Category Archives: History and Politics

The Corporate State

I have been fond, in an involuntary, Tourretic kind of way, of stating that the Nazis won World War Two.    There is a convincing argument to be made, the Nazis were, after all, on the forefront of many of the innovations now routinely used by those who rule the world today.   I would back this up in a scholarly paper, if there was time, if there wasn’t so much else to do.   (Similarly, there’s a scholarly paper on the shameful history of not only American slavery, and genocide, but the more than century long continuation of these things, under different names, during a reign of violence and mayhem slyly winked at by the Supreme Court.)

Please stop me if I told you this already.    Adolf Hitler, one of the most famous mad men in history, wrote a seldom read (but often purchased) manifesto called My Seven Year Struggle Against the Lying Race Poisoning Traitor Jews and Acchhhh! the Burning Slaver on my Rabid Dog Tongue! Fuck You, I’ll Kill you all, You Fucking Niggers… shortened, by a savvy editor, to “My Struggle” or Mein Kampf.

I tried to read it once.  Each sentence is a page long, with the verb at the very end.  Some sentences are longer and more convoluted.  If a dog with rabies could dictate its thoughts to an idiot with pen in hand (a loyal believer named Rudolf Hess, imprisoned with the future Fuhrer in Landsberg Prison after an unsuccessful putsch in 1923), the book that it produced might be Mein Kampf.  Hitler is reputed to have written a short crystal clear primer on propaganda, included in Mein Kampf, and I began combing through the lice and maggot infested prose to find it.

Et, voila.  The Fuhrer wipes the foam off his lips, takes a breath, and proceeds, in ten or fifteen cogent pages, to tell exactly how it should be done.   Frighten people, appeal to their desire to be protected, tell whatever lies are needed to make them hate, enrage them, focus their rage on enemies they can then be sent to destroy.   His right hand in propaganda, Josef Goebbels, Reich Minister of  Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, was very much down with the program, and an innovator in his own right.

First thing: control every organ of mass media.  Newspapers, radio, film, literature, theatre, put a Nazi sympathizer in  control every where, to root out all non-Nazis.

Second thing:  repeat the bullshit over and over and over.  Where there is no other voice, your explanations, no matter how lame or demonstrably false, will generally carry the day.

Third thing:  find and root out anyone who does not buy the stinking tissue of lies you are selling.  Take these people and make grotesque examples of them.  Nothing like a little dramatic public violence against them to get the attention of other would-be heroes.

I know, you are thinking it is a big, simplistic leap from a group of madmen with a murderous agenda to the super-wealthy leaders of our modern global corporate world.  Certainly the leaders of the oil industry, the financial sector, the global corporations that drive the world economy are not comparable to Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler, Goring.  Certainly.  Only a hyperperbolist would compare Dick Cheney, let’s say, to Hermann Goring.  If thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, are killed and millions displaced violently advancing the goals of corporations, it’s not as if they PLANNED to murder all these people or did it deliberately.  Big difference, no?

But here’s the thing:  you have a society that values only one thing, they call it “free enterprise” or the “free market”.  The only thing free about it is the freedom of those on top to keep most of the profit it produces.  So instead of a vision of a pure world polluted by those who must be destroyed– Jews, Communists, Freemasons, Homosexuals, Gypsies, People named Dave, you have a vision of a world of abundant but limited resources where the few are entitled to own everything they can acquire, and it is nobody’s problem if most of the world is dispossessed, if children die of hunger, if preventable disease kills millions, if the world itself is destroyed by pollution.

What does the mass media show?  When it presents the issue at all — freedom vs. tyranny and our American Exceptionalism.    Our mass media features distraction, stylized zero-sum competition and advertisements.  The news features stories that excite passion and resist reasonable discussion.    Every view, no matter how idiotic, is presented as being of equal value, thus real debate is stymied in the name of an absurd version of “fairness.”  And then, in case you are actually thinking about any of this,  a loud, attention grabbing word from our sponsor.  While you are watching one show there is an animated crawl on the bottom of the screen, an ad for another show you should watch, but there is no time to squeeze it in with paid advertising, so you cram it into the bottom of the show other sponsors are already paying for.  Lack of campaign finance laws?  No problem, political ads are a boon to television stations that are supposed to serve a public interest function for the privilege of having a broadcast license.  A quaint notion nobody gets excited about any more.  There’s too much money to be made!!!

