Post for Bobby, but interesting to all [maybe]:

About our Trickster John project -- I have no current title so TJ will do. To repeat what we discussed in person: Years ago I wrote a play for 5th or 6th grade. It was intended as the core of a curricular unit on slavery. I have always been interested in folklore , and when I took a course on the subject I learned that much of what I had loved was fakelore, usually invented by corporations to support their destructive habits and predatory ways. [ex: John Bunyon was created by logging companies to justify the rape of our natural resources. Only one actual folk tale featuring him could be found, and it was derivative and pornographic.]

Research into slave tales collected by ethnographers from those who had actually suffered under the South’s Noble Cause revealed a large collection of stories in the trickster mode. Most, if not all, societies have these tales. They range from Jack in the Germanic/English tradition; to Coyote or Raven in the Americas; to Anansi, who, Wikipedia informs me, is of West African origin. Torn from their native lands and cultures and forced into artificial groupings by the plantation system, the new Americans kept their old culture as alive as they could. One way was to turn old folk tales into new versions which reflected the horrors of captivity.

We all know of Brer Rabbit. Joel Chandler Harris’ character was based on actual slave tales, but Harris could not avoid racist assumptions, including a sense of Black inferiority. The tales of the character I prefer, sometimes called John, often called by many other names, were more edgy and often aimed at belittling and insulting Ol Massa and Ol Miss and other White authority figures. If Harris was told of these tales [and that is very unlikely], he was either incapable of or unwilling to repeat stories which suggested that the slaves could outsmart their White oppressors and strike back with demeaning stories about how smart a slave could be and how gullible a master often was. Think Hogan's Heroes with a sharp cutting edge.

I’ll do the re-write, unfortunately I haven’t yet found the play. I may have to start from scratch. You do the drawings. Which brings me to the purpose of this entry. I have asked you to join me in this project and that makes us partners. Should this ever be sold, we will simply split any royalties. The only problem that might arrive is if we disagree on contract terms with a publisher. Since these tend to be standardized, I don’t expect a problem. I will hold the copyright on the words, you on the art.

So, if we are to be coworkers, cocreators? coartists? artistes? Who cares? If we are to work together, let’s agree that you have the absolute final word on art and I on wording. Still, we need to work together. I suggest that we freely accept mutual critiques, but never forget who commands which portion and therefore has the final say.

All the verbiage in the paragraph above is an excuse for me to step outside the boundaries of common sense and discuss the artwork with you. Since my drawing skills are at a third grade level at best, this is extremely presumptuous of me, but you don’t mind. Do you?

If you do, stop reading now! You have been warned!

Continuing to read past this point constitutes complete acceptance of the above terms and conditions; plus any others I can think of later.

It’s OK, you can trust me.

Honest. You really can.

Of course, thousands of children's books go out to publishers every year. The whole issue is dependent upon many factors beyond our control, but who knows? It might sell.

So, to get to the grit and grind: The story is potentially divisive. It could be read as an attack on Whites, rather than on the White Supremacists who actually committed the crimes of slavery. It could also make slavery look fun and amusing. Here lie Scylla and Charybdis. We must navigate carefully. The point of the story, from my point of view, is to communicate nothing about Blacks or Whites, but instead to convey the inherent dignity and sense of personal value natural to all humanity. Unfortunately, slavery, which started largely nonracial, became purely racial as time wore on. While a form of white slavery found in bonded servants [one which reflected the biblical requirement that slaves eventually be freed], and slavery involving Amerinds faded, the Black/White version persisted and still haunts us today.

So why even go there? Because the issue is real and must be faced. I love both German and Japanese culture. Yet I feel the Germans have truly repented of the horrors their ancestors perpetrated in WW II, and made what repentance can be made, out of a genuine sense of contrition. A few [very few] Jews have actually emigrated back to their ancestral homes in Germany.

But, as much as I love Japan and her people, Japanese politics are still dominated by secret and powerful right wing groups which feel no remorse for the war or the atrocities committed during it. The issue is very complex, with most young Japanese as blissfully unaware of their past as most young Americans are of slavery [well, nonBlack young Americans anyway]. There are also many Japanese who are aware and wish to make appropriate acts of contrition and reconciliation with the world. For this, I hold Japan accountable. Not because they were worse than the Nazis, but because the nation remains sharply divided over the issue with many believing to this day that Japan was forced to go to war by United States’ aggression!

