#969: Hallelujah!

                     Leonard Cohen (1934-2016)

Welcome to the year 2024. Generally speaking, the new year brings resolutions aplenty . . . many of which will be broken within the wink of an eye. It’s not that we are being dishonest with ourselves; for many, it’s a lack of resolve. And who can blame the resolution transgressors? We live in extremely frustrating, fearfully uncomfortable and trying times. The fences, hedges and walls which divide people around the world cause many of us to quit watching the evening news and, in its place, crack open a bottle of whatever suits our taste. Peace and understanding, unity and serenity are oh so evasive. HOWEVER, from time to time we find moments of hopefulness and words of love and cheer which can - if we pay attention - act as restoratives.

Yesterday, while attending services for Shabbat (Sabbath), a restorative discovered me . . . rather than the opposite.  (To be honest, I am paraphrasing one of the three women who became b’not mitzvah; she said that they [the three women] did not choose the particular Torah portion [Exodus 1:1-6:1] upon which they would be observing this marvelous rite of passage  but rather, the Torah portion chose them.) How so?  Simply stated this first portion in the book of Exodus (in Hebrew, Sh’mot [שְּׁמוֹת] meaning “names,” deals with 5 profoundly heroic women: the baby Moses’ mother (Yocheved), and sister (Miriam), the Pharaoh’s daughter (Bat’ya) and two midwives, (Shifra and Pua); without these women, there would be no Jews in the world today . . . Quite a portion to be shared by three b’not mitzvah!

At one point in the service, we sang together the 150th - the last - Psalm.  It has no known author (To King David 73 of the 150 Psalms (תְהִילִים - pronounced t’hilim) are ascribed; it is easily the most universal, most unifying of all those poetic praises to G-d.  In this psalm of 6 verses, 13 times we find the words created from the Hebrew root ה-ל-ל (the root means “praise”), from which we get the word “Halleluyah,” literally meaning “G-d be praised.”  (Now mind you, there is a perhaps unintended coincidence here; according to Jewish law, there are precisely 613 mitzvot (commandments) in the Torah. Put 6 verses together with the 13 times the root ה-ל-ל is used and voila!  You get 613.  Brrrr.) During the more than six decades of chanting this psalm in shul, I have been accustomed to a single melody . . . likely the same one my grandfathers (Yussel and Issac) and their grandfathers sang more than 150 years ago. 

But not this time.  For this service, the Cantor (חזנית), Debbie Hafetz, a woman with a voice of gold and a soul of rhodium (the most valuable metal on earth), said we would be singing it to the tune of Leonard Cohen’s song entitled, simply, Hallelujah.  It both knocked my socks off and brought copious tears to my eyes.  Putting these Hebrew words together with Cohen’s emotional musical score was about as restorative a moment as one might hope for in these deeply troubling times.  Let’s explore several versions of this song, using both the original Hebrew words from the Bible,  and Leonard Cohen’s English creation. 

First, Central Synagogue’s Cantor Azi Schwartz singing the original Hebrew text of the 150th Psalm to Leonard Cohen’s melody.  Even if you do not know the words in Hebrew - let alone another language - I think it just might move you.  And, as the French say, n'ayez pas peur de sortir vos mouchoirs: “Don’t be afraid to take out your handkerchiefs.”  

To the best of my knowledge, there are only 2 words in the more than 7,000 tongues spoken on this planet which are the same . . . and both are Hebrew:  AMEN and HALLELUJAH.  The first means something akin to “I AGREE,” the second, as mentioned above “Praised be G-d.”  (According to Jewish oral tradition, AMEN is actually an acronym for the three Hebrew letter aleph (א), mem (מ) and final nun (ן) which stand for ayl melekh ne-ehmahn, meaning “G-d is a faithful King.”  Yes, both are a tad too theistic for some, regardless of their tongue or religious (or lack of)  belief.  But nonetheless, they are the two unifying words which bind us together. 

Leonard Cohen originally wrote lyrics to his Hallelujah (1984).  It easily became his most famous song.  What follows is the legendary guitarist Jeff Buckley singing Cohn’s English lyrics, while accompanying himself on his instrument.

Next, a Hebrew/English version of Cohen’s lyrics as performed by Yechiel Erps, a Chasid with an MS in speech pathology and a great deal of musical talent:

Indeed, this is a universal song with universal meaning.  I would be remiss if I were not to include Cohen’s universal son sung in, amazingly, English, Hebrew and Arabic.  Could there eventually be a hope for peace?

And last, but not least, Cohen's “Halleuljah” in one of his native  languages: Yiddish.  Cohen was born and raised in a family of Orthodox Jews in the wealthy enclave of Westmont, Quebec.  His native languages were French and Yiddish.  Until the  end of his life, despite exploring almost every religion on earth, he remained a practicing Jew, who would forego concerts on Friday nights.  His ideal was what is known in Hebrew as ‘‘pekuakh nefesh,”  repairing the world.  May his epitaph be this song, and may this song, some 3,500 years in the making, be a restorative for a world badly fractured and in need of repair.  For when all is said and done, isn’t this what all Abrahamic religions seek  most?

Can you say - or sing - Hallelujah with meaning?

Copyright©2024, Kurt Franklin Stone

Betwixt Optimism and Pessimism There Lies . . .

(Permit me to begin with a word of thanks to Rodger and Madeline Gobel, my friends and congregants who, without knowing it at the time, put a big smile on my face by providing me with an actuality which provided me with the germ from whence this essay evolved.)

