Blues, Punk, and White Youth R&B

This book review-essay is one of my best music writings ever, discussing in a short, pithy way blues, punk rock, left politics, white youth, and alienation--GF 

[“Blues and More” column posted on the Bloomington (IN) Alternative,  December 5, 2007]

My First Time:

A Collection of First Punk Show Stories

Chris Duncan, Editor

Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2007

            Yes, a review-essay on a new book about punk rock.  So what’s that got to do with the blues?  Plenty, as you’ll see below.  This is exactly why my column is called “Blues and More.”  Because, just as with the review last week of the killer CD by the Killer himself, classic rock ‘n’ roller Jerry Lewis, I wanted to be able to explore far more that is relevant to the living soul of the blues than just genre-specific blues music itself.  And a good look at My First Time fits this format of doing blues—and more—exactly.

            My First Time is rich and intriguing, comprised of 43 retrospective vignettes of the contributors’ initiation rite of passage as young adolescents and late pre-adolescents into what they all regard as a positive life-changing experience, the punk rock scene from the mid-1970s to the late 1980s.  Further, the book is graced by 20 photos of key punk rock bands in performance and significant punk personalities, a photo of punk pioneer Joey Ramone’s tombstone, and four flyers of classic punk rock shows.  And also, biographical notes on the contributors, many of whom went on to become significant players in punk bands and writers and editors for punk zines, founded punk rock record labels, and were otherwise continuing participants in the “scene” up to the present.  Living proof that the punk rock scene was anything but a transient fad.  My First Time is saucy, irreverent, straightforwardly honest, and has an attitude—exactly like the music of which it is about!

            I was an eager aficionado of punk when it first emerged, absolutely blown away as a thirtysomething New Left veteran by the in-your-face directness of the Sex Pistols’ “God Save the Queen”:

                                                            God save the Queen

                                                            The fascist regime

                                                            We have no future

                                                            We have no future

                                                            (The Sex Pistols,

“God Save the Queen”)

And I too had my initiation rite of passage as an adolescent and young adult when I discovered the music of my life, only it was 1950s rock ‘n’ roll and R&B; Bealtlemania, the British Invasion, and Bob Dylan’s surrealistic folk-rock of 1964-1965; and, as a freshman in college in 1965, the electric blues.

            And, in common with these young punkers twenty or so years my junior, I, too, was fleeing the “respectable whiteness” of “mainstream” social and cultural sterility, I, too, was an harassed pariah and outcast in the “mainstream” world in which I was forced to exist, but could never live in.  So well can I identify with the vignettes in My First Time.  For me, Jerry Lee Lewis was my Clash; Solomon Burke and Ray Charles my Sex Pistols; Sonny Boy Williamson, Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf my Ramones; and the early Beatles, Kinks and Who my Circle Jerks. 

            But that’s enough about me.  Let’s now turn to the contributors in My First Time and let them describe so tellingly what all this meant for them, and how, from these particular meanings, it crosses and encompasses generations for all of us “old enough” to never have abandoned our youthful ideals and dreams.

            Andy Shoup writes, “[H]ow you can think the world works within certain constraints—according to certain rules—and then all of a sudden, you are exposed to a new environment that makes you feel like everything you knew before can get chucked right out the fucking window, and from that point on, you want only to think about the New Way.”(14) And Jillian Lauren, “At least when I went home the next day, to the purgatory of the suburbs, I wouldn’t feel as alone as I had before.” (22) Anna Brown relates it to the political:  “The next morning my ears were ringing, I smelled like cigarettes, and I wanted more.  Not more drugs, but more of the feeling that I was in the right place for once in my life.  No one there expected me to look a certain way, to be happy or well adjusted.  You weren’t supposed to be happy.  Fucking Multi Death corporations ruled the planet; there were CIA-sponsored wars in El Salvador; animals suffered at the hands of factory farm butchers!!!  There was nothing wrong with me that wasn’t wrong with all of us.  Everyone’s parents were a drag and school sucked, but it was cool cause when you got to the punk show none of that stuff mattered.  It wasn’t our fault we were pissed off—it was practically our duty.  After all, I learned, society made us this way.” (45) Russ Rankin tells of how the legendary punk venue in Berkeley, the Gilman Street Project, personified “how a community of aware, like-minded people were able to create a space where a counter culture blossomed; where bands and audiences became one.” (50) George Hurchalla speaks of this community as an ocean where “the ocean would grow to be something even larger and more uncontrollable.  Into this is where we would throw our beliefs, no matter how half-baked or ill-formed, and watch them collide and mutate and sometimes break.  The best thing about the ocean was that it was ours.  We had a motherfucking ocean.” (77)

            Sto Cinders relates, [T]his was where I truly belonged—not on a sports team or in the math league or hanging out with the preps at their lame parties.  I was a punk and THIS was my family.” (127) Seeing the Ramones in Wisconsin shaped Steven Sciscenti’s life:  “I did indeed become a Communist and did my level best to be a faggot.” (92) And Joe Queer sums it all best in the ending vignette:  “It wasn’t a career move to be in a punk band then.  It was either ‘Welcome to Burger King, may I take your order?’ or punk rock.  No in-between.” (181)

