one where the wealth created that’s shared by all provides a greater material abundance for all as well? Isn’t it correct to state that such humane and humanistic goals require not only humane and humanistic means, those means need to be carried out by humane and humanistic persons as well if they are to be effective? Such persons as are not all that prevalent on the left as we’d like to believe? (I’ve written and posted something that expands positively on this, “Alas, we who wished to lay the foundations of kindness . . .,” http://newpol.org/node/493)
In conclusion, in stating what I’ve directly experienced from both socialists and capitalists as leading me to give one-and-a-half cheers for capitalism, am I perhaps echoing Merle Haggard, “Today I Started Loving You Again”? Not entirely. I still dislike and distrust capitalism, but I also like getting good things from what’s possible at the moment. And my socialist temperament leads me to truly believe that “An injury to one is an injury to all,” with “all” defined in an all-embracing, humanity-affirming way, not in a “politically correct” Orwellian way, where all are equal, but some are more equal than others. Capitalism is something we socialists have to improve on; but it’s not going to come from osmosis. It’s going to come from our being actively humane and liberatory ourselves.
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
HERMAN CAIN, JOE PATERNO, PENN STATE AND ME
This is from the routine I would've performed at Open Mic Comedy Night at Locals Only the evening of November 19, 2011. But I had to work overtime that night, and also, my computer was down and in the repair shop until Monday morning, so I couldn't notify anyone. but since i invited a number of people to hear my new Herman Cain, Joe Paterno, and Penn State jokes, and they were widely anticipated (ir at least I like to think so), I'm offering them here on "Politically Incorrect Leftist"--GF
I want to begin with a little reader participation (use the “Comments” box at the end to reply). How many of you are excited by, or even interested in, Herman Cain’s campaign for the Republican Presidential nomination? How many of you think Herman Cain makes a better pizza than he does a Presidential candidate!
Herman Cain’s campaign is right on top of the sexual harassment issue. From now on, Herman Cain will give a free pizza to every woman he harasses who keeps her mouth shut!
Herman Cain now joins Joe Paterno, Jerry Sandusky, the former president of Penn State, as objects of anger by public opinion for what they’ve done, which involves a very important moral issue—namely, bigwigs getting caught! Penn State has also become an object lesson in what happens when you cover up pedophilia—you lose to Nebraska, 17-14!
Yes, I know, that’s a little like saying “You know, Hitler really was a bad guy after all, because he lost the war.” And some of you might be muttering now to yourselves, “There’s a comedian in every house, even among those who perform at Open Mic Comedy Night.” And I can hear the objections now, “George, you’re not as stupid as you look, you’re stupider.” But I do want to say if what I’ve put on paper above confuses or offends any of you, tough shit! And on giving offense, I simply recall those profound words of my mother, who took great offense at those who gave offense, unless, of course, she was the one doing the offending. I can hear her now—“Well! If you can’t say anything good about Adolf Hitler, don’t say anything at all!”
But I don’t want to end on a negative note. In fact, I’m going to end by praising someone you might think doesn’t deserve any praise at all, but he really does; he was really the most accomplished man in history. I’m talking about Attila the Hun. Just think—he sacked Rome, destroyed Graeco-Roman culture, and plunged Europe into the Dark Ages, from which it took a thousand years to recover. Now that’s accomplishment!
I want to begin with a little reader participation (use the “Comments” box at the end to reply). How many of you are excited by, or even interested in, Herman Cain’s campaign for the Republican Presidential nomination? How many of you think Herman Cain makes a better pizza than he does a Presidential candidate!
Herman Cain’s campaign is right on top of the sexual harassment issue. From now on, Herman Cain will give a free pizza to every woman he harasses who keeps her mouth shut!
Herman Cain now joins Joe Paterno, Jerry Sandusky, the former president of Penn State, as objects of anger by public opinion for what they’ve done, which involves a very important moral issue—namely, bigwigs getting caught! Penn State has also become an object lesson in what happens when you cover up pedophilia—you lose to Nebraska, 17-14!
Yes, I know, that’s a little like saying “You know, Hitler really was a bad guy after all, because he lost the war.” And some of you might be muttering now to yourselves, “There’s a comedian in every house, even among those who perform at Open Mic Comedy Night.” And I can hear the objections now, “George, you’re not as stupid as you look, you’re stupider.” But I do want to say if what I’ve put on paper above confuses or offends any of you, tough shit! And on giving offense, I simply recall those profound words of my mother, who took great offense at those who gave offense, unless, of course, she was the one doing the offending. I can hear her now—“Well! If you can’t say anything good about Adolf Hitler, don’t say anything at all!”
But I don’t want to end on a negative note. In fact, I’m going to end by praising someone you might think doesn’t deserve any praise at all, but he really does; he was really the most accomplished man in history. I’m talking about Attila the Hun. Just think—he sacked Rome, destroyed Graeco-Roman culture, and plunged Europe into the Dark Ages, from which it took a thousand years to recover. Now that’s accomplishment!
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Religion is not the solution to the problem. Religion is the problem.
This paraphrase of Ronald Reagan’s famous words as President (“Government is not the solution to the problem. Government is the problem.”) becomes so apt, so tellingly truthful, upon even the most cursory, but honest, examination of religion and its influence on public life. We need look little beyond the headlines of the day, the leading news stories involving religion, for confirmation. First, and obviously, is the continuing scandal of priest-pedophilia and its even worse, even more reprehensible, cover-up by the Catholic Church, especially in Ireland, where the Vatican’s deliberate intervention in preventing action against pedophilic priests drew the ire of the Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny, who angrily denounced “the dysfunction, disconnection, elitism and narcissism that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this day.” There were further determined protests on the issue of the Catholic Church’s denial of women’s ordination to the priesthood, a conflict that’s been raging now for years, but has only been met with demands for silence by the Vatican. These issues were extensively reported in the New York Times of July 10, July 13, July 22, July 23 and July 25, 2011. (See “References” below)
The death of Osama bin Laden brought back to memory yet another set of crimes committed in the name of a certain type of Islam, those of Al-Qaeda, not only in terms of 9/11, but also in regard to al-Qaeda’s bloody attacks against Muslims who did not share its repressive theocratic authoritarianism. (See Karima Bennoune, “References”) The unholy alliance between the socially hidebound fanatics of the Religious Right with the “secular” economically hidebound fanatics of the Tea Party is still another example. (See Ted Kilgore, “References”)
Does the nefariousness of religion in the public realm ever end?
The religious liberals and mainstream pastors and laity will cry out, “But that’s not us!” But they will do so in vain, for they have not only been silent too long, but have even lent the cover of “religious tolerance” to such theological ugliness. So while their disingenuous acquitting of themselves is technically true—for they are not the ones committing the nefarious deeds—they fail the moral test of at least one mainstream religious current, i.e., Quakerism, in failing to “speak truth to power.” They fail the test of mandatorily speaking out against injustice and deliberate cruelty that’s expressed in both atheist and Christian perspectives: in the atheist Jean-Paul Sartre with his “Silence is complicity,” and in the Catholic Maryknoll priest Roy Bourgeois, about to be laicized for speaking out against the Vatican’s “sin of sexism” in ruling that the Catholic priesthood was a strictly male prerogative. Echoing Sartre, Bourgeois said, “Silence is the voice of consent.” (See George Fish stories on Bourgeois, In These Times, “References”) We need look no further than the silence of mainstream Protestantism in the face of Catholic priest-pedophilia and cover-up. For where were the voices of Christian compassion for the victims here, victims who were obviously receiving no such Christian compassion from the Catholic Church, only the barrage of the Church’s lawyers?
As for Islam, while we can properly note that not all Muslims embraced the methods, or even the aims, of Al-Qaeda, Muslims of note did not speak out against the placing of a bounty on the head of novelist Salman Rushdie, nor the riots by Muslims engendered by the irreverent Danish cartons, acts which are commonly regarded in the “Great Satan” West (to use a popular fundamentalist Muslim characterization) as permissible expressions of free speech. (See Ibn Warraq, “References”) We can talk as well of an assault on a Muslim people themselves in the name of a non-Muslim religious “mandate”, the continued denial of human rights to the Palestinians by the Israelis. Of course, all this above is denounced within the Christian religious tradition itself, in the words of the one Christianity calls the Messiah: “By their fruits ye shall know them.” But where are the voices of Christianity heeding this, acknowledging its telling admonition? Certainly not on the public record, nor, as I’ve found, even in private conversations!
As an accountant might say of the above moral bookkeeping by religion, “There are definitely two sets of books being kept here.” This is something I’ve experienced personally also, in my daily life lived among the believers as well as in being someone who reads the newspapers. This gives a new dimension to my atheism: moving it beyond a strictly intellectual objection to the teachings of the world’s various theologies, to a moral objection that pointedly notes that deliberate cruelty, abuse of power, hypocrisy and the promulgation of double standards are an integral part of religious practice—something I learned early in life growing up Catholic (but didn’t become aware of its causes until later), surrounded on all sides by the emotional and verbal abuse of Catholic parents and family, on the one hand, and, on the other, the abuse of power, censorious repression, and looking the other way when evil was done to me by the Catholic school system and the clerical and lay teachers and fellow classmates within it. So I can truly say I’ve directly experienced the malevolence of religious practice as an integral part of my life experience. A malevolence that by no means ended when I left Catholicism through entering the university, but a malevolence that’s also directly manifested itself in my life here in Indianapolis. A malevolence that’s been, and still continues to be, part and parcel of my treatment by the Indianapolis “peaceable religious progressives;” a malevolence that started with the lies and deliberate character assassination promulgated and broadcast extensively since 1980 by one late “good Quaker woman” who was believed uncritically, and who did permanent damage to both my reputation and to my standing among others. (See George Fish blog, “References”) Fortunately I’ve been able to free myself somewhat by discovering good people who are not motivated by the sanctimonious self-righteousness, that sense of being part of a sanctified elect, that’s so integral to the de facto self-definition of Indianapolis “religious progressives”—even though they will (unsuccessfully) try to deny it.
But this is not merely my own sui generis view. This dissection of Christian morality finds solid intellectual foundation in that seminal work by the 19th Century German atheist philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity. In it, Feuerbach not only tellingly depicts the self-estrangement of Man from his better nature through adoption of theology (which he distinguishes from the “natural” but vague religious impulse toward love of self and one’s neighbor, but which is corrupted, and has this corruption codified, by theological systems), but shows amply that through such theological embrace, the most cruel and perverted, the most unloving, the most destructive, forms of human behavior are not only tolerated, they are actually celebrated as the will of God and walking in the ways of God himself! Needless to say, history abounds in real-life examples, of which we need only mention the over 900 wars in the West during the Christian era, the Inquisition, the persecution of Galileo, right up to our own day with the priest-pedophilia scandal, the televangelism and political activism of the Religious Right, the televangelizing message of “God wants you to do well in the stock market” as preached by Robert Schuller and his devotees, right into my own personal life of active child abuse by my own “loving” devout Catholic parents, the character-assassination grousing behind my back by the late “good Quaker” mentioned above, and the gleefully active assault on my character and personality by the Indianapolis “religious progressives.”
Even leading Indianapolis “religious progressive” Jim Wolfe concedes that eminent British philosopher and logician Alfred North Whitehead was right when he stated that religion has probably done more harm than good in human affairs. He’s even willing to concede that “there have been more than enough of crusades, holy wars, pogroms, massacres, despotisms, spats, bigotry, abuse” committed in the name of religion. (Jim Wolfe, “Making Peace Among Religions Within Myself”) Atheist writer Christopher Hitchens states appropriately that, while religion is not the cause of what’s bad in human behavior, he also goes on to state incisively, “But the bad things that are innate in our species are strengthened by religion and are sanctified by it…so religion is a very powerful re-enforcer of our backward, clannish, tribal element.” (Quoted in Be Scofield, “5 Things Atheists Have Wrong About Religion," Tikkun, reprinted by AlterNet, www.alternet.org/story/151396/) Put all the above together, and a powerful case is made for regarding religion not as a good in our individual and collective lives, but one of the great evils within these lives.
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My good friend Greg King had a long, but most appropriate comment on this blog entry:
Even Karl Marx said something like, "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed; the heart of a heartless world." I'm sure I don't have the quote exactly right, but it's close to that. Many hundreds of millions of oppressed people around the world, for thousands of years, would have killed themselves, were it not for that "pie in the sky when you die" as Joe Hill sang -- that promise of a heavenly reward, if only they can keep trudging through this vale of tears. It has given them a reason to carry on.
