Bill Clinton is Boss Tweed: Recount the Votes in New Hampshire

for The Free Market News Network on 1/12/08

Kid, to run a crew like that you have to be completely rotten, Ben Wade, 3:10 to Yuma

Although it is obvious that the machine-counted votes in the heavily-populated industrial regions of the state will yield results different than those of more independent-minded voters here in northern NH where they are counted by hand, Dennis Kucinich’s call for a recount in New Hampshire should nevertheless be heeded.

We are seeing the same corrupt practices growing again today in the Democratic Party here in the Northeast that we saw in Boston in the '30s and '40s and in New York's ethnic neighborhoods during the Tammany Hall scandal. And we are seeing the same machine politicians.

Hollywood producer David Geffen has suggested that the Clintons are some of the most corrupt politicians ever to enter American politics.

“Everybody in politics lies, but they [the Clintons] do it with such ease, it’s troubling,” he told Maureen Dowd of the NYTs.

Geffen clearly states what most Democrats have conveniently repressed: The Clintons are crooks. Possibly the worst in the modern history of the Democratic Party. In an interview with Dowd, Geffen cited a pardon granted to Marc Rich after he gave Bill Clinton a million dollars as a sampling of Clinton corruption which would even impress Boss Tweed.

Senator Clinton’s ride has been appalling from beginning to end; from her questionable winnings in real estate in Arkansas to her endorsement of China’s “reaching out” to religious groups in a trip to China as First Lady while China was literally sweeping Taoists off the streets by the thousands never to be seen again and imprisoning and executing Tibetans by the tens of thousands. Her Senate ride has been entirely scripted and her record on Iraq is indefensible.

The Democrats have been crippled by Clinton Personality Cult. Whether it is Bill tapping the undergraduates in the Oval Office or his undergraduate staff pulling the keys off the computers or Hillary stealing White House trinkets and historical artifacts on the way out the door as First Lady, for almost two decades now the Clintons have constantly put the Democrats in the position of defending the indefensible.

Now may be the time to review. When Bill left office in 2001, The New York Times asked prominent Democrats their opinions:

Robert B. Reich, Clinton’s Secretary of Labor, said: “The seemingly interminable Clinton scandals are not the Democrats biggest problem, and merely distancing themselves from Bill Clinton (and Hillary Rodman Clinton) won’t restore the party’s soul. The Democratic establishment in Washington is no longer connected to the grass roots. The national party is nothing but a fund-raising machine.”

Author Kevin Phillips said: “Ralph Nader was right about the Democratic Party losing its soul to big donors and corporate money.”

Warren Beatty, actor and political activist said: “The Democratic Party has abdicated much of its soul to raise the money necessary to be elected . . . the party must, above all, face the fact of its own culpability in the odor of the legalized bribery that constitutes the way we finance our campaigns.”

Bill’s disgraceful slander and character assassination of Barack Obama just prior to the New Hampshire primary last week, his New Hampshire and national operatives race-baiting and insinuating drug issues and Islamic sympathies, and Senator Clinton’s sleazy new site “Hillary is 44,” virtually a Swift Boat operation set up specifically to attack Obama, bring a new sense of élan to an old political game played best perhaps in my old neighborhood, South Boston.

Bill Clinton is Boss Tweed but his loyal following is not this time a recent immigrant group fighting for turf and survival, but his own dedicated personality cult of people his own age, which George Will correctly identifies with geezer musicians like Led Zeppelin pitifully trying to stage a comeback.

Roll up a jumbo, Bill. But don’t inhale.

It is always Personality Cult which sends the electorate to a wife, daughter or secondary family member. It won't hold. Like Peter the Great's Catherine, John’s Yoko, Mao's Madame Mao and Bill's Hillary, the afterglow gives a sense of loss in an age rapidly deteriorating to all but the adoring idolaters. The Shining House on the Hill is in hindsight and the age has descended into shadow.

Note to Democrats: Let go.

New Hampshire Votes: (Waiting for Arnold, Bloomberg and Obama)

By Bernie Quigley for The Free Market News Network on 1/9/08

Hillary wins NH: America is descending to politics of the heart rather than the head; the politics of families rather than parties; the politics of personality cult; the return to generational tribe and monarch and the abandonment of commonweal and republic - that which you would expect in Spain under Franco, in Pakistan under Bhutto, in Argentina with Fernandez and today in America under Bush or Clinton.

A constant problem here in New Hampshire comes from the recent movement of people across the border from Massachusetts to the industrial cities in the south of New Hampshire. They are cautious and defensive – afraid of change, afraid of life, simply afraid. They come from industrial Massachusetts and are representative of a working class people who have risen a little ("upper working class") and are terrified of losing their slight purchase and can’t go no further and don’t want to.

If you took away those southern counties which I have said should be renamed North Massachusetts (or maybe North South Boston), Obama would have won (the real) New Hampshire in a landslide. Same in '04 - Wes Clark was way ahead in the northern regions and Howard Dean was doing well, then when they voted in the southern counties it was all John Kerry. I really don't see these dynamics so fully expressed elsewhere other than the Northeast and particularly in the extended Boston region. I have opposed the New Hampshire primary altogether because today it only gives a picture of people of post-industrial Massachusetts and how they vote when they move across the New Hampshire border to avoid paying taxes and to get away from black people.

I voted at 8 am for Obama and all morning there were calls and calls and visits to the door - all supporting Obama. The crowds were overwhelming to see Obama - (and as the Washington Post reported, they walked out on the Hunka Hunka Burnin’ Love, who brought the Big Hair to the same building in Hanover).

New Hampshire is certainly the quirkiest state in New England and probably in the country. We always seem drawn to the outsider and it is not a surprise that we in the quirky part of the state would go for Obama. What I find amazing is that we are confluent in this with conservative, consistent, conventional, white, faith-based, uniform, farm folk, Okie from Muscogee, did I say white (? - 97%) Iowa.

If an African-American from Chicago's South Side who still has sisters in Kenya can win in Iowa I don't see why he can't win everywhere. If Iowa no longer cares about race we are a free country. I think it might be easier for my friends and family in Tobaccoville, NC, and Poplar Camp, VA, to vote for a black man today than it was to vote for a Catholic in 1960.

But frankly, Iowa's heartland farmers seem to be less afraid of a black man from Chicago than my cousins at the bottom of New Hampshire holding signs saying "Irish for McCain" and what not all over national television these past few days.

This is the politics of Fear and Anti-Hope (which is right to the edge of Panic and Despair), and Clinton, who calls Obama’s hopeful visions “unrealistic expectations” is certainly its avatar. It is a celebration of no-can-do America and the Culture of Incompetence. It is likely to pull a good crowd in the post-industrial Northeast, where most everyone had a father or grandfather, aunts, great aunts and uncles who worked in the cotton mills (I have at least 31 possibly half of whom died from their tasks – the rest were cops and Vaudeville performers).

