Open Letter to the Chicago, Illinois Press and Tribune

Sir: I have just read your editorial concerning the horrific events of last Tuesday inst, and you should be ashamed of yourself.  While trying to disassociate yourselves from radical abolitionists, in fact you say the same thing they do: you justify Mr. Brown’s crimes.  Your claim that you abhor his “method” and his “violence” while feeling some sympathy to his “cause” says, in effect, that the blame for inciting servile rebellion–in fact, insurrection–ought to lie with the victims.  It says that Mr. Brown’s efforts to see our sister states awash with the blood of helpless, ravished women and slaughtered children as Negroes rise up with barred teeth and machetes–that all of this is of no consequence.

In fact, abolitionist-extremism is all that matters. Slavery has nothing to do with it. There is slavery in many other places, after all, and in those places you don’t see terrorist fanatics trying to turn happy, peaceful Negroes into mad killers!   No, the issue, the only issue, is terrorism.  Even bringing up the matter of “slavery” is opening a door to these radical abolitionists who want nothing more than to see us bow down to our Negro masters.

As long as there is terrorism and abolitionist extremism, that will remain the only issue.  Mr. Brown should hang, and those who speak sympathetically of his “cause” ought to hang with him.

Sincerely.

A Reader

 

1861: The Civil War Awakening by Adam Goodheart

In brief, this is one of the most amazing Civil War books I’ve ever read. I picked it up almost at random–it has a blurb by James McPherson–and read it slowly over the course of a couple of weeks.

Here’s what happens: There are, in most Civil War histories, certain events dealt with in a single sentence, or maybe a short paragraph.  For example, Colonel Anderson moved his command from Fort Moltrie to Fort Sumter.  Or, Elmer Ellsworth was killed while taking down a Confederate Flag in Alexandria, Virginia, and there was mourning throughout the North.  General Butler created the concept of “contraband” so he wouldn’t have to return slaves to their Confederate masters.  But:  Why was Anderson’s move such a big deal for the country? Who was this Ellsworth, and why did people care about him so much?  And exactly who were those slaves, how is it they came into Union lines,  how did Butler make that decision, and what were the effects of it?

In 1861, we learn of why and how these events–and several others–were significant. We learn how they contributed to the mood and feel of the time; to the attitude of the Northern civilian and soldier. We learn how they flow from history, and how they effect that history.

“By the end of May, Northerners were starting to accept the idea of Southerners not just as opponents–let alone the wayward brethren they’d been just a few months earlier–but as enemies.”  How that change took place is what this book is about, and it isn’t what you’d thought.

That old, tired cliche about a book being good as an introduction and for those who’ve done a lot of reading, well, it’s actually true this time.  If you’re familiar with the American Civil War, this will more than fill in gaps, it will cause you to reevaluate a number of things you knew. And if you’re not, it would be a place to start that gives you a solid platform from which to understand everything that follows.

I can’t recommend it strongly enough.

 

Double Slander: A Brief Civil War Note

This is just too long to put on Twitter, so it goes here:

Something came into focus for me today while reading Sandburg’s “Lincoln.”  There are some who quite vocally dislike the recent movie starring Daniel Day-Lewis because it neglects the contributions of black soldiers to the fight for their own freedom.  The thing is, not only were there many white soldiers consciously fighting to end slavery, but there were many black soldiers (especially freeborn from the Northeastern states) consciously fighting to preserve the Union.  When Lincoln, addressing those who opposed emancipation said, “You say you won’t fight for the Negro. Some of them are willing to fight for you…” he wasn’t just making it up.  So, yeah, that argument ends up slandering white and black soldiers.

 

Identity Politics and the PC Movement: An Historical Look

Idealism is the belief that ideas are primary to matter; that consciousness determines being. As a materialist, I reject it.  Really.  I mean, I try to.  I know I should.  But this voice in my head keeps whispering, “If you explain just one more time, everyone will understand and agree with you.”  This is idealism, because it ignores that my ideas flow from my conditions, and that other people’s ideas flow from theirs, and there is only a limited degree to which discussions can change ideas.  I know that.  And I will remember it.  Tomorrow.  But today, I’m going to try to explain just one more time.

In the last discussion of political correctness, David (professorperry) has quite correctly made it clear that I haven’t expressed myself well.  I don’t know why people should expect me to express myself well.  I mean, I’m only a writer for god’s sake.   Let me see if I can take a different approach to this whole thing.  It is obvious that I have given the impression that I believe the only, or at least the biggest, problem with Political Correctness is that it keeps you from doing more productive work. Let me try again.