I see in Japan much of what I see in America. We need to face the horrors of slavery and make sincere acts of condition and reconciliation. We are better about it now than we were when I was child. I still recall the textbooks in school when Dad was stationed in Biloxi, Mississippi. They showed happy slaves who were well treated and benefited greatly from the benign rule of their masters. As I recall, the point was actually made that they were better off here than in Africa. God, it was sickening! Even at that age I knew it was a horrible lie.

Still, we have hardly faced our ugly past as well as the Germans have faced theirs. Worse, they have done so in only 60 years. We have had since 1865 to do so. I love my country too much to ignore this oversight. Curricula no longer justify slavery. Many teachers do fine units on the subject which are entirely fair and honest [within the context of the tender age of the children being taught. There are limits to what can be told to a child.] I recall a school wide project at Westside in which “slaves” escaped and were hunted by “slave catchers” It was fun, yes, but no one pretended that in real life there had been any joy in it for the escapees. Man, I have to pause and say, I had a fine staff back in those days. Genuinely great teachers who cared and made a real difference. I miss working with such people. That’s why I want to work with you on this.

My point is, great teaching notwithstanding, as a society we look a lot like Japan. Some of us, of all races, have and will continue to deal with the ugly past. Others, like the Texas Board of Education, want to rewrite history and make it clear that slavery was a minor and forgettable blip in American perfection and holiness. This work is, to me, a statement of man’s struggle for freedom and dignity under any conditions and a reaffirmation of the need for redemption.

How’s that for an inflated sense of self importance? I work at it.

Before I got deflected into all the verbiage above, I was going to talk about details. This is already too long for a blog entry, so I’ll make a second one later today for those details.

A few odds and ends:

Bobby, I have hope that I might yet be able to create those three art works I once described to you. I have no talent, but have been aware of the potential of "printers" which build up a three dimensional object layer by layer. The technology was not mature but was very expensive. Today, a home kit of the device is available. still rather costly at $750, but affordable. it can only create small objects, but it is a start.

I recall reading in the L A Times when I was in high school that there was too little water available to sustain a continually growing Southern California. Today we are suffering for ignoring what was well known to experts 40 years ago. In Monday's Times, an editorial comment on the water problem noted that Wesley Powell publicly declared, "Gentlemen, you are pilling up a heritage of conflict and litigation over water rights, for there is not sufficient water to supply the land." He was shouted down. This happened in 1893.

Today the superstitious, who prefer comforting advertising style sound bites to reality, refuse to believe in global warming. Here we go again.

The July/August issue of Skeptical Inquirer has an article entitled, Blindsided by a Culture of Disinformation by Alan J. Scott. and has, in its follow up section, another article entitled the Twenty Year Effort to Create Doubt about [sic.] Climate Change by John R. Mashey. Interesting articles, anyone who is interested can find the facts quite easily, so I won’t sum them up. the simple fact is that there is no serious scientific doubt about climate change, but more and more Americans are fooled by the noise of the deceivers into doubting reality.

I feel that the situation is well defined by the movie, The Day the Earth Stood Still. I love the original, and was very worried about a remake, but I found that I liked the new version. The point of the movie was that we humans are shortsighted, even self destructive in our refusal to face reality; but when the crisis becomes undeniable we muster our resources and make astounding efforts to correct the problem. Of course, it would have been cheaper and much easier to avoid it in the first place, but that is not how we function in a large group. To put it another way, we are very gullible and very easily conned, but eventually we manage to figure out what was obvious all along.

This offers hope, but the damage we are doing to the environment on many levels is very dangerous. We cannot simply assume that fixing our errors will be easy, or even possible. Still, hope exists.

On the McChrystal flap:

A couple of points force their way to my consciousness.

