Seductively Satirizing Hollywood's Seduction: Woody Allen's Anti-Genre Films

Genre films are Hollywood’s staple. Many genres exist among contemporary film categories. The plots are consistently copies of previous successes and the actors are typecast in nearly identical roles in movie after movie. The endings are so predictable that every teenager knows what to expect every time they go to the show. The experience breeds conformity and provides a fundamental, subconscious confirmation that all is right with the world.

Genre films continue to enrich actors, directors and producers with huge incomes from their shares of the ever-increasing, box office receipts. These salaries translate into obscene, self-indulgent lifestyles which captivate the impressionable minds of the young, encouraging them to buy into the system and determine their self-worth from financial net worth. Those impressionable young minds learn to adulate that which they want to emulate. They invest their fascination in wealth and celebrity, neither of which accrues from talent, but stems from shallow, fleeting commodities such as physical attributes, current fads determining momentary hipness, and incomes that would be better spent feeding and housing the hungry and homeless of the world.

Woody Allen, as a screenwriter and filmmaker, knew the trend to genre films took over Hollywood early in his career because formula movies are so successful and their sameness makes them easy to produce, like cars on an assembly line. So, Woody made a series of parodies of the genre film early in his career. Woody’s, antiestablishment movies, like Take the Money and Run, Bananas, Sleeper and Love and Death, stand out as a genre of their own, an anti-genre which I call the “Woody Allen anti-authoritarian comedy” genre. Sleeper is both the best known and most viewed from this group. Consequently, it is the prime example of the “Woody Allen anti-authoritarian comedy” genre, epitomizing his movies which parody and satirize genre films.

Thomas Sobchack, Ph.D. has experience as the Director of Graduate Study for Film and Theater at the University of Utah. Sobchack is also the author of books on film and film criticism. Those undertakings provide him with excellent credentials and qualify him as an expert on genre films.

Sobchack’s article, “Genre Film: A Classical Experience,” which appears in the second edition of the book Writing As Revision, edited by Beth Alvarado and Michael Robinson, offers a brief, but poignant discussion of genre films. The essence of Sobchack’s criteria is that “in the genre film, the plot is fixed, the characters defined, the ending satisfyingly predictable” (72). He also informs us, “The subject matter of a genre film is story. Its sole justification for existence is to make concrete and perceivable the configurations inherent in its ideal form” (73). Sobchack relates to us that genre films, with respect to other movies from the same genre, faithfully maintain “a consistency of basic content; the motifs, plots, settings, and characters remain the same” (73). He also explains, “To further speed comprehension of the plot, genre films employ visual codes, called iconographies, in order to eliminate the need for excessive verbal or pictorial exposition (76). Another valuable tool in genre films, Sobchack suggests, is typecasting because, as he discusses, “It is just one more way of establishing character quickly and efficiently” (77). Sobchack tells us that an audience’s experience of emotional release through a catharsis at the end of the film is another significant element common among genre films. He writes, “Any brief rundown of the basic plots should serve to demonstrate that the catharsis engendered in genre films is a basic element of their structure” (80). Sobchack goes on to say, “The internal tension between the opposing impulses of personal individuation and submission to the group, which normally is held in check by the real pressures of everyday living, is released in the course of a genre film as the audience vicariously lives out its individual dreams of glory and terror, as it identifies with the stereotyped characters of fantasy life.” (80)

It is exactly this sociological response, conditioned in the viewer by exposure to genre films, which Woody Allen found so unnerving and potentially dangerous. He provides us with examples of automaton-like, subservient conformists who result from too great of exposure to the Hollywood formula movie (what Sobchack calls genre films) in the three movies which most typify the “Woody Allen anti-authoritarian comedy.” This provides a partial explanation why his early films were anti-authoritarian and parodied the genre film. His desire not to be boxed in by Hollywood’s box office, bottom line fixation and his anathema for being forced to make formula films with no redeeming value beyond the size of the return on the investment provide additional reasons. Woody is a highly creative individual who always aspires to create something of lasting value with meaning, depth and artistic integrity, so his aspiration to create art also provided motivation.

Some examples of the automaton-like conformist as presented in Woody’s films follow, showing the similarities in the movies and establishing why they constitute a genre. In Bananas, we find the followers of the leader fomenting revolution in the fictitious Latin American “banana republic,” San Marcos, are blind adherents to the cause, just as are the sycophantic assistants to the dictator, and the FBI agents who later arrest Woody’s character, Fielding Mellish who ascended to President of San Marcos, on trumped up charges. In Sleeper, the entire society is presented as brainwashed, mind-controlled conformists, and the rebels are depicted as being conditioned to respond in their roles as revolutionaries. In Love and Death, Napoleon Bonaparte is taking over the world. Napoleon’s followers are automaton soldiers obeying orders, just as are the Russian soldiers fighting him. The Russian society is presented as a parody of the society Tolstoy depicted in his novel War and Peace, and it is portrayed by Woody as a stereotype of Tolstoy’s so that everyone acts exactly as one would expect. In each of these Woody Allen movies, the only character not an automaton is Woody’s character. The female lead characters (Louise Lasser in Bananas and Diane Keaton in Sleeper and Love and Death) start out as robots, but Woody’s character leads his love interest in each film to see beyond her conformist programming to discover her own individuality. This occurs in the end of each movie and provides the satirized, faux catharsis.

In each of the movies, the use of iconographic imagery is satirized. In Bananas, released in 1971, the movie opens with ABC's Wide World of Sports (a popular television show from the 60s) broadcasting the assassination of San Marcos’ dictator to viewers in the US. Howard Cosell calls the action and parodies his own performances when he announced Muhammad Ali’s fights. Right away, the movie makes light of serious matters. In another scene, J. Edgar Hoover appears in court to testify at Woody Allen’s trial disguised as a black woman. All the characters in positions of power, in uniform, and in respectable positions are the bad guys. Even the rebels, who initially seem to be the good guys, turn out in the end just to be more bad guys wearing different uniforms but aspiring to the same power wielded by the existing government and also demanding conformity. The one area where traditional iconography holds true is that the lead character portrayed by Woody Allen is the good guy. In Love and Death, a similar approach is taken. All the authority figures are the bad guys and only Woody and Diane Keaton’s characters represent the forces of good.

In Sleeper, Woody goes to greater lengths in shattering iconographic stereotypes. Nearly everyone in the movie wears white. Yet, all the people wearing white are robotic, brainwashed conformists. Even the rebels wear white, or actually “off white.” Woody and the androids are the primary characters who wear other than white clothing (with a few minor exceptions like the party scene at Luna’s house). Later in the movie, Woody is abducted by the government and his brain is reprogrammed. While Woody is a conforming automaton, he wears white. When Woody and Diane Keaton infiltrate the conformist world in order to carry out the rebel’s subversive plan, they wear white. White, normally the symbol of purity, in Sleeper, denotes the impure, through both conscious actions and mindless complicity. It is also important that all the automaton, white wearing characters always have a hint of color just barely exposed at the edges of the white garments dominating their attire. This is to symbolize the barest traces of individual personality which must, in any human, remain even amid the most repressively enforced conformity laying dormant, ready to be brought to the surface as soon as individuality reawakens to self-awareness.

