The thrust of this book is not to answer problems. It is to select the right problems. We are convinced we have a crime problem. The situation described as a "crime" problem is in reality the problem of unemployed youth in a jungle culture. We have put the nitro-glycerine of violent theater in our blender and topped it with unemployment. The anti-crime warriors are going to turn on the blender. Lets restate the problem for the reactionary who is impelled to continue a mistake. The problem is boredom and unemployment, Your answer is internecine war. When crime was first becoming an obvious danger and it was noted that violent theater seemed to be the reason, psychology said that violent theater was therapeutic in that it allowed people to vent their anger by watching it. This argument has been exposed. There is no capitalist conspiracy to criminalize out youth. The process stems from the fact that the jungle owns the media. Only a jungle culture can issue from a jungle media.
At first glance it might seem that the reactionary could succeed in his feral solution to a social problem. Animals can be successfully put in cages but you are not dealing with normal animals. You are dealing with a creature that is as intelligent as you are. That is not saying much but the tribes that are being created in our penitentiaries are fearsome to behold. These weight lifting tattooed members of the Bloods, The Cholos, and the Aryans have a lot of time to think. Your thinking is occupied on many different levels. Their thinking is concentrated and deadly. When they are released to the streets they form cadres that make the bookish Communists and the Flower children look like Sunday school teachers.
The "bitch" . . . three strikes and out, and the death penalty will force them to underground techniques that use secret activity as a necessary prelude to revolution. The cadres that made the uprising in Chiapas had been many years preparing for their onslaught. Bloody repression forced populations to follow their leadership. The A.N.C. in South Africa is an obvious example. The populace wants leaders who are "tough on crime". Surely we have to be tough on crime but we also had better address the situations that generate crime.
The role of stupidity in the present situation is addressed in this
book.
The most stupid thing to do is select the wrong problem. We are
like a motorist with a flat tire. The problem is simple to our simple motorist.
The tire lacks air, ergo; lets pump some air into the tire. What is wrong
here? The problem is; that a nail has been driven into the tire. Putting
air into a tire that has a nail in it is a waste of time. We hear that
dope causes crime. Sounds logical! Let us ask the right question . . .
What causes dope? When the Medelin Cartel says they are honest businessmen
fulfilling a need, they are not far off the mark. We are attempting to
solve the wrong question. The right question is: Why does someone with
lots of money need dope?
It is no coincidence that alcohol is called spirits. That is what it is . . . chemical spirits for those whom have no spirits of their own. Those who would eliminate alcohol and other drugs are those who have created a spiritless and degenerate culture. Everyone worships money but as the old saw says, "money does not buy happiness." The truth of this is obvious when we view a society where the rich often-times, like Howard Hughes, die in a drug induced nightmare surrounded by vultures. Why would Howard Hughes, a billionaire end his life so tragically? The obvious answer is that his money removed him from the tribe and its spirit.
It may be convenient to select the wrong problem but it makes any sort of solution to the right problem an impossibility.
The glorification of violence in the culture. Cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians and movie kisses that are gasping, sucking, slobbering, tongue extending contests. These must immediately come under a new "Hayes office." The Hayes office, for those of you who are too young to remember, was run by an industry czar given absolute authority. He was like the baseball commissioner who put a stop to gambling in baseball. The baseball commissioner was a reaction to the "Black Socks scandal." The Hayes office was a result of the putrid culture that emanated from the prohibition era. Both of these institutions were reactions to a threat of government control.
First amendment rights are to protect the kind of unpopular political opinions presented by the author of this book. I doubt the founding fathers would have considered them a license to corrupt the populace. The attraction of sex and violence to a numbers cruncher is that this option precludes the hiring of genuine talent. Talent is expensive because like a jewel . . . it is rare. The introduction of the Hayes office resulted in Saroyan, Sinclair, Albee, and other writers coming to Hollywood. As children, my generation was nurtured by the elegance of Fred Astaire, Rosalind Russell, Cary Grant, and Katherine Hepburn. In spite of the trauma of war and depression our contributions were legendary, and private homes did not have to be equipped with barred windows.
