Michael Parenti: Socialism and World War II (Two Brief Notes)

(Below is an edited version of something I published on Facebook a week ago)

Michael Parenti passed away recently. He was a fairly or very important Marxist scholar, maybe comparable in some ways to Noam Chomsky but less well-known and certainly more comfortable being called a Marxist. There is some information about him here (I am NOT endorsing that site- a progressive I used to be a political acquaintance of seems to think that web-page is a good source of info about Parenti, so I am linking to it but that’s all).

Although I listened, in the late 1990s, to two of Parenti’s talks (I got them on tape from Alternative Radio), I have never read one of his books and probably just a few articles that I can’t remember. 

As some of you may suspect, I am not great at political theory. But part of my personal grasp of socialism was improved a little bit by something he said in one of those talks on tape. He said that socialism is not the utopia. I can’t remember exactly what he said socialism is, but I think it was something very close to, as I put it- the final stage or two (of how many? Maybe a few) of BUILDING the utopia. I’m not saying it’s crucial- in fact it’s pretty minor (I can’t imagine a socialist group splitting over this). But I don’t think we should be promising the utopia. Another way I put it is this- there’s something in that part of math where, in High School Algebra they hand out graphing calculators where a line goes almost parallel but not quite to one of the axes and will, indefinitely get closer and closer and closer to intersecting that axis but it will never actually intersect.

Anyway, I liked Parenti enough that I typed up something similar to this for a Facebook thread. There were a handful of things he said besides the utopia thing that I liked (the algebra thing is all mine). I just remembered one more that I feel like sharing. 

He said that the D-Day scene at the beginning of the movie “Saving Private Ryan” was great but that the rest of the movie should have been called “Saving Private Ridiculous.” I understand what he meant and I agree with the first part but only sort of agree about the second part of what he said. That first scene, I imagine, captured how chaotic and bloody and nightmarish war probably is (independent of things like the political cause involved). When looking back at history I am probably more fond of the Allies than most American progressives are. I’m not sure how Parenti felt about that cause, but I can’t totally endorse what he said about almost the entire movie. Also, if anyone responds by explaining that the US was just as bad as Nazi Germany and that my failure to totally agree about that is evidence that I’m a bad ally of, for example, American Indians, let me explain that I got three As and one B in the four Native American Studies courses I took. Although I did do better as a white ally of American Indians IN THE CLASSROOM than I did OUTSIDE of it, I WAS a fairly good or okay ally OUTSIDE of it.  I’m also fond of what the British did in WWII, and I have a pretty good record as an Irish Republican. Also, I criticize the IRA and the South of Ireland for their behavior towards Nazi Germany. IT IS A REALLY GOOD THING THAT NAZI GERMANY WAS DEFEATED.

Tom

Charlie Kirk's Murder And Political Violence in the US

This is about some thoughts I had in the wake of Charlie Kirk's murder. The first essay is what I submitted to the Daily Camera as a Letter-To-The-Editor and is I think exactly what they published here. The second essay is a longer version of the same- this time when writing something I'd like the paper to publish, after I felt that I was kind of done except for the disfiguring editing process so it would be under 300 words, I saved that first, longer version. It might perhaps be the better version because some of the editing I do involves deleting entire sentences or paragraphs which might be less valuable than the rest but are still valuable.

Tom

 

Editor,

After Charlie Kirk’s murder, we are close to another civil war. There’s been, for about 8 years, a “Cold Civil War.” In that time there’s been a large increase in political violence, from the massive insurrection of 1/6/21 by Republicans, to the sole-victim shooting of health care insurance CEO Brian Thompson in 2024.

I am not a pacifist and I define violence as something not inherently unjustified, although it could be defined as something inherently heart-breaking. When I look at Northern Ireland’s history, I defend almost everything the Irish Republican Army did. But I have also supported their 1997 cease-fire since day one. I believe very strongly in electoral politics, petitioning, non-violently protesting, etc. As a socialist I think a lot about how we can be more politically democratic (i.e. reforming the Constitution to reflect the fact that democracy is one-person-one-vote not one-state-flag-one-vote).

Kirk’s murder was wrong but to a very large degree criticizing Trump as a fascist is not deceptively encouraging people to kill people like Kirk- it’s simply not deceptive. Trump has always, since the 2016 campaign, made it clear he likes political violence. He believes that every civilian Executive Branch employee should be loyal to the President- this means that either A) he thinks that every four or eight years the entire civilian Executive Branch workforce should be completely replaced with new people, or B) he doesn’t foresee any future in this country where he is alive and not President.

There is one recent political murder that hasn’t gotten much attention. People should look into the 2020 case of Garret Foster being killed by Daniel Perry in Texas- after being convicted of murder, Perry was pardoned by the governor in 2024.

Tom Shelley

 

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After Charlie Kirk’s murder, we are close to another civil war. There’s been, for about 8 years, a “Cold Civil War” comparable to the standoff between the Soviets and the US. It can be traced back to the “New McCarthyism” after 9-11 that included censoring the anti-racist part of a book about George W. Bush by Michael Moore. In the last several years there’s been a large increase in political violence, from the massive insurrection of 1/6/21 by Republicans, to the murder of health care insurance CEO Brian Thompson in 2024 (he was probably killed because of the horrible health care situation in this country).

I am not a pacifist and we should understand that violence is not defined as inherently unjustified, although it could be defined as something inherently heart-breaking. When I look at Northern Ireland’s history, I defend, to one degree or another, almost everything the Irish Republican Army did. But I have also supported the 1997 cease-fire (permanent for many years now) since day one and have largely supported Sinn Fein (who bent over backwards to make the Peace Process work) since 2000. I believe very strongly in electoral politics, petitioning, non-violently protesting, etc. And have given a lot of thought as a socialist not just to making this country economically democratic and (what I call) sociologically democratic (i.e. racially just and racially equal) but also how we can be more politically democratic (i.e. reforming the Constitution to reflect the fact that democracy is one-person-one-vote not one-state-flag-one-vote).

Kirk’s murder was wrong. At this point it seems like nothing the Left has to own, but I still wanted to make my opinion clear. To a very large degree criticizing Trump as a fascist is not deceptively encouraging people to kill people like Kirk. It’s simply not deceptive. Trump has always, since the 2016 campaign, made it clear he likes political violence. He believes that every Executive Branch employee should be loyal to the President- this means that either A) he thinks that every four or eight years the entire Executive Branch workforce should be completely replaced with new people, or B) he doesn’t forsee any future in this country where is alive and not President.

There is one example of political violence that hasn’t gotten much attention. People should look into the 2020 case of Garret Foster being killed by Daniel Perry in Texas- after being convicted of murder, Perry was pardoned by the governor in 2024. 

How I Became A Socialist

 In High School I was, as I put it, transitioning towards being a socialist. In Jr. High, if I was political at all I think that I was probably pretty close to being a neoconservative (I’m not sure if Tom Clancy was a neocon or not, but I think he may have been close to one and in Jr. High probably 25% of the political material I read (fiction and non-fiction) were books by him; I also was, without doing any research, vaguely zionistic). The Summer after 12th grade I went to a protest rally against the “Promise Keepers,” a conservative Christian thing. One of the groups listed as a sponsor of the rally was the (local) Democratic Socialists of America. That might be why, when I saw flyers on the CU-Boulder campus (where I went to school starting in the Fall of 1994) for the campus chapter, I got involved.

About two months later the National Director of DSA visited Boulder (or at the very least the CU-Boulder DSA, but maybe the local one as well) and at a small gathering in a classroom we went around the table and briefly described how we each became a socialist. Probably about 1/4 of what I said was about reading novels by Clancy and people like him- Stephen Coonts, Frederick Forsyth, Larry Bond, Nelson DeMille, Payne Harrison, and Harold Coyle (I’m not sure when I started reading these authors, but I include them in what I call either the national security genre or the Tom Clancy genre). I am pretty sure I gave people the wrong idea, although it is a little mixed. I believe that what I was trying to do by referring to those authors was describe how I became INTERESTED IN POLITICS. On the other hand, some of those books DID make me a little curious about socialism (in HS one day I briefly checked DAS KAPITAL by Marx out of the school library but read almost none of it) and some of them actually said a few left-wing things here and there (see this).                           

This essay is kind of meant to undo any damage to my reputation that earlier conversation did (I DO realize that probably not a single person remembers that conversation, but I wanted to do this essay for a lot of other reasons as well).

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I grew up at least kind of if not VERY middle-class. I am also white, a cisgendered male, a heterosexual, and some kind of Christian (I am just starting something kind of formal where I might convert from being a Catholic to being a Protestant). For various reasons that I don’t think should be held against me, I have spent practically all of my life in Boulder and until college I did not interact much with people of color or with poor people. My parents were more or less liberal but not progressive or very politically active- I wasn’t exposed to liberal Democratic politics as a child.

