Idealism and Realism

One of the biggest differences between the time I grew up in—the dreaded 1960s—and today is the level of idealism. I was particularly impressed by Martin Luther King and his supporters. They were willing to accept beatings, jail, and even death to accomplish their end, which was an end that was good for everybody. I also admired Pete Seeger. People like King and Seeger presented a consistent vision of us all being in this together, and they really inspired me in my teenage years. (I was more a fan of Bob Dylan than of Pete Seeger, but I see now that while he fooled around with idealism at times, he was in it for his own glory.) The hippie commune movement emerged from that same idealism. When I say ideals, I mean universal ideals that go beyond any individual culture and its desires. Some people consider Ronald Reagan an idealist—an absolutely crazy notion. A real ideal is the refusal to opt for violence as a solution to anything, refusing to allow people to starve to death, cheerful renunciation of the pursuit of wealth, and the willingness to see one’s nation as simply one among many nations—no better than any other. There must be justice. For complicated reasons, not all of which are obvious, this kind of idealism has waned. Some say that the old ideals were unrealistic. But it seems to me that, realistically speaking, we either recover those ideals or we do ourselves in. It feels like we’re getting nearer and nearer that point.

More on Politics and Religion

Jesus said you cannot love both God and mammon, for you will inevitably hate one and love the other. “God” does not mean some white-bearded dude up in the sky. “God” means truth, integrity, justice, and compassion. Mammon means money and fame. The trouble with the Democrats is that they attempt to love both, so they’re always in turmoil and confusion. The Republicans confine their love to mammon—to mammon alone. That’s why they’re able to be so disciplined. But it’s the path to ruin.

Jesus was a Socialist

I opened up my browser to see on the main page of the New York Times web site a photograph of a crowd of angry right-wingers who had flown to D. C. to protest the health care bills currently before congress. One man was carrying a sign saying “No Socialized Health Care.” Well, I for one want socialized medicine, and something considerably more “socialized” than what is currently being proposed. But looking at that photograph, my strongest feeling was that the ideology of the men and women in that photograph needs to be thoroughly discredited. They call themselves religious, but they oppose true religious ideals whenever they encounter them. If he were one of their contemporaries, they would be calling their beloved Jesus a “socialist.” Jesus told the rich man to sell everything he owned and give it to the poor. If that’s not advocating redistribution of the wealth, what is?

Progress Report #22

I’ve finally finished the second draft of Chapter 10 of my book Street Song. It was so long that I ended up splitting it into two chapters 10 and 11—64 and 48 pages respectively. Tomorrow I begin work on Chapter 12—working title, “The Diamond-studded Highway”—in which I abandon everything and head down the road with $20 in my pocket and no particular place to go. Strangely, as I write this the song “Endless Highway” by The Band has just started playing on my computer. (It’s set to random play.)

Go on and walk that Endless Highway,
Walk that highway till you die.
All you children going my way
Better tell your home life sweet goodbye.

Back from Winnipeg

I just got back from the Gimme Some Truth documentary film festival in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and I’m still coffee-free. Judy and I were invited to present the “Wild Parrot” film and do Q & A after—once again. It’s remarkable and pleasing to see how lasting the film has been. We enjoyed our stay in Winnipeg. The downtown area is unique and has a peculiar beauty. All the Canadians wanted to know what the hell is wrong with us Americans that we have such fear over government health care. Contrary to what the conservatives here say, the Canadians are quite happy with it.

I’ve found that my energy is much better without coffee than it was with coffee. All I’d been getting out of coffee was maintenance—keeping the monkey off my back. I have no craving for it and I feel better throughout the day. I don’t think quitting will slow my work down at all. I feel that I’ll be able to sustain longer writing sessions. No crashes.

Progress Report #21

I wrote The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill on three double espressos a day. I’ve been working at Street Song on two double espressos a day. For reasons that I won’t go into right now, I decided to purge the caffeine out of my system. For the last two weeks, I’ve been having some foggy days—been in a foggy daze. It’s been difficult to work on the book and impossible to work on this blog. I’m pretty clear now, though, and I find that I have much better energy without all that caffeine in my veins. In two days, I’m leaving for Winnipeg to attend a film festival where they’re going to show the parrot movie. I’ll be back early next week, and then I’ll start posting again.