            To be sure, the newly-emerging scene of the roughly a decade encompassed here wasn’t an idyllic youthful Arcadia.  Slam dancing and moshing could cause serious bodily injuries, the anger expressed by audiences and bands alike mixed genuine rage with disingenuous posturing, there was drug and alcohol abuse, and dangerous elements attracted to the scene as well, with Nazi skinheads as much a part of the punk scene as the idealistic, commutarian young I’ve quoted above.  But dystopia sidled with utopia in the youthful counterculture of the New Left and hippiedom I was part of in the 1960s.  My friend Joyce Stoller says it well about both the Movement, and all movements against the status quo:  “The Movement attracts both the best and the worst in society.”  Because we’re all drawn to it because we’re marginalized, outcast, despised and live as outlaws.  Idealists and psychopaths alike.  Nothing more—but also nothing less.

And the quintessential outlaw in U.S. society, both historically and to this day, is the African American.  The original Blues People of Black poet and writer LeRoi Jones, the Invisible Man of Black novelist Ralph Ellison, the heroic sociopath of white proto-Beat Norman Mailer’s alternately insightful and silly “The White Negro.”  (Alternately insightful and silly—a good way to sum up the recently deceased Mailer himself.)

Which brings us back to the blues.  It’s everywhere, among all peoples.  Robert Johnson is a punk, Wilson Pickett opens for the Clash, and we just as eagerly slam-dance to everything Black America created that made us little white boys and girls try to forget we were white by moving our feet and shaking our hips, be it Motown or Buddy Guy.  It’s there in the best of all music, and that’s why it makes no sense to be genre-specific about what is “real” and what is not.  If it’s good, no matter what, it’s soulful, and we can feel it.  Which is the essence of the blues.  And rock ‘n ‘roll and rock.  And jazz.  And classical.  And folk. And country. And ska and reggae.  And all of it.  That is the blues, and this is more than just the blues, this is what makes it more than just the blues.    Precisely because the blues everywhere is more than just the blues.  Precisely because it is the blues.                       

                 

Another poetic creation--this one on Christianity

IS IT TRUE?

 

The only good Christian

is a dead one!

Yes, there are exceptions

(few and far between

I might add), but—

it’s also true that

even a blind squirrel

finds an acorn sometimes!

Another poem of Politically Correct Liberation

^{COME THE REVOLUTION}

^{THAT LIBERATES ALL}

^{(EVEN THE SIDEWALK!)}

^{O poor,}

^downtrodden,

^plebian

^sidewalk,

^{so nobly}

^proletarian

^{in your}

^being

^{as you are}

^{walked on}

^{and spit upon}

^{by men}

^{(and some}

^{women too,}

^{who should}

^{know better}

^because

^{of their own}

^{structural oppression}

^{under patriarchy).}

^{But your day}

^{shall come,}

^{and you shall}

^{be liberated}

^{from being}

^{walked on}

^and

^{trampled under}

^{the shod}

^{and even bare}

^{feet of men}

^{(and yes,}

^alas!

^{some women too):}

^{when that}

^{glorious day of the}

^{Proletarian Revolution}

^comes,

^{and all oppressed}

^{rise up}

^{to reclaim}

^{their stolen earth.}

^{Including you too,}

^{O noble,}

^downtrodden,

^proletarian

^sidewalk!

 

A poem of Politically Correct Liberation

MENAGE À TREE

(originally posted in the Facebook group

“Human Rights for Every Tree—Check Your ‘Human Privilege’”)

 

If only I could be a tree,

Then indeed I could be free;

But alas I'm only human,

Which is really to be subhuman.

I would change, if only I could!

But what can I do but knock on wood?

But that would violate the rights of a tree,

And reduce it but to the level of me.

Oh what a wretched, disgusting fool I am

For having the temerity to be a human man!

It's time for me to run for office (a poem on my political plans)

I’m thinking of

running for Anti-Christ—

because twenty-one hundred

years of Christianity is

certainly more than enough!

Some "kingly" thoughts on Princess Di

I’ve never, ever had kindly thoughts on constitutional monarchies, such as Britain’s, which is not only an oxymoron, but a ridiculous anachronism.  And even less tolerance for absolute monarchies, which still prevail in Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern Arab states, not to mention that de facto monarchy in the grossly-misnamed Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea), where its first leader, Kim Il-sung, was succeeded in power by his son, Kim Jong-il, and he, in turn by his son, Kim Jong-un—such regimes are cruel despotisms, medieval-style tyrannies in this, the 21^st Century!  Nor for that narrow-based “electoral” monarchy, the Catholic Papacy, where the Pope is “elected” to succeed his predecessor only by a vote among the Cardinals, who choose one such from their small ranks.  To this diehard socialist and democratic republican, monarchies of any sort are just plain atavistic and stupid.  Period!  