One: McChrystal's early judgment of Obama. He indicated that he felt the President was weak and intimidated in the presence of so many senior officers at an early meeting. This obviously laid the foundation for his later contempt of Presidential authority. I am inevitably reminded of Nikita Khrushchev's similar dismissal of Kennedy as weak and easily dominated. Both assessments were wrong and both men suffered for misjudging their opponent. [This actually points up a serious problem in the American military which I was pleased to see reflected in a recent L A Times editorial. More on this below.]

Lest any right wing extremist ever hear of this [yeah, that’s likely], let me point out that I am making a comparison only between the dangers of collecting bad intelligence data and underestimating your enemy, not saying anything about McChrystal's political inclinations. I find it sad that our nation is so polarized that I have to state that obvious fact.

Two: McChrystal's excellence as a military commander is surpassed only by his incompetence in dealing with the press and public, not to mention his superiors. Reminds me of Patton. One of the greatest generals of the war, feared more than any other allied commander by the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW) , Patton nevertheless managed to get himself fired more than once due to his in ability to accept his subordinate status and to make politically wise decisions. No, I don't think McChrystal's abilities rise to Patton's, but he is fine general in strictly tactical terms.

In summation, everyone needs to recall that McChrystal's actions were in direct violation of military law. The Uniform code of Military Justice prescribes a court martial for what McChyrstal did. The president did the right thing in not pursuing this option, but he could have done so.

Now to the issue of greatest importance. Anyone who is watching the Religious Right and the growing extremism which is seducing the Republican Party knows that the United States Military has become more and more political. The times editorial pointed out that until after WW II, many serving officers declined to vote in national elections. They felt that they need to remain pure in their service to their country and that to vote for a President would pollute that purity by making them partisan. Now that’s honor.

Today the military academies are struggling to end the prejudice in favor of fundamental evangelical Christianity and the pressure placed on plebes to join that sect and the Republican Party. This is fundamentally in contradiction to the most essential concepts of honor and duty as understood by our military for all its history. Yes, there are political and politicized generals, ranging for the mutinous [justifiably mutinous] revolutionary officers who wanted to rise up against Congress [some things never change], to political incompetents appointed by senators during the Civil War to the self serving presidential ambitions of McArthur, but the record as a whole is absolutely clear. Serving military officers must not become involved in politics.

The Times editorial indicated that much of the fault lies in poor training in this essential concept. I am certain that this is correct, but more fundamental is the leadership, both civilian and military. Flag rank officers lead by example. A politically motivated and directed senior officer demonstrates that this attitude is not only acceptable, but normative. Still, I feel the civilian authority is most at fault here. And more than anyone else I blame President Clinton.

When the military began to openly show contempt and disrespect to him, he needed to call in America’s military leaders and, as service men are apt to say, chew him some ass. By not forcing this issue and demanding the respect that the office of President of the United States demands, especially of it military, he gave covert permission to act in this manner. The rot was already present, but he permitted it to stay and therefore spread.

Once or twice, I happened to be around when Dad chewed him some ass. I hated it. Being a nonconflict sort of kid I thought Dad was being horrible. In retrospect, I realize that the officer who doesn’t at least occasionally dress down his subordinates, when justified, of course, will have no respect. While the President is not an officer, he is more, much more. He is the head of State, the representative of the American people. Respect is not optional. Obedience is not a decision to be made. If we permit these basic functions of a citizen army to become a choice, American will become another banana republic with every colonel dreaming of the day when he will El Presidente.

Do I fear for the Republic? Not at all. In my 6 decades plus as an
American I have only truly feared for our survival twice. One during the Cuban missile crisis, when I feared nuclear war would reduce not only our nation, but humanity to rubble and during Georgie Porgy's second term when the Religious Right looked like they would become the American ayatollah's who would decide who was and was not permitted to run for public office. Even during that second event, I decided there was nothing for fear unless Bush was replaced by another agent of religious oppression. When the Terry Shaivo case exploded and the Republicans began scrambling to lie their way out of their earlier extremist positions, I knew I had underestimated my fellow Americans. We will tolerate a certain level of abuse of authority, and no more.

When Obama replaced Bush, it was clear that I had done what I usually condemn. I allowed a brief political movement to seem to me to be a serious change in the nature of American democracy. My error.

