“Rap isn’t music. Music is infinite. Language is not.” —Jerry Garcia
“I had a terrible time. Nobody gets loose. They’re too cerebral” —Janis Joplin, on her European tour
“Horrible” —Mick Jagger watching video of a Hells Angel, hired to protect the Rolling Stones, killing Meredith Hunter in the free Altamont concert in California.
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Happy Birthday, America. You are still the center of everything.
People from all over the world still want to come here.
Hatred for America, and within America, is deep—even as America remains strong and democratic, and boasts a glorious past, the chief event of that past defeating the British Empire.
Nations are necessary, and worth defending against the sophistical perturbations of Empire; hatred of the United States flows from the borderless calculations of empire.
Americans can still celebrate July 4 with pride.
As a Facebook poet, I have made friends all over the world; as a student of the internet, I have learned bright and dark secrets, without having to travel by car or plane.
I am not defending America as a jingoistic fortress; the “nation” is a necessary step backwards as a means of moving forward to help “the world.” Strong, independent nations are good for the world; empire seeks the destruction of nations, and always will. Seen in this context, the informed American conservative is progressive, not reactionary.
The necessary “step backwards” is the way the conservative, the true progressive, moves forward—while remaining true to “backwards” nature (underpinning, material, common sense).
Without material common sense, which keeps the individual safe, sane, cautious, and grounded, the overreach of mad intellectuality leans its ears to propaganda sirens, and wrecks itself upon the rocks.
“Progressive,” America-hating rhetoric is widespread—it seeks to chip away at American independence and drag it back into colonial status; the strategy of America-hating is simple; pretending beneficence, divide American citizens from each other through embarrassment, humiliation, vanity, innuendo and half-truth.
For instance: one of the material truths of America is its inheritance of conditions produced by the British slave trade—this “Empire” reality is suppressed, and made to look like it is entirely America’s fault, and somehow the fault of American conservatives. Further, this shift of blame is increasingly made to look recent, with every disadvantage suffered by blacks, no matter what the cause, laid at the feet of conservatives. This strategy of divisive blame belongs to those passing themselves off as “progressive.”
And this, in a nutshell, is the strategy: Extract, in a fussy, indignant, distracting manner, the rhetoric on any topic from its underlying material reality and then focus on “the wrong” and the “blame” which needs fixing in an anecdote-driven, ahistorical present.
The Empire, by its advantageous material situation (it being an empire) can weather almost any storm, and this is why it seeks to “create storms” wherever its authority is threatened, and war (and blame) is a great way to create storms. Wars between nations are inevitably the result of empire spies (traitors)—but “progressives” blame the existence of war on the greed of nations.
Empires, which rule other nations, inevitably do so with the help of spies—and so empires learn to mimic other cultures if they are not creating, or conquering other cultures, outright.
Natural differences based on geography and climate are overcome by the advance of technology; war produces, almost by necessity, a great deal of engineering innovation, consolidation of wealth, and muscle-building, so that an empire may emerge from destruction and trauma—an empire is destruction and trauma—this emergence a geopolitical Darwinism with sometimes amazing and beneficent results. Greece fostered Rome which, when it fell, ushered in the Dark Ages and the Black Death, with Christianity and Platonism surviving beneath the upheaval; the British emerged as a powerful empire in the wake of its sword-and-spy-sharpening Catholic versus Protestant bloodbath; America grew stronger following the slaughter of its Civil War, and grew much stronger following its participation in World War Two. Richard Burton, a 19th century British spy, was the only westerner to penetrate the holiest inner circle of Islam; by contrast, the British nation simply walked into the Hindu world and made itself at home, stamping India with an English identity forever. And is it any accident that, America, emerging from the British Empire, has now turned into it? Just as Russia, with its Francophone identity, became victim of a revolution at least as disorienting as France’s, 200 years apart?
As America celebrates its Fourth of July in 2017 as the new British Empire—embodied by the CIA Deep State and its European and Mainstream Media allies, with Donald Trump as its chief executive—the latest vulgar leader after grotesque, weak, stupid, and despicable presidents like LBJ, Nixon, Carter, Bush, and Clinton—it is perhaps time to glance back at recent U.S. history—we named former recent presidents to instantaneously put things in perspective—the Democrat LBJ dropping napalm on women and children, just one example—to give the Trump-haters pause for a moment, these Trump-haters now in the throes of desperate and vengeful insanity, despite the fact that Trump hates Middle-East-destroying Bush and Middle-East-destroying-Hillary. (Divisions which make no sense are a good indication that the empire is fucking with our heads.) But maybe Trump is just like them. We can never be sure. The press and the people must be eternally vigilant.
My friend in Tehran, prisoner of the CIA installed 1979 regime there, finds her intellectual path out of that “hard-line Islam” nightmare to be the “American progressive” one, as it translates into Trump-hating in the United States. She currently fears a U.S./Saudi Arabia attack against Iran—her home, which she loves, but with reservations, as a Persian free-thinker and secularist. I ask her: who would be Iran’s ally in such a conflict—surely Russia. But she cannot bring herself to say anything good about Russia, given the intellectual path which she feels is her only escape—the current “progressive” one in the United States—every crazy Trump-hater feeling compelled to hate Russia. My friend knows the Democrat Jimmy Carter’s role in the 1979 takeover of her country, but “progressive” rhetoric still dogs her, as she cannot fully accept the bad news—the CIA Deep State, as personified by John McCain and Hillary Clinton, is just another nation-destroying brick in the wall of her “progressive” beliefs. But she learns about my country from American TV—the center of the “progressive” entertainment industry. This is probably the chief reason why so many foreigners who learn English from American TV and are interested in America, and who eventually come to America, are leftist. My friend in Iran says there is no racism in her country, and she’s proud of that, but because she watches American TV, she is sure racism bursts from every pore of America. I live here, and I know better. I’m quite certain the vast majority of Americans, no matter what color they are, are not infected with the disease of racism. But I know how the cynical nature of politics works. Trump replaces Obama. And so naturally everyone who is a Democrat feels in their partisan, indignant heart that half the country is “racist.” Fluidity of crazy belief is unfortunately real, and vigilance and common sense are necessary at all times. No one said democracy was easy. But the alternative is much worse.
