Jack Burns Lives!

National Geographic is airing an interview with George Bush about the 9-11 attacks on August 28. During one clip previewing the show Bush remarked “I was as shocked as everyone else.”

Why are these people, people that spread death and destruction all over the planet, so shocked when violence comes to their own doorstep?

“Gradualism in theory is perpetuity in practice.” William Lloyd Garrison

For the past ten years or so, I’ve subscribed to and toyed with this notion of building a society in parallel to the existing society. A democratic society with the right mix of socialism and small scale capitalism bound by ecological law. Local production for local consumption. The theory being, our current system is inherently non-sustainable and will certainly collapse. After all, who can deny we’re seeing the cracks appear in the dam?

Texas, a boom state with phenomenally non-sustainable growth, is locked in year long drought and they’ve been known to have ten year droughts. But not with twenty-five million people. They’re now planning to treat sewage for drinking water. Drink their own piss to survive. Serves ‘em right, I suppose. Aquifers in the Upper Mississippi Delta are feeling the strain of industrial agriculture. Dead zones are found throughout our oceans. The air in many national parks is so bad the Park Service advises people to not visit certain areas within parks. The government is nearly bankrupt, and there’s apparently no end in sight to our insane $700 billion annual military budget. Wall Street is up and down like a roller coaster and the housing market has, finally and thankfully, collapsed. London burns and protests ring out loud and clear around the globe.

But where are our radicals? Where are our protestors?

The theory I’ve subscribed to and tossed about in leftist circles has been to build this society in parallel that will be composed of democratic, community based institutions and organizations. Employee owned companies, local businesses, cooperatives, local farming and other means of production so we can live largely unaffected by what goes on in Washington. Although I must say, that I’ve never really bought into the idea we could operate “unaffected” or remain “uninfected” by what happens in Washington. You get sucked in, and anyone that doubts that should examine the fates of many communes and subsistence communities that have attempted to exist within the capitalist system in the United States. Once the cash economy gets a foothold, you’re doomed. It’s like allowing a virus access to your hard drive.

Kenneth Dolbeare once wrote an essay about how western capitalism possesses inherent defense mechanisms that make it very difficult to topple, not the least of which is the ability of its powerful ideology to penetrate deep into the core of our society. It doesn’t maintain itself by raw power alone. It’s ideology teaches that the system is right and natural, people are naturally competitive, and that hard work, or lack thereof, is the reason for income disparity. Patriotism is another important aspect of the ideology, that people should revere the nation state and protect against “socialism, “communism” and worst of all, “anarchy.”

These things are taught to our children via a compulsory educational system. The indoctrination begins at a very young age, when we first learn the Pledge of Allegiance. And by the time we reach high school or our post collegiate careers, most of us have become willing, duped accomplices.

In the process of maintaining social control, the ruling class enjoys the enthusiastic assistance of the middle class, via a complex system of hierarchies. Lawyers, journalists, teachers, administrators, executives, etc., all committed to the ideology since their status provides a relatively comfortable life. They administer the state and make sure society conforms to the principles that make capitalism run well. If the working class becomes troublesome, they repress it as needed.

Many of the most idealistic people, ones that leave universities well educated in liberal arts and fully aware of what’s going on, end up getting sucked into the system and become silent. Frankly, they need jobs, health insurance and a way to care for their families. Most end up in the Democratic party, the formerly socially conscious organization within the “system.” It allows them to exist as capitalists and suppress their revolutionary conscience, since the Democrats have traditionally helped the poor and stood for the environment. It’s the party of compromise, a sort of social Xanax. You feel better, but it doesn’t solve the core problem.

Of course, anything that threatens this or questions its legitimacy is quickly marginalized. I faced this within groups dominated by mainstream Democrats, often virulent opposition to any discussion of moving away from the Democratic Party or god forbid, anarchism. I was blamed for Gore’s defeat, skewered, and damn near drawn and quartered because I supported Ralph Nader. I supported Nader when Obama ran. I could no longer support status quo politics and figured the only thing that would move the Democrats left was the threat of losing their base.

Despite considerable gains in educating the populace, this remains our largest hurdle, getting people to question capitalism, or more specifically, the unfair distribution of equity within our society, as well as the legitimacy of a Representative Republic that represents only the upper classes.

For those that have stubbornly supported the Democratic platform over the years, those that supported Obama, America’s great and now failed Hope, has it ever been more clear that it is time to move on? To abandon them and look to something else? Immediately after the healthcare debacle, I knew we were in trouble. I urged Democrats to protest Obama in an effort to get him to move left. I stated that continued support within his party would lead to nothing but status quo politics. No one listened, or perhaps they listened, but no one dared question our once deified President. It was hopeless on two fronts, because one, they had no intention of doing it, and two, even if they did, he wouldn’t change. Even a cursory examination of his record before his Presidency reveals he was an empty suit. His record after reaching the White House is now there for all to see. Obama opened negotiations via a secret meeting with insurance executives? The old closed door, proverbial smoke filled room meeting of fat cats planning on how they would get fatter. Then came the expansion of war and covert actions around the globe, actions that even went beyond Bush. Yet, I still heard cries from Democrats that we needed to support Obama. He was just setting things up. Bullshit. Total bullshit, but this fully illustrates the power behind the ideology and the system. It’s hard for many people, even well educated, compassionate, thinking people to break away.