Of course, terrible things have been, and continue to be, done in the name of religion, but if it gives people a little comfort, a little solace, it's played a useful role. Of course, for many people throughout history, it has placed them on the wrong end of a pounded nail, a crossbow or a scimitar,faggots and torches, a noose, some stones. There have been many innocent victims of religious blindness and bigotry. But there have been hundreds of millions, or, over the last thirty thousand or so years, even billions of people, for whom it has played a useful role. No, I don't mean the role it has played for the pharisees, the popes, the bishops, the caliphs or the mullahs. I mean, as I've stated, the role it has played for the downtrodden peasants and workers. Buddha, Lao Tse, Jesus, St. Theresa, St. Francis, Dorothy Day, Rev. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Mahatma Ghandi, Martin Buber, Maimonides, the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Romero, Fathers Dan and Phil Berrigan, Fr. Roy Bourgeois, have all played very good roles and each, in their own way, has provided some comfort for the oppressed.
Of course it's better that the oppressed rise up and throw off their chains. But you know as well as I do many people have not had a real opportunity for that. People with the ability to lead, like Spartacus, John Ball and Wat the Tyler, Jean D'Arc, Danton, St. Just, Robespierre, Toussaint L'Ouverture, Sam Adams, Mary Wollstonecraft, St.Simon, Robert Owens, Karl Marx, Proudhon, Lenin, Trotsky, Bukharin, Mao Zedong, Liu Shaoqi, Zhu De, Ho Chi Minh, Joe Hill, Big Bill Haywood, Mother Bloor, Mother Jones, Anne Burlak Timpson, Amilcar Cabral, Sekou Toure, Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba, Kenji Miayamoto, Tom Hayden, Rudi Deutschke, Mark Rudd, Bernadine Dohrn, Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, Elaine Brown, Angela Davis,Carl Davidson, Carl Boice, Wayne Hayashi, Carol Amioka, Stan Masui, Kalani Ohelo, you, me and countless others, mostly unmentioned, who played major roles or very minor roles (like some of those listed), have to come along and provide inspiration and leadership. Not all of that leadership was good, but it had its good aspects.
Now, you know just as well as I do that the alternative to political leadership -- religious comfort -- may be based on a lie or, in any case, an illusion, a delusion. But we don't know that. We won't know until after we die. Most likely, we'll just insensately feed the grass, or our ashes will be scattered to the wind, and that will be it for us. But we may wake up in some way station between birth and rebirth. We may find ourselves in paradise or purgatory, or a hell somehow worse than the one we came from. We don't know. We may think we know, but it's much easier to prove the existence of something than the non-existence of something. So we might as well try to lead good lives, be considerate of our fellow beings. All our fellow beings.
Me? I don't know what to believe. Maybe Camus was right, and life is a cruel joke. We humans have this wonderful ability not only to experience, but to contemplate the world. But it's all going to be obliterated in an instant. As Simon and Garfunkel sing, "All lies in jest, yet a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." But I have found that appealing to something outside myself helps me through rough times. "When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comforts me," as the Beatles sing. I know it may just be an emotional crutch; that what I'm appealing to is just air, and nothing more. But it provides some comfort. I suspect that's pretty universal.
REFERENCES, ALL SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING
Bennoune, Karima, “Remembering all al-Qaida's victims,” Guardian (UK), May 3, 2011
Dalby, Douglas, and Rachel Donadio, “Irish Report Finds Abuse Persisting in Catholic Church,” New York Times, July 13, 2011
Donadio, Rachel, “Vatican Recalls Ambassador to Ireland Over Abuse Report,” New York Times, July 25, 2011
Dowd, Maureen, “The End of Awe,” New York Times, July 23, 2011
Feuerbach, Ludwig, The Essence of Christianity, translated by George Eliot, Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books, 1989 [Originally published in 1841]
Fish, George, “Roy Bourgeois Faces Excommunication,” In These Times, March 2009, www.inthesetimes.com
Fish, George, “No Indulgence for Father Bourgeois,” In These Times, October 2010, www.inthesetimes.com
Fish, George, “Politically Incorrect Leftist” blog, www.politicallyincorrectleftist.blogspot.com, esp. entries “Guest Blog from my friend John Williams: The Woman You Thought You Knew” and “On Mother’s Day: for those mothers who were really ‘mothers’”
Frosch, Dan, “Accusations of Abuse by Priest Dating to Early 1940s,” New York Times, July 10, 2011
Goodstein, Laurie, “In 3 Countries, Challenging the Vatican on Female Priests,” New York Times, July 22, 2011
Kilgore, Ted, “’Teavangelicals’: How the Christian Right Came to Bless the Economic Agenda of the Tea party,” The New Republic, www.tnr.com/article/the-permanent-campaign/91661/tea-party-christian-right-michele-bachmann
Mackey, Robert, “Video of Irish Leader’s Speech Attacking the Vatican,” New York Times, July 25, 2011
Scofield, Be, “5 things Atheists Have Wrong About Religion,” Tikkun, reprinted by AlterNet, www.alternet.org/story/151396/
Warraq, Ibn, Why I Am Not a Muslim, Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 2003
Wolfe, Jim, “Making Peace Among Religions Within Myself” speech text manuscript, n.d.
The death of Osama bin Laden brought back to memory yet another set of crimes committed in the name of a certain type of Islam, those of Al-Qaeda, not only in terms of 9/11, but also in regard to al-Qaeda’s bloody attacks against Muslims who did not share its repressive theocratic authoritarianism. (See Karima Bennoune, “References”) The unholy alliance between the socially hidebound fanatics of the Religious Right with the “secular” economically hidebound fanatics of the Tea Party is still another example. (See Ted Kilgore, “References”)
Does the nefariousness of religion in the public realm ever end?
The religious liberals and mainstream pastors and laity will cry out, “But that’s not us!” But they will do so in vain, for they have not only been silent too long, but have even lent the cover of “religious tolerance” to such theological ugliness. So while their disingenuous acquitting of themselves is technically true—for they are not the ones committing the nefarious deeds—they fail the moral test of at least one mainstream religious current, i.e., Quakerism, in failing to “speak truth to power.” They fail the test of mandatorily speaking out against injustice and deliberate cruelty that’s expressed in both atheist and Christian perspectives: in the atheist Jean-Paul Sartre with his “Silence is complicity,” and in the Catholic Maryknoll priest Roy Bourgeois, about to be laicized for speaking out against the Vatican’s “sin of sexism” in ruling that the Catholic priesthood was a strictly male prerogative. Echoing Sartre, Bourgeois said, “Silence is the voice of consent.” (See George Fish stories on Bourgeois, In These Times, “References”) We need look no further than the silence of mainstream Protestantism in the face of Catholic priest-pedophilia and cover-up. For where were the voices of Christian compassion for the victims here, victims who were obviously receiving no such Christian compassion from the Catholic Church, only the barrage of the Church’s lawyers?
As for Islam, while we can properly note that not all Muslims embraced the methods, or even the aims, of Al-Qaeda, Muslims of note did not speak out against the placing of a bounty on the head of novelist Salman Rushdie, nor the riots by Muslims engendered by the irreverent Danish cartons, acts which are commonly regarded in the “Great Satan” West (to use a popular fundamentalist Muslim characterization) as permissible expressions of free speech. (See Ibn Warraq, “References”) We can talk as well of an assault on a Muslim people themselves in the name of a non-Muslim religious “mandate”, the continued denial of human rights to the Palestinians by the Israelis. Of course, all this above is denounced within the Christian religious tradition itself, in the words of the one Christianity calls the Messiah: “By their fruits ye shall know them.” But where are the voices of Christianity heeding this, acknowledging its telling admonition? Certainly not on the public record, nor, as I’ve found, even in private conversations!
As an accountant might say of the above moral bookkeeping by religion, “There are definitely two sets of books being kept here.” This is something I’ve experienced personally also, in my daily life lived among the believers as well as in being someone who reads the newspapers. This gives a new dimension to my atheism: moving it beyond a strictly intellectual objection to the teachings of the world’s various theologies, to a moral objection that pointedly notes that deliberate cruelty, abuse of power, hypocrisy and the promulgation of double standards are an integral part of religious practice—something I learned early in life growing up Catholic (but didn’t become aware of its causes until later), surrounded on all sides by the emotional and verbal abuse of Catholic parents and family, on the one hand, and, on the other, the abuse of power, censorious repression, and looking the other way when evil was done to me by the Catholic school system and the clerical and lay teachers and fellow classmates within it. So I can truly say I’ve directly experienced the malevolence of religious practice as an integral part of my life experience. A malevolence that by no means ended when I left Catholicism through entering the university, but a malevolence that’s also directly manifested itself in my life here in Indianapolis. A malevolence that’s been, and still continues to be, part and parcel of my treatment by the Indianapolis “peaceable religious progressives;” a malevolence that started with the lies and deliberate character assassination promulgated and broadcast extensively since 1980 by one late “good Quaker woman” who was believed uncritically, and who did permanent damage to both my reputation and to my standing among others. (See George Fish blog, “References”) Fortunately I’ve been able to free myself somewhat by discovering good people who are not motivated by the sanctimonious self-righteousness, that sense of being part of a sanctified elect, that’s so integral to the de facto self-definition of Indianapolis “religious progressives”—even though they will (unsuccessfully) try to deny it.
But this is not merely my own sui generis view. This dissection of Christian morality finds solid intellectual foundation in that seminal work by the 19th Century German atheist philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity. In it, Feuerbach not only tellingly depicts the self-estrangement of Man from his better nature through adoption of theology (which he distinguishes from the “natural” but vague religious impulse toward love of self and one’s neighbor, but which is corrupted, and has this corruption codified, by theological systems), but shows amply that through such theological embrace, the most cruel and perverted, the most unloving, the most destructive, forms of human behavior are not only tolerated, they are actually celebrated as the will of God and walking in the ways of God himself! Needless to say, history abounds in real-life examples, of which we need only mention the over 900 wars in the West during the Christian era, the Inquisition, the persecution of Galileo, right up to our own day with the priest-pedophilia scandal, the televangelism and political activism of the Religious Right, the televangelizing message of “God wants you to do well in the stock market” as preached by Robert Schuller and his devotees, right into my own personal life of active child abuse by my own “loving” devout Catholic parents, the character-assassination grousing behind my back by the late “good Quaker” mentioned above, and the gleefully active assault on my character and personality by the Indianapolis “religious progressives.”
Even leading Indianapolis “religious progressive” Jim Wolfe concedes that eminent British philosopher and logician Alfred North Whitehead was right when he stated that religion has probably done more harm than good in human affairs. He’s even willing to concede that “there have been more than enough of crusades, holy wars, pogroms, massacres, despotisms, spats, bigotry, abuse” committed in the name of religion. (Jim Wolfe, “Making Peace Among Religions Within Myself”) Atheist writer Christopher Hitchens states appropriately that, while religion is not the cause of what’s bad in human behavior, he also goes on to state incisively, “But the bad things that are innate in our species are strengthened by religion and are sanctified by it…so religion is a very powerful re-enforcer of our backward, clannish, tribal element.” (Quoted in Be Scofield, “5 Things Atheists Have Wrong About Religion," Tikkun, reprinted by AlterNet, www.alternet.org/story/151396/) Put all the above together, and a powerful case is made for regarding religion not as a good in our individual and collective lives, but one of the great evils within these lives.
****************************************************
My good friend Greg King had a long, but most appropriate comment on this blog entry:
Even Karl Marx said something like, "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed; the heart of a heartless world." I'm sure I don't have the quote exactly right, but it's close to that. Many hundreds of millions of oppressed people around the world, for thousands of years, would have killed themselves, were it not for that "pie in the sky when you die" as Joe Hill sang -- that promise of a heavenly reward, if only they can keep trudging through this vale of tears. It has given them a reason to carry on.
