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The editor was interviewed by Counterpoise for Social Responsibilities, Liberty, and Dissent during Nov/Dec 2007. The issue came out in May 2008. For me, it was astonishing to see the issue, a tribute in a sense to my long uphill battle against the machine. It was astonishing to see my face on the front cover.
"Poet against the Machine" George Slone is the founding editor of The American Dissident and one of Counterpoise’s dedicated reviewers.
I received your most recent issue of The American Dissident in the mail yesterday and despite a few cartoons and writings that went over my head, I was overall refreshed by the level of realness at which you and your contributing writers expressed themselves. Could you explain more about your literary journal and its purpose?
The American Dissident was created in 1998 as a direct result of the corruption I experienced first-hand at Fitchburg State College (MA) as a professor. After teaching four years, my case went into arbitration, and I was awarded a year’s salary, which I’m not supposed to mention, even though FSC is a public institution! Unlike Florida and other states, Massachusetts has no FOI law. That is her shame. That is what protects corruption-as-usual in the state. The college never admitted wrong. Do they ever?
I tried to interest the student newspaper, local newspaper, and Boston Globe… over and over. The case went on for half a year. None of them would publish my story on corruption. Hell, I was even evicted from McKay campus and could face charges even today if I were to step foot there. Yet I have no record of violence whatsoever! So, it was the corruption and the refusal of the press to cover it that got me truly angered… and turned me into a dissident.
What I did is what most don’t do when wronged. I extrapolated. In other words, I didn’t simply focus on my little problem, but opened up, and realized intellectual corruption was perhaps widespread in the nation’s colleges and universities. Thus, The American Dissident was born. Also, I became an autodidactic cartoonist in order to illustrate the journal.
Its focus is critical writing. It does not seek to publish part-time or armchair dissidents. In other words, it will not publish a poem or essay written by a university professor critical of Bush. How facile! How utterly risk-less! And, yes, I do get plenty of such poem submissions. I always respond, requesting the professor in question send something critical of his department and/or university. Rarely, if ever, do I receive further communication.
The AD provides a forum for, amongst other things, examining the dark (corrupt) side of the Academic/Literary Industrial Complex. It has also reintroduced an old concept, parrhesiastes, into poetry. Rarely, if ever, does it receive poems of this nature. Parrhesiastes were citizens in Ancient Greece who dared criticize power. They risked death. The AD does not ask poets to risk death, not even job, for that matter. But it does ask that their poems risk something… perhaps the ire of the poet community, invitations, grants, publications, sabbaticals. But rare are the poets who would do that. And because of that I find myself publishing too many poems that do not risk. If I didn’t, The AD would have to fold.
At this point in my life, I make it a point to risk job. Hell, one only lives once, why not live in the truth! As an example, at my last job at an all black university, Grambling State, I made it a point to periodically submit to the student paper essays likely to risk the ire of my colleagues and administrators. A number of those essays were published, including one that questioned the legality of religious prayer at all faculty meetings. After all, this was a public university! Only two professors ever responded to my essays, none in the student paper. Students responded. What I do now is ask myself what I should not write about… then kick myself in the ass and write it… and kick myself a bigger one and send it off for publication. Every writer and poet knows what they shouldn’t criticize in public… and sadly most refrain from doing so.
That is one reason why American writing has gotten so bad. This week I am going to solo protest in front of the Concord Poetry Center for two reasons: 1. Joan Houlihan, the director, stated to me several years ago: “The idea of your teaching a workshop or delivering a lecture on the art of literary protest or poetry protest, or simply protest (Concord is where it all started!) occurred to me even before you mentioned it. So, yes, it’s something I will consider as we progress (this is only our first event). However, I must say I don’t favor having you teach at the center if you protest the reading.” Needless to say, I chose protest over a lecture possibility! Needless to say, I have yet to be invited to the Center, even though I live in the town and publish a lit journal in the town. 2. Emerson stated: “I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names.” The Center only invites name-brand poets to speak.
I see that the market for your journal and your mission is very small, but at the same time you occupy an important space in our society. In The American Dissident, you publish poems and writings that criticize and question the institutions that the writers intimately interact with on a daily basis. I agree that that individual risk is important, rather than people, like some university professors you suggested, aiming their criticism at distant and therefore safe targets, i.e. the Bush administration. At the same time, if professors don’t aim their arrows at the Bush administration, then who will?
