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.
****************************************************
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.
Saturday, July 30, 2011
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
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Dregs
This very long blog entry is a detailed account of a matter that depicts a serious maliase on the left today, not just in Indianapolis, but across the country, and even worldwide--GF
“It’s come to this. It’s come to this. And wasn’t it a long way down?” These words from an old Judy Collins recording stick in my mind as I ruminate over the treachery by “comrades” in the miniscule Indianapolis socialist movement and its aftermath, which has moved me to completely reconsider my relationship to the organized left, even as I still uphold my left values.
Obviously, the place to begin is to recount what happened, and what this treachery consisted of. Put succinctly, I was the victim of a prima facie deliberate set-up at the May 2010 joint meeting of Greater Indianapolis Socialist Party USA (SPUSA), Central Indiana Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and the Indiana Socialist Fellowship, deliberately set up out of personal spite by people I thought I had a positive rapport with and could trust, and because of this supposed trust, could express my thoughts honestly to them. Boy, was I proven wrong! These three treacherous conspirators—Becky the B and Mikey the M of SPUSA, and Marvey the W of DSA—took great personal umbrage at a series of e-mails I had sent to them, and only to them, giving my honest assessments of other comrades in our socialist grouplet, and what I saw as their fatal weaknesses that got in the way of building ourselves more effectively. While in retrospect I can see that the wiser course would’ve been to keep my assessments to myself, that would’ve only compounded the problem I saw—the fundamental inadequacy of the socialist movement in smug, complacent, hidebound Indianapolis, where even those who are “progressives,” supposed rebels against the status quo and critics of capitalism and conservatism, are themselves smug, complacent and hidebound.
“By what authority?” Marvey the W pointedly titled an e-mail to the four of us for writing down my assessment. Well, by the “authority” not only of free speech, but also by the “authority” on trying to move our socialist grouplet from stagnation to efficacy; by the “authority” of knowledge that one can’t construct a magnificent building out of what’s available in a garbage heap; by the “authority” of trying to goad toward effective action. And remember, this assessment of our socialists here was shared only with people I had thought I had rapport, with people I thought I could implicitly trust because of our most positive past relationship. After all, I had been in regular, even intimate, political contact with Becky the B, Mikey the M, and Marvey the W for the past six months. All three of them were the students in the classes I taught on Marxist theory. All three of them had regularly come to my apartment for these classes, all three of them had conversed freely with me over the course of several weeks on a regular basis, all three of them were people I liked and respected as good people because of this, and I thought all three of them also felt likewise about me. After all, these were people with whom I drank beer with and shared potato chips with in an atmosphere of comfort and relaxation. Whenever Marvey the W need a ride, because he didn’t have a car, I had volunteered to provide him transportation. With Becky the B I had been there when she needed someone to talk to, and had actively cajoled and encouraged her when she was down because of her sense of inferiority and ignorance that paralyzed her and made her indecisive. These were people I thought I could trust enough to unburden myself by being frank and direct; frank and direct the way I couldn’t be with others.
Further, I thought that the rapport I felt with them was reciprocated by their feeling of rapport with me. I had made it a point to go to them with my concerns precisely because I felt this rapport; and had assured them many times (or certainly tried to) that they could always come to me likewise. I had answered directly and honestly every one of Marvey the W’s pointed and nasty e-mails, not making excuses, but always trying to convey precisely why I had written the way I had. During the two weeks of Becky the B’s complete lack of communication with me (although a time when she was regularly talking to Marvey the W at length, according to Marvey himself; and assuredly with Mikey the M as well, who was, after all, her husband living with her), I had tried several times through both Marvey and Mikey to reach her and to find out what were her thoughts. (Becky the B was head of the local SPUSA branch, Marvey the W head of the DSA local.) But no avail; nor would Marvey volunteer any info on what he was discussing at length with Becky over several phone conversations, nor did I ask, as I had implicit trust in them and their straightforwardness. Boy, was I wrong! All this time, it seems, they were assiduously plotting against me, working on a way to set me up and humiliate me publicly at the May socialist meeting.
But before I go on to relate what exactly happened at the May meeting, I need to provide a little more background on the Indianapolis-area socialists. First of all, it’s worthy of special note, the socialists here are extremely paltry in numbers: counting me, there had been a total of ten persons, all of whom were male except for Becky, who regularly attended the once-a-month socialist meetings (and who did almost nothing else). I had labeled us the Forlorn Ten, because we never grew beyond that number. At one time we had been the Forlorn Eleven, but the eleventh member had dropped out to form something called the Socialist Central Committee, which was now devoting its energies to attacking the national SPUSA for supposedly selling its influence and support to a motley bunch of “counterculturalists” who bought this influence and support simply by paying annual SPUSA dues; and this nefarious band of “counterculturalists” who were thus undermining “true” socialism was comprised of—feminists, environmentalists, antiwar activists and supposed New Age religious believers who supported the right of everyone to practice or not practice religion as they saw fit! Now, with my being railroaded out, the socialist grouplet is now the Forlorn Nine; and my leaving caused, due to the lore of small numbers, a 10% decline in active (such as it is) socialist membership in Indianapolis and near environs!
At the May meeting, though, only seven of the Forlorn Ten were in attendance. Besides myself, Becky the B, Mikey the M, and Marvey the W, they were: Ron the H, venerable member of the SPUSA who had headed the Indianapolis-area socialists prior to the ascendancy of Becky the B and Marvey the W, and who had done virtually nothing to build a socialist presence in Central Indiana for the past several years he’d been titular head of the Indianapolis-area socialists; and Peter the B and Gilbey the K, both of whom distinguished themselves time and again by saying virtually nothing meeting after meeting. Some more characterization of the Forlorn Ten: only one of them, Ike the W, was under thirty; Ike the W was a rather childish graduate student at a local theological seminary who had set up the websites for the Greater Indianapolis SPUSA and Central Indiana DSA back in mid-March 2010 (three weeks after he’d said he was going to do it) and, although monitor of the websites, hadn’t updated them at all in the subsequent two months, not even to the extent of listing meeting times and locations. But these websites were supposed to be the public face of Greater Indianapolis SPUSA and Central Indiana DSA to the interested public! As for the rest, the next-youngest members of the Forlorn Ten were Becky the B and Mikey the M, in their mid-to-late 50s; then came me, at 63; one or two who, like me, were in their 60s; and three or four (depending on whether one of the sixtysomethings is actually a seventysomething) all in their mid-to-late 70s. In fact, at least two of these are actually closer to 80 than they are to 70. Ike the W worked as a ministerial intern; only Becky, Mikey and I were still of working age. The remainder was all retirees. This leaves out John the S, who rounds out the Forlorn Ten, about whom virtually nothing is known, and who generally contributed only voluble objections to whatever was raised.
Needless to say, the Indianapolis socialists of all the above Forlorns are exclusively white, as are Indianapolis “progressives” generally. (As a whole, they do not like being called “left.”) Very few black or Hispanic activists relate to the “progressives” at all, and the “progressives” themselves are oriented almost exclusively toward the white peace churches such as the Quakers, Mennonites and Brethren, and their religious “mainstream denomination” kindred, as well as toward religious belief itself—secularists, atheists and agnostics who consider themselves progressive, left, or radical are quite unwelcome, especially if they’re open about their unbelief. On a general social and cultural level, Indianapolis is extremely self-segregating racially, not just de facto segregated.
