Category Archives: Opinion

IT MIGHT BE THE BEST OF TIMES OR DAMN NEAR THE WORST

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Before I explain fracturing one of the great literary openings, I want to apologize for the extended period I’ve taken off from writing Monday posts. We’re way past my planned reappearance in January when I said I’d re-open. There have been deaths, potential lives (I’m going to be a grandfather to twin girls), a son moving out of the house, a rescheduled release date of my first three Matt Jacob novels by Polis Books, a decision to issue the fourth (TIES THAT BLIND) in fall of 2015 as both a print and e-book, and a great vacation in Mexico. From here on in I intend to post every other Monday and occasionally have different interesting and talented writers filling in on the off week.

As for the post’s title, it popped while watching an episode of Cosmos. I don’t have many regrets about my lack of formal education and perhaps that lack has added to my incredible delight and amazement as I begin to discern the scope of information and understanding we, as humans, have at our fingertips. In fact, it will take decades to decipher the raw data we receive every day from the rovers and probes that have been sent to space. It makes me tingle the same as listening to Rubinstein playing Chopin’s Nocturnes, Miles, reading Raymond Chandler, or seeing a Eugene O’Neill play.

It’s not just astronomers who might be living in the best of times. We’ve been discovering new species that survive at the ocean’s depths via modern submersible technology. And what of neurologists and neuropsychologists mapping the electrical pathways of the brain and the implications for treating diseases like Parkinson’s, for example. Hell, it’s only been about a decade since the completion of the Human Genome Project and we’re already reaping its benefits, and not just in medicine. Frankly, the discoveries that have occurred during my lifetime have dropped my jaw.

And let’s not ignore technology and the Internet, which has changed the way people interact, the ‘size’ of our world, politics all over the planet, and offers the opportunity to disseminate information faster than our wildest dreams.

Yeah, I know. A lot of people won’t like the paragraph above. I often hear complaints about the loss of the “real” world to the “virtual.” The massive erosion of privacy. Have listened as people derided the “Arab Spring” since the results have been considerably less than desired. I understand the issues, see the complications, appreciate the downsides, but continue to say bring it on.

From where I sit, the potential far outweighs the negative. Furthermore, whenever societies go through seismic change, many people decry the loss of the past. I’m just not one of them. Does anyone really believe the world would have known about the kidnapping of 250 Nigerian girls without the Internet?

That last fact brings me to the second half of the title. With all this great knowledge tumbling into our lives, we still live in a world better known for atrocities than humanity. That, to me, is a sick mind fuck.

People are going to tell me “twas ever thus” and they may be accurate. But until my dying day I’m never going to believe it has to stay this way, that we’re not better than this. That the gentle acts of kindness, compassion, and generosity we see between individuals every day can’t be translated into the greater society everywhere.

Why? It’s isn’t because of anything rose colored. I’ve been lucky to have seen some serious change for the better over the course of my life. From changing attitudes toward Trans*, LGBs, and women to issues that include income inequality–(1% versus 90)–and, to a much lesser degree, institutional racism.

Then add to that the commitment and work being done by those coming after my generation. Despite the economic hardships that younger people now face, they are still growing Teach For America. Still finding ways, inside and outside the system, to work for social change. Again, not just in the U.S., but places where it’s even more difficult and the risks much, much greater.

But yeah, you gotta be blind not to see that way, way too much totally sucks—and it behooves us to never forget. But however ugly it is and/or becomes, there’s really is an awful lot of wonder, awe, art, music, science, and good, good people to love and respect.

(Please remind me of this column when I get into one of my negative rants. Thanks.)

Hold fast to dreams,
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird,
That cannot fly.
Langston Hughes

WHO THEY KIDDING?

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The irony was just too much to ignore. The morning after I wrote the first draft of this post (Friday), I opened the newspaper to read that two of my friends and Mel King, a legendary Boston community organizer, had been busted for blocking yet another eviction by a greedy bank.

This gave me great pause since I’d written a scathing denunciation of our right-wing jihadists’ ability to blackmail the federal government into a shutdown. A shutdown which meant that more than 800,000 government employees have been unable to work1, 3,200 children have been locked out of Head Start, 2 and 401 national parks have been closed to the public.3

I’d even gone as far as presenting a chart that listed the number of federal employees in each of our states, noting how the congressional jihadists were hurting their own constituents. But after reading the article about my friends, I began to reconsider.