Question: when was the last time reading page-one headlines or watching a cable TV news crawler was anything less than a task filled with angst or dread?  (Yes, I know, “angst or dread” is an overly-repetitive redundancy . . . so sue me!)  For those whose answer is something like “I honestly can’t remember” or “Seems like forever-and-a-day,” you are undoubtedly correct.  It’s all too understandable. I mean, consider the menu of malevolence which confronts us on a daily basis: Putin’s maniacal war against Ukraine; teenagers mowing down shoppers and students with AK-47s in Buffalo and Uvalde (which, by the way, has already  passed muster with “spell-check”); the damage done to American politics as a result of the “Big Lie”; our quondam POTUS and retrogressive SCOTUS; the dilatory nature of Congress; the daily gaffs and linguistic lunacies of such Luddites as Marjorie Taylor Greene, Paul Gosar, Ted Cruz and Ron DeSantis; conspiracy theorists whose every off-the-wall inanity is as acceptable as Sinaitic truth by a growing minority of “true believers”;  higher and higher gas prices coupled with growing inflation;  and on and on and on . . .

 As one who has posted more than 900 mostly political essays over the past 17+ years, there are weeks when it is neigh on impossible to put another 1,000-1,500 words up on the screen.  Complaining, criticizing – even satirizing – becomes sheer drudgery.  And yet, going back to the very first essay (February 4, 2005 - when the blog was called “Beating the  Bushes”), I wrote that its overarching purpose would be “to hold up an honest mirror of the times in which we live, regardless of how complex, maddening or incomprehensible those times might be.”  The past several weeks have been far more complex, maddening, and incomprehensible than many, many others.

And so, this week I will resort to reportage of a more  hopeful sort.  Remember, the subtitle of this blog is “. . . & a Whole Lot More.”   

                      Airbnb’s Joe Gebbia: self-made billionaire and philanthropist

This past Wednesday, May 25, 2022, the senior class at Brookwood High School in Snellville, Georgia, held their graduation ceremony.  Rodger and Madeline were in attendance, kvelling their hearts out; their grandson was one of the graduates.  The commencement address was given by Joe Gebbia, one of the three cofounders of Airbnb,  and a 2000 graduate of Brookwood.  (Gebbia is now chief product officer of Airbnb, the company’s in-house design studio, Samara, and is chairman of Airbnb.org, the company’s nonprofit arm.) His address contained the expected flourishes about following their dreams and never giving up.  The now 40-year old self-made multi-billionaire confided to the graduates that he wasn’t the  most serious of students while attending Brookwood, and admitted “I definitely don’t remember the advice I was given at my graduation. And I don’t expect you to, either.” 

And while few of the 890 graduates are likely to remember what Gebbia said, they will long remember what he did.  Towards the end of his address he said:  “I would like to give you a piece of my dream to help inspire yours and let you know that it is possible.”  He then went on  to inform them that each and every one of the graduates would be getting 22 (for 2022) shares of Airbnb, which works out  to about $2,400 worth of stock per graduate, based on that day’s closing price of $110.40 a share. Altogether it was a gift worth nearly $2.2 million.   

Turns out this gift was by no means Joe Gebbia’s first.  Last year he pledged $700,000 to help boost his school’s arts department and cross country team, both activities he participated in when he was a student. In 2020, he donated $25 million to two organizations in San Francisco (where he and his family live) combating homelessness. Gebbia and his two Airbnb cofounders, Brian Chesky and Nathan Blecharczyk, joined the Giving Pledge in 2016—long before Airbnb went public—promising to donate at least half their wealth to charitable causes.  

Though billionaires often donate to educational institutions, it’s becoming increasingly common for the wealthy to help students directly, especially if a billionaire is chosen as a school’s commencement speaker. Earlier this year, Snapchat founder Evan Spiegel paid off the student loans for graduates of the Los Angeles-based Otis College of Art and Design, a gift of more than $10 million. Telecom billionaire Robert Hale Jr. gifted each graduating student at Quincy College in Massachusetts $1,000 each last year. The largest donation to graduating college students, though, comes from private equity tycoon Robert Smith, the richest Black person in America. He spent $34 million in 2019 to pay off the student debt for the entire graduating class of Morehouse College. Smith also gave 15,000 shares of stock from Vista Equity Partners’ portfolio companies to nearly 2,900 students, teachers and staff at Eagle Academies for Young Men, an all-boys school in New York City.

There are now more than 231 billionaires from 28 countries ranging in age from 31 to 98 who have pledged to give away more than 50% of their vast fortunes to charitable causes. Most of this pledging and giving has been done with far, far less fanfare or publicity than those who step on their tongues on an almost daily basis or shoot up schools, synagogues, supermarkets or gay bars. (Just the other day, as an example, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene garnered worldwide attention when she went off the rails, telling her supporters to beware of Bill Gates, who is planning to monitor their eating habits and “zap” them until they eat fake meat grown in a “peach tree dish.” (This is the same woman who, in accusing the Biden Administration of adopting Nazi tactics, accused him of employing “Gazpacho police-to monitor American’s bowel-going habits.

Is it any wonder that a pall of pessimism has enveloped so many otherwise hopeful people? The fact that the utter lunacy of a Marjorie Taylor Greene can garner or an ūber, over-the-top gun supporter like Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks so much more publicity than the generosity of a Joe Gebbia speaks volumes for where we’ve come as a society which is far more often glued to the lunacy of the brainless than the generosity of the accomplished.

Most are familiar with the expression “The pessimist sees the glass as being half empty, the optimist as being half full.” I have long believed that there’s got to be a third option: of being content with the fact that so long as there’s something in the glass that’s a good start. But what do we call these sorts of people (of whom I am proudly one)? I have long believed that laying somewhere betwixt the rosy-hued optimist and the dire, head-for-the-hills pessimist is the possibilist, a term first coined by the late writer/political philosopher/neo-liberal; Max Lerner. For possibilism is far, far better for the stomach than dire pessimism, and far less frustrating to the soul than rosy-hued optimism. And while both optimism and pessimism exist largely in the realm of  weltanschauung - “world view” - which is largely reactive It is the balance of which we speak - possibilism is energizing -  requiring action.  My slightly-older-sister Erica (Riki) just posted a marvelous photo of a heroic looking American Eagle stating what for me is the  possibilist’s creed:

  We are no longer accepting things we cannot change.  It is now time to change the things we cannot accept. 

