It’s Sunday, and tomorrow is Martin Luther King Day in the U.S., so we get a “bank holiday.”And the brutally cold weather will begin tomorrow: the onset of a real Chicago winter. My book discussion went well yesterday: a full house with standing room only (about 50, I’d say), and lots of books sold. The people were interested, smart, and asked good questions, and the event, scheduled for an hour, went 2.5. Now I’m hoarse (at least I don’t have a slight colt). Many were Communists (American Communist Party) and it was strange to hear well-dressed people talking about the coming revolution (which I strongly doubt will come). On this day in 1977, Gary Gimore (subject of Normal Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song) was executed by firing squad in Utah (I remember it well), and, in 1991, Operation Desert Storm began the Gulf War. In 1998 the Lewinsky scandal broke (“I did not have sex with that woman”). On January 17, 1922, Betty White was born, as was Jim Carrey in 1962. In 2001, Gregory Corso, the beat poet, died—one of three Beats I actually encountered (the other two were Gary Snyder and Allen Ginsburg). And, in 2008, Bobby Fischer, chess whiz and weirdo, died at the age of 65. Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is still interested in living noms, though I wonder if she means “the wintertime eating of birds.”
Hili: We are living in interesting times.
A: A penny for your thoughts.
Hili: I adore the wintertime feeding of birds.
Hili: Żyjemy w ciekawych czasach.
Ja: Co masz na myśli?
Hili: Uwielbiam to zimowe dokarmianie ptaków.
American Communist Party, is there still such an Organisation? what about the Socialist Party? there may be hope for you yet.
According to Wikipedia, many Communist Parties in the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_communist_parties
American Party of Labor, Communist Party USA, Communist Voice Organization, League of Revolutionaries for a New America, Party for Socialism and Liberation, Party of Communists USA, Progressive Labor Party, Revolutionary Organization of Labor, Revolutionary Communist Party, U.S. Marxist–Leninist Organization, Workers Party, USA, Workers World Party, Socialist Workers Party, Freedom Road Socialist Organization [frso.org], Freedom Road Socialist Organization [freedomroad.org]
Primary one is CPUSA – http://www.cpusa.org/
Splitters!
Many years ago I saw some BBC political affairs programme which had a segment on how the Left tends to fracture into ever-smaller groups over questions of ideological purity – and it was interspersed with clips from that very same scene in ‘LoB’. Hilarious!
Also quite surprising, given the BBC’s left-wing bias.
Strange that you consider the BBC has a left-wing bias when most of the left consider the BBC to have quite a strong right-wing bias – to the extent that I know some people who refuse to watch it and got rid of their TVs in order to not even fund it.
It’s a loss.
“Splitting” is a problem for all organisations driven by people’s principles, because people are so variable. It’s pragmatists who keep groups together. And sometimes that have to really, really struggle to keep the factions together. See, amongst other things, the regular atheist-basher-bashing posts on this site. In theory, we are all singing from the same hymn sheet, and in practice, we’re not.
Strange? Well, I remember back in the days of the old USSR, when Gorbachev was trying to move the state towards a free-market economy and was facing opposition from the old hard-line communists in the Politburo, how the BBC repeatedly described those hard-liners as the “right-wingers”. How strange that the BBC could regard Gorbachev as left-wing and the old communists as right-wing – except that it seems that to the BBC mind-set “left-wing” is synonymous with “good” and “right-wing” with “bad”.
As a more recent example: consider the aftermath of last year’s general election, and the utter amazement expressed by so many BBC commentators that people had voted the *wrong* way and elected the Conservatives – “cowardly Tory voters” was the phrase repeatedly bandied about to describe people who chose to not to share their voting intentions with the pollsters.
Of course, I suppose that to some people (e.g Morning Star readers, or SWP members?) the dear old Beeb might seem to the right of them – but many people who have worked within it will attest to its bias.
http://socialistparty-usa.net/
There is an old joke: The Soviet Union has developed a super computer that can predict the future, so Brezhnev comes to inspect it.
The first thing he asks is: “How does the US look in twenty years time?” And after a while, the computer prints out a strip of paper, on which it reads: “The US is a socialist country.”
Delighted, Brezhnev asks a second question: “How does the Soviet Union look in twenty years time?” And after a while, he gets a second strip of paper.
“Well, what does it say?”, he is asked, after remaining silent for a long time.
“I don’t know”, he answers, “it’s all Chinese characters.”
A friend of mine attended the book event and was one of the SRO crowd. He estimated about 70 there. He very much enjoyed the presentation, the Q&A and discussion.
I’m only one for three on employers in the US who consider MLK day to be a holiday. And the current one doesn’t! Enjoy your holiday 🙂
Sounds like Comrades all around.
West of Chicago we have a coating of snow from last night and a gift from Canada making it -5 Fahrenheit, -20 Celsius. Love those Canadians.
Don’t blame us, we got it from the Arctic and we’re just passing it on.
Here in the sunny south it’s a balmy -3C.
We have to blame it on someone. You know how that stuff runs downhill – we have to take a shot now and then.
Ever and always–blame Canada!
It has now struggled up to -16.6C in the northern suburbs, from -18 earlier, cold enough to make running out to grab the sunday paper dressed in a bathrobe and slippers something of a breezy adventure.
Titan, sensible cat that he is, refused to go out due to the climate, but had to go back to the door a few minutes later to confirm that his perception was correct (given that it is sunny and the snow has gone). He visibly shivered when he put his nose out for a couple of seconds, sniffed the air and pulled it back into the house.
I must admit that Sophisticated Magic™ held its fascination up to age 5, and Utopian Societies™ up to age 10.
Live some, learn some.
My constant quibble about the Clinton quote: I believe the full quote is “I did not have sex(ual intercourse) with that woman”. (As a white Southern boy, Clinton would never publicly refer to Lewinsky as anything worse than “That Woman”.) In this respect, “sexual intercourse” = “missionary position”, which is what one does with one’s Wife (note capitalization), who is a Lady (note capitalization). So, what he did with Lewinsky was “not” sexual intercourse. As Dan Inouye said in the Watergate hearings, “What a lawyer”.
Full Disclosure: (1) I voted for Clinton (2x) and (2) I am a Legal Secretary.
For the record, Bobby Fischer was (of course) 64 years old when he died.