What happens to those insiders who, at great personal risk, expose the details of and decry the unjust, illegal state of things?  These are no longer considered whistle blowers performing a valuable service to democracy.   We try them as traitors under a 1917 statute created to smash dissent as Woodrow Wilson was gearing up for America’s entry into World War One.  A statute that carries the death penalty.   Nothing gets the attention, or chills the blood, like the possibility that if you lose in court, you will be killed by the state.

I believe it was Dr. Goebbels who stated that the man of the future would be the ‘corporate man.’   A kid in the animation workshop, seeing a picture of Woody Guthrie playing a guitar with the words “This Machine Kills Fascists” painted across it, asked me what a fascist was.   “A facist is someone who wants to control everything that you do,” I told him.  I think that’s right.  Fascists know Best, as the sitcom of the fifties made clear.

I am clearly in a foul mood, otherwise why would I be sputtering this way?   Still, there is something to ponder in this:  we are living in a corporate state with all that entails.   President Obama has said from the beginning that it will require millions pushing him to enact any kind of progressive agenda.  What he didn’t say, because he is a smart man and a skilled politician, is that it will require many, many millions to push back against the prerogatives and privileges of those very wealthy persons and entities who funded his insanely expensive election campaigns.  How much say does your $20 contribution buy, compared to a plate that cost someone $5,000?

As every citizen of a corporate state knows: you get what you pay for.  Sometimes.

We Get the Government We Deserve

Democracy, when it’s bought and paid for by very wealthy people and corporations, does not concern itself with the trifles faced by isolated individuals.  It rightfully concerns itself with taking care of the customer, who is always right.

For example, if you are an individual with newly diagnosed hypertension, and have a follow-up appointment with your long-time doctor scheduled for January, you should not worry that he is not on any of the new insurance plans offered by Obamacare.  After all, you can drop dead of a heart attack, or have a stroke, any time and with or without a doctor’s supervision.

None of my long-time doctors seem to be participating in any of the insurance programs being offered on the NY State Health Exchange.  So I could enroll and pay for insurance today, and look for new doctors in the next few weeks.  Or I could not sign up today and just pay the fee of my long-time doctor for a visit in January.

The NY Times reported today that the deadline for enrolling in a health insurance plan has been quietly extended by 24 hours, in light of how screwed up the enrollment process is, how poor the buggy $600,000,000 website still is.  Of course, the government did not announce this extension officially, since they don’t want people to wait for the new last moment to crash the website.  One notes (though the NY Times did not)  that the NY State of Health website was shut down last night at midnight, until 8 a.m. this morning, for “routine maintenance”.

There is no doubt that Barack Obama is a brilliant man and a skilled self-promoter.  He ran two winning national ad campaigns:  YES WE CAN (you’ll find out who WE is)  and CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN (if you’re gullible and/or desperate).  A black friend snorted when I reflected on the man’s seeming lack of discernible moral or political convictions– “who did you expect the first black president to be?  Malcolm X?” and she laughed a bitter little laugh.  

Plus, it must be admitted, the man has, through no fault of his own, stirred up an unprecedented degree of violent opposition just by being a black man in a nation built by black slaves.  The unexpurgated “n-word” is still in wide use, and very often in the air when opponents speak of Mr. Obama.

So, maybe I should not be so harsh on the president, even though he lied when he said “if you like the health care you have, you can keep it.”  After all, when pressed, he apologized for lying– doesn’t that make it much better?  How often does any politician or person in power actually apologize?  It takes a big person to admit he lied, does it not?

In fact, I’m sorry now that I am not more grateful for the great job our Nobel Peace Laureate President is doing (murder of civilians and widespread PTSD from drones notwithstanding).  Just wish I could make an appointment to see my doctor, after seven years of paying up to 25% of my income for health insurance that no longer is offered.

I hate to agree with the haters

OK, admittedly, this country is a little bit messed up when it comes to health care.  Health benefits for most Americans are tied to their employment, ideally, unless your employer is big enough, or small enough, to avoid paying into it.  Employees of Walmart, America’s largest retail employer, qualify for Medicaid.  Is this a great country, or what?

But it’s beyond that, Americans pay by far the highest price for health care with very mediocre health outcomes.  45,000 Americans die every year of treatable conditions undiagnosed until the ER docs tighten their lips, shake their heads.  Millions of Americans with preventable diseases are treated at a cost of billions of dollars a year, 75% of US Health Care costs go to treating complications of obesity, gluttony, poverty, stupidity.   Insurance companies don’t like to pay for preventative care, why would they?