Aesthetically, the last word on monarchies, especially the British, was stated by the seminal British punk rock band, the Sex Pistols, in their outrageously but delightfully snarky song, “God Save The Queen;” a notable protest song that , I’m glad to say, although written in 1976, the 25^th Jubilee of the rule by Queen Elizabeth II, still outpolled the actual Queen’s 65^th Jubilee by 3-1 among the British populace!   I’m proud to have penned a poem honoring the Sex Pistols, published in Indianapolis’s Flying Island literary journal in 2015, posted online at http://flyingislandjournal.blogspot.com/2015/10/sex-pistols-we-are-all-punks-poem-by.html;

along with a link to a video of the Sex Pistols performing “God Save The Queen,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02D2T3wGCYg.

That being said, I did (and still do) have a warm spot in my heart for that outrageous commoner, Fergie, Sarah Ferguson, who married into the British Royal Family and proceeded to turn it topsy-turvy; and also for that other commoner, Kate, now Duchess of Cambridge and baby-making factory, who’s so outraged the Queen on several times when, on official visits, the wind has accidentally blown up her skirt in public, showing a delightful pair of gams!  (See, as male, I’m automatically “sexist” according to Politically Correct feminist women—so I’ll just revel in it, as that’s the way I’m biologically hard-wired!)  And yes, of course, that member of minor British royalty, Princess Di, Diana, who ended up haplessly in marriage to Prince Charles; and who died tragically in an auto accident in Paris 20 years ago this year.

Despite her royal blood, and the surely humiliating ritual of being examined by Royal Physicians to ensure she was still a virgin at the time of her marriage, Di was affably down-to-earth in ways the Royal Family wasn’t.  Further, she delighted the tabloids by wearing skimpy bikinis, and by even having an affair during her loveless marriage with a young Lieutenant in the British armed forces.  According to a recent article in the London Times, because of these and other supposed transgressions and affronts to the arrogant royal degenerates, she was treated with “feudal cruelty” by the rest of British royalty—but was beloved by the British populace in a way the other royals were never so, and indeed, could never be.  I remember around the time of her death talking to a British customer at my job in a parking garage, who said the British people loved Di because she was so humanly affable, and who went on to describe Prince Charles as a “prig.”  Well spoken!  And even after her divorce from Charles, when she became a jet-setting celebrity, she still maintained that honest affability, that air of truly decent and touchingly human reserve, something so obviously foreign to those other constantly publicity-grabbing “celebrities” such as Kim Kardashian.  She found all this folderol a bother, even as the paparazzi insisted on commodifying her by constantly taking photographs of her to sell, denying her any privacy whatsoever.  And it was in a vain attempt to escape these prying paparazzi that she tragically died when the automobile she was in crashed.         

 Prince Charles stated once that he never loved Diana.  Certainly an appropriate comment from this priggish, shallow fellow who’s had nothing to do all his life, and no other purpose to his life, other than wait for the Old Bag on the throne to die!  That’s enough to almost (I say almost) make me feel sorry for the hapless Charles; who now has even been denied the chance to succeed her, as the 90-yeaqr-old Queen herself has designated William and Kate to succeed her as occupants on that useless throne.  Though Charles has had some minor accomplishments:  he once gave a socially- and religiously-conservative speech a few decades ago now that did draw favorable attention, and was a reasonable stab at actual thought; he’s also knighted several British rock and pop stars of far more merit than he, creating Sir Paul McCartney, Sir Elton John, Sir Van Morrison, and yes, even Sir Mick Jagger! (Knighted December 13, 2003.)   And I do hope that, before he dies, he does have one final “honor” (which I’m sure will never happen), that of knighting, creating, Sir Johnny Rotten (aka Johnny Lydon), lead singer of the Sex Pistols and one of the most thoughtful men in rock, thus giving “God Save The Queen” the “royal” recognition it’s long overdue!

So, please forgive my “bourgeois sentimentality” here as I say a few kind words for Diana, which she does truly deserve!    

Police Killing of Unarmed Black Man Finally Wakes Up Sleepy Naptown

On June 29, 2017, Indianapolis police approached the car driven by African American city resident Aaron Bailey, who sped away.  The two officers in the car then shot at Bailey’s car multiple times, causing it to crash into a tree.  Bailey was pronounced dead at the scene, had no warrants out for his arrest, and was unarmed.

While police killings have happened several times before in Indianapolis, they are usually greeted by an apathetic “Ho hum” by the city’s residents, black, white and Latino, and the officers are almost always automatically acquitted of any charges by the city’s toothless police review board.  This time, however, was different.  The two police officers have been placed on administrative leave, the FBI is investigating for possible civil rights violations against Bailey by the officers, Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett stated publicly that unspecified changes would be made in the way the police handled shootings, and the prosecutor’s office is even supposedly looking into criminal charges against the officers. 