The PC movement and the supporters of Identity Politics are closely aligned, and grew out of a very definite history. From the mid 60’s to the early 70’s, there was tremendous anger among youth, starting with outrage at the Vietnam War. Internationally, this was often anger (a healthy anger, in my opinion) directed at the US, which often turned into anger directed at their own governments. This reached a peak in France in 1968, during which time the French working class became involved on a massive scale, and international capitalism was shaken to its roots. You may not believe capitalism was ever actually threatened by the events in France, but it is very clear that capitalists did: read any major newspaper of the time.

The Vietnam War ended exactly when the student protests in the US began to spread out to include the unions. (Well, that and the military victories of the NLF.)

At the same time, it became directed at one man: Nixon, as the most extreme representative of the war, and of everything that was hateful about capitalism.

But these protests were just that–protests. They were led  by those (SDS, SWP, SMC, &c) with no theoretical training in Marxism, and often an active hostility to Marxism or, in fact, theory of any kind. For the most part, they hated capitalism, but had no idea how to get from here to there–how to go from an outraged working class, to taking control of production. Could that have happened then? Personally, I doubt it; I don’t think conditions were right. The foundations could have been built for a movement prepared for the future. Instead, because of bankrupt leadership that based itself on the middle class, on begging the ruling class to be kinder, on accepting capitalism as given, what happened was that those involved in the protest didn’t see any way forward. I still remember that day: the day Nixon resigned. There was tremendous joy–and a simultaneous emptiness.

“Now what?” was the unspoken, almost unanimous question throughout the protest movement. And because of the lack of theoretical discussion, because of the failure to break from capitalism, because of the limited aims on the part of the leadership, the answer was: massive demoralization. This demoralization fractured the protest movement into many parts, depending on the mood and inclination of the individual. Food Co-ops, the New Age, &c.

As the working class had failed to do what the middle class radicals believed it should do (“reject material things” and “embrace anarchy” and above all, “follow our lead”), the middle class radicals gave up on the working class. Now many of them started reading Heidegger, and Marcuse, and others who had been demoralized by failures of the revolutions after WWI or WWII. The demoralized youth turned for guidance to the demoralized academic.  Enter here the theories of the post-modernists.  “Wait,” they cried.  “It isn’t at all a matter of understanding the world, it is a matter of which ideas you chose to accept.  It is a question of picking the proper narrative for what you wish to accomplish.  Let us not only reject the working class as the revolutionary class, but, along with that, science as the means to understand social relations.  In fact, let us reject science altogether; it just leads to progress, and what is progress but a narrative that leads to war and prejudice and oppression?”  Of course, different elements stopped in different places along this spectrum; some still accept science as long as it is kept “in its place.”  Others are suspicious of progress, but want us to redefine it rather than reject it utterly.  What they have in common is rejection of the idea that we can understand social relations and make that understanding work for us to accomplish definite ends.

This marriage of the New Left and the Post-Modernists produced offspring as disfigured as one might expect.  One of the most vacuous pieces of New Left ideology was, “the personal is the political.” This was very attractive to middle class radicals who had given up on the working class but felt comfortable discussing what was inside of their own–and others’–heads on a very personal basis.  Combine it with substitution of “narrative” for science, and, hey presto!  We have the beginnings of what we call political correctness.

By the 1980s, when Reagan was attacking the unions and capitalism was preparing and launching efforts to destroy anything that interfered with unfettered profit–these same middle class radicals had stock portfolios, and good jobs, and tenure, and some of them had even propelled themselves out of the middle class entirely. Their rejection of the working class was easy–they’d already done it.

And then those who wanted to tell themselves they were doing good came together with those who who didn’t care about doing good, but wanted to break down the gap between the high-income middle class black and the high-income middle class white; between the high-income middle class man and the high-income middle class woman. These groups came together easily and naturally. To them, the problem is not property relations that cause oppression and poverty and bare subsistence for millions upon millions of people; the problem is inequality between different sections of the upper middle class. From there, if you believe that “the personal is the political,” it is a simple step to saying, “I will break down this inequality among the upper middle class by making sure no one uses the generic ‘he.'” Altering language becomes the substitute–not for action in the most literal sense–but for fighting to understand the world from the point of view of taking action; from fighting to actually end oppression, to fighting to reduce inequality among the privileged.