I am far from the only one to become a pariah among Indianapolis “leftists” and “progressives.” During my stint here as an activist, going back over thirty years to late February 1980, and prior to that, a seasoned veteran of the New Left, Trotskyist and antiwar movements since 1965, I can recall four separate occasions where longtime, dedicated activists were driven out in disgust for simply trying to get things done, and who, because of it, were backbitten, hounded, and passively-aggressively undermined and resisted by Indianapolis’s hidebound “progressive” community of overwhelmingly “respectable peace-church churchgoers” and their uncritical “secular” supporters. So resisted until they, despite their dedication, surrendered to the hidebound inertia and simply gave up, often dropping out completely or else leaving town altogether. There was Tim in the 1990s, President of the Indianapolis Peace & Justice Center (IPJC), for years the dominant “progressive” group here, but now in seemingly terminal decline. Although he had had some notable success in building an effective movement against the first Iraq War, his very success undermined his efforts among the “peace church progressives” who thought him too radical; same fate, from the same opposition, that had undermined attempts to galvanize the IPJC in the late 1980s. Then there were the anarchist youth who had formed a left-wing bookstore here in 2001, Solidarity Books, who were hounded out of existence by the passive-aggressive “pacifists” as a dangerous bunch of “violent radicals.” But they were just feisty, and a good bunch of youth to work with, as I found out for myself, one of the few “old-time progressives” to show them any regard. They were finally done in by a specious lawsuit against them by one of the leading “progressives,” and they, too, succumbed in disgust and most of them left town; since this happened, in 2006, there has been no substantive left youth movement here in Indianapolis whatsoever, although there are pockets of radical youth at local universities, which are simply ignored or patronized by their elders. Last, there was the activist who reconstituted DSA here and tried to turn it into a viable socialist organization, in which Marvey, Peter the B and I were involved, but he and I were the only ones who weren’t armchair socialists; and so, our attempts to do something were, once again, met with passive-aggressive resistance, and so this person also succumbed and retreated into a completely private life. But one of the last political things he did do was e-mail me on his discouragement, and characterize the Indianapolis left as “pathetic to inept.” True, indeed. And local “socialists” have frequently been in the vanguard of these efforts to undermine a more active and radical left here.
Little more needs to be said here, except that there have been a plethora of alphabet-soup “progressive” groups here in Indianapolis that never did anything more than hold monthly meetings. All of them, full of promise and even numbers of supporters at the beginning, soon succumbed to the deadly routine of being only “respectable opposition” lest the Democratic Party get too upset. This was true even of the nominally independent Green Party here. And a key player in keeping the “radicals” out and the “respectables” entrenched was the late Jane the H, wife of Ron the H and, like him, thoroughly embedded in the Quaker church and unable to see beyond it.
Such then sets the stage for recounting what happened that fateful Third Sunday in May, 2010. As I indicated above, not only did I have no inkling of what would actually transpire, I went into the meeting buoyed with hope and anticipation of positive, constructive results. The month earlier, I had submitted for consideration two written documents outlining an organizational structure and methods of carrying on work that I thought would be quite efficacious. The Forlorn Ten had a full month to read and comment on these documents, but to date no one had; and I had not seen this silence for what it actually was—the hiding of a massive iceberg that was intending to demolish my ship. In fact, Marvey the W had even written in the group’s newsletter, the Central Indiana Socialist, that my papers would be up for discussion and action. Positive action, I had assumed.
Monthly meetings of the Indianapolis socialists were divided into three parts. First was a regular business meeting of the SPUSA, which would often consist of only three or four SPUSA members—Becky the B as chair, Mikey the M, unless he was absent, Peter the B, who served as treasurer of both SPUSA and DSA, and Ron the H, whose presence was almost guaranteed because the socialists met in the Quaker meeting house where Ronnie attended worship services. As happenstance would have it, I’m omitting Gilbey the K who was always present, simply because he had to be to allow the meetings to take place (he lived in the meeting house); but Gilbey remained silent 99.99% of the time any meeting occurred, simply sitting there implacable, so it’s pretty easy not to notice someone who is actually the Tommy Newsom of Central Indiana socialism! Next would follow the regular business meeting of DSA, with Marvey as chair, Pete again, and for the past several meetings, me, since I was Vice-President of Central Indiana DSA (and still am, although Marvey the W would like to deny it; but no due process has removed me, and mere non-attendance cannot remove someone—if that were true, then well over 75% of all members of SPUSA and DSA in Indiana would be excluded, as they are paper members only who never attend meetings!). Ike the W was supposed to attend, since he was DSA’s secretary and was charged with keeping meetings, and he regularly promised to be in attendance, but more often was not, no matter what he’d promised. Following these two meetings was the meeting of something called the Indiana Socialist Fellowship, which had originally been organized to enable SPUSA and DSA to work together on common concerns in the Indianapolis area, but which was in doldrums, with it further being compromised because no one was sure of what the Fellowship was or was supposed to be doing; this had become a big issue because both Greater Indianapolis SPUSA and Central Indiana DSA, as chartered branches of their respective national organizations, had been ordered by their national leaderships to concentrate less on joint activities and concentrate far more on building the membership of their respective local branches. So orders had come from on high to let the Fellowship lapse. Since most members of the Fellowship were either members of SPUSA, DSA or both, and only one or two of those active in the Fellowship were not, that meant that SPUSA and DSA were to function independently of each other, for SPUSA was SPUSA, DSA was DSA, and neither the twain shall meet. Such was the ukase of the national leaderships.
One thing that never occurred at any of these three meetings was discussion of politics; that ended up as de facto occurring only in the social chit-chat that preceded and followed the meetings, and never rose above the level of casual conversation and gossip. These business meetings were invariably paper-cut formalities in structure, with committee reports and the like, and also dry as dust: on the whole, they were as politically edifying as the business meeting of a Canasta club, but with one important difference—whereas a well-functioning Canasta club would at least arrange for its members to be able to play Canasta, the business meetings of SPUSA, DSA and the Fellowship rarely decided on any course of action, just endless bemoaning (if even that) about we socialists’ lack of growth and appeal to outside activists. But that follows when there’s no program of action formulated; when the only actions formulated are merely social gatherings in commemoration of May Day and Bastille Day; and when almost no one who was actually a member of SPUSA or DSA knew their own organization’s national programs and platforms, nor read their own organization’s national literature. That such was the direct consequence of Indiana’s notorious smug provincialism, which regarded anything that happened or which came from beyond its borders as having any importance—a smug provincialism regularly copied at the local level, where what was of importance only occurred within city or county boundaries, or even at the level of local cliques—was not only never considered, it was never even discussed, and woe to the one who would bring up such a heretical thought!
I had tried to change that; indeed, I had tried to change that within the broader group of Indiana and Indianapolis “progressives” the whole of my past thirty unfortunate years spent living in Indianapolis and active in “progressive” organizations. It had been to no avail; in fact, it had only garnered personal resentment of me among the “progressives,” a resentment coupled with much active backbiting and deliberate social ostracism. (Fortunately for me, this was not my lot among those who were apolitical, such as among my co-workers, or the creative and blues music communities—there I was much liked, and my activities and personal qualities much appreciated.) Certainly I had the credentials and experience to attempt such change: I had actively published many political articles in the national and regional left press, in small but respected national journals such as In These Times, Monthly Review, Socialism and Democracy, Against the Current, New Politics, and the like, where frequently I was among a small number of contributors who did not have a Ph.D., or was not a graduate student or professor! I also did the same in regional left and alternative publications such as the Indianapolis Peace and Justice Journal and the Bloomington Alternative (located in Bloomington, Indiana, home of the main campus of Indiana University, where I’d earned a degree in economics). Further, I had honed my organizational and political skills by being active in the left since 1965, first, as leader of the left wing of SDS at Michigan State University (MSU), (with my activities there actually chronicled in a history book on the anti-Vietnam War movement at non-elite universities, Kenneth Heineman’s Campus Wars(New York University Press, 1993); then in national SDS and other radical groups, locally and nationally, along with extensive freelance writing.