Three  . . . or four or five . . . cheers for the Joe Gebbias, Brian Cheskys and Nathan Blecharczyks of the world . . . as well as the largely unknown, unsung possibilists of the planet.

Do remember that betwixt pessimism - which always sees the glass as being half empty - and optimism - which sees the glass as being half full - is possibilism - which avers that so long as there’s something in the glass we can throw a party . . . 

 Copyright©2022 Kurt F. Stone

"There's a Spectre Haunting the World"

We begin by paraphrasing one of the most famous opening lines in all 19th century literature: “There’s a spectre haunting much of the world . . . the spectre of fascistic victimhood.” The literate amongst us will no doubt recognize from whence this paraphraseology comes: the opening paragraph of Karl Marx’s The Communist Manifesto (1848), which reads “A specter is haunting Europe—the specter of Communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre; Pope and Czar, Metternich and Guizot, French radicals and German police spies.”

Leapfrogging ahead 170 years, we find a no less brilliant, prescient and disturbing analysis of contemporary times, which should be read by anyone wishing to understand the political crisis currently engulfing the world: Professor Timothy Snyder’s The Road to Unfreedom, which begins with the words “The politics of inevitability is the idea that there are no ideas. Those in its thrall deny that ideas matter, proving only that they are in the grip of a powerful one. The cliché of the politics of inevitability is that ‘there are no alternatives.’ To accept this is to deny individual responsibility for seeing history and making change. Life becomes a sleepwalk to a pre-marked grave in a pre-purchased plot.”

Whether it be Marx or Snyder, both are (or in the case of the former, “was”) writing about tremendously dynamic, potentially earth-shattering changes in the political world. Marx wrote about an ancien regime made up of the churchmen, nobles and the ever-growing banking houses of Europe. He (along with his co-author, the German political philosopher Friedrich Engels, was concerned with a new order; one which would lift up the very victims of the ancien regime. In the case of Professor Snyder (he’s the Richard C. Levin Professor of history at Yale University), his focus is also on victims . . . but in a very different way. For his victims are not society’s dispossessed; rather they are the modern era’s version of the ancien regime, being convinced by their leaders that unless they man the barricades against immigrants, Jews, and a vicious “new world order,” they will be taken over by, and become enslaved to, a growing hoard of anti-Christian, “woke,” ultra-liberal Communist immoralists (the American version) or anti-Christian pro-Nazi fascists (the European/South American version). 

Writing in this past Saturday’s The Guardian, Jason Stanley noted that “Vladimir Putin’s pretext for invasion recasts Ukraine’s Jewish president as a Nazi and Russian Christians as true victims of the Holocaust.” To accuse Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, of being a Nazi ranks right up there with the worst lies in all recorded history. President Zelensky is, of course, himself Jewish, and comes from a family partially wiped out in the Nazi Holocaust. For the atheistic, autocratic Putin to recast himself as the ultimate defender of Christian nationalism puts him in league with America’s 45th POTUS, who somehow convinced most Evangelicals that he is the ultimate bulwark against Socialism and immorality. . . and that White Christian males – not Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Jewish or Muslim folk – are modern American society’s true victims. Just as Putin asserts that Nazified Ukrainians represent a lethal threat to the Russian people, so too do Trump and his ilk warn that “ultra-left-wing Socialists and Communists” represent the gravest threat to “real” Americans.  Both believe the enemy must be defeated at all costs.  Between Putin and Trump (and their most avid acolytes) there is barely a millimicron’s worth of distance in their political weltanschauung..

Historically, it was hard-right conservative Republicans who feared and warned of “Reds under the beds” . . . those lurking writers and academics, screenwriters and actors (a huge percentage of whom happened to be Jewish) who were the true enemies of America. Today, the shoe is on the other foot; former President Donald Trump describes Putin as “smart” and “savvy, and, Fox “News’” host Tucker Carlson insists that “Hating Putin, has become the central purpose of America’s foreign policy. It’s the main thing that we talk about. It might be worth asking yourself, since it is getting pretty serious: What is this really about? Why do I hate Putin so much? Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him?” As far as the Republican right is concerned, Putin is the one standing up to the “Nazified” Ukrainian President Zelensky (who was democratically elected), while President Biden kneels before those who are doing their best to demean and destroy White Christian America. Oh what an unfathomable change of footwear!

How is it possible that the American chapter of the “Friends of Putin” can ignore that this mass murderer has ordered his troops to bomb the largest cities in a Democratic nation which is our ally, as well as deploy TOS-1 heavy flamethrowers (which are capable of vaporizing human bodies) against innocent civilians? How can they aver in poll after poll that Vladimir Putin is a more capable leader than Joe Biden? I guess they just prefer Tom Doniphon (the character played by John Wayne in the 1962 film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance) to Thomas Jefferson ‘Tom’ Destry, Jr.) the character played by James Stewart in the 1939 film Destry Rides Again). As Emily Tamkin, senior editor of The New Statesman wrote in a recent New York Times guest editorial, “The American political right was long associated with Cold War hawkishness. But in recent years the trend has shifted toward fawning praise for autocrats, even those leading America’s traditional adversaries, as well as projecting our own culture wars overseas. Where once Russia and other autocracies were seen as anti-democratic, they have now become symbols of U.S. conservatism — a mirror for the right-wing worldview.“

This “victimization” battle-cry has become both the raison d'être and basis for the platform of one of America’s two major political parties. It tells voters that they - and they alone - can put an end to all the malevolent, progressive (which they spelled either S-O-C-I-A-L-S-T, W-O-K-E or U-L-T-R-A- L-E-F-T- W-I-N-G) conspiracies designed by the “enemies of America” to continually victimize and thus destroy the “real America.”