Part of the dislike for genuine talent on the part of the corporations is that talent has a penchant for including editorial opinion in its work. The corporation has an aversion for political opinion. They are living in the best of all possible worlds as was Voltaire's Candide. You will find little social comment in today's cynical epics, just a mind numbing love for breaking glass and crashing cars and solutions that emerge from the muzzle of a gun. It is time for our brilliant youth to put the spotlight on non-objective art and the glorification of sadistic murder. Where are the flower children? Have they been so poisoned by the advice of Timothy O'Leary that they have forgotten the beauty of the Commune and Woodstock, or does the fumes of marijuana and the screaming mania of L.S.D. still swirl in their heads?
This leaves us with the most important problem . . . unemployment. Is there no work to be done other than at McDonalds? Must our children compete with third world labor in some sweat-shop? Must we give tribal money to jungle projects in the vain hope they will put our kids to work? I maintain that there is enough money being wasted on atomic submarines, subsidies for timber and tobacco industries, "defense", and outright gifts to foreign countries for armaments that could kill Americans, to find employment for youth. It is time that we evict the jungle from our tribe. Let them do their thing . . . but not in the tribal compound. The tribe as owners and operators of the national resources is not broke. We can employ our youth.
You are listening to advice from a great-grandfather. A great-grandfather who has lived through similar problems. There have been solutions to these problems that worked. Why not research them?
Jobs alone are not the answer. We can afford art schools, music schools, and government sponsored sporting programs. We can use the social workers who want to help the suffering, to accomplish their goal instead of forcing them to become bureaucratic time-servers. We can help those whom have chosen medicine and science to concentrate on their professions without becoming trapped in the money wheel. We can clean up the trash, plant trees, create housing, and promote public works of art to rival the Medicis. Apprentice programs can be developed that offer jobs to graduates. There is no end to the inventive genius that will be released. No more will we be fattening a food supply for the jungle cat. We can employ our own youth and the jungle will be forced to offer them something better.
Now we get down to the real problem . . . the reactionary. The reactionary is a toad that won't move until you poke him in the ass. An old Red buddy of mine told me,"a politician is like any other prick . . . he will go wherever he is pushed. The reactionary waits until all hell is loose . . . then hides the fire-extinguisher. Like a toad he lives in his own mud puddle and likes it. An expert toad politician is one who contributes nothing but not satisfied with that . . . squats in the path of someone who does. He is called a "reactionary" because that is what he does . . . he reacts. Like the toad he waits for someone to poke him in the ass before he will jump. His answer to a losing approach is to call for a "war on crime" or an attack on "welfare mothers". He calls for a war on drugs while laundering and banking drug money. He talks about "family values" while he is chasing his secretary around her desk. He wants an end to "entitlements." Fine! let us start with ending the enormous pensions that presidents and congressmen are given by themselves. Think about what this conservative wants to conserve. His bank account and investments. His golf courses and his power. His false statistics and his trained social scientists. His "think" tanks and sewers of radioactive waste.
You do not follow a reactionary . . . you lay down in his puddle if he will let you. When I got out of the army in 1945 I went to work for a large corporation in their office. I was a replacement for an army wife who had been called to the active duty of housewife for another returning G.I. I was "invited" to join the Republican party and the Junior Chamber of Commerce. I was also invited to the Country Club.
One day I was talking to Casey . . . the superintendent of the factory, while we were standing at the loading door where the railroad parked our boxcars. It was the time of the railroad strike and I secretly was rooting for the railroad workers. I couldn't believe this old line union that had not had a strike in generations would actually do it. At noon sharp they parked the locomotive and banked the boilers. The product of the sit-down strikes in Flint Michigan ecstatically turned to Casey and said "by God it's about time they did it! Casey looked down his long skinny nose and from the glare in his eyes I knew my career was over.
In Normandy I had a buddy named Mickey Hoffenberg. He cultivated me because he had been a fellow passenger on a "Liberty run" truck bringing us back from Basingstoke England. We had just left a race-riot caused by a Second Armored division soldier who didn't like the sight of a Black soldier with an English girl and shot him in the back. It was quite a night. Coming back in the dark of the six-by-six truck some reb said it served the black bastard right! I immediately retorted that any American that shoots another American in the back is a yellow bastard and if anybody doesn't like it I'll kick his ass when I get off this truck. We rode back in silence and the reb never identified himself.