The first thing that got me thinking like a socialist was when I read, around the age of 11, the Children’s Bible THREE TIMES. I can’t remember much and I have never read the entire Bible (the regular one). But I know that there was at least some material about poverty and wealth, about loving your brothers and sisters, etc. I believe that is why, when I was about 12 or 13 I remember telling a kid I was briefly friends with that I thought everyone should just automatically get all the food they need.

I don’t think I made any left-ward progress in Jr. High. I DID start listening to rap music in Jr. High- it was “soft-core” non-political stuff by The Beastie Boys, RUN DMC and The Fresh Prince. I have no idea how I started listening to rap in Jr. High, but I think that is why I started listening to Public Enemy and Ice-T at the beginning of 10th grade. Below is a section of this essay about the role that MUSIC played in my High School transition to being a socialist. It’s copied and pasted, with a little editing, from a post here.                         

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The High School Years: Becoming A Socialist

So, a focus on music and my political development.

One aspect of this that I think about is, why did I come to focus more on racism than other symptoms of capitalism and get an Ethnic Studies degree instead of a Women’s Studies degree? I have no idea how I found myself listening to rap music in Jr. High. I wasn’t watching MTV and my parents were no more than moderately anti-racist. I didn’t have older siblings who listened to rap (actually, I might have been watching a LITTLE MTV because I have memories of watching 1-2 music videos by The Fresh Prince). On one hand, as far as I can remember, the rap I was listening to in Jr. High was non-political but It probably contributed to how I started listening to Public Enemy and Ice-T in late 1991.

I think that listening to that “Hard Core” rap is a huge part of why I did my first political act (and that may have been AFTER the Ice-T/Body Count concert I went to). In the Spring semester of 10th grade, in early 1992, I walked out of my 4th period class (I think it was 4th period) and joined about 50 of my peers walking around Boulder protesting the not-guilty verdict in a California trial of the racist white police officers who beat Rodney King a year earlier. That night I went to a march and rally for the community in general and/or the CU-Boulder campus and I was actually on the front page of the paper the next day (next to me was someone who later was the first or second person to get an Ethnic Studies degree at CU-Boulder, and there was someone wearing a Primus shirt and one person wearing a Body Count shirt).

This is a little embarrassing because I have heard things here and there indicating they’re not progressive, but I think some political stuff by Megadeth and Metallica nudged me towards the left in High School. Those songs are:

Metallica
“Fight Fire With Fire” is about the need to avoid nuclear war.
“Ride the Lightning” is in opposition to the death penalty.
“For Whom the Bell Tolls” could almost be mistaken for an anti-fascist song because it is indirectly inspired by an anti-fascist novel by Ernest Hemingway. The thing is, the MOVIE based on that book retained the anti-war message but not the ANTI-FASCIST message of the book.
“Disposal Heroes” is anti-war.
“Blackened” is about nuclear war.
“…And Justice for All” is basically about politics and power in this country, but I am very unsure about what EXACTLY is it saying. This one may have had no affect on me becoming a socialist.
“One” is anti-war.

Megadeth
“Set The World Afire” is about nuclear war.
“Holy Wars…. The Punishment Due.” The first half I’ve heard might be about international conflicts like Israel and the Palestinians and/or (possibly more specifically) Northern Ireland. Beyond that I’m not sure what to say about it.
“Take No Prisoners” is anti-war.
“Rust in Peace” is about nuclear war.
“Symphony of Destruction” is about politics but I can’t figure out what they’re trying to say.
“Architecture of Aggression” is sort of the same- it probably IS anti-war, but I am less certain than I am when it comes to “Take no Prisoners.” Megadeth just wasn’t consistently and explicitly progressive.
“Foreclosure of a Dream” is I BELIEVE about US federal farm policy in the 1980s. I am just not familiar with farm policy. I DO like the license plates in Colorado that say “No Farms, No Food” but I just don’t know anywhere near enough to comment on this song.

I think that is a pretty complete list of the relevant Megadeth and Metallica songs I listened to in High School that may have nudged me towards the left.

The hard-core rap I listened to, including three Ice-T albums, and 3-4 Public Enemy albums probably had a better effect on me than the Metallica and Megadeth stuff I just referred to. And then there was the (hardcore punk) Dead Kennedys stuff- some of their songs might not inspire progressive politics but about half of them do. And there was at least a couple that were about economic injustice- “Let’s Lynch the Landlord,” and “Kill the Poor.” There were several other political DK songs whose lyrics I’m too lazy to confirm- with the exceptions of “Police Truck” (police brutality), “Nazi Punks Fuck Off” and “We’ve Got a Bigger Problem Now” (about Ronald Reagan), which I definitely remember (I believe that in High School I listened to 3/4 or 4/4 of the Jello Biafra DK studio albums).

There were a handful of songs by Suicidal Tendencies that contributed to me becoming   progressive:

“Two Sided Politics” is basically contrasting the life of a rich person with that of a working-class person, and there’s some anti-Reagan stuff, etc. One thing I think is noteworthy is that there’s one line that says “I’m not anti-government, government is anti-me.” I like to think that might be in part an anti-anarchist statement.
“Fascist Pig” could be a little more political (that is, deeper) but Mexican-Americans criticizing the police may have pushed me a bit to the left.
“I Want More” is about the class conflict with some references to the minimum wage.
“Give It Revolution” was a little vague but probably nudged me in the right direction.

There were a handful of songs by a thrash-metal band called Nuclear Assault that pushed me to the left in High School. Although I have listened to their other stuff in recent years, in HS pretty much the only album I listened to was “Handle with Care.”
“New Song” which was a fairly good anti-racist song.
“Critical Mass” is a pretty good environmentalist song.
“Inherited Hell” is also like that.
“When Freedom Dies” Although I’m not sure what it’s saying about US foreign policy during the Cold War, it IS saying that freedom and civil liberties, etc. shouldn’t be weakened in the name of national security.
“Search and Seizure” is sort of similar, but basically about law enforcement harassing metal-heads (I’m not sure whether or how the lyrics-writer would generalize that statement to include punks, hippies, etc.)

Another band that influenced me in High School was a “cross-over” hard-core punk/thrash-metal band called DRI (Dirty Rotten Imbeciles). In HS I saw them play live twice and listened to three of their albums.

First there was the album “Definition” which included the following songs:
“Acid Rain” was about the environment.
“The Application” is about multiple forms of employment discrimination and DOES include a line about racism and a line about homophobia, and one about religion and one that is probably about being HIV+.

The album “Thrash Zone” has several political songs.
“Labelled Incurable” might be about AIDS (as far as I can tell DRI were probably anti-homophobic).
“Kill the Words” is sort of generally about censorship and dictatorship but seems to be at least partly if not totally about that sort of thing in the Muslim world; I have no idea if they’re anti-Muslim or just consistently opposing fundamentalism, censorship, and dictatorship (there IS another song where they condemn religious discrimination in employment, so they probably aren’t anti-Muslim)
“Worker Bee” although it’s not written as a socialist song, I think it’s basically about economic justice and is by a band that I’m pretty sure is in favor of social justice as well (I’m suspicious of bands, people, etc. who are economically progressive but not socially liberal).

There was one Soundgarden song about the environment called “Hands All Over.” Although I don’t feel like looking at the lyrics, I believe that there were at least a few L7 songs I liked politically (one example is “Pretend We’re Dead”).

This will require at least one paragraph. Although I’m not real familiar with this, I have gotten the impression that Rage Against The Machine were a bit to my left politically. One social-dem critic told me that the political forces RATM admired either would have told RATM to fuck off, or alternately, should be killed (I think that may have been a reference to the Peruvian leftist army/terror organization called Shining Path). I sort of stumbled onto RATM a little earlier than most of their fans. Somehow I knew that their performance at a small club in Boulder around late 1992 or early 1993 would inspire moshing, so I showed up. I don’t remember thinking about it much but I guess I liked the music enough and the general vibe and bought their album shortly after the show. At some point at least a couple months later they came to Denver with House of Pain and it was great listening and moshing KNOWING that they were promoting dissent in this country. At that concert I learned about Leonard Peltier, and generally drifted towards the Left. (Right before House of Pain came on stage they played the music sans vocals of a song I mention below called “Just Look Around” by Sick of it All). Yes, RATM was alternately politically vague and/or leaning towards the hard-left. But they contributed to me becoming a dissident of some sort and it’s slightly possible that wouldn’t have happened if not for them. And musically they were pretty cool.