A frightening proof of this is Florida Senator and National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair Rick Scott’s 31-page GOP agenda that he’s dubbed “My Plan to Rescue America.” Scott’s 11-point proposal for what Republicans promise to do should they take back the Senate in 2022 can be summed up in a few chilling sentences:

• Finish construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border -- and name it after Donald Trump;

• Ban all racial disclosures and references to ethnicity on government forms;

• Legally recognize that there are only "two genders," and that "unborn babies are babies."

• Limit absentee ballots and demand that "no ballots that show up after election day will be counted, ever,"

• Mandate that school children say the pledge of allegiance, salute the Flag, and learn that America is a great country;

• Starve Washington’s economy, and stop Socialism;

• Eliminate all federal programs that can be done locally, and enact term limits for federal bureaucrats and Congress;

• Guarantee that Americans will be free to welcome God into all aspects of their lives;

• Guarantee that every American pay income taxes, so as to assure they have “skin in the game.”

Having lived through eight years of Rick Scott’s governorship here in the Sunshine State, many of us have discovered that as a political leader, he is both hapless and hair-brained. This proposal of his will no doubt - if used correctly by Democrats - become an albatross for Republicans in the 2022 election. For Scott’s lame rescue plan is attempting to solve problems which do not exist . . . such as stolen elections, the teaching of “Critical Race Theory" in public schools, millions upon millions of Americans not paying income taxes (ever hear of payroll taxes?”) illegal immigrants stealing jobs from hard-working Americans. In other words, Scott’s plan, like Vladimir Putin’s, is using the spectre of victimization to keep the legions in line.

But there is some hopeful news on the horizon - both in Europe and America. In Europe, we are daily witnessing both the adroit leadership skills and breathtaking heroism of President Zelensky and the Ukranian people, and the growing unity of our allies in the E.U. and NATO (even Sweden has dropped its centuries-long position of political neutrality). And here in America, it’s not so much what we see as what we‘re beginning to sense: the muteness of the institutional wing of the Republican Party towards the purveyors of victimization - folks like Trump, Scott, Cruz, Hawley, Greene, Carlson and Bannon.

Yes, there is unquestionably a spectre haunting the world . . . but precisely what spectre, only time, tolerance and the truth shall tell.

Copyright©2020 Kurt F. Stone

One Generation Got Old, One Generation Got Soul

Surrealistic Pillow (1967) - Marty Holding Flute at Top Left

Spent several hours yesterday - and most of the night - watching and listening to old Jefferson Airplane songs and online videos. These songs, many of which were anthems for a generation, brought tears to my eyes . . . especially Marty Balin’s pulsating Volunteers. As many of you know by now, Marty (born Martyn Jerel Buchwald in Cincinnati, Ohio on January 30, 1942) died on Friday; he was 76. Balin had an amazing voice - one of the greatest in the history of Rock ‘n Roll. With that voice he could, in the words of New York Times writer John Parles, “. . .offer the intimate solace of ballads like Jefferson Airplane’s “Today,” the siren wails of a frantic acid-rocker like the group’s “Plastic Fantastic Lover,” or the soul-pop entreaties of Jefferson Starship’s “Miracles.” Although Balin always scored high with the public and rock connoisseurs for his pliable, powerful voice, few ever recognized the depth and quality of his lyrics; at base, Marty Balin was a poet.

And now he is dead at age 76 . . . which is sounding younger and younger all the time.

Marty was by no means the first member of the Airplane to pass away. In 2005, their drummer, Spencer Dryden (the son of Charlie Chaplin’s half-brother Wheeler) passed away at age 66 from cancer. On January 28, 2016 both Airplane co-founder Paul Kantner and the band’s original (e.g. pre-Grace Slick) singer Signe Toly Anderson passed away at age 74. Unbelievably, Grace Slick, the one member of the band everyone assumed would be first to go due to her excessive lifestyle, is still alive, flourishing and will turn 79 four weeks from today. Think about it: Grace Slick (that’s her standing next to Marty on the album cover above) is nearly EIGHTY YEARS OLD!! But then again, it is an absolute mind blow to consider the current ages of the rock musicians who played the musical score of our formative years:

• The Nobel Prize-winning Bob Dylan is 78;

• Eric Clapton is 72, as are The Who’s Pete Townsend and CCR’s John Fogerty;

• David Crosby (Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young) recently turned 78;

• The Rolling Stone’s Sir Mick Jagger is 75;

• The Kink’s Sir Ray Davies is 74;

• The Animals Eric Burdon is 77;

• The Hollies Graham Nash is 76;

• Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel are both 77;

• Former Beatles drummer Ringo Starr is 78 and still touring, as is his band mate

• Sir Paul McCartney, who is 76.

As I was completing this terribly brief list, a faint memory began to wend its way from the old neocortex to my frontal lobe: a brief piece of fiction I wrote in 1969, shortly after Rolling Stones’ drummer Brian Jones accidentally drowned in a swimming pool; he was all of 27. (Ironically, both Jimi Hendrix and the Doors’ Jim Morrison, who dedicated, respectively a song and a poem to Jones, would die within the next two years . . . at age 27.) Anyway, while contemplating Jones’ death, I began imagining how his eulogy would have read had he died at, say 75, or 80 or even 90? From there, it was but a short hop to writing a fictional news-story about the death of the last surviving Beatle - “Lord McCartney” - at age 93. The year in the story was 2035. Regrettably, the story, which was published in the long defunct City on a Hill Press, was long ago lost to the ravages of time. What I do remember is that it carried the screaming headline “I’M ONLY SLEEPING” - LORD MCCARTNEY, LAST SURVIVING BEATLE PASSES AWAY AT AGE 93. The “I’m Only Sleeping” part of the title came from a Lennon-McCartney song included in their 1966 album “Revolver.” It included the lyric:

Please, don't wake me, no, don't shake me
Leave me where I am, I'm only sleeping

It just seemed to fit. As I recall, my purpose in writing the piece was to engage in a bit of prophecy; what the world would be like more than 65 years later . . . what kind of an effect the generation of peace, pot and beads would have had on the world. As I recall, McCartney was made a Life Peer not only for his stellar contributions to music, but also for the important role he had played in bringing peace and harmony to the world. He had spent the last decades of his life traveling the globe, playing his music and contributing virtually ever cent he earned from these concerts to organizations working to feed, clothe and offer free healthcare to people all over the world.