Also, an angry rally against the killing of Bailey occurred July 15 on the grounds of the Indiana State House, a traditional free speech gathering place.  It drew about 200 people of all races, with many participants, speakers, and rally organizers wearing “Wake Up!” and “Black Lives Matter” T-shirts.  Relatives of Aaron Bailey tearfully addressed the gathered crowd, and one local speaker from Black Lives Matter gave an impassioned, militant speech calling not only for justice for Bailey but also demanding justice for Indianapolis’s black community, indictment of the officers, and substantive changes, not just cosmetic ones, in the way the Indianapolis Police Department relates to the black community.  In this writer’s 38 years living in Indianapolis, he’d never before seen such a response to a police shooting.  But then again, even in sleepy Naptown, Trump’s election has brought about a new sense of urgency and activism among blacks and Latinos, and the politically liberal and left, not previously experienced.  And it has sustained itself.  And is not fizzling out, as the Occupy demonstration and takeover of the State House lawn did in early 2012, leaving almost nothing behind except wistful nostalgia

Indianapolis.  Naptown (the city that always sleeps).  Indianoplace.  Frustrating city for progressives to live in; the largest city in equally frustrating Indiana, yet one would not sense it.  The standard norm here is apathy and complacency, with glitzy shopping areas and upscale restaurants that mock its 22% poverty rate and the lack of good jobs.  In many ways, Indianapolis is a throwback to an earlier time, a place straight out of a Sinclair Lewis novel. An atavism, a throwback to the mores of 19^th Century Mississippi, only with high tech.  Indianapolis’s most notable contemporary citizen, the late leftist writer Kurt Vonnegut, scathingly satirized it (although as a thinly-veiled fictional surrogate) in his 1973 novel Breakfast of Champions, calling it, through one of the book’s characters, “the asshole of the universe.”  Vonnegut also said of Indianapolis, his boyhood and adolescent home, “Indianapolis watches the 500 one day, and sleeps 364;” and as well, “There’s the 500, then 364 days of miniature golf, then the 500 again.”  Another noted contemporary writer who grew up here, Dan Wakefield, was equally harsh in his satirizing of Indianapolis in his 1970 novel Going All the Way, which, while set there in detailed accuracy in the year 1953, still eerily resembles the Indianapolis of 2017.

But perhaps now, all that is changing?  This writer hopes so.  But he’s also seen a lot of hopes raised in the past, only to be dashed.  But there is real possibility that this time now is different, markedly so, and the old ways of justly-named Naptown and Indianoplace will not recur again.  Al least on the overwhelming, stultifying scale they did before, and so heartbreakingly often.  Hell, even Indianapolis’s overarching problem of massive sewer overflow whenever it rained that spewed fecal matter and raw sewage waste into the streets has finally been addressed, and is being fixed!  Granted, fixing it will take till 2025.  But that’s much better than the frustration of before, when nothing was done.  As Bob Dylan sang, “the times, they are a-changin’.”  Even in Indianapolis, even in Indiana.       .

"When we fight, we win!"

INDIANAPOLIS.  What was going to be a civil disobedience confrontation between SEIU Local 1 and Mission Peak, the building management company that just hired a new anti-union janitorial service at two adjacent buildings in downtown Indianapolis, turned into a victory celebration instead.  The day before the scheduled civil disobedience action, Thursday, July 13, Mission Peak informed SEIU Local 1 by letter that it was not hiring as its janitorial contractor Bulldog, the contractor Local 1 vehemently opposed as unfair to its workers.   (Local 1 held a union contract with the previous contractor, which was now nullified under Bulldog.)  Mission Peak, as stated in its letter, would instead open bidding for a “responsible employer,” one that the union could work with.  So, at 10 AM, the approximately 75 people gathered at Indianapolis downtown’s City Market to move over to the nearby Gold Building for civil disobedience, remained gathered for a victory celebration instead.  In telling the supporters of the good news, Paul Nappier, SEIU Local 1’s 31-year-old sole paid staff organizer in Indianapolis, shouted out the lesson from this:  “When we fight, we win!”

Represented among the supporters of Local 1, which has waged a multi-year campaign to organize the janitors in Indianapolis downtown janitorial services, were of course, activist janitors of Local 1 themselves, but also security guards supporting Local 1, which is another organizing task in Indianapolis the SEIU local is undertaking.  Also among the activists were members of the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC), United Steelworkers (USW), AFSCME, and community activist and political groups Democratic Socialists of America (DSA); Labor for Our Revolution, offshoot of the Bernie Sanders campaign; Jobs with Justice (JwJ); and activists from the campaign for justice for Aaron Bailey, an unarmed black man who had recently been shot dead in his car by an Indianapolis police officer.  This writer attended as an activist and as a member of the union he belongs to, United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW). 

The short but spirited rally featured four Latina activist janitors who had worked at the Mission Peak-managed Gold Building and the adjacent 262 E. Ohio building, and had been dismissed.  They now had their jobs back, and each one addressed the crowd in Spanish through an interpreter thanking everyone for their support.  Of the 75 or so in attendance, a good ⅔ had been willing to perform civil disobedience and be arrested.  The rally ended by everyone joining together in singing all five verses plus the repeated chorus of “Solidarity Forever” to sax and French horn accompaniment, and multiple photo-taking of the participants.