How would I have felt if the Vietnam Anti-War movement had been able to shut the government down? Truth is, I would have felt great, useful, triumphant. But then I realized this country never closes the military. Wouldn’t have then and didn’t now. Realized that shutdowns are programs that help people or build a better country. War, on the other hand, doesn’t sleep.

That’s when it struck me that the government shutdown was more than a byproduct of Tea Party activists, and the underlying philosophy of shutdown politics is not really less government as much as no government. Some of what this shutdown actually provides. A Facebook friend commented to me, “This is a war about what this country is.” I guess I’d say this is a war about what a social compact means.

One side believes that people ought take care of themselves and their families and choose on their own whether to help those in need. I have no doubt that a huge number of people on this side actually do choose to help. They adopt, give money to many different charities, feed the hungry, and live lives that are a testament to their beliefs. They also believe that government is wasteful, runs on pork, misuses their hard-earned money, and interferes with their lives. While they do acknowledge people need some government, say a military, on the social side of the ledger there is no need or place for the feds.

Actually, many progressives agree with some of these points from their own perspective. For example, who does the government really work for? They see the overwhelming support government gives to the rich and powerful, the banks and multi-national corporations, the 1% and it sickens them. And some of them, like my friends, try to shut the government down by committing acts of civil disobedience to stop ugly and unfair foreclosures.

For this side of the division, though, social compact doesn’t leave the wellbeing of others to individual decisions or buy into the notion that it’s every person for themselves. While it agrees that government wastes a huge amount of money, it relies on a federal government to provide jobs for the unemployed, food for the hungry, and yes, healthcare for our people.

That doesn’t mean those of us with the collective view of our social compact rather than the individual uber alles position think governments walk on water. There’s plenty to complain about. We don’t believe that governments have the right to follow us around, intercept our emails, mess with peoples’ personal lives (or bodies) and the list keeps rolling on.

But we do believe it’s a necessary condition to administer a social compact. Without it people would starve, bridges would crumble, and the quality of most peoples’ lives would hit the shitter.

There’s an enormous amount of problems with this government and I certainly haven’t been shy in writing about them—from institutional racism and unnecessary wars, to our governments’ lapdog ass licking to big business and the greed-heads. But unlike the other side of the divide, I’m not willing to flush it away—even with my significant doubts about potential reformation.

Because right now government does feed the hungry, does fund shelters for the homeless and battered woman, does make sure that back alley abortions are a horror of the past, and does provide educational opportunities for those who can’t get them on their own. (And I’m just naming a few. Haven’t even bothered with the really big stuff like the F.D.A, Medical Research Grants, Transportation etc.)

If the day comes when the private sector decides to do all the above and more at the scale needed, then it might be time to shut the government down. But right now it’s nothing but extortion by people who, at their best, actually imagine that more than 300 million people can go it alone. That’s not thought. That’s delusion.

THIS COLUMN IS DEDICATED TO THE LIFE OF NATHAN BRENNER, A MAN WHO TOUCHED THE HEARTS OF MANY—INCLUDING MINE.

Sources:  1. “Federal Government Begins First Shutdown in 17 Years,” Time Swampland, October 1, 2013
http://www.moveon.org/r/?r=293957&id=75833-10335568-6ytOFax&t=3

2. “Shutdown Closes 3,200 Preschoolers’ Head Start Programs,” The Wall Street Journal, October 2, 2013
http://www.moveon.org/r/?r=294108&id=75833-10335568-6ytOFax&t=4

3. “National Parks: Shutting Down America’s Best Idea,” National Geographic, October 2, 2013
http://www.moveon.org/r/?r=294089&id=75833-10335568-6ytOFax&t=5

A Cell-Free Life by Kent Ballard

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Well, Mr. Mailer is still playing hard to get. You’d think a person in a grave couldn’t really hide, though they sure can remain silent. But I’ll lure him out with threats of interviewing Vidal first. So while I keep banging on his ego, Kent Ballard has kindly agreed to join my pinch-hitters. …Zach

 

Some of my friends call me a Luddite. Some claim I’m a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal. Some just think I’m…well…peculiar.

