#1: I’ve started to attend one of those meta-churches. A lot of critics say that these churches’ constant self-referencing take the layman away from God, but I find it works well.

#2: The perpetual campaign is merging into each other with no breaks. It is one race after another, report on one move to the next. Someone needs to announce that they are forming an exploratory committee to look into a 2012 presidential run already. And someone else needs to form an exploratory committee to look into the possiblity of forming an exploratory committee.

#3: A Chicago Bears — Indianapolis Colts Superbowl would be an interesting Superbowl match-up, as it would pair one team with an excellent offense and a suspect defense with a team with an excellent defense and suspect offense. Unfortunately, it’s not a perfectly complete circle. The Colts’ run defense is what has sucked in the past — the Bears’ quarterback’s passing is what has sucked in the past. So, on second thought, never mind. I’ve lost interest.

“Post more Larouche stuff.  This other stuff sucks.”

Yes.  I’m certainly following the dictates of that post from several months ago.  If I had a bit more time, I’d go ahead and read just and move  toward completion of the “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know” page I’ve set myself out to do — only deadline being that I want to have it done
before the man passes away — replete with a heck of a lot more than I had when I finished last year’s blogging with this morass.  I now have a bunch of gaps filled in from that series of posts — vaguarities made less vague.

It all starts to make perfect sense.  Here.  I have more.

In 1965, LaRouche launched a struggle inside the Socialist Workers Party (a Trotskyite organization), with Carol Larrabee — also known in LaRouche land as Schnitzer or White.  She would run off to Britain with a new co-hort, which is when LaRouche is believed to have gone off the remaining bit of a rocker he was on.  They had an elitist view of how the Revolution was going to come about: we need professional revolutionaries, intellectual leaders are not going to spring from the fabled “Workers of the World”.  The ins and outs of their sectional had them join Gerry Healy and the “American Committee for the 4th International”, which they later bounced from over to the “Spartacist League”, a splinter
from the “4th International” — which in turn was a splinter from the “SWP”.  Not getting anywhere, his enormous ego not being gratified and genuflected enough toward, LaRouche quit these “4th International” organizations, LaRouche wrote a letter declaring that all factions of the 4th International were null and void, and now LaRouche was setting out to establish the “5th International”.  Which makes as much sense as
launching the “Democratic Policy Committee”.

“Operation Mop-Up”, where LaRouche either conciously or unconciously aped Hitler and his “brown-shirts” in storming Communist meetings and swinging machettes around, starts to make sense.  Control and hegemony over the Revolution would be consolidated and taken from the “vanguard left” — who were all Rockefellar’s agents, mind you, bcause they diverted attention away from the true revolution and to stupid issues of gender, race, etc, and once that was accomplished, the control over  conciousness of the proletariat would be wrested from the Bourgeoise culture as a whole.

I’ve wondered about LaRouche’s mother problems.  I recommend everyone, college students in particular, who LaRouchites have granted the privilege of gracing with their presence, to walk up and say, “I’m thinking of joining the LaRouche Youth Movement, but I think I’ll pass the idea
by my mom.” and see what happens.  (Other ideas:  walk by with a friend and make it so they overhear the casual conversation “I try to model my life after Aristotle.”  Or “If you think Doubling the square sharpens the mind, wait until you TRIPLE the Square!”)  I’ve generally suspected that LaRouche simply intuits that moms are a barrier and competing
influence; they’d tend to try to talk their young ones out of joining “cadres” of any sort.  Also, it’s psychologically a way of having them declare them their own person at a crucial point in their life.  Beyond the tactics of the affront, I’ve shrugged and figured that maybe Larouche’s strict and religious up-bringing lead him to hate his mother.  But there is one other possibility.  Fred Newman, another political cult leader of long standing, currently largely holder of the reigns of the remains of the Reform Party, whose configuration was somewhat obstensibly a sort of a psycho-analytic Marxist confirguration — had his group join the NCLCs for a year.  Insanely enough, Newman wanted to take over the organization.  I had figured that LaRouche’s “brain-washing” reprogramming, launched when Carol flew off to Great Britain, was a product of his circa 1960 computer programming career.  It may well be, but the timing of events suggests as much that LaRouche picked up his psychotic “reprogramming” from his dalliances with Fred Newman.  As well, his “mother complex”, and degrading issuances that his followers’ failures in organizing came from sexual impotence.  (It all comes back to those “vital fluids” of Dr. Strangelove lore, doesn’t it?)

I am reading through a 1988 issue of “EIR”.  Insane though it may seem, Portland State University has three “special issues” (education, AIDS, and the Gulf War Crisis of 1990) of EIR in its library — apparently donated by LaRouchites, the cover pages stamped with the imprint “Donated Material”, which is good because it sets aside the frightening prospect that $700 — yes, the pricetag on these 3 issues of “Executive Intelligence Review” come up to $700 — of tax-payer dollars went to the type of writing that is obstenisbly sold for $5 on street corners, but is generally conspicuously littered about.  $5 is about $7 too much.