My friend in Iran is highly educated—just as my FB friends from British-divided-India-and-Pakistan are highly educated secularists, and enlightened secularism seeks peace and understanding between Muslims and Hindus. Secularism can be religious—but is primarily educated and peaceful, in spite of religion. Down with zealots—who inevitably work for empire.
Enlightened secularism is what America represents, too. We are not a religious state, like Iran, but to pretend that Christianity does not inform what America is, to some extent, is just silly. And yet, this might be America’s greatest asset—its separation of Church and State. Despite the fact that millions of conservatives believe abortion is murder, American law says otherwise, and precisely because we are not a religious state, that law is obeyed. Religious differences are exploited by empire to foster war and division, and all of us must be aware of this, as we set off fireworks and grill cows.
Why do the 1960s musician quotes introduce our article?
Recent history. To understand America, one has to understand the cultural phenomenon known as the Sixties, which ended, rather neatly, in December, 1969, with the “British Invasion” band the Rolling Stones performing in California.
Historically, America belongs to two phases.
First was America’s sober phase: the Great War of Independence, writing the Constitution, the building of a nation, a nation ruled by laws, not men. Exceptional figures made early America great, such as Ben Franklin and Edgar Poe—supreme architects of nation building, with science at the center. Not swanky, sexy, or conquering. Scientific, purposeful, focused.
We are now in our drunk phase—the 1960s was a particularly wild time of drunkeness. America’s drunk phase probably began during the Empire building which began during the Spanish American War. And America is still drunk.
But we may be coming out of it, and not necessarily because our 45th president, and Russia’s Putin, don’t drink.
“Make America great again” is actually a humble request.
It is a concession that America can no longer make the world great.
Since World War Two ended, the America that was thrust into the world as the great superpower was quickly turned into another version of the (apparently undying) British Empire—British spies joined American spies to undo Iran, in 1953 and 1979, the British supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and the British Empire examples of “divide to conquer” and “opium war free trade” globalism have been the Deep State, guiding animus of the new American Empire.
The 1960s saw a radical attempt to completely undermine the U.S. The attempt was so radical, that it made conservatism—frightened by radicalism—stronger.
What we see in the world now—and hasn’t this always been the case?—is a division between the sober and the drunk. What is Islam but the expression of sobriety—traditions which keep fluid behavior in check, stemming the tide against the hedonism of powerful, drunk America?
Here is the Muslim religious appeal: sober citizens, who are free of the intoxicating nature of sex and drugs. Here is the division: “But this sobriety is backwards and oppressive!” And Empire, to keep people divided against each other, does the rest.
America, the great experiment, survives, even thrives, by miraculously keeping Empire-instigated divisions in check, by a mad devotion to, and a practical understanding of, democracy and law. America threatens to unravel every now and then—it is a divided nation in all sorts of ways—but holds together in a mix of understanding and compromise, as hatred fumes and boils away.
War and trauma can make a country stronger. The Deep State, the Empire, will never finally prosper. Empire overreaches, finally, and makes the narrow, non-global, good smarter and stronger. For it is finally the local life, the individual life, which is the measure of common sense, intelligence and happiness.
When one views an interview of Jerry Garcia, the Grateful Dead musician at the center of 1960s social experimentation, veteran of a thousand acid trips, one hears a highly articulate and highly intellectual, professor speaking. And listen to the music of the Grateful Dead: traditional, 4/4, bluesy country rock music, as simple, entertaining, and plain as can be. Garcia survived. Jim Morrison, the true embodiment of Dionysius, died. And Morrison’s biggest fan was Janis Joplin, who also was a Dionysius figure, and she died young. Her remark on the Dick Cavet show is telling: She wasn’t loved in Europe. But they probably did like her—they just didn’t show it in a way she expected; it’s a glimpse of how sad and defensive the dionysian figure actually is. American, 1960s dionysiansim was real and it was crazy—Janis Joplin traveled in Europe—she was fortunate to visit that beautiful and historical place. But the dionysian rock star didn’t appreciate it.
Radicalism, when viewed up close, is never really as radical or as interesting as we think it is. The impact always has much more to do with what the young and naive think, and believe, it is. This is not to play down the dangers of what can happen when the naive and the Dionysian come together. But the pied piper himself is inevitably a fraud—a boring sociology professor, or a highly defensive and insecure person.
Underneath the pomp and the noise, life is plain and mundane.
Empire, however, does need brave soldiers to do their dirty work, and the British officer willing to travel to places like India and settle there and rule, was highly valued. Empire needs a certain amount of bravery to go with its practices of fraud, rule, deception and division.
The Rolling Stones are survivors, and the hell that was unleashed at Altamont could have killed them. But they bravely (foolishly?) played there, anyway. (Brian Jones, their founder, had been dumped, and died months earlier).
But despite the power of Dionysius and the bravery of Empire spies, the wisdom of (sane) nature (which punishes radical human behavior) keeps re-asserting itself. Common sense prevails over fanatical intellectualism.
The horrors resulting from empire’s dividing tactics and wars are too numerous to mention.
But good things are out there. And good things happen. In ways we might not predict, or expect.
The United States of America—just a nation, enduring.
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