Of course, terrible things have been, and continue to be, done in the name of religion, but if it gives people a little comfort, a little solace, it's played a useful role. Of course, for many people throughout history, it has placed them on the wrong end of a pounded nail, a crossbow or a scimitar,faggots and torches, a noose, some stones. There have been many innocent victims of religious blindness and bigotry. But there have been hundreds of millions, or, over the last thirty thousand or so years, even billions of people, for whom it has played a useful role. No, I don't mean the role it has played for the pharisees, the popes, the bishops, the caliphs or the mullahs. I mean, as I've stated, the role it has played for the downtrodden peasants and workers. Buddha, Lao Tse, Jesus, St. Theresa, St. Francis, Dorothy Day, Rev. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Mahatma Ghandi, Martin Buber, Maimonides, the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Romero, Fathers Dan and Phil Berrigan, Fr. Roy Bourgeois, have all played very good roles and each, in their own way, has provided some comfort for the oppressed.
Of course it's better that the oppressed rise up and throw off their chains. But you know as well as I do many people have not had a real opportunity for that. People with the ability to lead, like Spartacus, John Ball and Wat the Tyler, Jean D'Arc, Danton, St. Just, Robespierre, Toussaint L'Ouverture, Sam Adams, Mary Wollstonecraft, St.Simon, Robert Owens, Karl Marx, Proudhon, Lenin, Trotsky, Bukharin, Mao Zedong, Liu Shaoqi, Zhu De, Ho Chi Minh, Joe Hill, Big Bill Haywood, Mother Bloor, Mother Jones, Anne Burlak Timpson, Amilcar Cabral, Sekou Toure, Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba, Kenji Miayamoto, Tom Hayden, Rudi Deutschke, Mark Rudd, Bernadine Dohrn, Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, Elaine Brown, Angela Davis,Carl Davidson, Carl Boice, Wayne Hayashi, Carol Amioka, Stan Masui, Kalani Ohelo, you, me and countless others, mostly unmentioned, who played major roles or very minor roles (like some of those listed), have to come along and provide inspiration and leadership. Not all of that leadership was good, but it had its good aspects.
Now, you know just as well as I do that the alternative to political leadership -- religious comfort -- may be based on a lie or, in any case, an illusion, a delusion. But we don't know that. We won't know until after we die. Most likely, we'll just insensately feed the grass, or our ashes will be scattered to the wind, and that will be it for us. But we may wake up in some way station between birth and rebirth. We may find ourselves in paradise or purgatory, or a hell somehow worse than the one we came from. We don't know. We may think we know, but it's much easier to prove the existence of something than the non-existence of something. So we might as well try to lead good lives, be considerate of our fellow beings. All our fellow beings.
Me? I don't know what to believe. Maybe Camus was right, and life is a cruel joke. We humans have this wonderful ability not only to experience, but to contemplate the world. But it's all going to be obliterated in an instant. As Simon and Garfunkel sing, "All lies in jest, yet a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." But I have found that appealing to something outside myself helps me through rough times. "When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comforts me," as the Beatles sing. I know it may just be an emotional crutch; that what I'm appealing to is just air, and nothing more. But it provides some comfort. I suspect that's pretty universal.
REFERENCES, ALL SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING
Bennoune, Karima, “Remembering all al-Qaida's victims,” Guardian (UK), May 3, 2011
Dalby, Douglas, and Rachel Donadio, “Irish Report Finds Abuse Persisting in Catholic Church,” New York Times, July 13, 2011
Donadio, Rachel, “Vatican Recalls Ambassador to Ireland Over Abuse Report,” New York Times, July 25, 2011
Dowd, Maureen, “The End of Awe,” New York Times, July 23, 2011
Feuerbach, Ludwig, The Essence of Christianity, translated by George Eliot, Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books, 1989 [Originally published in 1841]
Fish, George, “Roy Bourgeois Faces Excommunication,” In These Times, March 2009, www.inthesetimes.com
Fish, George, “No Indulgence for Father Bourgeois,” In These Times, October 2010, www.inthesetimes.com
Fish, George, “Politically Incorrect Leftist” blog, www.politicallyincorrectleftist.blogspot.com, esp. entries “Guest Blog from my friend John Williams: The Woman You Thought You Knew” and “On Mother’s Day: for those mothers who were really ‘mothers’”
Frosch, Dan, “Accusations of Abuse by Priest Dating to Early 1940s,” New York Times, July 10, 2011
Goodstein, Laurie, “In 3 Countries, Challenging the Vatican on Female Priests,” New York Times, July 22, 2011
Kilgore, Ted, “’Teavangelicals’: How the Christian Right Came to Bless the Economic Agenda of the Tea party,” The New Republic, www.tnr.com/article/the-permanent-campaign/91661/tea-party-christian-right-michele-bachmann
Mackey, Robert, “Video of Irish Leader’s Speech Attacking the Vatican,” New York Times, July 25, 2011
Scofield, Be, “5 things Atheists Have Wrong About Religion,” Tikkun, reprinted by AlterNet, www.alternet.org/story/151396/
Warraq, Ibn, Why I Am Not a Muslim, Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 2003
Wolfe, Jim, “Making Peace Among Religions Within Myself” speech text manuscript, n.d.
Monday, June 13, 2011
Reflections on the Recent Indiana Workers' Upsurge
It’s over with now, but for two exciting, event-filled months, mid-February to mid-April, 2011, Indiana workers and the Democratic legislators of the General Assembly stood up to the Republicans who wanted to make Indiana a “right-to-work” state, gut teachers’ collective bargaining powers, and generally make life even more miserable for those who actually work for a living, instead of clipping coupons or entering politics from previously being a corporate CEO. For the first time in the 40 years I’ve lived in Indiana this time around, I felt proud to be a Hoosier. Not a small feat, because usually I find my life so frustrating in the State of Indiana I want to leave and retreat to the State of Intoxication! After all, life and culture in Indiana is shaped very much by the fact that the Hoosier state is at the confluence of three other states—the State of Smugness, the State of Complacency, and the State of Mediocrity, and is the place where not all of Indiana’s pigs are found on CAFOs. They abound aplenty, especially the two-legged variety; and they’re joined by flocks of Indiana two-legged sheep as well.
But this time in Indiana, I felt that I was actually in the presence of the Eighth, Ninth and Tenth Wonders of the World—an Indiana AFL-CIO with guts, an Indiana Democratic Party with guts, and even more amazingly, both of them showing guts at the same time, and cooperating in their open, public display of guts! For once, both Hoosiers of political prominence, and the Hoosier rank-and-file, stood up to the arrogant Republican majority in the State House and Governor’s mansion, and brought their ambitions to a grinding, screeching halt. When the Democratic members of the House of Representatives and the Senate walked out on the Indiana General Assembly and relocated for an indefinite sojourn in Illinois, they deprived the legislative session of a quorum; which meant the Republican majority was at an impasse, legally barred from ramming their anti-worker legislation down the Democratic minority’s, and the Hoosier public’s, throats. Immovable Democrats holed up in extradition-free Illinois, and vociferous protestors every day in front of the State House, actively organized by the state AFL-CIO unions, defied the Republicans both by their absence and by their presence, and made it known, “You’re just not going to do this!”
So the Republicans had to shelve “right-to-work,” had to shelve gutting teachers’ bargaining rights, had to deal with the Democrats whose power in absentia enabled them to call at least some of the shots. Both inside and outside the State House thousands of workers from all over the state converged in a massive display of ordinary people’s determination and fight-back spirit. Both together caused the Republicans to be unable to do anything but sputter, at least for a while, their major legislative goals unattainable; and perhaps even this whiff of defeat will still linger in the air not just in 2011, but in 2012 as well, at the polls and in the halls of the General Assembly. As in Wisconsin and Ohio, the Republicans had overreached, and had garnered for themselves not easy legislative pushovers, but massive, angry protest that took them aback—for at least the time being. For Indiana stood proudly in solidarity with the same kinds of protests in Wisconsin and Ohio, and if that still didn’t make the streets of downtown Indianapolis resemble the streets of Tunis or Tahrir Square in Cairo, at least the potential to become so is now there, when it wasn’t there before. After all, people remember again what they once did, when they recall the victories they had before, when they milled into the streets and defied power, when the occasion for such rises again. As it surely will. Republicans are too much like Bourbons, never remembering and never forgetting. But if the Hoosier people had been forgetting Republican trepidations for too long too many times before, they’re liable to remember the next time around. And a next time will come around—while Republicans will always be Republicans, so will the people once mobilized and energized, having shown to themselves and to others the strength of their numbers and determination.
A good reason for me to have savored that intoxication that came, not from substance abuse in the State of Intoxication, but by the heady sobriety of realizing the enormity of what had happened. And still savor it, even now.
To be sure, it wasn’t all victories. Even as the worker protests surged, a bill undermining unemployment benefits and eligibility for them, which takes effect July 1, did get through under stealth. While union teachers still kept their bargaining rights, more charter schools were authorized. Planned Parenthood was defunded, and Medicaid recipients are not allowed to utilize Planned Parenthood clinics. All the above gleefully signed into law by Republican Governor Mitch Daniels, former Office of Management and Budget head under George W. Bush; former CEO of Indianapolis Power and Light, where he used his power to privatize it, to his personal enrichment, at the cost of destroying workers’ pensions; and also, former CEO of Eli Lilly and Co., the major drug manufacturer and Indiana political powerhouse, where he earned $27 million in salary the year before running for Governor in 2004.
Also, in the last days of the General Assembly, after the Democrats had come back and walked out again in protest, the Republican minority rammed through a bill making further legislative walkouts illegal. Hopefully, this law will be challenged in the courts, and future Democratic legislators will show the same guts and determination again, as they did in 2011. But I don’t count on it. All of us who’ve watched Indiana politics before know how the Democrats have always talked a good fight, but always caved in before. Which is what made the Democrats this time so amazing. But, unfortunately, Democratic caving-in has a well-established tradition, not only in Indiana, but elsewhere; and so notably at the national level, with the Obama White House showing the lead these past few years, and with Democratic Congresspersons and Senators, with few exceptions, closing ranks and following suit. And Indiana Democrats have never been known for being particularly “liberal,” but have timidly adapted time in and time out to Indiana’s notorious conservatism. After all, this is the state that produced leading Senate Blue Dog Evan Bayh, and which ran another notable Blue Dog, Brad Ellsworth, for Senate in 2010. And no Indiana Democrats who can be considered as part of the "liberal camp” has ever distinguished him/herself as a Dennis Kucinich or a Bernie Sanders.
But at least one of the Republican victories given above turned into defeat. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has declared Indiana’s plan to defund Planned Parenthood illegal, and could pressure the state to drop it altogether by withholding funds. As it stands right now, lawyers are scrambling to find some way to salvage it; I join many other Hoosiers in hoping they fail, and that HHS stands behind its position.
I wasn’t able to participate in these events as much as I wanted to, despite having the time available due to layoff. For the State House, locus of all the activity, is in the heart of downtown Indianapolis, heart of much-touted upscale urban development; so that “ever new, ever more exciting”—ever more upscale and prohibitively expensive—“downtown Indianapolis” (to paraphrase one of the city’s trendy slogans) made affording parking far too expensive, and public transportation in Indianapolis is so lousy it really wasn’t an option from where I lived. But I was able to attend one State House rally on a late February Saturday, when downtown metered parking is free, and was glad to mill with the enthusiastic crowd, and see many of my friends and acquaintances there too, all just as eager and excited as I was.
Interestingly enough, I didn’t see but one of my former socialist “comrades,” whose personal treachery and do-nothingness I’ve recounted in two other blog entries here on “Politically Incorrect Leftist,” “Dregs” and “’Dregs’ Aftermath1.” And this was a big rally, specially organized and advertised! But the one fellow socialist I did see was quite friendly and glad to see me, as were the other local “progressives” I encountered, with whom I’m frequently on the outs with. But we of the left here in Indianapolis are all very small fish in a very big Red State sea, and under such conditions, sectarianism, cliquishness and purely personal umbrage become a part of life—especially in a social milieu already given to xenophobia and cliquishness to begin with. So-called Hoosier Hospitality is a mask used to gull tourists and out-of-state visitors to get them to part with their money. So says my cynical but realistic self, having lived in Indy now for over 30 years, and in Indiana for 40.
