Ron Jacobs's Blog, page 96

The Blues Had a Baby and They Named Him Jimi Hendrix-Spirits of the Red House

My friends and I used to fantasize about a life after death in a rock and roll heaven. Although there would be many guitarists present in the heavenly jam, the guy at the front of them all--sharing leads, riffs and chord changes--would be Jimi Hendrix. His clarion strings would stretch notes beyond the elysian boundaries, challenging Orpheus himself. As if to prove me right, a new disc from the master himself was released from beyond the grave on March 9th. Titled Valley of Neptune, the di...

Of Course Narcs Are Crooked....

We've all seen a television show or a movie about an undercover narcotics cop who become crooked. He loses the trust of his colleagues, then his family. Soon, the only contacts he has are with the world of drug dealers that he originally set out to destroy. Now picture this scenario of the criminal cop on a worldwide scale and condoned by various governments and their agencies, including that of the United States. Let's go a step further and understand that not only are these governments ...

I See Hawks and Earthworms--Let's Rock

When one travels through the North American continent, one is certain to run into places where the emptiness is overwhelming; where the land is bigger than the sky and the stars at night are the only signs that one is not alone. This emptiness is even greater when one is walking or camping and there are no vehicles even near. Hawks or buzzards flying above. Elk herds far in the distance. Painted canyons that once hosted civilizations. Highway stretching into the unseen distance and the o...

Just Walk Away From the Democrats

The left needs to organize the unorganized. The working people, the unemployed, the young, and the restless. The right wing has their core group of supporters who organize around fear of the other. The liberals have those who believe in the myth of American equality because they have no class analysis. The Left needs to organize the rest and they need to do so without the Democratic Party. It should be quite clear to almost every left-leaning American by now that the Democrats are nothing...

War On Terror or War On Disaffected Yemenis?

As if the US interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan were not enough to satiate the Empire's bloodlust, the calls are increasing for an all-out war on the nation of Yemen. The reason given for this intervention is that the man who apparently wanted to blow up an airliner on Christmas Day 2009 spent some time there and may have received his instructions while he was visiting. Like the increasingly bloody occupation of Afghanistan, Washington wants the world to believe that attacking a nation t...

Politics and Science Fiction

Paul Kantner and Grace Slick of the Jefferson Airplane released an album titled Blows Against the Empire in 1970. Besides the fact that it had an incredible lineup of San Francisco area musicians, it was also interesting because of its science fiction theme. Loosely based on Robert Heinlein's novel Methuselah's Children, the album was about a spaceship that had been hijacked by a group of revolutionaries determined to create a new world. If one considers the political milieu of the time th...

Judge Roy Bean Takes His Court to Manhattan

After several months of delay due to the legal concerns of his publisher American author Robert Coover published the novel The Public Burning in 1977. This novel is an often humorous and consistently biting commentary on the state of the US empire and the psyche that maintains it. It features (among others) Richard Nixon as the primary protagonist and narrator with occasional appearances from Uncle Sam as a Methuselahian superhero and Dwight Eisenhower as the latest incarnation of the Amer...

Barely A Peep...Escalation Unopposed

When school started in September 1969 I was attending a Catholic high school located twenty miles outside of Washington, DC. in Laurel, MD. My dad was in DaNang, Vietnam. The seniors at the school were facing an almost certain induction into the military and Richard Nixon had been president for almost a year. Some of the kids who lived closer to DC were working on the big demonstration coming up on October 15 -- the Vietnam Moratorium. The point of this protest was to bring the antiwar se...

Agitator Journalism: Remembering Ramparts

Many folks oriented toward the New Left in the 1960s and early 1970s have a story or two about Ramparts magazine. I personally discovered the periodical in a bookstore magazine rack in College Park, MD in late 1969. I was with a couple friends from high school. The November antiwar protests were over. My friends were buying some books for school and I was reading MAD magazine when I noticed the Ramparts cover. It featured Yippie Jerry Rubin wearing a bandolier and waving a gun. One of t...

Into the Vapid : Consuming the Cultural Product

Britney Spears, American Idol, Desperate Housewives ... The material that passes for popular culture has never been so vapid. Indeed, it's almost too easy to ridicule this stuff sold to viewers and listeners the world around. There is no enlightenment involved in the merchandise presented to us by car companies, banks, and other commercial failures whose primary intent is to convince us that our future involves us spending our money on their products. Indeed, there is not even a pretense ...