But if he was so great at listening, why did he keep doing what he was doing? If he knew from nearly the first day he signed up at MAIN, that what he was doing was wrong, why? Hip deep in the big muddy of congratulatory self-justification. Wherever the page turned, there I was, hip deep in the big muddy. (I have no idea if that works with the metaphor of that poem. Carrol just spouted it one time and I liked it. And that what was evoked by the experience of reading perkins: feeling hip deep in something muddy and brown.)
We never really talked much about the book. The deal with this book club is that the book is selected and it also needs to be a book that can be illustrated by a film. There was, therefore, a big push to get the damn film started. The reason for this is that, like a lot of book clubs, there's no requirement to read the book. So desperate are people to get together and discuss the issues, possibly any issues, and to grind whatever is one's personal axe, that it's anathema to have a requirement that might mean, well, that no one would actually show up. No axe grinding when that happens -- and we can't have that. So, no one is ever asked to read the book. Come along! Join us. Spout off about whatever strikes your fancy!
So, we watched a film interview of John Perkins.
The funny thing is, the one thing I appreciated about Perkins was his absolute insistence that none of what he's talking about is to be construed as conspiracy. For Perkins, the problems are institutionalized and systemic in such a way that no one person, no group of persons, could possibly change the system simply by being good people. Good intentions - integrity, having sound ethics and good morals -- simply won't do in such a system because, no matter what you do, the game is rigged.
Thank you Mr. Perkins!
As I read the book, I clung to that very important message that Perkins takes pains to make clear from the gitgo. It gets me through all the self-serving nonsense, cutesy little stories about brown people who share their truth with him because he's one of those good white guys who, in spite of the fact that he makes beaucoup bucks screwing them over, rilly rilly gets it. He has actually been to the parts of Indonesia where his fellow economic hit men would never go. Authentic White Man! Bow before him. Bow wow.
And yet, as the discussion leader turned the job of summarizing the book over to a man I'll call Arnie, I got a big heaping load of conspiracy theory! Aha! I'm definitely at home now. What good would a leftish gathering be without the conspiracy-theorizing 911 Truther in da house!? People, the elephantom of conspiracy theory: in da house! I've found my political home here in my new environs.
Why am I calling it the "elephantom" in da house? Because Dennis Perrin's wife has a hilarious blog about marketing and she once live blogged a marketing conference where she used that term. Cracked me up.
In other words, it probably doesn't evoke the right idea but I couldn't resist an opportunity to use the phrase.
Arnie went on about how most of this was about the CIA, blah blah blah, completely ignoring Perkins' warnings in the beginning that none of what he's talking about involves people sitting around plotting in smokey backrooms. Perkins even gives conpsiracy theorizing a little rap on the knuckles in the film. Didn't matter. Conspiracy Theory Elaphantom was in da house!
It made me chuckle.
We watched the documentary and then discussed the ideas raised in the doco. I'll admit that, as much as I have snarked about the format they're using, it does work well for the kinds of lives people lead: way too busy to read an entire book and then go spend 3 hours discussing it to boot.
We had a rousing big debate afterward. At first, what I observed seemed like well-trod debates between people who'd etched lines in the sand over this or that leftist issue many times before. That was my thought as I watched the room, smelling of mildewed furniture and books crawling with silverfish. The mildewed room exploded with men saying their say and other men jumping in to disagree.
Arns folded across barrel chests and lean torsos sat on hands, rocking rocking rocking. Back and forth rocking. Arms clenched tighter, faces grimaced, lips started to utter and then pulled back. waiting waiting waiting. A postmodern Roberts Rules of Order ordering the orderlessness. Waiting waiting waiting. Folding folding folding. Grimacing grimacing grimacing. Rocking rocking rocking. Leaning forward, disengaged. Leaning backward, engaged.
the lean torsos rocking back and forth while waiting waiting waiting for their turn to speak, the energy bursting out of their body became palpable, so palpable that you felt like you could reach out and grab that thick, heavy, dripping wet energy. Grab it in your fists and wring it like a rag, squeezing all the wet thickness out of it until it seemed like it was limp and spent. Seemed. Because that kind of passionate, dogmatic, I'm right and you're wrong energy, as it emanates from the long lean body of that torso sitting on his hands rocking rocking rocking and waiting waiting waiting only seems to have become flaccid. it's still there as heavy, thick and dripping wet as before you grabbed it and tried to wring it out.