A mix is necessary: lambaste Bush, definitely (and let’s not forget Hillary and all the other fraudulent politicos with their clown-like smiles), BUT ALSO lambaste that university feeding you, that is, if you’re a professor. Universities—probably all of them—are rife with intellectual corruption. How does a grown man or woman remain silent in the face of egregious, intellectual dishonesty and gross breaches in logic? I don’t know—I don’t know how to remain silent… and I like to think it’s because I’m a poet, BUT I’ve known far too many poets, so know better. The example I like to evoke regarding risk-taking and the professorate is what happened this year: Fifty-two weekly columns were published by a tenured professor in the News-Star (Monroe, LA), praising/glorifying ULM, his university. Not one professor at ULM dared write one counter column, critical of that university. So, I fought tooth and nail to convince the reluctant newspaper editor to permit me one critical column (see www.theamericandissident.org/Op-Ed-NewsStar.htm).
Universities today have been co-opted by the “corporation.” Their fundamental purpose seems to be GROWTH… and keeping the clientele happy! The lingo used is the same as that used in corporate America; for example, team playing, classroom management, and assessment outcomes. Some even refer to students as clients. And indeed a professor must keep the client happy… or find another job! “Collegiality” is a term appearing in nearly every job ad for professors today. I have yet to see the word “truth” in such a job ad. Isn’t that aberrant? In other words, professors today are being hired on their proven ability to “fit in” (certified by three letters of recommendation!) to a team or department (i.e., to be collegial). And one does not (can not) fit in, if one tends to have a critical mind and a little courage to express oneself. Professors are not being hired because of their proven ability to muster the courage to openly speak or write truth, as well as to instigate vigorous debate, make waves, go against the grain and otherwise rock the boat! That is the real shame of higher education today.
This year, while employed at Grambling State University, I wrote and published a criticism of that university in the student newspaper. What would be the most “risky” thing for me to write about regarding it? Religion, of course! GSU is a historically black university (HBCU) with religious roots and was once private. BUT today it is public, part of the Louisiana state university system… and still has religious prayer séances during faculty meetings and other events. I also published in the paper a satirical cartoon on the subject. “Dr. Slone, you really have balls!” said Kellen, one of my students, hitting the bull’s-eye without realizing it. Indeed, why should it take balls to criticize at a PUBLIC university? That, in a nutshell, is the problem with today’s universities.
The risk for a university professor to criticize BUSH is zero… unless you happen to be a professor at Oral Roberts University or some such other institution.
Sometimes you appear to be racist, like when critiquing Grambling State University or characterizing Bennett College as ‘an entirely un-diverse, highly pampered and indoctrinated student body of black women only,’ and further smashing the African American icon, Maya Angelou, by deeming her a ‘poet-cook-greeting-card-saleswoman-millionaire trustee… who boasts on her website that she is ‘a remarkable Renaissance woman who is hailed as one of the great voices of contemporary literature.’ You further state that ‘she is the kind of bland, pompous personage the corporate folks (and PBS) like to put on TV now and then, as well as on greeting cards.” Do you ever feel you should express more empathy towards African Americans, especially a community that has struggled just to get a positive person in the media, a community that is constantly kept down and whose greatest leaders of the twentieth century have been assassinated (Look out Obama!). Do you ever critique yourself and question your own perception when judging this community and wonder whether or not you’re being considerate of cross-cultural differences? On the other hand, as a dissident what good do you feel you are doing by bringing attention to the binding ideologies that have originated years ago in AME churches and in other Protestant institutions long before then, and have since bound the minds and actions of African Americans?
As for appearing racist, that is not a concern for me at all. I know who I am. People can call me whatever they like… and people have. But let’s not forget that name calling is an easy way out: shoot the messenger to avoid dealing with his message!
My only concern is truth and reality. Labeling someone racist today is an ad hominem. In other words, calling the guy racist somehow enables one to dismiss all of his arguments, no matter how logical or truthful. It is a despicable way to avoid truth. CNN’s Lou Dobbs, for example, has been called racist because he is against illegal immigration, which is beneficial to corporations greedy for cheap labor, the corrupt Mexican government which doesn’t seem to give a damn about its citizens, and harmful to American wages.