So we have a transcript of the AIDS issue froma LaRouche informercial in 1988.  “Many are asking, ‘What does Lyndon LaRouche know about AIDs that Surgeon General C Everett Koop does not?’  Many are saying to themselves, ‘I thought LaRouche was an economist.  What does an economist know about AIDs?’  My profession is a little known branch of science, called physical economy.  That is a branch of physical science developed 300 years ago by…” and on it goes as the viewer says, “Wait a minute!”, since nobody’s free-word association starts off with “LaRouche” and “economist”.

As for what LaRouche knew about AIDs that C Everett Koop did not:  LaRouche had been watching for a biological plot for about a decade, and when AIDs hit he was very suspicious, sho he pulled together a crack research staff to investigate.  AIDs, it seems, was accidentally prodcued in the 1960s by experiments with human tissue.  It is not primarily sexually transmitted, but there is a conspiracy to make the public think it is so that they can push pornographic sex education in our schools as well as pushing special rights for the pervers lifestyle choice of homosexuality.  Also, a Mathusian plot exists to use AIDs as an excuse to clear out the, by the evil ones’ perspective, the unwanted blacks.  AIDs is a highly transmittable disease, which can be spread through mosquito bites, and if left untouched will decimate the population (which, by the way, the wacko environmentalists — “enthropists” be they, would love to see happen because they hate people and love the Earth instead), so we must wage WAR on AIDs, all expenses necessary, and thus we need to screen the population and test everybody, and isolate those with AIDs (or, humanely, provide plenty of hospital beds).  If elected prsident, Lyndon LaRouche will make AIDs HISTORY!

The acronym for LaRouche’s organization which pushed his ballot measures in California was– appropriately enough — “PANIC”.  The acronym for the organized opposition was “CALM”.  The ballot measures failed by a two to one margin, but caused health experts serious head-aches.  It is here, reading over his AIDs booklet, that I see the evil of the man, somewhere beyond the kookery, and understand the Dennis Kings of the world’s insistence that you can’t simply dismiss LaRouche out of hand as a simple inconsequential crank.  Granted, for the most part I do, but at least I see where King is coming from.  LaRouche has on repeated occasion posited the manner in which he may become president without an election.  A crisis hits, simply economic crisis in general, but fret not — AIDs is usable as an issue as well.  In 1987, when the stock market tumbled and commentators made allusions to 1929, LaRouchites descended down Wall Street to declare how they were right.  In 1998, when the Asian Markets tumbled, LaRouche wrote an open letter to Bill Clinton urging that Clinton appoint LaRouche as economic advisor and declare emergency powers which “every sovereign state has available”.  He cited China as “one of the best governments in the world today, in terms of quality of leadership, the kind of leadership required to get through crisis.”  Today I note that LaRouche praises Vladamir Putin’s rather autocratic government in Russia.  As for AIDs, LaRouche insisted, naturally, that he be the one in charge of manning his AIDs program.  In LaRouche’s mind, he will be right there when the economy unravels.  There is a review for his 1974 quasi-Marxist book which includes the line “Judging perhaps unfairly from his controversial manner, Marcus impresses at least one reader as a Me-for-Dictator type to whom it would be dangerous to entrust the task of drawing any boundary between the domain of freedom and that of necessity or order.”  Amazing precient for a reviewer who did not know what a “Lyn Marcus” was.  (Martin Bronfenbrenner of Duke University writing for the “Journal of Political Economy”, Feb. 1976).

So we have some parallels for how LaRouche postures for power to Adolf Hitler.  Basically the problem is all I can really do with that is smirk and say “Nice try, idiot.”  Simply put, he hasn’t gotten anywhere and is not particularly likely to do so.  But he does seem to have it in his head.  If he is following the path of the Fuhrer, the problem is the path of the Fuhrer is narrow and steep and tenuous.  He is a Hitler with a silly paper hat.  If you look and see a Hitler, you see that paper hat.  If you look and see that silly paper hat, you pause and consider that you still see a Hitler.

Dubious conspiratorial source though it may be…

Former New York City police detective Bo Dietl was Neil Cavuto’s guest today (January 17, 2007) on Your World. Dietl appeared along with Imam Hassan Al-Qazwini, of the Islamic Center of America, to discuss a January 7 incident in which Northwest Airlines prohibited a group of 40 Muslims from boarding a plane in Germany, after a pilgrimage to the Hajj, on their return trip to Detroit. The group said that Northwest’s action was discriminatory and threatened to launch a boycott, whereupon Northwest apologized and agreed to pay for any expenses incurred as a result of the “snafu.”