I do not own a cell phone. I never owned one and if I have my way, never will. Many people are genuinely staggered by this. And the younger they are, the more astounding they find it. The majority of the world’s population, even in the poorest countries, now own cell phones. They have access to the Internet, instant worldwide news, the weather on any part of the globe, can communicate with the guy across the street or in Timbuktu, can film asteroids crashing into the earth, check their stocks, send and receive nude photos of each other, and generally have a nifty little piece of genuine Star Trek equipment they lug around with them everywhere.

I’ve had people tell me they would rather leave their homes without clothing than without their cell phone.

And in this one, lone, and remarkable instance, I am right and everyone else is wrong, so far as I’m concerned.

The modern American cellular phone is generally agreed to be Ameritech’s 1G DynaTAch, which took a decade to reach the market and cost one hundred million dollars to develop. It became available in 1983. It was heavy, awkward, took ten hours to charge, and had a talk time of about thirty minutes. They sold them faster than they could produce them. Waiting lists numbered into the thousands.

The cell phone is only about thirty years old, if you skip over bulky car phones, that ridiculous-looking brick with a three foot antenna and a weight approaching two and a half pounds. And you know what? We had a pretty dandy civilization before they came along. Yes, you may find it hard to believe, but before we had cell phones we had lasers, had been to the Moon, were flying operational missions with the Space Shuttle, had discovered the DNA double-helix, and even had electric lights.

One writer about my age (60) said that “we are the last generation on earth who will know what it’s like to be totally alone.” But I don’t see that as a necessarily bad thing. Sometimes I want to be alone and not looking at some YouTube film of a two-headed goat my neighbor sent me or texted nineteen boring cat jokes from Aunt Matilda. True, cell phone films taken by citizens of police abuse have proven valuable court evidence, but sworn testimony by eyewitnesses is still taken as gospel in the courts too. How do you think they handled these matters in, say, 1978?

Another thing I do not want is the NSA, FBI, or some podunk county sheriff “pinging” me to know my location at all times, day or night. I don’t want them to time me between cell towers and gauge the speed I am driving. I usually have a good idea of my location, and it’s none of their damned business. I don’t have enough room in my car to haul around forty government agencies, nor do I want them riding with me.

They say there’s no such thing as privacy now, and that’s often true. If they’re going to put me on a list of potential skateboard hijackers, they’ve already done it thanks to the shredding of the Fourth Amendment to the Bill of Rights and the PRISM program that reads all my email. And yours. But if I want to jump in my car and drive to Winslow, Arizona and wait for a girl in a flat-bed Ford to look at me, there’s no way in hell they’ll know where I am or what I’m doing and I like it like that.

But when wide-eyed people ask me, “What if you need to make an emergency call?” I tell them the truth. I can’t, and pay phones have all but disappeared. But if I’m on the road anywhere, I can reach for my CB radio, call out to just about any trucker, and they’ll place the call for me. I’ve done that before. It works very well, bless the truckers. CB radios, I predict, will make something of a comeback after the news releases about PRISM. The technology is so old they’ve simply overlooked it. And if you know how to do it, you can power them up to reach out hundreds of miles if you wish.

During the Boston Marathon Bombing, in one second the millions of viewers on the scene could have called anyone on the planet. The next, and their 4G iPhones were utterly useless. Sheer dead weight. Whether the cell towers were overloaded or if they simply shut them down isn’t the issue. People who had sure and certain communications with the world lost them, and for many that equaled panic.

But the race’s official communications were all handled by Ham radio operators. They never failed, not one. They set their frequencies to call in police, ambulances, emergency services while at the same time helping runners locate loved ones and maintaining an information flow with the outside world. Cell phones just slowly drained their batteries, silent. Think about that for a moment, and you will realize authorities in any area can simply shut down the cell towers whenever they think they have a reason, leaving you literally speechless, unable to contact a soul. You may wish to develop your own backup plan if the government tinkers much more with our communications in the near future.

Like all technology, cell phones have their good sides and bad sides. For me, the bad outweighs the good. They make very large crowds of people easier to silence, and that ain’t a good thing.

