The Best Days of My Life – What Could Have Been and Can Be Again, but Do We Have the Will?

It is a question people think about and randomly announce every once in a while when they often don’t mean it. What was the best day of your life? Almost, all of us, by obligation and in truth, would submit some family marker for that day – a day of magic, fulfillment, joy and love. Certainly, my wedding day, and not just saying – it is one of the few days where I remember the whole day, even if at a blur. Or the day my daughter, or son, or son were born, or that night in Scotland from the balcony of a 19^th century castle looking out on the ruins of 13^thcentury castle with a shooting star shower over head and a glass of local scotch to enjoy with my partner, and enjoy we did ….

View of the Ruins of Kildrummy Castle

And, more than likely, 1,000 other days for countless reasons with countless other people. And then, a memory of vivid horror takes me to another day, a day of sheer terror without the connections of family to warm it and create comfort. 9/11.

       For most of us, regardless of where we were, this was a horrible day and it is not on my list … but it sewed the seeds of the greatest of days, right in the midst of panic and sorrow. The Greatest of Days.

       I woke to the report confused with thoughts somewhere in between the plane that actually flew into the Empire State and visions of King Kong smashing bi-planes. I made it downstairs just in time to see the second plane. This was no ordinary day and from there every second was recorded and burned into memory.

       For many of us, not being in New York does not diminish the impact of this day, and being in NYC’s ugly step-brother city – yes, step brother, as in brotherly love – Philadelphia the experience was, perhaps, more relatable than anywhere else other than near Ground Zero. Philly is not as big – or mad, or wonderful, or grotesque, or vicious, or wild, or intense, or amazing – as NYC, but it wants to be. It once was the cultural, economic and political nexus of America, and then, New York. New York took it from Philadelphia, like Cinderella from What’s Her Face and Whoozawhat. Fucking, Cinderella. Fucking, NYC. And now nearly two centuries later, Philly is an afterthought in all things, art, literature, music – importance. Not New York, not even close.

       But on this day, this brilliant sky, perfect weather, horribly dark day, Philly was a great place to comprehend the magnitude, in human ways, just what was going on. Philly is a satellite of New York, connected in a multitude of ways to its larger more significant hub. Within an hour I was down in Center City, near the business district, waiting for my soon to be bride, who was not yet released from the chaos of her own job to join our collective madness. Mad, in extending into unreality, mad, in grasping at the unknown, mad, for wanting it to all go away. But not mad in anger, not yet, and maybe not ever.

       The scenes I saw were of the best of humanity. The lesser markets of Philadelphia were all at their end and the workers poured onto the streets of Philadelphia with tears streaming for their own partners in New York. Like me, most of them had friends and family in the towers, in that district, at ground zero. Emotions poured onto the streets of Philadelphia. Love poured onto the streets of Philadelphia. 

It's a park, not a street, in Philadelphia

       A man in a suit on a concrete bench underneath a scraping sky building, wept crumpled tears into his praying hands as his hat, a high hat, fell off and tumbled toward the street’s slowing traffic. The hat was saved by a woman in a blue suit with a pinkish red scarf and flaming blond hair that shook in the wind, most likely from the rustling of her own fingers trying to figure out what the hell was going on. She took the hat over to the man – and then, sat with him, put her arm around him. He sobered and looked at her. They embraced and said some words – what words? Doubtful that even they knew. They both stood. He picked up his brief case. They said more words and hugged again before parting.

       I watched in awe.

A middle age woman struggling to walk in the park, stumbled and nearly fell – like the towers themselves – it was not from age, or physical infirmity. She, like the buildings, like all of us, had been rocked and swayed from our kilter. A youngish man in a track suit – he had obviously jumped out of bed into the closest thing he could find, and by instinct was running towards the business district to look for answers – reached out and steadied her. She sobered and looked at him. They embraced and said some words – what words? There really are no words, only emotions which sounds convey. 

       Scenes like this, more and less dramatic, ran through city. Stories made in conciliation and kindness, stories made in countless encounters and countless cities to be repeated by a shocked generation, there evident on the streets of Philadelphia.

       We watch film and television shows, we read literature, both good and bad, to experience exactly this. Expressions of human action, of human ideas, of human words to evoke in us these very best of human emotions. We search and hope for those emotions in our daily life and then with the crash of a jet and inexplicable sorrow, there they are. The best of days had begun.

I called all the people I knew or that my brain could think of – just to hear them, just for that connection of emotions which sounds convey.

The place Rocky ran to, but didn't go in.

I went home and talked to my neighbor. He was old and raised in a world different from mine, in a world of working class Philly where his group didn’t like that group and that group didn’t like his group, and there were other groups that they all hated – because that’s what humans do. Our group is good and their group is bad.  A simple child’s mentality that has defined us for thousands of years. We sat and talked about what we saw non-stop on every television channel.

Then I said to him, “it’s time to change. It’s time to put those old ways to rest and follow the real meaning of this society – to respect others, to honor their rights, to live in community instead of hostility.” Ok, it was not that poetical, but that was the gist of it. And you know what, this hardened man, kind to everyone he met, but hardened by a thousand hates of those he never knew, agreed. “Yeah, you’re right.” It was as clear as could be. A new course could be set. A new course where kindness replaced conflict, where empathy could provide a path together to a better tomorrow. Isn’t that what America was supposed to be, anyway? 

We would all agree to that, in the abstract, but we would still all agree. Maybe the means would be different, but the end would be the same. And for two weeks, down at street level, it was that way. People went out of their way to be kind. Even while driving, people were kind to people because they were people. The best of days.