Keep in mind that the only two institutions of higher learning that would hire me over the past decade were black (i.e., HBCUs)… and that says a lot. In other words, white liberal professors don’t want to teach at such institutions because the pay is generally lower and the student populace less academically inclined. That’s the reality. Call it racist if you like. But that is the only thing that can explain how I, a professor apt to criticize openly, got hired.
What I did find at both HBCUs is that black professors and black administrators were no different than their white homologues regarding spinelessness, bureaucrat mentality, fixation on career, disinterest in truth, and general incuriosity. Now, how can you label that racist? Is that not egalitarian?
By the way, make certain to read the wonderful “smashing” Wanda Coleman, a black poet, gives to the black icon Angelou (see www.theamericandissident.org/Essays-Coleman.htm). Coleman got hell for it. But she didn’t care. Her interest, like mine, is truth seeking and truth telling, not the blind worship of icons. What is shameful about higher education today is precisely that: Professors seek to indoctrinate students in the blind worship of persons they’ve chosen to mold into icons.
If I were to express “more empathy towards African Americans” today, I would be doing “them” a disservice. Equality does not mean more. I seek to treat African Americans as equal, nothing more and nothing less. Besides the Coleman essay, other black writers are featured on The American Dissident website, including Frederick Douglass, James Baldwin, and Kenule Saro-Wiwa. Would a racist do that? Do you have the capacity to perceive “racist” as a trait of some black citizens? If not, I strongly urge you to teach at an all black university and/or live in Louisiana for a year or two.
The worst thing for you or anyone else is to consider the black population as intellectually monolithic. And it seems to me you are doing precisely that. You cannot logically and realistically view all black people as “a community that is constantly kept down.” That very viewpoint (i.e., the victimization mold) in itself serves to keep black people down. It also serves to buffer (from criticism) multimillionaire pro-capitalist blacks, including Oprah, Cosby, Powell, Rice, Jordan, and Angelou, to name but a few.
As an individual, I make it a point not to treat all blacks as a monolithic community, something you seem to be erroneously, if not “racistically,” doing, and I suspect your politically-correct, indoctrinated college professors are responsible for it.
Clearly, I am against the placing of a particular segment of the population in a protective-status cocoon. If I were to refrain from criticizing black people because it is politically incorrect to do so, I would be a racist and responsible for trying to keep black citizens in psychic jails. What journalist Pete Hamill wrote is particularly insightful: “Today, we too often find Americans whose essential slogan is, “I’m offended, therefore I am.” […] If you reduce yourself to some sociological category instead of being fully human, you will also be building your own little ‘psychic jail.’”
By the way, you failed to mention the cartoon I sketched depicting Bennett College students as obese. A black female correspondent brought it to my attention this year because she thought it was racist. Yet how should I have depicted my largely obese black female students, as thin models? Just the same, she was unable to comprehend the purpose of the cartoon, which was clearly to criticize the black female college president’s decision to support the local black male Krispie Kreme franchise owner by leading her obese black female students on a two-block weekly walk down to buy donuts. Diabetes kills. That president didn’t seem to give a damn. But I did.
As for your last question, I am an ardent atheist. Religion counters logic and reason, which is why it does not belong in higher education. I do hope that you will rethink your placing of all blacks into one category, as in my purported “bringing attention to the binding ideologies that have originated years ago in AME churches and in other Protestant institutions long before then, and are now binding the minds and actions of African Americans?” Black atheists exist! Blacks have managed to take those mind-binders off! And I say bravo to them for having the courage and intelligence to do so! Let us not forget that Protestantism was imposed on black slaves.
I agree with what you’re saying, I just hesitate to judge the black community because there seems to be a racial dynamic/solidarity that I do not feel I have the right to interrupt. But after what you have said, I feel a well-guided interruption is probably warranted, and perhaps even a social responsibility.
The racial solidarity you mention works against the individual conscience, which is too bad for the citizen who wants to be an individual, as opposed to a group member. I’d sure hate to have to haul around the thought-baggage of “my people” all the time. Personally, I don’t feel I have a “people.” Most whites do not have that as baggage, as compared to blacks, Native Americans, and now Latinos. However, Latinos in Mexico, of course, don’t have the “my people” thing as baggage either. But think differently from the black mold and you’ll be called an Uncle Tom or sellout to one’s people. That’s how it works. The leaders of the black community, of course, profit immensely from propagating the false idea of a monolithic black community.
