Santa Claus: Origins

Hollywood, consistently bereft of original ideas, loves prequels and “origins” stories.  In the holiday spirit I’m offering my own prequel story:  Santa.

 30-something days after Easter, in an undisclosed, secure location in Jerusalem.  Jesus meets with the Apostles, alerting them that His remaining time is short and gives them instructions on how to proceed in His absence.  In particular, He orders them to go out and spread the Word, not merely in Israel but also Turkey, Greece, and the rest of the known world.  He promises them that in a few months they will receive further instructions.  With that, He dismisses them – all except one:  Nicolas.

 “For you,” He tells Nicolas, “I have a special assignment….” And proceeds to explain.

“For these past few months I have preached peace, love, and understanding.  My reward was to be nailed to a cross.  While I know that my Apostles will be well inspired with the Holy Spirit to spread my message far and wide, I am less confident that the message will be well received.  To ensure that it is, I have the following plan.

 “As you know, I was all about giving rather than receiving.  I took not so much as a single life, but gave my own.  To remind them of my message, and to encourage them to listen, understand, and follow it, I have decided that on my birthday, December 25, instead of receiving presents, I will give them, particularly to the children.  I want you, Nicolas, to deliver these presents to the children every year on my birthday.”

Nicolas listened intently and asked, “All children, my lord Jesus?  Even those who have not obeyed your commands?”

Jesus thought for a moment, and reconsidered.  “Perhaps not.  It would be wise for you to monitor which children have been good, and which have not, and reward the former and not the latter.  We do not wish to spoil them.  For those who have not, give them something unpleasant like coal.  Oh, and for children from Holland, have Black Peter take them to Spain.”

“Black Peter?  Is he a Nubian?”

“No, he’s like us, he just has black skin.”

“…and Spain?”

“Trust me, no Dutch child wants to go to Spain.”

 Nicolas took this in, and accepted the assignment.  “I will set up an operation at the North Pole, and raise an army of elves to make these presents.   We will be outside any kingdoms and not subject to any inconvenient laws or interference.”

“Excellent.  To deliver these presents, I would suggest a sleigh, driven by eight magic flying camels.”

“Camels, my lord Jesus?  If we are at the North Pole, I would recommend reindeer instead.  They tolerate extreme cold far more than camels do.”

“Reindeer do sound better.  I was right to trust you, Nicolas, you are very sharp.”

“Thank you, my lord Jesus.  I will need one more reindeer, with a big, red nose, to light the way.  We will be flying at night.”

“Yes, that’s good.  How long do you think it will take to get this endeavor up and running?”

Nicolas shrugged, stroked his white beard, and guessed, “About 1800 years should be enough.”

“Good, make it so.  Merry Christmas!”

Gilgamesh

I recently finished reading the Epic of Gilgamesh, as “interpreted” by Stephen Mitchell (Gilgamesh, A New English Version).  Mitchell cannot read the cuneiform, Sumerian, or Babylonian language and did not have access to the original tablets, so what he did was simply reinterpret what prior authors had done, resummarizing it in a more coherent and sensible fashion than the prior attempts.  The initial work, however, was most of the heavy lifting: the original tablets had been lost for thousands of years and only found in the 1800s by various archeologists digging around in what we now know of as Iraq.  The original scholars had to decipher a dead language in a unique alphabet with no one around to help them out.  Eventually they put the pieces of the puzzle together and figured out what we could consider the “epic” of Gilgamesh, a fictional hero dating back 5,000 years ago or more.  Parts of it, concerning a great flood, coincide with parts of the Old Testament of the Bible.

 Gilgamesh was the ruler of Uruk, a large city southeast of Babylon and northwest of Ur.  The cities of this area and of modern Iraq follow the so-called “fertile crescent” of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.   

 “It’s Good to Be The King”.  Apparently Gilgamesh’s leadership style was heavy handed and unpopular.  Among the most objectionable of his policies was assertion of the right to take the virginity of new brides.  As we know, it was only relatively recently that even modern, industrial Western societies abandoned the presumption of virginity at marriage.  Presumably this was the case in Iraq 5,000 years ago.  Gilgamesh demanded – and received – the prerogative to be first to bed the bride; the groom had to wait patiently while the King nailed his wife.

  I’ve never been married, but from what I can tell, grooms are as likely to be nervous on their wedding nights as brides.  Any groom less than 100% confident in his abilities as a lover will probably appreciate a virgin bride who has no basis for unfavorable comparison.  This is completely negated by having your new bride get nailed by none other than the Hero King Stud, Gilgamesh himself.  How can you follow that?  So I suspect it was the grooms of Uruk who were more upset with this policy than the brides.

 The unhappy citizens of Uruk pleaded with the gods to send them some relief from this terrible man upsetting their wedding plans.  The gods sent a somewhat unfinished product, Enkidu. 

Enkidu is described as a virtual duplicate of Gilgamesh, though a bit shorter.  He starts off as a wild man living in the wilderness, running around with animals, naked, unclothed, “raised by wolves” so to speak.  In this condition he’s not particularly suited to his job of fixing the Uruk problem.

 Ishtar & Shamhat.  The temple of Ishtar was run on a very interesting basis.  The priestesses, far from being celibate nuns, were in fact sacred prostitutes who supported the cult by sleeping with the congregation or the general public for a fee.  Presumably this was considerably more effective (and popular) than bake sales or raffles.  One of the priestesses, Shamhat (there’s a feminine name) is assigned the task of civilizing Enkidu.

 She approaches Enkidu, strips naked, and begins masturbating in front of him.  This gets his full attention, and he proceeds to “get the idea” for the next full week.  After this marathon lovemaking session (apparently making up for 20-something years of abstinence in the wild) Shamhat shaves him, dresses him in elegant clothing, and feeds him “people food” (including a good amount of beer, which he likes).  At this point he is “civilized” and the animals no longer recognize him as their buddy – similar to the bachelor hooking up and alienating all his single buddies. 

Bromance.  Enkidu enters Uruk, and right away there is trouble.  Sure enough, he and Gilgamesh fight, with destruction following around them – I’m imagining that commercial where the robots fight and smash up the guy’s apartment while he casually and indifferently moves from room to room and cooks and eats his bachelor food.  Finally Gilgamesh prevails, but only after Enkidu had put up a big fight.  They emerge from the ruckus as best friends…maybe a bit more than that (Mitchell’s footnotes observe that the tablets imply a romantic relationship exists between the pair).

 Humbaba.  For some reason Gilgamesh gets it into his head to go west to the forests of Lebanon to defeat a mighty volcano monster called Humbaba.  The elders of Uruk, and Enkidu, think this is a really bad idea and try to dissuade him, with no success.  He goes off west, and persuades Enkidu to follow along.  Having done so, now he starts having second thoughts – a series of terrifying nightmares – and it’s up to Enkidu to change his mind and interpret the dreams with a very counterintuitive and implausible but positive spin (maybe Enkidu should have been a lawyer). 