Many believe that the gigantic federal government is the problem. Forget the many problems the federal government has historically solved, like a century of lynching of blacks in the former Confederacy.   Like the terror of a penniless old age, solved by Social Security, medical bankruptcies for old people ended by Medicare.

And yet the wealthiest and greediest continue to beat the drums that tax is evil and the government is the enemy of the people, a libidinous rapist poised to have its way with good, honest, God-fearing, dumber than shit Americans.   Air pollution?  A lie.  Man’s contribution to global warming?  Commie twaddle by disloyal Americans who hate our freedom.  The Affordable Care Act?  The most destructive legislation in U.S. History, we are told over and over, without elaboration.   The facts speak for themselves, after all.  Say them often, and loudly, enough and they start to sink in.

The president was elected after a brilliant advertising campaign financed by tens of millions given to him by people like those who hired the drafters of the Affordable Care Act.  The woman who was the prime author of the ACA left government to return to a multimillion dollar job in the health insurance industry.  Change you can believe in.  The most transparent administration in history was promised, but whistle blowers and journalists were prosecuted under the 1917 Espionage Act.   Nobel Peace Prize for our articulate president, even while he authorized collateral damage killing of children and other mourners at funerals.  Obamacare was met with much fretting — but don’t worry, if you like your insurance you can keep it.  Unless your insurance carrier sends you a letter terminating your insurance effective 12.31.13.  In that case you go to the website, which NPR tells you is now, after a disastrous roll-out,  working perfectly.   There you will see this (and don’t bother calling that number, it’s a robot):Image

Bigfooted By A Billionaire

Imagine getting to sit down with a magnate in your field, someone who can open any door, introduce you to the people you need to meet.   A man who loves ideas tells you he likes your idea very much and wants to help.  Only trouble is, there’s a stretch limo waiting for him downstairs, you may have seen it on your way in.   It was sent for him by his former intern, now, at age 26, about to become a very, very wealthy man.  Touching that the kid would send the limo for his old mentor, he was a teenager when he worked for the magnate for free.  A brilliant kid, a great kid.  Anyway, not to waste time– and I promise you a full meeting at a later date– but in four minutes or so, fill me in.

So you fill him in.  And as it’s your idea, and you know every detail of it intimately, and you’re a bright kid yourself, you are able to bring it to life to this guy who loves a great idea.  His eyes shine like the eyes of a kid in a candy store as you talk.  He asks an intelligent question, you give a snappy, succinct answer.  A few laughs are laughed.  It is with regret he stands, on the fourth intrusion by his secretary, and shakes your hand. “We’ll do the full meeting soon,” he says with warmth, and then is on his way down to the limo.

You later read about the sale, it’s all over the news.  The young man, David Karp, 26, has sold Tumblr for 1.1 billion dollars. Sitting next to him on the dais, the man you were just talking to.  It’s an amazing world.  

But that all happened in April, why are you thinking about it now?

Dialogue is, sadly, not always possible

I got the following email, from an old friend who has become decidedly right-leaning since 9/11, with this subject line:

Increasing Clouds and hunderstorms for Climate Alarmists, by Paul Driessen from Townhall

Excerpt:  “In short, our Earth’s climate may well changing, as it has repeatedly throughout history. But the changes are natural, and they are thus far hardly catastrophic – nothing like the wooly mammoth ice ages or Little Ice Age, and little different from any of the 20th century. Moreover, the changes are natural in origin. They are not due to humans, and they are not occurring in ways the alarmists and their models predicted

We truly need hydrocarbon energy: to lift more people out of poverty, maintain our living standards, and ensure the wealth and technology to adapt to any climate changes that nature may visit upon us (with or without some contribution from human carbon dioxide). Climate alarmism undermines all of this.”  

http://townhall.com/columnists/pauldriessen/2013/10/20/increasing-clouds-and-thunderstorms-for-climate-alarmists-n1728001/page/full

And, because we’d agreed many times, as recently as last week, to avoid partisan political discourse, I wrote back with this bark of anguish:

Don’t send me this kind of thing, OK?  The visible and toxic shroud of man-made pollution over much of the world has nothing to do with climate, fine, let’s pretend we agree the only problem here is those goddamned agitating, lying commies who want to end capitalism.
 