But provincial Indiana, including the Indiana “progressives,” looked down on all these activities, as they’d occurred outside the confines of the Hoosier State, and it was left here in Indianapolis (and elsewhere in Indiana) for those apolitical here locally, as well as for out-of-state leftists, to appreciate what I was doing and what I was writing. My activities in MSU SDS were derided by one local Veterans for Peace leader as “bragging about something obscure,” while Jane the H, Indianapolis’s Quaker “progressive” arbiter of what was “proper” and what was not, dismissing my frequent, favorable appearances in Campus Wars with “I’m sure it’s important to you,” because nothing of importance to anybody else in Indiana could possibly occur outside its borders!
So I shouldn’t have been surprised at what happened to me at the hands of the Indianapolis “socialists,” even though the perpetrators were all people with whom I had been actively involved with, and assumed our mutual cordiality had built bonds of trust; but I found out the hard way that the “Socialist” Three—Becky the B, Mikey the M, and Marvey the W—were ingrained Hoosiers first, and as such, would “naturally” take personal umbrage with anyone who did something they disliked, and that the old Hoosier corruptions of cliquishness and venomous striking out would take precedence over any bonds of mutual trust and regard I’d thought I had forged. They had indeed taken such personal umbrage at my confidential criticisms of others that they had moved to conspire against me and deliberately set me up—such is the conclusion not only I have come to, but is the conclusion of others as well. It is the conclusion not only of three close friends to whom I’ve related this narrative of what transpired, my college-graduate friends Harold and John, both of whom know several of the actors involved and the nature of the Indianapolis “progressive” milieu; and also the conclusion reached by my former academic advisor; but, tellingly enough, it is the conclusion as well of one of the May meeting participants, Ron the H, certainly no personal friend of mine, but rather, someone who’s been antagonistic toward me many times. He’s told me directly that “It seems you were set up,” and plans on raising it as an issue with the “Socialist” Three.
But back to the meeting itself. As I related above, nothing suspicious had developed prior to the meeting. Marvey the W had merely stated that he’d had several long conversations with Becky the B, but had not indicated anything disapproving of me had been discussed. Same with Mikey the M, Becky’s husband—he’d expressed no prior hostility either. As for Becky herself, the only word I’d gotten from her at all for the past two weeks was an e-mail thanking Marvey for forwarding on my criticisms of Ike the W and keeping her informed; then, just before I was about to leave for the meeting, a plaintive e-mail from her saying that Ike the W’s annoying personal habit of nervous giggling was something he couldn’t help, to which I’d responded that in my own past I had overcome a bad stutter, so I didn’t think such a habit was intractable. In fact, I had defended my criticisms at length over the course of several e-mails, and thought the matter pretty much settled, and settled in a principled was—especially as my defenses had drawn no comment from any of the three parties! (I will gladly make the whole e-mail exchange public to any interested party—I have them all on my computer.) Not only that, my arrival had not been greeted hostilely by any of the three, and the meeting itself began inauspiciously enough. Marvey even initiated a friendly gesture toward me, handing me a packet of New York Timesarticles on Catholic priest-pedophilia, but otherwise didn’t utter a peep. Becky, as nominal chair of the SPUSA meeting, then turned the meeting over to husband Mikey, saying he had a better grasp of parliamentary procedure than she had. With Mikey now as chair, I raised a point that in the past had been a mere formality—the approval of Marvey and I as guests, since both of us were DSA members, but not SPUSA members. Mikey then responded that I would be allowed guest status only to introduce the documents I had prepared earlier. When that time came around (after a few preliminaries), I introduced the documents everyone had agreed at the April meeting were to be discussed—and there was no second from anyone! This thus precluded discussion of what I had written, and of course, was in direct contravention of what had been decided on at the April meeting.
Then the open treachery began. Marvey, who did have guest status and thus could speak, then re-introduced verbatim, word-for-word from what I had written two of the motions that were in my document, and they passed unanimously. What I had been unable to introduce myself as author was now accepted under Marvey’s auspices! Needless to say, I objected heatedly, but was told to shut up by an enraged Mikey, responding to me, as he did for the rest of the meeting, with a very vicious temper flare. Marvey then raised yet another motion from my document which discussed financial compensation for me for carrying on an educational project for the Fellowship (something that had in the recent past been encouraged by the “Socialist” Three following the success of my Marxism classes in which they had all been students); stating that it was unfeasible based on a conversation he’d had with Frank Llewellyn, national DSA Executive Director, which he’d never told me about, or in fact, had never raised objection with me about—even though the documents I had prepared (but which now could not be discussed, due to no second) had circulated among all the socialists on the regular attendee mailing list for a month, and on which I had specifically solicited discussion, comment and criticism—with none coming whatsoever until now! Needless to say, this motion attributed to me was now unanimously rejected—even though it was not raised under any kind of parliamentary procedure at all (so much for Mikey’s vast knowledge of parliamentary procedure!), and since the document in which the motion was present couldn’t even be properly discussed, as it hadn’t been seconded!
The game was now well afoot, but needless to say, my objections were “answered” only by Mikey’s vehement rage demanding I shut up. Now it was Becky the B’s turn. She now brought up the criticisms I had made privately in e-mails addressed only to the “Socialist” Three—which meant that the other three of the six attendees besides myself had no inkling of their contents. So Becky was now criticizing matters I wrote that were completely unknown to half those attending beside myself! It’s quite fascinating to note that, even though Becky was sitting next to me and the criticisms she was making of me were quite personal, she deliberately stared straight ahead and with her head lowered, in order to avoid my glance completely—so “brave” this self-proclaimed “feminist” was that she couldn’t even personally attack me to my very face! When she finished her litany of accusations that even included “Defaming a dead person,” the late Jane the H, who had done some very cruel things to me in her lifetime, Marvey was given the floor instead of I, and now he continued the “prosecution” thus: he said (and yes, this is verbatim as I distinctly recall it), “I’m afraid to open an e-mail from George, because it will contain criticism.” [!!!!!] Yes, word-for-word: Marvey’s very own “e-mail phobia,” evidently some new mental health disorder that has not yet found its way into the DSM (acronym for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the official compendium of mental disorders produced by the American Psychiatric Association). But in answer to Marvey’s “fear” I’d like to point out that I once had a job as a third-shift parking garage cashier, and twice was the victim of an armed robbery there. Staring down a gun barrel that’s aimed directly at one’s face—now that’s real cause for fear, not some mere e-mail!
More. I related Marvey’s remarks on his fearfulness of receiving e-mails from me to several of my trusted co-workers, all of them fellow college graduates like myself, and in all cases Marvey’s remarks were greeted with howls of contemptuous laughter! A fitting riposte from educated people. (It should be mentioned here that all of the “Socialist” Three are also college graduates, with at least two of them holders of Master’s degrees—Marvey in theology, Becky in nursing—so they’re all educated, and presumably intelligent, people.)
