To the list:
I tried sending a picture but obviously that doesn't work. I guess it's just
"too big", I mean too much memory for the list or servers. Anyone who wants
one just ask and I will try sending it to you. Eva, did you get the picture?
Now as for Eva, Ed, Jay, Arthur, Sally, Mike and the rest,
The problem with this for me is the same as Paul Robeson. I worked with one of
his teachers and he was a great man. One of the great artists and heroes of the
20th century. It was not his politics that was so much the problem, anymore
than was Picasso's, but the whole concept of " intellectual value" abroad in the
society in his time and this time still.
A best selling book by a female judge says it best: "Beauty fades, dumb is
forever." But what constitutes smart? A scientist on the basketball court
with professional players would make dumb moves as would the reverse.
Robeson was a great singer and a great political hero for an America that was
brutal, crude and banal but he failed to see the same in the Soviets and the
relatives of his intellectual friends in Moscow who were murdered by Stalin,
never forgave him.
The split between Jews and Blacks began there but the Black collaborationists
who abandoned Robeson in the U.S. maintained the fragile coalition for a time
longer until more progress could be made. The Crow Priest "Plenty Coups" had
done the same sixty years earlier when he also signed a loyalty oath while
"Crazy Horse" was murdered for being intractable. So who was right? The
hero Robenson, under illegal "house arrest" in the U.S. for seven years
protesting the lynchings and apartheid refusing to sign an unconstitutional
loyalty oath so that he could perform around the world, or the men who
cooperated with Macarthy? We have a similiar issue with Elia Kazan and the
Oscars.
And they love to call this a Judeo-Christian society. If I were either I would
protest or certainly not admit to it.
It is said that the CIA gave Robeson a drug, that causes paranoia, at a party in
Moscow and the effect was that he slit his wrists effectively stopping his world
tour of socialist countries and not embarrassing the U.S. powers. The Russians
cooperated by giving him shock treatments and practically destroying the man.
Beauty is fragile but dumbness is cantagious. All of this was on Television
tonight. This great artist was a national treasure but dummies who stumble
over diamonds and can only use them to kill rabbits were emulated in the last
couple of centuries and are emulated still. Yes those same bunny killers are
the ones who call us Hunter/Gatherers and even finally got it into the Am. Her.
II American Dictionary. There is a problem with "knowledge" especially when
you can simply define your competitor out of existence. Only the latest is
real because there is a problem with remembering.
In tomorrow's NYTimes there is an article about the scientist businessmen in
Silicone Valley using their technical expertise and money to effect the
political landscape in California for the Libertarians. Most are young and
beautiful but their causes will outlast them and are truly dumb. Even the
article quotes them as having very short attentions spans. (Cocaine can cause
that also.) So the left is dumb and the right is dumb. Jay there had
better be more than just right or left or this ship WILL sink.
Robeson was trapped. White America patted themselves on the back for
"letting" him become who he was but did not ask why they were not up to his
standard. It also never occurred to them that this world class artist could
have happened anywhere at any time. America had nothing to do with it. It
just destroyed his health and ultimately killed him. The country that
criticized the KGB even monitored his medical charts in the hospital with the
FBI. What should worry the folks here is that the Black folks are not
forgetting this stuff. Even Harry Belafonte came across like a historian
tonight. They were an impressive group of people.
On Nightline tonight there was a program about a study in how the White medical
establishment treats blacks differently even when they are middle class, have
good health insurance and are productive. In effect they were saying that
the Black community is being robbed of its productive members by poor medical
care in major hospitals all because of Doctor's attitudes about who they
value. (Yes we've seen this before!)
The study will be in the New England Medical Journal for those of you who
believe this is hokum. I'm only reporting. ( It took an act of Congress to
get the secret sterilization's of Indian women stopped in Government hospitals
in 1977. The month the bill was passed there were 1,600 done anyway. So it's
not all that much hokum or maybe hohokum either. )
Koppel on Nightline didn't ascribe the inferior care to a belief in White
Supremacy by the Doctors but in simple attitude. "Beauty fades, dumb is
forever." How interesting it would be if instead of Blacks and Whites we
would consider Blacks and whatever ethnicity or religion those Doctors happen to
be. The myth that all Doctors are Jewish need not apply here. I suspect
that the Jewish Doctors are probably less involved. It may even be an age
issue. And we have seen how blanket "goodness" applied to certain religious
groups have simply heightened their predatory natures.
Anyone who believes that a person's conversion to their religion is comparable
to saving a person's life through heart surgery can make up any reason for
separating children from their families and have over the last four hundred or
so years. I know about that personally also.
It was strange that the Soviets could keep Inuit families together for study
while destroying their regular population's family relationships and shipping
people all over creation just for their government's convenience. It doesn't
seem to matter whether it is a Capitalist manipulating poverty or a Communist
considering the workforce as a corollary to the Army. Destruction is
destruction. And this destruction that both sides Piss and Moan about, is
built into their scientific and pseudo scientific use of knowledge.
The problem with the future is that there is no real valuing of balance in
creativity or respect for tradition in the present. Even the most obvious
benefits of a family professional line with great geniuses like the European
Master Painters, Lilli Lehman or even the Douglas family in Hollywood, not to
mention the professions in Japan and elsewhere, are ignored. But somehow the
Capitalists and the Commies are just so tied to that limited view of what
constitutes intelligence and value that they destroy lines of information that
have been building for hundreds and thousands of years. They think that the
best way is to break up the lines and start over again with each birth.
"Beauty fades, dumb is forever."
Just because they can quote Descartes and give his second rate shaman formula,
that every apprentice was taught at age six, does not mean that they know it or
even believe it. The difference is that literacy just taught us all how to
forget. Those six year olds didn't learn that. How's that for a line in the
sand? Beauty fades, dumb is forever! Like the ugliness of Greenbelt
Maryland, the UN Building, Black Velvet Last Supper scenes and sentimental
barroom ballads.
Now for a little Coda on this angst:
How about a compromise? Instead of insults and dogma why not consider a
little good old Lockian "prudence." It was, after all, Locke who succeeded
in his revolution. He changed England and without destroying it. Neither the
Founding Fathers of the U.S. or the Das Kapital Lieber Meisters were able to
accomplish that for themselves. I never liked Locke much, found him obvious
and boring but thus far he is the winner of this little story. He will
determine the future of our work unless we can discard him and the others to the
"stage" (altar, heap) of revered Masters and ask the real questions for
ourselves and struggle to answer them without resorting to excess. Like this
post it is too long and I'm going to bed. Goodnight Guys and Gals. Read
you tomorrow.
REH