While Indiana’s overall poverty rate is 14% (however, that’s according to federal poverty guidelines, which considerably understate the threshold for actual poverty), in Indianapolis it’s 21% overall, with the poverty rate for African Americans at 22%, and the poverty rate a whopping 28% for Latinos in the city, while the Indianapolis poverty rate for whites overall is 14%.  Also, janitors at the cleaning services often only work 4-6 hours a night, and pay, even under the union contact, is only around $9 an hour; however, with a contact there are benefits, and workers represented by the union do much better than the minimum wage or a little above, with no benefits, that non-union janitors make.  Plus, they have job security.  While SEIU’s demands for a “responsible employer” and “fair wages” with decent working conditions may seem “reformist” or just apolitical pure-and-simple trade unionism to many on the left, these demands are very important to the workers involved themselves, who are enthusiastic supporters of SEIU Local 1, and are heavily black and Latino.

So, Paul Nappier, SEIU Local 1’s young activist organizer, definitely has a point.  “When we fight, we win!”—and sometimes with surprising victories.  And every victory for labor in these hard times is, of course, incredibly sweet.  

The Orange Menace (A Poem About Trump)

During the campaign,

Trump’s complexion was

often described as orange,

and, naturally, he was

invidiously compared to a—

carrot!

Little did we know that,

in this, the time of

Decline of the US Empire,

this very man with the—

mind of a carrot!—

would become President!

(Which makes his

carrot-mind all the more

dangerous, even if

sardonically amusing.)

But, alas, it is so difficult

to write poetry, especially

rhyming poetry,

invoking orange.

After all, what really

rhymes with “orange”? 

Well,“borange,” of course,

but isn’t that a nonsense word?

No, no more than is—

“covfefe”!!

Further, as both The Donald

and I know, “borange,” “

same as “covfefe,”

 have special code meanings

that only those

Really In The Know understand!

There!  So stuff it, peons!

These are not nonsense words,

or typos, or misspellings,

but carefully-constructed

special concepts that just

happen to be undefined—

but we know what

they really mean,

and that’s all that counts!

Besides, just like The Donald,

I too am very, very smart:

even if I do pay taxes

and don’t declare

a nine billion dollar loss

to the IRS!

Russia, "the New Cold War," and Russiagate

Fellow socialists and leftists, it is time to dispel that illusion that somehow Putin’s Russia of today is somehow positively connected to the former USSR of yesterday.  That simply is not the case.  In this, the year of the hundredth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution (a revolution that didn’t even last seventy-five years!), not only does Putin repudiate Bolshevism’s legacy in its entirety, he even repudiates the February Revolution of 1917 in Russia that preceded the Bolshevik-led October revolution.  (See, on this, “Putin Likes to Pretend 1917 Never Happened,” the Atlantic, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/04/russia-putin-revolution-lenin-nicholas-1917/521571/.)  It was the February Revolution that overthrew the Czar and ushered in a whole new era in repressive, backward, even Oriental Despotic, Russia, a short-lived era of freedom and creativity that made even Lenin marvel that Russia was now “the freest country in the world.”  The Bolshevik Revolution was going to extend this freedom in the “freest country” even further, not through just a political revolution at the top, but by a social revolution from the bottom that would free the peasantry and the workers from exploitation. 

But this Russia of 1917 is anathema to Putin, who sees himself as heir to the Czars, and whose dedication to Russian nationalism is strictly Czarist in tone—as is his contempt for dissent and opposition, as is his devotion to pan-Slavism, as is his support for Russia’s corrupt crony capitalist economic system.  Not surprisingly, Putin sees spreading “chaos” in the West as a good way to advance Russian nationalist goals, and in furthering such, finds agreeable help in Russophile right-wing populists such as France’s Marine le Pen and, of course, the US’s Donald Trump, now our President.  Nor is it surprising that Russia actively tried to influence the French and US elections in favor of these candidates, which is now the matter of grave concern in the US; and over which Putin was confronted directly to his face by newly-elected French President Marcon in Paris.  For, certainly standing to reason from the Putin/Russian nationalist standpoint, is sowing “chaos “ in the West by helping Russophile politicians such as Le Pen and Trump win office—which the Russians failed to do in France, but which is a major point of contention in the US:  did Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election actually help Trump win?