I’m a non-union worker, not by choice, and a temp at that— a group of workers precluded from organizing by a George W. Bush-era NLRB decision. But I am very much a supporter of unions and union rights, even if I feel I must stand in dismay at this atrophied giant still in stupor most of the time. That’s another thing that amazed me by the protests—an AFL-CIO actually energized and fighting back for workers, even if (as was the case) only defensively, pushed to the wall with nowhere else to go by Republican arrogance. But as one of those 88.1% of the workforce not represented by a union (for only 11.9% of all U.S. workers are unionized, and fewer than 7% in the private sector), my support has to be tempered by frustration and chagrin. It still rankles me to recall the 2009 Central Indiana Job with Justice (JwJ) meeting where I was reprimanded by the head of AFSCME District 62, “You temps make more than my union workers.” Yeah. At $10/hour with no benefits, uncertain work, and having had to stomach pay cuts to keep my temp job—which requires a college degree! But I was there with my homemade sign, “I’m Non-Union & I Support You. But Will You Support Me?” To me, a good sentiment, and a very good question. And I’m sure I’m not the only non-union worker to feel this way.
The AFL-CIO protests attracted union celebrities to address the throngs. Actor Danny Glover, President of the Screen Actors Guild, addressed a rally, as did Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). Their presence was an important, very much public, demonstration of solidarity, and connected Indiana’s struggles with those elsewhere, uniting workers in struggle in Indiana with workers in struggle elsewhere, especially in Wisconsin and Ohio; most important in a state known for its overwhelming hidebound parochialism. Further, Weingarten’s public support for Indiana teachers is an important political gesture in a state where “education reform” battles are high on the agenda, and where privatization, charter schools and undermining public education are espoused by many, with much support. Unfortunately, AFT’s hawkish positions on wars in the Middle East and Central Asia, coupled with its uncritical support for Israel, are a damper on attempts to unite labor forces with antiwar forces. And while JwJ is active several places in the state, its typical labor-movement evasion of antiwar protest, and social justice issues not involving labor directly, is another hindrance. As for the Indiana AFL-CIO generally, it is still beset in many circles with a “Scoop” Jackson “guns and butter” mentality (after Henry “Scoop” Jackson, former Democratic Senator from the State of Washington—nicknamed the “Senator from Boeing” for his hawkish military stance and friendliness toward military contractors); and before the upsurge, devoted much of its time to organizing chauvinistic “Buy American” campaigns.
African American presence was notable, although most of the upsurge participants were white, same as in Wisconsin and Ohio. But it was good to see fellow white Hoosiers rallying for justice rather than going to Tea Party demonstrations.
As is fairly well-known nationally, two lawyers employed by Indiana government agencies were fired for ugly remarks on the protestors in Wisconsin, where the upsurge protests were greatest. One of them, an Assistant Attorney General even, called for using “deadly force” against protestors there, while the other urged Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker to fabricate an incident that could then be used to break up the protests. The Republicans in Indiana at one point cut off power lines at the State House, so that protestors could not use microphones. True examples indeed of class warfare by the rich and powerful against the working class, which is something Karl Marx never needed to invent. It’s always been there, even when hidden and insidious; but the workers’ upsurge in Indiana and elsewhere brought it out into the open, and what a bringing out! Makes one want to paraphrase Che Guevara: “Create, two, there, many Wisconsins, Ohios and Indianas! Create two, three, many Tunisias and Egypts! Workers of the world, unite!” Yes, indeed.
But this time in Indiana, I felt that I was actually in the presence of the Eighth, Ninth and Tenth Wonders of the World—an Indiana AFL-CIO with guts, an Indiana Democratic Party with guts, and even more amazingly, both of them showing guts at the same time, and cooperating in their open, public display of guts! For once, both Hoosiers of political prominence, and the Hoosier rank-and-file, stood up to the arrogant Republican majority in the State House and Governor’s mansion, and brought their ambitions to a grinding, screeching halt. When the Democratic members of the House of Representatives and the Senate walked out on the Indiana General Assembly and relocated for an indefinite sojourn in Illinois, they deprived the legislative session of a quorum; which meant the Republican majority was at an impasse, legally barred from ramming their anti-worker legislation down the Democratic minority’s, and the Hoosier public’s, throats. Immovable Democrats holed up in extradition-free Illinois, and vociferous protestors every day in front of the State House, actively organized by the state AFL-CIO unions, defied the Republicans both by their absence and by their presence, and made it known, “You’re just not going to do this!”
So the Republicans had to shelve “right-to-work,” had to shelve gutting teachers’ bargaining rights, had to deal with the Democrats whose power in absentia enabled them to call at least some of the shots. Both inside and outside the State House thousands of workers from all over the state converged in a massive display of ordinary people’s determination and fight-back spirit. Both together caused the Republicans to be unable to do anything but sputter, at least for a while, their major legislative goals unattainable; and perhaps even this whiff of defeat will still linger in the air not just in 2011, but in 2012 as well, at the polls and in the halls of the General Assembly. As in Wisconsin and Ohio, the Republicans had overreached, and had garnered for themselves not easy legislative pushovers, but massive, angry protest that took them aback—for at least the time being. For Indiana stood proudly in solidarity with the same kinds of protests in Wisconsin and Ohio, and if that still didn’t make the streets of downtown Indianapolis resemble the streets of Tunis or Tahrir Square in Cairo, at least the potential to become so is now there, when it wasn’t there before. After all, people remember again what they once did, when they recall the victories they had before, when they milled into the streets and defied power, when the occasion for such rises again. As it surely will. Republicans are too much like Bourbons, never remembering and never forgetting. But if the Hoosier people had been forgetting Republican trepidations for too long too many times before, they’re liable to remember the next time around. And a next time will come around—while Republicans will always be Republicans, so will the people once mobilized and energized, having shown to themselves and to others the strength of their numbers and determination.
A good reason for me to have savored that intoxication that came, not from substance abuse in the State of Intoxication, but by the heady sobriety of realizing the enormity of what had happened. And still savor it, even now.
To be sure, it wasn’t all victories. Even as the worker protests surged, a bill undermining unemployment benefits and eligibility for them, which takes effect July 1, did get through under stealth. While union teachers still kept their bargaining rights, more charter schools were authorized. Planned Parenthood was defunded, and Medicaid recipients are not allowed to utilize Planned Parenthood clinics. All the above gleefully signed into law by Republican Governor Mitch Daniels, former Office of Management and Budget head under George W. Bush; former CEO of Indianapolis Power and Light, where he used his power to privatize it, to his personal enrichment, at the cost of destroying workers’ pensions; and also, former CEO of Eli Lilly and Co., the major drug manufacturer and Indiana political powerhouse, where he earned $27 million in salary the year before running for Governor in 2004.
Also, in the last days of the General Assembly, after the Democrats had come back and walked out again in protest, the Republican minority rammed through a bill making further legislative walkouts illegal. Hopefully, this law will be challenged in the courts, and future Democratic legislators will show the same guts and determination again, as they did in 2011. But I don’t count on it. All of us who’ve watched Indiana politics before know how the Democrats have always talked a good fight, but always caved in before. Which is what made the Democrats this time so amazing. But, unfortunately, Democratic caving-in has a well-established tradition, not only in Indiana, but elsewhere; and so notably at the national level, with the Obama White House showing the lead these past few years, and with Democratic Congresspersons and Senators, with few exceptions, closing ranks and following suit. And Indiana Democrats have never been known for being particularly “liberal,” but have timidly adapted time in and time out to Indiana’s notorious conservatism. After all, this is the state that produced leading Senate Blue Dog Evan Bayh, and which ran another notable Blue Dog, Brad Ellsworth, for Senate in 2010. And no Indiana Democrats who can be considered as part of the "liberal camp” has ever distinguished him/herself as a Dennis Kucinich or a Bernie Sanders.
But at least one of the Republican victories given above turned into defeat. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has declared Indiana’s plan to defund Planned Parenthood illegal, and could pressure the state to drop it altogether by withholding funds. As it stands right now, lawyers are scrambling to find some way to salvage it; I join many other Hoosiers in hoping they fail, and that HHS stands behind its position.
I wasn’t able to participate in these events as much as I wanted to, despite having the time available due to layoff. For the State House, locus of all the activity, is in the heart of downtown Indianapolis, heart of much-touted upscale urban development; so that “ever new, ever more exciting”—ever more upscale and prohibitively expensive—“downtown Indianapolis” (to paraphrase one of the city’s trendy slogans) made affording parking far too expensive, and public transportation in Indianapolis is so lousy it really wasn’t an option from where I lived. But I was able to attend one State House rally on a late February Saturday, when downtown metered parking is free, and was glad to mill with the enthusiastic crowd, and see many of my friends and acquaintances there too, all just as eager and excited as I was.
Interestingly enough, I didn’t see but one of my former socialist “comrades,” whose personal treachery and do-nothingness I’ve recounted in two other blog entries here on “Politically Incorrect Leftist,” “Dregs” and “’Dregs’ Aftermath1.” And this was a big rally, specially organized and advertised! But the one fellow socialist I did see was quite friendly and glad to see me, as were the other local “progressives” I encountered, with whom I’m frequently on the outs with. But we of the left here in Indianapolis are all very small fish in a very big Red State sea, and under such conditions, sectarianism, cliquishness and purely personal umbrage become a part of life—especially in a social milieu already given to xenophobia and cliquishness to begin with. So-called Hoosier Hospitality is a mask used to gull tourists and out-of-state visitors to get them to part with their money. So says my cynical but realistic self, having lived in Indy now for over 30 years, and in Indiana for 40.
I’m a non-union worker, not by choice, and a temp at that— a group of workers precluded from organizing by a George W. Bush-era NLRB decision. But I am very much a supporter of unions and union rights, even if I feel I must stand in dismay at this atrophied giant still in stupor most of the time. That’s another thing that amazed me by the protests—an AFL-CIO actually energized and fighting back for workers, even if (as was the case) only defensively, pushed to the wall with nowhere else to go by Republican arrogance. But as one of those 88.1% of the workforce not represented by a union (for only 11.9% of all U.S. workers are unionized, and fewer than 7% in the private sector), my support has to be tempered by frustration and chagrin. It still rankles me to recall the 2009 Central Indiana Job with Justice (JwJ) meeting where I was reprimanded by the head of AFSCME District 62, “You temps make more than my union workers.” Yeah. At $10/hour with no benefits, uncertain work, and having had to stomach pay cuts to keep my temp job—which requires a college degree! But I was there with my homemade sign, “I’m Non-Union & I Support You. But Will You Support Me?” To me, a good sentiment, and a very good question. And I’m sure I’m not the only non-union worker to feel this way.
The AFL-CIO protests attracted union celebrities to address the throngs. Actor Danny Glover, President of the Screen Actors Guild, addressed a rally, as did Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). Their presence was an important, very much public, demonstration of solidarity, and connected Indiana’s struggles with those elsewhere, uniting workers in struggle in Indiana with workers in struggle elsewhere, especially in Wisconsin and Ohio; most important in a state known for its overwhelming hidebound parochialism. Further, Weingarten’s public support for Indiana teachers is an important political gesture in a state where “education reform” battles are high on the agenda, and where privatization, charter schools and undermining public education are espoused by many, with much support. Unfortunately, AFT’s hawkish positions on wars in the Middle East and Central Asia, coupled with its uncritical support for Israel, are a damper on attempts to unite labor forces with antiwar forces. And while JwJ is active several places in the state, its typical labor-movement evasion of antiwar protest, and social justice issues not involving labor directly, is another hindrance. As for the Indiana AFL-CIO generally, it is still beset in many circles with a “Scoop” Jackson “guns and butter” mentality (after Henry “Scoop” Jackson, former Democratic Senator from the State of Washington—nicknamed the “Senator from Boeing” for his hawkish military stance and friendliness toward military contractors); and before the upsurge, devoted much of its time to organizing chauvinistic “Buy American” campaigns.
African American presence was notable, although most of the upsurge participants were white, same as in Wisconsin and Ohio. But it was good to see fellow white Hoosiers rallying for justice rather than going to Tea Party demonstrations.