Typecasting is used in all these films. Woody always plays himself, in the same way that John Wayne, Errol Flynn, Kevin Costner, Humphrey Bogart and so many other traditional genre film actors always play themselves. Diane Keaton’s character in Sleeper is very much like Louise Lasser’s character in Bananas. The women are feminists who are college educated but don’t seem to use their whole minds. These female characters are portrayed in the films as having had several male sex partners and the idea of sex for sex’s sake is insinuated by Woody as the expression of women’s newly evolving sexual liberation. In Love and Death, Diane portrays an intelligent woman, more self-determined and more self-aware. However, many of the elements from the female leads in the earlier movies are still present in Keaton’s character in Love and Death: sexual promiscuity, erudition and feminist spirit are all present. In all these films, Woody is like Groucho in a Marx Brothers’ film, playing himself while Louise/Diane are like Margaret Dumont, presenting stereotypes of women of their times but with the ability to grow beyond the stereotype, symbolizing society’s ability to overcome its conformist programming.

The motifs of each of these movies are the same. They are about assassination and revolution. In Bananas, there are a series of assassinations and revolutions. In Love and Death, Woody and Diane hatch a plot to kill Napoleon. It’s like Bananas because the leader is assassinated. In Sleeper, Woody was awakened from cryostasis in order to join the underground and assist with a revolution which also involves assassinating the leader. Another motif regards making all authority figures the butts of jokes (paying homage to Marx Brothers’ movies). Another motif in each movie occurs when Woody’s character and the female lead have a philosophical discussion which, in each instance, leads to an awkward moment with the characters regarding one anther as intellectually inferior (another of Woody’s commentaries on the evolving male-female relationship during the era of feminism’s emergence and men’s difficulty in learning how to deal with the evolution in the male-female relationship). Each movie has a love story incorporated as Woody meets the woman of his dreams (Louise in Bananas, Diane in Sleeper and Love and Death). They initially fail in an effort to establish a viable relationship, but in the end of both Sleeper and Bananas, they fall in love. In Love and Death, they don’t fall in love and Woody’s character actually dies.

The catharsis occurs in each movie as the female lead awakens from her automaton-like mentality to become a whole person who is self-aware, incorporating a new view of the world that Woody teaches: be your own person, an individual who thinks for yourself and don’t follow leaders because they are all the same. As Pete Townsend wrote in his song, Won’t get Fooled Again, “Meet the new boss / Same as the old boss.”

These Woody Allen films also all pay homage to Marx Brothers movies. Woody often acts like Groucho and mimics many of Groucho’s movements and mannerisms in each film. The movies continue in the Marx Brothers vein of satirizing all things to do with authority, authority figures and conformity. Creating the title, Bananas, was a play on Coconuts, a Marx Brother’s title. Woody has commented that Bananas was inspired by Duck Soup (a movie which also makes fun of governments, dictators and politics). Sleeper also allowed Woody to reprise Keystone Kops’ chase scenes on multiple occasions.

The plot of Sleeper reveals the essence of “Woody Allen anti-authoritarian comedies.” Woody Allen’s character is named Miles Monroe. Miles ran a health food store in Greenwich Village before being put to sleep. He was also a clarinet player in a ragtime band. Miles went into the hospital in 1973 with peptic ulcer complaints. Complications arose, so his sister had him put to sleep cryogenically. He was awoken 200 years later by scientists in league with the underground.

The world in which Miles arises (from his long sleep - symbolically the pre-birth state)to find himself (to paraphrase Jean-Paul Sartre) is sterile and bland. It is also very clean, in the derogatory sense of the word used by The Beatles in their movie, A Hard Day’s Night which, along with the movie Help!, are two additional movies that pay homage to Marx Brothers’ films. Robots do the cooking and household chores. People own huge screen monitors. They also own machines called orgasmatrons for having sex because people don’t have sex manually anymore. The society also has “the orb,” a metallic ball which people rub to get high. The result appears like a marijuana experience.

Because Miles was from the past, he has no ID, and hasn’t been fingerprinted, scanned etc. by the government. He has no identity. This makes him a perfect candidate to be used by the underground to infiltrate the government and help with the revolution. Miles is a coward and doesn’t want any part in the plot. However, the police arrive. He has to run in order to avoid having his brain reprogrammed. The scientists are caught but Miles escapes in one of those Keystone Kop moments.

Miles hides in the back of a van which is transporting robots to their new owners. He is taken to the home of Luna (Diane Keaton). Miles dresses up like a robot and tries to act the part. He doesn’t know how to use any of the equipment and comically destroys guests coats and does battle with an overgrown pudding he made and which came to life. Luna is a poetess and a celebrity. Her poetry is influenced by the bad poet of the late 60s and early 70s, Rod McKuen, but hers is far worse.

The next day, Luna takes Miles (he calls himself Milo as a robot) into the repair station for a head replacement. Miles has to engineer another keystone Kop-like, comedic escape. He ends up finding Luna, and forces her to drive him to the Western District to find the underground and help stop the Aires Project. They don’t hit it off at all. She turns him in to the police. However, because Luna has spent too much time in the presence of the alien, Miles, she must have her brain reprogrammed, too. Luna and Miles end up escaping yet again in still another reprise of Keystone Kop physical comedy. It isn’t long before they are discovered again. This time, Miles is captured.

Luna finds her way to the underground where she joins the rebels and becomes Erno’s (the leader of the rebels) lover. She learns the harsh and difficult ways of the underground, and we see her eat raw meat she picks up off the dirt, thrown to her and left there as if she is an animal being fed. Miles is sent to a reprogramming center where he is brainwashed, dreams he is crowned Miss America, and learns to conform. These are juxtaposed as two different versions of the same result, mind reprogramming. One day, Luna shows up at Miles new home with Erno and some of the rebels. They kidnap Miles and abduct him. Once back at the rebel camp, Miles is deprogrammed.

Miles and Luna end up infiltrating a government building because Aires Day has arrived and they must stop whatever it may be (they don’t know). It turns out that the government’s leader, who is depicted to resemble FDR, in a wheelchair with a dog at his side, actually died. All they have left of the leader is his nose. The Aires Project intends to clone the leader from his nose. Miles and Luna are mistaken for the scientists who will conduct the cloning. Neither of them has a clue how to clone, of course. So, they are exposed as rebels. Miles steals the nose. He and Luna hold the nose at gunpoint to escape in the final Keystone Kop moment in the movie. In an animated cartoon moment, or something out of the silent era comedies, Miles throws the nose under a steamroller and it is flattened.

Once in safety after having escaped, Miles and Luna have a discussion. There had been some difficulty stemming from Miles’ jealousy toward Erno and Miles’ inability to accept Erno as an authority. Luna comments that Erno is a great man who will lead the revolution and bring a new and better world. Miles explains to Luna, as they simultaneously admit their love for one another, that there are no political solutions, and someday they’ll likely be trying to kill Erno’s nose. At this point we all experience the faux catharsis from Diane’s understanding gained by Woody’s revelation together with our sudden enlightenment.

As we see, a mockery is made of all things representing authority, tradition and the established norm. Conformist behavior is painted in even the merest of actions and activities. These qualities are disparaged and individualism is extolled. In this manner, Sleeper rises to the epitome of the “Woody Allen anti-authoritarian comedy” and conveys this anti-genre genre most successfully.

Understanding Classical Greek Mythology and Its Avenues for Enlightenment

The ancient religion of Classical Greece is one of a culture which based its religion more on reality than the unreachable paragon dictated by an autocratic god embraced by contemporary monotheistic nations and cultures. The Greek gods and goddesses not only exhibited human traits, but often to excessive degrees. The immortals can be more accurately understood as personifications of essential or basic energies extant throughout time which infuse and influence the lives of humans (or so the Greeks of the Classical period believed). The gods and goddesses, at their best, exemplify traits of excellence - arêtes to be emulated. However, they also offered foreboding omens to mortals as warnings against allowing these essential energies or potencies to run amok, beyond or outside the degree of excellence or arête.