A bit idealistic, no?

I also recall the story containing a bit of levity: interviews with the extremely aged fans who used to shriek and shout when, as teenagers, they went to Beatle concerts in England, America and throughout Europe. Although they frequently suffered from a bit of memory loss, when came it to John, Paul, George and Ringo, everything was crystal clear . . . as if the concert they had attended were only yesterday.

With the real-life passing of Marty Balin, I know I’m feeling a bit less immortal than last week. When I recall attending smallish rock gatherings headlined by The Great Society and The Warlocks (as The Jefferson Airplane and The Grateful Dead were known back in 1965/66) my memory informs me “Hey bro, like that was more than a half-century ago . . . ya ain’t a hippy anymore!” Funny though, I don’t feel all that much older . . . regardless of what I see in the mirror. Like a lot of aging boomers, I still - despite the current shape of politics and the world - continue to be fueled by a mixture of idealism and anger and refuse to retire from activism; refuse to sit back and do nothing but complain while others turn the world into a capacious cesspool. We are still, in the words of Marty Balin, Volunteers of America, the lyrics of which go:

Look what's happening out in the streets
Got a revolution (got to revolution)
Hey, I'm dancing down the streets
Got a revolution (got to revolution)
Oh, ain't it amazing all the people I meet?
Got a revolution (got to revolution)
One generation got old
One generation got soul
This generation got no destination to hold
Pick up the cry
Hey, now it's time for you and me
Got a revolution (got to revolution)
Hey, come on now we're marching to the sea
Got a revolution (got to revolution)
Who will take it from you, we will and who are we?
Well, we are volunteers of America (volunteers of America)
Volunteers of America (volunteers of America)
I've got a revolution
Got a revolution

Look what's happening out in the streets
Got a revolution (got to revolution)
Hey, I'm dancing down the streets
Got a revolution (got to revolution)
Oh, ain't it amazing all the people I meet?
Got a revolution, oh-oh
We are volunteers of America
Yeah, we are volunteers of America
We are volunteers of America (volunteers of America)
Volunteers of America (volunteers of America)

Back in the day - when Balin, McCartney, Dylan, Clapton, Townsend et al were in their twenties and an oft-repeated battle cry was “Don’t trust anyone over the age of 30!” we marched, protested and campaigned, seeking, as volunteers, to change the world. We were pegged as a generation of long-haired, stoned-out Communistic irreligious immoralists who were all desperately in need of a bath . . . if not a mass delousing. Collectively, we played a pivotal role in ending the Vietnam War, passing Amendment XXVI of the U.S. Constitution (which lowered the voting age to 18), getting people to recycle, and fighting for the rights of women, the LGBTQ community and the impoverished of the planet . . . plus the legalization of marijuana. Although we grew older, many of us, I am proud to say, never truly grew up.

And we still have all that great music.
Rest in Peace, Marty

“Life is very short, and there’s no time for fussing and fighting, my friend.”

(We Can Work It Out, Paul McCartney, 1965)

Midterm elections are 5 weeks from today . . . VOTE!!!

Copyright©2018 Kurt F. Stone

Distraction, Diversion and Political Optics

     (Kudos to Sandy Gotttstein, Alaska's gift to the world, for contributing to this piece in more ways than she will ever know . . . )

            John Carlos and Tommy Smith at the 1968 Olympics

By now, , after more than 16 months of  off-the-wall Trumpian weltanschauung, it is clear that whenever the President begins flying too close to the flame of political immolation, he unveils a diversionary issue bound to keep his base both delighted and in thrall.  Most recently, as the Mueller investigation continues picking up Republican support;  the administration continues forcibly taking migrant children from their parents and placing them in separate detention centers, to “deter” illegal immigration; and the world waits and watches as '45 keeps flip-flopping on tariffs and that summit with Kim Jong-un,  what does he do?  He turns up the heat on the various  National Football League (NFL) players who have been refusing to stand for the National Anthem prior to kick-off.  Now mind you, this isn't an issue that just began; it's been around the sports world for more than half-a-century.  Many will remember the 1968 Olympic games in Mexico when African-American 200 meter medalists Tommy Smith and John Carlos both raised a black-gloved "human rights salute" during the playing of the Star Spangled Banner.  The two received their medals from David Cecil (the 6th Marquess of Exeter) shoeless but wearing black socks to represent black poverty. Smith wore a black scarf around his neck to represent black pride, while Carlos had his tracksuit unzipped to show solidarity with blue-collar workers. (n.b. Smith went on to a brief three-year career in the NFL before becoming a longtime professor of sociology at Santa Monica College; Carlos, who was drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles but never played due to a severe knee injury, became a track and field coach at Palm Springs High School. In 2008, the two were honored with the Arthur Ashe Award for Courage at the 2008 ESPY Awards.)

Fast forward nearly a half-century, and we find San Francisco Forty-Niner quarterback Colin Kaepernik first sitting on the ground (3rd pre-season game) then from the 4th pre-season game onward, taking a knee during the playing of the National Anthem.  When queried by the national media, he explained "I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder", he said, referencing a series of events that led to the Black Lives Matter movement and adding that he would continue to protest until he felt like "[the American flag] represents what it's supposed to represent."  As in the case of Smith and Carlos in 1968, few people paid attention to what Kaepernik's underlying motives were in carrying out his protest; of what he was truly saying. Most simply attacked him for being unpatriotic, for desecrating the memory of all those who fought and died for our freedoms, and for showing utter disregard for the flag and all that it has long stood for.  And, as with Smith and Carlos, Kaepernik's professional sports career has all but ended because of his protest.  

