{"id":2018,"date":"2007-01-16T15:36:00","date_gmt":"2007-01-16T22:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2007\/01\/16\/you-too-can-have-all-this\/"},"modified":"2007-01-16T15:36:00","modified_gmt":"2007-01-16T22:36:00","slug":"you-too-can-have-all-this","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2007\/01\/16\/you-too-can-have-all-this\/","title":{"rendered":"“You too can have all this”"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Younger Than That Now<\/a>, an interlocking couple of memoirs.\u00c2\u00a0 A significant but not overwhelming part concerns Ruth Williams’s nine month membership in the Caucus of Labor Committees.\u00c2\u00a0 Spliced more than I probably am allowed to post, some excerpts.\u00c2\u00a0 Part 1:\u00c2\u00a0 Joining up.\u00c2\u00a0 Part 2:\u00c2\u00a0 Proud full-fledged member.\u00c2\u00a0 Part 3:\u00c2\u00a0 Quitting.<\/p>\n

Part 1:<\/p>\n

“Stop thinking about your mother,” someone yelled.\u00c2\u00a0 “You don’t need mother’s magic.”\u00c2\u00a0 The thin, bearded man writhing on the floor nodded his head and struggled to breath.\u00c2\u00a0 His face was becoming blue.\u00c2\u00a0 In 1974, mmany people thought asthma was pshycosomatic, and I figured this man was
\ntrying to overcome a neurosis, though it seemed an extreme cure.\u00c2\u00a0 But I became really alarmed when he began to lose conciousness.<\/p>\n

A plump, blond woman was telling me that she was on her way to MIT, armed with several awards and grants for her unique mathematical theories and also with her fanatic devotion to the Labor Committees.\u00c2\u00a0 I put my hand on her arm to get her to stop talking.\u00c2\u00a0 “He’s going to die,” I protested.\u00c2\u00a0 She turned around to look and, almost reluctantly, said, “I’ll call an ambulance.” I was relieved to hear sirens even before she hang up — the hospital was right across the street.<\/p>\n

Arlen, a tall, balding intellectual who seemed to be the leader of NLCL’s Madison cadre, knelt on the floor and held the head.\u00c2\u00a0 “You know asthma is a mother-induced illness, don’t you?\u00c2\u00a0 You know that.\u00c2\u00a0 We’ve discussed it.”
\nThe man could no longer nod.\u00c2\u00a0 His chest rattled, and I saw bubbles of foam beginning to come from his mouth.\u00c2\u00a0 Arlen turned to the rest of us and said, “He’ll be fine.\u00c2\u00a0 Really.\u00c2\u00a0 He’s been doing a lot better lately, and it’s just going to take some time before he becomes a fully realized human being.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s hard work.”\u00c2\u00a0 The group nodded sympathetically.\u00c2\u00a0 Then three paramedics burst into the room and began to revive the man.\u00c2\u00a0 After a hypodermic and some oxygen, he was breathing again.\u00c2\u00a0 “I’m sorry,” he mumbled as he was carried to the ambulance.<\/p>\n

I turned a horrified face to the MIT woman.\u00c2\u00a0 “What was that all about?”
\n“He’ll be fine,” she consoled me.\u00c2\u00a0 “It’s been a long time since he needed medical care.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s just a little setback.\u00c2\u00a0 Eventually he won’t have asthma anymore.”\u00c2\u00a0 She looked totally convinced of what she’d just said.\u00c2\u00a0 Evidentally NCLC members believed they could fight disease and human\u00c2\u00a0frailty as well as change the face of American politics, and they were already practicing psychology on their membership.\u00c2\u00a0 Why had the\u00c2\u00a0 well-educated, highly intelligent woman joined what I had thought was an insignificant fringe organization?\u00c2\u00a0 Was there more to it than I saw?<\/p>\n