But Humans are likely to follow the best of days by the worst of nightmares, and the seeds of our own undoing were already being planted by those whose plantations had more ability to bear fruit than us meager street dwellers. Instead of nurturing our love, George W. Bush fertilized our hate and what a load of shit it was. Revenge. REVENGE!

The guy looking at you was the chief architect of the Versailles Treaty and made his political fortune on Revenge! His efforts insured there would be another War even greater than the Great War.

       He looked first to Saddam, but that was a non-starter since Saddam and Al-Qaida were enemies …. And Al-Qaida took credit for it. Let’s get ‘em.

       The quest for revenge was veiled in the silk purse of Justice, but that fabric was as transparent as the guys in Philly who beat up Sikh cab drivers, because revenge doesn’t know the difference between Muslims and the Sikhs who Muslims used to oppress, and historically have not liked Muslims. Go figure. And there we were right back into regular life, flags waving, chants of USA growing and the hope of an even better tomorrow dashed on a return to normalcy. Yep, just as stupid as the Harding that first uttered that non-word.

       For one brief moment after the world came to a stop and the towers fell, the world came to a stop and possibilities soared. Now that we are in the worst crisis since 9/11 and maybe even worse. What will we do today to make it better? And what will tomorrow become.

Normal is not good enough. What could have been, can be again.

American Revolution Lecture, Part II

First Continental Congress     In response to the Coercive Acts, the British colonial merchant community again called a Congress. This First Continental Congress, with 12 of the colonies (Georgia was a long way away) met in Philadelphia starting in September of 1774.  They met in Carpenter’s Hall a rock’s throw from the colonial Assembly now known as Independence Hall (oops, spoiler). To Historian’s this signaled an unwillingness to meet in a Hall sanctioned by crown government as the proprietary government of Pennsylvania existed through the crown’s permission (the colonial charter). 

            The first interesting business the delegates undertook was to vote on a proposition of Joseph Galloway, Speaker of the Pennsylvania Assembly. He proposed a plan of union for the colonies and the formation of a colonial charter – union had been proposed by a colonial congress in Albany back in 1756 but was rebuked by the colonies as they thought of themselves as totally separate (British) entities. And apparently nothing had changed as the Galloway’s plan of union was voted down as well, despite the curious quote from Patrick Henry claiming that he was “an American and not a Virginian”, but he didn’t want to live in an America united because he was British. Henry’s quote makes so little sense that I don’t even believe it was uttered, at least not as recorded. Even more curious, the King’s Prime Minister, Lord Frederick North had to have begun a proposal of a very different sort to allow the colonies to tax themselves to pay for the Empire’s expenses, under the approval of Parliament North’s Conciliatory Plan would not arrive in the colonies until after shooting began in 1775, so it was too late and wasn’t liked by the colonists anyway. But the point is that Galloway was branded as sympathetic to the crown for proposing a union of the colonies, an enemy, a traitor. He became a Loyalist, so I guess the delegates of Congress were right?

Declaration of Rights Congress then proceeded to do what they had done in the Stamp Act Congress. Petition the King, and tell him how much they loved him, and how loyally British they were. And in their Declaration of Rights they established how British they were and how they were entitled to all the rights as any Englishman in England was entitled to. On that point, under British law, they were correct. 

You see, in British law there were two types of colonies: 1. Colonies by Conquest 2. Colonies by Settlement. In conquest colonies, like Canada, the population was not British by blood and so they had to accept whatever governing institutions and laws that the conquering British gave them. Maybe a say in the legislature, or maybe no legislature. Maybe rights, or maybe no rights. Whatever the conquering British decided. But in a Settlement Colony, the population was British and carried in their blood the entitlement to British rights – the most important of which, as they had claimed for 1,000 years (or at least since Magna Carta in 1215) was the right to consent to the laws that governed them. The right could not be taken away because it was an entitlement of blood, just like representation was by blood in the Commons. But while the colonists desired the British blood right of consent, they denied the existence of blood based representation and stated it right in their Declaration of Rights, that the Commons in England was not where they exercised their consent but in the common Assemblies of each of their 13 colonies. These assemblies, under charter of the King and through his government, were the only bodies that could make law, especially taxes on the inhabitants of those colonies.

Colonial Association   The Delegates knew that petitions and declarations would not be enough and so they formed an association, an institution to manage their efforts, that would oversee a colonial embargo of British goods. Hit the British where it hurt, in their bankroll. The 1760s embargo had failed because it had no oversight, no coordination. The Colonial Association was meant to change all that, and it would go into effect at the start of 1775 if the British didn’t agree to the British colonial demands of having their own separate houses of commons. The British did not agree. Beginning in January of 1775 the embargo was underway, to quite an effect. The real British were angry and tired of colonial British games.

Military Action            And then fighting broke out in March 1775. You can read what the reasons of Lexington and Concord were (from the colonial perspective anyway, and Paul Revere, yada yada), but truth be known I think the British wanted the gloves to come off and shots to be fired. The colonists had proven to be horrible at war in the French and Indian War, and Britain probably figured this would make it easier for them. People have a tendency to think war and killing make things easier. They are always wrong.

            Lexington and Concord led to another battle at Breed’s Hill in Boston called the Battle of Bunker Hill for some reason. The British colonial militia technically lost the battle to the British Army, but there were more British regulars killed than militia, so the colonists claimed it a victory.