The Greeks accomplished another feat with their religion. They reconfigured the world from a place full of danger, terror and dread which one should fear into a world of beauty, joy and opportunity. One of the ways that was accomplished was through heroic tales, great men performing great deeds. Another manner by which this transformation was elucidated came through the writing of poets and teaching of philosophers. Rationality and order placed chaos and the terrors of fate’s whims into perspective, allowing the minds of the Greeks to gain a sense of harmony with nature and a growing ability to use nature for human benefit.

Apollo’s mythic nature and attributes, along with the tales, myths and legends about him, offer insight through self-analysis for facilitating healing in today’s world. Apollo’s roles as God of Shamans, a healer, poet, musician and entertainer to the Olympians, and the God of Prophecy, provide glimpses into avenues for healing. Significant individuals, who pushed and prodded the world of the 1960s into social consciousness, helping to spark and enflame the peace movement, embodied those qualities. Jim Morrison, John Lennon, Bob Dylan and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young represent a few examples of people whose Apollonian traits inculcated the ideas of peace, love, understanding, cooperation and nonviolence as a force for societal healing.

A central requirement for imparting a healing message to the world, and having it heard, accepted and acted upon by others, arises from charisma. Physical attractiveness is a part of charisma. The qualities of the gift of speech, an exciting air and aura, charm, wittiness and intense energy each play additional roles in presenting a magnetic personality. For a figure in today’s world to reach a mass audience and be able to excite, energize and galvanize them into a healing force for change, that person must exude ample quantities of charisma.

Apollo is a god whose allure includes magnetic charm. For instance, in the book Classical Myth, written by Barry B. Powell, the author reveals from the “Homeric Hymn to Apollo” the following lines to describe the favor and esteem in which Apollo was held. “How can I challenge the songs already sung to your glory? / Everywhere, Phoebus, the strains of music resound in your honor,” (160). Powell offers this explanation, “Apollo fulfills in the divine community the same function as the oral poet in the human, playing for choral dance and singing and entertaining at the banquet” (162). Hermes gave Apollo the lyre as a gift. It was said in verse of Apollo that he skillfully strummed the lyre (190). Apollo’s charisma was sufficient to command the attention and interest necessary for imparting a message through his gifts as poet and musician.

Apollo’s legend encompasses slaying the serpent, Python. Slaying the serpent represents a leg of the hero’s journey – meeting and slaying a dragon in combat. The serpent or dragon symbolizes evil, both within and without. A study of Apollo would lead individuals and societies to comprehend that evil should not be projected onto others. The projection outward of evil is not a valid excuse for war, interpersonal disputes or violence. Evil is a state of imbalance, sometimes between two or more people or groups and other times within the souls, psyches and collective consciousness of individuals and groups. Healing imbalance is best accomplished by looking within, not making scapegoats of others. Through studying this aspect of Apollo, illuminated as part of the hero’s journey, individuals and societies can learn to practice self-healing. Self-healing will aid them to climb out of their money-wealth-possession accumulation induced narcissism.

In his guise as the God of Prophecy, Apollo assists us to see beyond the veneer of our selfish interests and desires. Prophecy offers warnings concerning the impending cataclysm from Climate Change as well as the degradation, death and destruction awaiting massive populations on the planet from war. If humanity studied Apollo, its collective ear might be attuned to the warnings all around. Then, the disasters which await the planet might be averted. Comprehending Apollo’s nature could assist humanity to heed the signs nature posts instead of ignoring them so they can delude themselves into thinking it will continue to be fine to pursue business as usual: greedily amassing possessions from a fixation with narcissistic consumerism and its resulting perpetuation of corporate excess, the mass production of needless products and the waste of the planet's resources, all contributing to the overheating of the planetary ecosystem.

Apollo, in his guise as the God of Shamans, combines all these elements in one persona. The shaman was a healer and seer for societies in antiquity. “He can read the inner meaning in signs and omens. He can summon the spirits of the dead, and dreams reveal to him what will come to pass. Through his superior knowledge he controls the invisible and dangerous forces that interfere constantly in the lives of human beings, including the most dangerous and puzzling of them all, disease” (Powell 171-72). This is the guise of the doctor, the healer, and the magician. This form of Apollo offers the opportunity for healing to individuals, societies, cultures and the planet, bringing necessary medicine to cure us of soul-sickness while leading us forward into a brighter, happier and more naturally balanced future.

One of the more interesting facets of the Greek myths can be seen in how the myths themselves matured as the Greek societies grew more sophisticated. The natures of the gods and goddesses themselves were altered over time as the Greeks grew in their understanding of ethics, morals and philosophical ideas. Some attributes of the gods seem to reflect a looser morality than other legends and myths reveal. The myths surrounding Zeus offer a case in point. Perhaps this has more to do 1) with the ethics and morals of the contemporary world which judges the actions contained in the myths by contemporary standards and which may have little or nothing to do with the standards held by the societies in the time when the myths were popular, and 2) with the various moral and ethical standards which might have been present at different times while the myths came into being.

As an example, Zeus possessed a dual nature which offers a glimpse at this phenomenon.

One side of Zeus depicted in the tales about him evidences aberrant behavior by contemporary standards. Although he was married to Hera, Zeus had many female consorts, lovers and conquests. He sired children out of wedlock with his sexual partners, some of whom were mortal, others were divine. These tales were popular at a time when kings had concubines, consorts and harems in addition to other sexual adventures. Maybe these kingly prerogatives arose because the kings mimicked the behavior of their gods. However, it is more likely the gods were depicted with these kinds of human moral failings because men conceived of their gods in their own image, especially with regard to the practices of the societies in existence when the myths were created.

Another side of Zeus is as the warrior, leader, ruler and father figure. He is the patriarch. He is also the mightiest and most feared of all the gods and his thunderbolts were the greatest of the gods’ weapons. He was a general who rallied his forces to his side to overthrow the old order as he also protected himself and liberated his siblings from the fate Cronus had in store for them.

Zeus is said to have ruled over Olympus with an iron hand. However, the Olympians lived sumptuously and elegantly. All seemed to enjoy great freedom to do as they pleased as long as they did not interfere with Zeus’ order. Nonetheless, Olympus was always full of intrigue and plots. During the Trojan War, Zeus wasn’t able to control the actions of the other Olympians or prevent them from meddling in human affairs.

There is still another side to Zeus, a very important one for the matters being discussed. He is said to have been an arbiter of fairness and justice and represented the Greek ideal of justice called dike. He is also emblematic of the Greek principle called xenia, which was the custom or formal institution of friendship and reciprocity. A relationship exists between the tarot card The Emperor, the Greek god Zeus (the Roman god Jupiter), the Kabbalistic sephiroth called Chesed and the energies of mercy, justice and the balancing of scales. Zeus is father of the Seasons (Horae), Fates (Morae), Graces and Muses. So, it is from him and his essence that each of those governing and inspiring forces emanate.

“The name Zeus is said to derive from the Indo-European root di- meaning ‘shine’ or ‘sky’” (Powell 137), and which is associated with a luminous heaven and a numinous quality. Transcendence may be found in this description: the luminous, numinous sense of Zeus, his sky/heaven association, his representation of xenia and dike, and his embodiment of justice and fairness. In these qualities, we see something beyond the laws of man and start to discover “the light of the higher laws of the universe” of which Emerson wrote.

One more facet to Zeus’ nature assists in realizing perhaps the most important approach to contemplating his relationship to transcendence. Zeus rose above his human-like frailties and his baser nature. Sometimes he was rooted in the world, seeking pleasure and opulence. At other times, he rose above and beyond that mundane realm of existence and those earthy, earthly qualities to shine luminously, to transcend his nature and enter into communion with his numinous essence and highest nature. Thus, Zeus embodies the ideal of man perfected as a god (also the alchemists' search for the Philosopher's Stone, the Knights of the Round Table's quest for the Grail, the Zen Buddists' desire for Satori, and the Kabbalists' efforts to rise up through the ten sephirah along the 22 paths through the four worlds and attain oneness in Kether).