All the problems we face are real and serious. I do not belittle them, but I am confident that we will solve them and that our nation will continue to inspire the world. No nation lasts forever, but we are here for the immediate future. Immediate future in this case means for this century at least, and I’d confidently bet on the next couple of centuries as well.

A continuation of the May 24th 2010 entry and comment by Bobby [keywords economics and Plutocracy]:

"ambit"--nice word. I'll try to remember that. Actually, I am not so anti-wealth as I may have seemed. My objection is that the rich have taken control of the government and intend to use it to adjust society to insure that their wealth is protected. This is presented as a function of free enterprise when it is the opposite. Freedom to succeed necessitates the freedom to fail.

I do not begrudge Bill Gates his wealth. I do begrudge the concept of a new aristocracy which is entitled to wealth, not by ability, but by birth.

As far as your concern not with , "income inequality in our country, but the poverty line and the portion of society below it." I am in agreement with you. The ancient Greek conceptualization of an enforced poverty is going too far. As you probably know, it was considered an offense against the gods and your fellow citizens to become too wealthy. A citizen who attained an excess of wealth, as perceived by his peers, was expected to donate that excess to the city in the form of public buildings or the maintenance of one or more soldiers for its defense. To fail to do so was to be seen as an outcast who thought of himself as superior to his fellow Greeks.

I believe instead that society, through its tool of government, needs to insure that the rules are equally and fairly applied to all citizens. No one gets a free pass to wealth or power, not even via your successful parent. Of course, it is human to provide for your children, and, of course, this means that being born to privilege will always have its effect. But this is different from a system which is fine tuned to keeping wealth in the hands of the select few and therefore, inevitably, out of the hands of everyone else.

What we need, then, is to insure that no one, especially children, are forced to go to bed hungry, or to shiver in the cold, or to be denied medical care. We also need to provide an excellent, tax payer supported, education system that reaches at least to Bachelor's level. This is not to deny the existence of private colleges and universities, which will, naturally, be used by the wealthy to give their offspring a boost up in the world. I don't think everyone has a right to wealth, only to the basic minimums which give one the tools necessary to have a fair chance at building wealth.

I have heard the statements that the mere existence of great wealth is a form of social obscenity. This assumes that if someone lives in a state of excess while others live in deprivation, the discontinuity is intolerable. I do not agree. Back in the early 90’s, I recall an author who declared that the only way to live justly was for everyone in the world to accept poverty. In his conceptualization, America, Europe, and Japan would need to accept a sharply restricted diet and life style so that the wealth could be evenly distributed among the world’s people. He acknowledged that everyone in the world would be poor, but felt that this was justified since everyone would be equally poor. [Anyone recall his name or that of his book?]

His reasoning was flawed in several ways. First, he ignored human self interest. Love or despise this drive, it is real and asking people to deny it is to ask them to cease to be human and to become some other species. What species, I can’t imagine, as this is an evolutionary force. Not a natural species then, but something engineered.

Second, he ignored the equal, or perhaps more powerful, urge to provide for and advance the interests of your own children and relatives. Even in social insects, it has been proven that what appears as sacrifice for the good of the hive is really sacrifice for the genes of your relatives. Again, he dreams, as utopians do, of over riding human nature for the sake of his vision of the ideal, or at least the much improved social order.

In short, he imagines that everyone will work for the benefit of others. First Worlders, he thinks, will struggle and sacrifice their own health to feed strangers on the far side of the globe. Utopians often fall into this trap. The simple fact is that we while are a social species and do care about the suffering of strangers, we care much more about ourselves and our children.

Finally, he ignores the fact that in the world he proposed, everyone becomes a peasant. Who is to create the wealth he wants to distribute? We are hugely wealthy because we eat so well, live so comfortably, have so much leisure. Eliminate these and everyone will be equally poor, but it will be the abject poverty of the third World made universal.