 They meet Humbaba, who is just as fearsome and powerful as they feared, but somehow they are able to reduce him to begging for mercy.  While Gilgamesh is inclined to spare his life, Enkidu persuades him to finish off Humbaba.  This earns him a curse from the gods, whose “plan” apparently was for Gilgamesh to defeat, but not kill, Humbaba.  Enkidu comes down with a nasty, mysterious illness which strikes him down in the prime of life.  This stuns and demoralizes Gilgamesh (see below).

 Ishtar & the Bull.  When they return to Uruk, the love & war goddess herself, Ishtar, courts Gilgamesh.  But Gilgamesh is not impressed, and he rebuffs her advances with zero tact or discretion.  Basically his argument is: every lover you take, you eventually grow tired of and dispose of in a particularly nasty fashion.  You sent one of your ex-BF’s to Hell.  Thanks, but I’m not interested in winding up like they did.  Incensed, as you can imagine, Ishtar gets the gods to send her a Bull to fight Gilgamesh to punish him for his arrogance, but Gilgamesh kills the Bull and laughs in her face. 

 Enkidu Dies.  As noted, Enkidu suffers a disease which weakens and kills him; despite having faced down Humbaba and the Bull, Gilgamesh is powerless to save his friend from this threat, and loses him.  When his prayers and grief fail to save Enkidu or resurrect his cold, inert, lifeless body, Gilgamesh soon realizes the same fate ultimately awaits him someday.  He becomes obsessed with learning the secret to immortality.

 Upnaptishim.  Gilgamesh seeks out the sole mortal to have gained immortality, Upnaptishim.  Here is the Bible angle:  Upnaptishim is the epic’s equivalent of Noah, who survived a mighty flood by building a huge ark and filling it with pairs of animals.  Ultimately this man tells Gilgamesh, “I’m sorry, but one day you will die.  Everyone dies.  It’s part of life.  I can’t fix that or give you immortality, no one can.  All I can tell you is to enjoy life as much as you can, while you can.”  End of story.

You Deserve It (?)

Recently I started watching a new game show on ABC called “You Deserve It”.  It’s a quiz show and its “gimmick” is that the contestant is playing not to win money for himself or herself, but for some special person who “deserves” the winnings.  Supposedly the intended beneficiary is left in the dark about this until the end of the show, at which point the “prize crew” surprises the person with the good news. 

 All well and fine, right?  Not exactly.

First of all, is the actual premise.  So far as I’ve seen the beneficiaries tend to be very close family members of the contestant.  I don’t know about you, but if my brother won me $200,000.00 on a game show, you can bet I’d be splitting it with him big time, probably 50/50.  These are not estranged relatives we’re talking about.  If they’re good enough to deserve this money, they’re good enough to share it with the person who actually won it for them.

 Second is the quiz system.  Like on “Wheel of Fortune”, the “answer” is a person, place, or thing, which the contestants have to guess. They get a “free clue” (which is so vague as to be meaningless) then have to “buy” 9 extra clues.  Each clue results in the prize money being reduced by a (supposedly) random amount.  Clearly the less clues you need to solve the puzzle, the more money your friend will wind up with.  The 9 clues together add up to the full prize amount, so if you were dumb enough to require all 9 clues you’d wind up with nothing.  Even 7-8 clues tend to reduce the prize amount considerably.

 One problem is that the clues are obviously very vague and many are mutually inconsistent.  You’re going to need at least 5-6 clues to get the answer.  And along the way the prize money will go down.  From what I’ve seen, in every case the maximum reduction amount always gets hit.  Not right away, but it will.  I strongly suspect it’s rigged that this amount will be hit by the 3^rd or 4^th clue every time.  Someone should keep track (next time I’m watching, I will).

 Another problem is the clues themselves.  One was outright misleading.  When the “answer” was “Barack Obama”, one clue was “basketball player” and another was “44”.  The poor contestant was racking her brain about professional basketball players, and she knew she didn’t know any who wore #44.  Does Obama play basketball?  I’m sure he does every now and then.  So does about half the country.  But to my knowledge he’s never played for the NBA, which was clearly what the game designers intended to be implied by the clue: they knew the contestant would assume “basketball player” meant “professional basketball player”.  Of course, no one believes Obama played for the NBA.  So here’s a clue which not only doesn’t help us guess Barack Obama, but which steers us AWAY from him.  And clearly the “44” clue, possibly helpful on its own, in conjunction with “basketball player” would combine in the contestant’s mind to mean “professional basketball player who wears #44”.  Clearly the game designers were aware of this.  This poor girl had to buy more clues just to offset the damage done by these two.  If a clue hurts your chances of guessing the correct answer, that’s not much of a clue, is it? 

 I would have hoped that the days of rigged TV game shows were long gone, but apparently they’re still very much alive and well.

More Obscure Bands

I suppose Hawkwind and Wishbone Ash count here, but I’ve already mentioned them.  Here’s another few groups worth checking out by anyone who considers themselves a “rock fan”.

 Be Bop Deluxe.  The main character is Bill Nelson, and their most famous album is Sunburst Finish.  This was a British pop band from the 70s, from 1972-79.   The music is standard issue rock from that era, not particularly special or original, but certainly competent and well-made.  Nelson’s guitar work is excellent, and salvages what might otherwise be standard issue 70s pop into something more substantial and worthwhile.  “Ships in the Night” has a reggae feel very similar to the Scorpions’ “Is There Anybody There” from Lovedrive.

 Max Webster.  A Canadian pop band.  The main character: Kim Mitchell.  They used to open up for Rush in the late 70s, but have since broken up; they were active from 1973-81.  Kim Mitchell is still on the radio in Canada.  I have their first two albums, the self-titled debut and High Class in Borrowed Shoes.  MW are somewhat more commercial, a bit like Blue Oyster Cult, even with some quirkiness thrown into the mix (e.g. “Toronto Tontos”).  Mitchell, as with so many commercial guitarists, knows exactly how much bad-ass guitar to throw into the mix to keep it from being just “banal and insipid” garbage.  

 The Sensational Alex Harvey Band.  My buddy Dave described them as “AC/DC with keyboards”, but to me the sound is like a heavier, rock-oriented vaudeville show.  Their top song is “The Faith Healer”.  Alex Harvey himself had a kind of Beano look to him, with striped t-shirts, and his voice is practically identical to early Bon Scott (e.g. “Big Balls”); it’s hard not to suspect that Scott was ripping off Harvey for his vocal style, at least early on.  Guitarist Zal Cleminson dressed in clown makeup, but aside from looking incredibly gay (in both senses of the word) is actually damn good.