Again, truth guides me, not concern about interrupting this dynamic or that dynamic. Think of the Soviet dynamic and how anyone who dared behave as an individual was automatically placed into a gulag prison… and labeled a counterrevolutionary. How convenient! It is akin to calling me racist! The very same dynamic is at play, which is why we must force ourselves to question and challenge all dynamics, including those that appear to be beneficial.
Your question on whether or not anything good materializes out of my purposeful conflicts with power, as illustrated in the ample literary letters section of The AD, is a good and difficult one. How to define good, for example? Much more often than not, nothing tangibly good results at all, though I do obtain most of my creative work from such conflict, including poems, essays, cartoons, and even a handful of autobiographical novels. Almost everything I do creatively stems from it. Also, I like to believe that people used to positive feedback, when suddenly confronted with negative feedback, might actually stop and think for a moment. In that sense, something good must inevitably stem from my purposeful conflicts.
By the way, two English professors have used The AD in their classes. One invited me to speak at one of his classes. What those professors appreciated more than anything else was my constant questioning and challenging of all things. They’d like their students to do the same. But why only two out of the scores and scores of English professors I’ve been in “touch” with?
Much more often than not, people I’ve criticized prefer truncating debate almost immediately. That refusal of vigorous debate by the seeming immense majority of academics and poets is the key conclusion resulting from my diverse conflicts. And since vigorous debate is a necessity for any thriving democracy, the absence of it must indicate something other than democracy is at play.
Speaking of the distribution of your journal, how might you be able to partner with librarians (the bulk of our readership) and other individuals to help get your journal into more reader's hands? Didn't you mention at one point that a librarian put together an exhibit on dissidence and included your journal in it? Do you ever get invited to speak at university or public libraries?
Good question on distribution. I wasn’t expecting that one. BTW, the AD received 501 c3 nonprofit status last May (costs about $500), making it eligible for NEA grants. I have applied. Some literary journals get thousands of dollars from the NEA. Threepenny Review, for example, received $30K in one year! Oddly, the Massachusetts Cultural Council will not fund literary journals with annual budgets less than $10K. The AD budget is about $1K.
From perusing many, many literary journals, it seems The American Dissident is quite unique in its contrarian stance and constant—seemingly in vain, especially regarding the academic/literary milieu—search for and instigation of vigorous debate, cornerstone of any thriving democracy. Trying to build a library subscriber-base has been very difficult and disappointing, though libraries of Harvard U, Brown U, Buffalo U, U of Wisconsin, and U of Michigan are now subscribers. Concord Free Public Library, Lincoln Parish Public Library, and New York Public Library are also subscribers. But it’s taken me 10 years to get those libraries. Compare that with Threepenny Review, for example, which boasts over 150 library subscribers! I have knocked on many doors. I even sent out to about 50 libraries with special collections and had no luck at all… Not even one response! As an alumnus, I can’t even get Northeastern University or Middlebury College libraries to subscribe. Grambling State University wouldn’t subscribe, even though I was teaching there. In fact, the English Department was entirely indifferent to The AD.
Local libraries prove the most frustrating to deal with. They stock plenty of Dummy and Idiot books, and then tell me they don’t think their patrons would be interested in something like The American Dissident. So, what does that say about what they think about their patrons? Another librarian told me they only buy periodicals from their distributor. Excuses abound. I’ve even had difficulty obtaining permission from librarians to hang a simple flyer on their public bulletin boards. Pre-approved speech is not free speech. Librarians need to understand and ought to take a good look at the Library Bill of Rights of the American Library Association. I put it on The AD website a long time ago (www.theamericandissident.org/Library.html). Right #4 stipulates “Libraries should cooperate with all persons and groups concerned with resisting abridgment of free expression and free access to ideas.” The librarians I’ve come into contact with, for the most part, do not abide by that “right,” nor do they by “right” #3: “Libraries should challenge censorship in the fulfillment of their responsibility to provide information and enlightenment.”