I’ve related my story informally to other apolitical friends of mine in Indianapolis besides the ones mentioned above, and their response was the same as those of Harold, John, and my old academic advisor: it appeared indeed that I had been set up, and they weren’t surprised, given the smug, sanctimonious arrogance that so easily prevails here. So I’ve not been without friends and supporters in my travail, have not been cut off and left to dangle due to my forced “retirement” Indianapolis has thrust upon me after forty-five years of left activism. In fact, I’m rather enjoying it, as I’ve found in apolitical people (by which I mean people who are not actively involved politically, but who have the same decent, humane values the left formally claims, and who would be real assets to any left movement worthy of them) the comfort, succor and support that was so actively and readily denied me among the “progressives.” Which is a real shame for the left, given its present-day isolation from the lives and concerns of ordinary people who are struggling, and who could readily gravitate to it had it something to offer other than sectarianism, cannibalistic feeding upon itself, and a ready penchant for talking at people, not talking to them. Faults that are seemingly everywhere, but significantly noticeable in the justly-named IndiaNOPLACE, native home to left writers Kurt Vonnegut and Dan Wakefield, who left it in such disgust they wouldn’t return for decades. Two writers who used their eloquent pens to satirize this, the Circle City, in two trenchant novels: Vonnegut, in his Breakfast of Champions of 1973, Wakefield in Going All the Way, published in 1971. They also hark back to another notable U.S. social satirist, Nobel Laureate Sinclair Lewis, who savagely, but truly, limned the social and cultural distress of the Midwest so well in novels such as Main Street, Babbitt, Arrowsmith and Elmer Gantry. Funny but telling indeed that Lewis’s work from the 1920s, and Vonnegut’s and Wakefield’s works from the 1970s, could still be so apropos for Indianapolis and Indiana of the second decade of the 21st Century, but that is the enduring quality of true and trenchant art.
So I’ve spent the time cultivating my friendships among the apolitical, as well as continuing to participate in the left nationally through writing. After thirty years of putting up with the “progressives” here, I am coming at last to feel “unfettered and alive” for the first time, fulfilling that yearning that Joni Mitchell sang of in her song, “Free Man in Paris.” Still, at heart I am still a political activist and a man of the left who is not leaving the left, despite its leaving him—and in the lurch at that.
Not all see it this way, and one of my most hostile critics outside of Indianapolis is one Dave Finkel (the only person who’s full real name I’m giving here, as he is truly a public personage), Managing Editor of the left bimonthly Against the Current, and leader in Solidarity, a small socialist group I still maintain active membership in. Speaking from his perch at Solidarity’s National Office in Detroit, Finkel maintains that I brought all these problems on myself, that the SPUSA and DSA “leadership” in Indianapolis surely had “good reasons” for their treachery, and that, anyway, they certainly hadn’t betrayed my trust because they were merely “drinking buddies,” an inference he drew from my indicating that they had been guests in my apartment and we had sometimes shared a beer together. But then, he has not heard my full story; in fact, refused any attempts by me to relate it to him, so, should he read this, it will be the first time ever that he has confronted any narrative of what divided me from the Indianapolis “socialists.” But it won’t be the first time Finkel has found me entirely at fault, and by his own admission, he does not care to know what exactly transpires here in this place so separated from the empyrean realms of Detroit, where he holds court, and where his “Marxist” wisdom enables him to see and understand all things.
But the matter looks entirely different to my friend and fellow Solidarity comrade Phil D., who actually lives in Indiana and was appalled at what transpired here. Although he does not live in Indianapolis now, he did a few years ago, and was himself deliberately politically isolated and socially ostracized because his open Marxism made him a pariah, a “disrupter of the natural harmony” that infused the world view of “respectable Quaker progressive” Jane the H, who treated him the same way she treated me—indeed, as all the leading “progressives” of this justly-named Naptown did. So, by no means do I lack support and supporters—even if I must endure “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” from the hidebound and willfully blind.
But life goes on, and I continue, and part of this continuing on is to tell my story above, and tell it with political import. I would not object to being given the chance to be politically active again, but it is no longer the burning priority I had given it in the past. I would even have a civil rapprochement with the “Socialist” Three, although we will never be friends again—I certainly can never again trust these obvious Three Musketeers of Cowardice. Nor, as I’ve indicated above, am I alone among the Indianapolis socialists in feeling that I was betrayed. Ron the H, for at least one, is unsettled by the matter, and wishes to pursue the matter. And I will gladly stand by my offer to make the whole of the e-mail exchange public to anyone who wishes it. I do offer a heartfelt partial apology for losing my temper in the face of the vicious onslaught and vindictive temper tantrum of Mikey, but I do not retreat one iota from the criticisms of comrades I made in the e-mails: I believe I spoke frankly, without embellishment or euphemism, and that my speaking as I did was for the benefit of Indianapolis socialism. Certainly one has to build a movement with the personnel one has on hand, but that never means that a fruitful, constructive movement can be built from the material found on a garbage heap, same as the building I alluded to at the beginning of this essay. The test of my position is still to come, and will come soon enough—let us see where the Indianapolis socialists are in May 2011, and whether they are at all different from the Forlorn Nine they are today! Marvey can go back to attending his Indiana Pacers home games, a great “socialist” pastime he likes to indulge in, even as he lets his ‘socialist” conscience evade the fact that our sterling NBA basketball team, these very Pacers, recently extorted $33.5 million from the City of Indianapolis so that they would stay here, demanding this payment due to “poverty” while Indianapolis was considering the permanent closing of public library branches due to lack of revenue, and lacks money for its schools and even road repair. But what other priority would “good socialists” such as Marvey and his ilk have!!
“It’s come to this. It’s come to this. And wasn’t it a long way down?” These words from an old Judy Collins recording stick in my mind as I ruminate over the treachery by “comrades” in the miniscule Indianapolis socialist movement and its aftermath, which has moved me to completely reconsider my relationship to the organized left, even as I still uphold my left values.
Obviously, the place to begin is to recount what happened, and what this treachery consisted of. Put succinctly, I was the victim of a prima facie deliberate set-up at the May 2010 joint meeting of Greater Indianapolis Socialist Party USA (SPUSA), Central Indiana Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and the Indiana Socialist Fellowship, deliberately set up out of personal spite by people I thought I had a positive rapport with and could trust, and because of this supposed trust, could express my thoughts honestly to them. Boy, was I proven wrong! These three treacherous conspirators—Becky the B and Mikey the M of SPUSA, and Marvey the W of DSA—took great personal umbrage at a series of e-mails I had sent to them, and only to them, giving my honest assessments of other comrades in our socialist grouplet, and what I saw as their fatal weaknesses that got in the way of building ourselves more effectively. While in retrospect I can see that the wiser course would’ve been to keep my assessments to myself, that would’ve only compounded the problem I saw—the fundamental inadequacy of the socialist movement in smug, complacent, hidebound Indianapolis, where even those who are “progressives,” supposed rebels against the status quo and critics of capitalism and conservatism, are themselves smug, complacent and hidebound.