 Argent.  Aside from this band, keyboardist Rod Argent is best known for the band the Zombies, whose hit “Time of the Season” was actually released after the band had already broken up.  They’ve since reformed, with Argent, and of course play that song on their reunion tour.  Argent himself teamed up with guitarist Russ Ballard to make several albums of pop-prog-rock.  Argent’s material reminds me of that bizarre candy Willy Wonka invented, the one which changes to completely different flavors.  At one point I’m hearing King Crimson, then Uriah Heep, then Jethro Tull, and some Deep Purple (actually Uriah Heep in more recent years have been accused of sounding more like classic Deep Purple than Purple themselves do these days – Heep Purple?).  They are all over the place.  KISS covered “God Gave Rock’n’Roll To You”, but their original hit was “Hold Your Head Up”.   I purchased a 5-pack of their albums Argent, Ring of Hands, All Together Now, In Deep, and Nexus.  All of them have atrocious album covers.

 Budgie.  I separate this Welsh 70’s-80’s band in to three phases.  First they were very close to being Black Sabbath clones on the first four albums: Budgie, Squawk, Never Turn Your Back On A Friend, and In For The Kill.  By the fifth album, they had loosened up a bit with some more jazzy, even bossa nova feel:  Bandolier, If I Were Britannia I’d Waive the Rules, and Impeckable.  Unfortunately, Bourge quit, and was replaced by John Thomas, right in time (1980) for Budgie to emulate Saxon and Y&T for their NWOBHM eras; these three albums are Power Supply, Night Flight, and Deliver Us From Evil.  They broke up, and eventually reformed around original bassist/singer Burke Shelley.   No mention of Budgie is complete without a reference to Metallica, who covered “Breadfan” as a single (the b-side to “Eye of the Beholder”) and “Crash Course in Brain Surgery” on the Garage Days Re-Revisited EP.   While both songs are good, “Zoom Club” (from In For The Kill) is probably their best song.   Budgie share the tendency of Frank Zappa and Blue Oyster Cult of having extremely odd song titles: “Nude Disintegrating Parachutist Woman”, “Napoleon Bona Part I & II”, “Hot As A Docker’s Armpit”, “Panzer Division Destroyed”, “If I Were Britannia I’d Waive the Rules”, etc.  

Spanish-American War

Time for another round of “obscure wars no one cares about!” (except maybe Cubans, Filipinos or Puerto Ricans). This week:  the Spanish-American War of 1898.  Just as the Russo-Japanese War (1905) was Japan’s opportunity to defeat a European country (Tsarist Russia), this was America’s chance to knock down on Spain, which had by then deteriorated into just another half-assed European country with a bunch of overseas colonies it could no longer adequately protect.  Instead of fighting at home in Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, or out on the Plains against Indians (American type, not 7-11) the US was off to Cuba, Puerto Rico, and far off in the Pacific to the Philippines.

 Cuba.  The Spanish had been having problems with a native Cuban insurgency (the Army of Liberation) in the late 1800s.  By 1895 another one had erupted.  Popular sentiment in the US supported the insurgency.   Before Che Guevara (who was Argentinian, by the way), the popular hero of Cuba was Maximo Gomez, a general in the Army of Liberation.

            On February 15, 1898, the US battleship Maine, (built to compete with Brazil’s dreadnought the Riachuelo, which had scared the hell out of the Americans) anchored in Havana harbor, mysteriously exploded and sank.  Although no one knows who was responsible, the Spanish were blamed anyway.  By April 25, the US had declared war on Spain.

            As was so often the case with US getting into wars, the standing peacetime army was far too small, and a volunteer army had to be raised and trained from scratch.  The volunteers camped at Camp Alger, which was actually close by to where my office is now:  Route 50 west of Graham Road in northern Virginia. 

            On June 22, US forces landed in southeast Cuba near Santiago.  The harbor defenses were too strong to directly defeat, so a prolonged siege from both land and sea was what ultimately broke the Spanish.  The US fleet blockaded the Spanish fleet at Santiago, while various land forces, including Roosevelt’s Rough Riders, took on the Spanish forces on the mainland; by July 1, San Juan Hill was in US hands.  This completed the land-side siege of Santiago.  An attempt by the Spanish fleet to break out was unsuccessful.  On July 17 the garrison surrendered, which ended the war in Cuba.

 The Rough Riders.  Officially known as the 1^st US Volunteer Cavalry, led by Theodore Roosevelt.  Their uniform was a blue flannel shirt, slouch hat, bandana, and leggings; they used the Krag-Jorgensen bolt-action rifle, .30-40 caliber.  The Rough Riders attracted an amazing variety of adventurous characters:  American Indians, cowboys, athletes, anyone with some military experience (Civil War or Indian War) or horseriding skill, almost an American version of the French Foreign Legion.

 Puerto Rico.  US troops landed on July 25.  By August 13 the Spanish had surrendered.

 The Philippines.  As with Cuba, there was a native insurgency in the Philippines, the major player being Emilio Aguinaldo.  When the US entered war with Spain, Aguinaldo, who had been in exile in Hong Kong after the last rebellion, negotiated his return to the Philippines.  As with Cuba, the war against Spain in this area had a naval and land aspect.  On sea, Admiral Dewey defeated the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay on May 1.  On June 30, US troops debarked at Cavite; by August 13, the Spanish had surrendered.

            But this didn’t end the hostilities.  The Filipino insurgents, who had been expecting full independence in exchange for assisting the US invasion (liberation?) were shocked and disappointed when the end of the war simply transferred ownership from Spain to the US.  Then began an “insurgency” which lasted far longer than the original war; the locals put up a much tougher fight than the Spanish had.  The “official” end was declared in April 1902, but sporadic clashes with primitive Muslim Moro tribes continued on until the 1920s.  The US finally granted the Philippines independence on July 4, 1946.  Aguinaldo himself lived until 1964, age 94.

 Uniforms and equipment.  This was about the time the Navy switched from the older “Donald Duck” hat for sailors to the current Dixie Cup variety.  For its part, the Army was switching over from dark blue (since the Civil War) to khaki, a completely different color far better suited to the realities of modern warfare, and in much lighter, more comfortable materials.  The latter was important as for the first time US soldiers were fighting in tropical conditions different than experienced at home in the United States. 

            Spanish soldiers typically wore a cotton tropical uniform, called rayadillo, in white with narrow blue vertical stripes.  To modern eyes – or at least mine – they look like pajamas.  Their rifle was the 1893 Spanish Mauser (7mm Mauser), which was actually superior to the US rifles, both the obsolete trapdoor Springfields (.45-70, single shot) and the Krags.  It was the success of this rifle which led the US to adopt the Mauser bolt action system on the 1903 Springfield.  Another popular rifle was the Remington rolling block, typically in 11mm (.43) as used by the Spanish.     