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Probably the main thing that contributed to me drifting towards the left is material that I learned in 11th grade when I took Advanced Placement US History. On one hand, I remember saying something inconsistent with what I’m saying here- in one debate I took some kind of bizarre LIBERTARIAN stance and criticized one of my peers because they were pro-government for some things but anti-government for other things. I also made one or another mistake with the two research papers we were assigned during the year. On the other hand, I got a 5 out 5 score on the final Exam, and I was pushed further to the left when I learned something about the Great Depression, something that might not have been covered in a regular 11th grade History class. At the very beginning of that period the (Republican) administration tried to fix things by lowering taxes on the rich and corporations which they thought would stimulate expansion (building new factories, etc.). The thing is, there was no increase in stimulus spending by corporate America and the Depression got worse. I got the strong impression that the New Deal alleviated a lot of suffering and empowered workers and probably kept the nation from sliding into such a deep socio-economic/political abyss that we wouldn’t be able to climb out of it when WWII started.

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As I mentioned above there were some novels that played one or another role in my voyage to the left.

The main one is a book called “Vortex” which had some serious progressive elements as I explain here.                                

“Fire Lance” is summarized here.

I think it was in High School that I first read a book by Harold Coyle called “Trial By Fire.” It’s about two things. First, a pilot program in the US Army involving four female Lieutenants (I know there are two kinds of Lieutenants in Army, but I can’t remember which one leads a platoon) leading ground combat units (platoons and in the case the story focuses on, a Mechanized Infantry platoon). I am, to one moderate degree or another hostile to the US military, but in this paragraph I need to explain that as long as we HAVE an institution, it should involve equity for women. Part of why I say this is that I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a large chunk of the male American population who get the wrong idea about equity for women when they see that the US military doesn’t HAVE EQUITY FOR WOMEN. The book is simultaneously also about a conflict between Mexico and the US. I haven’t read this novel for about 5-10 years now but I could swear that I remember Coyle making the pro-war people look stupid- it might even be progressive. I think I will read it again soon and I might publish an essay about it on this blog.

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There was one TV show I should mention. I think that in Jr. High and High School I watched about 75% of all the episodes of Roseanne (see this). As you may know, poverty and/or the working-class was a pervasive theme and from a relatively (or in some cases VERY) left-wing perspective. It was overall fairly if not very anti-racist and even more so, feminist. 

1-3 different TV shows that should be here but aren't. Although I LOVE watching almost anything Star Trek (and that started 27 years ago), I didn't start watching the TV shows until 1998. So, I missed The Original Series, The Next Generation, and Deep Space Nine (which is probably the most left-wing of all Star Trek series). On the other hand, I am  sort of working on something about how progressives in America could use ST to advance their agenda, and if I come up with some ideas that are worth your time, I'll publish them here and/or email them to some political friends of mine.

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That is about it as far as what changed my thinking. On a related note, I am proud of the fact that I was kind of politically active in High School. Below is a list of political stuff I did:

The very first political action I took was in early 1992 when I walked out of 4th period (Spanish) and joined about 50 peers marching around Boulder to protest the acquittal in California of some racist LAPD cops who savagely beat a black man (Rodney King) a year earlier. We even went up to the CU-Boulder campus to show them how it’s done : ).That night I went to a community/CU-Boulder march and rally about the same problem.

In 11th grade my best friend James (of Oregon) and I did a “‘Zine” (a small and unprofessionally written and edited magaZINE). James’ stuff was definitely more creative than mine, and may have been almost as political as my stuff. I did one article (in this case I tried to be as unbiased as possible) about an incident of job discrimination against a gay man in Boulder. IN THE SAME ISSUE I wrote an editorial criticizing Amendment Two (in 1992’s election in Colorado a ballot issue was approved by voters that outlawed gay rights anti-discrimination measures in CO).

In one issue, I did something that was far from creative and maybe even illegal, but I published the lyrics for an an incredibly anti-racist song by the Red Hot Chili Peppers called “The Power of Equality” (it’s close to the only RHCP song I listen to, but it’s AMAZING).

That’s pretty much all the relevant stuff I remember writing in the ‘zine.

I also was transitioning towards being pro-choice, and I wrote a Letter to the local paper (the Daily Camera) in which I expressed some degree of support for a woman’s right to choose.

I joined the Rocky Mountain Peace (and Justice) Center when I was 16 and wrote a letter to the Camera that was sort of pro-Persian Gulf War, but was also critical of the sanctions that had been applied to Iraq. Although that letter was not totally progressive, in response to it the Peace Center invited me to join them at a meeting with the Congressperson for that part of Colorado.

I probably had about 5-10 t-shirts of music groups I liked that were also political. I had a Body Count shirt, a Fishbone shirt that said “FUCK RACISM” (It’s possible it was “RACISM SUCKS” or maybe I had both??), at least one Rage Against The Machine t-shirt, a Public Enemy shirt and probably 1-2 Dead Kennedys shirts.

I think that’s about it. I might type up something about my thoughts about socialism- no, it won’t be very philosophical.

My Review of Larry Bond's 1991 Anti-Apartheid Novel "Vortex"

In a book report (it wasn’t very analytical) I did in 2022 about a sort of sci-fi/sort of techno-thriller novel with a left-wing message, I admitted that a big chunk of the fiction I read is by Tom Clancy or authors like Tom Clancy (1989-2009 it was about 70% and since 2009 it’s been about 25% (hopefully I won’t go to Socialist Hell)). As far as I can tell, the author of the book I just referred to (David Mace) is progressive. If you look at the books I’ve read in the Tom Clancy genre there’s a handful with some stuff that is liberal or even progressive. It’s usually a small island of progressive viewpoints (by characters you’re supposed to like) with an ocean of center/center-right politics. There is one book which is written by someone much more right-wing than left-wing but which can nonetheless be greatly enjoyed politically by progressives, if you think about it the right way. I’m talking about Larry Bond’s 1991 novel “Vortex.”

“Vortex” is about Apartheid South Africa, and a “last gasp” attempt by hardliners to maintain Apartheid and Afrikaner colonialism. I believe the story starts in May of 1992, although it’s not clear what the year is. I am not sure how much or how little progress was made in the Peace Process between Mandela’s release and May of 1992 (in reality). Towards the very beginning of the book the President of SA talks about significant progress being made, which prompts the main villain (Karl Vorster, a Cabinet member) to carry out something which is basically a coup, but which appears to be the ANC’s military wing (MK) assassinating the rest of the cabinet (although this is known by almost no one until the last 1/3 of the book, the MK operation was manipulated by Vorster and the Intelligence agency he runs). He then reverses the small number of reforms that had been made to Apartheid, invades neighboring Namibia, and turns the security forces loose against Blacks and any dissent by whites.

The situation becomes chaotic. The leader of the Zulu population (who, in reality, may not have been as militant as the ANC was during the anti-Apartheid struggle) calls for the rest of the world to take action against the new regime and his people take up armed struggle. A large chunk of the military in Cape Town refuses to massacre white civilian protestors and rebels against the government.

Things also start to fall apart for Vorster in Namibia, whose government asks the Cuban Army in Angola to help repel the invasion. Although this is more complicated, to one extent or another during most of the book you can root for the Cuban Army. The head of the Cuban Army in Africa (General Antonio Vega) convinces Castro that Cuba should resolve the conflict by invading South Africa and overthrowing Apartheid. With some help from other “anti-Imperialist” countries (including three Libyan units probably the size of battalions) three columns (probably around 2,000-3,000 men in each) enter SA from the east, north and west. Because the Cubans hid their preparations for the invasion the SA military is still focused on Namibia and rapid progress is made, especially the column approaching Pretoria from the West. Because it is a desert and a sparely populated area (and because he is psychotic) Vorster eradicates that column with a nuclear bomb. SA is on the verge of using two more nukes to attack strategic targets when the US military captures them and removes them from the country in a massive airborne operation. Shortly after that the US military lands something like a division on the east coast of SA (at Durban) and starts fighting the SA Army on it’s way to Pretoria. Naval aircraft start attacking the East column of Cubans.

As you might guess, the US military stops the Cubans from reaching Pretoria until they (the US) can get there first. The aftermath of this victory for the US is largely a GOP fantasy. Because of some significant friction with the Cubans (see below), the ANC abandons it’s commitment to socialism. There IS something about recognition of the trade-unions, something proposed by the occupying US military, but I think we’re talking about something that is probably engineered to foster a pretty centrist labor movement.

There are two large aspects of this story relevant to how close it is to being a progressive book.

First, the US government moves very slowly at each stage of the crisis and are usually far behind Cuba. And they (characters who are officials of the US government) are pretty honest about why they are initially very slow and behind Cuba, and they’re also very honest about why they DO send their own invasion force after Cuba invades- they don’t want Cuba to get credit for overthrowing Apartheid. I will add a lot of details to this in about a year when I read this book (for the 6th or 7th time) and take some notes, but in general, Cuba looks better than the US government.