“By what authority?” Marvey the W pointedly titled an e-mail to the four of us for writing down my assessment. Well, by the “authority” not only of free speech, but also by the “authority” on trying to move our socialist grouplet from stagnation to efficacy; by the “authority” of knowledge that one can’t construct a magnificent building out of what’s available in a garbage heap; by the “authority” of trying to goad toward effective action. And remember, this assessment of our socialists here was shared only with people I had thought I had rapport, with people I thought I could implicitly trust because of our most positive past relationship. After all, I had been in regular, even intimate, political contact with Becky the B, Mikey the M, and Marvey the W for the past six months. All three of them were the students in the classes I taught on Marxist theory. All three of them had regularly come to my apartment for these classes, all three of them had conversed freely with me over the course of several weeks on a regular basis, all three of them were people I liked and respected as good people because of this, and I thought all three of them also felt likewise about me. After all, these were people with whom I drank beer with and shared potato chips with in an atmosphere of comfort and relaxation. Whenever Marvey the W need a ride, because he didn’t have a car, I had volunteered to provide him transportation. With Becky the B I had been there when she needed someone to talk to, and had actively cajoled and encouraged her when she was down because of her sense of inferiority and ignorance that paralyzed her and made her indecisive. These were people I thought I could trust enough to unburden myself by being frank and direct; frank and direct the way I couldn’t be with others.
Further, I thought that the rapport I felt with them was reciprocated by their feeling of rapport with me. I had made it a point to go to them with my concerns precisely because I felt this rapport; and had assured them many times (or certainly tried to) that they could always come to me likewise. I had answered directly and honestly every one of Marvey the W’s pointed and nasty e-mails, not making excuses, but always trying to convey precisely why I had written the way I had. During the two weeks of Becky the B’s complete lack of communication with me (although a time when she was regularly talking to Marvey the W at length, according to Marvey himself; and assuredly with Mikey the M as well, who was, after all, her husband living with her), I had tried several times through both Marvey and Mikey to reach her and to find out what were her thoughts. (Becky the B was head of the local SPUSA branch, Marvey the W head of the DSA local.) But no avail; nor would Marvey volunteer any info on what he was discussing at length with Becky over several phone conversations, nor did I ask, as I had implicit trust in them and their straightforwardness. Boy, was I wrong! All this time, it seems, they were assiduously plotting against me, working on a way to set me up and humiliate me publicly at the May socialist meeting.
But before I go on to relate what exactly happened at the May meeting, I need to provide a little more background on the Indianapolis-area socialists. First of all, it’s worthy of special note, the socialists here are extremely paltry in numbers: counting me, there had been a total of ten persons, all of whom were male except for Becky, who regularly attended the once-a-month socialist meetings (and who did almost nothing else). I had labeled us the Forlorn Ten, because we never grew beyond that number. At one time we had been the Forlorn Eleven, but the eleventh member had dropped out to form something called the Socialist Central Committee, which was now devoting its energies to attacking the national SPUSA for supposedly selling its influence and support to a motley bunch of “counterculturalists” who bought this influence and support simply by paying annual SPUSA dues; and this nefarious band of “counterculturalists” who were thus undermining “true” socialism was comprised of—feminists, environmentalists, antiwar activists and supposed New Age religious believers who supported the right of everyone to practice or not practice religion as they saw fit! Now, with my being railroaded out, the socialist grouplet is now the Forlorn Nine; and my leaving caused, due to the lore of small numbers, a 10% decline in active (such as it is) socialist membership in Indianapolis and near environs!
At the May meeting, though, only seven of the Forlorn Ten were in attendance. Besides myself, Becky the B, Mikey the M, and Marvey the W, they were: Ron the H, venerable member of the SPUSA who had headed the Indianapolis-area socialists prior to the ascendancy of Becky the B and Marvey the W, and who had done virtually nothing to build a socialist presence in Central Indiana for the past several years he’d been titular head of the Indianapolis-area socialists; and Peter the B and Gilbey the K, both of whom distinguished themselves time and again by saying virtually nothing meeting after meeting. Some more characterization of the Forlorn Ten: only one of them, Ike the W, was under thirty; Ike the W was a rather childish graduate student at a local theological seminary who had set up the websites for the Greater Indianapolis SPUSA and Central Indiana DSA back in mid-March 2010 (three weeks after he’d said he was going to do it) and, although monitor of the websites, hadn’t updated them at all in the subsequent two months, not even to the extent of listing meeting times and locations. But these websites were supposed to be the public face of Greater Indianapolis SPUSA and Central Indiana DSA to the interested public! As for the rest, the next-youngest members of the Forlorn Ten were Becky the B and Mikey the M, in their mid-to-late 50s; then came me, at 63; one or two who, like me, were in their 60s; and three or four (depending on whether one of the sixtysomethings is actually a seventysomething) all in their mid-to-late 70s. In fact, at least two of these are actually closer to 80 than they are to 70. Ike the W worked as a ministerial intern; only Becky, Mikey and I were still of working age. The remainder was all retirees. This leaves out John the S, who rounds out the Forlorn Ten, about whom virtually nothing is known, and who generally contributed only voluble objections to whatever was raised.
Needless to say, the Indianapolis socialists of all the above Forlorns are exclusively white, as are Indianapolis “progressives” generally. (As a whole, they do not like being called “left.”) Very few black or Hispanic activists relate to the “progressives” at all, and the “progressives” themselves are oriented almost exclusively toward the white peace churches such as the Quakers, Mennonites and Brethren, and their religious “mainstream denomination” kindred, as well as toward religious belief itself—secularists, atheists and agnostics who consider themselves progressive, left, or radical are quite unwelcome, especially if they’re open about their unbelief. On a general social and cultural level, Indianapolis is extremely self-segregating racially, not just de facto segregated.
I am far from the only one to become a pariah among Indianapolis “leftists” and “progressives.” During my stint here as an activist, going back over thirty years to late February 1980, and prior to that, a seasoned veteran of the New Left, Trotskyist and antiwar movements since 1965, I can recall four separate occasions where longtime, dedicated activists were driven out in disgust for simply trying to get things done, and who, because of it, were backbitten, hounded, and passively-aggressively undermined and resisted by Indianapolis’s hidebound “progressive” community of overwhelmingly “respectable peace-church churchgoers” and their uncritical “secular” supporters. So resisted until they, despite their dedication, surrendered to the hidebound inertia and simply gave up, often dropping out completely or else leaving town altogether. There was Tim in the 1990s, President of the Indianapolis Peace & Justice Center (IPJC), for years the dominant “progressive” group here, but now in seemingly terminal decline. Although he had had some notable success in building an effective movement against the first Iraq War, his very success undermined his efforts among the “peace church progressives” who thought him too radical; same fate, from the same opposition, that had undermined attempts to galvanize the IPJC in the late 1980s. Then there were the anarchist youth who had formed a left-wing bookstore here in 2001, Solidarity Books, who were hounded out of existence by the passive-aggressive “pacifists” as a dangerous bunch of “violent radicals.” But they were just feisty, and a good bunch of youth to work with, as I found out for myself, one of the few “old-time progressives” to show them any regard. They were finally done in by a specious lawsuit against them by one of the leading “progressives,” and they, too, succumbed in disgust and most of them left town; since this happened, in 2006, there has been no substantive left youth movement here in Indianapolis whatsoever, although there are pockets of radical youth at local universities, which are simply ignored or patronized by their elders. Last, there was the activist who reconstituted DSA here and tried to turn it into a viable socialist organization, in which Marvey, Peter the B and I were involved, but he and I were the only ones who weren’t armchair socialists; and so, our attempts to do something were, once again, met with passive-aggressive resistance, and so this person also succumbed and retreated into a completely private life. But one of the last political things he did do was e-mail me on his discouragement, and characterize the Indianapolis left as “pathetic to inept.” True, indeed. And local “socialists” have frequently been in the vanguard of these efforts to undermine a more active and radical left here.