This quote from my local newspaper this morning by an excellent political reporter, John P. Gregg, gets to the point:

"Sullivan County (bottom of the state - bq) County Treasurer Cynthia Sweeney, who is in her mid-60s, said she voted for Clinton in part because the youthful Obama ‘scares the daylights of me’ and reminded her of ‘those same young Turks’ (Islamic slur? - bq) Sweeney blamed for the decline of her former employer . . . . ‘It's the attitude of we know, we can do it better, get out of our way and let us do it.' said Sweeney . . ."

I was raised up here with South Boston people but spend half of my life in Virginia and North Carolina. People outside forget, but - particularly in the industrial cities of northern New England - time has left us behind to allow the South, the Southwest and the West to rise economically and culturally. I did not find this same general negative orientation in North Carolina or Virginia possibly because there was no such vast industrial class sent upward in so short a time; only two generations.

I'm feeling two things at this point:

One: The South is still a rising boat and rising boats don't express this cautionary tale we saw from Clinton idolaters last night in New Hampshire’s industrial cities; the South and the newly empowered economic regions will rise to Hope and not succumb to Fear and the Democrats there will rise to Obama and Edwards.

I am looking forward to South Carolina and the South primaries. One of the things that happened in Iowa is that black people nationally had pledged to Hillary in loyalty to the Clintons prior to Iowa thinking that Obama didn't really have a chance. Then when he won Iowa it was clear that he did have a chance and he does. So Obama's support went up 20% in South Carolina among blacks overnight and in a state like that which is half black, it will make a difference. Iowa should still bring it to South Carolina in spite of New Hampshire.

There is also rapidly growing up here in NH and I think everywhere a stark generational turning; a contrast between Bill Clinton - he no longer draws crowds - and Obama (they faint). As reporter Gregg said in his article, we actually LOVE Obama and Michelle now in the northern valleys. I think that is correct (in the mountains but not in the southern cities). The Clinton supporters up here yesterday all use the same phrasing - I heard this again and again on the C Span reports - they want to bring back the past because, it was " . . . better then." So this struggle between Clinton and Obama is a struggle between the past and the future and it cannot be seen any other way. As always, the engine of that struggle is generational conflict. Earth to Clintons: the young generation always wins.

Second Thought: Mike Bloomberg, who appeared with former Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia and David Boren, President of the University of Oklahoma, at a conference in Oklahoma last week to encourage “post partisanship” was widely thought to be there to begin a movement toward a third-party bid for the Presidency. Wisely, he left quickly when he saw Obama's flame ignite in Iowa.

When Obama hatched in Iowa, Bloomberg saw his gate close. Then last night he saw Hillary open the gate for him again.

Bloomberg is all about being the anti-thesis to Billary's Politics without Passion – a weird political aberration spawned from rapid and uniform post-war birth rates and the subsequent inevitable demographics - which John Kenneth Galbraith called a “Culture of Contentment.” And he is from the same neighborhood as my Irish cousins in Boston who vote for Hillary. The gate opened again for Bloomberg to return us to mature and rational governance and the enlightened tradition from which all our Boston tribes emerged. If he wants to do this he might bring along his best bud, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Yesterday afternoon, when we were voting up here in New Hampshire and listening to the Silver Tongued Devils cautioning us to go forward without hope and rely on the sure ways of the past, Californians were listen to their dynamic Governor give his State of the State speech.

“Sometimes you have to be daring because the need is so great,” said the Governator.

If Obama is elected he might first hire Bloomberg and Arnold. They are all three on the same page and live in the same millennium. If Bloomberg is elected he might first hire Obama and Arnold. Such a grouping would satisfy the “post partisan” vision and leave the pessimists in the dust.

Hillary’s "House Negroes"

By Bernie Quigley for The Free Market News Network

I’s a free nigra, just the same I follow Massa Frank. Pomp, the Free Negro side kick of Frank Reade, Jr., pulp fiction adventurer of the 1870s

We are people who were formally Africans who were kidnapped and brought to America. Our forefathers weren’t the pilgrims. They didn’t land on Plymouth Rock. The rock was landed on us. Malcolm X

One of the most interesting aspects of the Iowa results is the surprise and enthusiasm of conservative commentators – David Brooks and even Rush Limbaugh – for Barack Obama. Perhaps they are not old enough to experience an authentic political awakening like that which occurred with the rise of John F. Kennedy.

Ronald Reagan is their closest memory, but that was different. That was stabilization and a return to reason by a country marred by chaos and assassination which for a dozen years before was making America ungovernable. We are at a critical change now like that between Eisenhower and Kennedy and again between Kennedy and Reagan. Those of us who heard the Obama stump speech a month before anticipated win in Iowa and New Hampshire. Those of us who brought our kids: Mine had never, not for a moment, shown any interest in any politician. But they rushed the stage after Obama’s stirring oration; legend now even before the New Hampshire primary.

Perhaps the long campaign cycle has done some good after all. It took a long time to get to know Ron Paul who at the end of the day gutted what was left of the Republican Party, leaving its entrails strewn across the Plains. It took a long time to get to know Obama. With Paul, the heart which brought forth the Republican rise of Ronald Reagan has shifted. Ron Paul is the new ride, leaving Fox News, the Rottweiler Republicans, Richard Viguerie and the Christian Right in the dust. And with Obama the political world begins again.

In hindsight, Senator Clinton was possibly the best contender for Obama. Her husband has brought the silvered Everly Brothers hair up here at every instance and it is clear by now to everyone up here that this is Bill’s ride. His is the Elvis curse; he refuses to leave the building and will be a continuing embarrassment to himself and to the country- like Elvis in Winter in the god suit in Los Vegas - to the bitter end.

Polls up here and elsewhere show Hillary to be the candidate for women over 40 – 45% of whom support her in New Hampshire. The ads that come to my mailbox every day to pitch Hillary always feature such a woman; neither old nor young, neither particularly smart looking nor dumb. But all white, all women, all from the same moment in time between old and new but not either.

Clinton’s was exclusively a generational package. It scorned the older generation and kicked it aside – including the wise men and great men in the party like John Kenneth Galbraith and George Kennan. And it is fully apparent to the young ‘uns that they have no relevance to the Clintons. Voters under 30 voted 60% for Obama in Iowa.

Reports up here in New Hampshire now are all about the calm in Obama’s camp while the Clintons are in a panic. As always, they send in Bill – described this week as a “relic” by one of the papers. 40% percent of Hillary’s bid was the free ride which came from marketing potential by venues like CNN and Fox – CNN had at least three stories about Hillary “not running” even before the ’06 races. It’s gonna be a hard rain with these guys. But if you watch generational demographics which would occur naturally on say Daily Kos, a young person’s political blog, Hillary had a zero rating as of last summer and the Clintons never had a chance.