Today’s PC movement is an outgrowth of the subjective idealism of the New Left. Subjective idealism is the belief that consciousness determines being combined with a focus on the consciousness of individuals, rather than the consciousness of the masses.  Just like its empty-headed twin sibling Identity Politics, it ends up supporting capitalism, supporting oppression, and making the struggle for genuine equality more difficult.

The Catmobile vs the Snowplows

The following happened back in 1991. I thought it lost forever until my friend D.W.James let me know that, in fact, he had saved it as it happened (then posted on the old bulletin board system GEnie).

So, without even fixing typos, here, as it unfolded at the time, is the saga of the Catmobile vs the Snowplows

Category 8, Topic 17
Message 483 Thu Dec 05, 1991
STEVEN.BRUST at 03:28 EST

Bill, it was *great* doing tunes with you. More! More!

So, for those of you who like stories, a funny thing happened today. Or, actually, is happening now (pause to go look out the window), yes. Well, you see, when I got home from Silicon, I found about fifteen or twenty more inches of snow than there’d been when I left. The Catmobile (the ambulence pictured on the cover of ANOTHER WAY TO TRAVEL) was burried. Not only that, but it needed a jump-start (I left the headlights on last time I drove it). Not only *that* but it was parked on what we Minnesotans call a “Snow Emergency Route”– the first areas plowed during a snow emergency, and you’d bloody well better not leave your car there.

So, there’s the Catmobile, dead, burried, and in the wrong place, with a nice ticket sticking out of the snow mound. Not much I could do about it right away, but I figured I’d try to get some help and move the thing this weekend.

Too late. About 10:00 this evening, the city towing service arrived, dug her out enough to attach chains and stuff, and started pulling. The Catmobile didn’t want to go. They argued. The towtruck lost. I looked out the window about 11:00 and saw the poor man standing out there, scratching his head. I went out to talk to him, and found out that his truck had burned out. No engine, no power, nothing. I invited him in. He came in and used the phone. Seemed like a nice guy.

The second tow truck arrived about midnight.

The third tow truck arrived about 1:00.

They retreated in confusion about 1:30, leaving behind the first truck, which was still disabled–in front of my driveway. Now, you can’t go and block someone’s driveway, can you? ‘Course not. I called the police, and explained that their was a towtruck blocking my driveway. They came by about ten minutes ago (as I was starting to type this message) and looked at it. I don’t know what they’ll do. They’ll probably get my car eventually, but she sure hasn’t made it easy for the bastards.

————
Category 8, Topic 17
Message 484 Thu Dec 05, 1991
STEVEN.BRUST at 04:28 EST

As of now (03:31 zulu) the 4th tow truck has come…and gone. Heh heh heh.

————
Category 8, Topic 17
Message 485 Thu Dec 05, 1991
STEVEN.BRUST at 05:00 EST

03:55 and tow-trucks number 5, 6, and 7 are there. Number 1 is too, still being attached to the Catmobile. Truch number 6 is a big flatbed–they’re pulling out the heavy artillery now.

This is all fun, but I hope they don’t hurt the car, or I will be seriously bummed.

————
Category 8, Topic 17
Message 486 Thu Dec 05, 1991
STEVEN.BRUST at 05:07 EST

04:03 Truck *NINE* showed up–another flatbed, and they’ve finally managed to get truck number 1 out of there. Now there are two flatbeds and a regular truck standing around out there. Presumably they’re finally going to take the Catmobile away, but I don’t see them actually doing anything yet.

————
Category 8, Topic 17
Message 487 Thu Dec 05, 1991
STEVEN.BRUST at 05:19 EST

4:15 Truck *ten* just showed up. Another flatbed. The last regular tow-truck has split. People, I’m not making this up. Now they look serious about towing her. *Sigh*

————
Category 8, Topic 17
Message 488 Thu Dec 05, 1991
STEVEN.BRUST at 05:35 EST

4:31 Yep. Number 10 finally got her. I’ll probably go in on Friday and bail her out.

______

Afterword added 2/12/2013: One thing I didn’t mention at the time, but clearly remember: As they were towing her away going north on Portland (which is a one-way street going south, incidentally), a bit of snow fell off the left front headlight. I swear to God, it looked at though she were winking at me.

I retrieved her the next day, and I’ll bet to this day those people have never seen anyone grinning as much when retrieving a towed-away car.

Another Way to Travel Cover