On the other hand, there are some things Bond has the Cubans do that A) usually involve quite a bit of imagination on Bond’s part and B) make Cuba look bad. After one of his columns is wiped out by a nuke, Vega decides to compensate for that by using chemical weapons. In all fairness to Vega and in all fairness to Bond who was probably tempted to really slander Cuba at this point, they use NON-PERSISTENT chemical weapons which become impotent pretty quickly after they are released into the air. This means they’re not quite as indiscriminate as they would be if they were persistent. We don’t know how many battles involved Cuban chemical weapons, but there was at least one. And some small part of the nearby black population was affected, with some deaths.

Those black deaths contribute to the erosion of congeniality between the Cuban Army and the ANC’s military wing, Spear of the Nation. There is one bizarre incident that was a pretty good example of Bond trying to reassure most of his readers that he did not go commie while writing this book. The Cubans ask the black population in one town to help them make an airfield they took over functional again. There weren’t enough volunteers so a small number of Blacks were forced to help. This of course contributes to the conflict developing between the Cubans and the ANC. Bond does sort zig-zag a bit and quotes Vega’s thoughts, pointing out that he has Black officers on his staff- who he describes as brave and competent.

There is something I really need to say about Bond. Vortex is his second book. His first and third books are politically fairly centrist overall. His fourth and fifth books, I thought were racist towards Muslims and I will never read them again and I haven’t read anything he wrote after book five. (see this and this (and look for my name)). (I lost track of those two novels in my collection for several years but in the end I made a decision about 5 years ago to throw them away instead of taking them to a thrift store (I’m not totally okay with that, because it resembles book burning, but throwing them away was probably the right thing to do))

There is one last thing I need to get out of the way. In the very first sentence of the book, in a section that includes maybe 500 words, it sounds like Bond is saying that rural, uneducated Zimbabweans think that helicopters flying at night are “demons.”  There’s a bit more to that short first section, and I also think after I explain this next part, progressive readers will feel comfortable assuming that Bond is not racist towards Black people. In his first book (about a second Korean War), one of the main characters is an Air Force pilot who gets shot down behind enemy lines, and is rescued at night by a helicopter. This character does say that the helicopter appears like a demon.

It’s a massive book- 896 pages in paperback. If you’re not totally against anything military and you hate Apartheid, you will probably like this book. In about a year I will probably read it again and take some notes and have more to say.

Some Thoughts About New Atheists

I came across an article in Salon about how the New Atheists merged with the far-right. I have read it and read it and read it some more, probably 10 times total (it was the first thing I read in YEARS about New Atheists, so as I was typing this essay, I read about 10 other long articles about the New Atheists (links to those articles are at the bottom of this)). The author of the article (Emile P. Torres) has done a great service for liberal-progressive religious people and some other groups in our society (like atheist women). They seem to be a very solid atheist and might not like helping the former group, but they're also very intellectually honest and when they realized what kind of people the leading New Atheists are, they contributed to publicly exposing them as the scum that they are.

(I discuss what I mean by liberal here (my brief non-philosophical definition is someone to the left of Bill Clinton and to the right of Senator Elizabeth Warren))

(You might want to read part of my post about things Catholic. Read the stuff towards the bottom starting with “Some of this is repetitive but I’ll describe the politics of Catholics,” and ending with the asterisks above the very last section).

I’m going to offer some thoughts about the New Atheists in general, thoughts inspired by reading the Salon article. I’m sure Torres will disagree with some of it, but it is not meant as an attack on them. I encourage you to read their article first and then read this essay.

I believe that the New Atheists cross the line in terms of their hostility to religious people. I will also describe how I am both religious and secular. I will explain that I believe New Atheists were clearly more right-wing than left-wing many years ago.

(I’m going to assume that there are rank and file members of the New Atheist community who are liberal or progressive like Torres)

New Atheism crosses the line

I am fine with atheists in general. I’m close or very close to at least a few if not several. As I’ll explain below, I am very secular. But I believe that the hostility New Atheists have for religious people is so extreme that it is close to bigotry. I would say that even if they were completely even-handed in their hostility to religion, but they’re not. They are much more hostile to Muslims than they are to Jews. I’ll say more about that below.

New Atheists are hostile to religious people because they have a different belief about God (atheists don’t KNOW that God doesn’t exist anymore than theists KNOW that God does exist).They act as if great harm is done by believing in, for example, the Trinity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Great harm is done by the right-wing POLITICAL beliefs of many or most religious people (there is nothing right-wing, left-wing or centrist about the Holy Trinity (for example)) but no harm is done by believing, for example, that Christ was the Son of God. In all honesty and fairness there are some miscellaneous non-political ways that religion can harm, such as Catholic priests abusing altar boys, but that miscellaneous stuff isn’t much compared to the political work of right-wing religious people- they are the main problem with religion, and as I explain below, can be dealt with in ways that don’t put down all religious people.

New Atheism wants to make everyone an atheist. One problem with that is that if it were attempted through some kind of coercion (such as treating religious faith like alcoholism) a successful effort would be akin to genocide. And there are many things about religion that bleed into culture and history and philosophy that would also be lost if everything religious was eradicated.

They believe that religion poisons everything and that getting rid of religion would make the world a better place. First, a better place for whom? Based partly on Torres’ article and some other articles I’ve found, the New Atheists are more right-wing than left-wing. Also, the connection between being liberal or progressive and being an atheist isn’t as strong as they think. Same with the connection between being conservative or right-wing and being a theist. There are plenty of exceptions on both sides of that- plenty of liberal or leftist theists and plenty of conservative or fascist atheists. And the idea that attacking the religious beliefs of most conservatives and right-wingers is a short-cut to making them re-consider their noxious political beliefs is likely flawed. I have no idea why it would be easier to change someone’s religious beliefs than it would be to change their political beliefs. And focusing on their religious beliefs makes it easier for them to claim that it’s the liberals and leftists who have crossed the line by attacking their religious beliefs. I say, ignore the religious dimension of the religious right as much as you can and simply oppose, for example, their homophobia as if they’re NOT referring to the Bible.

What’s Good About Religion?

There are other reasons why the New Atheist agenda of eradicating religion is bad. Here’s a list of a few good things about religion.

1) To whatever degree you need to believe in God to believe in Heaven, religion provides a theory for what, if anything, happens when we die. For many people, including myself, this helps with dealing with loss of a loved one.


2) Reading the children’s Bible 3 times around the age of 11 planted the seeds that blossomed into my socialist beliefs about 7 years later (there were other factors, like the music I listened to in High School).
3) There’s a strong sense of community. Although the fairly partisan socialist in me sees that as a bad thing when it’s a conservative community, when it’s a liberal-progressive one it’s great.
4) I’m tempted to say that without the Black church in America, we’d still have segregation. In all fairness it’s likely that if that church had not developed, something secular would have played a similar role in overthrowing segregation, but the fact is, the Black church was a major part of the Civil Rights Movement.

It’s not an exhaustive list at all, but there are a lot of good things about religion that would be thrown out with the bigotry, etc. if (the more liberal or progressive) New Atheists had their way (the others (the ones Torres describes) don’t seem interested in getting rid of the injustice and inequality in our society).

I’m both religious and secular

I have been religious almost all of the time since I was about 5 or 10. But I have also been secular in many ways. When I used to wear a “medal” (like a cross but a little different) I wore it under my shirt. I wasn’t embarrassed or anything like that, but I wasn’t interested in promoting religion, it was just something to remind me of my relationship with God.

When I went to confirmation class at my church in 12th grade, I may have been more interested in the material than most of the other students, but I chose not to get confirmed at the end of it. Although I kind of regret that decision, I felt that I didn’t need the ultra-official sanction of the Church to be a Catholic. And I didn’t need it. I continued getting communion after I declined to be confirmed.

Although the Bible was part of what made me a socialist and I have no problem with religious socialists, I don’t identify as one myself. I’m not sure exactly why, but just in general I am very secular outwardly and fairly religious and spiritual inwardly.

I don’t believe in trying to convert people and I believe that religions should be fairly passive in trying to get new adherents.

I believe in Intelligent Design, the idea that Evolution was guided by God.