Mickey was a well-educated scion of a new York garment manufacturer with left-wing sympathies. In Normandie he educated me about the class struggle. This was like setting fire to a California hill during a Santa Anna wind. At this time a vet from Italy who lost both his legs in Italy, started a letter writing campaign. It began a Veterans organization to counteract the V.F.W. and American legion that were extremely conservative. It was called The American Veterans Committee,and Mickey and I became members.
After the war I lived with my wife and two kids in San Jose California. I saw in the paper that there was to be a meeting in the Civic Auditorium of "The American Veterans Committee." I went and at the end of the meeting they read a list of members that were missing in action. I heard my name called and stood up to set them straight. Come to find out . . . I was a founder. They immediately elected me recording secretary. Before long every Red in town was making my acquaintance. This led to a hectic political life that cost me my family and led me to the trade of agitator. When I retired I never thought I would do it again . . . but here I am.
This time I don't have any line to follow but my own. I fully expect to make enemies but what is life without an enemy? Every warrior needs an enemy. If there was a new "Charge of the Light Brigade" I would be on the lead horse. It is better than dying from one of the many diseases of old-age. Here I come Voila!
When I was about seven years of age my parents used to leave me with my grandparents in Canada. Grandma was a massive woman of sixty and grandpa was small with a handle-bar mustache and one eye that gazed up and to the right as he peered at me with the other. The first night was the worst. Grandpa snored with a noise like a rip-saw cutting oak, and Grandma prayed on her knees by the bed at the top of her voice. "Hail Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners!" This little sinner pulled the covers over his head and shook with terrror as the duet continued for hours.
Grandma was always working and complaining that my cousin Ken wouldn't
do the dishes. Ken would just laugh and head for the door. She would go
on about being a poor old lady dying of overwork. I felt sorry for her
and did the dishes and anything else that I could to help. One day I watched
her coming down the staircase with an enormous bureau on her shoulder.
She carried it like it was made of balsa-wood with no visible sign of strain.
From then on, when Ken left, I left with him.
One day the neighbor kids chased me home crying. Kitty Foley (grandma) grabbed me with a grip like an iron clamp and told me to go out there and fight or I would have to fight her . . . I became the terror of the neighborhood. From then on I was "old Yank." in my cousin Ken's gang everybody was called "old" something as a term of affection.
Television violence has gotten to the point where it does not interest
me.
When I turn it on to someone rolling a car end over end, I surf
on to C-Span.) Unlike the life of your hell-raising author; it is certain
that the authors of violent theatre had a very gentle childhood. "What
are you doing children?" . . . "Fucking mother!" . . . "Thats nice, don't
fight!" Certainly only someone who has never had a fight in his life would
write a scene where the hero gets the living hell beat out of him by three
hoods and then gets up and goes about his business. Diving through a plate
glass window that is not made of sugar will leave you looking like a victim
of O.J. Simpson, but these heros don't get a scratch, nor is anyone ever
pulled out of cars wrecked in car-chases with the special tongs used by
the highway patrol. I have yet to see a movie assassin with a scoped rifle
and binoculars on a tri-pod that does not miss his victim at the last second.
I wouldn't miss, and I find it hard to believe that a trained assassin
would either.
No! It is certain that these Chekov's have never been in a fight. Fights hurt! In Chicago before a fight we used to say "lets get on with the misery." This was the resigned mutual affirmation that there would be no winners in this contest. Maybe someone would get knocked out, but the survivor would spend a pain wracked week before recovering from the results of his phyrric victory. I don't blame anyone for wanting to stay out of a fight. But please don't write about it!
As a youth I enjoyed boxing, (I mean doing it, not watching it). Fortunately I avoided the promotors by going in the army and having the sense to realize that my head was not intended for a punching-bag. A freind of mine used to earn fifty dollars fighting at the Civic Auditorium in San Jose every Saturday night. "Easy money," he said, but every time he came over he talked slower and slower.
