Instead of mountain men we are cursed with a plague of diggers, drillers, borers, grubbers; of asphalt spreaders, dam builders, overgrazers, clear-cutters, and strip miners whose object seems to be to make our mountains match our men – making molehills out of mountains for a race of rodents – for the rat race. (Edward Abbey, Down the River with Henry Thoreau)
Imagine two people spending their nights alone in the wilderness. One is only barely asleep, aware of every noise and certain that in the thick soup are bears and mountain lions. He will awake at the slightest noise, holding perfectly still until he resolves its puzzle in his mind. Wind caused a pine cone to drop on the tent? Deer passing through? A ragged coyote looking for an easy meal? Each noise creates a moment of panic. The woods at night are dangerous. They need to be so. If we remove the danger, we remove the most important thing that wilderness offers: Wild. It is a journey into the soul.
Our second man is a coward. He’s in the woods out of necessity, hunting for game. That’s not a problem. We’re omnivores, after all. The problem is that he feels a need to have a gun at his side to help him sleep. He doesn’t own his fear. He has not yet let his inner child have a vision quest. Continue reading “Fear primordial”→
We have taken to watching the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon lately. He’s very funny and the show is very entertaining. He might have a good long run, and I wish him the best. Fallon is a practiced comedian, that is, he works very hard on his bits. All of his accents and characters are the product of hours before a mirror, honing them to perfection. That, coupled with his personal happiness, natural charm and friendliness, makes him the perfect host for that show.
NBC is using him for cross-marketing purposes, however. His monologue each night is laden with current fashionable politics. The official US propaganda line these days is that Vladimir Putin is a monster. Most Americans are aware of events in Ukraine, and many can now locate it on a world map. That’s highly unusual. Our propaganda machine wants such awareness. So Fallon’s writers, who no doubt don’t give two shits for anything other than getting good laughs, have been instructed to introduce topical material into the monologue. They have have him opening with Putin impressions and bits. It’s Cold War fever again!
The last show I saw had Fallon mocking the vote in Crimea to remain part of Russia, inferring that the count had to be rigged since it goes counter to what we are told to think about that situation. Who can know. But he should temper that humor a bit. In the US our elections are true farces. The candidates are controlled by the same money, and when they are not, the results are stolen by easily-hacked electronic counting machines. So let’s contain the mockery. We’re in no position to judge.
I understand the confusion, however. I have a hunch the Crimean vote represented a true expression of public sentiment, and that would indeed be a foreign thing for any American to witness.
I stopped watching TV news decades ago, and quit newspapers shortly after I realized that Obama was a fraud, some time around late 2008. I only gather up impressions, and even though I say so myself, feel as “informed” on this issues of our time as anyone I know.
But as an outsider, I think it worth mentioning here that the United States news media is a state-run outfit with one point of view offered on all outlets from the supposed “right” over at Fox to the “left” over at MSNBC. NPR and Limbaugh are in harmony. They are just packages with outer wrapping designed to appeal to different audiences.
Limbaugh listeners are reactionary, needing the hostility he projects against perceived “liberals” to validate their own views.
Those views, incidentally, are identical to those of NPR listeners, who need to feel intellectually superior to reactionaries for their own validation.
Of course that’s a broad sweeping statement and is not true if analyzed in detail. There are, within our doctrinal confines, disagreements that are constantly being debated. Is abortion OK? Immigration? Gun control? Gay marriage? Marijuana? Taxes too high or low? These are “wedge” matters, used to segment us for advertising and voting purposes, but otherwise of no consequence. We are allowed our debates on those matters for the precise reason that they do not threaten real power.
But on the important issues of our time there is no dissent anywhere in the narrow spectrum. Further, anyone voicing dissent is quickly dispatched. On Bill Maher’s Real Time, for instance, a panelist recently spoke of the painfully obvious fact that there never was any “war” in the Cold War, that it was just a framework that allowed the US to justify its perpetual aggression against resource colonies. He was quickly hushed by all of the panelists, “right” and “left” alike. Such a foolish man, saying something obviously true. He won’t be asked back.
And now, with the EU-forced violent coup d’état in Ukraine and Crimea’s breakaway, I see complete and universal agreement on the lies that are being told. You can judge for yourself, but it’s only a matter of degree. Limbaugh is probably saying that Obama was soft and Putin took advantage of him. I imagine Thom Hartmann is defending Obama, saying he handled the matter correctly. On those shows that do allow some real news, like the Daily Show and Maher, Putin is likely being caricatured as a Hitler-like bare-chested monster.
But that’s how it is done in a state-controlled environment: Agreement about the lies is universal. Details are a matter of dispute. Anyone calling a lie a lie is shown the door.
CraigOne animal that I’d like to see hunted to extinction is the assassination “buff,” or the person so caught up in the details of the various important crimes of our times that he has lost all sight of their true importance.
Understanding those crimes is useful in understanding the nature of people who now hold office, supposedly the ones in charge. But they are mere drones. Understanding that helps to understand the nature of our country.