Many public libraries have adjunct associations of essentially bourgeois/business oriented-people who control events that take place at the library. They call themselves “Friends of the XXX Public Library.” I’ve tried dealing with the one in Concord, which simply refuses to respond to my concerns. The Concord Festival of Authors, which takes place at the library, refuses to inform me what criteria it uses in selecting its chosen authors, has yet to invite me and, unlike most of the authors selected, I actually live and write in Concord! In fact, the Concord Poetry Center also has yet to invite me.
Actually, it wasn’t a librarian who invited me to set up a display on The AD as part of the exhibit on dissidence to be held at the Tsongas Museum (Lowell, MA) this winter, but Director of Marketing & Public Relations for The Thoreau Society. I’d been “battling” with the latter regarding its utter indifference to my concerns of lack of free speech at Walden Pond et al for over a decade. Finally, it has opened up a tad. Persistence!
Not one library has ever invited me to speak. Only one university professor has ever invited me to speak, and that was Dan Sklar at Endicott College (MA) several weeks ago. It was a wonderful opportunity. I enjoyed it thoroughly. Students were very receptive and had great questions to ask. Each had a copy of The AD. Frequently, I challenge English professors by email, responding to their job adverts, not “collegially” but “truthfully.” Almost never do they respond to my challenge. The great shame of higher education today is its prioritizing of “collegiality” over “truth” and vigorous debate. Professors also send submissions to The AD, but never critical of their immediate milieu. My recent response to the director of the writing center at one university was the following:
“What to say about your poems? They are absolutely RISKLESS in nature, clones of so many unoriginal poems written by so many unoriginal academic poets. Why not forge poems as weapons against the festering corruption at Ohio State University (e.g., against your corporate-model colleagues, who call themselves professors and poets), instead of simply closing your eyes to it, so you may continue filling your pockets and FITTING IN and being COLLEGIAL? Why not become a poet warrior, as opposed to a careerist, tenured, professor-poet toady? Why not step out on to the edge naked and “go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways? (Emerson). Do you even realize how common and ineffective you probably are as director of a writing center, director of a multitude of writing beavers and beaverettes? Do you even realize the damage you do to your students and our democracy? Well, I’m certain mine are wasted words, but if you can bear this harsh criticism, read the guidelines, and please try again.”
To my surprise (professor poets almost never respond to my critique), the director (Doug Ramspeck) actually responded:
“Thank you for taking the time to write such a refreshingly honest (however scathing) rejection note to the poems I sent you. You surely have a point that I have slanted my poems toward the academic to try to "fit in." You state your case in a more extreme way than I accept (and I do like some academic poetry a great deal, including, for example, Edward Hirsch), but I don't think your words were wasted (you implied they probably were). And although I suspect I am unlikely to produce the kind of work you are looking for, your note accomplished something that rejections don't usually accomplish: I've spent much of the day thinking about it. Best Wishes, Doug Ramspeck, The Ohio State University at Lima, Director of the Beavers and Beaverettes at the Writing Center.”
Unfortunately, the director will likely continue on his merry monetary way as director of the Beavers and Beaverettes.
I'm sure your "purposeful conflicts with power" have incited others to censor you. When is the last time you were censored and by who?
As for censorship, I’ve been censored right and left. Hell, I spent a day in a Concord jail cell for expressing myself in public. Academic literary journals refuse to publish anything dissident I write and submit (see www.theamericandissident.org/ColdPassion.htm). The Concord Chamber of Commerce refuses to permit me to stock The AD in its Concord Visitor’s Center next to other journals and books. NewPages.com, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and Poetry Foundation, amongst others, refuse to list The AD with other journals in their listings.
But most recently, this past summer and to my sincere surprise, the Academy of American Poets censored me, that is to say, removed all of my entries and responses to my entries from its online forums and banned me from participating in future forums. What had I done? Had I promoted sex with children like one of its members, Alan Ginsberg, had done? Not at all! Had I used any prohibited four-letter words? Not at all! Had I threatened anybody? Not physically, but no doubt intellectually! And that was the problem. For the full transcript (fortunately, I saved it prior to its erasure) et al, see www.theamericandissident.org/AcademyAmericanPoets.htm.