In this aspect of his story, Zeus shines like a beacon to all of us as we live out our own quests to find the source of personal enlightenment. After all, enlightenment does shine luminously from within, and its glow both induces and reveals transcendence.

In her book The Greek Way, Edith Hamilton, explained, “The power wine has to uplift a man, to give him an exultant sense of mastery, to carry him out of himself, was finally transformed into the idea of the god of wine freeing men from themselves and revealing to them that they too could become divine, an idea really implicit in Homer’s picture of human gods and godlike men, but never developed until Dionysus came.” (213-14). Shortly later, Ms. Hamilton imparts, “’He who is not being inspired,’ Plato says, ‘and having no touch of madness in his soul, comes to the door and thinks he will get into the temple by the help of art – he, I say, and his poetry are not admitted’” (216).

Let us consider the effects of wine on an individual. The first notable effect that wine produces on an individual is a loosening of one’s inhibitions. The senses are also affected, and the individual is prone to errors in perceptions with regard to both time and space. One’s motor coordination is impaired, as well, when under the influence of alcohol. Finally, wine provides a heightened sense of self as well as of self-importance.

Next, one ought to gain the perspective of what the Greek mysteries were about. The Greek mystery schools sought to separate the individual from mundane reality, exalt the individual to a level conducive to allowing him or her to identify with an archetype, or a god or goddess from the Greek pantheon. In so doing, the individual was enabled to transcend everyday regularity, move beyond normal perception, and see through perceptual reality to find a deeper meaning in life and connection to and with the universe.

Plato’s point is that the normal, everyday kind of mind, even when that mind is heightened to the degree that one might be an artist or poet, is insufficient to carry the individual past normal perception into the kind of deep trance which can yield transcendence. Furthermore, transcendence is required for the individual to undergo the transformation of the mind and soul necessary to experience the true mysteries. However, by loosening the control which society exerts over us all through the mechanisms of induced conformity and peer pressure, and by loosening the control our minds exert over us to see and perceive reality as based solely on our unaltered sense perceptions, the individual can find an approach or doorway into the temple to discover meaning and connection of the deeper nature offered by the Greek mysteries.

Indeed, in contemporary culture, humans are even more limited in their apprehension of the scope of reality by their senses and perceptual input. Science has reduced the mysterious into a small box it calls by one of the names from among superstition, illusion and delusion, or science demystifies the mysterious with explanations alluding to the intercession of natural processes. The entire culture suffers from severe doses of induced conformity imposed by schools, churches, television commercials and peer pressure requiring adherence to the latest, academically accepted ideas and current moral values commercial fads while contemporary cultures debase the use of any and all forms of intoxicants as being evidence of aberrant behavior. It is naturally the case that contemporary cultures seek to breed conformity to social, cultural, moral and economic values bred by that culture as a means of perpetuating the system in place and the class of people entrusted with governing that system. The consequence is witnessed in contemporary cultures’ ties to economic models in which the only acceptable values can be reduced to income: the amassing wealth, proving the individual’s relative power within the culture through the amount and quantity of expenditures as witnessed in the things one acquires, and dedication to productive work which is really only guaranteed to amass greater sums for the already wealthy while reducing the free time and enjoyment of the worker classes. All of these modes of economically induced conformity engage with sense perception in a way as to create a cycle of reinforcement. Consequently, the mind is more and more attached to sense perceived reality as being all there is.

One’s only avenues to loosening the controls – that culture, the economy, contemporary religion, societal mores currently applied and the training and influences of parents, teachers, preachers and television commercials exert on the individual from birth – can be found by relaxing those controls, at least temporarily and to some degree. Hence, the use of intoxicants and psychedelics provide the most approachable mediators (at least in Western civilization, whereas in the East, Sufism, Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism and Transcendental Meditation all offer additional paths to loosening the strings of convention and physical reality) for deconstructing the societal and cultural edifice long enough and deeply enough to at least investigate alternate insights into reality. These are the only contemporary avenues for seeking transcendence which can lead to personal transformation and an apprehension of the mysteries the ancient Greeks held so dear.

The most transcendental experience of the ancient Greek religion had to do with the rites of Eleusis. Very little is actually known for certain regarding what occurred in those rites. They were shrouded in secrecy and mystery. Few actual details have been preserved to enlighten us about the Eleusinian Mysteries. However, one can construct some of gist of what must have been going on from the details known.

The rites lasted for days. There were two different events staged: one for the Greater Mysteries and one for the Lesser Mysteries. Sacred objects were brought to Athens where they were housed in Demeter's sanctuary beneath the Acropolis. The festival began in the agora when the official announcement of its commencement was given.

Maria Mavromataki, in her book Greek Mythology and Religion, relates that, on the next four days, sacrifices were made and the initiates washed and purified themselves by the sea. On the morning of the fifth day, a splendid procession headed for Eleusis along the Sacred Way made up of mystes (initiates), priests, the hierophant and torch-bearer among the procession. The initiates wore laurel wreaths. Along the Sacred Way, from time to time, the procession stopped to perform mini-rites at appropriate sanctuaries. That evening, they reached Eleusis. Two initiates (to be symbolically, ritually sacrificed to Demeter and Persephone) fasted and drank a barley water potion (74-5). It is from this point forward that little is known.

In The Road to Eleusis, R. Gordon Wasson (the founder of ethnomycology), Albert Hoffman (the discoverer of LSD), and classicist Carl A. P. Ruck collaborated on a thesis which proposed that the secret ingredient in the barley water drink was ergot. Hoffman explains that the ergot of wheat and of barley analyzed in his lab was found to contain basically the same alkaloids as ergot of rye, including traces of lysergic acidamide.

The authors provide the following description of the mysteries within the temple. "As he performed the service, the hierophant intoned ancient chants in a falsetto voice, for his role in the Mystery was asexual, a male who had sacrificed his gender to the Great Goddess... Finally, in acknowledgement of their readiness, they all chanted that they had drunk the potion and had handled the sacred objects... Then, seated on the tiers of steps that lined the walls of the cavernous hall, in darkness, they waited. From the potion, they gradually entered ecstasy" (58-9).

The next portion of the description sounds like something right out of one of Ken Kesey's acid tests with the Merry Pranksters. ""This potion - an hallucinogen - under the right set and setting, disturbs man's inner ear and trips astonishing ventriloquistic effects. We can rest assured that the hierophants, with generations of experience [these rites were performed for a period lasting over 2000 years], knew all the secrets of set and setting. I am sure that there was music, probably both vocal and instrumental, not loud but with authority, coming from hither and yon, now from the depths of the earth, now from outside, now a mere whisper infiltrating the ear, flitting from place to place unaccountably. The hierophants may well have known the art of releasing into the air various perfumes in succession, and they must have contrived the music for a crescendo of expectation, until suddenly the inner chamber was flung open and spirits of light entered the room, subdued lights I think, not blinding, and among them the spirit of Persephone with her new-born son just returned from Hades. She would arrive just as the hierophant raised his voice in ancient measures reserved for the Mystery: 'The Terrible Queen has given birth to her son, the Terrible One'. This divine birth of the Lord of the Nether world was accompanied by the bellowing of a gong-like instrument that outdid, for the ecstatic audience, the mightiest thunderclap coming from the bowels of the earth" (59). Here's how they described the experience that people who dropped acid in the 60s and 70s called peaking, "Then, suddenly, there was light and the boundaries on this world burst their bounds as spiritual presences were felt in their midst and the hall was flooded with glowing mystery" (63).

