Dear Comrades #1 [April 2008]

Dear Comrades #1

[April 2008]

The eternal bi-partisan budget crisis in California demonstrates just how selective & flawed is the memory of capitalist society. This year the simple-minded solution is to cut education & social services (always a favorite) AND prison funding. The State solution to budget woes in the past has been to cut intervention & diversion programs, and to pass more laws & build more prisons. This year they don’t even want to shell out to keep people locked-up. This will be an interesting scenario to watch play out.

Perhaps the real plan is to re-locate the Financial Elite to some pristine & “restricted” Outer Space destination .

The other budgetary solution—and not only in California but across the nation—is State sponsored gambling. With the exception of the Lotto, in California gambling is (for the time being) restricted to Native American reservation land. How ironic—white America brought “fire water” (and death & disease) to the Indian, now the Indian facilitates American society’s gambling fever. [Historic footnote: The Mob got real cozy with the CIA when Castro shut down the casinos in Havana. The only people who can really afford gambling are the wealthy. Legalization & taxation of marijuana would solve the budget problem, cut out violent dealers & gangs & would make society a whole lot happier & more peaceful—AND more creative too.]

Meanwhile the American social disorder is being directed to the acceptance of an endless “War on Terror.”

The media, actors—and yes, perhaps especially, writers—are less than subtly supporting

the full steam ahead drive to an uncritical support for the grossest militarism & insipid nationalism.

A promo for an “Animal Planet” TV special on beavers (beavers, for Christ sake!)

featured a comic inanely grinning & saying, “Since we’re in the process of rebuilding

Iraq we should send beavers over there” in order to save money. Yes, it’s ridiculous

on the face of it, and could be laughed off—for the exception of the fact that America

is primarily responsible for the destruction & social barbarism that has become Iraq.

It’s like a Twilight Zone episode, one that features a smugly complacent society cradling

it own demise like the proverbial serpent to its breast—either that or a lunatic Texan.

During a session of the UN then Premier Nikita Khrushchev (1894–1971) banged his shoe on the table and shouted, “Capitalists will sell the rope that hangs them.”

This is true metaphorically speaking.

Trouble is, that noose is tightly pinching all our throats.

In the late 50’s & early 60’s the USA displayed a keen interest in destroying Vietnam & the Vietnamese people. At least during that particular sacrilege there was strong & organized anti-war movement in the US—but that was primarily because a compulsory draft was in effect. I am convinced that there will be no meaningful mass anti-war movement in the US again until the draft is reinstated.

The tragedy of 9/11 has been used to justify the near obliteration of an entire nation, the

death & mutilation of tens of thousands of children & making physical torture an

accepted norm in the new century.

America is the Poster Nation for the Double Standard Syndrome (DSS). Perhaps a pharmaceutical company will come up with a pill for it. However, America is not alone. The world governments have not only condoned US aggression, many have actively engaged in it.

About 3,000 died during 9/11—and the United States has demanded 100’s of thousands of innocent Iraqi lives in return.

Let’s look at this from another perspective:

During World War II, Nazi Germany slaughtered over 20 MILLION Soviet citizens. The damage in

terms of property destruction & suffering cannot be calculated. Can you imagine how the USA would have retaliated for THAT? Hiroshima was bad enough. Yet every US President right on down the line screamed about the injustice of the Berlin Wall (at the same time the USA was rescuing Nazi war criminals & giving them fake IDs.) The US govt. can’t even tolerate the presence or even acknowledge the existence of Cuba. The US been trying unsuccessfully to starve out the socialist administration (and the entire population) for 50 years. The fact that people have been jumping overboard is no surprise—that was the capitalist intention all along. They thought Havana would fall and all the undesirable Cuban refugees would go home and the casinos would reopen. It hasn’t quite worked out that way, has it?

When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan the action was supported by the all progressive elements (particularly women) & Kabul govt. in that country. The Soviet Union knew full well the danger an armed & radical Islam posed to their secular régime. Naturally the reactionaries in the USA set up an unrelenting wail & cry about ‘the poor, victimized people of Afghanistan under the heel of the Red Army.’ More hypocrisy. The failure of the Soviet venture in Afghanistan was instrumental (among a host of other negatives) in bringing about its own collapse. We’ll see now if the US fares any better.

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I’m not a feminist, but it really does seem to me that the driving force of reaction in the world—and has been from the beginning of human history—is the basic aggression of the human male animal. What else explains the self-destructive perpetuation of war? I know that as a Marxist I’m supposed to put all the blame on the class system—but it does not explain the eagerness that men of all classes exhibit in their willingness to engage in human genocide. Just watch TV programs dedicated to war & militarism. I think that there will always be a dominating presence of males who will delight in blowing things & people up—as well as a preponderance of women ready & willing to support them. They will continue to push aggression because the rest of the population lets them get away with it.

Ah, if only the boneheads would just bump off each other

& leave the rest of us & Nature alone.

Nature can go on quite well without humanity, but humanity

can’t exist without Nature.

So what’s a weary, peace-loving, social revolutionary to do?

In the past the tactic of “Deep Entry” has been advised by some organizations.

This meant keeping one’s revolutionary orientation a “secret” until objective conditions became such as

to radicalize a significant sector of the working class population. Sort of like a “Don’t Ask, Don’t

Tell” policy for Communists. The problem is that society will endure a lot of extreme hardship before

it finally gets galvanized to do something about it. Deep Entry became so prolonged that the people who

participated in it were often swallowed up whole into the society they once so fervently sought to change.

In the 60’s the new strategy was “Turn on, tune in, drop out.” Obviously this didn’t work either—the rebellious 60’s generation & their offspring became the neo-cons of the 80’s & 90’s. (Well, not everybody, of course.)

Personally I no longer believe the enlightened people of the world will ever have the numbers and/or commitment needed to implement the revolutionary social & political change needed to prevent the approaching human & environmental catastrophe.

Involvement in reformism only supplies a cover to hide the (not so hidden) agenda of decaying capitalism & the above mentioned boneheads who groove on war, cruelty & destruction..

Humans are unwilling to significantly modify their behavior until conditions become literally unbearable.

For people with even a modicum of insight those conditions have existed for some time, but most

of the population appears to remain in generalized denial.

Maybe that’s their way of coping…maybe they just don’t care.

That’s probably closer to the reality.

One thing I know for sure, they’ve got thicker skin than I do.

Regards,