ABOUT THE PICTURE: having any genuine quality of life in the viciously anti-mass-transit United States demands ownership of a motor vehicle sustained by enough income to pay the increasingly prohibitive costs of fuel, licensing, insurance and maintenance.
But
my (meticulously maintained) Ford V6 Tempo died in mid-2009 after
260,000 miles. And capitalism being what it is, I will never in this
lifetime have enough money to afford another car.
As
a result I am often forced to impose on friends for local transport and
am utterly dependent on them for any spiritually recharging visits to
the country. Thus my boundless joy and endless gratitude when my friend
Cate Montana – whose new book Unearthing Venus is as vital to the struggle against patriarchy as Manifesto is to the fight against capitalism-become-fascism – insisted on driving me up to Mount Rainier.
It
was my first-ever trip to Paradise, the jumping-off place for hikers
and climbers at 5,420 feet, the closest you can drive to the 14,411-foot
crest of the volcano. We walked a short distance up the Paradise River
trail, where I promptly discovered just how badly out-of-shape I am due
to the combination of (irremediable) post-smoking weight gain and the
oppressively prison-like inactivity inflicted by Tacoma's wretched
public transport and the lack of my own car.
But
I could not long remain mortified and gloomy in Cate's uplifting
company. This post-Paradise cell-phone selfie, at Reflection Lakes,
elevation 5,311 feet, gives a glimpse of the mountain and the happiness
of the day itself. (Photo by Cate, to whom my most profound thanks.)
*
(Note:
Even while allegedly on a semi-vacation from blogging, I continued to
blog – compulsively, you might say. Such is reality for one to whom
writing has seemingly become as life-sustaining as breathing itself. The
following is the result.)
*
JUDAISM,
CHRISTIANITY, ISLAM – each claims a divine sadist as its founder, and
each behaves accordingly. As their own scriptures tell us, “by their fruits shall ye know them.”
Thus
the long, blood-drenched litany of Abrahamic atrocities new and old:
Gaza; 9/11; Yugoslavia; the modern-day depredations of Jihadists and
Hassidim; the Christian bigotry underlying the Nazi Holocaust; the
pogroms of Imperial Russia; the massacre at Mountain Meadows; the First
Nations genocide; the St. Bartholomew's massacre; the Ulster massacres;
the European wars of religion; the Burning Times; the Inquisition; the
depredations of the Teutonic Knights; the Crusades; the Islamic
invasions of Europe; Christian persecutions of Pagans in the final
centuries of the Roman Empire; the innumerable massacres by the
Israelites recounted in the Torah and Old Testament, etc. ad nauseam. (See for example here and here.)
At
the core of Christianity's malevolence in the United States is the
so-called “prosperity gospel,” which defines wealth as divine reward and
poverty as divine punishment. That it is the dominant religious ethos
within the imperial homeland explains the nation's increasing savagery
toward lower-income people, especially those who are elderly and/or
disabled. Its inherent misogyny fuels the war against women. Its notion
of “one nation under god” – literally, god as heavenly Führer – mandates foreign policy based on “American Exceptionalism,” the 21st Century variant of the Nazi doctrine of Aryan supremacy.
Moreover,
this sort of fanatically militant Christianity whether Protestant or
Catholic is methodically replacing the remnants of constitutional
governance with theocracy based on biblical law, a relentless campaign
in which the Hobby Lobby decision is but the most recent Christian
victory.
Yet
most of the Left, with its collective head plunged deep in the sands of
denial, arrogantly mouths wishful platitudes about religion becoming
irrelevant and thus refuses to recognize the threat – never mind it is
thoroughly documented on-line and in many recent books.
The most useful of these sources include three books and three web sites. The books are: The Family: the Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power (Jeff Sharlet; Harper: 2008); American Fascists: the Christian Right and the War in America (Chris Hedges; Free Press div. of Simon & Schuster: 2006); and American Theocracy: the Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century (Kevin Phillips; Viking: 2006). The web sites are: Theocracy Watch; CatholicWatch; and Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
Such
disclosures give us a telling and presumably terrifying glimpse of what
our everyday lives would be like if the Christian theocrats – who now
control the U.S. Supreme Court (and are therefore able to dictate the
terms of all governance within U.S. borders) – continue their victorious
onslaught.