At one point Cavuto turned to Dietl and said, “Bo, you have a problem with Northwest apologizing, right?” to which Dietl responded:

No, I have a problem because things have changed, Hassan. We have to look at — a bunch of Irish guys are not going to get on the plane now and blow themselves up or put themselves into buildings. The fact of the matter is, I mean, you don’t watch ’24?’ On Fox TV? They’re out there. They’re out there. There are cells out there. We have to protect ourselves against them as Americans.

That’s not the first time I’ve heard 24 cited in such a manner. Luara Ingraham once cited the popularity of 24 as evidence that America supports Bush’s definitions on torture.

So if Jack Bauer dies. [LOL], who will be foremost and most overt in taking up on the mantle on that post 9/11 meeting Hollywood executives had with the Bush Administration to create propaganda vehicles for our government actions? I mean, Threat Matrix tanked in the ratings.

The World Evangelical Alliance has applauded the agreement reached this week by New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson and Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir to cease all hostilities between the Khartoum government and rebel groups for 60 days as they work towards a durable end to the conflict in Darfur.

Okay.  Bill Richardson has brokered a temporary cease fire — fragile and apt to be broken any minute now though it may be– in Darfur.  Just for the sake of prospective presidential candidate check-ups… what have Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards done in the last week?

I look through the ads in the back of the local alternative weekly, and see, trying to remember if it would be appearing in the other local alternative weekly and deciding it probably wouldn’t be*, an ad for… The Goddamned Menopause: the Musical.

I would not think anything of it, and I’ve seen this ad here for months, except for the blurb at the top of the ad.  “Final Months”.  Plural.   Months.  Not the final weeks.  Not the final month.  The final months.  As in, indefinite.  Months.  No end to sight.  Maybe there’s light at the end of the dark tunnel, but we can’t see it yet.  I would think that this thing would run its course by now, but no… no… it’s just like “What the Bleep Do You Know”, which you can assign a “final months” to and continue for another year.  In fact, somebody should do a mash-up of “What the Bleep” and “Menopause”.

Actually, any opinion of “Menopause: the Musical” is immaterial.  The “Final Months” bother me in terms of its promise of finality (hurry up and see it because it’ll disappear) without stating finality.

The other innovation on the ad, made months back and to my memory not appearing at the start, is a burst saying “Men Love It Too!”  No.  No they don’t.  Men love lots of stupid things, but this is not one of them.  I presume there’s a cadre of women, with a lot of repeat customers — attracted to the “fun baby-boomer soundtrack” I heard the radio advertisement proclaim — wacky parody songs of songs from the late 60s turned to being about menopause–, who bring along their husbands and boyfriends, but no… no… this is marketed to women, and to deny otherwise is to insult everyone’s intelligence.

*The Portland Mercury.  The Willamette Week.  Figure it out yourownself.

I believe President George Bush’s job approval ratings have only just barely eked above the 40 mark a couple of times in the past two years.  He has spent his entire second term mired in the 30s.  If memory serves right, Clinton’s approval ratings shrank into the 30s in his first few months, but otherwise coasted with a low ebb at around 45 — that, probably taking a point or two, being where he stood at his disasterous 1994 mid-term point, which promptly created the Time “Incredibly Shrinking President” cover and his “The President is still relevant” statement in his 1995 State of the Union speech.  In a previous life, 40 percent was seen as abysmally low ratings and a sign of a president in peril.  Today, it means a president on the rebound, gaining momentum, ready to “surge”, I tell you, “surge”.

Of course, Clinton was up into the 60s through most of the Impeachment debacle.  I suspect mostly by way of comparison, a foil of a foil.

Bush is stuck in a defensive crouch.  History may vindicate him yet, but that owes more to the peculiar biases of our historians.  I’ve been meaning to read over the 60 Minutes transcript.  I’ve heard some sound clips.  He accepts responsibility for Iraq not going as well as planned, stating that the public needs somebody to blame and if they don’t blame him they may blame the troops.  It is statements like that that make me consider the answer to the question “If you could ask or say one thing to President Bush, what would you say?” — “Go away.”

I understand Bush has picked up bi-partisan support for his quote-in-quote “surge” plan.  The name he cites is Joseph Lieberman — who, you will remember, lost the Democratic nomination and thus switched parties to the “Connecticut for Lieberman” party.  Bush has assembled a grand Republican — Connecticut for Lieberman coalition for the policy of punting the Iraq War over to the next president.

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

Part 1:

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

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

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

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

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

………………….

Part 2:

 

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

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

So, there you have an infinitesimal glance into the burgeoning currents of my life.  Jeff, I feel like every human being can potentially feel.  I feel like God.  

………….

Part 3:

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

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