Revolution

I've always thought that if the USA was to have a revolution these days, it would either come from the far right, or the far right would come out on top no matter who started it.  I wonder if that is coming to pass now.  The USA appears poised to split along lines of race and class.  It seems that Americans are indeed eager to turn upon each other instead of on those who created and profit from the low-wage high-debt reality that most people live in now.

What I Think of the Oscars

This clip sums it up nicely.



Oscar Gold from Leonardo Gatica on Vimeo.

Sadly, This Now Seems Timely

A scene from one of my favorite movies:

Another Reading From John Steinbeck

...from The Grapes of Wrath.
... with a little passage from Scripture embedded in it:

Tom went on, "He spouted some Scripture once, an' it didn' soun' like no hell-fire Scripture.  He tol' it twicet, an' I remember it.  Says it's from the Preacher."
"How's it go, Tom?"
"Goes, 'Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their labor.  For if they fall, the one will lif' up his fellow, but woe to him that is alone when he falleth, for he hath not another to help him up.'  That's part of her."
"Go on," Ma said, "Go on, Tom."
"Jus' a little bit more.  'Again, if two lie together, then they have heat; but how can one be warm alone? And if one prevail against him, two shall withstand him, and a three-fold cord is not quickly broken.'" [Ecclesiastes 4: 9-12]
"An' that's Scripture?"
"Casy said it was.  Called it the Preacher."
"Hush -- listen."
"On'y the wind, Ma.  I know the wind.  An' I got to thinkin', Ma -- most of the preachin' is about the poor we shall have always with us, an' if you got nuthin', why, jus' fol' your hands an' to hell with it, you gonna git ice cream on gol' plates when you're dead.  An' then this here Preacher say two get a better reward for their work."
"Tom," she said.  "What you aimin' to do?"
He was quiet for a long time.  "I been thinkin' how it was in that gov'ment camp, how our folks took care a theirselves, an' if they was a fight they fixed it theirself; an' they wasn't no cops wagglin' their guns, but they was better order than them cops ever give.  I been a-wonderin' why we can't do that all over.  Throw out the cops that ain't our people.  All work together for our own thing -- all farm our own lan'."
"Tom," Ma repeated, "what you gonna do?"
"What Casy done," he said.
"But they killed him."
"Yeah," said Tom.  "He didn' duck quick enough.  He wasn' doing nothin' against the law, Ma.  I been thinkin' a hell of a lot, thinkin' about our people livin' like pigs an' the good rich lan' layin' fallow, or maybe one fella with a million acres, while a hunderd thousan' good farmers is starvin'.  An' I been wonderin' if all our folks got together an' yelled, like them fellas yelled, only a few of 'em at the Hooper ranch --"
Ma said, "Tom, they'll drive you, an' cut you down like they done to young Floyd."
"They gonna drive me anyways.  They drivin' all our people."
"You don't aim to kill nobody, Tom?"
"No.  I been thinkin', long as I'm a outlaw anyways, maybe I could -- Hell, I ain't thought it out clear, Ma.  Don' worry me now.  Don' worry me."

Arthur Rothstein, Younger Members of the Drake Family, Farm Security Administration camp, Weslaco, Texas, 1942

A Sensation at The Advocate

The article on The Passion of Christ, A Gay Vision has become something of a phenomenon at The Advocate online.  The article is now up to 2.5K shares on Facebook and Twitter.  Kittredge Cherry reports that the book is now sold out on Amazon.

EXTRA

As of yesterday, the article now has 3K shares.

Umberto Eco

It appears that the New York Review of Books let down its high pay wall around one of the late Umberto Eco's greatest essays, his essay on Fascism from June 1995.

On the morning of July 27, 1943, I was told that, according to radio reports, fascism had collapsed and Mussolini was under arrest. When my mother sent me out to buy the newspaper, I saw that the papers at the nearest newsstand had different titles. Moreover, after seeing the headlines, I realized that each newspaper said different things. I bought one of them, blindly, and read a message on the first page signed by five or six political parties—among them the Democrazia Cristiana, the Communist Party, the Socialist Party, the Partito d’Azione, and the Liberal Party. 

Until then, I had believed that there was a single party in every country and that in Italy it was the Partito Nazionale Fascista. Now I was discovering that in my country several parties could exist at the same time. Since I was a clever boy, I immediately realized that so many parties could not have been born overnight, and they must have existed for some time as clandestine organizations.
The message on the front celebrated the end of the dictatorship and the return of freedom: freedom of speech, of press, of political association. These words, “freedom,” “dictatorship,” “liberty,”—I now read them for the first time in my life. I was reborn as a free Western man by virtue of these new words.

We must keep alert, so that the sense of these words will not be forgotten again. Ur-Fascism is still around us, sometimes in plainclothes. It would be so much easier, for us, if there appeared on the world scene somebody saying, “I want to reopen Auschwitz, I want the Black Shirts to parade again in the Italian squares.” Life is not that simple. Ur-Fascism can come back under the most innocent of disguises. Our duty is to uncover it and to point our finger at any of its new instances—every day, in every part of the world. Franklin Roosevelt’s words of November 4, 1938, are worth recalling: “I venture the challenging statement that if American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens, fascism will grow in strength in our land.” Freedom and liberation are an unending task.

Another Lent, Another Flame War Over the Passion Series.

The Advocate online featured the Passion Series and Kittredge Cherry's book on it again, a big spread with all the paintings reproduced.

Right now, there is a big flame war going on at The Advocate's Facebook page.  Most of it is the usual "Sick!! Sacrilege!! Apostasy!! Why don't you paint a gay Muhammad?" from the fundamentalists, and "Jesus didn't exist! This is a fucking waste of time!" from the atheists.

What a bore.


On the other hand, The Advocate's Facebook page for the article is now at 332 likes and 133 shares.  And The Advocate online's article has been shared a total of 646 times on Facebook and Twitter.