(Note: The above, one of the most relevant essays I have ever written, originated on the comment thread of “Inside Mars Hill's massive meltdown,” a breathtakingly courageous exposé
of the savagery at the incipiently violent core of true-believer
Christianity. Written by the upcoming freelancer Stacey Solie,
“Meltdown” has probably generated more responses – and more revelations
of the hatefulness spawned by Christian “love” – than anything Crosscut,
the Seattle online daily, has ever published. The original text of my
response therefore included a salute both to Solie and to Crosscut for
their journalistic bravery. Via AlterNet, two other gripping accounts of adults recovering from Christian malevolence are here and here.)
******
I
GENERALLY AGREE – often emphatically – with what Chris Hedges writes.
But when a public intellectual of such wisdom and eloquence belabors us
with his belief in “God,” it does nothing whatsoever for the cause of
humanitarian betterment. Indeed it is arguable such proselytizing –
precisely because it reinforces the very ignorance that keeps so many of
us in chains – is actually anti-humanitarian. In any case, it is
depressingly grotesque and irremediably discrediting.
Moreover,
and despite Hedges' disclaimers, the term “God” has by usage come to
mean only the god of the Abrahamic religions. This deity is our species'
ultimate sadist, not just the heavenly Führer
but the divine model of a serial killer, proven so by the innumerable
genocides committed – typically at his command – by his disciples in
Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Thus if this “God” is anything more
than an imaginary character – if he is anything other than an adult
equivalent of an especially vindictive Santa Claus – the notion he
“weeps” is patently absurd. Either God doesn't care or – more likely
(given the murderous histories of his followers) – he chortles with glee
at the carnage.
(Posted in response to “Let My People Go,” by Hedges on TruthDig.)
******
NO LONGER CAN I doubt 9/11 was the U.S. version of the Reichstag Fire.
The
pre-9/11 U.S. is no more. We the People are no longer citizens. We are
instead subjects of a global empire, what is effectively the Fourth
Reich. (Making it thus was the avowed intent of the Nazi war criminals
the USian capitalists and politicians welcomed and embraced after 1945.)
In
the Fourth Reich as in the Third Reich, unpopular minorities are the
first targets of oppression – a core principle in Nazism and all other
forms of fascism. (This is how the politicians retain the support of the
Moronic Majority.)
In the Third Reich, ruled by Hitler and the Nazis in accordance with the principles Hitler laid out in Mein Kampf, the initial targets were Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, homosexuals, Leftists and trade unionists.
But for the Red Army, the Third Reich and its allies would have conquered the world.
In
the Fourth Reich, ruled by the One Percent via corrupt politicians in
accordance with the principles Ayn Rand laid out in her
fictionalizations of Mein Kampf, the initial targets are African-Americans, Hispanics, First Nations people, Leftists and trade unionists.
The
Fourth Reich, whether economically or militarily, has already conquered
the world and is now making of the entire planet an electronic
concentration camp.
Who then can save us from this looming fascist darkness? Who has the requisite courage, solidarity and discipline?
(The above remarks originated as my contribution to the comment thread of “Ferguson Holds Up a Mirror to Our Militarized Police State,” by Carl Gibson of Reader Supported News.)
******
THE MOST TELLING fact about Hillary Clinton is she began her political life as a “Goldwater Girl” – the 1960s version of someone fiercely proud to publicly declare herself an Ayn Rand fascist.
Moreover,
Hillary made that self-defining choice at a time when the issues –
race, domestic poverty, Vietnam, the Cold War – were unequivocally
clear.
If
you backed the Civil Rights Movement, supported the War on Poverty and
believed in making every possible effort toward world peace, you voted
for President Lyndon Johnson. But if you opposed the Civil Rights
Movement, despised the poor as “lazy,” wanted to privatize all
government services and advocated nuke-em-till-they-glow imperialism,
you voted for Sen. Barry Goldwater.
