In the Absence of Whitman

Back during the First Gulf War, I submitted an article to my local self-styled "lefty" newsweekly that was basically an exposition of Robinson Jeffers' Stoic musings in "Shine, Perishing Republic." For whatever reason, the editors chose not to publish the peice. Hard to blame them, I guess. After all, we appeared to be kicking some good Arab butt back then. So why be glum? I have often said, "Scratch a Liberal, find a Reactionary." It is as true today as it was back then. Sadly.

I no longer recall with what commentary I embroidered Jeffers' poem, but it's not important. Or certainly not as important as the poem itself. Here it is:

While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily thickening
to empire
And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out, and the
mass hardens,
I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make fruit, the fruit rots
to make earth.
Out of the mother; and through the spring exultances, ripeness and decadence;
and home to the mother.
You making haste haste on decay: not blameworthy; life is good, be it stubbornly
long or suddenly
A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than mountains:
shine, perishing republic.
But for my children, I would have them keep their distance from the thickening
center; corruption
Never has been compulsory, when the cities lie at the monster's feet there
are left the mountains.
And boys, be in nothing so moderate as in love of man, a clever servant,
insufferable master.
There is the trap that catches noblest spirits, that caught –-
they say -–
God, when he walked on earth.

9/11: Letter From Europe

On 9/11/2006 my man in the Big Apple writes: "Today we had it all: the ringing of bells, the laying of wreathes, the reading of names, dubya, the blue light."

It is really quite a relief to be in Europe at this moment as the Bush
Administration continues its campaign of milking old wounds for political survival.

Karl Rove believes Americans are a craven lot: easily bullied, gullible, ridden with fear and an unlimited capacity for revenge. Poet of the 4th Reich, Rove is; Walt Whitman, he is not.

For their part, the Europeans I have spoken with about the tragedy wince at what appears to them to be American self-involvement; the feeling that we are the only people who have ever suffered an injustice and that that feeling somehow entitles us to a permanent "Get Out of Jail Free" card in the court of world opinion.

Meanwhile, a Dutch physician I spoke with asked me, "So, how do you like Holland?" Before I could reply he said, "You know, we have no poverty here. None. We eliminated it." I said, "Yes. I know that it's possible--where there is the will." He nodded. "Exactly," he said.

The social democracies of Europe and Scandinavia are far from perfect. But they do not appear to me to have their heads in the sand (or in anatomically inappropriate places). Over here, one finds images of smiling head-scarved Muslim women in advertisements (something one never finds in George Bush's America). The social imagination is alive here. The E.U. is dreaming a new world order.

In Britain (no longer "Great"), British Labour FINALLY appears poised to show Tony Blair the door.

The coming mid-term elections in the U.S. could be America's finest hour since 9/11/01--if the electorate can muster the courage to punish the politicians who find in tragic circumstances opportunities for a resurgent military-industrial-complex underwritten by a plutocracy that has shed the last vestiges of common democratic decency.