Like the tides, the generations cannot be stopped: When Obama passed Clinton last April in fundraising; when Mobil gas put an Obama look alike in their gas ads last February, the Fates had cast their spell and even the Hunka Hunka Burnin’ Love can’t save the crusty vessel.

The Democrats began a new ride in the world when Jim Webb was elected to the Senate in Virginia in ’04. It is Webb, who would make a great VP with Obama; it is Tammy Duckworth, an Iraq war veteran who lost a race for the Senate in Illinois; it is Mark Warner, who pioneered “post partisanship” or “across the isle” politics in Virginia before Arnold stole the fire; it is John Lynch, governor of New Hampshire who follows in Warner’s path with enormous success; it is Joe Sestak of Pennsylvania and Carol Shea-Porter of New Hampshire. It was a small flame cupped in the hands in ’06 before the Clintons attempted to snuff it out.

Too late. History begins with one person and only one or two are remembered: Washington, Lincoln, Grant and in our time Eisenhower, Kennedy, Reagan. And now Obama and in a year – maybe by February – no one else will matter.

Bill, Hillary and myself grew up with the fierce people; the best and most beautiful among us died before 30 and if they didn’t die of their own passion they were gunned down, like Malcolm X and John Lennon. But strangely enough, the fierce ones, more than the rest of us, seemed to die anyway, like Otis Redding, killed in a plane crash and Jerry Rubin, run over by a car. So today it is odd – even tiring – to see a generation remembering itself in a selection of blue-eyed, blond mousy hair, slightly over middle-aged women who all looked like they went to Mount Holyoke or Wellesley – segregated schools for rich white girls back when – pitching Hillary for President. In Obama’s great stump speech he says they want him to wait until the passion is boiled out and this, they say, is experience. (Experience? Was not the medical health care management plan of Hillary the totality of her White House experience? Was it not the greatest federal management fiasco of modern times before Katrina? Was her fierce support of the war on Iraq for two years leadership?)

But what I want to know is how can a group of black Baptist preachers in the South unite to show their support for Hillary at the historic moment when a black man is running a juggernaut, in the words of David Brooks, to the Presidency of the United States. In the days of the fierce people, Malcolm X, the fiercest of the lot, used to call people like this “House Negroes.” They are free men, as Pomp says, just the same they vote for massa. He’s got the silver hair. He plays the saxophone. And he loves the colored girls don’t cha know. And to show their loyalty, they’ll even vote for the Arkansas governor’s missus. “He loved his master more than the master loved himself,” Malcolm said of the House Negro, and identified fully with the master: “If the master was sick, the House Negro would say, ‘What’s the matter, boss, we sick?’” That will be something to tell the grandchildren.

When I saw Obama speak up here last month I knew our country and the world which has been waiting us for the last ten or more years was on to a new awakening. And the three people who came to my mind were the fierce people who died in their moment way back: Otis Redding, Malcolm X and Jack Kennedy. They are all different but they shared a moment that lit something which remains: Otis Redding brought the soul of a sleeping South; a soul which had formed faith, love and oratory in the South white and black for hundreds of years to Detroit and to the rest of us and made us a part of that soul; Malcolm who was not afraid to die and not afraid to live; the Field Negro, he called himself, who came to push the House Negroes out of their fawning, complacent and submissive spot in the white man’s parlor. And Jack Kennedy who brought élan and world spirit and a change in America from Head to Heart.

These three were prelude to the moment; to this moment which awakened in the world again last week in Iowa. And we will be finished for awhile with politicians who hire technicians and stylists to teach them how to smile. And the world will begin again with Obama whose smile reveals an inner state of joy as its soul’s beginning and primal life force.

The first President we have had who had that smile since JFK.

Lakota Nation: Black Elk's Center of the World

by Bernie Quigley for The Free Market News Network at 12/28/07

"It may be that some little root of the sacred tree still lives," Black Elk.

Of all the garden variety secession movements springing up today in North America, from Quebec Nation to the Republic of Texas and up to the Bear Republic of California then back again to Vermont and the Free State initiative here in New Hampshire, Lakota Nation is perhaps the most interesting.

The Argus Leader of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, reports that Lakota Indians, led by activist Russell Means, announced a plan recently for their people to withdraw from treaties their forefathers signed with the U.S. government. Lakota Nation seeks recognition for their effort to form a free and independent Lakota nation. The new nation is needed, the report said, because Indians have been "dismissed" by the United States and are tired of living under a colonial apartheid system.

None of these initiatives have a change of success unless California leads the way. Texas is already Mexican except for the rich oil people; Vermont will one day speak with the français in Acadia again; the Bear Republic will succumb to the Asian horde and the Russkie will stomp out the Newfie seperatists with one big boot now that they have planted the flag at the top of Canada. But the Lakota Nation is something else. It is a Ghost Dance. It is a spirit long thought dead - killed in slaughter at Wounded Knee - a spirit that suddenly awakened in the mid-Sixties and as Chief Joseph said, it is a spirit which will always walk among us.

Lakota always was and will continue to be when the white fellow with his city shoes and puffy L.L. Bean jacket succumbs with the loss of his hedge fund, derivatives and pension plan pegged to the falling dollar. Already he has no cousins or aunties. His religion is a dictatorship. His house is square and made of glass.

Lakota spirit lives in a round house, and as Black Elk said, Lakota lives therefore, “like the birds.” Lakota spirit will always be and it is everywhere. We name cars after it and states and movie stars. We call the name of Indian warrior spirit in battle. And most real Americans who have lost the Euro history like to claim to being "part Indian."

And Lakota Nation is, as Black Elk, the great Lakota shaman and prophet said, pointing north, “. . . the center of the world.”

And right now it actually is as the Mississippi River divides the world today uniting the U.S. east and west and all of the Eastern world and the Western world into one world.

Today, we see a reversal of Kipling’s maxim: East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet. Now, East and West, like the recently-photographed galaxy known as IC2163, swinging counterclockwise past its celestial partner NGC2207, appear to be about to form into one unified solar system. Now they cannot be kept apart. It almost appears as if history was waiting for this moment to bring these two forces together in unity. An ancient spiritual force from the East and a new-to-history technical force in the West, as the Dalai Lama generally expressed it recently.

These two forces could not have come together at any other time in history. Nor could they have flowed together into a unique new culture at any place other than the North American continent.

North America is the Aquarian continent, made up of all the world’s peoples, castes, races and religions, pouring freely in, as the water pours from the vessel of the Titan. And its epic tale, Huckelberry Finn, identifies the vortex, the Mississippi River. The water pours freely over the falls at Niagara to the sacred lakes of the Manitou, the Great Spirit, into Chicago thereabouts and down the Mississippi to where the Amish flourish, on to the sacred primal place of Elvis’ Graceland and out into the Gulf of Mexico.