By continually attacking those NFL players who have been kneeling during the National Anthem, '45 has accomplished several things:

1. Getting the NFL to set a policy which mandates that those players who do not stand during the singing of the National Anthem will remain in their respective locker rooms until the anthem has been completed . . . and that any player who does not obey this mandate will be fined;
2. Shifted the political optics away from such issues as Mueller, children of immigrants, tariffs and North Korea towards a group of largely minority millionaire gladiators;
3. Set up a potential issue for the 2018 midterm elections (e,g., "Yes or no: are you for or against the flag and all it stands for?" a question whose complexity demands far more than a monosyllabic response.)
4. Shown that the POTUS - like an awful lot of Americans - haven't got the slightest idea about the background, history or meaning of the Star Spangled Banner, nor what the law has to say about it or the flag it represents.

While most Americans know that the words of the Star Spangled Banner were written by Francis Scott Key (1779-1843), few know that he served as the decidedly pro-slavery, anti-abolitionist United States Attorney for the District of Columbia for nearly a decade. Nor do many know that his poem,  written in 1814 and set to the tune of a popular British song called To Anacreon in Heaven, consists of four stanzas and did not officially become our National Anthem until 1931.  It contains some decidedly racist lyrics: in the 3rd stanza, as but one example, we read No refuge could save the hirling and slave/from the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave /And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave/O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.  When Key wrote these words on the back of a letter 204 years ago, the "land of the free" definitely did not include African Americans or non-citizens.  When I was in grade school (during the height of McCarthyism) our teacher, Miss Collette, had us sing all four stanzas every day at the beginning of class:

For those who do not have access to audio or video, here are the four stanzas:

O say can you see, by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight
O’er the ramparts we watch’d were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there,
O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream,
’Tis the star-spangled banner—O long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore,
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion
A home and a Country should leave us no more?
Their blood has wash’d out their foul footstep’s pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

O thus be it ever when freemen shall stand
Between their lov’d home and the war’s desolation!
Blest with vict’ry and peace may the heav’n rescued land
Praise the power that hath made and preserv’d us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto – “In God is our trust,”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

I personally challenge the president and any member of his Cabinet (or Congress) to sing any (if not all) of these stanzas correctly.  And as for the president's suggestion that those football players who do not stay out on the field of play and sing our National Anthem should be be deported, this flies in the face of a 75-year old decision by the United States Supreme Court: West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette.  While this decision specifically dealt with the illegality of forcing school children to stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance, Justice Robert Jackson noted for all time that ". . . we apply the limitations of the Constitution with no fear that freedom to be intellectually and spiritually diverse or even contrary will disintegrate the social organization. To believe that patriotism will not flourish if patriotic ceremonies are voluntary and spontaneous instead of a compulsory routine is to make an unflattering estimate of the appeal of our institutions to free minds. We can have intellectual individualism and the rich cultural diversities that we owe to exceptional minds only at the price of occasional eccentricity and abnormal attitudes. When they are so harmless to others or to the State as those we deal with here, the price is not too great. But freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order."  Some will argue that the court's decision only applies to public places like class rooms, court rooms and city hall chambers - not to privately-owned spaces.  Maybe yes, maybe no.  But do keep in mind that a large percentage of professional sports' stadia (and the land upon which they have been erected) have been underwritten with public tax dollars which, by definition, makes the West Virginia State ruling apply to them as well.  What legal strategy is '45 and his Justice Department going to use to deport American citizens?  Where is he going to send them?  Guantanamo?  Back to Africa?  To Neptune or Mars?

At least one NFL team co-owner - the Jets' Christopher Johnson - has gone on record as saying that while his personal preference was for his players to stand on the field during the singing of the National Anthem, that fines related to national anthem protests “will be borne by the organization, by me, not the players. . . .I never want to put restrictions on the speech of our players,” he said. “There are some big, complicated issues that we’re all struggling with, and our players are on the front lines. I don’t want to come down on them like a ton of bricks, and I won’t. There will be no club fines or suspensions or any sort of repercussions. If the team gets fined, that’s just something I’ll have to bear.”  One wonders how long it will take for the next NFL owner to break with both the POTUS and league commissioner Roger Goodell, who is paid in excess of $35 million a year plus the lifetime use of a jet.  After all, this is a world in which billionaires abound, making unfathomable sums through the gladiatorial efforts of the multimillionaires they employ.  That even one should show independence is a good sign . . .

So let the POTUS try to divert our attention from issues that truly matter with political optics that are as disturbing as anything ever created by Edvard Munch.  We shall neither be deceived, diverted nor distracted, for we are, when all is said and done, "The land of the free and the home of the brave."

494 days down, 978 days to go.

Copyright2018 Kurt F. Stone

Are We Living In a Dystopian Novel?

Literary scholars (of which I am definitely not one) have long debated what the first dystopian novel was.  Some claim it was Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726); others say the honor belongs to either French writer Jules Verne's Paris in the Twentieth Century (1863) or British author H.G. Welles' The Time Machine (1895); then there are those who swear the honor belongs to one of two American novel: either Ignatius Donnelly's Caesar's Column (1890) or Jack London's The Iron Heel (1908).  It is likely that some readers of The K.F. Stone Weekly have not yet read - nor heard of - several of these classic works,  and as such, are likely unable to define the term "dystopian." However a brief rendering of some of the most famous novels in the genre - Kafka's The Trial, Orwell's 1984, Huxley's Brave New World, Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, Phillip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? or Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games - should give at least a hint as to the definition of dystopia.  Simply stated, dystopian novels, stories or movie adaptations deal with an imagined future time, place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad - typically a totalitarian or environmentally degraded one. In other words, "dystopia" is the bipolar opposite of "utopia."  

