July 21, 2013

Waiting for a train

all around the water tank
waiting for a train
a thousand miles away from home
sleeping in the rain
I walked up to a brakeman
just to give him a line of talk
he said "if you got money boy
I'll see that you don't walk"
I haven't got a nickel
not a penny can I show
"Get off! get off! you railroad bum"
and slammed the boxcar door ...

July 21, 2013

Vietnam Blues

... o god if you can hear my prayer now
please help my brothers over in vietnam
o god if you can hear my prayer now
please help my brothers over in vietnam
the poor boys fightin
killin and hidin all in holes,
maybe killin their own brother
they do not know ...

July 21, 2013

They call us the workin class

I was workin in a factory
on the edge of town
the company moved to Mexico
they closed the factory down
my next door neighbor
he got a PhD
now he's in the unemployment line
standin next to me ...

July 20, 2013

Hard tack, come again no more

let us close our game of poker
take our tin cups in our hand
as we all stand by the cook's tent door
as dried monies of hard crackers
are handed to each man
o! hard tack! come again no more!

tis the song, the sigh of the hungry
hard tack! hard tack! come again no more!
many days you have lingered
upon our stomachs sore.
o! hard tack! come again no more! ...

July 20, 2013

The Sons of Molly McGuire

when the wind blows cold at night past the breaker melancholy
if you stand in the dark
with your ears to the wind
you'll hear the sons of molly
deep in the dark of the old mine shaft
you'll smell the smoke and the fire
and the whisper low from the mine below is the ghost of molly mcguire ...

so i'll tell ya boys
alex campbell is my name and no pistol did i fire
but i will fall from the gallows wall
just for being a molly mcguire
and i will die with my head held high
i fought for the men below
those men who work and mine and die down in the black hell below

July 20, 2013

"Philosophers have SOLVED the world -- but the real problem is to CHANGE it"

Theses On Feuerbach (1845)

I own several of Mr Hedges' books, and in parts I find them excellent. I do not find them excellent in their entirety, however, and the quote above, from the Theses on Feuerbach, summarizes rather well some of my disappointments with Hedges

Hedges originally trained in seminary and afterwards opted for a career as a war-correspondent. Such work is dangerous, of course, and Hedges himself has discussed in print the curious addiction to excitement and danger that prevented many of his fellow war-reporters from changing careers before their luck fatally changed. His political views, I think, often show limitations plausibly associated with his background: he sometimes exhibits a quasi-religious absolutism, together with a continuing need for the excitement of life-and-death struggles. If he had a poetic temperament, and a good ear for popular moods, such tendencies might have produced a brilliant rhetorician, with the ability to stir people to action. And if his substantial analytical ability were not so derailed by his tendency to absolutism and his craving for excitement, he might have become a substantial commentator on current events

I tend to read Hedges because, from a purely philosophical PoV, I frequently rather agree with him. But here, precisely, is the danger. One of the characteristics of popular culture in America -- I say America, because I really cannot speak of other places -- is that political action is routinely confused with personal opinion: people (for example) claim to "support" something when they mean only that in some vague emotional manner they agree philosophically with the position they think is being discussed, while in reality they do nothing whatsoever material to support any definite political organizing around the issue. That is, as remarked in the Theses on Feuerbach:



This American habit -- of believing we have "supported" something once we stated our opinions about it -- safeguards the status quo, because it ensures that we feel satisfied merely to think and discuss issues without inconveniencing ourselves by any dedication to concrete activity. In accordance with this tendency, we find ourselves arguing about the "meaning" of "news" stories that quote only two words from extensive remarks, or that provide only an incomplete and superficial background to some event -- conditions under which, of course, we actually learn nothing at all about the real world

Hedges at his worst plays into this habit, with "analyses" that are actually mere slogans without much content, such as "Obama's assault on civil liberties is worse than Bush" or "it's just a game, because whether it's Bush or whether it's Obama, Goldman Sachs wins always"

Like many people, Hedges' view of political action does not extend further than -- expressing an opinion. He has no background trying to organize people to do anything for a concrete result, and so his political views are not tethered to any particular reality by any experiment. He wants "to SOLVE the world" and has not sullied himself in the dull and tedious work of trying "to CHANGE it."

Unsurprisingly, he has no strategy beyond "make the power elite terrified of us." And his tactics are completely disconnected from this extraordinarily simplistic strategy: "I wrote Nader's major policy speeches for him in 2008 and voted for Jill Stein in the last election .. as a .. protest vote." But something much more sophisticated than that is needed

July 20, 2013

Christmas in the Trenches

July 20, 2013

Fire in Soweto

July 20, 2013

What's Going On

mother mother
there's too many of you crying
brother brother brother
there's far too many of you dying
you know we've got to find a way
to bring some lovin here today
yeah

father father
we don't need to escalate
you see war is not the answer
for only love can conquer hate
you know we've got to find a way
to bring some lovin here today ...

July 20, 2013

Simon Bolivar

... Simon Bolivar, Simon
out of your Venezuela
your voice shines through time
like a candle
like a candle showing a clear path
over this soil covered with dignity by the dead ...