Little more needs to be said here, except that there have been a plethora of alphabet-soup “progressive” groups here in Indianapolis that never did anything more than hold monthly meetings. All of them, full of promise and even numbers of supporters at the beginning, soon succumbed to the deadly routine of being only “respectable opposition” lest the Democratic Party get too upset. This was true even of the nominally independent Green Party here. And a key player in keeping the “radicals” out and the “respectables” entrenched was the late Jane the H, wife of Ron the H and, like him, thoroughly embedded in the Quaker church and unable to see beyond it.
Such then sets the stage for recounting what happened that fateful Third Sunday in May, 2010. As I indicated above, not only did I have no inkling of what would actually transpire, I went into the meeting buoyed with hope and anticipation of positive, constructive results. The month earlier, I had submitted for consideration two written documents outlining an organizational structure and methods of carrying on work that I thought would be quite efficacious. The Forlorn Ten had a full month to read and comment on these documents, but to date no one had; and I had not seen this silence for what it actually was—the hiding of a massive iceberg that was intending to demolish my ship. In fact, Marvey the W had even written in the group’s newsletter, the Central Indiana Socialist, that my papers would be up for discussion and action. Positive action, I had assumed.
Monthly meetings of the Indianapolis socialists were divided into three parts. First was a regular business meeting of the SPUSA, which would often consist of only three or four SPUSA members—Becky the B as chair, Mikey the M, unless he was absent, Peter the B, who served as treasurer of both SPUSA and DSA, and Ron the H, whose presence was almost guaranteed because the socialists met in the Quaker meeting house where Ronnie attended worship services. As happenstance would have it, I’m omitting Gilbey the K who was always present, simply because he had to be to allow the meetings to take place (he lived in the meeting house); but Gilbey remained silent 99.99% of the time any meeting occurred, simply sitting there implacable, so it’s pretty easy not to notice someone who is actually the Tommy Newsom of Central Indiana socialism! Next would follow the regular business meeting of DSA, with Marvey as chair, Pete again, and for the past several meetings, me, since I was Vice-President of Central Indiana DSA (and still am, although Marvey the W would like to deny it; but no due process has removed me, and mere non-attendance cannot remove someone—if that were true, then well over 75% of all members of SPUSA and DSA in Indiana would be excluded, as they are paper members only who never attend meetings!). Ike the W was supposed to attend, since he was DSA’s secretary and was charged with keeping meetings, and he regularly promised to be in attendance, but more often was not, no matter what he’d promised. Following these two meetings was the meeting of something called the Indiana Socialist Fellowship, which had originally been organized to enable SPUSA and DSA to work together on common concerns in the Indianapolis area, but which was in doldrums, with it further being compromised because no one was sure of what the Fellowship was or was supposed to be doing; this had become a big issue because both Greater Indianapolis SPUSA and Central Indiana DSA, as chartered branches of their respective national organizations, had been ordered by their national leaderships to concentrate less on joint activities and concentrate far more on building the membership of their respective local branches. So orders had come from on high to let the Fellowship lapse. Since most members of the Fellowship were either members of SPUSA, DSA or both, and only one or two of those active in the Fellowship were not, that meant that SPUSA and DSA were to function independently of each other, for SPUSA was SPUSA, DSA was DSA, and neither the twain shall meet. Such was the ukase of the national leaderships.
One thing that never occurred at any of these three meetings was discussion of politics; that ended up as de facto occurring only in the social chit-chat that preceded and followed the meetings, and never rose above the level of casual conversation and gossip. These business meetings were invariably paper-cut formalities in structure, with committee reports and the like, and also dry as dust: on the whole, they were as politically edifying as the business meeting of a Canasta club, but with one important difference—whereas a well-functioning Canasta club would at least arrange for its members to be able to play Canasta, the business meetings of SPUSA, DSA and the Fellowship rarely decided on any course of action, just endless bemoaning (if even that) about we socialists’ lack of growth and appeal to outside activists. But that follows when there’s no program of action formulated; when the only actions formulated are merely social gatherings in commemoration of May Day and Bastille Day; and when almost no one who was actually a member of SPUSA or DSA knew their own organization’s national programs and platforms, nor read their own organization’s national literature. That such was the direct consequence of Indiana’s notorious smug provincialism, which regarded anything that happened or which came from beyond its borders as having any importance—a smug provincialism regularly copied at the local level, where what was of importance only occurred within city or county boundaries, or even at the level of local cliques—was not only never considered, it was never even discussed, and woe to the one who would bring up such a heretical thought!
I had tried to change that; indeed, I had tried to change that within the broader group of Indiana and Indianapolis “progressives” the whole of my past thirty unfortunate years spent living in Indianapolis and active in “progressive” organizations. It had been to no avail; in fact, it had only garnered personal resentment of me among the “progressives,” a resentment coupled with much active backbiting and deliberate social ostracism. (Fortunately for me, this was not my lot among those who were apolitical, such as among my co-workers, or the creative and blues music communities—there I was much liked, and my activities and personal qualities much appreciated.) Certainly I had the credentials and experience to attempt such change: I had actively published many political articles in the national and regional left press, in small but respected national journals such as In These Times, Monthly Review, Socialism and Democracy, Against the Current, New Politics, and the like, where frequently I was among a small number of contributors who did not have a Ph.D., or was not a graduate student or professor! I also did the same in regional left and alternative publications such as the Indianapolis Peace and Justice Journal and the Bloomington Alternative (located in Bloomington, Indiana, home of the main campus of Indiana University, where I’d earned a degree in economics). Further, I had honed my organizational and political skills by being active in the left since 1965, first, as leader of the left wing of SDS at Michigan State University (MSU), (with my activities there actually chronicled in a history book on the anti-Vietnam War movement at non-elite universities, Kenneth Heineman’s Campus Wars(New York University Press, 1993); then in national SDS and other radical groups, locally and nationally, along with extensive freelance writing.
But provincial Indiana, including the Indiana “progressives,” looked down on all these activities, as they’d occurred outside the confines of the Hoosier State, and it was left here in Indianapolis (and elsewhere in Indiana) for those apolitical here locally, as well as for out-of-state leftists, to appreciate what I was doing and what I was writing. My activities in MSU SDS were derided by one local Veterans for Peace leader as “bragging about something obscure,” while Jane the H, Indianapolis’s Quaker “progressive” arbiter of what was “proper” and what was not, dismissing my frequent, favorable appearances in Campus Wars with “I’m sure it’s important to you,” because nothing of importance to anybody else in Indiana could possibly occur outside its borders!
So I shouldn’t have been surprised at what happened to me at the hands of the Indianapolis “socialists,” even though the perpetrators were all people with whom I had been actively involved with, and assumed our mutual cordiality had built bonds of trust; but I found out the hard way that the “Socialist” Three—Becky the B, Mikey the M, and Marvey the W—were ingrained Hoosiers first, and as such, would “naturally” take personal umbrage with anyone who did something they disliked, and that the old Hoosier corruptions of cliquishness and venomous striking out would take precedence over any bonds of mutual trust and regard I’d thought I had forged. They had indeed taken such personal umbrage at my confidential criticisms of others that they had moved to conspire against me and deliberately set me up—such is the conclusion not only I have come to, but is the conclusion of others as well. It is the conclusion not only of three close friends to whom I’ve related this narrative of what transpired, my college-graduate friends Harold and John, both of whom know several of the actors involved and the nature of the Indianapolis “progressive” milieu; and also the conclusion reached by my former academic advisor; but, tellingly enough, it is the conclusion as well of one of the May meeting participants, Ron the H, certainly no personal friend of mine, but rather, someone who’s been antagonistic toward me many times. He’s told me directly that “It seems you were set up,” and plans on raising it as an issue with the “Socialist” Three.