As is fairly well-known nationally, two lawyers employed by Indiana government agencies were fired for ugly remarks on the protestors in Wisconsin, where the upsurge protests were greatest. One of them, an Assistant Attorney General even, called for using “deadly force” against protestors there, while the other urged Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker to fabricate an incident that could then be used to break up the protests. The Republicans in Indiana at one point cut off power lines at the State House, so that protestors could not use microphones. True examples indeed of class warfare by the rich and powerful against the working class, which is something Karl Marx never needed to invent. It’s always been there, even when hidden and insidious; but the workers’ upsurge in Indiana and elsewhere brought it out into the open, and what a bringing out! Makes one want to paraphrase Che Guevara: “Create, two, there, many Wisconsins, Ohios and Indianas! Create two, three, many Tunisias and Egypts! Workers of the world, unite!” Yes, indeed.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Guest Blog from my friend John Williams: The Woman You Thought You Knew
THE WOMAN YOU THOUGHT YOU KNEW
by John Williams
A true story about real people written in the form of a short story
CAST OF CHARACTERS AND THE REAL PEOPLE THEY REPRESENT
Renee Folger—representing real person Jane the H. of blog entry "Dregs"
Ben Folger—representing real person Ron the H. of "Dregs"
Both influential leaders among Indianapolis "progressives" and "socialists"
Glen Fowler—representing real person George Fish
All long-time activists among Indianapolis "progressives" and "socialists"
Disclaimer: Although a story based on real people and real events, it is still a short story, and should not be taken as a completely true-to-life documentary; however, it is substantively based on the facts and psychologies of the personages as the author knew them, and he’s known each personage depicted for decades.
The story of Renee Folger needs to be told. Through this uncovering of her life, you’ll get to know her and the secrets that were found out. Many of these previously-unknown secrets were expressed only after her passing. Be on guard, read carefully and see what happened, lest it happen to you.
As the story begins, we learn that Renee’s husband, Ben, has a good-paying job in a local government office. He buys champagne and roses for Renee, and provides a good living. Renee rejoices in her husband’s good position, and provides support for him in any way she can. From a distance, it seems their life is good, and that the goodness will never stop.
Ironically, Renee was doing quite well herself financially. She was a nutritionist for a large hospital complex, and her decisions were final, no questions asked. Good money, authority over others, and a husband with a good-paying job. Wow! What else could she want?
For reasons unknown, Renee was the money handler for her family of two; the couple never had any children. As such, she wrote the checks, paid the bills, and made all the financial decisions. Her husband took the backseat completely. This was so obvious that some said the husband didn’t even know how to write a check, even a little one.
Renee needed control over everything, and she got it. She controlled the finances, and developed into what might be called a “helper.” Her life’s mission was to help others and make a beautiful, happy world where she and her friends could live.
But even in this make-believe world some problems seeped in. There was a political shift at work, and her husband’s job situation changed dramatically. Over time, he was maneuvered out of his job. He soon needed help, and Renee was more than happy to step in.
Renee and Ben were of the Quaker faith. Over the course of many years, they regularly attended church services and made many close friends. Renee, of course, was the center of attention, and soon her friends considered her a type of angel. She could do no wrong! She was the perfect example of goodness and correctness—or so it seemed on the surface. This surface appearance of goodness and correctness was so strong that, in fact, had she been a member of a different religion, she would have been up for canonization as a saint.
Ben, now unemployed, gained employment as a Quaker minister. Gee, imagine that! As time went on, the members of the congregation became unhappy with the new minister. It seems he wanted to take his faith-driven purpose in life to the streets. The higher-ups decided that Ben would have to go. Quite frankly, he wasn’t following the rules of Quaker orthodoxy, and was considered somewhat too radical for official purposes and decorum.
Being very close to Ben and his situation, naturally, Renee once again found another place where she could “help.” She did have friends and money, and Ben certainly had a need. Renee, however, didn’t look to Ben to decide what he wanted, but instead decided for Ben that he needed a new direction. Perhaps his message could be better expressed, and his mission better accomplished, as an editor and typesetter who also worked other ancillary journalistic occupations. At least, she thought, here he could have freedom of expression and perhaps make some money.
Next, we find Ben being the editor of a small political newspaper. The title of “editor” is used loosely here, as Ben was editor in name only. Renee knew the finances of the paper and, through knowing such, had control of what was published and by whom. Once again, her decisions were final and not to be disputed, even by Ben.
As time went on, Renee’s helpfulness found a new outlet. She embraced the less fortunate, those people on the street who needed direction and hope. Sometimes she blended politics and religion quite nicely, as they both fit together quite well. Or--at least it appeared that way!
Social issues abounded, and help was needed. Renee and Ben attended meetings and protests to add their input—and their impotence in matters of power to really effect change—to various causes. Dues were paid and contributions were forthcoming. A new cause, a new day. Renee was happy, prosperous, and boy, could she help!
But during this felicitous time something else happened. Something unexpected, something that would have a substantial effect on Renee and Ben for years to come: Glen Fowler entered their lives. He met Renee and Ben at one of the political meetings they attended. For whatever reason, there was an attraction by Glen to what seemed to be a very nice couple. Or so he thought!
Glen Fowler’s background was complex, troubled, and unknown to Renee and Ben. The experiences of his life that he revealed, however, fit in quite nicely into Renee’s notion of the type of person she could really help. Really help! And what did Glen really need? In a word, everything.
For too many years, Glen had been trapped by the circumstances of his life. As a youth, Glen had been forced to accept the dictates of his parents and family. He had no choice, no alternative, no recourse! His parents were members of an orthodox religion that was very authoritative, very authoritarian, and accepted no dissent or rebuttal. It was either “this way” or “the highway.”
The elements of this faith reinforced his parents’ view of child-rearing, which was also quite authoritarian. As Glen got older, conflicts arose within his family. Questions arose, and were not answered. He soon realized that if he were to survive, he needed to “shut up” and somehow “go away” at the very minimum. He did just that because he had to.
Living as he did in a small town under the rule of unquestioned authority, Glen longed for a way out. It came when he left home for college in the mid-1960s.
The 1960s in America was a time of revolution. It was an era of protests, marches, and discontent with the war in Vietnam. It was an unsettling time of new ideas and challenges. Also, it was a time of new-found freedoms.
Glen left home and stepped into a whole new dimension. For the first time in his life, Glen had total freedom, the ability to do whatever he wanted. It was during this time that Glen learned many new ideas, and found out for himself how vastly different the world can be. It was the first time Glen had been exposed to different races, cultures, political beliefs and religions. Here too came his beginning experiences with alcohol, drugs and the opposite sex. Wow, what a beginning of real life!
Life is filled with twists and turns. It seems the great awakening gradually took its toll on Glen. While in college he recognized that something was wrong. He became depressed and somewhat disoriented. Glen sought help at the college infirmary, and this began a most negative and long-term disaster.
For the next several years Glen’s life was literally on hold. He followed instructions from the medical folks. He took his medications, attended his counseling sessions. Little did he know he was on a merry-go-round that was leading him nowhere. But not only that for Glen; Ben wasn’t aware either that he’d fallen into a trap himself—one of answering to authority with no rebuttal allowed. Both had fallen into traps set by Renee by her need to “help” others through controlling them.
Things went from bad to worse. And now Glen was faced with a multitude of unpleasant situations: inadequate housing, unemployment, alcoholism, apathy form family, and many confusing and conflicting feelings.
Ben and Renee, on the other hand, were doing quite well. Ben’s business wasn’t overly successful, but at least he had a private office, regular meals, and a place of his own. And incidentally, he had Renee. Or was it the other way around?
Renee’s need to help soon surrounded Glen. Once again, Glen had accidentally tripped and stumbled into a trap of which he wasn’t aware. He had fallen into the clutches of a most accommodating helper. A trap very similar to living at home but with much more long-lasting and dangerous consequences.
The years passed slowly. Renee’s help came to Glen in various ways. She helped Glen pay his rent and was gracious enough to speak to him and allow him to visit Ben’s office. Wonderful! She even allowed some of his articles to be published.
Glen had learned many things over time. Unable to adequately defend himself against adversity, Glen reluctantly accepted Renee’s help, but suspected that other vital needs and their satisfaction would have to be relinquished in exchange for Renee’s help. His suspicions were soon to be realized, but this was readily dismissed by Renee due to her power and Glen’s lack of influence.
Glen was sounding an alarm. No one listened. He longed to tell everyone about Renee and what she was doing. He wanted others to know of Renee’s pretentious appearance of goodness and “help” she cultivated, while simultaneously treating Glen as unworthy of respect and not worthy of being treated like a human being. His efforts in this regard fell on deaf ears. No one listened or cared. Still Glen persisted, and tried in every conceivable way to tell others.
During all this, Fate stepped in and brought forth an unexpected event—Renee’s health began to wither. She had liver cancer.
As Renee’s health continued to decline, Glen still held on to his message. The timing of Glen’s message and Renee’s failing health didn’t sit well with others. Once again, Glen was asked to be silent and please, go away!
What was Glen’s message? And why was it so important that he felt he needed to write an essay and make it available to mourners after Renee’s demise? Yes, Renee had passed! But now, what of Glen and his message?
What Glen had to say had been learned over a period spanning greater than twenty years. He had paid a dear price for what he’d learned. He hadn’t known that Renee, due to her influence, was socially isolating Glen. He hadn’t known of the criticism of him behind his back to everyone Renee knew. He hadn’t known about the private conversations that had been held to talk about him. He hadn’t even known how phony and obnoxious “helpers” can be. All this he’d found out the hard way.
Additionally, he hadn’t known that when Renee passed she’d saddled her husband with bills for utilities that had been unpaid for the previous three months. Also, that the bulk of her estate had been left for charity, not her husband, who now had next to nothing. Incidentally, he hadn’t even been aware that Ben, Renee’s husband, now widower, didn’t even know how to drive a car.
Glen certainly knew that Renee’s husband was totally controlled by her. But he didn’t know that when Renee died, she’d left Ben as an infant to walk alone now in the woods. In fact, Ben now felt imposed upon when he had to answer the telephone, a small task formerly managed by Renee.
So much to know about someone trying to help!
Glen’s hard-learned message is clear: Let no one control you! Further, his experiences raise certain moral questions that really need to be answered. For instance, is charity always from the heart, or are there “charitable” people who demand repayment for it in insidious, treacherous ways? Can we have good intentions but, in reality, do harm despite them? Lastly, how can we be sure when someone justifies actions such as these that they were, as they state, “directed by God”?
At first glance, Renee appeared to be the personification of goodness. When she passed, however, she left behind a poor child with nothing, and a man who couldn’t forget what she did. Is this the woman you thought you knew?
by John Williams
A true story about real people written in the form of a short story
CAST OF CHARACTERS AND THE REAL PEOPLE THEY REPRESENT
Renee Folger—representing real person Jane the H. of blog entry "Dregs"
Ben Folger—representing real person Ron the H. of "Dregs"
Both influential leaders among Indianapolis "progressives" and "socialists"
Glen Fowler—representing real person George Fish
All long-time activists among Indianapolis "progressives" and "socialists"
Disclaimer: Although a story based on real people and real events, it is still a short story, and should not be taken as a completely true-to-life documentary; however, it is substantively based on the facts and psychologies of the personages as the author knew them, and he’s known each personage depicted for decades.
The story of Renee Folger needs to be told. Through this uncovering of her life, you’ll get to know her and the secrets that were found out. Many of these previously-unknown secrets were expressed only after her passing. Be on guard, read carefully and see what happened, lest it happen to you.
As the story begins, we learn that Renee’s husband, Ben, has a good-paying job in a local government office. He buys champagne and roses for Renee, and provides a good living. Renee rejoices in her husband’s good position, and provides support for him in any way she can. From a distance, it seems their life is good, and that the goodness will never stop.
Ironically, Renee was doing quite well herself financially. She was a nutritionist for a large hospital complex, and her decisions were final, no questions asked. Good money, authority over others, and a husband with a good-paying job. Wow! What else could she want?
For reasons unknown, Renee was the money handler for her family of two; the couple never had any children. As such, she wrote the checks, paid the bills, and made all the financial decisions. Her husband took the backseat completely. This was so obvious that some said the husband didn’t even know how to write a check, even a little one.
Renee needed control over everything, and she got it. She controlled the finances, and developed into what might be called a “helper.” Her life’s mission was to help others and make a beautiful, happy world where she and her friends could live.
But even in this make-believe world some problems seeped in. There was a political shift at work, and her husband’s job situation changed dramatically. Over time, he was maneuvered out of his job. He soon needed help, and Renee was more than happy to step in.
Renee and Ben were of the Quaker faith. Over the course of many years, they regularly attended church services and made many close friends. Renee, of course, was the center of attention, and soon her friends considered her a type of angel. She could do no wrong! She was the perfect example of goodness and correctness—or so it seemed on the surface. This surface appearance of goodness and correctness was so strong that, in fact, had she been a member of a different religion, she would have been up for canonization as a saint.