           Back in the First Continental Congress, when they were wrapping up, they agreed that if anything new should happen that they would convene another Congress on May 10 1775, and sure enough “war” had happened and so they had to meet. Militia fighting regulars made the delegates nervous. Oh, not because it is a mismatch, I mean, real soldiers against “one weekend a month at playing soldier” farmers (that’s the militia). That wasn’t their real fear. Historians speculate that the Merchant/Planter Class members of Congress were afraid that leadership of the “cause” would fall into the wrong hands (they didn’t like lower class people who they called terms like “the great unwashed”). Not very democratic and not very British, either. So, Congress set out to form a real Army for itself. A Continental Army uniting the strength of all of the colonies under the command of Congress (who didn’t want to be united at all – their words not mine). 

            George Washington wore his old uniform from the French and Indian War every day that Congress discussed who to pick to lead this army of theirs. Washington always denied that he ever sought a reward, or money, or power. He only loved his country so much that he wore a 15 year old uniform to Congress so that they wouldn’t pick him. They picked him and off to Boston he went to organize (under the authority of the elite in Congress) resistance to what was now seen as British tyranny. Tyranny caused not by the King, but by the Commons and Parliament in England. 

Declaration on Taking Arms and the Olive Branch Petition They loved the King and didn’t blame him. It was all his evil ministers and members of government that were responsible for a horrible treatment of the King’s most loyal British subjects in the colonies, or at least that’s what they said in the Declaration on Taking Arms and the Olive Branch Petition. Jefferson wrote the first draft of the Declaration but was replaced by Dickinson. Most Historians claim this is because Jefferson was too tough on the British (because he was a real American) and Dickinson’s wording was more polite (he was a little soft on the anti-British thing). But if you read both docs, there is very little difference except in the name. Jefferson, at that point, didn’t have one, and Dickinson, the Pennsylvania Farmer was one of the most significant British colonial writers out there. That reason for the substitution of Dickinson for Jefferson seems much more plausible. They hoped the Declaration and a new Petition to the King would get the British to agree that they had British (blood) rights, and British (voting) representation. One position was British and based on blood and one was colonial based on changes in colonial culture that diverged from the real British. Doesn’t make sense, just like Fanon would have said. 

Declaration of Rebellion and Prohibitory Acts           By the time this new petition arrived in England (it took weeks for news to cross the Atlantic by ship) The British in Parliament, including the King, were fed up with the British colonists. In speeches in August and September the King declared the colonies no longer in the Empire and out of his protection. “Get out my house. My house, My rules.” He didn’t say that, but any angry parent would have said something like it.

            When the Delegates to Congress heard the King’s Speech, they knew what was up. Whether they liked it or not they were now independent in 1775. What?

            Yeah, independent. 

            So why would the King and the British give the colonists their independence. Well it’s a legal thing. You know, that legal thing of how laws are written so they only make sense to lawyers? Same thing, here. To get what they wanted, which was obedience, the King and Parliament couldn’t take away rights from the colonists and just out and out punish them into submission because they were a Settlement Colony. But if they weren’t in the Empire they could be conquered and made into whatever King and Commons wanted them to be – a Colony of Conquest, without the rights of a British birth.

            And if the colonists needed any more convincing that they were no longer in the Empire and no longer “British” in the eyes of the British, Parliament passed a series of Acts collectively described as the Prohibitory Acts that declared war on the colonies – not a police action, but war as if they were French, or something.

Stages of Independence         The delegates knew it and they took immediate steps when they convened after their winter break in January of 1776. They established a plan and they began putting that plan in action. The plan consisted of forming committees to work on the following: 1. Form a Confederation (which is not really a union, but a cooperative formation)

2. Get Allies – you know France will help fighting the British

3. Make a formal Declaration of Independence – let the colonists know what their leaders think society should be all about and blame all their problems on the British.

            In the mean time Congress as a whole had to manage the war of the Continental Army of colonists against the British Army. So they decided to invade Canada!

            Canada would make a good base for the British and bringing its population, mostly French into the fight might help. So Canada it was. And this does sound like a plan that an independent people would undertake.

            Further evidence that they knew they were independent happened on May 10 1776. On that day Congress introduced a Resolution on Government to be sent to all the colonies, recommending that the colonies now base their governmental authority on the will of the people instead of grants and charters of the King – the King that threw them out of the house. Sounds like independent to me. So what took so long for independence to be declared.

Collapse of Colonial Invasion of Canada, June 1776  The reason it took so long was because of the plan. The colonies never wanted union of any kind, so even making a confederation was going to take a while, and diplomacy to get allies? That was going to take months or years, since the flow of information took months to get from France to Philadelphia.  And independence was supposed to be last on the plan.

            And then Canada changed the timeline, as indicated in a previous blog post, so I won’t go over it again here, go look at the blog http://americahypothesis.blogspot.com/2018/07/independence-day-why-it-wasnt-june-or.html

Declaration of Independence             Now if you think colonists were Americans and they were prepared for Independence, then just go and read the Declaration of Independence and you’ll find out that they had no idea who they were without their British mask.

            It’s a confused document. The draft of the final version carried with it a title of “Declaration of the 13 united States of America,” and then after the comma named each of the “states.” Lots to unpack here. Notice the writing “13 united States” as if they were 13 separate things, things that we could call nations, because that would really be more definitive of what was meant by state than the way we use it. We use it to mean a part of a greater whole. They used State to mean a whole thing in and of itself, like we use “nation.” Look at the words, “13 united States” – no, I’m not making a typing error – the u is not capitalized because it is not the “United States” the way we say it, it was more like 13 separate nations united. 