But back to the meeting itself. As I related above, nothing suspicious had developed prior to the meeting. Marvey the W had merely stated that he’d had several long conversations with Becky the B, but had not indicated anything disapproving of me had been discussed. Same with Mikey the M, Becky’s husband—he’d expressed no prior hostility either. As for Becky herself, the only word I’d gotten from her at all for the past two weeks was an e-mail thanking Marvey for forwarding on my criticisms of Ike the W and keeping her informed; then, just before I was about to leave for the meeting, a plaintive e-mail from her saying that Ike the W’s annoying personal habit of nervous giggling was something he couldn’t help, to which I’d responded that in my own past I had overcome a bad stutter, so I didn’t think such a habit was intractable. In fact, I had defended my criticisms at length over the course of several e-mails, and thought the matter pretty much settled, and settled in a principled was—especially as my defenses had drawn no comment from any of the three parties! (I will gladly make the whole e-mail exchange public to any interested party—I have them all on my computer.) Not only that, my arrival had not been greeted hostilely by any of the three, and the meeting itself began inauspiciously enough. Marvey even initiated a friendly gesture toward me, handing me a packet of New York Timesarticles on Catholic priest-pedophilia, but otherwise didn’t utter a peep. Becky, as nominal chair of the SPUSA meeting, then turned the meeting over to husband Mikey, saying he had a better grasp of parliamentary procedure than she had. With Mikey now as chair, I raised a point that in the past had been a mere formality—the approval of Marvey and I as guests, since both of us were DSA members, but not SPUSA members. Mikey then responded that I would be allowed guest status only to introduce the documents I had prepared earlier. When that time came around (after a few preliminaries), I introduced the documents everyone had agreed at the April meeting were to be discussed—and there was no second from anyone! This thus precluded discussion of what I had written, and of course, was in direct contravention of what had been decided on at the April meeting.
Then the open treachery began. Marvey, who did have guest status and thus could speak, then re-introduced verbatim, word-for-word from what I had written two of the motions that were in my document, and they passed unanimously. What I had been unable to introduce myself as author was now accepted under Marvey’s auspices! Needless to say, I objected heatedly, but was told to shut up by an enraged Mikey, responding to me, as he did for the rest of the meeting, with a very vicious temper flare. Marvey then raised yet another motion from my document which discussed financial compensation for me for carrying on an educational project for the Fellowship (something that had in the recent past been encouraged by the “Socialist” Three following the success of my Marxism classes in which they had all been students); stating that it was unfeasible based on a conversation he’d had with Frank Llewellyn, national DSA Executive Director, which he’d never told me about, or in fact, had never raised objection with me about—even though the documents I had prepared (but which now could not be discussed, due to no second) had circulated among all the socialists on the regular attendee mailing list for a month, and on which I had specifically solicited discussion, comment and criticism—with none coming whatsoever until now! Needless to say, this motion attributed to me was now unanimously rejected—even though it was not raised under any kind of parliamentary procedure at all (so much for Mikey’s vast knowledge of parliamentary procedure!), and since the document in which the motion was present couldn’t even be properly discussed, as it hadn’t been seconded!
The game was now well afoot, but needless to say, my objections were “answered” only by Mikey’s vehement rage demanding I shut up. Now it was Becky the B’s turn. She now brought up the criticisms I had made privately in e-mails addressed only to the “Socialist” Three—which meant that the other three of the six attendees besides myself had no inkling of their contents. So Becky was now criticizing matters I wrote that were completely unknown to half those attending beside myself! It’s quite fascinating to note that, even though Becky was sitting next to me and the criticisms she was making of me were quite personal, she deliberately stared straight ahead and with her head lowered, in order to avoid my glance completely—so “brave” this self-proclaimed “feminist” was that she couldn’t even personally attack me to my very face! When she finished her litany of accusations that even included “Defaming a dead person,” the late Jane the H, who had done some very cruel things to me in her lifetime, Marvey was given the floor instead of I, and now he continued the “prosecution” thus: he said (and yes, this is verbatim as I distinctly recall it), “I’m afraid to open an e-mail from George, because it will contain criticism.” [!!!!!] Yes, word-for-word: Marvey’s very own “e-mail phobia,” evidently some new mental health disorder that has not yet found its way into the DSM (acronym for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the official compendium of mental disorders produced by the American Psychiatric Association). But in answer to Marvey’s “fear” I’d like to point out that I once had a job as a third-shift parking garage cashier, and twice was the victim of an armed robbery there. Staring down a gun barrel that’s aimed directly at one’s face—now that’s real cause for fear, not some mere e-mail!
More. I related Marvey’s remarks on his fearfulness of receiving e-mails from me to several of my trusted co-workers, all of them fellow college graduates like myself, and in all cases Marvey’s remarks were greeted with howls of contemptuous laughter! A fitting riposte from educated people. (It should be mentioned here that all of the “Socialist” Three are also college graduates, with at least two of them holders of Master’s degrees—Marvey in theology, Becky in nursing—so they’re all educated, and presumably intelligent, people.)
I’ve related my story informally to other apolitical friends of mine in Indianapolis besides the ones mentioned above, and their response was the same as those of Harold, John, and my old academic advisor: it appeared indeed that I had been set up, and they weren’t surprised, given the smug, sanctimonious arrogance that so easily prevails here. So I’ve not been without friends and supporters in my travail, have not been cut off and left to dangle due to my forced “retirement” Indianapolis has thrust upon me after forty-five years of left activism. In fact, I’m rather enjoying it, as I’ve found in apolitical people (by which I mean people who are not actively involved politically, but who have the same decent, humane values the left formally claims, and who would be real assets to any left movement worthy of them) the comfort, succor and support that was so actively and readily denied me among the “progressives.” Which is a real shame for the left, given its present-day isolation from the lives and concerns of ordinary people who are struggling, and who could readily gravitate to it had it something to offer other than sectarianism, cannibalistic feeding upon itself, and a ready penchant for talking at people, not talking to them. Faults that are seemingly everywhere, but significantly noticeable in the justly-named IndiaNOPLACE, native home to left writers Kurt Vonnegut and Dan Wakefield, who left it in such disgust they wouldn’t return for decades. Two writers who used their eloquent pens to satirize this, the Circle City, in two trenchant novels: Vonnegut, in his Breakfast of Champions of 1973, Wakefield in Going All the Way, published in 1971. They also hark back to another notable U.S. social satirist, Nobel Laureate Sinclair Lewis, who savagely, but truly, limned the social and cultural distress of the Midwest so well in novels such as Main Street, Babbitt, Arrowsmith and Elmer Gantry. Funny but telling indeed that Lewis’s work from the 1920s, and Vonnegut’s and Wakefield’s works from the 1970s, could still be so apropos for Indianapolis and Indiana of the second decade of the 21st Century, but that is the enduring quality of true and trenchant art.
So I’ve spent the time cultivating my friendships among the apolitical, as well as continuing to participate in the left nationally through writing. After thirty years of putting up with the “progressives” here, I am coming at last to feel “unfettered and alive” for the first time, fulfilling that yearning that Joni Mitchell sang of in her song, “Free Man in Paris.” Still, at heart I am still a political activist and a man of the left who is not leaving the left, despite its leaving him—and in the lurch at that.