Whether or not there was actual “collusion” between the Trump campaign and the Russians, or whether there were just vast, intertwining interests involved, but short of actual “collusion,” is a moot point. After all, it’s these extensive involvements of Trump campaign and, later, Administration officials with the Russians, in business deals, as lobbyists, and as government officials, that are currently under investigation; and despite all those who claim there was no Russian interference in the 2016 election, it certainly seems clear that there was such interference.  Russian state and business interests are far more closely intertwined in Russia than they are in the US; and the connections between Russians such as former Trump campaign manager Paul Monafort; the forced-to-resign Trump national security advisor Michael Flynn;  the major business concession now-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson negotiated as head of Exxon/Mobil with the Russians; Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s secret meeting with Russians which he failed to disclose at his confirmation hearings; the attempt by Trump’s son-in-law and major advisor Jared Kushner to set up a “back channel” private line with the Russian government that would be sited in the Russian embassy in the US—just these alone have been the subject of numerous media headlines and stories, as have been other contacts with the Russians by campaign and Administration officials.  (Which seem to be like the Biblical Hosts of the Lord—their number is legion!)  Certainly the appearances are anything but “innocent,” or “just doing international business,” as certain commentators of the right have complained; the most recent one being a Forbes contributor, Paul Roderick Gregory,  who writes on “domestic and international economics from a free-market perspective”:  “There Remains No Evidence of Trump-Russia Collusion,” https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulroderickgregory/2017/05/23/there-remains-no-evidence-of-trump-russia-collusion/#abfd1c6242cf.

But it is not the right’s enamoring, absolution, of Russia that concerns me here.  After all, Western capitalists have always being willing to do business with authoritarian regimes when lucrative markets and investment capital have been available from them; and Trumps/s businesses themselves have been the beneficiaries of a considerable influx of investment capital from Russian business oligarchs.  Russian plutocrats also have far more direct ties with the Russian state apparatus than their Western counterparts, so good governmental relations are just good business.  Also, Western capitalists have never had any political problems with authoritarian or even fascist regimes, as long as “business as usual” remains.  We see that is the history of European fascism in the 1930s, with dealings with the Pinochet regime in Chile in the 1970s, and with other unsavory regimes across the world.  As stated by two leading conservative political theorists in regard to capitalism and authoritarian regimes:  Frederick Hayek stated, “[M]y personal preference leans toward a liberal dictatorship rather than toward a democratic government devoid of liberalism” (“liberal” here meaning as in the 19^th Century sense, an unregulated free-market capitalist economy); while William F. Buckley, Jr. wrote notably,

Let the individual keep his dollar—however few he is able to save—and he can indulge his taste (and never mind who had a role in shaping it) in houses, in doctors, in education,

in groceries, in entertainment, in culture, in religion; give him the right of free speech or the right to go to the polling booth, and at best he contributes to a collective determination, contributes as a rule an exiguous voice.  Give me the right to spend my dollars as I see fit—to devote them, as I see fit, to travel, to food, to learning, to taking pleasure, to polemicizing, and, if I must make the choice, I will surrender you my political franchise in trade, confident that by the transaction, assuming the terms of the contract are that no political decision affecting my sovereignty over my dollar can be made, I shall have augmented my dominance over my own affairs. (Quoted in Yale Alumni Magazine, April 1978, p. 37; Buckley was a Yale alumnus.)

 

 

Hence for conservatives then and now, from hallowed intellectuals such as Hayek and Buckley to the frequently ill-regarded politicians of today’s Republican Party, up to and including Trump, the “freedom to shop” is the ultimate freedom that overcomes and subordinates all other “so-called” freedoms!

 

Unfortunately, sections of the US left, because of visceral anti-Hillary Clinton hatred, have caught this same Russophile pro-Putin virus.  During the 2016 campaign, Green Party Presidential candidate Jill Stein charged that, if elected, Hillary Clinton would get the US involved in a war with Russia over Syria, while, to the contrary, Trump would “normalize” relations with Russia.  Left philosopher Slovoj Žižek announced publicly his support for Trump as President because he would “shake things up.” 

Not that I doubt Hillary Clinton is a neocon hawk; not in the least.  But there is certainly good reason to believe that she would have demonstrated probity in office that Trump has certainly not shown; because what Trump has shown is that he is the proverbial loose cannon, an impulsive man who makes decisions on the spur of the moment.  Also, that he is guided by a pro-Putin attitude that most resembles a high-school crush on someone he admires as a strongman.  Consider that, when Bill O’Reilly, of all people, declared in an interview with Trump that Putin was “a killer,” Trump agreed with O’Reilly, but then, went on to say, nonetheless, he “respects” Putin! (Perhaps because Putin does to his opponents what Trump would like to do to his?)   Trump continued, saying that the US does the same thing, and has blood on its own hands, which is true; but, more likely, when Trump said it he was merely being the blind squirrel who occasionally finds an acorn.  It is unlikely that Trump has any serious knowledge of how the US overthrew Arbenz in Guatemala, overthrew Mossadegh in Iran and installed the Shah, overthrew Allende in Chile and installed Pinochet, or waged war against Saddam Hussein and set Iraq onto the road to destruction and perpetual sectarian warfare.  It’s really doubtful that Trump is that informed or that smart.  But what it does mean, I aver, is that the Russians, under Putin especially, have taken lessons from the US playbook and, in this cybernetics, cyberespionage and cyberwarfare age, have been able to do nonviolently what it took actual physical intervention by the US to accomplish! (Same also in France with Le Pen vs. Marcon.)  Nothing for the left to be proud of, either in singling out only the US for scolding, or in automatically exonerating the Russians.