Cookie Monster

I had mentioned this earlier in my Thrash Metal blog, but it was brought home to me again after listening to a band called Baroness, their so-called Blue Album.  The music itself was excellent, yet it was completely marred by the atrocious singing, if you can even call it that.  Yet again, Cookie Monster showed up to sing. (Fortunately for this band, their recent Yellow/Green double album dials down the Cookie Monster considerably).

 Mastodon is a similar band with excellent music and terrible vocals.  Opeth has finally released a non-prog, regular album, Heritage, with no such vocals on it, and with the addition of songs from that album the live set has finally pushed the CM variety into the minority.   We can expect one song from Damnation, not the whole album, but at least the rest of the set is no longer mostly growls.  Which is even more peculiar, because Mikael Akerfeldt, the singer, actually has a damn good singing voice.

 Look at the Big Four of Thrash, finally playing together.  Of these, only Tom Araya (Slayer) has a gravelly voice; we can probably blame him for this trend.  “If he can get away with it, why can’t all these other idiots with zero singing ability?”  James Hetfield (Metallica) has the best of the four: a nasty biting, rasp which is still intelligible.  Dave Mustaine’s (Megadeth) voice is almost identical, full of venom and contempt but still recognizable.  And Joey Belladonna (Anthrax) can belt it – no subtitles needed. 

 I predict two things: (1) bands like Opeth will continue to sell more records and be more successful so long as the singer actually sings, and (2) the hardcore deathcore yahoos will sneer “sell-out” when a band moves out of the Cookie Monster box, a demographic which could fit into a small room, into the demographic of “normal, intelligent people” who prefer to hear real singing – you know, like Rob Halford or Bruce Dickinson.  Welcome to the real world at last.

The Twentieth Century

If nostalgia is looking wistfully at the past, the opposite is looking towards the future, although not necessarily wistfully – i.e. science fiction.  We’ve all heard of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, the most famous late 19^th century science fiction writers.  Here’s a new entry:  Albert Robida, author of The Twentieth Century, which has only recently been translated into English (from French).  This is Robida’s depiction, from the point of view of 1882, of what France (and the world) will look like in 1952.  Robida not only wrote the book, he also illustrated it.  I found it…fascinating (arching single eyebrow).

 Telephonoscopes.   This is one thing which Robida got close:  video phones.  Voice, picture, music all come over the transmission lines – even full performances of operas and concerts.  Of course, these modern versions are interspersed with all sorts of modern adaptations to wake up the audience and keep it relevant and not boring.  Almost without exception, all of Robida’s 1950 technology was in existence, in some form, in 1882.  Even Edgar Rice Burroughs came up with technology which was nonexistent at his time – through the sheer imagination of simply making it up with no explanation as to how it worked.  Step by step….

 Style.  Indistinguishable from the late 19^th century, and completely different from what actually wound up in 1952.  I suppose the steampunk people might find it curious.  Heinlein, in For Us, The Living, at least predicted that in the 21^st century nudity taboos would be gone and we could wear anything at all – or nothing at all.  Ahead of his time, alas!

 Catering.  Food, wine, soup – all delivered to your home from a central plant by means of pipes!  Turn the faucet, and your dinner emerges!  Voila!  It’s so simple.  Well, there are still some bugs.  Two wealthy men, comparing each other’s catering companies:

            Ponto:  “…not to mention the steam choppers for vegetables, or the power hammer to mash potatoes…”

            Gontran: “Let me stop you right there with your power hammer.  This is precisely one of the reasons why I did not become a subscriber to your Great Company.  Surely, you remember that cook who was pureed along with this vegetables by that power hammer of yours.”

            Ponto:  “I do indeed, but that was a suicide.”

            Gontran: “Granted, it was, but the incident was not discovered until after dinner.  Your subscribers had the cook for supper!”

 Journalists.  L’Epoque is the top newspaper in France, delivered daily by telephonoscope to its subscribers.   The “defamation”/”corrections” department works by having aggrieved parties challenge the responsible journalist to a duel – the winner’s position prevails.  L’Epoque has a fencing instructor and weapons master on retainer to train its writers.

 Travel.  Not a single airplane!  Ground-based travel is a series of electro-pneumatic high speed tubes (an underground TGV), whereas air-based travel is through rapidly accelerating balloons: privately operated airships, intra city transport, and even intercontinental traffic.  The means of acceleration is not explained, but the balloons themselves, particularly the smaller ones for individual craft, are often fish-shaped.  Much of Paris is built up into the air for docking with airships, and almost 100% of this upward docking is festooned with advertisements of all types (similar to the opening credits of “Futurama”).  Italy, by the way, has successfully been converted into a theme park – the entire country.   A transatlantic tunnel is being built between America and Europe.

 Prison.  The enlightened criminologists of 1952 decided to coddle inmates in luxurious garden parks hoping to rehabilitate them with kindness and compassion.  The results?  A mixture of Alex’s smarmy, insincere promises of remorse (“A Clockwork Orange”) and the Daumier thief stealing from his own attorney.  

 Decennial Revolutions.  France has reached the point of institutionalizing revolution:  every ten years the government automatically changes amidst faux revolutionary festivities: muskets with blanks, a barricade competition (you can’t have a revolution without barricades, can you?), and all the pomp and glory of the revolutions of old with none of the unpleasantness or bloodshed. 

            Women have complete equality in all professions, and there is even a very powerful Feminist Party and a Ladies’ Stock Exchange. In fact, female attorneys are particularly well esteemed, particularly for criminal law, as their emotions are considered apt for provoking similar responses, eliciting sympathy for criminal defendants.

            Politicians are accompanied at all times by monitors, who are simply ordinary citizens charged with the responsibility of babysitting their elected representatives to make sure no illegal, unethical, or immoral activity occurs.

 America Divided, Mormon England.   Similar to The Man in the High Castle (Philip K. Dick): west coast US is taken over by China, the capital being San Francisco, aka New Nanking, the east coast is a German America (with the original Deutschland becoming the colony), capital New Berlin (New York City) and the rest of America squeezed into the middle.   The American Indians have all adopted modern clothing and have completely phased into 1950s style; their civilization is modern and thriving (no mention of casinos, though).  The Japanese, too, have completely adopted Western dress and culture to the exclusion of their own.

            The Mormons, for their part, left en masse for England, which they took over from the English, who for their part had all left for India.  But polygamy is so rife in England now, that bachelors visiting the country are in danger of forced into marriages or thrown in prison.