Who    And Jefferson is revered as a super genius, but look at how he doesn’t really know how to describe this new independent thing. He names the former colonies in several ways – “united States,” “these colonies,” “People of these Colonies” “United Colonies” where he capitalized the U. What does that mean? It means he is in the place that  Fanon found many of his patients, somewhere between what they were and what they perceived themselves to have been.  And the phrase “Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress Assembled” is the most telling of all. The only time the colonies were united (remember they didn’t want to be united as colonies, they rejected that, yuck!) was when their representatives met in Congress. When not meeting in Congress, not united. And the Who of the Declaration really tells you all you need to know about the Revolution at this point. It is not Americans seeking liberty from a tyrannical conquering Britain, but colonists awash in a post-colonial identity dilemma. They had no idea who they were, and only had their British colonial selves to fall back on – which is why the Declaration articulated a version of British political theory where government had always been meant to protect rights – the big difference is this time it would be without a King, and for now, in 1776, that was the only difference they would make.

The Roaring 20s: The Decade that Shaped Modern America

AmericaHypothesis: As much as the Progressive Era established the ground work, the basis of our culture in the 2020s comes, both good and bad, grew out of formations established in the 1920s.

 Paris Peace Conference saw to that. Instead of adopting Wilson’s plan for peace without victor or vanquished, the Allies took vengeance on Germany and the Central Powers. The New Government in Germany was forced through the disarmament of the Armistice agreement to accept a Versailles Treaty that beat the Germans even more than what had occurred on the battlefield – and that beating at the end of the war had been pretty bad.

           World War I, a product of centuries of Archaic principle, was over and a brave new world lay ahead. The War had killed millions of people and cost massive material and financial resources. It represented the worst of human civilization, a civilization that had loved war and its pomp and glory, and believed in kicking the enemy when it was down. The 

            Germany had to accept blame for the war, pay massive reparations (actuaries calculated the final price-tag down to the last bullet and life and stitch of cloth). Parts of Germany were occupied and Alsace-Lorraine, most of which was culturally German and had been taken at the formation of the German Empire in 1871 after France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, was ceded to France. French revenge demanded German disarmament, the taking of its colonies – its utter humiliation. The French Commander and Chief either boasted or forewarned that peace had been achieved for 20 years. But the populations of Europe were not ready to go back to business as usual and bowing and scraping to a defining ruling class. Gone would be the sacrosanct traditions, and strict formality represented by the ruling houses that took the world in war. A new age would rise, not quite the People’s Revolution as in Bolshevik Russia, but a step towards empowerment of people born out of the ruling class elite.

            And to start off the Age? A Pandemic!

           World War I had killed about 20 million, half of which were military victims in the war, but the Spanish Influenza killed without such discriminations. Estimates between 50 and 100 million worldwide – 2,000,000 cases in the U.S with 500,000 deaths. If war had brought home to populations the need for change, then disease had made that desire more urgent.

            Art had been changing in the since the age of Democratic Revolution and the dawn of the industrial era, but it went nuts in the 20s in breaking with tradition. Artistic style and trends indicated by Dadaism, Bauhaus and other forms showed that artists wanted to move beyond the tropes that catered to their rich clients and satisfy the impulses of their artistic minds. Dada meant nothing, and the artistic movement attempted to highlight nonsense in a world that had just gone mad. Surrealism, cubism and other forms showed the disconnect between the horrors of reality and the pursuit of what ought to be – or maybe just the distortion that is life. American artists didn’t go as far afield, at least not at this point, but had been moving towards themes of the significance of everyday life and everyday people – like with Ashcan school of artist, namely George Bellows – he painted a lot of boxing matches, the stuff of the most common, working class people – instead of portaits and landscapes for and of the wealthy ruling elite.

 For the first time since its founding in 1789, the United States was a world power. The leading economy in the world relatively untouched by the waste of war, America now proved its martial skill, and diplomatic influence. US culture, movies, art, literature – consumer products – was fast becoming what the world emulated and desired, and yet, the United States wanted no part of world leadership. Politicians and the population retreated behind the two oceans into isolation. The United States did not join the League of Nations and instead of reaching out to a wounded world, cut open immigration through government act in 1920 and 1924 that severely limited who could come to America. Afterall, look what the world had done! World War I was their war, and the pandemic came from them. Keep them out and build a wall – metaphorically at least. 

           1917 had brought the first Communist government into existence – a direct challenge to corporate control in America. So the government engaged in destroying organizations and individuals who leaned a little too far left. A fear of socialism of any kind came into existence, a paranoia of all things red (which is odd that the Republican Party is associated with Red States?). As had been US practice since the Founding, the United States reduced its huge military raised during the war, down to a minimal force – a good sized navy was kept in place. In fact about the only major international accomplishment of the Federal Government was the signing of the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928 with 16 other nations (eventually 31) that basically outlawed war as an instrument of national policy. Of course this was in keeping with the ideals of the American corporate driven empire since its dawn in the late 1800, but now such a policy served its paranoid and isolationist impulses. But the new American empire wasn’t based on what the institutions of government did, it was based on cultural might, and ideas of freedom – oh, and corporate raiding of the global economy, as well.

            American writers, many of which were known as the Lost Generation, made American Literature a light in all the world. Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Gertrude Stein helped to articulate and define the mood of the decade.

            More significantly, American art was becoming multi-cultural and what was “American” was seen by the world as not merely being produced by a homogeneous white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant population. The Harlem Renaissance flowered by the 1920s and helped to define “American” art, literature and music as inclusive of its African descended population. It’s certainly not that poets, like Langston Hughes, were read, or even known, in every household, but they were read, and read outside of black America. Harlem Renaissance leader, James Weldon Johnson, a classical composer, encouraged high artistic achievement as a means to breading down race barriers and proving the worth of African Americans to European Americans who maintained an exclusive dominance on American political, economic and social institutions. Johnson is often pegged as an elitist who frowned on black working class habits and customs. He preferred Paul Robeson singing Opera to the countless new black artists developing the new language and expression of Jazz. Hughes noted the contradiction of denigrating common black life in his master work The Weary Blues (1926). The poem notes attitudes of an emerging black elite and their desire for cultural distancing – thinking that will abate the racism inherent in American culture. For Hughes, however, Jazz was an expression of what historian Joyce Goldberg called, “Black musical genius!” Music, historically, had been one of the few areas in which the White system had allowed for Black expression and in the 1920s Jazz became God, or culturally close to it.