I let her put my arm around my waist as we walked to some chairs in the back of the room.\u00c2\u00a0 She knelt on the floor beside me and said, “You really love your husband, don’t you?”
\n“Yes.”
\n“I loved mine too.\u00c2\u00a0 But sometimes real human beings have to make hard choices.\u00c2\u00a0 I had to divorce my husband.”
\n“Why?”
\n“He wouldn’t join the Labor Committees.\u00c2\u00a0 Even after he heard Lyndon LaRouche speak in New York last spring — wait until you hear him, he’s a genius — he wouldn’t let go of his fears.\u00c2\u00a0 I had to move on.”
\n“Like Bill will, you mean?\u00c2\u00a0 If I don’t join?”
\nShe crooked an eyebrow, a knowing “what else could he do?” look.\u00c2\u00a0 Then she said, “But that’s not what has to happen.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 You can both be in the vanguard of a new American Renaissance.”
\nWe seemed to be making quantum leaps, from this bare, basement meeting room to a renaissance.\u00c2\u00a0 From divorce to a vanguard.\u00c2\u00a0 My head was spinning.\u00c2\u00a0 She went on, “There’s one thing stopping you from joining him.”
\n“What’s that?”
\n“You have to forget mother’s homemade magic.\u00c2\u00a0 Forget Reverend Jorgenson.\u00c2\u00a0 Forget –”
\n“Hey, how do you know about him?”
\n“Bill and I had a long talk yesterday.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

………………….<\/p>\n

Part 2:<\/p>\n

\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dear Jeff,
\nMuch has changed since your visit and I hesitate to unfold it within\u00c2\u00a0the limited scope of a letter but it must be attempted if we hope to\u00c2\u00a0continue to communicate.\u00c2\u00a0 There are innumerable reasons to recoil in dismay\u00c2\u00a0from reality.\u00c2\u00a0 However, Bill and I have ruthlessly confronted those reasons and found them less than human, if not totally insane.\u00c2\u00a0 Throughout\u00c2\u00a0 our lives, Jeff, we have been surrounded with fantasy — TV, mother’s homeside magic, Vietnam and its deluded antiwar “revolutionaries”, the\u00c2\u00a0 myth of success, etc. — and we have responded with neurotic insanity,\u00c2\u00a0feverishly constructing more fantasy, performing propitiatory rituals to\u00c2\u00a0dead pasts.\u00c2\u00a0 Now the fantasies are melting away.<\/p>\n

This letter is VERITABLY IMPOSSIBLE for me to write, so big is the gulf between yourself (who can write impassively of Rockefeller and William F Buckley) and myself (who is pouring my intellect, creativity, time, energy, probably my life’s blood into the battle for humanity against the bestialized filth of those men and their following).\u00c2\u00a0 Have you read about TRIAGE as suggested by Rocky’s Trilateral Commission?\u00c2\u00a0 If so, how can you possibly tolerate it and call yourself human?\u00c2\u00a0 Einstein,
\nFeuerbach, Marx, Luxemburg, Hegel, Oparin, Vernadsky — in essence break out of the controlled environment spawned by “higer education” and begin your education anew.\u00c2\u00a0 Bill and I have embarked on the excruciating task of finding the real
\nworld and we are tempted to backslide daily, but the realization of the discovery of self-concious mentation of the type experienced by Descartes, “I think therefore I am”, and the responsibility it carries of negentropic growth constantly compels us to tear out the demons of our education.\u00c2\u00a0 Ie, we are confronting the “giggling, nervous infants of bourgeois fear” which grip and strangle the minds of most of our acquaintances, our families, our friends — and we arebecoming members of a new species, equipped to make the conceptual leap which is absolutely necessary if the human race is to survive an impending ecological holocaust.
\nPolitical, economic, psychological, personal, moral, scientific,
\nartistic levels — all the pursuits of mankind — must be conceptually raised to the next level of human progress.\u00c2\u00a0 We are in the process of an intellectual renaissance, Jff, and it is very real.\u00c2\u00a0 I would be less than equal in the demands of a truly creative friendship if I didn’t joyfully bring it within the grasp of your mind.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve enclosed several clippings which I hope you will read.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re from NEW SOLIDARITY — you know, the paper you used to laugh at?\u00c2\u00a0 We are planning to leave Madison and will be organizing full-time with the Labor Committees in Milwaukee and Chicago.\u00c2\u00a0 I quit my job in November and have since been making intellectual leaps necessary to maintain the integrity of my decision to be a world historical being rather than Ruth Tuttle of Yazoo City.\u00c2\u00a0 I am beginning to locate myself by my mental coordinates rather than geographically.\u00c2\u00a0 Whithin me exists not onlly the experiences of 23 years, but also an intensifying sensuous grasp of the geometry of the universe and the laws and forms I am capable of imposing on it.\u00c2\u00a0 Of all my friends, you are the one I know best intellectually.\u00c2\u00a0 We have shared our minds much more than our experiences and for this reason, I am convinced that you have the intellectual integrity to grapple with\u00c2\u00a0your bourgeois persona and fear and to discover your humanity, your pride.\u00c2\u00a0 This will be very straining to our relationship because it calls for an honesty not accepted in polite society and is certainly far removed from the magnanimous apathy of the counterculture many of our peers have opted for.<\/p>\n