To date, not one AAP staff member has responded to my complaints of censorship. Not even Professor Poet Gary Snyder, AAP Chancellor, has deigned to respond. In fact, I devised a literary questionnaire, including several questions regarding censorship, sent it out to over 130 “high end” literary journals, including Poetry, Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, and others so often found on the shelves of public libraries. Only one editor filled out the questionnaire and responded he would not contest my being censored by the AAP. In a sense, I was and am still outraged by the deafening silence and indifference…
Since you compared the subscription base of your journal to that of Threepenny Review, do you think more libraries would subscribe to your journal if you had more book reviews and made the journal more into a literary review journal on poetry and the like? In it, you and others could write the unique reviews that you have written for Counterpoise. That way, librarians could use your journal more as a tool for beefing up their collection rather than depending on others to like your journal and stock it on their shelves.
From what I’ve seen, The AD is different from the bulk of literary journals in that it actually has a definite focus (i.e., Literature, Dissidence, Parrhesiastes, and Democracy), as opposed to mere poetry for the sake of poetry (as in l’art pour l’art). A principle part of that focus is its encouragement and active seeking of vigorous, no-holds-barred debate with your so-called scholarly literary journals, editors, professors, librarians, and poets, nearly all of whom shamefully discourage such debate, preferring to live in comfortable scholarly cocoons of rampant self-congratulations and backslapping, where few dare question and challenge that modus operandi. By the way, such individuals need to be constantly reminded that vigorous debate is in fact a highly pertinent cornerstone of any thriving democracy.
The uniqueness alone of The AD ought to interest librarians. But I think the journal’s title alone turns so many of them off, for librarians tend not to be much different from the bulk citizen herd, which tends to be hyper-patriotic and scorn protest and dissidence. Or in the case of the bulk liberal herd, librarians tend to be equally orthodox and inflexible (e.g., one cannot possibly be a liberal, if one doesn't have the audacity to criticize liberals). Several times, for example, I’ve solo protested in front of the local poetry center’s bourgeois poetry gatherings and have been amazed to witness grown adults manifest dumbfounded surprise at my protest. “How can anyone possibly protest poetry?” several of them asked bewildered. That seems to be the general attitude. For some reason, the scholarly bourgeois mentality has deemed poetry off-limits to hardcore protest and criticism. Perhaps that is what is rendering it increasingly uninteresting and disengaged (read my review of Best American Poetry to see the kind of poetry the established order considers “best”—www.theamericandissident.org/BookReviews-BestAmerican.htm).
In any case, The AD will never alter itself in an effort to get more subscriptions… or grant money. Turning it into a review journal on poetry is not what I would want to do, for most poetry is boringly predictable, if not unreadable. But including more reviews is certainly an option.
By the way, it might be interesting to note why I write reviews. I write them because I consider them a valid literary genre, if not essay, close to it. In fact, they more or less serve as another platform for me to get my ideas on paper and out there. I also write them in direct opposition to the general two-thumbs-up review writer, rampant in the nation. Thus, I do not write them like many academics… to add to the resume.
Well I must say that I highly disagree with your general characterization of librarians as “hyper-patriotic citizens” who “scorn protest and dissidence” and who are “equally orthodox and inflexible” as the “bulk citizen herd.” I know different types of librarians. Some are activists, socially conscious of the world at an advanced level, open-minded and concerned about the state of the environment, the state of technological warfare, and several other issues that only citizens living outside the herd would care about. Others, however, are perhaps some of those that you have come across – rich, older bourgeois intellects who only care about appearances. But these are only the 10 librarians that I have in mind, and just like you can’t “consider the black population as intellectually monolithic,” you also do a disservice to librarians and yourself by characterizing them in the same manner.
You note: “Well I must say that I highly disagree with your general characterization of librarians as “hyper-patriotic citizens” who “scorn protest and dissidence” and who are “equally orthodox and inflexible” as the “bulk citizen herd.”
Hmm. I too think that statement is a bit too much. I’m not proud of it. Let me back off from it. Show me I’m wrong with a little reason and logic, as you did, and I will be eager to back off from a statement and apologize and correct it. Hell, I don’t know that many librarians out there to make such a statement; besides, I have met several good ones. So, please excuse me on it. The librarians I was thinking of are the handful of librarians I’ve approached around here, though even around here, two have subscribed. The University librarians simply tend not to respond to my queries, though a handful have subscribed. Thanks for challenging me on that one.