            Jazz became the background music in a rising Urban Culture that was overtaking the 19^th century rural ideal of the American ethos. This was the first generation to go to the movies, at least the way we think of it, to listen to the radio, music, comedy, news, commercials – youtube from a box without pictures. While rural America tried to fight back through national legislation like the Volstead Act which enforced the 18^th Amendment prohibiting alcohol, Urban America rebelled with illegal clubs, dance hall, and hidden saloons. The Speakeasy was a place to get what a world sick of convention, sick of war, sick of influenza – drugs, sex and wild music. You know, fun!

            Urban America came to represent to rural America decadence, immorality and sin – and no, not everyone lived in a barrel of gin, smoking reefer and having sex, probably most did not – but it became the accepted, normal way of life in most cities. A sexual and sensual Revolution had dawned, self-definition and self-determination in ways to make the Puritan of old blush. 

 Consumer Culture of conspicuous, and often over, consumption.

           The new Urban ideal, which is still America today, was a consumer ideal, an attitude of getting and spending, and working to spend some more. This is the their ideal, this is our ideal, this is America to the rest of the world, A 

            While much of rural America still scratched much of its resources from the naked earth, Urban culture lived off the market. Fueled by Mass Media, which was now possible to market goods in newspapers and radio all around the country, the economy boomed. Incidentally, this was also the decade of mechanization – where machine power overtook muscle power as the main source by which work was done. That only increased the size of the boom. Government helped – giving funds to corporate America to expand its markets, expand its products, expand the ideal that in America you are measured by what you buy. The Smith-Lever Act had earmarked millions of dollars to help corporate America reach more customers and by the 1920s more Americans drove cars, went to the movies, read a newspaper, had an electric you name the appliance, than anywhere else in the world. USA USA USA

And a new cultural ethos, this Urban Cultural Ideal, demanded new gods to reflect the new values.

And the gods came, in the form of “Everyman” … and woman too!

Perhaps the most heralded American at that time, or any time, was Charles Lindbergh who became the first to fly in a plane across the Atlantic in the Spirit of St. Louis  in 1928. Flying a plane was god-like and even mediocre pilots like Amelia Earhart were seen as superhuman.  

For most of American History, sport other than horse racing or polo, or other horsey things, was seen as low-class and unworthy of regard, but the 20s changed that and made sports figures “superstars.” Babe Ruth is the father of the sports icon – Ali, Jordan, all of them owe a debt to the Babe, and to a lesser extent, to the other Babe, Babe Didrickson, who was a female athlete whose multi-sports feats made the ideal of athletics less gender segregated. Less, anyhow. 

Movie icons were bigger than at any other time. Hollywood, founded earlier in the 20^th century as a Mecca for film, enjoyed a golden age where more Americans went to see movies than in any other decade. And how could they not. Giant screens with giant faces, moving, though not talking, was magical. The general population began their fascination with celebrity, a disease we still have. When movie star Rudolph Valentino suddenly died in 1928 it was purported that several fans committed suicide rather than live in a world without him. 

Jazz went from being African American music played mostly in New Orleans and New York, earlier in the century, to a national obsession by the mid-1920s. The ideal of cool and sexy became synonamous with Jazz stars like Josephine Baker and Duke Ellington. Everyone wanted to be just like that … in the Urban ideal, anyhow, but not everyone in the country.

The KKK rose from the dead in the 1920s to become one of the largest organizations in the country. Spurred on by a Trumpian call to stem the tide of change brought by foreigners and brown people, the KKK targeted those of immigrant background who threatened the white Anglo-Saxon, Protestant stranglehold on defining who was, and who was not, American.

For the good and the bad, the 20s defined what life would be in America.

American Revolution Lecture -- Part 1

So what does Prince have to do with the American Revolution? You should increase your cultural knowledge – his band was named the Revolution and I spent thousands of hours listening to this little, purple, genius. But the real purpose here is to track the identity patterns in the evidence of the American Revolution – evidence that most of you have been taught before but were taught totally through the national narrative to come to the conclusion of the main interpretation. Colonists were Americans, Americans are good, and the British were evil. Does the evidence support any of these claims? We’ll see.

Before we begin, I want to introduce you to Frantz Fanon. Fanon was a psychiatrist in Martinique, which was a French colony. French by law, French by language, French by culture but the primary part of the population (Martinique is an island in the Caribbean so you should know what the population is like) the primary part of the population is African and not French. Fanon is African descended in a French colony. In treating patients Fanon became aware that racism played a significant role in framing the psychology of his patients. Many of the patients, he discovered, had psychological problems because the French culture in Martinique denied and sought to destroy their African self. In Black Skin, White Mask Fanon discussed the duality (dual life) that African descended French people had to endure. They were black, but they were asked by the culture to be white, wear a white mask. The white mask validated them, gave them meaning in a culture that denied the meaning of their black skinned selves. This duality, and the denial of the true self (their African heritage) caused problems for people. Fanon theorized that the only thing that could produce health would be Revolution – smash the mask and validate the black skin underneath. While this situation that Fanon described in the 1950s is relevant to race in America, there are also parallels to the colonial experience in the 1770s in North America.      Here in North America, colonists began to develop their own cultural ways which deviated from British norms. They thought they were British, but in many ways, the existence of slavery, having representation based on voting instead of blood, for example, they were acting in non-British ways. The thing is they thought they were British and they thought their cultural ways were British, even when they weren’t. They had different cultural habits than the British, but they thought they were British, and being British brought them meaning, it validated who they were. But they weren’t really who they thought they were. Very confusing, and confusion often leads to conflict – hence, Revolution. Their identity was as British colonists – it was a mask, maybe for something underneath (an American skin?), but the difference between Martinique and the 13 British colonies is that the British colonists didn’t know what their skin was.