            Robida correctly predicted a civil war in China in the 1940s, but missed the boat on fascism and communism.

 Robida injects a heavy dose of humor to the mix, which makes the book that much more enjoyable; fortunately it had annotations, as much of the text refers to matters more familiar to late 19^th century readers than myself.  Technologically, he isn’t really visionary; his virtues lie more in politics and society, extrapolating from what he perceived to be late 19^th century trends. 

The Unarmed Citizen

This week’s contributions to The Unarmed Citizen, a monthly installment in the Unarmed American, which is published by the National No-Rifle Association.

 *          After a recent burglary, Ethel Berman wasn’t going to be taking any chances.  The 70 year old grandmother fired up the Kenmore range and cooked up a batch of Tollhouse cookies.  Sure enough, another would-be burglar broke into her house from the back door intent on making off with her life savings.  Ethel was ready this time:  a plate of hot, steamy, gooey chocolate chip cookies dissuaded the masked intruder, filled his tummy, and sent him on his way with a smile on his face.  [Boston Pravda, 9/22/11.]

 *          A string of rapes in the Potomac neighborhood put retiree Alice Dukakis on notice: something had to be done.  Instead of locking and loading, or stocking up on 9mm or .45 (or even mace or pepper spray), this smart woman did something much better: she bought a Barry White CD, some scented candles, and a three pack of condoms in case the rapist was particularly persistent or aggressive.  When the serial rapist broke into her bedroom, Alice was ready – lights turned down, candles burning, and soft jazz with a deep voice gave the intruder a warm welcome.  Stunned by this unusual approach, the masked man jumped out the window and fled.  [Rockville Head Examiner, 9/11/11.]

 *          UC-Berkeley liberal arts major Steve Murray’s semester in “Alternatives to Violence” truly paid off.  When accosted by a lowlife criminal in Oakland in a dark alley, Murray was able to hold off the thug with a long-winded diatribe on the irrationality of violence in solving problems and the superiority of nonviolent solutions.  After 30 minutes of enduring pacifist ideology, the crook could stand it no more, turned his gun on himself, and took his own life.  [Oakland Worker, 9/18/11.]

 *          Yet again, quick thinking defused a potentially dangerous situation with a positive outcome.  Sharon Davis was approached at gunpoint after leaving her ATM on Broad Street with a substantial sum of cash.  Eschewing phony heroics, she cleverly “disarmed” her opponent by throwing the entire wad of cash at him and immediately fleeing the scene.  [Falls Church Open Mind Press, 9/20/11.]

 *          Scott Breuer was convinced, as all right-thinking, rational persons are in American society, that ownership of handguns and other dangerous weapons is properly restricted to the military, National Guard, and local police.  So when he was stopped at gunpoint by a mysterious stranger, it was his sheer luck that a US soldier carrying an M-16, a National Guardsman also carrying an M-16, and an on-duty DC police officer armed with a service Glock 17 automatic assault machine pistol, just happened to be passing by when the crime was in progress in plain view of them.  The would-be mugger fled the scene immediately and Breuer was rescued.  [Washington Paper of City, 9/15/11.]

Pink Triangle

I’ve been watching more of “Modern Family” – the gay couple, Mitchell and Cameron, are hilarious.  Both of them fit the stereotypes so well.  I suppose it’s time to tackle this particular issue.

 Hardcore haters.  I’ve noticed that the people who bark and bray the loudest against gays almost invariably wind up being bumped out the closet quite dramatically.  Whether it’s denial or self-hatred, I don’t know, but the gay bashers all too often seem to be confused as to which team they’re actually on.  On the other hand, simply not being a “sympathizer” and hanging out with gays, frequenting gay clubs, or embracing them and their lifestyle, is not even prima facie proof of being a “homophobe”.  

 Having said that, I do have a few problems with gays.  None relate to religion, though.

A.         Roger the Alien, from “American Dad”.  Rather, I should say this is my problem with gays as portrayed on TV.  Too many of them have this annoying tendency to be excessively impressed with their own wit and sophistication.  This pretentious depiction exceeds what I’ve noticed of gays in person.  The TV people are so intent on positive portrayals of gays that they go overboard with depictions that are, in fact, annoying.  Fortunately the “Modern Family” writers have dodged that bullet.

B.         I’m not particularly worried that a legion of gay men are going to find me irresistible and hunt me down.  I don’t find all women attractive; do all gay men find me attractive simply because I’m male?  Probably not - especially since not all women find me attractive either.  What I’d be more concerned about is being considered gay simply by association.  The way to avoid that is to avoid gay bars and other places where they socialize as a majority.  But even around Dupont Circle in DC, not every place is mobbed.  

            Way back when, on “L.A. Law”, Douglas Brachtman (Alan Rachins) was invited to lunch by an old friend (law school classmates?  I don’t remember) who wanted to disclose his orientation to him.  And this guy picked a restaurant known – apparently not to Brachtman – as a gay hangout, with serious consequences for Brachtman.  And I’m thinking, Mr. Pink Friend didn’t have to go to this particular place to make his big confession, he could have picked a regular restaurant.  All very well and fine to embrace who you are, but dragging your straight friend into the equation was gratuitous and inconsiderate – a serious lapse in discretion on his part.

C.         Flamers.  Now on “Dancing With the Stars” there is are not one but TWO flamers, Judge Bruno and the contestant Carson Kressley.  Lee, on “Desperate Housewives”, is the flamer; Jack (Sean Hayes) was the flamer on “Will & Grace”.   This is annoying, to be sure, but not offensive per se.  At least not to me.  Then again, a flamer is putting you on notice as to his orientation.  You have been warned!

 Metrosexuals.  “Metrosexual” basically means “acts gay but doesn’t sleep with men” – the whole manicure/pedicure, obsessive grooming and dressing, cooking & wine, etc.  I don’t think any of them are actually gay; to the contrary, it often seems like a desperate attempt by luckless straight guys who can’t seem to attract women any other way.  Be careful: she may think you’re actually gay.   

 Choice vs. Genes.  I really don’t care about this one way or another.  I have no attraction to men, and if put in a position where access to women was practically nil I’d just…take care of myself.  I’m not bisexual or even curious – and no amount of alcohol or drugs will change that.  Nor do I buy into this idea that (A) all women are secretly bisexual or (B) all men are “bi-curious”.  While I’m sure certain women are bisexual, it’s been my experience that this proportion is extremely small.  And my take on the latter is that many truly bisexual – or in fact, gay – men don’t want to admit that the majority of the male population is neither gay nor even bisexual, so they cook up this nonsense about “bi-curious”, partly defensive and partly wishful thinking. 