So, there you have an infinitesimal glance into the burgeoning currents of my life.\u00c2\u00a0 Jeff, I feel like every human being can potentially feel.\u00c2\u00a0 I feel like God.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

………….<\/p>\n

Part 3:<\/p>\n

I told my version of the incident to the man on the phone, adding, “at the hospital the police told me the woman is known in the neighborhood as mentally ill.\u00c2\u00a0 She’s always hallucinating about the devil, and today she was tripping her brains out, too.\u00c2\u00a0 They were trying to contact a family member to get her committed.”
\n“And you believed that?”
\n“Well yeah,” I said.\u00c2\u00a0 “You don’t?”
\n“Look at the facts:\u00c2\u00a0 The working class is being systematically destroyed by Rocky’s Trilateral Commission.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s a psychological holocaust going on out there.\u00c2\u00a0 This is the direct result of Nelson Rockefeller’s interference in our daily organizing.\u00c2\u00a0 If you do your job better, the workers won’t be destroyed like this.”
\n“So it’s my fault?”
\n“Let’s go over this story again, only this time I want you to tell me more about what Rodney was doing.”
\nAbout ten people were gathered in the next room.\u00c2\u00a0 Some of them were talking.\u00c2\u00a0 Others sat quietly, slumped in their chairs.\u00c2\u00a0 What I saw when I looked through the kitchen door was a group of demoralized, drifting\u00c2\u00a0 souls.\u00c2\u00a0 We had become dumb animals with gaunt faces and dark-rimmed eyes, members of the same soul starved family.\u00c2\u00a0 There was only one person who seemed to be untouched by Labor Committee angst, a genial black youth named Teddy.
\nI caught his eye and he came into the kitchen.\u00c2\u00a0 While I talked on the phone, he stood behind me and rubbed my shoulders.\u00c2\u00a0 I think he knew what I meant when I hung up the phone and said, “I’m going home now.”
\n“Yep, I’m about done with this scene, too,” he replied.\u00c2\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n

I was assigned to bring him along.\u00c2\u00a0 I would meet him at AO Smith during the morning shift change and hand him some copies of New Solidarity.\u00c2\u00a0 Within 20 minutes all his buddies would buy us out, the younger ones ribbing Teddy about his “white piece,” the older ones delivering advice with their twenty-five cents: “Boy, you bes’ be lookin’ after yo’ mamma, ‘stead of hustlin’ this garbage.”\u00c2\u00a0 Almost without exception they’d then toss the paper into the trash can next to the ramp.\u00c2\u00a0 Teddy and I just laughed it off.\u00c2\u00a0 The rest of the afternoon we’d hang out in a coffee shop, laughing — and sometimes crying — as we shared life stories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Younger Than That Now, an interlocking couple of memoirs.\u00c2\u00a0 A significant but not overwhelming part concerns Ruth Williams’s nine month membership in the Caucus of Labor Committees.\u00c2\u00a0 Spliced more than I probably am allowed to post, some excerpts.\u00c2\u00a0 Part 1:\u00c2\u00a0 Joining up.\u00c2\u00a0 Part 2:\u00c2\u00a0 Proud full-fledged member.\u00c2\u00a0 Part 3:\u00c2\u00a0 Quitting. Part 1: “Stop thinking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-larouche-challenge","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2018\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}