                        So now, with that idea about the complexity of identity, let’s look at the evidence of the Revolution. The First slide below outlines the pre-Revolutionary events of the 1760s 

        The Revolution is typically studied from the perspective of the aftermath of the French and Indian War, or also known as the Seven Years’ War, from 1754-1763. This war began in the colonies on the frontier between French colonists and their Native allies and British colonists and their Native allies, and then spread around the globe where France and England fought for world leadership.  The British won! And the colonists, being British, celebrated.

    The British spent a lot of money, a lot of money defending the colonies. Soldiers, weapons, ships, food, medicines, forts, ports, all sorts of expenses paid for by taxes raised in Britain – but not the colonies. For their defense the colonists contributed nothing. British taxpayers paid the cost, not British colonial taxpayers. This is a very important point. You need to get this. Britain paid the costs of protecting the lives, economy and territory of the North American 13 British colonies. Britain paid, not the colonists.

         Payment means debt in times of war, so Britain’s British government in England, in Parliament had to figure out a way to stabilize the finances of the Empire. They needed new revenue and new sources of revenue to cover the costs of the empire. That means that Parliament realized it had to organize revenue from the colonies in a systematic and workable way. There were taxes on the colonies, Parliament had tried before, for example with acts like the Molasses Act of 1733, which taxed sugar products going into the colonies from the West Indies. The money collected would pay for the costs of the British Navy which protected the trade of the colonists. Another important point. The taxes raised by Parliament were to pay for the things the colonists got from the empire, like protection from the French, or Pirates. The taxes raised by Parliament were to pay for the things the colonists got from the empire, like government, and courts, and in some cases roads, and bridges. Taxes pay for things the community needs. Without taxes we don’t have those things. The taxes raised by Parliament were to pay for the things the colonists got from the empire. Ok?

       Parliament realized that a system of taxes needed to be put in place to raise revenue from the colonists to pay for the things that colonists needed from the Empire.

      At this time in British politics there were basically two parties, one that favored more involvement by the King, Tory, and one that favored more power in the Commons, Whig. The Whigs had been in control during the French and Indian War, but their leader, William Pitt, very popular in the colonies, fell out of favor at the end of the War, and the King who appointed the government’s ministers with the approval of the Commons, replaced him with a Tory, George Grenville – the colonists were not happy.

            Grenville realized that the colonists had to start paying for the costs of the stuff they got from the empire and a new system of administering the colonies had to be put in place. Why? Because the colonists had never paid the taxes that were already on the books, like the Molasses Act. They didn’t pay taxes on sugar because colonial merchants could easily smuggle goods past the customs collector and the British were so busy fighting the French and/or Pirates that they hardly ever enforced the law against smuggling. But it didn’t change the fact that to Grenville, it was time for the colonists to grow up and pay their own way, to grow up and pay for the costs the empire paid for courts, and government, and protection and other things. That’s reasonable, isn’t it? It is. Remember that. British policy is based on reason, not tyranny, whatever tyranny means.

         And here is another problem Grenville faced. Even when some of the colonists smugglers were arrested they were tried in Admiralty Courts located in 4 colonial cities, made up by juries of colonial merchants who gave the verdict on the smugglers. BUT THEY WERE SMUGGLERS, TOO! So no one ever got convicted and smuggling continued and no taxes were paid.

     Grenville realized that the colonists didn’t like the 1733 Molasses Act because it was a pretty high tax on sugar, so in new legislation he got passed, Sugar Act of 1764, the tax on sugar was lowered to a really low amount. What? Lowered? Yes, lowered, the British Parliament lowered taxes on Sugar and they made it so low that smuggling just wouldn’t be worth it – except that colonial merchants were used to paying $0 in taxes, so even a low tax, was more than they ever paid. So the colonists didn’t like this. But Grenville used the law to compel them to pay. Part of the law set up funds to have more enforcement of the new tax and set up a new court, with rulings by a judge not a jury, in Halifax, Nova Scotia. That’s in Canada, not Boston, New York, Philadelphia or Charleston where the other Admiralty Courts had been. In this new Admiralty Court, the Crown would get convictions against smugglers, and, prison time was going to be in England itself – not in the colonies where your family could at least bring you food and keep you from starving. So if you were a smuggler, a colonial merchant, you knew not paying this small tax was a death sentence. Yikes.

The new revenue from the Sugar Act would go for protection of colonial trade by the Royal Navy. Good for colonists, now potentially paid for by the colonists.

       The Currency Act insured that the colonists used the money of the empire, and not like some of the colonies, their own printed money. This way they could pay their taxes.

The colonists grumbled and complained. And then the straw that caused pandemonium in the merchant community of the colonies. The Stamp Act.

