Trance Politics: Are We Completely Distracted Yet?

Maybe the Rethuglicans think that no one in America will think about any serious issues until after November if they continue to provide tons of distraction, both intentional and unintentional. If that's their strategy, it's working unbelievably well in both Left and Right Blogistan and the traditional media.

Two quick, recent, simple examples of the phenomenon:

Example 1. There has been lots of blogging about Sarah Palin's not being the mother of her youngest child, the claim being that her daughter was actually the mother. And now, today, the refutation of the story. Not that photo of an obviously pregnant Palin. Oh no. Nothing like that. Instead, a story that her daughter is pregnant now, that she'll marry the baby's father, and so on. This is worth at least a week more of distraction, during which we're not supposed to look at Iraq, the economy, energy or health care. Instead, we're supposed to debate and/or scream at each other about whether or not Sarah Palin's daughter did or did not have access to contraception and compare Sarah Palin to Hillary Britney's mother.

Example 2. Hurricane Gustav takes aim at New Orleans. Embarrassed about Katrina, the Rethuglican's decide it would be unbecoming to have arch villains Bush and Cheney in public a coronation celebration while a natural disaster strikes America. They say that on this occasion they should act like Americans rather than Rethuglicans. Great. So we turn attention to how that will change their planned convention, and how they're getting briefed in Mississippi and Tejas. But why is it, if it's not ok to celebrate a coronation when there's a natural disaster, that it is ok to celebrate it while there's a continuing man-made disaster in Iraq, which has left thousands of US troops and tens of thousands of Iraqis dead and tens of thousands more maimed or seriously wounded. It's ok to celebrate when thousands of nation's youth are dying, but the mere chance of deaths or injuries or loss of property from a storm makes the celebration inappropriate. Does this make any sense? Only if you care about providing innocuous material to discuss instead of real issues.

Enough, I say. Enough.

Now I'm going to an American barbecue. I'm going to drink lots of globalized beer. I'm going to celebrate what labor in America has brought the nation. Things like the 8 hour day and the weekend. I'm going especially to celebrate the triumphs of the UFW and Cesar Chavez. And the IWW. I'm going to think about Big Bill Haywood and Woody Guthrie. I'm gonna hum labor songs. I'm taking a break.

While I'm gone, I hope folks will start to figure out how to break the trance.

U. Utah Phillips, RIP

"The Golden Voice of the Great Southwest" sings no more. Bruce "U. Utah" Phillips who, tongue firmly in cheek, billed himself that way, died peacefully in his sleep at his home in Nevada City, CA, May 23. He was 73.

Phillips was one of the deans of American folk music, a crucial link to the working class movement and history of western North America, and a cheerfully subversive social critic.

A proud, card-carrying Wobbly, Bruce made the songs and stories of the American West his own. As indeed they were. When he returned home from the Korean War, Phillips was broke in purse, body and spirit, riding the rails, until he landed at Joe Hill House in Salt Lake City, a shelter run by anarchist Ammon Hennacy of the Catholic Workers movement. Hennacy's Marxism made sense of Phillip's experience, and from it grew the knowledge and imagination Phillips subsequently put on stage.

Starting in the late 1960s, "U. Utah Phillips, The Golden Voice of the Great Southwest" sang the old, radical songs of the Little Red Song Book, and told the old organizers’ stories, working class yarns, rants and tall tales. He performed them with the skill and panache of Hal Holbrook doing Mark Twain - and thereby rejuvenated them. At hundreds of folk festivals and thousands of concerts, through a dozen recordings, he passed the lore on to two generations of new listeners, including young musicians like Ani De Franco. source

When the the U.S. government finally released Joe Hill's ashes, it was to Phillips that they gave them.

In his own words:

"Listen," Phillips wrote in 1995, when first forced to cancel his extensive touring schedule, "for 25 years now, I have been part of a family which has given me a living – not a killing, but a living – a trade without bosses, in which I could own what I do, make all of the creative decisions, be free to say and sing whatever I chose to... Front porch, kitchen, back yard, drunk and sober, young and old, coast-to-coast folk music, a world in which I discovered that I don't need power, wealth, or fame. I need friends. And that's what I found and still find."

"To hell with the mainstream," Bruce concluded. "It's polluted. What purifies the mainstream? The little tributaries up in the wilderness where the pure water flows. Better to be lost in the tributaries known to a few, than mired in the mainstream, consumed with self-love and the absurdity of greed. Please. Don't give our world up. It needs to grow, yes – but subtly, out, through, under, quietly, like water eroding stone, subversive, alive, happy."

In his own way:



He will be sorely missed.