            But I say “irrelevant” for this reason:  I don’t really care WHY gays do what they do.  Whether something inside them makes them prefer other men, or one day they simply CHOSE to be gay, so long as their sex is 100% consensual and they leave me alone, what they do neither interests nor concerns me. 

            “Not that there’s anything wrong with it”. Jerry Seinfeld joked that straights were worried that with the proper “sales pitch”, they could be persuaded to switch sides.  “Start with holding hands, there’s no obligation.”  Whatever you are, you are, whether you’re in or out of the closet.  Closer examination reveals “switching sides” to be nothing more than “coming out” – a public recognition of true orientation rather than an actual change in preferences.

 Expediently Bisexual.   By this I mean the type of guys who will nail guys when women are not available, but are exclusively hetero when women are around.  The best examples involve (A) prison or (B) Islamic terrorists out in the field.  I’ve noted earlier about Yasser Arafat; the more knowledgeable experts, from Lawrence of Arabia all the way to the Israelis, have observed the dirty secret that the heavily homophobic Islamic world hides a substantial minority of repressed homosexuals.  As we saw during Prohibition (1919-1933), gun control, the Drug War, etc. repressing something never stamps out the behavior in question, it simply raises the cost of doing what we’d do anyway. 

 Molesters.  The big issue with molesters is not that they’re gay, it’s that they prey on children who are too young to understand what’s going on or too weak to resist.  And this is true whether the child is a little girl or a little boy.  It’s also objectionable when a person in a position of trust – e.g. a priest, father, uncle, Michael Jackson, etc. – takes advantage of that to satisfy his own darker desires at the expense of a small child. 

 Will & Grace.  This was the first show which really showcased the lifestyle.  I never watched it unless it came on the TV in front of me at gay church (the gym) while I was on the treadmill.  Even then it wasn’t particularly amusing or funny, just an excuse for these two (McCormack and Hayes) to marvel at their own wit.  I much prefer watching Mitchell and Cameron (and Lily) on “Modern Family” – a clever, sophisticated gay couple who AREN’T pretending to be the most intelligent people on the planet or better than all the straights around them.

 Freddie Mercury & Rob Halford.  We pretty much knew Queen had a bisexual singer; Mercury was fairly open about his lifestyle.  As for Judas Priest, Halford had consistently ACTED gay but denied it.  The music?  Queen did have a drama, show-tune kind of quality to their music, particularly “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “Flash Gordon”, but deep down inside the music still rocked.  Songs like “Best Friend” could be considered ambivalent, as with “Eat Me Alive” and “Love Bites”, two of JP’s more raunchier songs, with “Raw Deal” being the nastiest.  But the clever part about it is that Mercury and Halford knew how far they could go without stepping over the edge – make it, at worst, ambiguous and not explicit. 

            Of course, how could we have missed The Village People?  Apparently the Navy did.

 Gay Marriage.  My take on this is the following:  allow them to have “civil unions”.  If the state had a finite amount of marriages they were willing to perform each year, and straight couples were locked out because gay couples took up the available slots, then it would be a zero-sum game whereby gay marriages were imposing some sort of cost on straight ones; then I could see some sort of problem.  But civil unions do not (A) force straight people to marry gays, (B) prevent any straight couple from getting married if they want to, or (C) somehow “ruin” it for straight couples, who now have to get divorced, live together, or pursue common law marriages in the few states which still recognize them.  The state has no legitimate interest in interfering with the happiness of consenting adults.   

            Having said that, the Constitution has no provision protecting gay marriage (nor, for that matter, should it), so at this point the 50 individual states and D.C. can make their own determination.  If DC, MA, NY, CA, etc. want to legalize gay marriage (or civil unions) and VA, NC, SC, GA, MS, AL, FL, TX, AZ, etc. wish to ban it, that’s their prerogatives.  Part of the beauty of a federal system is that if you’re not thrilled with your state, you can move to a state you prefer; moving out of the country completely due to unfavorable Federal laws is considerably more inconvenient (and unfair) than simply crossing state lines.  This will clearly encourage gays to live in certain more “tolerant” parts of the country, but if they are in the minority in the “less tolerant” areas they really have no business dictating their particular political agenda to the rest of the state.  Tolerance works both ways, and gays have to accept that not everyone loves them, nor do they have the right to unconditional acceptance by the entire country.

 AIDSCAP.  Back in 1994 I had a temporary job working for this USAID agency in Arlington.  Myself and perhaps 3 other guys were the only straight men at this whole project.  However, only about 2-3 of the gay men were actually flamers; the rest were pretty normal.  I got along fine with everyone and was not molested, groped, or mistreated. 

            I did learn something interesting, though:  according to the literature put out by this agency, which was 99% pro-gay agenda, in the US the AIDS problem is 90% a gay problem.  It’s overseas in the Third World, where it seems half the male population regularly visits prostitutes, that straight men and women start having problems with AIDS. 

 Condemnation & Gay Rights.  Having said all that, South Park is still on point: “simply because you tolerate something doesn’t mean you have to like it.”  If gays are free to do as they please with each other, straights likewise have the right say what they want about them, and private organizations like the Boy Scouts have the right to screen out for gays.  Even G. Gordon Liddy pointed it out correctly:  gays have the SAME RIGHTS, no more, no less, as straight people; they have no “gay rights” and no rights specifically because they are gay.

             We know there are two kinds of vegetarian:  the Paul McCartney style who adopt it as a choice but respect the non-vegans’ rights and choices to continue to eat meat, vs. the militant types who try to gross us out from eating meat and ruin it for everyone.  Likewise there are the discreet gays who aren’t out to rub their lifestyle in our faces and just want to be left alone, vs. the militant types who flaunt it outrageously and get off on shock for the sake of shock.  The latter types aren’t doing the movement any favors; most straight people are content to let the gays alone so long as the sex is consensual and discreet.   

            Personally, I don’t think being gay is anything to be proud of, such that a “gay pride parade” is a good thing, but somehow I also don’t think that a Gay Shame Parade, where they block off the street for a few hours to see absolutely no one parade at all, would fly or work very well in practice.  The whole thing works best when everyone just minds their own business and leaves each other alone.

Nostalgia

A few days ago I was sitting in court in Fairfax, waiting for my case to be called.  The Fairfax courthouse is fairly modern – late 1970s style – and not particular fancy or ornate, more functionally than design oriented.  My mind wandered, as it does when I’m denied the privilege of reading anything non-case related (even my Android Kindle).  It occurred to me that there could be any time in the future, be it 2111, 3111, 10011, however far advanced in time, and SOMEONE then could be wondering what life was like back in 2011, and I’d know what they could only imagine – I’m here now. 