 

Same goes for the charge by certain US leftists that the US government is initiating a “new Cold War” by accusing the Russians of what evidence indicates they did—interfered to tilt the results of the US Presidential election in favor of Trump.  (Whether or not they actually succeeded, or whether, in fact, Hillary Clinton defeated herself, is a moot point that may never be settled definitively.)  But that is assuming that Putin’s Czarism-revering nationalist Russia is somehow the equivalent of the former USSR, a bastion of “peace” and “socialism,” and that somehow Putin is another Khrushchev or Gorbachev, or even a Brezhnev, Stalin, or Lenin:  committed to a left-wing “socialist co-existence” rather than to a resurgent Russian nationalist, and strictly right-wing capitalist, form of Great Power politics and foreign policy.  Certainly, Trump’s own avowed admiration for Russia and Putin should put that charge to rest.  Even at his most bellicose, when he fired Tomahawk missiles at the Syrian airbase in retaliation for Russian-allied Syrian leader Assad’s gas attack on civilians, Trump was careful to warn the Russians beforehand.  No, Putin’s crony-capitalist, repressive Russia is hardly the former Soviet Union, and it certainly can be argued that Russia has very similar imperial ambitions as the US or any other Western capitalist power; and much prefers pliable Russophile right-wing governments in power in the West, same as in Eastern Europe.  What blinds the Western left to these actual geopolitical realities is the left’s own naïvete toward Great Power foreign policies, and its mistaken view that imperialism, and imperial ambitions, can only occur among traditional, well-established, Western capitalist powers—in other words, global politics even in 2017 follows as though straight out of the Marxist playbook as articulated in Lenin’s 1916 Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism.  Thus, Russia can’t possibly have Great-Power imperialist ambitions, or a shady and dubious foreign policy!          

 

Fortunately, these naïve illusions are laid well to rest in Stephen Shalom’s definitive article in the Winter 2017 issue of the Third Camp semi-Trotskyist socialist journal New Politics, “Russia and the Left” (available online at http://newpol.org/content/russia-and-left-0).  Shalom’s carefully-reasoned article justly points out that, when Russia was the former USSR, many well-meaning Communists and other leftists supported the Soviet Union because it was seen as “socialist,” a “workers’ state,” and a progressive, leftist force that supported labor rights, civil rights, and anti-colonialism—even though its own internal practices were highly repressive and its foreign policy checkered, to say the very least.  But such can’t even be remotely said for Putin’s Russia, which is not only clearly repressive, but even openly right-wing.  Contemporary Russia’s foreign policy is not progressive or anti-imperialist, anti-colonial, in the least; but is imperialist, allied with truly noxious regimes, and has one clear goal—to undermine the US specifically, and the West generally; and does so to advance a regressively right-wing, openly chauvinist, Russian nationalism that smacks more of inter-imperialist rivalry than of anything else.  Not that Russia doesn’t spout “anti-imperialist” and “anti-status quo” rhetoric; it clearly does, and assiduously courts allies across the ideological spectrum and among Third World regimes through this.  Such is prevalent in patently state-controlled media outlets such as RT and Sputnik.  But for those of the left to fall for this appearances-only show—either, as Shalom suggests, from, nostalgia or from a narrow “An enemy of my enemy is my friend” perspective—such is both disingenuous and a betrayal of truly left ideals.  Further, in order to advance his agenda, Putin and the Russian state apparatus he dominates assiduously court whatever “anti-Western status quo” forces they can, aiming appeals both to the far right, and to the far left, and finding allies in both camps.

Such disingenuousness toward Russia is notably found in US Green Party 2016 Presidential candidate Jill Stein, much to the dismay of European Greens—as shown by articles showing her uncritical pro-Putin apologetics: both in the often center-right Daily Beast, Casey Michel’s “How Putin Played the Far Left,” http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/01/13/how-putin-played-the-far-left; and in left-leaning Raw Story’s summary article on the Daily Beast revelations by Travis Gettys, “Here’s How Jill Stein helps Putin promote his right-wing agenda to the American left,”  http://www.rawstory.com/2017/01/heres-how-jill-stein-helps-putin-promote-his-right-wing-agenda-to-the-american-left/.  Notably, Jill Stein made a visit to Moscow in December 2015 on the tenth anniversary of the founding of RT, where she spoke favorably of Putin at an RT forum, and was feted, even sitting at the same banquet table as Putin and Michael Flynn (according to the Daily Beast).  Who funded all this, Stein has refused to say.