This is the Aquarian mandala, which will find creative energy in centuries ahead. This means the development and enrichment of regional cultures on the North American continent, forging one another, helping one another and hating one another; forming new dynamic relationships and creating a new world.

We come together in a federalist state. With federalism, everyone is equal, but no one is connected. This is the Hamiltonian model of federalism and it is singularly responsible for how we have developed since 1776. Hamilton favored a vast, singular state with a central government to aid and abet industry and the business class. Thomas Jefferson envisioned instead a series of autonomous regions, each with their own provincial culture and life force. The Hamilton way is temporary, and once we are all here and found the place meant for us, we will stay here and grow here to our own Peoples, as Jefferson envisioned a free society.

As Revelation closes the gate for one epoch which began its historical march in Rome and Constantinople, the American Indian visionary opens a gate to the next. Here Black Elk is the perennial guide – from Cooper to novelist Charles Frazier -- for Natty Bumpo/Hawkeye the new arrival on this continent who has lost his orientation and is wandering with a sick soul in the desert of the new world. Here is Black Elk: “And the Voice said: Give them now the flowering stick that they may flourish, and the sacred pipe that they may know the power that is peace, and the wing of the white giant that they may have endurance and face all winds with courage.”

The recent novel Cold Mountain with its Indian guide is representative of the journey of the spirit as it unfolds on what still is a new continent and in what is surely a new age. As Bunyan’s Christian pilgrim sought a life of the highest integrity and moral perseverance in a world torn asunder in the 1600s, so Frazier speaks to us today in Cold Mountain. There are two Cold Mountains, one in China where Taoist sages and hermits have lived for ages, and one in North Carolina, considered sacred to Indians in those parts. At the beginning of the novel Frazier quotes the eighth century Taoist sage, Han shan: Men ask the way to Cold Mountain. Cold Mountain: there’s no through trail. It is a mandala novel; it begins with the character on a broken edge of a circle, but with an Indian guide in a brief but perfect life he finds his way to the center, whole.

Like Natty Bumpo, Frazier's hero finds wholeness and completion in the house of the Indian. It is the oldest and youngest of American stories. And it speaks well of the North American journey, a journey for all here which is just beginning.

The rabbis tell us that the gods hide in the lowest places. When I was a child we were told a story about a Texas lawman who died in the desert and was brought back to life - "born again" - by an Indian shaman. But he could not remember his name. He lost his history. And he no longer had Jesus but an Indian to guide him in the desert between East and West.

Each week we white folk were asked the important question: "Who is the Masked Man?"

We are the Masked Man. Our identity not yet revealed, even to ourselves.

Fascism with a Christian Face: The Grand Inquisitor at The New York Times

by Bernie Quigley for The Free Market News Network at 12/26/07

The NYTs and other major newspapers have opened on their op-ed pages a congenial and brotherly discussion of torture. Like the discussion of the use of nuclear weapons in terrorist situations at last summer’s Daily Kos conference, in which several of the Democratic candidates for President brought forth positions which would have been considered madness a decade ago, this kind of public discussion acclimates the culture to ideas previously unthought and unheard and spirals to a further descent into political and historical degeneracy. As Emerson said at the beginning of our arc of power: We see ourselves ascending a stairs. But today we see ourselves descending that same set of stairs.

Torture now has binary parts; those sort of for and those sort of against – this sort of pseudo-Hegelian dialectic has mnemonic and associative conversational features which acclimate the reader to torture and insinuates torture into our culture to a degree to which it has never existed before. It is a complete compromise of character by the appeasing voice of the horde, today's mainstream journalists.

Arthur Koestler - spirit father of the neocon adventure - referred to torturers in his time - the children of Franco - as the scum of the earth and it is interesting that the neocon journalists who were formed by Koestler's heroic character in opposition to European fascism first advanced this discussion. But in Koestler's time, the torturers were them; The Others. They were not those among us nor were they part of our discussion and we did not consider them to be part of our humanity: We defined our humanity in opposition to them. They were the grotesque caricatures in Dostoyevsky's The Grand Inquisitor and Kafka's In the Penal Colony; a different moral species than the rest of us. Today, as per the discussion in the NYTs, they are us. That this discussion exists at all today is evidence that the American republic as it was born and reared has lost its talisman.

It is startling that the appeasers in the press only accommodate to a new force in Congress which insults 2,000 years of the European tradition and religious history and on the day of Christmas at that. As torture, like the repeal of habeas corpus and the establishment of American gulags, has only entered into the American political realm and discussion since American politicians, like George Bush and Mitt Romney, have promoted themselves as Christian. Romney, in fact, the most fascistic of the lot, has promised us that he is also - Mormonism aside - the most Christian of this squalid pack of hungry predators and in his extreme positions on torture and Gitmo he appears to want to bolster his Christian karma and credentials. As Ron Paul said recently, disarming a Fox commentator who hoped to initiate him into the Fox tribe: "Upton Sinclair once wrote that when America became a fascist state it would do so wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross."

To discuss freedom is to be free. Likewise, to discuss torture as the NYTs does today is to enter the moral condition of the true slave; the one who prefers moral submission to clarity of heart and mind; the one who has not the courage to stand free in opposition; the one who enters the discussion in objectivity; the coward who channels irony as a substitute for passion and holds on head down through the difficult years lest s/he lose tenure and the pension.

This is Corporation Man and Woman in a Republic of Penguins – the totem animal of the horde; uniform in mind and stripe, walking together into the sunset without the political will or individual character to take the real actions that need to be taken - s/he is the weakling who enables the Wolf and the Rising American Fascism.

The congenial tone and banter in the NYTs discussion finds the voice of Huxley's lightly totalitarianated hordes - people without places marinated exclusively in their generational culture and with tiny telephones the size of roaches dangling from their ears, willfully on the path of Prozac and public radio. If penguins listened to us, this would be the language they listened in. And if penguins could speak, this would be their language and discussion as well.

The Year of the Penguin: The Grand Inquisitor at The New York Times

draft

The NYTs and other major newspapers have opened on their op-ed pages a congenial and brotherly discussion of torture. Torture now has binary parts; those sort of for and those sort of against - this is a sort of Hegelian dialectic which insures the establishment of torture in one realm or another and to a degree to which it has never existed in our republic before. It is a complete compromise of character by the weakling, cowardly and appeasing voice of the horde, today's mainstream journalists. Arthur Koestler - spirit father of the neocon adventure - referred to torturers in his time - the children of Franco - as the scum of the earth and it is interesting that the neocon journalists who were formed by Koestler's heroic character in opposition to European fascism first advanced this discussion. But in Koestler's time, the torturers were them; The Others. They were not those among us and we did not consider them to be part of our humanity: We defined our humanity in opposition to them and their very existence as if they were a different moral species. Today, as per the discussion in the NYTs, it is us. That this discussion exists at all today is evidence that the American republic as it was born and reared has lost its talisman.