In light of the many changes that have radically altered civil society over the past generation or two - and especially since the advent of the Internet - and a populace conditioned to view reality through the lens of "optics" -many of the most dire and frightening predictions of great dystopian novels have come chillingly true.  Consider, if you will, brief summaries of a handful of dystopian novels; the pictures they paint are haunting:

• The Iron Heel (1908): Focusing on the breakdown of politics in a future American society, Jack London imagines the rise of an oligarchic tyranny which bankrupts the middle classes and rules over its poor subjects with a crass, uncaring iron heel;
• 1984 (1949): George Orwell creates a highly disturbing future world of "Newspeak," and "Big Brother," in which 2+2=5;  hot is cold, up is down, constant surveillance and a government-controlled media;
• Fahrenheit 451 (1953): America has become a society in which books are burned and intellectual thought is illegal. Ironically, when first published, Bradbury's book was itself banned for containing "questionable themes";
• The Drowned World (1962):  A vivid picture of a world irreversibly changed by global warming; the cities of Europe and America lie submerged in tropical lagoons, while a biologist cataloging flora and fauna is beset with strange dreams.
• The Handmaid's Tale (1998): Set in a totalitarian, post-nuclear world, Christian theocracy has overthrown the US government. Women are forbidden to read, and the few capable of having children are subjugated and forced to serve the wider needs of society by becoming breeding machines.

What makes these - and many, many other - dystopian novels so chillingly, mind-numbing is how closely they approximate the direction American society has been taking over the past several decades.  The rise of cyber reality, untrammeled, self-centered consumerism, instantaneous hand-held communications, creeping authoritarianism, a rising tide of religious and ethnic intolerance, a growing distrust of science, and a penchant for accepting the most outlandish conspiracy theories as reality, has changed society a thousand times over. Today, as in dystopian novels, there exists a sizable plurality which disdains those they view as effete intellectuals, derides those who hold different opinions on matters of race, politics or sexual orientation, and despises those who will not walk in lockstep with their anointed leaders.  These are people who have been conditioned to turning a blind eye toward provable facts, all the while claiming that these facts are nothing more than lies promulgated by elitist elements for their own purposes. 

Of all the many disabilities and outright lies '45, Bannon, Limbaugh, Fox News, conspiracists like Alex Jones and white supremacists like Richard Spencer and David Duke have foisted upon American society, perhaps none is quite so diabolic - or brilliant - as that of "Fake News."  For over the past several years, they have trained and conditioned their Pavlovian followers into believing that anything in print, on the Internet or broadcast over the airwaves which does not jibe with their preconceived notions of reality is a big fat lie; a lie spread by the Fake Media.  This is utterly brilliant.  All '45 or his lieutenants have to do to negate something in the news which questions their facts or veracity is to proclaim that they are part and parcel of the "Fake News" conspiracy. 

Sometimes the Fake News angle goes beyond belief. Take General Jon Kelly's press conference the other day in which he denounced Florida Congressional Representative Fredrecka Wilson  for having given herself credit for the construction of a new FBI building in Miami.  Turns out that a video taken of that event by the Ft. Lauderdale News Sun Sentinel proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Rep. Wilson never said any thing of the sort. Turns out, that according to General Kelly and presidential press secretary Sarah Sanders, the Sun Sentinel video was a hoax; just another example of Fake News being perpetrated by the liberal mainstream media.  

Other examples abound - going back to that which got the future '45 his first political notice: "birtherism."  Polling done during the 2016 election showed that two-thirds of the Trump supporters knew for a fact that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, is to this day a practicing Muslim, and was sent here as a child for the purpose of eventually turning America into an Islamic nation.  Then too, '45's rabid base still "knows" that he scored the "biggest victory" in the history of presidential elections, and had more people attend his inauguration than any president in the modern era.  And how do they know these things when facts, photos and statistics prove them wrong?  Why their fearless leader told them so!

Oy!

And while one can easily respond with "Don't lose too much sleep over it; these crazy people represent far less than a majority," I say this: members of this "crazy plurality" represent some of the most heavily armed people in America.  Whether '45 knows it or not, the people who consciously created this Republican base (the very base which '45 and most of the cowards in Congress spoon feed) have their own frightening, dystopian agenda: to create a Civil War; a conflict which will pit the followers and descendants of the Old South, Joe McCarthy, Charles "America First!" Lindburgh and the Koch Brothers against the descendants of FDR, Kennedy, King and Obama . . . not to mention Richard Hofstadter who, while not a dystopian novelist, did, back in November, 1964, write one of the most important dystopian essays of all time: The Paranoid Style in American Politics.

I for one do not wish to live within the pages of 1984. The Chrysalids or The Running Man. My choices tend towards George Eliot's Middlemarch and Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward  where at least idealism still has a chance.

264 days down, 1082 to go.

Copyright©2017 Kurt F. Stone

This Is Serious . . . Very, Very Serious

                                     Indy and Short Round

Up until late yesterday, I was fully prepared to devote this week's essay to '45, North Korea and the insane rhetorical brinkmanship going back-and-forth between the two nuclear nations.  Of how the POTUS has, whether consciously or not, taken a page from Richard Nixon's "I'm madder and badder than thou" playbook in order to scare the pants off of Kim Jong-un, and how '45's North Korean counterpart has ratcheted up his rhetoric to proclaim that his ICBM is " a gift for the American bastards" even as he promised a missile launch in the direction of Guam. I was looking forward to comparing '45's oratorical flourishes ("fire and fury like the world has never seen," as well as "locked and loaded,") to those of his North Korean counterpart, and quoting Asian sources who are now wondering aloud just who is more dangerous - Donald Trump or Kim Jong-un?  I was even thinking about putting in a word or two about '45's wild and woolly threat to take military action against Venezuela. 