        Stamps had been a common way to make a tax in many parts of the empire, particularly at home in England. A merchant of common paper items has to buy a stamp, place the stamp on the item, to verify the tax is paid, and then pass the cost of the tax onto the price of the item and the consumer. Easy, and easy revenue. Benjamin Franklin was in London when the Stamp Act was passed and actually wanted to be put in charge of the program (he got a fee for every stamp sold, so he would make a lot of money!) But Franklin didn’t react like other merchants back in the colonies. Even though taxes raised by the Stamp Act went to pay for services provided to the colonists by the Empire, services provided to the colonists by the Empire, perfectly reasonable, the colonial merchant erupted in demonstration against these Parliamentary Acts. Colonial inhabitants, spurred on by the merchant community, rioted. They burned tax collection houses, harassed collectors and British officials and in some cases tarred and feathered them – hot tar poured on skin, and then fluffed with feathers – as deadly as asking for a golden crown from a Dothraki. Am I right, GOT fans? Eh?

Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems.

The merchants saw the protests were getting out of hands, so to get things back under their control and out of the hands of the lowly masses, they called for an assembly of notables to convene to give an organized Colonial response to this tax and Revenue Plan situation.

     They called for a Congress of Delegates to meet in New York City, in September of 1765. Only 9 colonies sent delegates, as some of the Royal Governors of Royal colonies forbid the King’s subjects to attend a Congress against laws passed by King, Lords, Commons (Parliament – and you see everyone represented in that Parliament, even the colonists who were common by the Commons – if you follow the British definition of representation that is).

                        The first order of business of the Congress was to select a face for the Congress, well someone to be the presiding officer of their proceedings, who would serve as the face of the Congress. Two names were put in Nomination. Timothy Ruggles, a Massachusetts official who had actually been an officer in the Royal Army – not the colonial militia mind you, but the real army. No one could deny his loyalty and patriotism for the Empire. And then there was James Otis, the other nominee. Otis was a lawyer (lost my vote already) who was already on record against the Revenue Plan (and whose family and connection formed the core of the Boston Merchant (smugglers) community. One represented the best of the Empire and one represented the interests of the colonies (and merchant law-breaking radicalism). The choice seemed clear, loyalty or radical rejection of Parliament. And what did they choose? Well, from what we have always been taught about the America First Revolution, you would figure, of course they chose Otis. But they didn’t. They chose Ruggles. They chose Loyalty …. And made that abundantly clear in the addresses and petitions sent by the Congress to London. We are loyal British subjects, but then the Fanon-like duality began to creep in. They were British, in their minds, but not all of their ideas were in keeping with being British. And you can see it in the Declaration of Rights produced by the Stamp Act Congress.  

                        In that document, after expressing how loyal to the empire the very British colonists were, they deviated from the standard British political science about who and what they were. The colonists acknowledged towards the King, the “same allegiance to the crown that is owing from his subjects born within the realm” – they were just as British as if they had been born in Britain and loved their King! BUT, and this in terms of cultural identity, was a big but.

                        When it came to Parliament and the Commons, the colonists only owed “all due subordination to that august body.” Meaning? That sometimes we go by Parliament and sometimes not, and their reasoning followed in very un-British means by defining representation, not by the fact of blood, by which they all were common and therefore represented by the law making Commons, but by the act of voting as the signifier of representation. Meaning, voting selected representatives to make law and not blood. This is not the British definition of representation and makes all the claims of the Congress to be loyal British colonists weird, just weird. How can they be British, but reject British things. It is the duality of colonial life, perhaps, Colonist skin, British mask.

The delegates claimed, “the undoubted right that no taxes be imposed upon them but with their own consent given personally or by their representatives.” The colonists maintained their reps were in their local common assemblies and not in the Commons of England. 

We are one thing, but we are different than that thing – which, of course, makes no sense.

              The difference was striking between British and British colonist's definition of what it meant to be British. They argued back and forth in writing pamphlets on these political issues. Otis wrote of this “we are British, but reject the British idea of representation,” as did even more famously Pennsylvania’s John Dickinson. Dickinson outlined what historians have labeled a difference between the virtual (blood based) representation of the British, and, what Dickinson favored, actual (voting based) representation. 

Confusion and bewilderment reigned back in England, and the American Revenue Plan was repealed. Grenville was out and the Whigs came back into power.

             But the Whigs realized that revenue had to be raised from the colonies and that the colonies couldn’t just refuse to follow Parliament because they got it all wrong about who represented whom. In 1766 Parliament passed a definitive law to support its “virtual” representation. Parliament had the right to make law “for all cases whatsoever” everywhere and anywhere in the Empire under the Declaratory Act of 1766. And then they set about making more taxes, called the Townshend Acts. 

The colonist didn’t like these acts, either. And this time, instead of a Congress, tried to get everyone in the colonies, all the loyal British subjects, to stop buying British made goods. That’ll show them how British the colonists are! It wasn’t really a success, but it did make Parliament get rid of the Townshend Acts – except for one. On Tea. You know, the Tea Act. But listen, Parliament agreed to try again. Colonists didn’t like the Revenue Plan? Get rid of it. Colonists didn’t like the Townshend Acts? Get rid of them. Is this tyranny? Hardly, at least not on the part of the British – you could make the argument that the British colonists were a bit of a brat, though.

So why not Tea? To make a long story short, the tax on tea was propping a business too big to fail, and so the British had to maintain it. And it also needed to be kept to send a message, a Declaratory message to the colonists that Parliament had the right to tax the colonies – as the King said to his new Tory Minister Lord North (in office from 1770-1782), “So as to retain the Right!”