To sum it all up- The ability to accumulate wealth and share it with your offspring is the great engine of human desire and effort. Even macaque monkeys have aristocracies of inherited privilege. Moreover, there is a kind of trickle down effect, far weaker than that which St. Ronald of Reagan imagined. When society creates new wealth, a just society allows all members to have a fair chance at exploiting this source. The benefits are not automatic, but must be protected by governmental regulation--effective and nondestructive regulation. We must not allow guilt or an interest in social justice to strangle this natural and invigorating motivation. But, at the other extreme, we must provide a minimum of security and a maximum of potential to everyone, so that this motivation is universally available and utilized for the benefit of all humanity

Arthur Brooks. of the American Enterprise Institute [originally and more accurately named the Keep the Ultra Rich Rich and Screw Everybody Else Institute] published a screed today in which he declares [apparently ex cathedra] that the new culture war is between those who believe in free enterprise and those who believe in an “expanding and paternalistic government”. He continues this forced choice false dichotomy at length. This is rather like the salesman at a used car lot offering customers a choice. “You can buy this junk heap of a car at my price or destroy the American auto industry.” At least some of his customers might realize that there are a few other alternatives available to them.

What the anti regulation crowd really want is quite simple, and for them, quite attractive. They want to turn America into Mexico. In Spanish, an old saying goes, “Los ricos son los ricos y los pobrecitios son los pobrecitos.” In English, "The rich are the rich and the poor are the poor." The operative word here is the verb, son. It refers to a permanent state. In other words, the rich are rich forever and the poor are poor forever. In spite of Mr. Brooks Olympian declarations, this is not what made America a great and wealthy nation. Economic mobility is what made us great and wealthy. Fixing the system so as to create a new class of nobles who are entitled to their wealth forever is not a good idea. France attempted this with the ancient regime and you know what happened there..guillotines anyone?

Jefferson’s idea of a natural aristocracy was iffy at best, but at least he intended that those who were able to rise would, and those who were above their ability would sink. No government by, for, and of the rich.

In the dreams of the American plutocracy, the very few ultra elite will form a new aristocracy while everyone else will become their peasant class of illiterate workers. No thanks. I prefer a well regulated free enterprise system in which naked greed and corruption are least somewhat controlled. This is much like a well regulated militia. Somehow, the advocates of unbridled gun ownership and heavily armed, self appointed “patriots” overthrowing the government whoever they feel like it, miss the “well regulated” part of "militia". It applies to free enterprise too. There is a world of opportunity between zero regulation and socialism, but that’s hard work and takes effort. It is so much easier to rant and howl about only two extremes and not have to work at actually thinking about the situation.

It appears that the American Enterprise Institute sends its headhunters to beer bashes at American universities and colleges. Imagine what would happen to their mindless ideology if a studious or scholarly recruit arrived. God forbid anyone working there actually thinks things through or offers a realistic set of alternatives.

Think I‘m exaggerating? Check this out: a confidential report that Citigroup initially circulated only to it's wealthiest customers. Those reports, since leaked, plainly discuss the power of the Plutonomy in America, and how it would only strengthen, as long as "the rest us" (the non-plutonics) could be kept in the dark about the Plutonomy existence, its role, and its over-arching control in the American Economy.
"http://www.scribd.com/doc/6674234/Citigroup-Oct-16-2005-Plutonomy-Report-Part-1"


A brief excerpt: v4) In a plutonomy there is no such animal as “the U.S. consumer” or “the UK consumer”, or indeed the “Russian consumer”. There are rich consumers, few in number, but disproportionate in the gigantic slice of income and consumption they take. There are the rest, the “non-rich”, the multitudinous many, but only accounting for surprisingly small bites of the national pie.

The report goes on to exult over the control the Plutonomy has held and expects to continue to hold over the government of the United States .

Now, generally despise the conspiracy theorists, but this report is from Citigroup. And no, its not like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, that is, a fake. This is the real thing. why did Citigroup publish such a thing? They are so confident that they have nothing but contempt for the rest of us. They probably aren't even worried that it did leak. After all, they control both houses of Congress and even have an in with center left Obama. What do we think we can do? Maybe we can eat cake.

From a message to Bobby, with additional comment: Life could be so wonderful if it weren't for all the living we have to do. Yeah, the desert is not what it used to be. I really miss the quiet little place it was. Too many people and not enough desert now. I enjoy the variety of restaurants, and some of the stores are convenient, but I would honestly rather go back to the days when you planned to go down below to do serious shopping at least one day a month. It was a pain in some ways, but things were quiet and semi rural then.