This rite reveals exactly what is missing from the contemporary world. There's no mystery. There's no glorious apprehension and communion with the mystical. We're too busy anesthetizing ourselves with toys and television and movies and virtual reality games and beer to actually live life and enjoy the interconnection which life offers. Because we disrupt the flow of current which otherwise should be present in interconnection, we lose respect and appreciation for everything of real value. Acid tests actually sparked a movement back to nature and to reconnection among like-minded "brothers and sisters." Unfortunately, in today's world of bland conformity, there is no place left for mystery outside the movie theater, and even there, it is only witnessed through brief, vicarious encounters never through direct, experiential interaction.

I wonder sometimes if there are any people left who remember what it was like to roll in the grass on a warm summer day, or fly a kite, or run through the surf. Few bother to recall the joy of playing tag at dusk or recollect the sensation of running fingers over the rough bark of an oak tree and contrasting it with the slippery smoothness of river rocks. The scent of tomorrow is plastic and metallic and antiseptic. The colors are all ecru. But most sadly, the experiences only occur indoors and lack infusion with one's own imagination. Without an absurd theater of sublime ecstasy, life itself becomes absurd and meaningless. Without mystery, nature's only value lies in what new commodity can be made from the planet's natural resources. When there is no longer a real connection with the planet and all value for nature ebbs, we bring Climate Change upon ourselves. Laws to limit the amount of carbon emissions will not save humanity from itself. Mystery and reconnection with nature and with each other are the only avenues to a satisfying and rewarding future.

One World Day

One World Day - an idea whose time has come, baby, can you dig it? One World Day: an event enlisting all of you, the roughly 6.6 billion people on the planet, to unite with the voice of one human peace-army for a day – telling it like it is, telling it like you really want it to be. One World Day sings the demands for world leaders to heed the voices, needs, wishes and agenda of you, the people, for peace, sustenance, comfort, cooperation, understanding, fulfillment and opportunity instead of promoting the mad money mania the world has been forced to endure for ages!

One World Day – an expression by you, the people of the world, who, through your sheer numbers, your power as you mass in the streets, your willingness to engage in or refuse to perform work and services, and the power of your willingness to pay or withhold payment of taxes to governments – can shock politicians and corporate Machiavellians with awe as you demand from contemporary leaders, with the same strength demonstrated by the people of India in their quest for independence from Britain and by the people of Eastern Europe as they extracted independence from Soviet domination, a new world reflecting your real, common interests, the interests of people everywhere.

The idea for One World Day flowers as the child of two events which occurred in the 60s. One of those psychedelic, parental seeds was the Our World broadcast on satellite to 26 countries, watched with rapture by some 400 million viewers on June 25, 1967 in what was billed as the first worldwide, satellite television broadcast. The other spiritual parent of One World Day played minor havoc with corporate profits and political agendas as the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam elicited a mass, popular strike from work and school on the 15th day of October and November of 1969 by people who supported ending the war.

The BBC commissioned The Beatles to provide the UK’s contribution to the Our World show. In response, John Lennon wrote the song All You Need Is Love (officially credited as a Lennon/McCartney composition). The then recently psychedelicized mop-tops performed the song live, with a large, participatory audience present. The lyrics embodied Lennon’s statement to the world that, through love, altruism, community, togetherness, cooperation, understanding and unified will, the great mass of average, working class people and student youth movement could build a better world, without divisions and bigotry, without the kind of competitive antagonism which disunites people, creates classes and castes, and yields, ultimately, to a hierarchy pitting people and groups against one another as they struggle to accumulate the dreams for wealth and power which always remains outside their grasp, while simultaneously taking away even the opportunity for the poor to eke out meager sustenance and survival.

The star studded audience present incorporated their energy, symbolizing a united world joining The Beatles as they performed – everyone, everywhere lifting their hearts in one voice crying out the paean that All You Need Is Love! Well, my beautiful friends, the time to make that symbol a reality arises, this moment presents itself as an opportunity to get 6 billion people out in the streets together, spontaneously singing with one voice that, indeed, All You Need Is Love. With the internet, the word can be spread immediately, along with the agenda, the list of demands and the program to be presented.

The Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam drew up a blueprint for how to make a mass movement of voices the world over heard and felt. That antiwar movement got together on the 15th of the each month and stayed out of work and school. They didn’t buy anything. The only thing they did was go out of their homes wearing black armbands and participated in demonstrations against the war.

It is obvious that there is big money made in war. The Moratorium intended to attack the war by creating a desire to counteract the profitability of war, the real reason for waging war, not because of the bullshit platitudes and phony political excuses men in monkey suits read on TV. Those Moratorium idealist participants sought to remove the incentive for waging war. Those demonstrators understood that as long as war remains profitable, it will be waged. It’s the profits, baby. Follow the money and you'll see the causes and desires of any political action. The protesters also understood the bottom line of all corporations contributing to the war effort could be dramatically cut if a concerted effort was made to boycott products made by those corporations intimately enmeshed in the military-industrial complex. The antiwar movement realized the only way to make a point was to put a dent in corporate profits. Shut businesses and commerce down for a day per month became the theme of dissent.

One World Day can change the future. John Lennon told you that you can have anything you want if you want it badly enough and are willing to work for it. He said, "If the world wants peace, they'll have peace. But they have to want peace more than another television set."

Listen groovy babies, here’s the secret, all you’ve got to do is be dedicated, persistent and determined. But you have to start and you can’t stop once you do start. Pick a day, any day of the month. Start with 50 people in one hamlet, somewhere. Somebody must prove brave enough to go first. Step out into your street and sing All You Need Is Love. Refuse to go to work or school that day. Don’t buy anything. Don’t spend any money. Let everyone you know in on your subversive little plot. Enlist volunteers across your little corner of the world. Plant the seed and watch it grow.

Keep meeting on your street on the same day every month like the cabal of revolutionaries you are, brothers and sisters. Like a vine, the movement will catch on and spread out over fertile soil. More and more people will catch the fever, just like a wave at a ballpark or a cheer at an arena. You no longer possess a reason to keep serving masters!

Why let a few thousand politicians and corporate monkey suits tell you what to do, how to live your life, determine who will live and die, who will eat and go hungry and who will sleep in the dirt or in a palatial home? There’s too many of you, and they need you too badly for their profits and their votes and their taxes to ignore you if 6 billion of you walk outside on the same day and sing All You Need Is Love together everywhere across the world, all refusing to work and go to school that day, and all refusing to buy anything that day. Can you dig the power in that?

What do we want as people?

We want human dignity.

We want to know we will be fed everyday and that the food will be healthy, nutritious and tasty.

We want to know we will have a place to sleep every night.

We want to know that when we are sick, we can see a doctor and be properly cared for as opposed to being turned away or have some insurance company say we aren’t covered or we cannot have the medication a trained and professional doctor prescribes for us.

We want to know we will be able to find meaningful employment in a career of our choice, finding fulfillment and satisfaction through contributing to our communities.

We want to know our children will be properly educated.

We all want a fair share of the abundance harvested from commerce.

We want sufficient time to share with our families and loved ones and to enjoy a reasonable quality of life rather than spending nearly every waking moment devoted to earning obscene amounts of profits for the corporations employing us.

We want to know we will live in a world free from pollution and pass that clean world on to our children.

We want to live in a world where weapons of mass destruction do not exist.

We want to live in a world without standing armies and huge military arsenals.

We want to live in a world that will allow us to get along with our neighbors.