Now I have one more question – what do you think about the upcoming election? Have you watched any of the candidate debates? Do you even think the president has much affect on managing the country anymore? Because I tend to think corporations - insurance companies and other big businesses who act above the law and to the disinterest of the people - have more control and power than the president. In other words, shouldn't we be more worried about the next corporate merger than the next president?
What do I think about the election? Wow. I’m not quite sure where to start. I’ve always liked Nader. In fact, he’s the only one I’ve ever liked and voted for. But he’s not in the race this time around. I liked Nader’s open anti-corporate-grip on politics stance. To me that is the key… to democracy or not to democracy. I was against Gore because I wanted regime change and an end to the smooth Bubba talk. Now, I’d probably get off my butt and vote, if GORE stood up and became a candidate, though I don’t think we expect too too much from him, as a lifer politician. Evidently, we must get rid of Bush and the war, both of which are destroying the nation perhaps irrevocably. Just wrote a poem on the situation last week. It doesn’t risk anything, just tells it as I see it.
Bleakness on the Brink While the dollar plummets, the deficit soars, and inflation knocks the pants off of most of us, we continue waging wars; oil grows scarcer, its price steadily rising; and our wealthy compatriots don’t give a damn, for cheap labor unfurls over the southern border
While health care soars in price, CEOs babble on about free trade, corporate-style “democracy” rules, Mexican cartels take over our national parks, China purchases our infrastructure, journalists push celebrity and wealth; yes, while all of that, so many of us don’t have jobs or health insurance
While we suffer the last days of Bush, Cheney, and Condoleezza, helplessly we follow the new generation of famed power mongers—Giuliani and Romney thinking we actually want more of the same, Hillary pondering her days as a hippie, playing it safe, neutral, and light-hearted and, of course, Obama talking about getting tough, while only seeking revival in faith…
As for Hillary, no thanks. I’ve read too much about her; besides, she’s sucking up corporate dollars like everyone else and seems as dishonest as it gets and can’t give a no or yes to a simple answer… like the rest of them. Of the known bunch running, I’d have to go for Edwards but he hasn’t come out with an anti-corporate stance, and we both know corporations want to transform the nation into a third-world nation via NAFTA and their new behind-the-scenes negotiations. Alas, our presidents are only corporate puppets. Yours is a statement worth quoting: “In other words, shouldn't we be more worried about the next corporate merger than the next president?” What an interesting concept!
It is difficult for me not to perceive America as a great experiment, not in democracy, but in commerce. For me, America isn’t a country, it’s a big business—sell, sell, sell—and that’s why she doesn’t give a damn about my not having health insurance and my being put out of work at a public university by a Mongolian with a green card who, of course, would never ever criticize that public university. Good functionaries are prized in America, you see, not good citizens apt to “go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways” (Emerson) and let their lives “be a counterfriction to stop the machine” (Thoreau), the rampant commerce machine that steamrolls over everything. America is indeed quite colorblind when it comes to good functionaries!
We have got to stop indoctrinating future citizens to focus on wealth and celebrity, if ever we hope to resolve the problem of the nation as runaway conglomerate commerce. We have got to say no to CEO Vice Presidents like Cheney. We need to establish core curriculum in all public schools and universities devoted to the ideals of democracy, free speech, and vigorous debate, not to politically-correct thought control. Race is not the issue! Diversity has become a convenient diversion away from the real issues of great-wealth discrepancy and corporate control over the nation. Black wealth exists! We all know that. But Black wealth does not fight corporate wealth: It is corporate wealth! We need to stop according tenure to certified professor kowtows of the system. Many of our universities have gone politically-correct whacko, probably because of that very reason (see thefire.org for a list of institutions gone whacko like the University of Delaware, for example). Yes, education is the only answer, but not that offered by our increasingly corporate-co-opted public universities bent on creating fit-in functionaries and bureaucrats, as opposed to courageous questioning and challenging citizens. Our public university professors and other educationists need to stop playing monkey-do, monkey-see. They need to rethink the requisite three letters of recommendation that only serve to create faculties of like-minded, see-no-evil, hear-no-evil professors. How can democracy possibly thrive with such creatures at the helm of higher education? It cannot and has not.
ALL MATERIAL ON THIS SITE IS COPYRIGHT ©G. Tod Slone, 2008, The American Dissident (www.theamericandissident.org), a 501c3 nonprofit org. |
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