On foreign policy New Atheists are mostly right-wing

In addition to being universally and incredibly hostile to Islam, New Atheist leaders have MOSTLY also sided with Israel in the Middle-East conflict and, years ago, (mostly) with the US administration of George W. Bush in the War on Terror and specifically the Iraq War 2003-2008. As others have more or less pointed out, the Palestinian struggle was dominated by secular forces for decades before Hamas won an election in 2006- and although they haven’t lost an election since then they also haven’t won one either- there’s reason to believe that a majority of Palestinians don’t share all of Hamas’ beliefs. There were a lot of complaints among Palestinians about the PLO that had nothing to do with it being secular. I’m not sure to what degree this is true in Gaza since 2006, but in the West Bank the Christian minority of Palestinians is treated just fine by the Muslims. It’s the Israeli state that’s tough on minorities. Christians and Muslims are not considered full members of the Israeli nation. And although there are a lot of atheists in Israel’s Jewish population, the Jewish identity of the State is partly about religion- but many New Atheists are so anti-muslim and pro-American imperialism that they support Israel anyway.

(I offer evidence for calling Israeli policy towards the Palestinians “Israeli Apartheid” here and discuss Zionism here) (UPDATE 7/13/21 most of my thoughts about the War on Terror are here)

Are atheists in America oppressed?

American atheists in general don’t have much to complain about. Based on various answers given on wikipedia, I believe that the percentage of the US population that is atheist is somewhere around 15 to 20. And I doubt that more than 1-2% of the US Congress is atheist, so they have a legitimate complaint there. I’m sure most atheists in America have experienced at least a little harassment because of their belief about God, and I take that pretty seriously.  They sometimes have to fight efforts by government to blur the boundary between church and state, a fight I join them in.

Does hostility towards Atheists result in the kind of job discrimination that creates disproportionate poverty? Apparently not. According to Pew 30% of atheist households earn $100,000 or more and only 24% earn less than $30,000 (in that graph I just linked to, they’re the 5th richest religious group in America, out of about 25-30). I have not heard of anti-atheist police brutality, or mass incarceration, or a low rate of graduation from college, etc..

In general, American atheists don’t have much to complain about.

Religion and The Troubles

For the most part I suggest you start with reading some of my posts here, here, and here. If you want more than that, I recommend the books “Northern Ireland: The Orange State” by Michael Farrell and “McCann: War and Peace in Northern Ireland” by Eamonn McCann.

Although religion is a big thing for most of the anti-Catholic bigots, A) there is also nationality, and B) from what I have heard there are some anti-Catholic bigots who are atheists- not many at all, but some. On the Catholic side there is very little anti-Protestant bigotry and very little religious motivation. When Catholics experience bigotry they don’t quote those parts of the Bible that make it clear they’re Christians. They don’t even use the Bible the way Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. did- when they refer to America in their quest for equality, they sometimes focus on the secular actions of this country’s black population and in general they say little if anything about the Bible which inspired the civil rights movement here.

The British introduced sectarianism to the population of Ireland as a way to (on one hand) divide the settlers and the indigenous people and (on the other hand) keep the Catholics down (which helped with the former goal). They maintained a colonial presence in N. Ireland for several reasons and religious solidarity with the Protestants was only one of them. It was basically because of imperialism.

The white male class privilege of the New Atheists
 

Torres accuses the New Atheists of worrying about the erosion of their white male privilege. I think there’s something else as well as that. They decided that advancing an atheist agenda was incredibly important. They clearly weren’t concerned about economic justice or social justice. I say that partly because you need to build coalitions for those things and you aren’t going to organize a coalition for economic or racial justice if at the same time you’re putting down everyone religious. And I need to say that I’m sure those theists who would be attracted to a coalition for social, and/or economic, and/or racial justice are unlikely to be the kind that would try to start a fight with atheists in the coalition.

*******

Articles I read to refresh and add to my understanding of New Atheism:

Atheism and the Class Problem
Gaza Has New Atheists Split Over Which Religion is more wrong
When It Comes To Islam, New Atheists Sound A Lot Like Christian Fundamentalists
Why Are There So Few Atheists In Israel?
American New Atheism and Israel
Sam Harris, the New Atheists, and anti-Muslim Animus
Why the “New Atheists” are Right-wing on Foreign Policy
The Trouble with the New Atheists: Part II

*******

The posts on my blog that are partly or entirely about religion are here.

Don't Vote GOP: Three New Poems

(this was originally published 4/27/20 but for some reason it stopped showing up, so I am republishing it now)

Here are three more poems. They are all based on offensive lyrics, I explain that here.

For all the poems, you can click on the "lyrics" label the bottom.

1. Stop the Klan. What you think it's about.
2. Irish Citizen Army. The Irish workers' militia of 1913-1916.
3. Don't Vote SDLP. What's wrong with Northern Ireland's Social Democratic and Labour Party.

“Stop the Ku Klux Klan” based on “Stand Up and Be Counted” by either The Klansmen in the 1980s or the racist assholes who originally wrote it several decades ago. Original lyrics are here.

1. In 2017 or 2018 or 2019 there were reports that caravans of refugees from Central America were traveling through Mexico on their way to the US. Trump used this, probably successfully, to whip up anti-immigrant hatred. These were definitely refugees and they were traveling in caravan for security.
2. I believe that there is a spectrum between democratic and undemocratic and I believe that, politically, the US is closer to the democratic end of the spectrum. But my thoughts about how we can make it more democratic politically are here. I worry greatly that Trump is a fascist, literally, and my thoughts about that are in the middle of a post here.

3. Trump is a racist. See this and this. There’s also his comments on the murder of an anti-fascist by a fascist in Charlottesville in 2017. And there’s this, that I published elsewhere on my blog:

[When asked about David Duke endorsing him, his] response in an interview was:

Well, just so you understand, I don’t know anything about David Duke. OK? I don't know anything about what you’re even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacists. So, I don't know. I don’t know, did he endorse me or what’s going on, because, you know, I know nothing about David Duke. I know nothing about white supremacists. And so you're asking me a question that I'm supposed to be talking about people that I know nothing about.

4. The Torah is the main Jewish text.
5. My thoughts about religion are found here, although a lot of those posts are only partly relevant.
6. **58% of this version is me, 42% is the original.

7. I give this poem 3 stars out of 5.

8. UPDATE 6/1/22 I believe there's a spectrum between democratic and undemocratic and I USED to believe we were in the middle but closer to the democratic end of the spectrum. With what the GOP has done in the last couple years I think we might be closer to the UNdemocratic end of the spectrum.

Chorus:
Stand up and be counted, welcome the caravans
Stand up and be counted, and stop the Ku Klux Klan

We are anti-racists and love our democracy true
We always can be counted on, when there's a job to do
We educate our communities day and night, to keep them Klan-free
And proudly display anti-racist bumper-stickers, promoting diversity

Chorus

The Bible’s pretty cool, but so are the Torah and Koran
We believe in gay rights, so fuck the Ku Klux Klan
In search of peace and liberty, with the constitution in hand
We will defeat Trump to save our democratic land

***********

“Irish Citizen Army” based on “Blackshirt and Roses” by Razor’s Edge. Original lyrics are here.

1. This is written from the perspective of an Irish Republican in the 1970s, or 1980s or 1990s in Ireland. The Irish Citizen Army was started in 1913 during a general lock-out (where, in response to labor activism, an employer throws their employees out of the factory, etc.) in Dublin. It was formed to protect workers from attacks by the police.  In 1916, when the Easter Rising (an attempt at getting the British out) took place, while most of the moderate Irish Volunteers failed to participate the (admittedly much smaller) ICA participated fully and James Connolly, the leader of the ICA, was the de facto leader of the uprising. Connolly was a Marxist theoretician and union organizer and considered Ireland’s greatest socialist- there is a train station in Dublin named after him.
2. The Starry Plough is basically the flag of republican socialism, although some non-republican socialists use it. At one point about 10-15 years ago, and maybe still today, the youth wing of the Irish Labour Party used it.
3. Connolly was one of the few European socialists to oppose the nationalism of World War I. (The original refers to WWII)
4. Razor’s Edge were/are British and support(ed) the British and Unionist causes in N. Ireland.
5. **54% of this version is me, 46% is the original.

6. I give this poem 4 stars out of 5.

They created the Starry Plough, an emblem of the Irish working-class
And they spread Marxism, patriotic workers struggling en masse.

(Chorus)
Fuck the British Empire
Ireland still recalls
The Irish Citizen Army
Heroes one and all.

Opposed the nationalist war in Europe, they knew the real enemy.
With the European Working-Class, they were in solidarity.

The flame they lit was not extinguished, still burning in our hearts today.
We're carrying on the fight because the ICA led the way.

(Chorus)

Fuck the British Empire
Ireland still recalls
Connolly and the ICA
Heroes one and all.

************

“Don’t Vote SDLP” based on “Freedom” by Razor’s Edge. Original lyrics are here.