We want to live in a world where there is real equality and equal opportunity for everyone, everywhere, and without special treatment for the rich, famous and powerful.

We want to live in a world where we can feel like a vital, honored, respected, valued and integral member.

How do we get all that?

Go out and stand in your street and sing All You Need Is Love. When someone asks you what you are doing, tell them you are preparing the world for unity, love and understanding. Tell them you are participating in One World Day. When they ask what that means, tell them what you want, or write down your list from what is suggested above.

Then, tell them you won’t buy any products that day and you won’t work that day as a protest against the world you’ve been forced to accept. This isn’t the world you made or wanted, it’s the world monkey suits have bequeathed you. Tell them you don’t want the monkey suits’ world anymore and won’t participate in it anymore. Then, month after month, go out and do it again and again. And don’t stop!

This is your world and your life. Stop settling for what you’re given. Take what you want. But do it non-violently. You cannot create change if the change is based on violence. Violence will only beget more violence. The result of using violence would be a reactionary cycle of violence. Any violent actions you exhibit will provide the monkey suits with an excuse to beat you down with their clubs and their tear gas and their bullets and their tanks.

But if all you do is stand there singing All You Need Is Love, what can they do? If all you do is refuse to go to work and boycott purchasing products one day every month while you sing a song in the streets with your family, friends and neighbors, what can anyone do to you? Even if you decide to stop buying any and all products from specific companies because those companies are linked to the military-industrial complex, what can any legitimate government do about it?

Not a damn thing flaming groovies!

Leaders talk about bringing change. They buy you off with words and platitudes and dreams which they will never deliver and cannot deliver because the monkey suits won't allow it. When politicians are bought with money from men in monkey suits – corporate CEOs, lobbyists, promoters, advertisers, TV moguls and newscasters who are paid to represent the interests of those monkey suited money interests and campaign donors – they owe those monkey suits favors and loyalty to the agenda those monkey suits think up and pass on as their agenda.

Change gets lost in the day-to-day operations of business as usual. Change will never come from the silver-tongued plastic-fronts funded by the monkey suits who sit in elected offices. Change will never come clothed by the plastic money that the monkey suits’ use to tempt and buy the leaders and elected officials of governments. Neither Demoncrat nor Repugnican in the US, neither Slavours nor Consneervatives in Britain will ever bring you change, because they are owned by the monkey suits and devoted to the monkey suited mania they call the economy.

Change will only come from you! Change will only come when you demand it and force both your leaders and the men in the monkey suits to accept it. Change will only occur when people stand up together, holding hands across the boundaries of all nations, and sing together in one voice the paean of their shared desires and mutual interests. Change is your birthright: all you have to do is take it. To take it, all you have to do is sing All You Need Is Love together, one day a month, every month, in one voice, until 6 billion of you are brave enough to all sing it together – holding hands across all national borders – so loudly that your voices will be heard in the heavens and even the monkey suits will have to take notice. All you have to do is take that one day, call it One World Day and boycott commerce in every way. All you have to do is boycott all products made by corporations involved in the military-industrial complex. All you have to do is, as Gandhi said, "be the change you want to see" – be love, give love, feel love and sing love. Then, love will fill your world. Then, the world you live in will really be your world.

One World Day is your day, dream it, plan it, practice it, demonstrate it, and perpetuate it though persistence and insistence. Bring One World Day to every street corner. Become one loving mass of humanity, and create the most significant historical moment in the annals of time! History is waiting for all of your beautiful souls, all of your loving hearts, to set the world aflame with your passion, your wisdom and your caring to become a Unity of Love and seed the clouds with a rain of love that will create a Reign of Love upon the planet that can last forever. That would be so psychedelic! Can you dig it?

This article is reprinted and was originally published by The Glasgow Review in their Fall issue.

A Wasted, Stubborn Gaze

Glance upon the shadows cast by ficus limbs
as their growing fingers span memories' bridge,
creeping across dandelionclock faces
that mark the consistent progress of seconds'
subconscious wile; while marijuana's wasted,
stubborn gaze persists in calculating odds:
seeping seeds spend evolution underground.

Childlike drifting fascination, feathers
leaf through the creole backstreets of Mardi Gras
revelry under ash blackened foreheads, dreams
squander faintly demented marching brigades'
bound captives; coffin gagged, violence resistent
bodhisattvas' sing supine supplication -
winding a forest carpet, silent, sublime.

A baby's fingers clutch for mother's wet breasts
sucking air from imaginary nipples,
insistent TV ads intercede, "Suckle
from culture's commercial, corporate illusion."
The contemporary model of nature:
mother's too busy to care for baby's needs;
dripping seeds melt, heat seared on the rocky dust.

Gazes turn to the wind, a blowing bellows,
a roaring, raging inferno of frothing,
rabid dogs carving out the latest fashion,
erecting statues of glorification,
their gleaming eyes slobber with gluttonous glee;
just out of sight, in the seedy underground,
a wasted, stubborn gaze breeds revolution.

Passion Spent Spills

Heated flesh radiates with a red aura:
rubbing up against attraction’s golden glow
in the still midnight hush, a fragrant flush
blushes urgency to flower petulantly
as the whitewater rapids of desire ply
curiosity with a provocative pretense.

Forms embody souls’ impressions
and curve-cuddle close like the lines
of fingerprints, they shadow dance
on momentary eternity’s wall –
illuminated by united bliss-brilliance
in separation’s dark desert of illusion.

The fresh scent of passion spent spills
upon quivering petals like dewdrops’
crystallized ambrosial nectar: innocence
yields like fading stars at sunrise – multitudes
burn into one radiant luminosity and blood
flows through the heart, condensing into spirit.

Crestfallen

Scrambling up a mountainside
slippery pebbles slide under foot.

Fingers grasp, clutching emptiness
in the crestfallen starscape
where prayers wander aimlessly.

Who dares suckle the night?

An owl prowls
the moonless land,
a rodent in its talons.

Slithery scavengers
witness eons crumble into dust,
strewn across time’s sandy highway.

A cavern’s frigid bowels
fossilize ancient tales
etched on evolutionary walls.

Even created ignorance leaves
a trail: demented dementia.

Who dares nourish the suckling mother?

A Cold, Stone Edifice

A cold, stone edifice lurks at the edge
of daybreak. Soldiers’ boots crawl
across blood soaked streets in hazy
half-light. Bats screech through un-peopled
underpasses in the between-world – killers
above corpses below. The mostly asleep
undead dreamwalk through turnstiles,
depositing their productive years
into token slots as they pull the gas pump
triggers of Uzis and smart bombs.
Wealth’s stranglehold grips newborn
fantasies by the jugular, applying pressure
while insatiable appetites ooze a putrid,
envious and lusty stench. A blind moment –
no one’s eyes read the inscription, so a cold,
stone edifice shrugs deliriously, mutely aware
that technological advances erect no signposts
indicating lethal lessons latently linger learned.

Health Care, Tea Parties, Lies, Racism and Capra

On Thursday evenings, in a business plaza located in Tucson, Arizona called La Placita, a local theater exhibits old movies in the courtyard for free to those who'd like to attend. This last Thursday, the movie shown was Frank Capra's classic, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. That particular night's (August 7th, 2009) event was sponsored by Gabrielle Giffords, a Demoncratic Party Congresswoman. In honor of the event, and as a means of politicizing an otherwise enjoyable evening which had nothing to do with politics, the Tucson Tea Party decided to attend and conduct a protest of President Obama's desire to reform health care and the Demoncratic Party's approach to achieving that end in Congress.