It is startling that the appeasers in the press only accommodate to a new force in Congress which insults 2,000 years of the European tradition and religious history and on the day of Christmas at that. As torture, like the repeal of habeas corpus and the establishment of American gulags, has only entered into the American political realm and discussion since American politicians, like George Bush and Mitt Romney, have promoted themselves as Christian. Romney, in fact, the most fascistic of the lot, has promised us that he is also - Mormonism aside - the most Christian of this squalid pack of hungry wolves and in his extreme positions on torture and Gitmo he appears to want to bolster his Christian karma.

To discuss Freedom is to Be Free. Likewise, to discuss torture as the NYTs and the Republican candidates all but McCain and Ron Paul do today, is to enter the moral condition of the true slave; the one who prefers moral submission to clarity of heart and mind; the one who has not the courage to stand free in opposition; the one who enters the discussion in objectivity; the coward who lacks passion and holds on head down through these difficult years lest s/he lose the pension. This is Corporation Man and Woman in a Republic of Penguins; s/he is the weakling who enables the Wolf and the Rising American Fascism. And in our time today it is only Ron Paul and John McCain who speak with that clear voice in opposition and without nuance or discussion. As Paul said very recently on Fox TV, disarming their commentator who hoped to accommodate him as a fledgling into their tribe: "Upton Sinclair once wrote that when American became a fascist state it would do so wrapped in the American flag and carrying a cross."

America is an Awakening land, an Enlightenment culture and the Land of the Free. One day we will again be a slave culture perhaps in the mind and in the heart, beholding to priest, the brute and the politician alike, as everything awake returns to sleep. But not today. Those who bring up the topic of torture for discussion will soon descend to the Hole of Shame and Nothingness from which they have come sputtering forth. Consider that their life force was not, never was, can never be, strong enough to get a purchase in the Land of the Free.

George Bush, The Last Penguin: Does California Need a Federal Government? Does New England?

by Bernie Quigley for The Free Market News Network on 12/20/07

In a historic series of government failures – Iraq, Katrina, Gitmo, habeas corpus, waterboarding, the fallen dollar – the EPA’s rejection of states’ emission efforts today will perhaps prove to be the most far-reaching. For the first time since 1865 the states – this time the Northeastern and Western states – face a crisis which sends them to oppose Constitutional convention and possibly Constitutional law to make their own way in the world. We are seeing the beginning of a new regionally-based citizenship. Perhaps we are seeing the end of federalism. Does California still need a federal government? Does New England?

In the case of California, the question should be can California survive a federal government? Ask yourself, if you were an internal country with its own unique culture and with an economy the size of France and an outside force kept reaching in to take your kids from your family and press them into military service (or national service); if it’s shamanic economic theories and actions virtually killed your housing market and sent a recovering but healthy state economy deep into debt; if its head-in-the-sand environmental policies formed and fulfilled by oil and auto lobbyists and a very few Texas oil families in cahoots with Saudi princes turned the bottom part of your state into an uninhabitable fire and dust zone, annually causing death now going into the hundreds and into the thousands, at one point you would have to ask yourself, what are my options?

At the beginning of the war on Iraq I wrote here that the country, state by state and region by region, had one choice and that choice was: Do we want to join the rest of the world; a world we created in law and in outlook since Yalta, or do we want to join the Crawford Ranch? We face the same question today.

In California, attitudes reached consensus in the second election of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger when he won the most liberal precincts in San Francisco and some of the most conservative in the state. In a landmark speech a few months back Schwarzenegger showed commitment we have not seen in our national people in his efforts to bring a cleaner environment to California. It was a prescient moment in which he said that green business and a thoughtful approach to the world around us would be the way of the future and everyone will get on board, all but “the last penguin” floating off by itself on a tiny scrap of iceberg.

It was a good metaphor; we live in a moment when animal familiars are all the rage, in movies like The Golden Compass. Surely the penguin is the totem animal for an entire generation; a horde, uniform in mind and stripe, walking together into the sunset without the political will or individual character to take the actions that need to be taken. And substituting instead the switching off of an occasion light switch or conspicuously wearing a sweater around the office. The sweater was the new initiative at Bali – I expect to see Bush the Little wearing one soon. These are denial initiatives; they remove the individual from responsibility by creating the personal illusion of “doing something.” But they are at least prelude to an environment of real action in the next generation (the non-penguin or “anti-penguin” generation), which is the new one rising.

One of Governor Schwarzenegger’s initiatives is a “hydrogen highway,” a pioneering set of way stations leading up from southern California to Sacramento north to Vancouver, so that hydrogen-fueled cars, which emit no harmful waste and can be fueled by power generated from algae farms or nuclear plants, can be driven the length. Here in the Northeast the initiative exists to continue the path from this end, much as the railroad was started at both ends and united at the middle two centuries back. It would begin in Montpelier, VT, and on to Burlington. And Quebec and the Canadian provinces in between also have the political will to post stations around Montreal and across the TransCanada highway, linking up with the California initiative in Vancouver.

So what stops this? It is the god which the visionary Aldous Huxley called Ford. Like most, it is a god with a dual nature; Ford and General Motors and as it was said at the beginning, “as goes General Motors, so goes the country.” Which has an ominous ring today.

Like so many of that century with their horde waves of futurism, fascism, communism, consumerism, deconstructivism and reconstructivism, it is a god that failed.

The tailpipe standards California adopted in 2004 oppose the car lobby and the Bush oil family and its adjutant, Dick Cheney, the Dark Penguin. It would force automakers to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent by 2016. But under the Clean Air Act, CA needs a federal waiver to implement.

Note the language: Clean Air Act; a federal program committed to keeping the air dirty. It is the fate of all Twins that they look like, no matter how different they are. This is the language of the U.S.S.R. in the old Politburo days and the sound and syllogism which the Dark Penguin speaks today; the language that Huxley's lightly totalitarianated hordes - people without places marinated exclusively in their generational culture and with tiny telephones the size of roaches dangling from their ears, willfully on the path of Prozac and public radio - listen in. And if penguins could speak, it would be their language as well. Likewise, when the EPA rejected the advanced standards brought forth by Schwarzenegger, as in the Soviet tradition, it set up its own program; a program which brought forth actually laughter and booing at the recent climate conference in Bali.

But Arnold is not alone. 12 other states – most in the Northeast but a few in the Southwest and Pacific Northwest – are on board with him. And so is Canada and so is Europe and much of Asia and most of the world. All of those other states are now prevented from going forward by the feds.

The question for them – for us – is as it was at the beginning of the war on Iraq; do we want to join Boy George at the Crawford Ranch or do we want to join the world? But today the circumstances are different and so is the country: today we go forward with Arnold.