So, our choices seem few. If we insist on this program of gradually building up a society in parallel, I suggest we step on the gas a bit. We need a large scale general strike that will destroy businesses unwilling to give equity and a voice to all employees. As purchasers, we must shun and ostracize these organizations and the people that support them. We need to work as if we’re preparing for an invasion, with great fervor, opening cooperatives, growing, harvesting and selling food locally. Train doctors willing to practice medicine for the greater good and run cooperative clinics. Produce other goods locally. Open employee owned pharmaceutical companies that can produce needed medicines. Whatever we’ve been buying from the Chinese (not junk…needed items) needs to be produced in our own bioregions. If you’re working within a capitalist enterprise, you need to pose the question about greater equity distribution for employees. Yes, it’s risky business, but this is no time for apathy or cowardice.

But we don’t have much time. The sand in the top of the hour glass is running quickly.

We can hasten things via sabotage. Hacking systems, using tools like Wikileaks to expose the bad elements and in some cases, stop them cold in their tracks. Tim DeChristopher had a good idea that only needs some slight modification. The general strike. Use our heads. We’re smarter, I do know that. But we can’t have Baader Meinhof type violence. People that go that route will be crushed and play directly into the hands of the state.

What do I hope will emerge? More democracy, greater equity for workers, stronger communities. Less dependence on Washington, more power in the hands of the people. Communism? No, that’s not going to work. A rational mixture smaller scale capitalism and socialism, industrialism bound by ecology, democratic enterprises owned by the workers but still with an incentive base. All pay doesn’t have to be equal. Some people will be more valuable and better trained. But we can’t support a system where some workers earn 250 times more than the average employee. Who can possibly say that is fair or just?

I do know one thing. The time to act has passed. We have to capitalize on this moment, on the anger and unrest all around us.

Onward

ancient tsunami warning stone in Japan

An important message from my compadre on the Left Coast.

Industrial civilization is like a tsunami. You can’t stop it. All you can do is live wisely and stay out of its path. You don’t want to be part of it. You want to survive until the water recedes and returns to the sea.

It’s destructive and powerful, but it will pass.

Thus, we preserve knowledge and life ways for the survivors, like the ancients who crafted tsunami warning signs in Japan. The survivors and those that come later will rebuild. Woe be to those that ignore the signs.

ABQJournal Online
By John W. Flores / Albuquerque Resident on Sun, Aug 7, 2011

Fitting Tribute For Homemade Classic
Not long ago I wrote a letter to Albuquerque Mayor Richard Berry asking that the city find some way to celebrate what is acting legend Kirk Douglas’ favorite film out of all the ones he’s made in his long career – “Lonely Are the Brave.”

It’s a story based on the book by the individualist philosopher and environmentalist author Edward Abbey, titled “The Brave Cowboy.”

After Douglas read this fine piece of writing, he soon bought the movie rights. He loved the book’s central character, John W. “Jack” Burns, a war veteran in the late 1940s who became a wandering cowboy on his chestnut mare named Whiskey, working from ranch to ranch across the wide-open Southwest.

He’s the last of a dying breed even in 1962, when the movie is set in and around Albuquerque – with special details on the nearby Sandia Mountains. In the Sandias, Burns would find a fleeting refuge for his frontiersman instincts and sensibilities.

My letter to Berry was simple enough, and had a great effect. I asked that we honor Douglas in the summer of 2012, the 50th anniversary of the film’s release, by holding an event where the city would show that film and proclaim Douglas’ favorite all-time character, Jack Burns, a distinguished local wandering cowboy.

Douglas would appreciate that.

Berry sent my letter to Ann Lerner, the director of the Albuquerque Film Office, and she called me right away, saying that the mayor was enthusiastic about the idea and so was she. So Lerner called me up to her office a couple of weeks ago and knighted me with the noble, if impossible, task as chairman of a committee with the sole purpose of “getting Mr. Douglas interested in coming here” for a screening of his great work on that movie.

“Lonely Are the Brave” also stars Walter Matthau, Carroll O’Connor, George Kennedy and Gena Rowlands.

Paul Bardacke, who is a former state attorney general and now a prominent attorney in Albuquerque, told me he thinks this is a “great idea.” Bardacke is an old college roommate of Douglas’ son, actor and director Michael Douglas.

I also have the task of finding as many “extras” from that 1962 film as I can to be on hand at the screening. The movie was a big deal for everyone here in the small town that Albuquerque was in those days. Now, it’s grown up. But there are still a few people around, no doubt, who were in it.

Lerner was so excited about the screening and celebration that she already made arrangements to have the event at the historic KiMo Theater on old Route 66, the central road across New Mexico in those days, when Jack Burns and his mare ambled across the five volcanoes on the western mesa, across the Rio Grande and through the northern part of the city.

The opening scene shows Burns putting out his campfire, looking up at a newfangled airliner streaking across the deep blue autumn sky. He then cuts barbed wire after reading the sign held up by that fence that says: “Duke City.”

That’s the first sign his character is a rugged young man hell-bent on being free. He’s about to encounter a troubled, harried, angst-ridden society with only the guitar on his back to placate him and his horse on their endless travels across the modern, slowly vanishing American West.

After reading the book, it’s easy to see why Douglas immediately snapped up the rights to it. He hired veteran screenwriter Dalton Trumbo – who had been black-listed by the McCarthy people, who found some remote association to “communism.” Douglas hired him without prejudice, and Trumbo produced in one draft what Douglas calls “a perfect script.” No rewrites.

If Douglas cannot attend – he is getting up there in age (he’ll be 95 in December) – I want to express in a letter to him on behalf of people everywhere that we appreciate what he loved about an unforgettable literary and cinematic character who, like Douglas himself, was always willing to fight for what he believed in. Never afraid to put it all on the line for a great cause. Always loyal to his friends.

And in spite of everything, never letting go of his dreams for a better world.