On its web page, the Tucson Tea Party (who maintains a web presence with its Facebook page in addition to its own website) describes itself as, "a venue for people who are against the over $12 trillion dollars in government bail-outs, stimulus, loans, entitlements, and guarantees since September, 2008, to come together and find their voice. We come together to send a message to our elected officials that, if they voted for any one of these measures, they had better be prepared to collect unemployment in 2010! We believe that the government is taking America away from the ideals that have made it great. We believe in individual liberty and responsibility, a small federal government whose constitutional powers are limited, and the pursuit of happiness. We do not believe that the government has the right to take your money in order to bail out big financial institutions, delinquent borrowers, or make it harder for you to earn your own living. The government is spending future generations into debt slavery. If you care about your future and the future of your children, join the Tucson Tea Party."

Now, anyone who has read any of the blog entries which I have posted here on economics and the bailout ("On Reviewing the Realities of Reaganomics' Supply Side Strategies and Their Effects on the Current American Economic Recession," "On Solutions Offered to Politicians for Averting an Economic Calamity" and "American Economic Decline - Stop the Bailout", will know I have been against the methods chosen initially by George W. Bush, Henry Paulson and Ben Shalom Bernanke, and which have been perpetuated by Barack Obama, Timothy Geithner and Ben Shalom Bernanke. I, too, have decried against the mountains of money being given to the wealthiest men in America, the most corrupt financial leaders who led us into the economic collapse, the businesses and corporations which have failed to adapt to the conditions in the current marketplace, and the corruption within both government and the systems set up for government to monitor and police the financial sector and thereby protect the American public from exactly the kind of greed induced corruption and failure of ethics and morality which has led to the current economic climate.

Let me be perfectly clear, while the Tucson Tea Party and I may agree that the bailout has been handled incorrectly and is not going to solve our economic problems, we couldn't disagree more about everything from that point forward - from what led to our current economic malaise to how to solve the problems to who caused the problems to who best serves the interests of the American public to the nature of Capitalism to the veracity of the information the Tucson Tea Party dissemenates at its functions to how it uses the children of its members to promote their cause to the racist slander and bigoted libel is slurs the current government with and even to the misinformation regarding the nature of and planned programs for the proposed health care overhaul being discussed in Congress.

I was appalled at what confronted me when I arrived at La Placita to watch Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, not knowing a protest had been planned for the night by the Tea Party. When I arrived, one of the first things I noticed were large placcards emblazoned with the face of President Obama, but altered, with a white face and red painted lips to imitate the appearance of Jack Nicholson's portrayal of the Joker in the Batman series of movies. Signs contained messages such as spelling out OBAMA in caps vertically, and horizontally stating One Big Ass Mistake America. Another placcard stated "Social Health is not Free." Another stated "Socialism Chains We Cannot Afford." However, perhaps the most appalling thing I saw was the doctored photo of Obama as the Joker, pasted onto the backs of the Tea Party members' children, and beneath the photo was, in bold lettering, Communism, with the C being replaced by the communist symbol of the hammer and sickle. Every single member of the Tucson Tea Party who was present at the rally, and I am not exaggerating, was white and WASPish looking. Not one member present at the event had as their ethnicity any other segment or minority of society. In perusing the photos on their website and their link to Flickr, I only found one photo which depicted non-white Americans in it, and in that photo, only one person of minority heritage wore the red T-shirt uniform of the Tucson Tea Party (and the event which drew the non-whites was concerned with an anti-rent tax rally).

As you can see by the photos which I have copied from their Flickr page above, one sign even went to the extreme of calling Obama a dictator and advocating the President's death. Now, one can go all the way back to Vietnam era protests during both Johnson's and Nixon's presidencies and recall that, while both were burned in effigy, no one ever actually came out and called for either American president's assassination. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that such a position is treasonous. Let's be real here, the members of the Tea Party may disagree with Obama's positions, but the man was duly elected, the members of Congress who are pursuing the health care legislation were also duly elected, and indeed, are pursuing a bill which differs in many ways from the proposals Obama would prefer if he could actually dictate anything. We are witnessing the same machinations of government today for the inquiry into and passage of any bill as those which we've witnessed, at the very least, since the mid-'60s.

Let's also be honest about the details of the health care reform bill passing through Congress. These Tea Party members call it socialism and Communism in their remarks concerning the bill verbally, in their literature and on their signs. Nothing could be further from the truth. Socialism is a system whereby the government provides services without charging the public for the services. Communism does the same thing. The main differences between Communism and socialism are in the methods regarding how the government exercises power/control. Socialism has been administered by all kinds of governmental forms from democratic to fascist to Communist. Socialism concerns the economic system, not the form of government which administers it. In fact, some of the most free and most prosperous economies in history have been or are socialist, but democratic: Sweden and Denmark provide two examples.

Communism, however, includes the political apparatus which administers the socialist economic policies of Communist governments. In theory, Communism was meant to place power into the hands of the "proletariat," or workers. However, what arose with Communism was a bureaucratic class which assumed responsibility for administering (and even formulating) not only the economic direction and policies of the nation, but also every other political policy. As Communism developed, and as power centralized into the class known as the bureaucrats, and as power corrupts, the bureaucrats in most Communist nations eventually wielded power in a manner which served that class most predominantly, and the rest of the populace secondarily.

Some of the benefits of socialism are the manner in which the socialist society apportions social services. Schooling, health care, living quarters, jobs and other similar services are guaranteed to all, and all receive their fair share. There is no wealthy class, but there is no poverty class, either. The state makes sure that the economy runs efficiently and that it moves forward in directions which best serve the national agenda and national interests. One of the things a socialist nation was able to do in the past was industrialize extremely rapidly. Both Nazi Germany and the Communist Soviet Union used this to their advantage in the years between the two world wars. For instance, the Soviet Union, through its 5 year plans, was able to engineer the industrialization of its economy far more rapidly than either Britain or the US through Capitalist means. Had the Soviet Union not been Communist and not industrialized in roughly a period of 23 years years to a degree which took the US to achieve in a period of roughty over 150 years, the Nazis likely would not have been defeated during WWII.

Communism evolved into a dictatorial form of government. A small body of bureaucrats usurped control by forming an alliance with the military industrial complex of their nation. The authority over an amassed, modern, technologically armed military together with the centralized control over the economy gave these few bureaucrats an iron-fisted regulation over the machinery of government. The institution of a secret police provided that governing body with ironclad domination over the public as well.

Now, to suggest that Barack Obama is a Communist is utterly absurd. Whether or not he is a socialist or has socialist leanings may yet be up for conjecture, however, pinning the Communist tail on the Demoncrat donkey is not appropriate in the least since Obama is not dictating any of the policy matters with which the Tea Party disagrees. The bailout was begun by the Repugnican Bush Administration and set in motion without any real disagreement from other Repugnicans or other right-wingers (where were the Tea Party players when the policies they decry against in their mission statement were initiated by the previous white, Repugnican President Bush?). It has only been since Obama's election and his continuance of the program set in place by the Repugnicans that the right-wing Tea Party groups have come out of their white-sheeted closets to bash the policy. In actuality, the idea of giving money to businesses has always been part of the Repugnican agenda, and though most of today's right likes to take it back only as far as Ronald Reagan (insinuating that he was successful in his use of it, even though Raygun's stratagies actually led to a similar fiasco in '87 with the S & L failures as well as having led to the situation the US economy suffers from today), however, those strategies extend all the way back to the failed Herbert Hoover Administration and the ushering in of the Great Depression.