Since
then, while carefully disguising herself as a feminist, Hillary has
clandestinely joined the effort by Christian fanatics to impose the
savage misogyny of biblical-law theocracy on the United States. (See
Jeff Sharlet, The Family: the Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power [Harper: 2008], pages 272-277.)
In
other words, beneath her cloak of Big Lies, Hillary is still that
Goldwater Girl – still Hillary the Heartless, still burning with desire
the United States be the Fourth Reich at home and abroad.
(The above originated as my response to “Hillary Clinton Joins Republicans in Call for War,” by David Clark Scott of The Christian Science Monitor, reprinted by RSN.)
******
THE NAMING CONTEST for the new water taxis that serve Seattle/King County prompted Crosscut
columnist Knute Berger to suggest a rewriting of Washington state
political history that's almost as outrageously revisionist as Hillary's
efforts to present herself as a feminist.
Berger
proposed one of the environmentally protective taxis be named after the
late Dixy Lee Ray, the notorious anti-environmentalist who, from 1977
through 1981, was the state's first female governor. Thus “A water taxi named 'Dixy'?”; thus too my unsparing response, substantially revised for reprinting here:
As
an alumnus of Gov. Ray's enemies list – 'twas I who scooped the world
on her practice of using tax dollars to provide chauffeur-driven
limousines for her department heads – I have to question the
appropriateness of naming anything but a leaky nuclear-waste dump after
such a brazenly anti-environmental politician.
I also have to believe columnist Berger writes in jest.
Dixy's
automotive ostentation, which defiantly reversed the sensible state
energy-conservation policies instituted by Gov. Dan Evans following Big
Oil's 1973 price-coup, gave us not only the Ayn-Randish arrogance of the
Welfare Limo but the fuelish absurdity of the Ecology Limo as well.
Both these gas-guzzlers were operated by liveried drivers, complete with visored caps.
My story, “Dixy's Honchos Get Bigger, Greedier Cars,” broke on Page One, 1 May 1977 in the old Sunday-Wednesday-Friday Federal Way News.
It went statewide and national via United Press International, for
which I was a longtime stringer, and it made the front section of The New York Times.
The accompanying art, which I got by sneaking into the state garage, ran only in FWN.
It was a photo of the Welfare Limo, the Department of Social and Health
Services logo like a royal coat-of-arms on its doors, the vehicle's
pretentious length deliberately emphasized by the 24mm Nikkor on my
Nikon F.
But
the most significant element of Gov. Ray's administration was not so
easily photographed. It was Dixy's sneering celebration of how – by
running as a Democrat but governing as a John Bircher – she had duped a
nominally Democratic electorate into voting for a female Barry
Goldwater.
Hers
was a false-flag campaign as brazen as the president's shape-shift from
Obama the Orator to Barack the Betrayer – for which (given Watergate
Felon John Ehrlichman's testimony about Washington state as a
proving-ground for techniques of oppression), it may have been a
test-run.
Note
too the parallel use of disguise: Dixy, like Hillary decades later, was
presented to the public as a feminist Democrat, just as Obama was
presented as an African-American Democrat, each in truth so far Right
the epithet “fascist” is almost an understatement.
I remember now some of my press-corps colleagues – and some Democratic Party insiders too – joked that Dixy was “Nixon's Revenge.” Looking back, I cannot but suspect they were right.
By
the way, if you read the linked piece, Berger errs in referring to Gov.
Ray as “Madam Nuke.” Amongst her opponents throughout Washington state,
her colloquial moniker was “Madam Atom,” memorable both for its easy
alliteration and its portent of glow-in-the-dark disaster. “Madam Nuke”
was used only by journalists, self included, who were jealous someone
else had come up with the title “Madam Atom.”
More
to the water-taxi point, if Sen. Warren Magnuson had not employed
political sleight-of-hand to keep Dixy from turning Puget Sound into an
international petroleum port, our homeland sea might now be too befouled
for any vessels save supertankers.
Hence if we must name a taxi to immortalize someone notorious, even D.B. Cooper – who robbed a public conveyance but did no damage to the environment – would seem to be a better choice.
******
(The following was born as my response to Crosscut's publication of a notably nasty film review entitled “Too much? A movie gives us an inside view of poverty” and was only slightly revised.)