Fortunately, not all on the left are as naïve as Stein.  For example, delving deeper into the Trump-Putin connection on the other side of the ideological divide is the rather alarming article scheduled for the upcoming hard-copy version of leftist investigative reporting magazine Mother Jones, David Corn’s “We Already Know Trump Betrayed America,” online at http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/05/trump-putin-russia-scandal-guilty. Concerns about “politically incorrect” nationalist sentiments aside, we of the left certainly should understand that if, for example, we regard the US as ethically wrong when it overthrew Arbenz, then it’s equally ethically wrong for the Russians to try and influence the outcome of the 2016 Presidential election; or, for that matter, the 2017 French Presidential election. Because when realpolitik trumps all (pun only partially intended), then we live in a jungle where the only rule is, “Eat or be eaten.”  And no, that’s not “bourgeois sentimentality.”  That’s hardheaded expression of socialist ideals.   

                                                                                                                              

This pro-Putin assiduousness on the part of some generally thought of as being on the left even spills over into pro-Trump attitudes and conspiracy theorizing about a “Deep State” plot by US intelligence and law enforcement agencies, the NSA, the CIA, and the FBI, to topple Trump.  As a really egregious example of this line of reasoning, KJ McElrath, writing for the left-wing Ring of Fire Network, https://trofire.com/2017/02/21/glen-greenwald-siding-deep-state-trump-extremely-dangerous/,   quotes pro-Putin, pro-Assad, Russian election interference-denying reporter Glen Greenwald as stating, “Trump was democratically elected and is subject to democratic controls, as these courts just demonstrated and as the media is showing, as citizens are proving;”  McElrath then goes on to suggest a “Deep State” conspiracy.  But Greenwald, who’s guested on both leftist media and Fox News, is wrong on two counts.  First of all, Trump was not “democratically elected.”  Hillary Clinton received nearly three million more popular votes than he did.  Trump was elected by the deliberately undemocratic Electoral College, which over-represents less-populous states over those more populous.  Second, as for being “subject to democratic controls, as the courts just demonstrated and as the media is showing, as citizens are proving,” those “controls” have come flagrantly under attack from Trump himself, and require constant vigilance to force what can only presently amount to forcing restraint from Trump and the GOP.  But further, whatever the CIA, the NSA, the FBI think of Trump, they are not noticeably at all preparing a coup against him.  While Trump would undoubtedly like to be himself a fascist dictator, even under his bullying the US still remains a bourgeois democracy with a Bill of Rights in place; even if these constitutionally-guaranteed rights are under vigorous attack from Trump and others in his Administration (which certainly isn’t the first time in US history that a President and his Administrations have tried to quash dissent).  Despite several popular books on the CIA and other intelligence, law enforcement, agencies that portray them as an “invisible government,” their actual power to launch coups has been severely limited historically and to date, not only by legal safeguards and public opinion, but also by the self-restraint and the studied apolitical, above-the-fray stances of these agencies’ personnel themselves. And these are most likely to continue.   This is but realism, fellow leftists, not complacency—for truly, “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” But the US is not politically akin to a Latin American banana republic, and it is hysteria to think so.  Fear of a “Deep State” conspiracy against Trump, of all people, thus remains but a conspiracist fantasy. Certainly for now.  Lest we forget.

So, what should the left be doing in the wake of all this?  Obviously, for a starter, we should press for a complete and thorough investigation of the Trump Administration and its ties to Russia, to be conducted honestly, transparently, and without being quashed or interfered with; this is already happening, and we of the left should support it and press for it to continue until all matters are settled.  While, of course, continuing with all our vigor to oppose and thwart those specific reactionary policies and proposals independent of Russiagate that come from Trump and the GOP-dominated legislative branches (e.g., the budget, Trumpcare).  Second, as socialists committed to democracy, especially grassroots democracy from the bottom up by the people themselves, we should not be suckered into supporting one particular nation-state in its rivalry with other nation-states.  That is not what we of the left are about, despite siren calls to line up on the “correct” side, the “anti-imperialist” or “anti-hegemonic” side.  It is not our business to declare left allegiance to either the US or to Russia; this is a dispute between two imperialist nation-states, not a college football rivalry.  Third, and very important, we must recognize the potential war danger presently existent, not only between the US and Russia, but also between the US and China, possibly over access and control over the South China Sea; or between the US and North Korea.  In this world fraught with nuclear-armed powers, the danger of war is omnipresent; meaning that we need an antiwar movement that does not arbitrarily, or in a partisan way, choose Great Power sides.  And last, the left must totally abandon any penchant for an “enemy of my enemy is my friend” mentality, as today’s “friend” can be tomorrow’s “enemy,” and vice versa.  Just considering the US in isolation, for example, at one time it had as a “friend” an “enemy of its enemy” in—Osama Bin Laden! 

For us of the left, a nuanced and sophisticated, not just ideological, approach is what’s called for.   Above all, a commitment to grassroots democracy and genuine self-determination by the workers and oppressed peoples themselves is called for, wherever and whoever they are:  be they Kurds, Syrians, Russians, Mexicans, Koreans, African Americans, or even displaced US white workers!   This precludes, I say, taking sides in Great Power rivalries; but instead, upholding “liberty and justice for all.”  That’s what we of the left can take out of this Russiagate imbroglio.