I stumbled across a short article by Jeffrey St. Clair in Counterpunch (behind subscription wall) titled “Camus in the Time of Drones.” It’s a nice piece because St. Clair is beyond body counts and instead focuses on the nature of drone killing as practiced by the current American regime. It is senseless, even random, and there is no retribution to be had. What can be done to a drone that hits the ‘wrong’ target? Execute it?
People killed by drone strikes are as often innocent bystanders as intended targets, but that’s not the point. The ability to murder people with impunity is the essential element of drone warfare.
The conscience of the killer has been sterilized, the drone operator, fully alienated from the act he is committing, can walk out the door after his shift is over and calmly order and IPA at the local microbrew or play a round of golf under the desert sky. He is left with no blood on his hands, no savagery weighing on his conscience, no degrading images to stalk his dreams,
St. Clair writes as if drone warfare is new. Only the technology is. Drones are instruments of terror. But we’ve always had them. Piloted aircraft that blow up innocent people are flown by highly trained drones, many with astounding SAT scores. Since they cannot see their victims, there is no qualm of conscience. What’s different?
In Vietnam some of the killing had to be done one-on-one by trained assassins under the program codenamed “Phoenix.” A different kind of drone was used and perhaps 40,000 people (if anything resembling truth is ever allowed to escape Langley) were murdered in cold blood, and for one purpose: To inflict terror on that society. What became of those who did the killings? Were they dispatched by their employer too? Or did they re-enter our society and become our night stalkers and serial killers? It’s hard to imagine that men trained in the fine art of assassination by a thousand devices came back home to live mundane lives.
What has this to do with assassination buffs? For some reason as I read St. Clair’s piece, the name Roger Craig came to mind. He was a deputy sheriff in Dallas in 1963 when JFK was murdered. He refused to buckle before the Warren Commission. He found what was perhaps one of the real assassination rifles in the Texas Book Depository, a 7.65 German Mauser, and refused to say it was something else. He heard the news of the shooting of Officer Tippet at 1:06, and refused to change it to 1:15, the time that the Commission needed to pin the crime on Oswald.
An assassination ‘buff’ will recite those details about Craig and completely miss their importance: Craig suffered from integrity. It got him killed.
Integrity is why people die young in a land like ours. But there are other ways to dispatch them. Ralph Nader, Anthony Weiner, Elliot Spitzer, Dorothy Kilgallen, John F. Kennedy – all appear to have integrity. Such people cannot stand to be around liars, cowards and murderers. Craig was dismissed from the Sheriff’s office in 1967. He could never again work in “law” enforcement. His wife left him. Attempts were made on his life. But he refused to change his story. Finally he is said to have killed himself in 1975.
Not likely. He was probably murdered by a drone. But integrity cannot be killed. Only its vessel is dispatched.
View from LopezWe are back and recovered from our latest trip, and have a couple of weeks here before we again head out. We have a brief trip to Montana in early April, where all of Eileen Tokarski’s grandchildren (and their parents and step-parent) are gathering for an impromptu graveside memorial. As my oldest said, they’ve not really had a chance to “process” her passing, by which she means to say good-bye. Standing at a grave, which I don’t otherwise recommend, serves that purpose. It is a moving experience when done with the intent to create closure. The most effective means by which I’ve seen this ceremony work is by releasing helium balloons and watching them drift far away and out of sight. It is a powerful image guaranteed to produce tears.
Later in April we are going to Bellingham to visit Mom’s sole surviving sister, and from there to visit a cousin on Lopez Island out in the San Juan’s. This cousin, I am so pleased to report, recently was allowed to marry her spouse of many years – legally. I only knew of her, but not on a personal basis. I had read the book JFK and the Unspeakable, by James Douglass, and in the acknowledgements (who reads those?) found he had a Northwest connection, and then I saw my cousin’s name. It’s not a common name, but not that uncommon either, and I thought can it be? Months later I passed the question on to my aunt, and yes, I learned, this was my cousin. Later we had a long phone conversation, and she sent me an early draft of a stage play to advance the Doulglass work, and also some of his work on the MLK murder. I am excited at the prospect of spending time with them.
I so look forward to that trip. Everything is new and fresh when old eyes see new faces and places.
After Lopez, we are off to Portland for a week. We rented a condo in the downtown area, and will have some grand-kid/kid time. Portland in April is really kind of a nice place. We might even kayak the Willamette.
I know, you’re thinking who has time to travel like that? Not many. But then, in all these years before I’ve not had time or money to travel much, and so went on a journey of the mind. I just got back from wasting part of my Saturday on the impenetrable PW at the Intelligent Disconnection. All I ever did before I could travel was to make regular trips to the book store, and my whole world view changed. I did not mean for that to happen. I was the staid, boring, self-assured Catholic Republican that my parents had raised. But for that to happen to PW, one true thing has to sneak through his defenses and undermine his certitude. I don’t know what that one true thing might be. I only know that 1) he’s not looking, and 2) hasn’t stumbled yet.