I even had what I thought was a pretty good title containing just a soupçon of satire: This Is Serious . . . Very, Very Serious," which as any Indiana Jones aficionado knows, was said  (in slightly abbreviated form) by cinema's favorite archaeologist/adventurer when he and "Short Round" (a.k.a. "Shorty") were trapped in a death room as long-bladed swords began slowly and ominously descending from the ceiling. This scene and quote was of course in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

And then along came the horrifying events of the past 24 hours in Charlottesville, Virginia, which shoved my original essay into the "maybe next week" column. The one thing I have salvaged from the North Korea/mutually assured insanity/utter chaos at the White House piece is the title, which works just as well . . . if not better.

This Is Serious . . . Very, Very Serious. 

At this juncture, there is little need to go into much detail about the "Unite the Right" atrocity which took place in the town along the Rivanna River; constant cable coverage has pretty much made any such recap unnecessarily redundant.   For certain, this is a story that will continue receiving coverage for many days, if not weeks to come.  And among the media sidebars we should expect will be pieces putting faces on the leaders and major perpetrators, as well as informative (and no doubt chilling) sketches about the roughly one-dozen jack-booted, tiki-torch and Confederate flag-bearing, armed White Power, pro-Nazi, anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic groups that gathered in the shadow of the University of Virginia and Jefferson's Monticello.  Their goal? According to their leaders, to protest the removal of a statue of General Robert E. Lee from a nearby park. Their not so hidden agenda? To come to physical blows with any and all counter-protesters, thus sending a visual message to those who support their twisted, hate/fear-inspired Weltanschauung.  We know what they are and who they hate: Jews, African Americans, the LGBTQ community, Muslims, environmentalists, Democrats . . . indeed, anyone who doesn't look or think like them.  What they fear is that America is no longer "theirs."  In their rheumy eyes, America has been taken over by the dregs of society and must be stopped.  

What took place on the streets of Charlottesville was obviously not spontaneous.  Rather, it was the product of months of not-so-hidden prodding and planning and a couple of generations of growing, twisted psychopathology.  Seeing the torch-bearing hundreds wearing their various uniforms, brandishing guns, rifles and automatic weapons while chanting the old Nazi refrain Blut und Boden ("blood and soil") was - and is - a stark reminder that something serious . . . very, very serious . . . is taking place in the United States.  To wit, a growing and technologically savvy minority of miscreants who want to return to a time when America was controlled by White Men; when Jews, African Americans, women and immigrants knew their place and all heroes looked and sounded like John Wayne.   

Rhetorical responses to the Charlottesville massacre - in which, as of this writing, 3 have died and more than 2 been dozen injured - have ranged from the predictably outraged to the shockingly hateful to the toxically tepid.  A smattering of statements and Tweets:

• David Duke, former head of the KKK (who attended the "United the Right" rally) called is "a turning point" in the effort to help people like him "fulfill the promises of Donald Trump."
• Richard Spencer, co-editor of AltRight.com Tweeted "We came in peace. It was the police and antifa(cists) that used force against peaceful, lawful demonstrators. 
• The POTUS's brief comment to the press was, to say the most, less than room temperature: "We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides, on many sides. What is vital now is a swift restoration of law and order and the protection of innocent lives."  Among the questions he ignored at the end of his statement were  "Do you want the support of these white nationalists?" and "Do you think the violence in Charlottesville should be considered terrorism?"

Responses to 45's comments varied greatly:

• Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT): "We should call evil by its name. My brother didn't give his life fighting Hitler for Nazi ideas to go unchallenged here at home."
• Senator Cory Gardner (R-CO): "Mr. President - we must call evil by its name. These were white supremacists and this was domestic terrorism."
• Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL): "Very important for the nation to hear @POTUS describe events in #Charlottesville for what they are, a terror attack by #whitesupremacists."
• Andrew Aglin, Founder of the Daily Stormer (a neo-Nazi, white supremacist, alt-right website): "['45] refused to even mention anything to do with us. When reporters were screaming at him about White Nationalism he just walked out of the room."
• Barack Obama quoted Nelson Mandela: " . . . for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite."
• Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT): "No Mr. President. This is a provocative effort by Neo-Nazis to foment racism and hatred and violence.  Call it out for what it is."
• Even Anthony Scaramucci '45's former Communications Director (he lasted less than 2 weeks) insisted “I think he needed to be much harsher as it relates to the white supremacists, you have to call that stuff out.”

Hours after these responses to his public comments - both negative and positive, the Tweeter-in-Chief took to the internet and wrote "We ALL must be united & condemn all that hate stands for. There is no place for this kind of violence in America. Lets come together as one!"

Again, he did not specifically condemn the alt-Right, white supremacist or Neo-Nazi perpetrators. This is serious . . . very, very serious.

If '45 really, truly wants to "condemn all that hate stands for" he could start by immediately - and very publicly - firing:

• Stephen Bannon, his White House Chief Strategist  and former Executive Chair of the far-right Breitbart News and
• Sebastian Gorka, his far-right, anti-Semitic Deputy Assistant, who came to his boss's inauguration wearing a badge, tunic, and ring of the Order of Vitéz,  a far-right group listed by the State Department as having been " . . . under the direction of the Nazi Government of Germany' during World War II." (It should also  be noted that Gorka's mother Susan worked closely as a translator with David Irving, the discredited historian described by a judge as a "Holocaust denier … anti-Semitic and racist, and that he associates with right-wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism."

Alas, there is every reason to believe that '45 would gladly fire Bob Mueller and/or A.G. Sessions before he'd ever let go of Bannon and/or Gorka . . . and for the same reason: he doesn't want to do anything that would possibly alienate his beloved "base."  For it's his base - which apparently includes white supremacists, neo-Nazis, racists and anti-Semites - that ultimately gives him the adulation and ego strokes which keeps his emotional/psychic furnace ablaze.  It's this base that that makes him feel real, feel alive . . . feel presidential.

And this is serious . . . very, very serious.

Copyright©2017 Kurt F. Stone