1. This is NOT written from my perspective, but the perspective of  the type of person I probably could have collaborated with politically if I had lived in the Nationalist community of Northern Ireland in the 1970s, 80s or 90s (I’m American). It’s from the perspective of someone who lives in a working-class Nationalist area in the 1990s and is sort of pacifist and a left-wing social-dem and doesn’t like Sinn Fein very much because of the violence and doesn’t like the Social Democratic and Labour Party for the reasons I give here (there are some more thoughts about the SDLP here, while discussing the episode “Rising Star”).
The thing is, the British Labour Party hasn’t ever organized in the North and recently had to be taken to court to allow Northerners to join, but they refuse to let the Party run candidates there (which is more of a good thing than a bad thing). There are multiple tendencies in the BLP when it comes to N. Ireland and I think the dominant one is to support their official sister organization the SDLP. I don’t think they ever called for the IRISH Labour Party to organize there and it wasn’t until tension developed between the ILP and the SDLP in 2001, 2002, and 2003 that the ILP started a transitional process of organizing there that was supposed to result in them running candidates as rivals to those of their official sister party. I did an essay/article/post PARTLY about that here.
So, this person has little or no options for voting (even if the BLP had been running candidates there, this person wouldn’t have voted for them (unless they were comparable to Tony Benn or Ken Livingstone)).
2. The red, white, and blue are the colors of the British flag.
3. The SDLP encouraged their supporters to do little more than vote. They were more or less against marching and probably against rallies as well. It’s true that non-SDLP supporters could have become involved and the inevitable friction with the security forces may have been difficult for stewards to control and a riot could have developed. But they still should have tried it, maybe with double the usual number of stewards. If there weren’t enough good stewards in the SDLP, maybe, in the 1970s and 1980s, they could have acquired the help of members and former members of the Official IRA, whose movement the Provisionals (SF and the IRA) had split from, and which was committed to a relatively non-violent path (I just think it would have been great if they HAD organized marches and I wanted to explain that they could have found a way to do it with a low risk of them turning into riots). The failure to offer mass struggle as an alternative to armed struggle weakened the overall effort to advance the interests of the Nationalist population.
4. The SDLP was socially conservative and although they probably did a better job of attracting Protestants than the Provos did, they were also closer to the Catholic Church.
5. Critics sometimes call the SDLP the Stoop Down Low Party.
6. In the 70s and 80s and probably the 90s as swell, I can imagine SDLP canvassers at election time being uncomfortable when whoever they’re talking with informed them that they’re gay. That homophobia is largely gone now, and I don’t think it was all that hateful in the first place, but they were homophobes.
7. They’re in the Socialist International and today maybe the SI almost deserves them, but with their social conservatism and moderate, almost capitalist, economics, they certainly didn’t belong there in the 1990s and 2000s and probably not in the 70s and 80s.
8. My thoughts about what the Provos did are here.
9. Razor’s Edge were/are British and support(ed) the British and Unionist causes in N. Ireland.
10. **66% of this version is me, 34% is the original.

11. This poem gets 5 stars out of 5.

Sell-out politicians always seem confused
They can’t figure out how to eject the red, white and blue
the only time you matter is on Election Day
so they can grab your vote and then tell you to go pray

(Chorus)
Options, no options
For pacifist social-dems in this community
Options, no options
The Stoops offer no mass struggle opportunities

A community defended by heroes but who then go too far
There are too many problems with their repertoire
But the only time you matter to the Stoops is on Election Day
They really want your vote unless you’re lesbian, bi or gay

Chorus

With their moderate instincts, the community gets left behind
if you think they’re helping us, you must be f*cking blind
the only time you matter is on Election Day
They’re in the International, but they’re pro-life and anti-gay

A Letter to Bernie Sanders About Mental Health Care and Stigma

Below is a message I sent to Bernie Sanders. UPDATE 11/18/20 I sent an almost identical letter to my congressperson, Joe Neguse. His response is below my signature at the end of the letter to Sanders.

Senator Bernie Sanders,

I am not a constituent but I voted for you in the 2016 CO caucus and also this year. My blog doesn’t get much traffic which is a problem I am working on, but I link to your campaign web-site and also Our Revolution. I used to be a DSA member and between 1994 and 2004 I did a ton of activism. Since then I haven’t done much activism, partly because of my disabilities but since 2008 I have done a political blog which until 2018 got a lot of visitors and in the last 3 months I got a lot of visitors because I include the URL for my blog when I leave progressive comments on Politico. In the last 8-10 years I have volunteered 4-6 hours a week on average at a food bank. I left DSA for a hybrid of personal and political reasons but I am a fellow traveler and link to them in 2-4 ways in my blog’s links list. In 2002 I represented the Anti-Racism Commission of DSA at the National Conference of Sinn Fein Youth in Galway, Ireland. My blog is at- https://theblackandthegreen3.blogspot.com/

I am emailing you instead of my own Senator because I’m more familiar with you, because you’re a national leader, because I know you feel strongly about funding mental health care and because I can imagine the likely thoughts that Bennet and/or his staff will have when they read about a mentally ill progressive. I appreciate what you have done- we need more funding for mental health care. Although I’m very slightly middle-class, I qualify for SSI and SSDI and am part of what you might call the low-income part of the mental health care system. The mental health center I go to is fairly well-funded (it serves two counties in Colorado, one being Boulder), but sometimes they have to ration therapy. Sometimes I have only gotten therapy every other week and at one point they were talking about me taking a break from getting therapy. For a lot of us therapy is very helpful.

But in addition to funding, we also need to address what is called stigma. As the National Alliance on Mental Illness said several months ago in ads seen in movie theaters, stigma can result in people not getting help. I think there is a major problem with stigma in our society. When I have a good reason to, I mention that I am mentally ill. I don’t hide it. But recently when I mentioned it to 4 progressive activists in an email, 2-3 of them didn’t respond (it’s a little complicated).

I usually think of things this way. As individuals and as a society, we should do whatever is reasonable so that people with disabilities can participate as much as possible in our society. But I think a lot of people have a double standard between physical disabilities and mental disabilities.

I have had for roughly 25-30 years, Depression, Tourrette’s Syndrome, Attention Deficit Disorder, and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Although I would have said in the past that they floated between mild and moderate, now they hover around moderate, and the ADD is a little worse than that. To give you a better idea of what I mean by “moderate,” let me give you two examples: With the ADD, if I watch a two hour movie by myself, on average I have to stop and rewind about 10 times before I’m done, just because of the ADD. One aspect of the OCD that can be measured is that, after I make sure my car or bedroom door is locked, I go back 2.5 times on average to make sure it’s locked. I suffered a brain injury in 2010. It affects my hearing, my immediate/working memory, and my ability to organize my thoughts. It MIGHT have made my short-term memory a little flawed, but my long-term memory is still really good. At the risk of putting down other mentally ill people, I have a firm grip on reality.

After my ADD got really bad in 2007 and the 2010 brain injury there was an insurmountable barrier to me doing activism. I have since gone to an occasional event or protest and I don’t refuse to have face to face conversations with people about politics but I don’t look for trouble by going to weekly or monthly meetings where events are planned and there are discussions about goals, tactics, vision, and strategy. I do my blog, I volunteer at the food bank and I go to events as an audience member.

So I understand that there are some things mentally disabled people can’t do. But I think there are a lot of times when stigma keeps mentally disabled people from participating in our society as much as they really can.

I’ll be honest, I’m not real familiar with what they do because I haven’t needed their help, but I like to think that if I encounter stigma in one form or another, if it were serious enough I could turn to the local or state or national office of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. But I am sure they could use some more money. If someone encounters bias against them because they’re physically disabled, they get plenty of help. If someone is mentally disabled and less able to deal with bias against the mentally ill, I don’t think they get much help. I would ask you to look into NAMI and when appropriate promote them.

Thanks for your time and everything you’ve done for progressive causes. I don’t expect a personal response, but if someone working for you could let me know that this message was received I would appreciate it. If I don’t get such a response, I will try to contact you via your Senate office web-site, and after that I will drop it.

Tom Shelley
Boulder, CO 

 

********

 

Below the asterisks is the response I got from my congressperson. He doesn't address the issue of stigma, but he does seem fairly concerned about mental illness in a positive way.

***********

 

October 23, 2020
 

Mr. Tom Shelley

(I deleted my address)

Dear Mr. Shelley:

Thank you for contacting me with your support for mental health services. I appreciate hearing from you because it enables me to better represent the beliefs and values of our district, and I agree with you that Congress must do more to help individuals who are suffering with mental illness access the resources they need.