UNFORTUNATELY I HAVE not seen the film Rich Hill,
and unless it comes to Tacoma via The Grand Cinema, there is probably
no way I will ever be able to see it. Yet it sounds as if it is a
genuine work of art, both for its documentary value and for the veracity
of the candid moments recorded by its filmmakers. Assuming this is
true, it is an achievement that would surely be honored by critics just
about anywhere else on this planet – especially in the cultural
epicenters of New York, Paris, Berlin and St. Petersburg.
But here in the aesthetic backwater of Pugetopolis, Rich Hill
is damned by local critic Rustin Thompson for what he implies are
serial intrusions born of what he belittles as “artistic whims.” The
film's unflinching view of the inescapable poverty that now
characterizes reality for half the U.S. population – a triumph of
reportage that elsewhere would be lauded amongst the picture's greatest
strengths – is the very quality that prompts Thompson to denounce it as
“making a case for the ennobling value of squalor.”
Actually
– again with the stipulation I have not seen the film – what Thompson
seems to be expressing in his notably negative review is probably just
another variant of what I have learned from bitter experience is the
Puget Sound region's often violent hostility toward social-documentary
photographers and the images we produce.
The
basis of this prejudice – I have encountered its like nowhere else in
the United States (not even in the [allegedly] far-less-civilized South)
– is no doubt the same provincial small-mindedness that defines how
people born in Seattle and its environs relate to those of us from
elsewhere. It seems the rampant xenophobia that underlies the Seattle
Freeze – this locale's well-documented antagonism to outsiders – readily
expands into the spurious notion any un-posed photograph of the human
condition is invariably a malicious invasion of the subject's privacy.
In
its most extreme form – as a quietly fanatical dogma commonplace
amongst the members of the local Ansel Adams cult – this patently
reactionary rejection of social-documentary imagery is bolstered by a
sneering conviction that photography of the human condition is nothing
more than a waste of time and material – a medium with no artistic value
whatsoever. In the eyes of these chillingly heartless elitists, human
subjects and the struggles of oppressed peoples are reduced to
meaninglessness in comparison to the grandeur of un-peopled nature.
Obviously Thompson does not go nearly so far in his rejection of Rich Hill.
Indeed he admits “(t)he filmmakers' hearts are in the right place.” But
– to me at least – his review nevertheless bears (and bares) an
undeniable taint of Seattle's aesthetic toxicity, so much so it seems a
perfect example of the Seattle Freeze transformed into the pretense of
art criticism.
There
is also in Thompson's text the bias one would expect of a
cinematographer who earns a living making propaganda films for
charities: that is, he condemns Rich Hill for avoiding “any
suggestion of how these boys could get help, or any larger picture of
the endemic issues faced by the community as a whole.” In other words,
there was no uplifting sales pitch at the end of the film – no pretense a
viewer's contribution might make things better – to relieve the guilt
and emotional depression evoked by the subjects' circumstances.
From my perspective, that notable lack of PollyAnna deception may underscore what might be Rich Hill's
two most revealing truths: that as capitalism inevitably morphs into
fascism, the poverty of its subjects is inescapable; and that our
species' only hope lies in a revolutionary ideology no present-day U.S.
theater would dare screen.
(DISCLOSURE:
though most of my lifetime income came from writing and editing, it was
photography that produced most of the fame-and-glory aspects of my
resumé. My picture credits start with Paris-Match and Newsweek; I
was the social documentarian for Manhattan's Beth Israel Hospital
[1967-1970], for which I focused on the people and neighborhoods served
by its free clinics; was the founding photographer [1974-1976] of The Seattle Sun;
taught photography during the later '70s and early 1980s at Western
Washington University's [Seattle] Center for Urban Studies and at Tacoma
Community College; am officially retired but retain a working
familiarity with film and cameras. A consummate street photographer
during my Manhattan years [1965-1970; 1983-1986], my first few weeks in
Seattle (1972) taught me that attempting street photography here is as
dangerous as trying to photograph the Ku Klux Klan in Tennessee.)
LB/17 August 2014
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