The long lean torso sitting on hands was lying. Eyes were telling the truth instead. The eyes burned above the gaunt face full of gray blond hair. They burned with the burn of righteous rightness. Righteous rightness that sees all resistance before it as impediments put before Righteousness simply to vex it.
And feed it.
As righteousness burns brightly, the pupils are constricted enlarging the eyes into glowing pulsating orbs. burning. seeking. Searing. Righteous eyes, levitating above the lean long torso, rocking rocking rocking and waiting waiting waiting. Those burn of those glowing orbs lasers in on its quarry: opposition and resistance revealing that there's no interest in respectfully attending to opposition, contradiction, objection, questions, resistance. No, no interest in reconciliation or concession or just leaving well enough alone - in spite of the (imp)atience of the rocking rocking rocking of the lean long torso. The shoulders are hunched high to hold in the righteousness and keep it from spilling out. But it doesn't work because righteous eyes exist on a plane just above the lying body and they tell the truth.
Righteous eyes sear any and all resistance before them. Righteous eyes ablaze, seeking out objection. seeking out resistance. seeking out disagreement. seeking out difference. Righteous rightness needs the resistance because it's its source of energy. Righteous Rightness feeds on everything in its path, no matter how noble the uprisings against it.
Righteous eyes never have any questions, only a request: bring unto me, o universe, all forms of resistance so that i may sear it to blackened dust before me.
Obama.
And the point Perkins makes, I hear someone say, is that Obama... Obama. Eyes turn to Len, a young black man who'd decided to attend. Eyes turn to Lev because, at least for some, the idea was to bring enlightenment about Obama.
Obama is always going to serve the interests of corporatocracy - Perkins' word. Obama never intended to do anything different BUT serve corporatocracy. You could see it from the beginning. there are things in that man's past that no one is allowed to touch says my Elephantom Consiracy Theorist who is certain that CIA agents at Harvard handpicked him to be presdinet (tm).
Obama. Scorned.
Obama. Disdained.
Obama. Despised.
Obama. Spurned.
Obama, who'd been praised the night before when we god blessed america, was not praised here. Obama, who'd been nudged and gently chided for his sins last evening - You Are a Sinner! Welcome to North Carolina! - was not being nudged here. No forgiveness, no quarter. Obama who, the night before, was seen as a smiling wise black man just doing his shonuf best, a shining one man city on a hill, was not and had never intended to do his 'best' because there was no 'best' about him. Ever. Obama who coulda been shoulda been a contender for the role of 21st century Martin Luther King on the views of my compadres last night? That Obama didn't exist in this mildewed sofaed room.
I think it all knocked poor Len who was just a really really concerned AIDS activist, been fighting city hall on AIDS awareness for years now. Well, where was it all coming from? You could see the puzzlement on his face. Why the ....
passion.
Because, when I asked the people arguing heatedly over whether the founding fathers were rich and well-to-do representatives of monied interests in a kind of mechanical marxist analysis, or were they really just lil ol' landowners and farmers, some of whom had little money? When I asked: you both keep coming to the same conclusion and agree, so what's goig on that there's so much dissension over a -- A! -- class analysis of the american revolution? what's at stake. Why, if you both end up agreeing on what the problem is, at root, and how we can go about attacking that problem, why, if you both actually agree, are you in such a vexed state over differences in the class-origins of ideas.
Because the original question was, Is Perkins right to say that wonderful ideas of equality, justice and freedom came out of the revolutionary era and that the capitalist system that emerged right along beside it... well, it was kind of mistake according to Perkins. Those great ideas shouldn't have emerged alongside ever growing class inequality. It was all one big mistake.
That question, whether Perkins is right or wrong? If everyone agrees that the ideals and ideas of that era are truly wonderful, then does it matter whether those ideas were created by filthy rich white slave owning men? Or created by middling farmers and proprietors who really had very little money compared to the aristocracy?
I'm just askin'.
Oh, my dear little one, our child, our n00b in the midst, we big men are fighting 'n' all. But don't be afraid. We're just _passionate_
Internally, I rolled my eyes.
Poor widdle woman child. Us boys are sorry that we got into some fisticuffs. It's just passion. Please, come back to our next meeting. Don't run away just because we were having mean words, OK?
I felt the collective palm open, lay upon my head: pat. pat. pat.
Best damn book club group discussion!
More anon. This puppy has been up since 4 a.m., I'm bushwacked.
-- http://cleandraws.com Wear Clean Draws ('coz there's 5 million ways to kill a CEO)