Her reply:
Jeez Eliot, I sent you a scholarly piece which showed how more and more scientists are coming together (across the previous divide)!
My reply:
“Climate Alarmists” is a term developed by the fossil fuel industry and their public relations machine to dismiss the science behind human activity’s role in global warming (there was an excellent Frontline piece on this branding of “alarmists” a couple of years ago).  The term is deliberately dismissive, these scientists are hysterical, alarmists.   It would be like me sending you a scholarly article from Al Gore headlined “sun sets on climate change deniers”, no matter how scholarly the article might be.
 
Oh darn, in popping on to google to get the link to the Frontline piece, I had to scroll through a full screen of posts debunking the “hooey” — by those who believe Global Warming to be a commie hoax– of Frontline’s ham-fisted hatchet job on Climate Change Skeptics.  
Note–  alarmists vs. skeptics. Who are you going to believe?   We are not deniers, dear, we’re simply informed skeptics seeking to allay the damage done by biased alarmists with a political agenda.  
Sheesh.

It’s not about the interest rate comfortable people pay

It’s one thing to nonchalantly pay your 3.85% mortgage on something that you live in, a comfortable home that appreciates in value, is an asset you can eventually sell to recoup your investment, if not also a profit.

It’s another thing entirely to pay mortgage interest four times what the banks are paying, on a house you will never live in, a house full of vermin and every kind of expensive vexation, a house of plague you avoid.  And the repayment amount exceeds your combined income for a decade.

But I’m not here to whine about interest rates on unwisely taken student loans.  There is more important business, like getting you to reading this again, with focus and attention.  To imbibe its truth, and to taste the truth of it, and to think on it a moment.

WENDELL BERRY:  But that’s the problem we’re in to start with, we’ve tried to impose the answers.

The answers will come not from walking up to your farm and saying this is what I want and this is what I expect from you.

You walk up and you say what do you need. And you commit yourself to say all right, I’m not going to do any extensive damage here until I know what it is that you are asking of me.

And this can’t be hurried.  This is the dreadful situation that young people are in.

I think of them and I say well, the situation you’re in now is a situation that’s going to call for a lot of patience.

And to be patient in an emergency is a terrible trial.

source: http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-wendell-berry-poet-prophet/

And To Be Patient in An Emergency is A Terrible Trial

BILL MOYERS: When did you know you were free? And I ask that because of the poem you wrote, “The Peace of Wild Things.”

WENDELL BERRY: You’re free when you realize that you’re willing to go to the length that’s necessary.

BILL MOYERS: Then read your own poem.

WENDELL BERRY: This….this was a long time ago. “The Peace of Wild Things.”

When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world and am free.

BILL MOYERS: The grace of the world, take that a little further for me.

WENDELL BERRY: I meant it in the religious sense. The people of, people of religious faith know that the world is, is maintained every day by the same force that created it. It’s an article of my faith and belief, that all creatures live by breathing God’s breath and participating in his spirit. And this means that the whole thing is holy. The whole shooting match. There are no sacred and unsacred places, there are only sacred and desecrated places. So finally I see those gouges in the surface mine country as desecrations, not just as land abuse. Not just as…as human oppression. But as desecration. As blasphemy.

BILL MOYERS: Let me read you this. “No amount…” This is you. “No amount of fiddling with capitalism to regulate and humanize it … can for long disguise its failure” to conserve the wealth and health of nature. “Eroded, wasted, or degraded soils; damaged or destroyed ecosystems; extinction of biodiversity, species; whole landscapes defaced, gouged, flooded, or blown up … thoughtless squandering of fossil fuels and fossil waters, of mineable minerals and ores, natural health and beauty replaced by a heartless and sickening ugliness. Perhaps its greatest success is an astounding increase in the destructiveness and therefore the profitability of war.” That’s as powerful an indictment of the consequences of runaway capitalism as I’ve ever read and surely if that’s happening as we know it is, it takes more than reverence, and it takes more than words to try to reverse it. What do you say to those people who say Wendell, please tell me what I can do?