Ben, now unemployed, gained employment as a Quaker minister. Gee, imagine that! As time went on, the members of the congregation became unhappy with the new minister. It seems he wanted to take his faith-driven purpose in life to the streets. The higher-ups decided that Ben would have to go. Quite frankly, he wasn’t following the rules of Quaker orthodoxy, and was considered somewhat too radical for official purposes and decorum.
Being very close to Ben and his situation, naturally, Renee once again found another place where she could “help.” She did have friends and money, and Ben certainly had a need. Renee, however, didn’t look to Ben to decide what he wanted, but instead decided for Ben that he needed a new direction. Perhaps his message could be better expressed, and his mission better accomplished, as an editor and typesetter who also worked other ancillary journalistic occupations. At least, she thought, here he could have freedom of expression and perhaps make some money.
Next, we find Ben being the editor of a small political newspaper. The title of “editor” is used loosely here, as Ben was editor in name only. Renee knew the finances of the paper and, through knowing such, had control of what was published and by whom. Once again, her decisions were final and not to be disputed, even by Ben.
As time went on, Renee’s helpfulness found a new outlet. She embraced the less fortunate, those people on the street who needed direction and hope. Sometimes she blended politics and religion quite nicely, as they both fit together quite well. Or--at least it appeared that way!
Social issues abounded, and help was needed. Renee and Ben attended meetings and protests to add their input—and their impotence in matters of power to really effect change—to various causes. Dues were paid and contributions were forthcoming. A new cause, a new day. Renee was happy, prosperous, and boy, could she help!
But during this felicitous time something else happened. Something unexpected, something that would have a substantial effect on Renee and Ben for years to come: Glen Fowler entered their lives. He met Renee and Ben at one of the political meetings they attended. For whatever reason, there was an attraction by Glen to what seemed to be a very nice couple. Or so he thought!
Glen Fowler’s background was complex, troubled, and unknown to Renee and Ben. The experiences of his life that he revealed, however, fit in quite nicely into Renee’s notion of the type of person she could really help. Really help! And what did Glen really need? In a word, everything.
For too many years, Glen had been trapped by the circumstances of his life. As a youth, Glen had been forced to accept the dictates of his parents and family. He had no choice, no alternative, no recourse! His parents were members of an orthodox religion that was very authoritative, very authoritarian, and accepted no dissent or rebuttal. It was either “this way” or “the highway.”
The elements of this faith reinforced his parents’ view of child-rearing, which was also quite authoritarian. As Glen got older, conflicts arose within his family. Questions arose, and were not answered. He soon realized that if he were to survive, he needed to “shut up” and somehow “go away” at the very minimum. He did just that because he had to.
Living as he did in a small town under the rule of unquestioned authority, Glen longed for a way out. It came when he left home for college in the mid-1960s.
The 1960s in America was a time of revolution. It was an era of protests, marches, and discontent with the war in Vietnam. It was an unsettling time of new ideas and challenges. Also, it was a time of new-found freedoms.
Glen left home and stepped into a whole new dimension. For the first time in his life, Glen had total freedom, the ability to do whatever he wanted. It was during this time that Glen learned many new ideas, and found out for himself how vastly different the world can be. It was the first time Glen had been exposed to different races, cultures, political beliefs and religions. Here too came his beginning experiences with alcohol, drugs and the opposite sex. Wow, what a beginning of real life!
Life is filled with twists and turns. It seems the great awakening gradually took its toll on Glen. While in college he recognized that something was wrong. He became depressed and somewhat disoriented. Glen sought help at the college infirmary, and this began a most negative and long-term disaster.
For the next several years Glen’s life was literally on hold. He followed instructions from the medical folks. He took his medications, attended his counseling sessions. Little did he know he was on a merry-go-round that was leading him nowhere. But not only that for Glen; Ben wasn’t aware either that he’d fallen into a trap himself—one of answering to authority with no rebuttal allowed. Both had fallen into traps set by Renee by her need to “help” others through controlling them.
Things went from bad to worse. And now Glen was faced with a multitude of unpleasant situations: inadequate housing, unemployment, alcoholism, apathy form family, and many confusing and conflicting feelings.
Ben and Renee, on the other hand, were doing quite well. Ben’s business wasn’t overly successful, but at least he had a private office, regular meals, and a place of his own. And incidentally, he had Renee. Or was it the other way around?
Renee’s need to help soon surrounded Glen. Once again, Glen had accidentally tripped and stumbled into a trap of which he wasn’t aware. He had fallen into the clutches of a most accommodating helper. A trap very similar to living at home but with much more long-lasting and dangerous consequences.
The years passed slowly. Renee’s help came to Glen in various ways. She helped Glen pay his rent and was gracious enough to speak to him and allow him to visit Ben’s office. Wonderful! She even allowed some of his articles to be published.
Glen had learned many things over time. Unable to adequately defend himself against adversity, Glen reluctantly accepted Renee’s help, but suspected that other vital needs and their satisfaction would have to be relinquished in exchange for Renee’s help. His suspicions were soon to be realized, but this was readily dismissed by Renee due to her power and Glen’s lack of influence.
Glen was sounding an alarm. No one listened. He longed to tell everyone about Renee and what she was doing. He wanted others to know of Renee’s pretentious appearance of goodness and “help” she cultivated, while simultaneously treating Glen as unworthy of respect and not worthy of being treated like a human being. His efforts in this regard fell on deaf ears. No one listened or cared. Still Glen persisted, and tried in every conceivable way to tell others.
During all this, Fate stepped in and brought forth an unexpected event—Renee’s health began to wither. She had liver cancer.
As Renee’s health continued to decline, Glen still held on to his message. The timing of Glen’s message and Renee’s failing health didn’t sit well with others. Once again, Glen was asked to be silent and please, go away!
What was Glen’s message? And why was it so important that he felt he needed to write an essay and make it available to mourners after Renee’s demise? Yes, Renee had passed! But now, what of Glen and his message?
What Glen had to say had been learned over a period spanning greater than twenty years. He had paid a dear price for what he’d learned. He hadn’t known that Renee, due to her influence, was socially isolating Glen. He hadn’t known of the criticism of him behind his back to everyone Renee knew. He hadn’t known about the private conversations that had been held to talk about him. He hadn’t even known how phony and obnoxious “helpers” can be. All this he’d found out the hard way.
Additionally, he hadn’t known that when Renee passed she’d saddled her husband with bills for utilities that had been unpaid for the previous three months. Also, that the bulk of her estate had been left for charity, not her husband, who now had next to nothing. Incidentally, he hadn’t even been aware that Ben, Renee’s husband, now widower, didn’t even know how to drive a car.
Glen certainly knew that Renee’s husband was totally controlled by her. But he didn’t know that when Renee died, she’d left Ben as an infant to walk alone now in the woods. In fact, Ben now felt imposed upon when he had to answer the telephone, a small task formerly managed by Renee.
So much to know about someone trying to help!
Glen’s hard-learned message is clear: Let no one control you! Further, his experiences raise certain moral questions that really need to be answered. For instance, is charity always from the heart, or are there “charitable” people who demand repayment for it in insidious, treacherous ways? Can we have good intentions but, in reality, do harm despite them? Lastly, how can we be sure when someone justifies actions such as these that they were, as they state, “directed by God”?
At first glance, Renee appeared to be the personification of goodness. When she passed, however, she left behind a poor child with nothing, and a man who couldn’t forget what she did. Is this the woman you thought you knew?
Sunday, May 8, 2011
On Mother's Day: for those mothers who were really "mothers"
...as in that compound word that begins with “mother” and is followed by a second word that begins with “f.” Unofrtunately, that was the kind of mother I had, as will be seen below, and I see no reason to be disingenuously silent about it.
This piece was originally posted on my former Bloomington Alternative blog on Mother’s Day, 2008. The only thing changed is to give it the date for Mother's Day, 2011--GF
Well, it’s May 8, 2011, Mother’s Day. A day to get sentimental about Mother, celebrate fulsomely how our mother contributed so positively to our upbringing as children that she guaranteed our satisfaction and success as adults. But what my mother so fulsomely gave me through the way she raised me—and I’ll be brutally honest here—is simply a deep sense of regret at being born.
Had I a choice in the matter I wouldn’t have chosen either her or my father to be my parents. And I certainly wouldn’t have chosen to be raised in their Catholic religion. Nor would I have chosen to be part of that dysfunctional, authoritarian, repressive Catholic family I was raised in, and which was so very typical of Catholic families, both in its authoritarian lovelessness and in its exercise of arbitrary, repressive power.
My mother had one particular bête noire, and that was men and boys urinating standing up, and thus allegedly dripping and splashing. She was so obsessed with this that any little faux pas on my part would set her off in a screaming apoplectic rage so deep that her face would not only turn beet red, but the veins and tendons in her neck stand would out like mountain ranges as well. She’d screech at the top of her lungs, “All women just hate that!” then go into a ten-minute tirade on how all women were deeply offended and put upon by males urinating standing up, with their inevitable dripping and splashing on the rim of the toilet bowl. (But I never did know another woman who was so deeply offended by this natural male urination the way she was.) These unpredictable apoplectic rages, which could be set off at any time over any issue, were an integral part of not only my childhood, but my adolescence and even adulthood as well. Needless to say, as a good Catholic wife and mother, she never did go off on my father for his urinating the same way I did. She saved the expression of her seething rage at my father (and probably her own father as well) for when he was completely out of earshot. She needed a convenient scapegoat for her rage at my father, and lucky me, I became it.
Of course, that’s fundamentally child abuse, verbal and emotional child abuse that cuts as deeply as any physical abuse does (but which I was not generally subject to, only continuous verbal and emotional abuse). Needless to say, such abusive tirades not only undermined my most basic sense of self-esteem, any sense whatsoever of ever living up to any positive expectation on my part that I would ever please my mother; and their very capriciousness and unpredictability made me grow up with a constant fearful awareness of walking on eggs. With no recourse or avenue of escape whatsoever, for neither church nor society provided for that; they only upheld and reinforced such abuse as within the proper realm of parental authority.
I inherited a less-than-sterling set of genes from both my parents. Those behavioral patterns and mind-sets that have been so troublesome for myself and others in my life—my irritability, moodiness, sudden mood changes, depression and seething rage that suddenly, unpredictably explodes in volcanic eruption—I now see clearly as being integrally part of both my parents’ personalities also. But their power and authority enabled them to completely get away with it. As for me, when I was 18 and a college student, I sought psychiatric help for depression, only to have my life essentially put 40+ years on hold as the perpetual psychiatric outpatient. (Such is the result for most people entering into psychiatric treatment—the “professionals” now take it upon themselves to micro-manage their patients for the rest of their lives, because they’re obviously incapable of ever being more than demented cripples. This is called “curing mental illness.”) The Problem George I was to my parents and to the Catholic Church now became Problem George to psychiatry as well.
My mother’s great fear was somehow not being found quite respectable enough no matter what she did or didn’t do. This according to that tawdry, constricted sense of what was respectable and what was not so assiduously promulgated by the Reader’s Digest especially in those days of my youth, the 1950s and early 1960s. Both my parents read the Reader’s Digest religiously, the only magazine either of them ever did read regularly, or at all (my mother also read religiously the eminently respectable woman’s magazine of the day, McCall’s). Being “respectable” under such conditions meant not only not challenging authority, but also never being suspect or doubted by authority; and for parents, that “respectability” also meant never having children who weren’t also “respectable” by those standards. Alas, I failed miserably at that test. I was simply too bright, too stupidly unable to resist asking the question “Why?” in the Catholic school system to ever expect to pass that test, the test by which “good Catholics” were measured. And, needless to say, a system dominated in the most brutally authoritarian way by priests and nuns, and one never, never, crossed a priest or nun and expected to be considered worthwhile. My father once did so in my defense, and after being firmly rebuffed by the priest who was also the school’s principal, never made that mistake again. As for my mother, she hated those “liberal, questioning” priests that came out of the authoritarian closet in the early, heady days of Vatican II, much preferring those rigid, fundamentalist priests who could comfort her in her sorrowful lot as the Sinful Daughter of Eve, but who was still redeemable as a woman if she kept her nose clean.