There are millions of Americans living with undiagnosed mental illness, and millions more who have received their diagnoses but aren't receiving the care they need to properly manage their health and wellbeing. I believe that every American has the right to high-quality, affordable healthcare, which includes mental health treatment. Too many individuals are forced to prioritize other aspects of their lives over taking care of their mental health, and too often there are not enough resources available for them to get the help they need. Mental health and substance abuse treatment facilities lack the funds they require to serve their communities, caregivers lack adequate support to assist their loved ones, and far too many people dealing with mental illness end up in prison, which only exacerbates their struggles. To that end, I am a cosponsor on H.R. 945, The Mental Health Access Improvement Act of 2019. This bill would provide coverage for marriage and family therapist services and mental health counseling under Medicare.

In addition, Colorado has one of the highest suicide rates in the country, especially for children and young adults ages 10-24. We need to be taking care of our children and youth populations and increasing resources that are available to prevent many of these tragic deaths. I am proud to cosponsor H.R. 4194, the National Suicide Hotline Designation Act of 2019, to designate the number 988 as the national suicide hotline and provide support to those in need. I also joined several of my colleagues in asking for increased funding for the National Institutes of Mental Health, Community Mental Health Services Block Grants, and other programs in the Fiscal Year 2020 appropriations process, and voted in favor of amendments to the Labor, Health, and Human Services Appropriations Bill that passed the House on June 19, 2019 to add additional funding for mental health programs to the Fiscal Year 2020 budget.

As your Representative, providing accessible mental health resources is something that I care deeply about. Should other legislation regarding mental health services come before the full House of Representatives for a vote, I will be sure to keep your thoughts in mind.

I appreciate that you took the time to contact me, it is one of my priorities that the constituents of the Second District of Colorado have their voices heard. I encourage you to continue contacting me about the issues that are important to you. Please visit my website at https://neguse.house.gov/ to sign up for my e-newsletter and receive periodic updates on my activities as your representative in Washington.
 

Sincerely,

Joe Neguse
Member of Congress 

Taking Down Columbus: Three New Poems

I explain about my poetry here. The second is based on a song I agree with. The other two are not. The third one is about anti-racist skinheads. You might want to read the notes about that kind of poem here.

All the poems are available by clicking on the "lyrics" label at the bottom.

1. Indigenous Peoples Day. Opposition to Columbus Day Parades.
2. A Letter From Ardoyne To British Labour. An appeal by a Northern Ireland Catholic to the British Labour Party.
3. Taking Down the Boneheads. Anti-racist skinheads.

“Indigenous Peoples Day” based on “Freedom” by Brutal Attack. Original lyrics are here.

1. This is about opposition to Columbus Day parades, from the perspective of a white ally, but not me (frankly, I LOVE those parades- just joking; the thing is, I practically never or never write from my perspective when I use the first person in my poems; in this case, the last line of the first verse is not something I have done)). For multiple reasons, you should read several paragraphs here, beginning a little more than 1/2 way down, starting with the paragraph “For many reasons…” and ending with the paragraph “For whatever it’s worth….” You should definitely read some of the material here.
2. Although this is about such parades nation-wide, in Denver at least, the group organizing the parade is or has been the Sons of Columbus (there seem to be groups using that phrase throughout the country) (UPDATE 3/27/20 It's been 15-20 years and I was wrong- in Denver it was the Sons of Italy, but the other phrase, in connection with the word parade, IS found all over the internet).
3. When Columbus was governor of Hispanola (today Haiti and the Dominican Republic), at least 99% of the indigenous population was killed.
4. I mentioned Irish-Americans for three reasons:

A: We’re awesome.

B: In the last 20 years or so, frequently local organizations of the Ancient Order of Hibernians (an exclusively male, Catholic and Irish-American group) have marched in Columbus Day Parades (see the very end of an article here). They’re more or less conservative (some are economically progressive) and this just pisses me off even more.

C: I think that sometimes Sinn Fein should intervene in American political fights considering A) how internationalist they are and B) how much time they spend here. Considering how Columbus Day parades stand for something worse than Orange Order parades, and the fact that many of their supporters are MARCHING in Columbus Day parades, I think it’s one of the few times that SF should speak out, IN AMERICA, about injustice here.

5. This isn’t written from MY perspective. But here’s a little story relevant to the last line of the first verse. After the controversy about Ward Churchill broke, I attended a rally and/or protest in support of him. I was wearing an anti-Columbus t-shirt and some College Republican said that Columbus was his hero. I explained what I mentioned above about Hispanola and the GOPer said that when he moved into his apartment he wiped out the “indigenous population of spiders.” I should have explained how offensive it is to compare that with killing brown-skinned people, but I just called him a motherfucker. He asked if I wanted to fight and then speculated that I don’t believe in fighting (I’m not a pacifist). I just stood there looking at the rest of the crowd until he’d been silent for 2-3 minutes and then I walked away.
6. As far as the FBI, in the 1970s the American Indian Movement was targeted for destruction by the FBI (exclusively or almost exclusively on Pine Ridge). On the Pine Ridge reservation, 1973-1976, the US government and its corrupt reservation allies were responsible for the murder of at least 69 AIM members and supporters (according to the chapter “AIM Casualties on Pine Ridge” in Ward Churchill’s 1994 book “Indians Are Us?”). The population of that reservation I would estimate was, at the time, about 20,000 (I can’t find anything for that, and according to the US Census Bureau via Wikipedia, in 2017 there were almost 20,000 people there, and between the fact that it was likely 1/2 of 1/3 that in 1975 and the fact that I have found some confusing facts indicating that it may be higher than 20,000 today, I’m just going to go with 20,000). In The Troubles, five years that saw 200+ deaths each year were 1972-1976 and since 1972 saw 480 deaths in the conflict, I looked at the years 1972-1975. During that time, almost exactly 422 members of the Nationalist community, including members of republican paramilitaries (including three from the South who were killed in the North; I mention that because I’m sure some AIM members on Pine Ridge were not locals), were killed by either the security forces or loyalist paramilitaries. Now, when considering population figures, if things were equal in terms of these sorts of deaths, the figure for N. Ireland would have been 1,725 (for good reason, I looked at just Pine Ridge and on the other hand, all of N. Ireland). I should also point out that AIM was not as militant as the IRA, and as far as I know, killed none or almost none of their opponents and probably ZERO civilians, and were not blowing up buildings. If they had been more aggressive and/or had killed civilians, I can only imagine how many of them and their supporters would have been killed (there’s evidence that around 90% of the Nationalist community, including republicans, supported republican paramilitaries TO ONE DEGREE OR ANOTHER, see the middle third of this for support of internees in the 1970s and hunger-strikers in 1981). UPDATE 12/19/20 I just got an email from Churchill saying that the population of Pine ridge at the time was about 10,000, so instead of 1,725 the hypothetical figure for N. Ireland is 3, 450.
7. In the last 25 years I celebrated the 4th 3-6 times. A) I have some slightly patriotic tendencies and B) I was hanging out with friends who were more or less liberal or my Mom who was (overall) fairly liberal. But I’m sure that most white allies who oppose these parades don’t celebrate the 4th and I agree that some of what it is symbolic of is fucked up shit.
8. Columbus may have been Italian, although according to Ward Churchill there’s some disagreement about that. MANY Italian-Americans (around 60-90 years ago), in response to bigotry against them, started talking up the idea that Columbus was Italian and began celebrating him. At a 2000 talk in support of a protest of the Denver Columbus Day parade, Ward Churchill said that there SHOULD be a celebration of Italian-America, but based on pasta, not Columbus. Sacco and Vanzetti were Italian immigrants and anarchists convicted of murder in 1921 during a wave of anti-immigrant, anti-Italian, and anti-anarchist hysteria in America. It’s widely agreed that there’s plenty of reason to believe they were innocent.
9. Police body cams make it less likely that they’ll do fucked up shit. There should be some kind of serious penalty for the officers and/or department if they claim that the footage isn’t available (it wasn’t turned on, it broke, the computer doesn’t work, whatever their excuse is).
10. **80% of this version is me, 20% is the original.
11. This is dedicated to my late friend Chris O’Laughlin, who died of cancer in 2002. He was very progressive, and an opponent of these parades, and was Irish-American and Italian-American (and probably proud of both- I know he was an Irish Republican). RIP Chris.
12. UPDATE 3/27/20 I'm not real familiar with to what degree American Indians live communally today, especially those who live off the reservation, but A) I think that continues to one degree or another today and B) only about 150 years ago around 1/3-1/2 DEFINITELY lived communally and C) 300 years before that, they all definitely did and D) it's something that many Indians, to one degree or another, aspire to.
13. UPDATE 3/28/20 In case I need to clarify this, here it is. I have said, explicitly, in at least two other places on my blog, that I would feel better if there hadn't been any European settlement here at all. I mentioned westward expansion  for two reasons: A) A LOT of the time people focus on criticizing "Manifest Destiny" (the idea behind westward expansion) and B) the settlement of the 13 colonies was not something done by the government I recognize as mine, it was done by the British. But I DO feel bad about the settlement of the 13 colonies.
14. UPDATE 4/9/20 I imply in the poem that all American Indians want the parades banned. I'm not sure that's totally true. About 10 years ago an Indian I was friends with said she wasn't into the idea of blocking the parade. That might extend to getting it banned. But among Indians who oppose blocking it, there might be some or many who are sort of okay with it being banned by the city. In Denver I had been to a few other protests organized by the group (or the main group) that organized the protest of the parade (Colorado AIM) and was slightly familiar with the Denver American Indian community and I think that maybe around 1/3 or 1/2 of Indians in that area identified with them (most of the others hated them). It's possible that if the others opposed blocking the parade, for some of them it was because CO-AIM got in front of opposition to the parade at the very beginning, and like I said, a lot of Indians in Denver really don't like them (that might be because they’re fairly comfortable, in theory and at least once in practice, with militancy, and without being Marxist or social-democratic or anarchist, CO-AIM could be described, to one degree or another, as leftist). And if some people would say that the issue of freedom of assembly would indicate opposition to the parade being banned, I would say that it seems pretty popular among Indians to tell sports teams what they can do with their “Indian” mascots. The Native American Rights Fund, a group more moderate than CO-AIM, supported at least one lawsuit and supports creating a legislatively created and empowered committee in CO that would have the power of the law to approve or reject the mascots of public schools (including higher education). The streets are public, and Columbus Day is probably more offensive to American Indians than “Indian” mascots are. In any case, something like 99% of American Indians don't like the parades.