Obama and the Nobel Peace Prize

I was surprised and somewhat amused to see the news this morning. While I understood the impulse to give it to him, I didn’t see him as truly deserving it. Now I’m rethinking. Who has been, in fact, the greatest threat to world peace in recent years? The American neocons. They had both a demented world view and the military power to try to implement it. It was Obama who took them on and derailed them. And of course the Republican Right is enraged over the awarding of the prize. They know why he was awarded it. The inference is that they are a dangerous lot, enemies of peace—which they are.

Progress Report #20: Theory and Practice

Whenever I’ve sat myself down to work on the “final” outline for the book—and I’ve done this several times now—I’ve chopped the story line into blocks that I think make sense. But I always find that when I get into the actual writing, things change.

The chapter that I’m working on now, what I’ve been calling Chapter Ten, or “Warm Love,” ended up at 104 pages (double-spaced). That was after the first pass at this, the second draft. Usually, as I make my second pass at a chapter draft, I’m able to shorten it by cutting out both stuff that I know won’t go into the final draft and the redundancies that invariably sneak into the manuscript. Furthermore, I always see myself cutting even more material on the final draft as I discover what is truly vital and what is not. This time, it’s been different. As I’ve made my second pass, the chapter has been growing. When it reached a 110 pages, I knew that it wanted to be two chapters. I saw that  there was a natural place to make the division. So now I already have Chapter Eleven (working title “Conquered in a Car Seat”). But I’m still working on my second pass at “Warm Love.”

I’ve begun to enter the heart of the book, and all my old outlines are suffering for it. That’s the way it goes.

CBS Radio News

I’ve been in the habit of listening to the local all-news radio station, KCBS, at the top of the hour, once or twice a day. I’ve been doing it just to hear the basic headlines. You never get any depth from that kind of program, and I’ve never expected any. But in recent years, I’ve been noticing an increasing right-wing slant—sometimes subtle, sometimes not—to even this small corner of the media news. It’s been bugging me, and today I reached the point where I’m no longer willing to endure it.

This morning, the newsreader announced that the American government was having its first one-on-one contacts in around thirty years with the Iranian government regarding its nuclear program. That would have been enough for me. But he then went on to play a brief comment from Elliot Abrams, one of the most arrogant neocons in the United States today. I doubt that many Americans remember who he is, but Abrams worked for both the Reagan and the George W. Bush administrations, and while he was in the Reagan administration he was criminally involved in the Iran-Contra affair. He has a vehemently pro-Israel position that he pushes constantly, and that’s relevant, of course, to the issue at hand. I was appalled that he was introduced as merely a fellow from some blandly named think tank giving his professional analysis of the situation. Abrams deemed the talks a complete waste of time, and there was no one from any other side to balance his statement. It’s not healthy to allow propaganda to have access to one’s mind. So, just as I refuse to set foot inside any business that has FOX News on in the background, I won’t be listening to the CBS Radio News anymore.

A Leech on the Body Politic

I’ve had a particular image running around in my head for over a month now. This August, when Judy and I were up in the State of Washington, my home state, we passed through the town of Aberdeen. The highway passes right through the downtown area, and we got stuck there in a traffic jam caused by road work. The condition of the downtown area shocked me. There were dozens of boarded-up buildings and others that had been left just to rot. There weren’t many people hanging around, even though it was the center of downtown. Parts of it looked similar to places I’ve seen in rural Mississippi. At the edge of the blighted downtown is a river. (For those who know Aberdeen, there are actually two.) You cross the narrow river, the Wishkah, and as soon as you reach the other side, there’s a big shopping mall where the parking lots are filled with cars. It was all Wall Mart and Home Depot—all the big box stores. With no distance between the two to create an illusion of separate “ecologies,” you see directly how the mall is a giant leech sucking the life out of the town of Aberdeen.

I know the arguments of those who defend malls and chain stores. They say that people are free to spend their money however they please, and that the decisions they make are based on their own best interests. It’s the magic of the marketplace! But something that is truly good doesn’t leave a blighted landscape. It’s considered bad form to call into question the wisdom of “the people.” But the people are the object of expensive and cynical advertising campaigns designed to convince them to buy things they don’t need and aren’t good for them. We live in a culture that encourages instant gratification, ignores long-term effects, and mocks any idea that requires labor or a subtle view. Most of the money that the people spend in those stores leaves the local area for corporate headquarters. The image of the leech sitting right across the river, right on the vein, as it were, provides a material display of that reality.