WENDELL BERRY: All right. Well, you’ve put me in the place I’m always winding up in and…that is to say well we’ve acknowledged that the problems are big, now where’s the big solution? When you ask the question what is the big answer, then you’re implying that we can impose the answer. But that’s the problem we’re in to start with, we’ve tried to impose the answers. The answers will come not from walking up to your farm and saying this is what I want and this is what I expect from you. You walk up and you say what do you need. And you commit yourself to say all right, I’m not going to do any extensive damage here until I know what it is that you are asking of me. And this can’t be hurried. This is the dreadful situation that young people are in. I think of them and I say well, the situation you’re in now is a situation that’s going to call for a lot of patience. And to be patient in an emergency is a terrible trial.

source: http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-wendell-berry-poet-prophet/

A More Rational World Would Be Nice

I was directed to a right wing website just now to read about some legislation considered insane and outrageous by Rush Limbaugh.   When I was done reading about three sickening bills a liberal governor had just signed, one involving illegal aliens, another promoting homosexual parenting and a third making early-term abortions easier to obtain and more affordable, I was invited to participate in this poll.   Rather than participate in that exercise in democracy by knee jerk I copied the invite and share it here.

Image

Our world is not run on a strictly rational basis.   Still, I was struck by the subtle thumb on the scale of this VOTE NOW! popup.   Without knowing anything about who these two are or what they represent, are you going to vote for the stubborn looking guy on the left, mouth drawn tightly into a hard line, who can’t even look at the camera?  He’s in a pose everybody knows means he’s hiding something, probably because he’s so damned wrong and knows it.  He’s been caught in a lie, and not for the first time either, by the looks of that closed face.  I think most Americans, even minorities, would have to side with the forthright man on the right.  He’s firm, and ready for a fight over important values.  You can tell by looking at him.

That black guy, or South American, or Pacific Islander or whatever he is, is clearly wrong on this issue.  I mean, just look at the two of them and decide for yourself.

Your vote is important, the exclamation point tells us, because that’s the cornerstone of democracy, people thinking for themselves, making the right choices, casting their votes and living with the laws that are duly passed.  Although, sometimes millions vote, laws are debated and passed, challenged in the Supreme Court and left standing, and other means become necessary for forthright men like the fighter on the right side of the screen to stop a particular law from going into effect.  You know, if some sweeping law like, say, the Civil Rights Act, really, really offends you, you need to take steps to make sure it can’t be forced on you or anyone else.  Don’t rule out closing down the entire government, if that’s what it takes to stop it.

This is the hard business of having a vision, I suppose, and the kind of deep seated, firmly held belief that kept American heroes like Martin Luther King, Jr. going– just because something is the law doesn’t make it right.

Or maybe we need two other photos to help us decide which man is the embodiment of intransigent flagrantly anti-democratic assholes in this equation.

Political Orientation and Class Warfare

An old friend, a former leftist who had a political awakening on September 11th, 2001 and thereafter came to believe Bush and Cheney had the right approach, sometimes chides me for being uncharitable to the super rich. She considers herself an independent now.   She asked me recently if I knew how many really wonderful very rich people there are in the world.  I have no idea of the number, and was at a loss for a reply.  I admit I have a certain antipathy towards a class who, as a group, puts the acquisition of more than they can ever spend as their top priority.

She sent me an email today with a link to an article entitled  Americans in Poverty Have TVs VCRs Cellphones and Airconditioning (click on it, if you like).    The author, she wrote, backs up her thesis, American poverty is “a problem of fatherless homes, values, ennui, purposelessness, soul-work.”   She also lamented the lack of people, poor or otherwise, who believe in something greater than themselves.

I tried to be mild, since I value our friendship.  I’m not sure if I succeeded.   I wrote: 

If you will forgive me, I didn’t see anything very convincing in this little opinion piece which suggests America’s poor are doing just fine, thank you.  I know the right wing view of poverty which the title of this piece advertises quite prominently — moral failure of lazy non-workers, bloated, spoiled entitled parasites, godless hedonists.  People lacking the moral fiber and drive that folks like our former presidents Bush were both born with.
 
The other side of this view can be seen during a walk in any of the actual slums of the richest country on earth, slums that have been slums for generations, where the infant mortality rate is as bad in as the worst third world hell holes and the challenges of day to day survival are daunting.  Many do have tvs, and cellphones, and $200 sneakers.  Yes, I know, it seems unconscionable that people with such short life expectancies and so little to live for crave the luxuries that America advertises 24/7.  Particularly shameful when you consider that a hard-working HS graduate on minimum wage ($7.25 federal and NY state) makes under $300 for a 40 hour week, before taxes.  Seems an impossibly small amount of money to live on– only a greedy fool making that pittance would try to have a cell phone or TV.
 