Feminism changed (only partially, conditionally, unevenly) part of this. Needless to say, my mother hated feminism as “un-womanly,” and still does. She’s not overly fond of anti-racist (she’d say regularly in the 1960s, “They don’t want equal rights, they want special rights.”) or antiwar attitudes either (she’d say also in the 1960s against my opposition to the war in Vietnam, “No one wants war, but…” and then uphold the Vietnam War in knee-jerk, “respectable” fashion). In the early 1970s she went into a burning rage over the daughter of a family friend who took, along with her husband, a hyphenated surname instead of her husband’s name. As noted above, “male chauvinism” to her was men urinating standing up, to which she took righteous umbrage on behalf of oppressed womanhood easily as great as that that might be expressed (on different matters, of course) by Gloria Steinem. Needless to say, I’m horribly politically incorrect by the standards of contemporary leftism for expressing such thoughts and noting such things; but as I wrote many years ago on structural oppression and the human personality, “While oppression may ennoble in some cases, in the majority it curdles, it sours and makes opportunistic the personality.” I stand by this politically incorrect, yet palpably real, insight 100% today still, even as I wish mine and yours a “Happy Mom’s Day” this May 8, 2011.
*********************************************************
It should be added here that I did successfully confront my mother on her past abuse and moral blindness, following the course advocated by psychotherapist Dr. Susan Forward in her excellent book, Toxic Parents, in which she says the only way to move beyond abuse is to confront the abuser. I did so, and all my mother could say in "response" was to indignantly utter the egregious falsehood, "You never had to clean toilets!" However, I will say positively that when I needed a new car my mother volunteered to take out a bank loan to pay for it. Of course, that was in her direct self-interest also: having a car to go to work and get around here in Indianapolis kept me from moving back with the family, and thus preserved peace on both sides through geographical distance!
This piece was originally posted on my former Bloomington Alternative blog on Mother’s Day, 2008. The only thing changed is to give it the date for Mother's Day, 2011--GF
Well, it’s May 8, 2011, Mother’s Day. A day to get sentimental about Mother, celebrate fulsomely how our mother contributed so positively to our upbringing as children that she guaranteed our satisfaction and success as adults. But what my mother so fulsomely gave me through the way she raised me—and I’ll be brutally honest here—is simply a deep sense of regret at being born.
Had I a choice in the matter I wouldn’t have chosen either her or my father to be my parents. And I certainly wouldn’t have chosen to be raised in their Catholic religion. Nor would I have chosen to be part of that dysfunctional, authoritarian, repressive Catholic family I was raised in, and which was so very typical of Catholic families, both in its authoritarian lovelessness and in its exercise of arbitrary, repressive power.
My mother had one particular bête noire, and that was men and boys urinating standing up, and thus allegedly dripping and splashing. She was so obsessed with this that any little faux pas on my part would set her off in a screaming apoplectic rage so deep that her face would not only turn beet red, but the veins and tendons in her neck stand would out like mountain ranges as well. She’d screech at the top of her lungs, “All women just hate that!” then go into a ten-minute tirade on how all women were deeply offended and put upon by males urinating standing up, with their inevitable dripping and splashing on the rim of the toilet bowl. (But I never did know another woman who was so deeply offended by this natural male urination the way she was.) These unpredictable apoplectic rages, which could be set off at any time over any issue, were an integral part of not only my childhood, but my adolescence and even adulthood as well. Needless to say, as a good Catholic wife and mother, she never did go off on my father for his urinating the same way I did. She saved the expression of her seething rage at my father (and probably her own father as well) for when he was completely out of earshot. She needed a convenient scapegoat for her rage at my father, and lucky me, I became it.
Of course, that’s fundamentally child abuse, verbal and emotional child abuse that cuts as deeply as any physical abuse does (but which I was not generally subject to, only continuous verbal and emotional abuse). Needless to say, such abusive tirades not only undermined my most basic sense of self-esteem, any sense whatsoever of ever living up to any positive expectation on my part that I would ever please my mother; and their very capriciousness and unpredictability made me grow up with a constant fearful awareness of walking on eggs. With no recourse or avenue of escape whatsoever, for neither church nor society provided for that; they only upheld and reinforced such abuse as within the proper realm of parental authority.
I inherited a less-than-sterling set of genes from both my parents. Those behavioral patterns and mind-sets that have been so troublesome for myself and others in my life—my irritability, moodiness, sudden mood changes, depression and seething rage that suddenly, unpredictably explodes in volcanic eruption—I now see clearly as being integrally part of both my parents’ personalities also. But their power and authority enabled them to completely get away with it. As for me, when I was 18 and a college student, I sought psychiatric help for depression, only to have my life essentially put 40+ years on hold as the perpetual psychiatric outpatient. (Such is the result for most people entering into psychiatric treatment—the “professionals” now take it upon themselves to micro-manage their patients for the rest of their lives, because they’re obviously incapable of ever being more than demented cripples. This is called “curing mental illness.”) The Problem George I was to my parents and to the Catholic Church now became Problem George to psychiatry as well.
My mother’s great fear was somehow not being found quite respectable enough no matter what she did or didn’t do. This according to that tawdry, constricted sense of what was respectable and what was not so assiduously promulgated by the Reader’s Digest especially in those days of my youth, the 1950s and early 1960s. Both my parents read the Reader’s Digest religiously, the only magazine either of them ever did read regularly, or at all (my mother also read religiously the eminently respectable woman’s magazine of the day, McCall’s). Being “respectable” under such conditions meant not only not challenging authority, but also never being suspect or doubted by authority; and for parents, that “respectability” also meant never having children who weren’t also “respectable” by those standards. Alas, I failed miserably at that test. I was simply too bright, too stupidly unable to resist asking the question “Why?” in the Catholic school system to ever expect to pass that test, the test by which “good Catholics” were measured. And, needless to say, a system dominated in the most brutally authoritarian way by priests and nuns, and one never, never, crossed a priest or nun and expected to be considered worthwhile. My father once did so in my defense, and after being firmly rebuffed by the priest who was also the school’s principal, never made that mistake again. As for my mother, she hated those “liberal, questioning” priests that came out of the authoritarian closet in the early, heady days of Vatican II, much preferring those rigid, fundamentalist priests who could comfort her in her sorrowful lot as the Sinful Daughter of Eve, but who was still redeemable as a woman if she kept her nose clean.
Feminism changed (only partially, conditionally, unevenly) part of this. Needless to say, my mother hated feminism as “un-womanly,” and still does. She’s not overly fond of anti-racist (she’d say regularly in the 1960s, “They don’t want equal rights, they want special rights.”) or antiwar attitudes either (she’d say also in the 1960s against my opposition to the war in Vietnam, “No one wants war, but…” and then uphold the Vietnam War in knee-jerk, “respectable” fashion). In the early 1970s she went into a burning rage over the daughter of a family friend who took, along with her husband, a hyphenated surname instead of her husband’s name. As noted above, “male chauvinism” to her was men urinating standing up, to which she took righteous umbrage on behalf of oppressed womanhood easily as great as that that might be expressed (on different matters, of course) by Gloria Steinem. Needless to say, I’m horribly politically incorrect by the standards of contemporary leftism for expressing such thoughts and noting such things; but as I wrote many years ago on structural oppression and the human personality, “While oppression may ennoble in some cases, in the majority it curdles, it sours and makes opportunistic the personality.” I stand by this politically incorrect, yet palpably real, insight 100% today still, even as I wish mine and yours a “Happy Mom’s Day” this May 8, 2011.
*********************************************************
It should be added here that I did successfully confront my mother on her past abuse and moral blindness, following the course advocated by psychotherapist Dr. Susan Forward in her excellent book, Toxic Parents, in which she says the only way to move beyond abuse is to confront the abuser. I did so, and all my mother could say in "response" was to indignantly utter the egregious falsehood, "You never had to clean toilets!" However, I will say positively that when I needed a new car my mother volunteered to take out a bank loan to pay for it. Of course, that was in her direct self-interest also: having a car to go to work and get around here in Indianapolis kept me from moving back with the family, and thus preserved peace on both sides through geographical distance!
Thursday, February 17, 2011
“Dregs” Aftermath1: Letter from One of “the Masses”
I’ve been away from my blog for quite a while now, due to the time-draining constraints of both work and problematic health. But I plan to make up for it with more regular postings.—GF
My good friend John W, who knows me very well because he asks me questions and doesn’t just assume things about me, unlike the other Indianapolis “progressives” and “socialists,” has avidly followed my travails with the local “socialists” that I limned in my previous blog entry, “Dregs” (which is just below this one). He has also followed the course of this matter ever since then, and has read all the e-mail exchanges that have ensued. Because of this knowledge, he found himself considerably un-edified and quite distrustful of the Indianapolis “socialists” and all their pretensions. This motivated him to draft the letter below to these locals, primarily members of SPUSA and DSA who gather collectively under the umbrella of the Indiana Socialist Fellowship, but whom he addressed as the “Indianapolis Socialist Fellowship group.” I then typed up this letter from his handwritten copy and e-mailed to these local denizens of significant social change (John is not either a typing or an Internet man). I give the text of this letter below not simply as an affirmation of my original position, but also as an important view for us political activists of the left of just how our movement looks to an intelligent outsider.
Indeed, John could be “one of us” were we of the left able to effectively converse with our fellow humans—converse, that is, with real give-and-take, not simply hector, cajole, lecture, or try to convert. The hallmark of John’s style is that he asks questions; he is of an inquisitive, rather than a declamatory, bent, and it shows well in the letter below. He has inquired well into what happened, and drawn his conclusions, which he expresses pithily and pungently. If the result is an image of the “socialists” as a clique of pretentious do-nothings, it’s not due to any fault, may I say, in the eye of the painter, John; rather, it’s the result of what’s already present in the material he’s examined. And he has seen more than just my side: he has seen the nasty e-mails Marvey the W wrote to me, and he’s seen those of Frank Llewellyn, National Director of DSA, who has judged me from afar on the basis only of what he’s heard from Marvey. (These will be fully related and dissected in a forthcoming blog.) Living proof that parochialism can indeed exist in supposedly cosmopolitan New York City just as much as it can in the hinterland of Indiana.
But enough for now. I’ll have more to say later, but right now I’m going to yield to my friend John and his letter:
Thus the “socialists, as seen through the eyes of one of “the masses.” If it’s reproached that John is not “massy” enough, being a university graduate who worked as a white-collar professional, such characteristics fit the “socialists” also, and just not locally, but nationally. It can easily be said that those who call themselves socialists and are “active” enough to participate in socialist organizations—at least to the extent of attending meetings once a month—are more white-collar or professional than blue-collar (I’d say the most common occupation among professed socialists, at least in my experience, is college professor), and almost without exception, college students, former college students, or college graduates. And we are very small in numbers, as John pointedly observes, not only in Indianapolis, but nationally. I’d estimate that there are only about two million persons in the U.S. today who could be counted as left or socialist activists, at least in the sense of occasionally attending a rally or demonstration, or attend meetings of left political groups. Two million out of a current U.S. population of over 300 million—or less than 1% of the population! So, even on the national level that would constitute the left as, in John’s word, merely a “club.” And a club divided into many factions that bicker among themselves, and frequently go heresy-hunting, as did the local “socialists” toward me.
“Alas, we/Who wished to lay the foundations of kindness/Could not ourselves be kind,” Brecht wrote disingenuously in the late 1930s, in his poem “To Posterity.” I say “disingenuously” because, if we of the left who “[c]ould not ourselves be kind” think that we’re still able to “lay the foundations of kindness,” then we are deluding ourselves. It takes much more than simply articulating good programmatic proposals to “lay the foundations of kindness;” for these good programmatic proposals of the left (and we of the left have far better ones than either the center or the right) are but the bricks, the congealed theoretical elements of those “foundations of kindness.” But for “foundations” to be laid out of bricks, it takes, in addition, bricklayers who know their craft, as well as mortar. “Kindness” from ourselves is the necessary mortar we of the left must provide, in addition to being a necessary requirement for our being bricklayers capable of “lay[ing] the foundations of kindness.” Without such, we of the left simply spout pretty words!
Without “kindness,” which is but human decency, we of the left simply become another one of those societal exponents of “Do as I say, not as I do” ethics, of which we already have a plethora. But we of the left too often cannot “ourselves be kind.” And for a putative agent of positive social change that is already bedraggled in society, whose cries and proposals for “socialism” are already imbued with a pervasive society-wide negativity that’s actively conveyed by the societal leaders and media to the masses we wish to reach, that lack of “kindness,” i.e., that inability in ourselves to be examples of that very element which we insouciantly proclaim ourselves to be the foundation-layers, can becomes deadly. In fact, it already has. “The fault lies not in the stars, but in ourselves.” Or, put another way, “We have found the enemy, and it is us.” If we of the left wonder why we are so much ignored by “the masses,” it would be wiser for us first of all to look to ourselves and how we act, how we are perceived by “the masses”—who are but the John W’s of the world.