 Occasionally I go to courts where the styling is very obvious from another time.  The US Bankruptcy Court in Alexandria dates from 1931; it’s not hard to imagine yourself back then in some of the courtrooms of that court.  Even stranger is the Baltimore City Circuit Court in downtown Baltimore, built in the late 19^th century, though as yet I have not had occasion to actually attend court in that building.  An uncontested divorce filed a few years ago had its “hearing” held in a lawyer’s office in downtown Baltimore, and a personal injury case settled without trial. 

 I suppose I should distinguish two types of nostalgia.  The first concerns a time period with which you may be personally familiar, probably either early childhood or growing up.  The other concerns time periods in which you might want to have lived – Roman times, Renaissance Europe, etc. – but with which you only have second-hand knowledge gained from books or movies. 

 1970s.  Naturally I have a strong nostalgia (of the first type) for this time period, because I grew up as a kid in Montgomery Village, Maryland at that time.   Recently I came across two issues of “Living”, the magazine the developers, Kettler Brothers, released to attract people to settle there: chock full of 70s nostalgia at its finest.  It’s too bad we can’t “go back” there.  I suppose the closest is indulging in vinyl records, 8 tracks, and scoring (someday) a 2^nd generation (1970-81) Pontiac Trans Am.  The 70s means no computers, no faxes, no cell phones, no Internet, but color TVs (no HD) and movies are in movie theater or shown with projectors and screens.  The condo I live in now, in northern Virginia, was built in 1973 and certainly looks it.

 Midnight in Paris.  This is a recent Owen Wilson film in which he time travels to 1920s Paris, meeting (among others) Picasso, Dali, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Gertrude Stein.   He strikes up a brief romance with Picasso’s mistress, Adrianna (Marion Cotillard), a flapper who takes 1920s Paris for granted and would rather experience “La Belle Epoque” (late 19^th-early 20^th century) Paris, and indeed does so.  And the Moulin Rouge patrons who they meet there, themselves take this era for granted and would rather be back in the Renaissance.  By this point Wilson’s character Gil realizes he’s just as well back in 2010.

 Somewhere in Time.  I have to say I share Adrianna’s time preference more than Gil’s.  In this film, Christopher Reeve has a fixation, an obsession, with the early 20^th century.  He manages to hypnotize himself back to 1912, to the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island in Michigan. 

 1879-1919. This is the time period I’m most nostalgic for – that is to say, the second type of nostalgia for a time period I never actually lived myself.  It includes Art Nouveau and World War I, gaslight, the dawn of electricity and the peak of railroads, and the very first automobiles.  Movies from this time are all silent and very poor quality black & white, e.g. “Birth of A Nation” and “Intolerance”. 

 NFL Throwbacks.  The NFL has thankfully indulged in this.  Various teams resurrect earlier uniforms from time to time.  The New York Jets, Buffalo Bills, and San Diego Chargers have made the experiment permanent.  The Patriots, Steelers, Bears, Cowboys, Redskins, Vikings, Jets/Titans, don the throwbacks uniforms periodically. 

 Williamsburg, VA.  I like the concept of Colonial Williamsburg, unfortunately I have zero interest in that particular time period (late 18^th century).  I like that the people have to stay in character, but my understanding is that when the shift is over they take off the tricorner hats and period clothing and go home to their 21^st century abodes.

 Renaissance Fairs.  These are the closest to medieval Europe you’re likely to find in the US, or anywhere else.  Fortunately the Bubonic Plague is absent, as is the brutalism of that period when people were simply killed outright with no police or habeas corpus.  What’s cool is that the employees are 99% “in character” and most of the crowd is too (free admission to anyone dressed appropriately). 

 Retro.  By now we have several retro-styled cars:  the new Camaro (1969 style), Challenger (1970 style), HHR (early Suburban), Prowler, PT Cruiser, etc.  My niece Zoe plays with these American Girls dolls, each of which focuses on a different time period in American history.  My question is this: why can’t we do retro for everything?  Clothes, kitchen appliances, furniture, etc. – a full “retro package” for either rooms in the house or the entire place.  Products which were originally available during that time could be repackaged accordingly, though with contemporary content.  Recently Budweiser reissued 1936 pattern beer cans, Pepsi released “Retro Pepsi” in the original styling and made with real sugar, and the same deal with Mountain Dew.  Coca-Cola has been available for years in those smaller 8 oz glass bottles (though for obvious reasons the pre-1903 formula with cocaine hasn’t been reintroduced).  I don’t know why, but there is some undeniably stronger flavor and sweetness coming out of one of those bottles than an aluminum can or a plastic 20 oz bottle. 

            I suppose it would be silly putting a 26” plasma TV into a wood console – it defeats the purpose of having a flat screen if you’re going to put it into a deep wood cabinet, but those of us who aren’t mounting it on the wall itself probably don’t care anyway.  We had the 36” depth in the room for CRT TVs, if rooms are the same size or larger we can still handle that even if we don’t need to anymore.

            The ultimate “retro experience” might be to recreate an entire town dedicated to that time period.  For a turn of the century deal, it would have to be serviced by train only (no airport or paved road).  No TV, no cell phone service, no Internet access, and more in the way of gas appliances than electricity. I don’t think this could work as a 24/7 living experience; communes were an attempt to simply replicate a rural, pre-industrial society amidst a modern industrial country, and failed miserably whenever attempted.  But as a Williamsburg tourist deal it might work.  For the sake of economics, it might better work as a theme park with multiple areas dedicated to particular time periods, as I don’t think any one time period could attract enough people to make it work by itself.  And we’ll keep the futuristic, killer Yul Brynner robots out of this: all the “staff” will be live humans. 

Vulcan's Hammer vs. Occupy Wall Street

Vulcan’s Hammer, Phillip K. Dick (Kindle) (written in 1960).  The year is 2029 (!) and Earth is ruled by a supercomputer called Vulcan 3.  An anti-computer movement, led by anarchic, monk-like Healers, rises against the computer.  The human head of this so-called Unity government, Jason Dill, seeks advice not only from Vulcan 3, but its predecessor, the obsolete and de-authorized but still fully functional Vulcan 2.  Vulcan 2 warns that Vulcan 3 will develop self-awareness and begin to act on its own behalf and initiative.  For that reason, Dill withholds information about the Healer movement from Vulcan 3, but Vulcan 3 finds out anyway.  A sympathetic sub-director, Barris, is the main protagonist of the story:  he opposes Vulcan 3, but initially cannot bring himself to switch sides to the Healers.  Ultimately, however, he determines that Vulcan 3 has access to thermonuclear weapons and will not hesitate to wipe out the entire human race if it deems it necessary to protect its own interests, so Barris decides that, as anarchic and “we don’t stand for anything except tearing down the system” as the Healers may be, they are less of a threat to humanity than Vulcan 3.  Moreover, the Unity forces upon which Barris could count on to oppose BOTH Vulcan 3 AND the Healer movement are nonexistent; so he allies himself with the Healers.  