In spite of my hatred of violence; one Sunday morning I was awakened by someone yelling at my kids in the back yard. Surly from having my sleep disturbed I confronted another old geezer who was giving my kids hell right next to my bed-room window. He turned on me and said "What kind of people are you?" I said, "The kind of people that want you out of my yard." I followed him as he headed across the asphalt parking lot of the apartments next to my house and asked him, "do you want to fight?" The old boy put up his dukes and we went at it in the parking lot. My legs had arthritis in both knees and if stressed would drop me where I stood. Anyway whether he knocked me down or I fell down; from my prone position I reached out for his legs and brought him crashing down on the asphalt and straddled him. I would have beat his head off but my wife and oldest son pulled me off him. It was years later when I found out my little darlings had been throwing rocks at his house. I felt like "getting on the misery" with them . . . but it was too late
. The Technosphere The word "biosphere" takes in all life and the conditions that make life possible on the planet Earth. I propose to coin a word (if it has not already been coined) . . . "technosphere". It is generally accepted that all biotic entities develop in an upward direction following the Darwinian precept of mutation and survival. It is quite apparent that technology does the same thing. The only difference is that mutations are random in biology and invention (which has the identical role as a mutation) are more calculated. Still . . . invention is put to the same test of survival . . . the market.
Technology came on the scene when an ape sharpened a pointed stick and used it as a weapon. In doing this . . . the ape become what we know today as a human being.
This would be a minor discovery and certainly arguable if it were not for the fact that technology has developed to the point where it challenges the survival of nature itself. It is destroying the ozone layer, contributing to global warming, destroying species, removing enormous quantities of life from the oceans, and resulting in the biological success of its innovator Homo Sap to the point that overpopulation is becoming not only a threat to mankind but a threat to the biosphere itself.
If intelligence and planned creation are to continue in this sector of the galaxy they will most certainly be carried on by intelligent robots. These children of Issac Asimov, and other science fiction writers are now (like the dreams of the science aficionado) being developed. They are not being made with the idea of surviving the coming apocalypse but are meant to provide cheap and reliable labor for the technological monolith. Not being biotic . . . they are not going to be dependent on a biosphere at all and will join the other mindless phenomena like black holes and super-novas as non-sequitur actors in a universe gone mad.
This distressing scenario would mean that there are not any other intelligent beings in the universe. It would follow as the night the day that technology (no matter where it arose) would inevitably follow the same laws of development that led to the destruction of life. It must be self-evident that intelligence is the creation of technology and that technology must end with the destruction of biotic-intelligence. This line of reasoning would posit that the drivers of the U.F.O.'s are not living creatures . . . but are in reality intelligent robots.
A quick analysis shows that the Biosphere is independent and has no need for the technosphere but the technosphere will continue to be dependent on the biosphere until it has destroyed it. This denouement is inevitable so long as the technological jungle (pushing for more and more profits,) is allowed to dominate the human tribe. The only possible way of avoiding the coming apocalypse is for the human tribe to reassume its original separation from the jungle. People's governments, (real people's governments) could bring the monster that is unbridled greed to heel. The thrust of the present revolutionary must be to reorganize the human tribe so that the techno-jungle does not dominate it.
Democratic government is not necessarily wedded to business. Today's revolutionary must forget the idea of class-struggle. It is the duty of every tribesman to re-appropriate a government that has become nothing but a committee to carry on the affairs of business. The prospect of this succeeding is very good. The Technosphere depends upon us for their market. It depends upon us to guide its plunge to destruction. The proliferation of communication technology is a weapon in our hands. When we cleanse the halls of government of the money power we will have to concentrate on making sure that the lowliest tribesperson can live comfortably with minimal dependence on the Technosphere.
We can educate ourselves to live happily without the tons of junk that fill our garages and attics and landfills. We can gain control of a popular culture that has become degenerate. We can replant the biosphere and relegate technology to its perceived role as handmaiden to Man and not the uncontrolled juggernaut that it actually is. We should look to the religions of the indigenous tribes that were concerned with living with nature in harmony.
We can reassert our pride in being human beings. We can reduce the Technosphere and use it to promote the health of the biosphere. All these things we can do if we have a vision
The world of today is a radical's paradise. There are unions to organize in all parts of the world. The bloated jungle is more vulnerable than ever. I have a first-class computer and am on Internet . . . I hope they bug my computer. It will give them a heart attack. Listen to my C.D. Rom of the International "Arise you prisoners of starvation . . . arise you wretched of the earth . . . for justice thunders condemnation . . . a whole new worlds in birth! It was a great song even though it was betrayed. This time make socialism a tribal affair and let the jungle alone. We do not need any economists. Let us get our tribe under its own roof. In the end the jungle will thank us for it. It will once again follow its own laws of competition. We only have to show it who's boss.