But as I’ve shown earlier in “Dregs,” we don’t come across that well, and we ourselves are quite capable of the cruelties and injustices we fault the greater capitalist society for producing. Historically and in the present, the left has not only been a repository of virtue, human decency and striving for equity and justice, but also a repository of injustice and frame-up, of sectarianism, dogmatism, vigorous heresy-hunting within our ranks, of active expulsion and execration, of self-righteousness, betrayal of others and of our ideals, double standards, and political correctness. What happened to me as outlined in “Dregs” is but one case, and a relatively minor one at that, but a good case of what’s all too pervasive on the left, and has been recounted time and again by talented writers who’ve been in the maw of the left. We might look at the poignant story of Richard Wright, for example, as he relates it in The God that Failed (New York: Bantam Books, 1964, pp. 103-146). We can see it and feel it in the excellent recounting of life on the left that Vivian Gornick relates in The Romance of American Communism (New York: Basic Books, 1977). Being part of a beleaguered political sect such as the left is in the U.S., painfully aware of its isolation and marginalization, but with a vision of inclusiveness in equality and justice that supposedly makes us universally attractive to society’s have-nots, especially to those with both “consciousness and conscience,” it’s understandable that the left would embrace those defensive traits that hold sects together—cliquishness; distrust of the different; super-sensitivity to criticism, especially from within; quick retaliation toward the offender, especially the offender within the ranks. Understandable, but not forgivable. That’s why persons like my friend John W are so valuable for the left; precisely because they are not “members of the choir,” they can give us insights on how we really are, how we really look to those outside the choral gallery. And whether we of the left like it or not, the John W’s of the world are precisely those whom the left is going to have to convince, to gain support from, and to involve. But when we behave as the “socialists” did as recounted in “Dregs,” we should be very grateful indeed that there are John W’s in the world to write us letters of reproach, who make fun of our pomposities, and who hold up mirrors in which to view ourselves—warts and all.
Update--my co-worker Dave commented on the Indiana "socialists" to me as follows after reading my blogs. I quote him with his permission. He said, "My co-worker Dave read my blog entries & commented to me via e-mail on the local "socialists." I print his remarks with his permission. He said: "After browsing through the documents you attached and also your blog, I would concur with the assessment that you were set up by those three members of the Indiana Socialist Fellowship. It seems to me that they are more interested in maintaining a stranglehold on the control of that little group, even if it means the group will remain perpetually marginalized and insignificant. Yes, it may be small and insignificant, but it's their pond, and they're still the big fish in that tiny pond -- and I'll bet that's just the way they like it. And it will probably always be that way as long as they're still around, calling the shots."
This is the first of several commentaries by me that will draw up the lessons to be learned from both the successes and the failures of the left, in order that a better left can come into being, and become educated in the better ways. That’s really what this blog is all about—pedagogy. And like all good pedagogies, it draws upon both the carrot and the stick.—GF
My good friend John W, who knows me very well because he asks me questions and doesn’t just assume things about me, unlike the other Indianapolis “progressives” and “socialists,” has avidly followed my travails with the local “socialists” that I limned in my previous blog entry, “Dregs” (which is just below this one). He has also followed the course of this matter ever since then, and has read all the e-mail exchanges that have ensued. Because of this knowledge, he found himself considerably un-edified and quite distrustful of the Indianapolis “socialists” and all their pretensions. This motivated him to draft the letter below to these locals, primarily members of SPUSA and DSA who gather collectively under the umbrella of the Indiana Socialist Fellowship, but whom he addressed as the “Indianapolis Socialist Fellowship group.” I then typed up this letter from his handwritten copy and e-mailed to these local denizens of significant social change (John is not either a typing or an Internet man). I give the text of this letter below not simply as an affirmation of my original position, but also as an important view for us political activists of the left of just how our movement looks to an intelligent outsider.
Indeed, John could be “one of us” were we of the left able to effectively converse with our fellow humans—converse, that is, with real give-and-take, not simply hector, cajole, lecture, or try to convert. The hallmark of John’s style is that he asks questions; he is of an inquisitive, rather than a declamatory, bent, and it shows well in the letter below. He has inquired well into what happened, and drawn his conclusions, which he expresses pithily and pungently. If the result is an image of the “socialists” as a clique of pretentious do-nothings, it’s not due to any fault, may I say, in the eye of the painter, John; rather, it’s the result of what’s already present in the material he’s examined. And he has seen more than just my side: he has seen the nasty e-mails Marvey the W wrote to me, and he’s seen those of Frank Llewellyn, National Director of DSA, who has judged me from afar on the basis only of what he’s heard from Marvey. (These will be fully related and dissected in a forthcoming blog.) Living proof that parochialism can indeed exist in supposedly cosmopolitan New York City just as much as it can in the hinterland of Indiana.
But enough for now. I’ll have more to say later, but right now I’m going to yield to my friend John and his letter:
To: Indianapolis Socialist Fellowship Group
From: John W
Date: February 15, 2011
As a matter of introduction, I’m a retired Public Accountant who has lived in Indianapolis for the majority of my sixty-five years. A 1972 graduate of the University f Indianapolis, I worked with my dad in downtown Indianapolis for 37½ years.
In truth, I’m non-political and more concerned with humanitarian issues than Congressional bills or making good contacts.
George Fish is a good friend of mine. Recently, he shared with me his experiences with your organization; I immediately went into a state of shock. I said, “What? You’re kidding!”
I’ll briefly share some thoughts with you about your organization.
At the outset, I’m amazed that, considering my 65 years of Indiana residency, I’ve never even heard of your organization! You’re who, and you do what?
If your group were a major force in the political arena, perhaps making major contributions to American society, I’d like your club a lot more.
As I understand, your group meets one Sunday afternoon per month. Wow! This has to be somewhat of a comedy. How on earth can your members take this much time out of their busy schedules? And, by the way, what exactly has your club done lately?
Were your members aware of such events as the war in Afghanistan, the Egyptian revolution, the U.S. Recession/Depression, the plight of those in poverty or lack of adequate health care in this country? Has your club tackled the unemployment issue of concerned itself with the image of the U.S. overseas?
To continue the comedy from this non-political Public Accountant, what about your membership? I hear that on a good Sunday you’ll have all of ten members attending your meetings. Ten? Has your advertising committee disbanded? Are folks all over Indy beating a path to your door?
Speaking of doors, George told me that recently you slammed the door on his attendance at your meetings. Are you kidding me?” Of course, you realize that your membership just dropped, on a good Sunday, from ten to nine. Not to mention the loss of revenue to your club!
I could go on and on. Yet, I’m thinking this letter is sufficient to show you want an outsider sees as a most absurd group.
Thus the “socialists, as seen through the eyes of one of “the masses.” If it’s reproached that John is not “massy” enough, being a university graduate who worked as a white-collar professional, such characteristics fit the “socialists” also, and just not locally, but nationally. It can easily be said that those who call themselves socialists and are “active” enough to participate in socialist organizations—at least to the extent of attending meetings once a month—are more white-collar or professional than blue-collar (I’d say the most common occupation among professed socialists, at least in my experience, is college professor), and almost without exception, college students, former college students, or college graduates. And we are very small in numbers, as John pointedly observes, not only in Indianapolis, but nationally. I’d estimate that there are only about two million persons in the U.S. today who could be counted as left or socialist activists, at least in the sense of occasionally attending a rally or demonstration, or attend meetings of left political groups. Two million out of a current U.S. population of over 300 million—or less than 1% of the population! So, even on the national level that would constitute the left as, in John’s word, merely a “club.” And a club divided into many factions that bicker among themselves, and frequently go heresy-hunting, as did the local “socialists” toward me.
“Alas, we/Who wished to lay the foundations of kindness/Could not ourselves be kind,” Brecht wrote disingenuously in the late 1930s, in his poem “To Posterity.” I say “disingenuously” because, if we of the left who “[c]ould not ourselves be kind” think that we’re still able to “lay the foundations of kindness,” then we are deluding ourselves. It takes much more than simply articulating good programmatic proposals to “lay the foundations of kindness;” for these good programmatic proposals of the left (and we of the left have far better ones than either the center or the right) are but the bricks, the congealed theoretical elements of those “foundations of kindness.” But for “foundations” to be laid out of bricks, it takes, in addition, bricklayers who know their craft, as well as mortar. “Kindness” from ourselves is the necessary mortar we of the left must provide, in addition to being a necessary requirement for our being bricklayers capable of “lay[ing] the foundations of kindness.” Without such, we of the left simply spout pretty words!
Without “kindness,” which is but human decency, we of the left simply become another one of those societal exponents of “Do as I say, not as I do” ethics, of which we already have a plethora. But we of the left too often cannot “ourselves be kind.” And for a putative agent of positive social change that is already bedraggled in society, whose cries and proposals for “socialism” are already imbued with a pervasive society-wide negativity that’s actively conveyed by the societal leaders and media to the masses we wish to reach, that lack of “kindness,” i.e., that inability in ourselves to be examples of that very element which we insouciantly proclaim ourselves to be the foundation-layers, can becomes deadly. In fact, it already has. “The fault lies not in the stars, but in ourselves.” Or, put another way, “We have found the enemy, and it is us.” If we of the left wonder why we are so much ignored by “the masses,” it would be wiser for us first of all to look to ourselves and how we act, how we are perceived by “the masses”—who are but the John W’s of the world.
But as I’ve shown earlier in “Dregs,” we don’t come across that well, and we ourselves are quite capable of the cruelties and injustices we fault the greater capitalist society for producing. Historically and in the present, the left has not only been a repository of virtue, human decency and striving for equity and justice, but also a repository of injustice and frame-up, of sectarianism, dogmatism, vigorous heresy-hunting within our ranks, of active expulsion and execration, of self-righteousness, betrayal of others and of our ideals, double standards, and political correctness. What happened to me as outlined in “Dregs” is but one case, and a relatively minor one at that, but a good case of what’s all too pervasive on the left, and has been recounted time and again by talented writers who’ve been in the maw of the left. We might look at the poignant story of Richard Wright, for example, as he relates it in The God that Failed (New York: Bantam Books, 1964, pp. 103-146). We can see it and feel it in the excellent recounting of life on the left that Vivian Gornick relates in The Romance of American Communism (New York: Basic Books, 1977). Being part of a beleaguered political sect such as the left is in the U.S., painfully aware of its isolation and marginalization, but with a vision of inclusiveness in equality and justice that supposedly makes us universally attractive to society’s have-nots, especially to those with both “consciousness and conscience,” it’s understandable that the left would embrace those defensive traits that hold sects together—cliquishness; distrust of the different; super-sensitivity to criticism, especially from within; quick retaliation toward the offender, especially the offender within the ranks. Understandable, but not forgivable. That’s why persons like my friend John W are so valuable for the left; precisely because they are not “members of the choir,” they can give us insights on how we really are, how we really look to those outside the choral gallery. And whether we of the left like it or not, the John W’s of the world are precisely those whom the left is going to have to convince, to gain support from, and to involve. But when we behave as the “socialists” did as recounted in “Dregs,” we should be very grateful indeed that there are John W’s in the world to write us letters of reproach, who make fun of our pomposities, and who hold up mirrors in which to view ourselves—warts and all.
Update--my co-worker Dave commented on the Indiana "socialists" to me as follows after reading my blogs. I quote him with his permission. He said, "My co-worker Dave read my blog entries & commented to me via e-mail on the local "socialists." I print his remarks with his permission. He said: "After browsing through the documents you attached and also your blog, I would concur with the assessment that you were set up by those three members of the Indiana Socialist Fellowship. It seems to me that they are more interested in maintaining a stranglehold on the control of that little group, even if it means the group will remain perpetually marginalized and insignificant. Yes, it may be small and insignificant, but it's their pond, and they're still the big fish in that tiny pond -- and I'll bet that's just the way they like it. And it will probably always be that way as long as they're still around, calling the shots."
This is the first of several commentaries by me that will draw up the lessons to be learned from both the successes and the failures of the left, in order that a better left can come into being, and become educated in the better ways. That’s really what this blog is all about—pedagogy. And like all good pedagogies, it draws upon both the carrot and the stick.—GF
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