Not all see it this way, and one of my most hostile critics outside of Indianapolis is one Dave Finkel (the only person who’s full real name I’m giving here, as he is truly a public personage), Managing Editor of the left bimonthly Against the Current, and leader in Solidarity, a small socialist group I still maintain active membership in. Speaking from his perch at Solidarity’s National Office in Detroit, Finkel maintains that I brought all these problems on myself, that the SPUSA and DSA “leadership” in Indianapolis surely had “good reasons” for their treachery, and that, anyway, they certainly hadn’t betrayed my trust because they were merely “drinking buddies,” an inference he drew from my indicating that they had been guests in my apartment and we had sometimes shared a beer together. But then, he has not heard my full story; in fact, refused any attempts by me to relate it to him, so, should he read this, it will be the first time ever that he has confronted any narrative of what divided me from the Indianapolis “socialists.” But it won’t be the first time Finkel has found me entirely at fault, and by his own admission, he does not care to know what exactly transpires here in this place so separated from the empyrean realms of Detroit, where he holds court, and where his “Marxist” wisdom enables him to see and understand all things.
But the matter looks entirely different to my friend and fellow Solidarity comrade Phil D., who actually lives in Indiana and was appalled at what transpired here. Although he does not live in Indianapolis now, he did a few years ago, and was himself deliberately politically isolated and socially ostracized because his open Marxism made him a pariah, a “disrupter of the natural harmony” that infused the world view of “respectable Quaker progressive” Jane the H, who treated him the same way she treated me—indeed, as all the leading “progressives” of this justly-named Naptown did. So, by no means do I lack support and supporters—even if I must endure “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” from the hidebound and willfully blind.
But life goes on, and I continue, and part of this continuing on is to tell my story above, and tell it with political import. I would not object to being given the chance to be politically active again, but it is no longer the burning priority I had given it in the past. I would even have a civil rapprochement with the “Socialist” Three, although we will never be friends again—I certainly can never again trust these obvious Three Musketeers of Cowardice. Nor, as I’ve indicated above, am I alone among the Indianapolis socialists in feeling that I was betrayed. Ron the H, for at least one, is unsettled by the matter, and wishes to pursue the matter. And I will gladly stand by my offer to make the whole of the e-mail exchange public to anyone who wishes it. I do offer a heartfelt partial apology for losing my temper in the face of the vicious onslaught and vindictive temper tantrum of Mikey, but I do not retreat one iota from the criticisms of comrades I made in the e-mails: I believe I spoke frankly, without embellishment or euphemism, and that my speaking as I did was for the benefit of Indianapolis socialism. Certainly one has to build a movement with the personnel one has on hand, but that never means that a fruitful, constructive movement can be built from the material found on a garbage heap, same as the building I alluded to at the beginning of this essay. The test of my position is still to come, and will come soon enough—let us see where the Indianapolis socialists are in May 2011, and whether they are at all different from the Forlorn Nine they are today! Marvey can go back to attending his Indiana Pacers home games, a great “socialist” pastime he likes to indulge in, even as he lets his ‘socialist” conscience evade the fact that our sterling NBA basketball team, these very Pacers, recently extorted $33.5 million from the City of Indianapolis so that they would stay here, demanding this payment due to “poverty” while Indianapolis was considering the permanent closing of public library branches due to lack of revenue, and lacks money for its schools and even road repair. But what other priority would “good socialists” such as Marvey and his ilk have!!
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Special Celebrity Pizzas
I've been away from my blog for awhile due to illness and work. so I thought I'd start again by posting a little satirical humor. "Specialty Celebrity Pizzas" grew out of a conversation with friends about a pizzeria that specialized in unique offerings named after celebrities. Sh here are my own Specials, brought to you by Chef and Humorist George Fish!
Barry Manilow Pizza (has to be really lame)--topped with Chef Boy-Ar-Dee spaghetti and meatballs
George W. Bush Pizza--a half-baked pizza crust topped exclusively with American cheese. Hold the hummus!
Glenn Beck Pizza--severely undercooked male cow meat on a half-raw pizza crust: 100% bull, and the whole thing only half-baked
Barack Obama/Bill Clinton Pizza--topped with waffles
Rush Limbaugh Pizza--topped with corn and sprinkled liberally with bullshit. Served with vitriol on the side
Fox News "Fair and Balanced" Pizza--all the toppings so placed that the whole pizza tilts sharply to the right
Hu Jintao Pizza--topped with American-style club sandwich. Hold the Ma-o!
Benjamin Netanyahu Pizza--stolen pita bread topped with Kosher corned beef
Islamic Suicide Bomber Pizza--a heavenly delight served exclusively by virgin waitresses
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Pizza--we deny this pizza contains any Kosher pastrami, lox and bagels, or Gefilte fish! Or that it ever did!
Arizona Governor Jan Brewer Pizza--Mexican-style taco pizza with 100% made-in-USA ingredients only
Senator Mitch McConnell Pizza--contains absolutely nothing, because we can't afford it!
Rand Paul Pizza--topped with ribs, collard greens and chitlins: proprietor reserves the right to refuse to serve it to anyone he pleases!
Wall Street Pizza--topped exclusively with massive amounts of money
BP Pizza--massively spread all over with Louisiana Gulf oil: so popular Bobby Jindal demands more!
Healthcare Reform Pizza-- a healthy mixture of fruits and vegetables with no recisions, but sprinkled liberally with deductables, exclusions and loopholes
Afghan War Pizza Buffet--all you can stomach, with no end in in sight
Barry Manilow Pizza (has to be really lame)--topped with Chef Boy-Ar-Dee spaghetti and meatballs
George W. Bush Pizza--a half-baked pizza crust topped exclusively with American cheese. Hold the hummus!
Glenn Beck Pizza--severely undercooked male cow meat on a half-raw pizza crust: 100% bull, and the whole thing only half-baked
Barack Obama/Bill Clinton Pizza--topped with waffles
Rush Limbaugh Pizza--topped with corn and sprinkled liberally with bullshit. Served with vitriol on the side
Fox News "Fair and Balanced" Pizza--all the toppings so placed that the whole pizza tilts sharply to the right
Hu Jintao Pizza--topped with American-style club sandwich. Hold the Ma-o!
Benjamin Netanyahu Pizza--stolen pita bread topped with Kosher corned beef
Islamic Suicide Bomber Pizza--a heavenly delight served exclusively by virgin waitresses
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Pizza--we deny this pizza contains any Kosher pastrami, lox and bagels, or Gefilte fish! Or that it ever did!
Arizona Governor Jan Brewer Pizza--Mexican-style taco pizza with 100% made-in-USA ingredients only
Senator Mitch McConnell Pizza--contains absolutely nothing, because we can't afford it!
Rand Paul Pizza--topped with ribs, collard greens and chitlins: proprietor reserves the right to refuse to serve it to anyone he pleases!
Wall Street Pizza--topped exclusively with massive amounts of money
BP Pizza--massively spread all over with Louisiana Gulf oil: so popular Bobby Jindal demands more!
Healthcare Reform Pizza-- a healthy mixture of fruits and vegetables with no recisions, but sprinkled liberally with deductables, exclusions and loopholes
Afghan War Pizza Buffet--all you can stomach, with no end in in sight
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