Yes, I’m among the last generation to know what it’s like to be truly alone—when I want to be. I can walk back through my woods, sit down by the little creek, and the only sound I will hear is the babbling of the water and song birds. After a bad day, that is peace few people can find. And I will have no beeping, ringing, squalling, or moon-dancing racket interrupt my solitude and gathering calmness. No nameless “officer” will be able to locate me. No hordes of ad agencies will know my habits and send me eighteen pounds of junk mail for outdoor goods. That’s known as targeted advertising.

And I don’t care to be a target.

NORMAN FUCKED ME OVER

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I originally planned for this week to be an interview with Norman Mailer in Provincetown, but at the last minute, he called to reschedule. When I asked why, he simply grumbled angrily. The only word I actually understood was Capote and it was said with clear hostility.

Then I understood why he was fucking with me. I had interviewed Truman before him. Damn lucky I haven’t yet done Gore Vidal or Norman would have refused my call. Okay, I get it, though I really won’t be pleased if he bails on me again. Hell, I have a DEAD PEOPLE INTERVIEW series to write.

So I was at loss for this week’s post until I began thinking about how many progressive petitions, donation requests, and single issue emails had flooded my inbox—this week, last week, doubtless next week and forever.. I’ve posted about this before in 2011,(http://zacharykleinonline.com/personal-experience/love-me-im-a-liberal/), but after re-reading the column, I’ve come to a less humorous conclusion.

Fact is, I am bombarded by many decent organizations that care deeply about their particular cause. And,rightly so. But now I’ve got some serious questions—and complaints—about this “single issue” notion of change.

I hang with enough progressives in both my real and virtual life to realize there’s a great deal of antipathy about talking to people who disagree with our progressive programs and ideas. Personally, I think this is foolish. Of course, I’d love to change some hearts and minds, although I’m not optimistic about it. I do, however, think I can better understand how conservatives think about the society and world in which we live. And make no mistake, there’s a huge difference between honest conservatives and the right-wing jihadists who populate Congress and the Supreme Court. True conservatives aren’t about hating government per se. Though they do dislike much of the way our government functions.

Sound familiar, progressives? We dislike much of the way government functions.

Another group that progressives often shun is the 30 to 40 percent of the population that doesn’t bother to vote. This significant percentage includes many blue collar workers, working poor, and poor people—people who are alienated, apathetic, and flat out wary of a government whose programs seemed designed to aid everyone but them. (More about this later.)

And finally, if the emails I receive (DemandProgress.Org, Organic Consumers Organization, Ourfuture.org, ProgressivesUnited, Environmental Working Group, UsAction/TrueMajority, ActBlue, Democracy for America, 350.org etc, etc., etc.) are accurate, progressives aren’t even talking to each other! The problem isn’t the organizations’ causes—most are fighting for real and positive change—but rather their apparent willingness to go it alone. Maybe it’s because they fear that the amount of contributors and resources are too small to share. Or, perhaps the attitude is akin to the myth of individualism I wrote about in last week’s column on detective fiction (http://zacharykleinonline.com/writing/detective-fiction-an-american-myth/).

Most of my progressive friends laugh out loud when I bring up Jesse Jackson. They call him a self-aggrandizing publicity hound willing to go anywhere to garner television appearances or newspaper coverage. I don’t think Jackson is funny at all. Never did. Does he have an ego? Yes. Who doesn’t? His willingness to work with any progressive action, be it unrelenting opposition to racist behavior, unswerving commitment to striking workers, or belief in economic justice, gay rights, and a healthy environment is unquestionable—whatever one thinks of the person.

What makes Jesse Jackson even more important to me was his efforts to build the Rainbow Coalition. While that attempt fizzled, I believe it was the road-map for creating a true progressive political party.

I know. At best the most lasting effect that third parties made in American politics was to have their ideas and issues co-opted by a majority party in diluted form. Yes, there was Robert M. La Follette, Eugene Victor “Gene” Debs, and Norman Thomas all third party candidates, but never a lasting legacy of a national progressive party.

That was then, this is now. Never in my lifetime have I seen dysfunction equal to our present political system. Never have seen the money spent on buying an election as I do now. And never imagined I’d be living in a country that has one right-of-center party and one that’s even further in that direction. Truth is, our political choices have boiled down to ugly or uglier.

Jackson’s road-map is an incredible opportunity to actually create a progressive party with national staying power. But—and there’s always a but—we have to begin by talking to each other to find the common causes that will bind us into an honest coalition. Whether it’s Save the Wolves or Occupy Wall Street, we must find ways to form alliances and commitments where the whole really is greater than the sum of its parts.