            The plot of this story is so much like “Terminator” (even down to the year 2029) that I couldn’t imagine Cameron was oblivious to this story.  But Wikipedia says this:

 In Rome, during the release of Piranha II: The Spawning director James Cameron grew ill and had a dream about a metallic torso dragging itself from an explosion while holding kitchen knives.^[2] When Cameron returned to Pomona, California he stayed at Randall Frakes' home where he wrote a draft for The Terminator. Cameron later stated that his influences while writing the script were 1950s science fiction films, episodes of The Outer Limits as well as contemporary films including The Driver and The Road Warrior.

...Writer Harlan Ellison stated that he "loved the movie, was just blown away by it", but believed that the screenplay was based on an episode of The Outer Limits he had written, titled "Soldier". Orion gave Ellison an undisclosed amount of money and an acknowledgment credit in later prints of the film. Some accounts of the settlement state that "Demon with a Glass Hand", another Outer Limits episode written by Ellison, was also claimed to have been plagiarized by the film, but Ellison has explicitly stated that The Terminator "was a ripoff" of "Soldier" rather than "Demon with a Glass Hand".

As you can see – NO mention of Dick in this whole thing.  He had died in 1982, only shortly before the movie came out, but the story dates from 1960.  It seems his estate was asleep at the switch.   Here, by the way, is the plot to “Soldier” (also from the Wikipedia entry for this particular Outer Limits episode):

Eighteen hundred years in the future, two foot soldiers clash on a battlefield. A random energy weapon strikes both and they are hurled into a time vortex. While one soldier is trapped in the matrix of time, the other, Qarlo Clobregnny, materializes on a city street in the year 1964.

Qarlo is soon captured and interrogated by Tom Kagan, a philologist, and his origin is discovered. Qarlo has been trained for one purpose, fighting, and that is all he knows. Progress is made in "taming" him; eventually Qarlo comes to live with the Kagan family.

But the time eddy holding the enemy soldier slowly weakens. Finally he materializes fully and tracks Qarlo to the Kagan home. In a final hand-to-hand battle, Qarlo sacrifices his life to kill the enemy and save the Kagan family.

In a limited sense, the “time traveling opponents seek each other out” element of the plot is evident in “The Terminator”.  But Cameron’s overall scenario, of Skynet developing self-awareness and destroying the human population to protect itself, is almost verbatim from Dick’s story. 

The Healer movement described in this book is very similar to the “Occupy Wall Street” movement.  As I’ve noted several times in the past, the anti-World Bank/IMF group is extremely vocal in its opposition to capitalism and Wall Street, but is equally silent about its actual goals and objectives, besides simply trying to shut down the system or embarrass as many people as possible.  Among others, the Anonymous movement has been described as “anarchist”.  However, it seems that Adbusters was the primary organization to instigate these protests and Anonymous has simply encouraged its own supporters to join in.

Actually, identifying the Occupy Wall Street movement with the Healers in Vulcan’s Hammer gives the OWS too much credit: the Healers opposed what was clearly a totalitarian dictatorship run by an all-powerful machine, Vulcan 3. OWS appear to be, at best, yet another vaguely articulated attack on capitalism per se by a movement which NEVER explains what type of system it favors.  Are you socialist?  Are you anarchist?  If you oppose capitalism, what do you support?

One thing that Wall Street does not do that Qaddaffi, Syria, and other regimes do:  use armed force to attack protesters.  Where are the Morgan Stanley Armored Divisions?  The Goldman Sachs F-16s spraying Merrill Lynch Napalm on the crowds?  The GM & Ford Riot Police?  Even the Pinkerton strikebusting goons are history, quite literally.  Not even US armed forces, or the National Guard, as “proxies” for their corporate puppetmasters, are present.  In DC, the Mall has always been a place for protest marches, and the DC police only arrest people for not having permits or blocking traffic.  No tear gas, no massed ranks of riot police, no Cossacks with sabers chasing unarmed protesters and their baby carriages down the steps of Odessa.

Whatever else it might be, the US government and Wall Street are not totalitarian regimes – and never have been.  North Korea, Red China, and Cuba still are.  I’ve seen some pictures showing “V For Vendetta” imagery among the protesters.  Neither George W. Bush nor Barack Obama – nor any other US President, even the much-maligned Richard Nixon – are or were anywhere close to Adolf Hitler, nor any US regime remotely close to the UK dictatorship depicted in “V For Vendetta”, Orwell’s 1984, or Nazi Germany.  Even Franklin Roosevelt, who co-opted the socialists’ agenda and enacted much of what could be found in the Nazi Party’s 25 Points platform of 1920, did not turn the FBI loose as an American Gestapo, and the very worse excesses of his administration, the Japanese internment camps in California, were just that: internment camps and not Auschwitz, Belzec, Treblinka, Sobibor, or even Dachau or Theriesenstadt.  This plague of “moral relativism” and “moral equivalence” is ubiquitous among the protesters.  By making these bizarre and obviously inapplicable parallels, they completely lose any moral credibility or political coherence they might possibly have.  Lyndon LaRouche makes as much sense as they do.

Here’s your challenge, latter-day Marxists and anarchists:  take what we’ve learned from (1) the Paris Commune, (2) Soviet Russia, (3) Red China, (4) North Korea, (5) “Market Socialist” Europe (Sweden, Denmark, etc.), and (6) the capitalist First World, and give us a coherent, sensible blueprint for a fair and free modern day society: its government (if any) and its economic system.  Tell us how that would work not merely in Belgium, Sweden, or Canada, but also in larger countries like the US and Russia with diverse, multi-ethnic populations and huge, complex modern economies.  When you’ve got that all figured out, THEN you can tear down the current system once you’ve figured out what the hell you’re going to replace it with.

And as for freedom of expression, listen up:  you have a right to say what you want.  You have a right to wave placards.  You have a right to get up on a stage and bark and bray.  And you can invite as many of your comrades as you can get to join you at the same time.  But here’s where your rights end:

1.         No right to block traffic – e.g. roads and bridges - simply to inconvenience others you feel are complacent or indifferent to your political agenda;

2.         No right to obstruct pedestrian traffic to museums and other tourist attractions, again as some misguided attempt to disrupt others’ lives because you feel they don’t care enough about your movement;

3.         No right to blow things up, even if you target unoccupied office buildings at 2 a.m. with a warning call, simply to attract attention to your cause (“propaganda by deed”) and stir the general public out of its bourgeois complacency.  This applies whether your goal was to stop the war in Vietnam (The Weather Underground), the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq, or Wall Street.