The key to understanding this country and its intellectual culture is this: PW is protected from ever finding one true thing by intellectual hubris. Unless he stumbles on on one true thing, unless it jumps out from behind a tree and slaps him, he’s merely on his way to becoming yet another serious commentator on the important state of affairs in this world. He’ll know nothing, least of all that he knows nothing. Those kind of people write our important books and fill our TV screens. That’s why this country is so damned boring!
This has been a great trip. I can tell because it seems so long ago that we left home and yet it’s only been nine days. We landed in Atlanta, and from there saw the Great Smokies, Asheville, Charlestown, Savannah, and even stepped into Alabama so we could say we’ve been there. (Alabama, based on our quick fact-finding trip, is a large fireworks stand.) We are now in Bonita Springs, Florida.
So let’s find reason to travel and visit other parts of our land: These places exist in our minds, but seeing them in the flesh blends them into our commons. We’re not different. We all want the same things out of life. We are just in different geographical places. But we’re one people.
The armies of the north introduced total warfare down here, punishing civilians for merely being in the wrong place at that time. Atlanta was destroyed, but when Sherman got to Savannah, he thought it too beautiful to destroy. That city, above all others, stands out for us. It has charm unlike the others, cobbled streets on which stand old buildings that now house the same stupid gift shops and bars and restaurants as in every other city in the US. But with Savannah, I want a souvenir coffee cup to put on the shelf in my office.
Southern latitudes, Florida in particular, offer beauty, warm hospitality and friendly charm. Life on the gulf this time of year transcends mere relaxation. The warm breeze is a drug, the lush green landscape a comfortable down mattress. I can see living here and why it has drawn so many millions over the decades. We could be on the Mediterranean in the Middle Ages or the Black Sea in the time of Genghis Kahn. The vast majority of humans are near the salty breeze as they awake each day.
We’re in a gated community. Mexicans, Cubans and blacks tend to our needs. For that reason, I could not live here. Liberal guilt would ruin it for me.
We used to take two publications when I was growing up: the Saturday Evening Post, and Life Magazine. Both went under in the 70’s. The reason was waste product, an advertising concept. The magazines had broad appeal – there was as likely something in any issue for me, my parents and older brothers. That created a problem. The makers of Geritol, for instance, did not want to pay to advertise to readership that did not use their product.
It’s called segmentation. Advertisers insisted that magazines target audiences so that when they bought space, there was no waste. Hence, magazines like Gum Chewers Quarterly and Knot Tying Weekly Along with Cosmo and it’s endless ‘how to surprise him in bed’ lists and GQ for the self-imagined sophisticated male. Continue reading “The appeal of silence”→
“[The Cherokee] would go down to the water early in the morning, wade out waist deep, take the water of the river and throw it up over his head, and say, ‘Wash away any thoughts or feelings that may hinder me from being closer to my God. Take away any thoughts or feelings that may hinder me from being closer to all my brothers and sisters on the earth, and the animals of the earth.’ And they would wash themselves and cleanse themselves every morning, and they would walk out of the water.” [Adapted from Freeman Owle, “Going to Water.”]
Those words are posted on an information sign on the Oconaluftee River near Cherokee, outside Great Smoky Mountain National Park. I found them moving.
In comments below the previous post we were discussing the propaganda that we swim in daily here in the land of the blind, and I remember Jacques Ellul wrote about the “illusion of progress.” We have this notion that life is getting better. We have better aircraft, phones, Internet, interstate Highways, GPS systems, all due to the Department of Defense, an Orwellian euphemism. That government agency controls our technology, and for so long as that technology gives them an advantage over enemies, real and make believe, it is kept under wraps. When the advantage is gone it is given over to the private sector.
War is progress.
That image of a man wading into a river, cleansing his body and mind in preparation for a new day – we have surely regressed. What more is there to life than to exist in peace and in nature and among our fellow humans?
USA Today (similar to “Pravda,” or an official American propaganda outlet), says
Crimea government called fake: Putin decries Ukraine’s leadership as illegitimate, but analysts say he’s got it backward.
The “analysts” are never identified, but I think I’ve got it figured out. They are deep in the bowels of State or the Executive, and are unidentified because that’s how we do “news” in the crazy imperialist country. Anonymous sources make it up, doe-eyed stenographers repeat it, their only job to make it sound officious.
Meanwhile, there is still no hint anywhere in any US propaganda outlet of the facts on the ground: The Russians did not “invade” Crimea. Troops have been there for decades, along with military hardware. It is all by agreement. Additionally, the coup d’état was carried out by neo-Nazi elements within Ukraine, long supported by CIA through NED. CIA itself was a blending of SS and OSS after World War II, given Carte Blanche by a doe-eyed Harry Truman, who would later call it his greatest mistake.
It’s ugly, but true, and so far from official US propaganda, and the doe-eyed attitudes of even sentient Americans, that it seems bizarre. But Bizarroworld is really USA today. That’s how crazy we are.
The US media, the most submissive in the industrial world, is simply lying about Ukraine, and in bold. But turn to the sports section – there they are very good, even burrowing and defiant. There we get actual reporting, even some journalism.
Piece of Mindful 