If we can do that, we might begin engaging those with whom we share some values (e.g., civil libertarian conservatives), and the alienated, apathetic folks who have simply given up on government. The prospect of reaching out with policies and programs that can truly mean something to those who have lost faith in politics is in our hands. These people are our constituency and, unless we make a concerted effort to create a party that speaks to them—we might as well kiss our political asses goodbye. Because if we’ve learned anything over the past fifty years it’s that Republicans and Democrats are only going to work for the rich and powerful.

“As individual fingers we can easily be broken, but all together we make a mighty fist.”  Sitting Bull

BACK TO THE FUTURE

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I’ll be turning sixty five this July so you’d think I would have known better. From the time I quit college, I had no belief that what passes for democracy in this country could be seriously reformed through our existing institutions. I distrusted both major political parties and doubted it was possible to ever create a significant or even viable third.

Living without this kind of belief is hard. Although I have, in many ways, embraced the resulting cynicism as a lifestyle, it drains an important part of life out of you. Luckily I also trusted that working with people less fortunate than I would be a worthwhile way to spend my life. A romanticized vision of an existential existence personified by the doctor in Albert Camus’s book, The Plague. And for most of my years that has been true.

Creating a school for dropouts in Chicago, trying to stem gang violence, pushing from my alternative school platform for educational reform; working at Boston’s Project Place, a worker-controlled social service agency that provided free services and also struggled to create an alternative to the usual hierarchical structures; having a private practice in counseling; fighting in the world of law for workers injured or killed by corporate indifference. All these years, all these efforts fed the meter.

Even when turning to detective fiction, I harbored the notion if I were able to honestly write about people’s interior lives and relationships, that too would be worthwhile to others and more important than just living for myself.

Throughout all that time I refused to vote for any major party presidential candidate except George McGovern. Even when folks beat on me for refusing to vote for Democrats like Humphrey and Clinton, I continued to believe that real change could never come about through our traditional institutions. A belief that was reinforced through my work with civil and criminal courts which exposed the nakedly blatant deck-stacking.

Then came Obama and I dropped my guard. I’ve written before about why I supported him, so no need to tread over old territory. But we’re almost six years in and my armor is back in place. Even his quasi-reforms don’t cut it. Especially when matched with the same old, same old that’s been a hallmark of his presidency.

In fact, the best I can say about his election (other than breaking the race barrier) is the preview of our new demographics and that was going to happen with or without him, and with or without some half-ass immigration “reform” laws.

So, “I’m back, I’m back. I’m back to where I once belonged.” But it’s different now. Or, more specifically, I’m different. It’s worse than ever. I don’t know how the “seduced and abandoned” factor figures in, but I can’t even imagine how anything can change for the better, something I’ve always been able to do.

This loss saddens me. The space where there was once an unbending hope for the future has been replaced by fear, loathing, and a deep sense of generational failure.

Yes, my generation has helped in some areas–race, women’s rights, LGBT rights and more, but it wasn’t and isn’t enough. I realized that when I looked at The Way We Live Now chart I included in my August 29th post. (middle of : http://zacharykleinonline.com/political/what-the-hell-are-we-4/) So much pain, so many lost lives, so little gain.

It’s kind of shocking when one is faced with their own naiveté. Add to that the painful realization that I’m saddened by what I see rather than juiced by anger. I’m sure some of these feelings are related to my own mortality. But some have to do with revisiting that existential reality and truly understanding the hopelessness that doctor faced in fighting the plague. As my cousin’s comment said on last Monday’s post, “What has become of us?” What I didn’t respond but probably should have, “Twas ever thus.”

Even with all that I’m feeling, I’m just not ready to throw in the towel. Maybe it’s because I see the work my son and his wife are doing along with others like him. Maybe it’s because I see that the Internet has given the fight a powerful new weapon and arena from its role in the Arab Spring to the petitions and notes flooding my inbox. Or, maybe it’s because I’m a stubborn son of a bitch. It doesn’t matter. I’ll continue to vote in local elections, sign those petitions, do my write ins for president, and occasionally demonstrate. But what matters to me NOW is making sure the candle is lit for those who follow.

Keep Hope Alive—Jessie Jackson