Worst of all is the horrible light pollution. You can hardly see the stars anymore. Pele and Pele's Plume [aka Scorpio] are back, but so low in the sky you can hardly see them. Ummm... did you know that I have my own names for the constellations?

It may seem odd are first, until you remember that this is me talking. Then it seems normative...for me anyway.

Speaking of light pollution... why do some people, so many people, slash and cut the night with so many light sabers? Street lights, parking lot lights, mercury and sodium flood lights in their yards, what did the night ever do to them? All the high desert has become full of glare. No matter where I go to meditate, I am assaulted by wild and angry photons. Well, while smog is here in the evenings, it is more a smell and a headache than the eye burning attack it was a few decades ago. There is hope. If we could get smog reduced and the air less poisoned, maybe we can do the same for the Cathedral of Night that God built.

On immigration and ethnic studies. Arizona, determined to drive out all that nasty Hispanic and liberal money, has added strict new regulations on ethnic studies in public schools. While they seem obvious at first glance, at second glance they sound paranoid...as in clinical paranoia. I have always had hesitations regarding ethnic/women’s studies. Well, I have since their inception, which I am old enough to recall clearly. I seems to me a better route would be to be more inclusive in American and world history classes.

I note that the apparent source of the bizarre “Cleopatra was black.” movement is a Black studies program at one university where the theory is aggressively professed by the instructor. Anecdotal evidence such as this is often quoted by those who fear such courses, but I have yet to hear any verifiable data regarding how accurate and or how divisive such programs are.

I recall as a student at San Deigo State the resentment I felt that female students had a special lounge from which the rest of us were excluded. Why wasn't there a male only lounge? I have no doubt that that was wrong, but do ethnic studies really promote the overthrow of the United States? Do they actually “track” students racially? The law refers to these and other abuses and at least one Arizona official defended the law saying these excesses do occur. If so, this is one retired school administrator who thinks that a new law is less necessary than appropriate supervision by school authorities. If passing a law is the only way to make Arizonan principals and superintendents do their job, something is very rotten in the educational system of Arizona.

In any event, it seems clear to me that Arizona is wildly overreacting to show the world that they are tough on tolerance. The fact that the majority of Americans polled support Arizona’s hard boiled approach to the immigration problem encourages them, but they should remember that at one time, something like 90% of Americans supported the Iraq war. At that time I said, “The day will come when America will look at Iraq and ask, ‘How did we get into the mess?’” I was right then and I am convinced that Arizona will one day say the same thing about its new attitude.

I also can't resist pointing out that Arizona and many Americans are bitterly angry that the federal government failed to deal with immigration. I recall that one of the few things Georgie Porgy tried to do right was comprehensive immigration reform. He was prevented from doing so by the same people who are now so bitter that the government failed to serve their needs by listening to them. If only Bush had ignored their demands to do nothing, they would now be happy that he had done something against their will. Ummm... so they are now mad at the government for daring to do as they demanded in the past and also angry at it for not doing what they are demanding now. OK. Makes sense to me!

I must add a point that angers me to the maximum. Hispanics are regularly attacked for being racist due to the name of one political advocacy group. I refer, of course, to La Raza. I am not a member and do not know much about the group's activities, but neither do those who use the name to bitterly attack Hispanics, including the Arizonan official I listened to earlier tonight. If he does know something about the group, he didn’t mention it. all he did was point out the “obvious” racism inherent in the name.

The problem is that the definition of the word “raza” is more complex than the automatically assume bigotry crowd think. The definition is as follows: Race, generation, lineage, family, clan: branch of a family.

In other words, while it is possible the members of La Raza are implying that they are racists by choosing this name, it is also possible that they are simply affirming their membership in an ethnic group [ie: clan]; their feeling that they constitute an extended family [The family of man? Well, the Hispanic sub Family of Man anyway]; or simply acknowledging that they share a lineage and a culture.

Of course, a certain type of person automatically assumes the worst of those who are darker skinned than themselves. I think this is unwise and says a lot more about the person making the assumption than it does about La Raza.

I don’t want to make assumptions either. It is possible that La Raza is making a racist claim. Does anyone know? If you do, I'd like to see the evidence.