The tax on the wealthiest goes back up, amid great gnashing of wealthy teeth, to pre-Bush tax cut levels by about 10% of the total rate while the payroll tax on everybody else goes up 48%.  Fair is fair.  Does one really have to be a Marxist to see that there is a class bias to our laws?  Is it unfair to criticize greed when it’s perfectly legal and enshrined in our laws?  Why should a CEO make only 40 times what his factory foreman makes (1970) when now he can make 400 times what that manager makes?  He’d be a fool to settle for 1/10th of what he can get, right?
 
So I’m not going to go further into this subject, though I may have gone too far already.  It’s something I guess we’ll never agree about.  Are there good rich people?  I’m certain there are many.  Are there good poor people?  I’m sure there are millions.  Are there greedy, vicious sociopaths both rich and poor?  Certainly, but in my book the poor, as a class, get the benefit of the doubt on that one.   At least they don’t amass more wealth than they can spend in 10,000 lifetimes, and fight for every penny of it as their right as successful Americans, and buy legislators and pass laws that favor their advantages, while children go to bed hungry across town for lack of food and others die needlessly for lack of access to routine medical care, while the aged poor eat scraps and wear extra sweaters to save on heating bills they can’t afford.
 
Perhaps the percentage of good and evil people is the same in both groups, good people and moral scum probably occur in roughly the same proportion in the rich and in the poor — but since there are thousands of times the poor people, I think the world has many more good poor people than good rich people.
 
Of course, most of the working poor are too busy holding down two or three low-paying jobs to write opinion pieces in prestigious publications, or on their websites. 
 
Love,
Groucho

What am I trying to do?

I am looking for the kids the system is about to give up on, future public enemy types about to turn their back on a world that despises them.  In a way, they are making the only dignified move available to them by saying “fuck this” and walking away from a system practically designed to make them drop out.   The schools were not made for children who come from endless generations of poverty, certainly not now that there are no decent paying factory jobs left in America.  

Today smart entrepreneurs are using the failure of the public school system, and the drying up of real economic opportunity for millions born poor, to build their own alternative schools, making nice money as they shine a false light on what needs to be done, building small, elite, for-profit  schools, in public buildings, funded by vouchers that come out of the public school budget, instead of working to fix our larger problem– although there is a lot of good work that desperately needs to be done well in our society, there is nothing real for most poor children to aspire to in our kinder, gentler, more global nation.  

The public schools are built on the old factory model and while there are many good people working very hard in the system, it is set up to make many kids tune out and quit, especially the children of the poor, children who have the most reason to be discouraged when they start to fall behind.   These are the kids I’m looking for, trying to reach before they are beyond reach.

“What the hell are you trying to do that for?” virtually everyone asks, and there is nothing fake about how mystified they are.  I have no house, no car, I wear the same clothes I’ve had for years, same winter jacket, new boots once a year.  I don’t care about eating in nice restaurants or going to beautiful vacation spots where poor people will treat me like a king.  I don’t even care about having a really nice guitar, though I play well enough to have one.  I don’t say this out of any sense of virtue, I just truly don’t care very much for these things.  What I care about is becoming the change I want to see in the world– a mild, effective man, nurturing creativity instead of my own bitterness.

“What do you care for?” a caring friend asks, and I tell the story of the kid on the beach. A story I heard years ago at a conference for public school teachers I attended on a half day.  The kids were home, or running in the street, and the teachers were in a convention center, listening to a great speaker inspire us to be the best teachers we could be.

“So it’s low tide, and there are about a million star fish drying out on the rocks on the beach, as far as the eye can see.  And a little boy is bending down and picking up half dead starfish and flinging them back into the water.  ‘What are you doing?’ asks a man in a mildly derisive tone, ‘what difference does it make if you throw a few back?  Do you think you can save them all?  Look, there are millions, you can’t save all of them. What difference could it possibly make if you throw a few back?’  And the kid picks up a star fish and heaves it back into the ocean– ‘it makes a big difference for that one’ he says to the crusty old bastard.”

Only, of course, the man talking to the kid was the voice of reason, the voice of the world, and the inspirational speaker didn’t speak of the mercilessly realistic fuck as a crusty old bastard.  The speaker was probably being paid very well to talk to that huge room full of tired teachers, hell, most of the teachers were getting a hundred maybe two hundred dollars just to sit in that room for half a day, listening to this great speech.  I heard it more than twenty years ago, when I was an idealistic third grade teacher in Harlem, and it still resonates, sings.  It’s a bell of clarity, really.