Furthermore, the suggestion that Obama's heath care reform is Communist again fails the "do you have any grasp on reality?" test. Not only is Obama not dictating the details of this bill, he can't even get Congress to get busy with it in the time frame he desires. The Demoncrats are also preparing a bill different in many ways from what Obama has stated he prefers. So, the suggestion that Obama is a Communist is just purely ridiculous because he is not a dictator which is one of the requirements for a government to be honestly and accurately called Communist.

It's also absurd to suggest the bill is socialist. The bill does not provide for the government to pay for health care for EVERY citizen in the US, or even ANY citizen in the US. That would be socialism. No, the bill provides for every citizen in the US to be required to be covered by an INSURANCE POLICY. The mandate that every citizen have an insurance policy has nothing to do with socialism, but merely forces every citizen to take part in one industry of Capitalism (an industry which has for years been granted exceptional protection by governments with the requirement that every auto owner have an automobile insurance policy and the requirements for nearly every business in the US to purchase health insurance coverage for their employees). In the case of health care reform, the government is proposing to pay the health insurance premiums for some citizens who are too poor to pay for health care insurance on their own. The government already does this for people receiving state medical relief. The health care reform bill only proposes to extend that benefit to a few more people - the ones who fall through the cracks because they work, but their employers don't cover them and they don't earn enough to afford to pay for their own coverage or they are self-employed and do not earn sufficient funds with which to purchase health insurance for themselves and their families. This is far from socialism!

No, what we are witnessing is a right-wing attack on the Obama Administration. They are throwing around the same words that were inaccurately thrown at Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., socialist and Communist. Like the attacks on Dr. King, the rhetoric today is nothing more than a racist attempt to sway white voters away from supporting a black leader who is guiding a movement which would assist the poor, the infirm, the troubled, the mistreated, the maligned, who are discriminated against and who are the forgotten Americans, desperately needing the assistance of their government, especially at this time of economic crisis. The doctoring of the photographs of President Obama to look like the Joker are really more intended to be a play on the old racist use of "black face" in the theater - in this instance "white-facing" Obama.

These Tea Party bigots force their children to take part, putting the photos on their clothing and making them carry signs and attend events, indoctrinating these young and highly impressionable minds with lies, misinformation and rascist imagery. They have the children carry signs with racist slogans and with lies about the President. They force the children to attend events where other participants carry signs suggesting the President should be killed! And they do all this in the name of patriotism.

My friends, this is the same brand of patriotism as was brandished by the Nazi Party as Hitler rose to power in Germany in the 20s and 30s. These are the same tactics as were used by Hitler and the Nazis, too. The White Supremacists in the United States like the John Birch Society and Klu Klux Klan followed these tactics throughout the first half of the 20th century to keep black Americans in positions of servitiude and poverty. Those same groups used the same kinds of lies and tactics to try to smear Dr. King and other black leaders and organizations during the Civil Rights movement of the 50s and 60s. Americans, you must not be fooled by their lies and their pretention for innocense and patriotism. Paint them as the bigots they are and refuse to allow them to paint your President as something he is not.

Irony rose to greet the night after the Tea Party protest failed. First, Congresswoman Giffords showed enough class as to avoid attending the showing of Capra's movie which she sponsored. She understood that the movie presentation was not intended as a political event, but merely as a kind gesture to the public, to offer free entertainment on a hot summer night. So, the Congresswoman stayed away to remove the focus for the Tea Party's denonstration. The Tea Party people milled about, tried to enlist members of the public to sign up for their literature and forced their propaganda on the public in attendance. They stood in the way of moviegoers, brandishing their racist, lying placcards, destroying the festive mood of people who merely wanted to enjoy a classic film about America and real American patriotism.

As the movie unfolded, the intense irony was revealed. Capra's tale, about corruption and graft in government and one man's fight to expose it showed the Tea Party movement for what it actually is. In Capra's film, the forces of Capitalist greed, graft, corruption and domination of the real interests of the American public used their wealth and power to strong arm the voice of Mr. Smith and his army of boys who only sought to tell the public the truth as they also sought to provide boys with a summer camp venue. Like the Tea Party movement, the corrupt machine of the greedy Capitalists (who wanted to steal the land for the boy's camp, put a dam on it, and make a profit on the sale of the profit at the expense of the taxpayers) spread lies about Mr. Smith, branded him with false epithets and accusations, and shouted down his supporters to silence them. Like the Tea Party movement supporters, the political machine sought to strong arm the opposition and force their own lies into the media at the same time as they stamped out an honest public debate of the issues. Nothing could have been more appropos as a metaphor for revealing the frighteningly corrupt, dishonest and repressionist tactics of the Tea Party and its advocates than Capra's brilliant movie.

Those of us who stayed and enjoyed the show went home with a clearer picture as to who are the real villians and patriots in the real life saga being played out by Tea Party fascists amid the actual democratic process of reform currently in progress.

Moonset Sunrise

A bright, silvery-white orb
swims through night's celestial ink
arcing a path from crag
to mesa - jutting up to wall off
a desert expanse. The ancients
chanted many names:
Hecate, Diana, Ishtar,
Artemis, Europa;
still, this hour
a bell tower struck
Selene's chimes, tolling
an approach: winding
to her abode in Mount
Latmus' cave. Silvery
light yellowed, Selene
sank into the muggy
morning monsoon
clouds, drifting aimlessly.
Her fullness strummed
descending, peek-a-boo
moon chords, magnetic
Selene attracted dense,
wetly drenched dark
condensation, she winked
light rays on and off,
diffusing heat in a blink,
melting diaphanous
wisps into clear, dry
skies. Skin sponged
the night's persperation.
Behind the crag facing
the mesa, Eos' orange
wash, from pastel
to burnt sienna, crayons
the dawn as Helios bleaches
the inky dome, erasing
shimmering stars -
Jupiter and Venus stand
as twin sentinels, balancing
opportunity with beauty
and justice; the first rays
of sun sliver over
the edge of the world.
My body stood, trapped -
the poles of two magnets
charged by the haunting
voice of Jim Morrison,
gulping the tequila worm
at the bottom of a bottle,
laughing bloody phlegm out
from his lungs, pulling
the tails off lizards, wizards
churning out incantations
of cheap pop crap; and winds
swirl up a twister, blistering
across synaptic highways
as I reach out from darkness
finding light slips through
my fingers, and lightning
bolts magically charge
the ions of a new world
only found in the dove-
tailed resin of a joint
smiling from the street
corners of a One World
popular rally, six billion
strong marching across
corporate plasma TV
screens in the instant
between moonset and sunrise.

Splashing Passion

A soft zephyr lightly rustles barly parted,
sheer, lace curtains lapping and clapping
a window sill, a cool breeze caresses
porcelain skin - an alabaster woman's
flesh tingling anticipation. Sauvignon's
blush paints desire on rising goosebumps.

Strawberries bitten-open-blood stains
petulant, ivory lips moist, tart sugar
gushes from fruit's fleshy meat, steamy
heat oozes through sopping pores, high
tide's answer to a proxigee new moon.
Night's ebony canopy cradles pin-

prick, distorted light beams glimmer
diffused reflections against angled panes -
windows cranked ajar - shadows wildly
dance to gasped breaths' tempo, abandon
flickers on walls, a candle flame jumps
and wavers in the wind. Cascading

the room like a waterfall, splashing passion
drapes night with a moonlit, rainbow
mist: thickly scented coitus. Rocky strength,
hardened hands, seduces flesh, lightly
lingering grazes - enlightened feather-fingers
stroking, furnace stoking, eternal flames' rage.

She wraps arms around spirit, he erupts:
bodies meld. She grasps an instant, hoping
to overwhelm lifespans, to shine as unendingly
as stars, forgetting starlight is an ancient traveler,
long ago bursting, only to be witnessed, finally,
tonight: ever present, but one place at a time.