Bloomberg, McCain, Schwarzenegger: Waiting for Arnold, Part Four

By Bernie Quigley for The Free Market News Network on 12/19/07

Speculation is high this week that Mike Bloomberg, Mayor of New York, will announce that he will run for President as a third party candidate. David A. Andelman, who worked for Bloomberg, wrote this week in Forbes.com that this time it is for real.

“Folks close to New York City's twice-elected mayor suggest that he's made up his mind to end one of the city's long-running rumors and become an Independent candidate for President,” writes Andelman.

He says he will announce shortly after Feb. 5, directly after Super Tuesday when he would have a pretty good idea of just who would be lining up against his third-party, self-financed billion-dollar campaign. Bloomberg has said that he would put two billion into his campaign.

Who would Bloomberg chose for his Vice President? Quite possibly John McCain.

From the beginning of these rumors which started two years ago, Bloomberg’s gamble can be viewed as playing between two characters: Hillary Clinton and John McCain. First speculation was that Bloomberg would run if party politics became polarized between Senator Clinton on the one hand and George Allen, former Senator of Virginia, slightly to the right of Genghis Khan, on the other. When Allen fell to Jim Webb in ‘06, Bloomberg held on, waiting to see if mischief would develop along the path to ‘08.

And mischief it is, in local and national races. Mischief here, mischief there, mischief everywhere. The Land of the Free in our time is being offered professional wrestlers, TV actors, Appalachian preachers, stand up comedians, strippers, favorite sons and their cousins, aunties, wives and secretaries.

The political commercial that Chuck Norris has done with Mike Huckabee is a hoot. Huckabee is now leading in Iowa and in parts of the South. But this is President of the United States. Huckabee’s article in Foreign Affairs this month may bring to the action and passion of war in Iraq the native sweetness of the Bible Belt man of faith, but the prognostication is in some ways more extreme than any yet conceived even by the Yankee-reared, pseudo-Texan today in the White House. It delivers a sensory feeling which might be called Fascism with a Christian face. If we want out-right fascism, we should go with Rudy. And we might.

Thus, Bloomberg. Hillary is in, and the quiet voices in the parlor long said that if Hillary got the nomination, Bloomberg would consider. And now McCain is out; sent away by the voters in Iowa as straight and narrow as corn rows, and the South as well, where Huckabee’s rustic charm, Bible quotin’ and guitar strummin’ is taking the day.

Bloomberg is passionate about Israel and there is some dark and complex speculation that he is entering the race to pull the Jewish vote from the Democrats as Hillary or Obama cannot be trusted to stay the current course or design a suitable new one. A liberal on social issues and more actual New Yorker than the Clintons, Bloomberg would pull votes from the Clinton nostalgicos in effect, pushing the electorate to a Republican victory, most likely Giuliani. Said speculation claims that Bloomberg can’t win but he can throw the election to the Republicans and can stay the course for Israel.

However, his personal history says that if he can’t win, he won’t run. And his views on Israel are more real world and accommodating than those of the neocons. And passionate he may be, but not beholding. Bloomberg is a New England Jew raised at a time when New England was tribal, as in the movie Miller’s Crossing. It all ended quickly in the early Sixties, but just prior to that Irish Catholics, Jews and other ethnic groups all interacted more or less within their own kith and kin. It might have been a time when everyone knew their place, but everyone had a place. And Yankee fair play with its humane good sense and Constitutional bearings had a place as well. It did not so much conflict as enhance. Irish Catholics may have married within their parish. We ate fish on Friday, but on Saturday it was beans, the ritual practice of the Yankee tradition. It was a day that had its flaws and problems but torture was not one of them. Bloomberg will make his announcement shortly after a likely New England win at the Super Bowl in an era of renaissance of many things New England.

And by entering in February, Bloomberg will not have been diminished, dominated, territorialized, shaped and formed by Sister Mary Wolf Blitzer and chorus and the very, very few who package and crate the candidates, even flaunting press dominance and candidates submission by asking them to “raise their hands” like school children. In this he stands alone, above the other candidates, above the press and above the Iowa horde which shifts its shape like amber waves of grain. Among the mainstream candidates the most telling moment in the debates was John McCain’s amazement that the other candidates – Ron Paul aside – see nothing wrong with torture in its current use. Our local paper here in the mountains of New Hampshire has made the point in an editorial that any candidate which advocates torture should be discarded out of hand. That speaks to the New Englander in us; Jew, Irish or White Glove Unitarian. Bloomberg’s choice of McCain for VP would retrieve that lost honor.

It should be remembered that it was Bloomberg who put the cash behind Joe Lieberman in his contentious reelection bid against Ned Lamont. And as coincidence would have it, Lieberman just this week endorsed John McCain.

There is, they say, no such thing as a coincidence. So there could be something behind it that this week, when Adam Lisberg of The New York Daily News interviewed Bloomberg, there was a lot of good talk about John McCain.

Elizabeth Benajmin of the DN reports: “Asked for his thoughts on the party-line-crossing endorsement of John McCain by Sen. Joe Lieberman (whom Bloomberg himself crossed party lines to endorse last year back when the mayor was a Republican and Lieberman had lost the Democratic primary), Bloomberg called the development ‘healthy,’ adding:

‘Number one, in all fairness and disclosure, (McCain) campaigned for me. Somebody introduced us before ‘01, and we were just casual friends. And then when I started to run for office, he came up and we walked the streets of Brooklyn. So, I can say nothing but good things about John McCain for that reason.’

John McCain can become here Bloomberg’s Gray Champion, and if the Republicans prefer the Singin’ Preacher or the Mormon who assures us he loves Jesus good as Johnny Cash, although the rituals these guys propose suggest the Spanish Inquisition, Bloomberg will take him as Vice President.

Bloomberg’s third party move is a gamble he is unlikely to take unless there is a good chance of success. And it could in fact resemble more the corporate takeover of a Republican Party fallen into poor management practices which have undervalued its stock more than a random third party run like Ross Perot’s; a buy out and a shake up, putting new management at the top and leaving the rest to dangle.

That new top management would indeed include Mayor Mike’s best bud, the Governator of California. Lisberg asked about his friendship with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bloomberg replied:

“Number one, I had dinner with him on Saturday night. And number two, he couldn’t be vice president. The Constitution is clear. You have to be able to be president to be vice president. I don’t know where that story came from, but the law would not allow it. Incidentally, he’s a great guy. He’d make a great vice president…This guy’s a substantive guy who really is serious about governing, and I think California - he’s going to be term-limited out - California’s going to miss him, because he really has made a difference in his term in his office. But Saturday night’s the answer to your question, and I had steak a la stone.”

No, Arnold would be Secretary of State in a Bloomberg Triumvirate. And as VP, McCain would be too old to follow in Bloomberg’s footsteps as POTUS. But a Bloomberg Presidency as successful as Reagan’s or Eisenhower’s – and we are at such a turning; and Bloomberg has the abilities - would give him and Arnold the real possibility of changing the Constitution so foreign-born Arnold could follow in the Presidency by ’12 or ’16, giving the Bloomberg/McCain/Arnold Triumvirate a 16-year run of governance.