When the Sons of Italy want to march the city won’t ban it
But take a look at the genocide, Columbus began it
Now they’re afraid of us because we tell the truth
To the masses of white people, including the Irish-American youth
When I think about America’s westward expansion I feel some shame
But when I stand to make a speech the police ask me for my name

Chorus
Freedom from genocide is the very least they deserve
Capitalism and Imperialism joined forces, two things we should not conserve
The White man can try to suppress Indians with their police and the FBI
Indians will emerge victors- and fuck the 4th of July!

Communal Nations with a lot of respect for the land       
They’ll keep working until Columbus Day parades are banned
We don’t hate Italians-Americans and remember Sacco and Vanzetti
As Ward said, let’s celebrate Italian-America with a ton of spaghetti

So, let’s help promote the next protest against those parades
If we have to, we’ll keep doing this for many decades
We want a country free of bigotry, and based on community
We believe in police body cams and equal opportunity

**********

“A Letter From Ardoyne To British Labour” based on “Body Count” by Body Count (Ice-T’s heavy metal band). Original lyrics are here.

1. I removed a lot of Ice-T’s non lyrical talk, except for the very beginning.
2. Ardoyne is a nationalist/republican neighborhood in North Belfast.
3. This is basically in late 1970 and 1971, after British Labour were removed from power by the voters and yet, close enough to the beginning of the conflict that you could say the republican struggle was still growing, and when Orange is definitely the right word because Stormont, the Unionist-dominated regional devolved Parliament and Government, still existed.
4. As far as I can tell, there are some pro-unionist tendencies in BL, some pro-republican tendencies, some pro-SDLP tendencies (although officially they’re sister organizations, the SDLP doesn’t belong in the Socialist International and I think a lot of people in BL know that (that post also explains how, setting aside the question of the IRA’s campaign, getting behind the SDLP was not getting behind an effective path to equality, justice and freedom for the Nationalist population)), and some other tendencies (i.e. some wanted Labour to organize in the North, but British Labour, not Irish Labour).
5. The red, white and blue, in this poem and not the original lyrics, refers to the BRITISH flag.
6. Partition is the division of Ireland.
7. Orange is the color of anti-Catholic bigotry in the Anglo-Irish context.
8. The BA is the British Army.
9. AKs are AK-47s which are automatic rifles.
10. RA stands for “Republican Army” and is pronounced “raw.”
11. Loyalist refers to the paramilitaries that focused mostly on killing Catholic civilians because they were Catholic.
12. Squaddie is a British soldier.
13. I choose North Belfast because, behind West Belfast, it saw the most deaths in the conflict (compared to the other 3 quarters of Belfast, Derry, and Counties Armagh, Down, Antrim, Derry, Fermanagh, and Tyrone). But I think it was worse for Catholics in North Belfast than those in West Belfast because it was a mixture of Nationalist and Unionist areas, whereas the Nationalist areas of West Belfast were all grouped together.
14. **25% of this version is me, 75% is the original.
15. I have calculated that only about .3% of the IRA's operations resulted in civilian death.

You know, sometimes I sit at home, you know, and I watch the BBC
And I wonder what it would be like to live in some place like
You know, Manchester, Liverpool
You know, where the peelers come and got your cat outta the tree
All your friends die of old age
But you see.. I live in North Belfast
And unfortunately... SHIT AIN'T LIKE THAT!!
It's real fucked up!

God damn, what brothers and sisters gotta do
To get a message through
To the red and white and blue
What? I gotta die, before you realize
I was a person with open eyes?
Partition’s insane, while you drink champagne
And I'm living under Orange reign
The BA fears Irish people with AKs
Here the ‘RA's got ten stashed With a case of hand grenades

You'd know what to do
If loyalists killed your kid on the way to school
Or a BA sniper shot your kid in a rural barnyard
Shit would hit the fan motherfucker and it would hit real hard
I hear it every night, another gun fight
The struggle mounts,
on with the IRA’s squaddie Body Count

God damn what the Irish gotta do
To get a message through
To the red and white and you?
What? I gotta die before you realize
I was a Catholic with open eyes?
Orange society’s insane, while you drink champagne
And I'm living under Imperialistic reign
Don't you hear the loyalist guns?
You stupid, dumb British Labour politicians!!

*************

“Taking on the Boneheads” based on “Tearing Down the Flags” by Razor’s Edge. Original lyrics are here.

1.  This is about anti-racist skinheads. They might not exist anymore, but that’s not going to stop me from doing poems like this.
2. Bonehead is an anti-racist term for nazi skinhead.
3. Cardiff (Wales) is the home of Roddy Moreno and the Oi! band The Oppressed are based there. Moreno is the most popular anti-racist skinhead in the world.
4. Las Vegas is where in 1998, two anti-racist skinheads were killed by Nazis.
5. A large town in the Czech Republic is where, in 2008, an anti-racist skinhead was killed by a Nazi Skinhead.
6. Perth (Australia) rhymes with Earth.
7. Anti-racist skinheads are embarrassed (or something like that) by the existence of Nazis in their culture.
8. SHARP stands for “SkinHead Against Racial Prejudice.”
9. Fash is short for fascists.
10. Suss is a skinhead/British word for intelligence (or something close to that).
11. Around 95% of skinheads are working-class and even when it’s warped by fascism, have a strong sense of working-class pride.
12. The idea is that, since the skinhead culture started in connection with Black English people, if you’re a racist you can’t be a skinhead.
13. Bread is a term for economic justice. Although the average SHARP is only sort of political and only sort of progressive, Nazi skinheads are, for better or worse, very political and have a (racially narrow) belief in economic justice.
14. Ian Stuart was the opposite of Moreno, and died in 1993 in a hilarious car accident.
15. I think the fash (and, sort of separately, the Christian Right) try to ignore the way they have a lot in common with the Muslim fundamentalist Right (if you think I have a racist double standard, see the first third of this).
16. I don’t believe in Hell, but if it does exist Ian Stuart and Al-Qaeda members are there.
17. A patch on, for example, a bomber jacket (popular with skinheads).
18. Docs are Doc Martens, boots that almost all skinheads (and some non-skinhead fans of music that inspires moshing) wear (it’s possible that in the last 20 years, a LOT of other people are wearing them, too).
19. **63% of this poem is me, 37% is the original.

They wear their swastika patches, their symbols full of hate
Don't they f*cking realize, that their defeat awaits
We're taking on the boneheads, all across the Earth
In Cardiff, Las Vegas, the Czech Republic and Perth

(Chorus)
We're taking down the boneheads- we'll banish Skinhead’s shame.
We're taking down the boneheads- SHARP is our name.
We're taking down the boneheads- we’re never giving in.
We're taking down the boneheads- we’re gonna f*cking win.

Fash still marching on our streets, they haven't learned a thing.
Don't they f*cking realize, our fists will swing and they’ll swing and they’ll swing
They're just a bunch of wankers, who haven’t got the suss
To the skinhead culture and the working-class they’re treasonous

They shave their heads and wear Docs but they aren’t real skinheads
They don’t realize you can’t promote hate and successfully push for bread
We're taking down the boneheads, and we hate Ian Stuart real well.
So they can join Al-Qaeda, in the fascist motherfuckers hell