But the colonial merchants only wanted the benefit of Empire and not the cost. So they dressed up as someone else and destroyed a boatload of tea in Boston Harbor. Think of that. Did they know this act of terrorism was wrong? Is that why they dressed as Native Americans? Or is this a suggestion that they had thrown away their British mask and were now in their American skin? Whatever it was, the British were tired of being reasonable with the British colonists, and punishment was now necessary.

             To bring the colonists back into good behavior Parliament passed the Coercive Acts in 1774 to punish the Boston area for the acts of terrorism committed there against lawful British Government. Massachusetts would pay for what the terrorists did. Its government and courts would be re-organized and crown troops would insure a return to peace. All in all pretty reasonable. But not to the Colonists. They were scared and they should have been. And so they called a Congress. What else would they do?

And we’ll talk about that Congress next time.

Berning the Democrats: Will the Democratic Party Have to Give the Nod to Bernie?

Sorry, Bernie Bro’s, but I don’t like Bernie as a Presidential Candidate – History has shown that “revolutionaries” make very poor governors, and a Bernie presidency will not bring about the results that he claims.

 

There are many branches on the American political
Tree, but the socialist limb fell off a long time ago.

Medi-Care for all? Good idea, but that won’t happen.

Do away with student debt? Would be great, though unconscionable and unrealistic.

And socialism? But he’s not a socialist and the very idea scares most of the population and almost all of the elected officials in Washington.

Perhaps, the only thing he could get is a “Green New Deal” and the development of a 21^stcentury infrastructure, if, and only if Mitch McConnell is no longer in charge of the Senate.

Americans, even liberal Americans, are fond of saying, “socialism is great in theory, in theory.” And you know the rest. Bernie is the same thing, great in theory, in theory, but …. He won’t be able to make good on anything. Nothing.

Bernie has been a maverick politician and great critic from the left. A voice of corrective reason in a democratic and capitalist (social capital?) society that sometimes loses its way and likes to hear an elderly voice rail against its brutal excesses. What he is not is an effective legislator. He is not LBJ wrangling the cattle in the Senate or even Nancy P. shushing the House of Representatives. No, he has no experience or expertise doing that and it shows.

When asked how he would get Medi-care for all passed in Congress, he has stated because the people would put pressure on Congress to vote with him. Huh? Is that ego or stupidity? And could he build a coalition of Democrats for such legislation, if they get a majority in both houses? Highly unlikely, as he is as unpopular with many Dems as he is with Trumpers.

Which brings us to two more points. Bernie isn’t going to help the Democrats gain a majority in the Senate, and his whole phenomena is too Trumplike, for my tastes at least. 

Bernie has a core, like Trump, but smaller, that will follow him to the ends of the earth … or shoot someone? Eh, not Bernie, but the Bros are Trumpian in their celebration of their champion …. Except that Bernie’s crowd is smarter and more empathetic in that they at least have chosen a sovereign who does care about more than his gilded wig. But Bernie, like Trump, is a cult of personality that eschews planning and substance for rhetoric and emotion. Of course, health care for all would be better public policy, but you can’t get their by public acclaim …. And Americans don’t want to pay for good public policy, most only want to pay for a big mushroom shaped …. cloud, the military. 

And even if you agree that the 1% are evil, taking all their money and relieving the debt of college students who paid outlandish tuition to colleges and universities that are ripping off, not only those students, but the tax payers who guaranteed those loans in the first place shows that Bernie doesn’t understand that problem. The debt was accumulated paying inflated tuition that rose astronomically over the last 25 years because we the people thought it was good public policy to make money for college (through government guaranteed student loans) possible for everyone. And in a 21^st century world, where learning is more important than other marketable skills, that was good policy. What went wrong is that no one put price controls on the universities who saw this as a windfall and used that student loan money to rebuild and overbuild their grossly bloated campuses and administrations. Shame on them, and until something is done about that tuition gouging it is morally wrong to ask tax payers to cover the debt of any student.

And the biggest reason that I don’t like Bernie is that he is not a DEMOCRATIC SOCIALIST. I know, if he calls himself that, then he must be that, but I can call myself Donald Trump, but that’s not what makes me an asshole. Words have meaning because they mean something and, Bernie, who advocates market economies and the accumulation of private wealth cannot by definition be an advocate of common control of the means of production, which is socialism, democratic or not. He is, however, a social democrat, as are most Americans. He adheres to the tenets of Liberalism (people have rights, government should be representational and private wealth systems should be promoted) but modified by social safety nets. It just so happens that his nets are bigger and stronger than most liberals, but that doesn’t make him a socialist.

So why does he call himself a socialist? I don’t fucking know. It’s the dumbest thing in politics I’ve ever seen. Maybe he’s fulfilling some beatnik fantasy of his youth, but it’s the dumbest fucking thing ever. And that makes me not trust him, not at all. There is something disingenuous about calling yourself a thing you know you are not, and being real, Bernie must certainly know his political definitions. Dumbest thing ever.

But, the Bros, like in 2016, will not support any other candidate, and hence, they will, therefore, be supporting the re-election of Donald Trump. So, must the Democrats kneel at the alter of Bernie?

It looks like once again, Black America is going to have to save America’s soul. This voting block did not come out for Hillary, and they wouldn’t come out for many of the Democratic candidates, like Buttigieg, especially Buttigieg, but they will come out for Joe, and even though I don’t like Joe (who really does?), the voice of moderation by which the current system can work, and increasingly work for more and more of the people, is the voice of Joe.

And if you want movement toward universal healthcare that can get passed in Congress? Joe

And if you want legislation to abate climate change? Joe

And if you want the building of a greener America? Joe

Unless, by some strange math, Bernie is able to win the key states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona and Wisconsin by accumulating over 45% of Democratic primary voters, the choice is clear. Joe