We are today in a state of management crisis that finds a parallel in the mid-1800s and the fall of the Whigs. Today, a successful Bloomberg Presidency could well put one of the two existing political parties out of business for good. My guess is that it would be the Democrats who have descended into a Northeastern Clinton Personality Cult and have failed to address the needs of the South, the Southwest and the Midwest as population and economy have shifted to those parts.

The Democrats had in any case lost their purpose when the country lost its proletariat and working class to a varied economy; when ethnic Democrats moved to Reagan and when the Democrats went Lace Curtain and married Wall St. with the Clintons. The Republicans as well lost their way when the talisman of the English-speaking tradition, habeas corpus, was traded in for the Bible and the waterboard.

Ron Paul has opened a new path for the Republicans. Or better, Paul has articulated and clarified a direction the Republicans had only been slouching toward these past 20 years. The Paul phenomenon is certainly the most important new awakening of this Presidential cycle thus far. It will have long-reaching consequences.

Ron Paul could bring in one path. Bloomberg another. And for the Clintons, Hasta La vista, baby.

But would Arnold want the job as one of Bloomberg’s Three Celestial Ones?

I am now from 25 to 30 percent that Arnold, frustrated with a convention-bound American system which seems immune to creativity and rewards incompetence, will look back to Austria where he still has the option of being chief. I used to joke with a German friend that when the euro awakens it will really be a deutschmark. France and Germany are binary parts - the core center of a New Europe; Sarcozy, it should be noted, has Prussian gentry lines and has crossed those lines to marry France with Germany; the euro has pulled 35% from the dollar in its six years of life and the Pope (Latin Mass! Old School!) is a Bavarian. If Arnold went back to Austria today he would bring a mythical dimension to New Europe and the EU and Austria would be its center.

But the other 70% says no. Arnold is as American as apple pie, Glock 9s and hydrogen cars. And in our time and in his way, perhaps no other speaks better to the essence of the American condition. If Bloomberg brings him along, he will go.

New England Should Claim Regional Identity

By Bernie Quigley for The Free Market News Network on 12/11/07

We have come to a crisis in the United States. Habeas corpus, key to the evolution of the English-speaking people since the 12^th century, has been randomly discarded without raising an eyebrow. Waterboarding, a torture technique refined in Nazi Germany, is all in a day’s work and the Washington Post revealed last week that key Democrats, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, were fully briefed on waterboarding as early as 2002 and registered no protest. And General Abizaid’s assessment that the objectives in the Middle East will require “ . . . 50 years of war,” raised no objection either from an accommodating Congress or from the passive multitudes.

I believe that this crisis has come about because Alexander Hamilton’s vision of federalism has reached its outer limits. Hamilton and Washington believed in a single strong central government and weak states and regions. This may well have been the correct path when the western regions were still in wilderness and while the Northeast dominated the political agenda after 1865. But demographics have changed the political landscape.

The rise of the Religious Right is an organic consequence of changing demographics. Influence in our country has shifted from the New York and Boston regions to the South, Texas, the Southwest and Midwestern states because economy and population have moved there continually since the end of WW II. Naturally, when the South became economically and politically integrated into the world economy and began to gain influence on the national agenda, Southern people would demand that their own values be expressed in their own cultural idiom. And as it has been since the earliest days, these values would be in opposition to those of the Northern regions, particularly those of New England. This, writes the great Southern historian Frank Owsley, has been the “irrepressible conflict” in American destiny long preceding the Civil War.

In Vermont today we see signs which say, “U.S. out of Vermont.” And for the first time since 1812, there are fledgling secession movements in Vermont and New Hampshire.

Secession is not a practical solution. But here in New England today we have to face the fact that we can no longer impose our values on the rest of the United States, particularly the South, the Southwest and a good part of the Midwest. Hamilton’s direction is yielding to demographics, and Jefferson’s vision of unique states and regions and peoples, loosely connecting the one to the other, growing over time, rich in character and each with its own identity and personality is ascending.

New England was in any case Jeffersonian before 1865 as were our earliest poets and visionaries. We were closer to nature and perhaps closer to each other than our “Hamiltonian” neighbors in New York and in the more industrialized regions. I believe we still are Jeffersonian and I believe with Jefferson that the only sure defense against a wayward and unpredictable federal government is strong states and strong regions.

In order to retain our New England character and culture we must return to Jefferson’s vision. But we should return to Jefferson by increment; without causing chaos or disorder. “One size fits all federalism” (a phrase first used here at The Free Market News Network, now used by Romney) was the right path in terms of economy and culture when the western regions were empty spaces. But today, a regional approach to government would be far more effective on issues of work, poverty, economy and environment.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in California, Governor Jodi Rell of Connecticut and Mike Bloomberg of New York have all recently taken the Jeffersonian approach in opposition to the federal government on issues of environment and gun control. Gov. Schwarzenegger in particular has brought a direct challenge to the federal government, signing climate treaties between California and British Columbia and England in direct opposition to federalist custom and lore since 1865.

This is the natural next step in our American journey.

Op-ed to the Boston Globe, 12/1/07

New England Should Seek Greater Autonomy on National Issues

By Bernie Quigley on 12/11/07

At the beginning of the war on Iraq two writers and a college professor from the three northernmost New England states proposed that under Jefferson’s view of the Constitution, the New England states need not participate. To our surprise, George Kennan, possibly our most important ambassador since Franklin, heartily endorsed this idea. We also suggested that if the U.S. no longer wanted to be part of the UN, then the New England states should send their own representative to the UN. John Kenneth Galbraith, still at his desk at Harvard at 94 in 2002, thought this idea “ . . . wonderfully to the good.”

We have come to a crisis in the United States. Habeas corpus, key to the evolution of the English-speaking people since the 12^th century, has been randomly discarded without raising an eyebrow. Waterboarding, a torture technique refined in Nazi Germany, is all in a day’s work and the Washington Post revealed last week that key Democrats, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, were fully briefed on waterboarding as early as 2002 and registered no protest. And General Abizaid’s assessment that the objectives in the Middle East will require “ . . . 50 years of war,” raised no objection either from an accommodating Congress or from the passive multitudes.

I believe that this crisis has come about because Alexander Hamilton’s vision of federalism has reached its outer limits. Hamilton and Washington believed in a single strong central government and weak states and regions. This may well have been the correct path when the western regions were still in wilderness and while the Northeast dominated the political agenda after 1865. But demographics have changed the political landscape.

As a result of these new demographics, we in New England can no longer dictate to the rest of the country and today we are being forced to live under the political influence of the heartland religionists and their “faith-based” politics. Increasingly, Boston and New York no longer control the conversation. Texas does.

The rise of the Religious Right is an organic consequence of changing demographics. Influence in our country has shifted from the New York and Boston regions to the South, Texas, the Southwest and Midwestern states because economy and population have moved there continually since the end of WW II. Naturally, when the South became economically and politically integrated into the world economy and began to gain influence on the national agenda, Southern people would demand that their own values be expressed in their own cultural idiom. And as it has been since the earliest days, these values would be in opposition to those of the Northern regions, particularly those of New England. This, writes the great Southern historian Frank Owsley, has been the “Irrepressible Conflict” in American destiny long preceding the Civil War.

It should be noted that in the variety of religious forums and “value forums” sponsored recently by the Religious Right, only John McCain and Ron Paul have explicitly opposed torture. This in no way speaks to New England and New England’s values.

In Vermont today we see signs which say, “U.S. out of Vermont.” And for the first time since 1812, there are fledgling secession movements in Vermont and New Hampshire.

Secession is not the answer. But New England today has to face the fact that we can no longer impose our values on the rest of the United States, particularly the South, the Southwest and a good part of the Midwest. Hamilton’s direction is yielding to demographics, and Jefferson’s vision of unique states and regions and peoples, loosely connecting the one to the other, growing over time, rich in character and each with its own identity and personality is ascending.

New England was in any case Jeffersonian before 1865 as were our earliest poets and visionaries. We were closer to nature and perhaps closer to each other than our “Hamiltonian” neighbors in New York and in the more industrialized regions. I believe we still are Jeffersonian and I believe with Jefferson that the only sure defense against a wayward and unpredictable federal government is strong states and strong regions.

In order to retain our New England character and culture we must return to Jefferson’s vision. But we should return to Jefferson by increment; without causing chaos or disorder. “One size fits all federalism” (my phrase, now used by Romney) was the right path in terms of economy and culture when the western regions were empty spaces. But today, a regional approach to government would be far more effective on issues of work, poverty, economy and environment.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in California, Governor Jodi Rell of Connecticut and Mike Bloomberg of New York have all recently taken the Jeffersonian approach in opposition to the federal government on issues of environment and gun control. Gov. Schwarzenegger in particular has brought a direct challenge to the federal government, signing climate treaties between California and British Columbia and England in direct opposition to federalist custom and lore since 1865.

This is the natural next step in our American journey.

On the Death of John Lennon

By Bernie Quigley 12/8/07 for The Free Market News Network

John Lennon was gunned down and killed 27 years ago today in New York City. Perhaps the gods take the Great Ones young so they don't end up playing Super Bowls and Bar Mitzvahs and political rallies when their immortal and timeless moment passes and the constellation dissipates.

The anniversary of his death goes largely unnoticed in the press. I think this is probably good at the moment because we live in the hour of the weakling and the wolf; the wolf enabled by the weakling - all original spirits are sent into exile in times like this or leave at their own accord - much as the wave element of matter collapses when it is being watched. (Note on The Way of the Weakling: WaPost reveals today that key Democrats, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, were fully briefed on waterboarding as early as 2002 and registered no objections. The Post advises that this torture strategy was refined in Nazi Germany. It should also be noted that the rise of fascism in Germany and Italy was fully dependent on the weakling and appeasing liberal cultural of the German and Italian middle class.)

When Lennon is remembered at all today it is as an anti-war figure but that is the way of the weakling as well. Not that Lennon was weak; he never was. But this is the way the artist is appropriated for vain political or nihilistic objectives and there was never a trace of nihilism in Lennon’s life and work. (In the Rolling Stones, perhaps, those suburban titty-bar musicians and Friends of Bill who followed in his shadow as the great ones all carry shadows and tails.)

In 1969, at the peak of the war in Vietnam, John Lennon was the most important man in the world. But that was in the twilight of his arc of creativity. The high point of his life and work was several years before when he used the expression “I am he,” at the beginning of one of his most important and entertaining songs at the height of the hippie days. Lennon was, in his time, a generational shaman. He awakened his own generation between childhood and adulthood. But today he resonates in the world as a pure force all of his own.

Had there been no John Lennon then there would perhaps be no Dalai Lama now, for in his journey to the East in his life and work he took half the world with him and he took the chill and fright and mystery and fear out of the things of the East. Nor would that Aquarian talisman, the Golden Compass, have been found yet. Possibly there would not have come that later pre-Calvin earth shaman, Harry Potter.

“I am he,” is an expression widely understood in the East – it is in a sense the essence of the East. The classic explanation in the Hindu is that a person alone in the world at some point finds an enlightenment within herself or himself; a celestial inner god, the Atman. And if that person continues on the path, which in the East would be considered the Path of God, then at the top of the mountain she or he might find wholeness with all the others and wholeness with the universe. For the first the journeyer could think and say, “I am the Atman.” Then at the peak s/he would say, “I am the Brahman.” Lennon played on these phrases in classical Liverpool humor. He followed the Hindu phrase I am he (I am no longer who I was when I started, but I have become something else which is within him and the others and everyone, everything, everywhere . . .) not with “I am the Atman, I am the Brahman,” but instead with: I am the Eggman, I am the Walrus.

Listening to Senators, Governors, Presidents and outright louts and war criminals these past few years and this week again talk about their religious “convictions” – these men of faith and religious burghers who joyfully in the name of the Prince of Peace endorse torture, “50 more years of war,” and barbaric practices unheard of among the English-speaking people since the 12^th century, I began to think of how entirely screwed I would feel today if I was a young man and just beginning on life's journey, hearing these speeches given in the Manhattan penthouses of Wall St. financiers and their lobbyists and ex-Presidents and in the parlors of Texas oil men.

And what a joy and a pleasure it was to hear instead these charmed and encouraging words by John Lennon, when I was a young man, even hearing them for the first time in a war zone in Asia.

Lennon’s swan song, Imagine, reflects timeless Buddhist sentiment like that presented in What the Buddha Taught by Walpola Rahula, which had gained popularity in the Sixties. It is likely an intentional reconstruction of Tolstoyan philosophy which was deeply influenced by Buddhism and Taoism.

Imagine also bears a relationship to The Gospel of Thomas, which he quoted from in earlier music ("When the inside is out . . . the outside is in . . ."). Elaine Pagel's book Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas, states that in Thomas’s account, Jesus challenges those who mistake the kingdom of God for an otherworldly place or a future event: Jesus said, "If those who lead you say to you, Look, the kingdom is in the sky,’ then the birds of the sky will get there before you . . ." In a word, Imagine there’s no heaven.

William Butler Yeats writes: "What portion in the world can the artist have/Who has awakened from the common dream/But dissipation and despair?" Such was the lot of John Lennon.

Late in life, broken and in pain, Lennon wrote, "I was the Walrus, but now I’m John."

One of his biographers writes that he was never happy again after the Sgt. Peppers period. The pictures show it. He never smiled again for the camera after he returned from India.