Film Review: A Bridge Too Far & Military History....

A Bridge Too Far   -  Directed by Richard Attenborough
released 1977

I recently  picked up a DVD of this flawed masterpiece.  I'd seen it a few times before, but didn't have a clear recollection of what I'd thought of it.  Having spent much of the past 15 years studying World War II and the culture and politics of war in general, I am much better-prepared to say something about it than I ever was, before.  

For the 1st hour or so, it seemed OK.  Although there was some weak and confusing dialogue, the main point seemed to be the common humanity of the German forces and generals - a theme often seen in the NATO Cold-war environment, where the Germans are now our allies while the evil Communists (Soviets) pose all the threats and moral hazard.  

The film is based on the Cornelius Ryan best-seller of the same name.  I've known people who thought it one of the best military histories ever.  I haven't read it, but the film merely said "based on" Ryan's book.  I have little doubt that Ryan might have repudiated many aspects of the film - at least in its final form.  

There is also evidence of internal strife between the screenwriter and director, with the producer having his own agenda of what he wanted the film to "say."  Not that I know anything specific about this, but as I said, I can see evidence of it.  There are also conflicts between British (and surely German) ideas of military humor, if any, and the Norman Mailer or Joseph Heller type of American WWII bitterness and sarcasm.  Even though Jews might have been the biggest losers of WWII, in terms of percentage of population and horrors experienced, it doesn't seem to have deterred them from perpetuating similar racist, fascist behavior towards their own "occupyees".  

But of course this doesn't define the Jewish character or anything else.  It's simply a validation of the principle that victims of past discrimination and persecution are not in a mood to forgive and forget.  Few Jews that I know are happy about WWII or the Zionist domination of their history and culture.  And  they're especially upset by Israel's rogue nuke capability, and the fact that 40% of their economy (GDP) is military-related.  Israel (as well as Sweden) are giants in producing the means for small, poor countries to kill each other in large numbers.  

Contrary to what most Americans think, we don't act "defensively" at all - in SW Asia or anywhere else.  Instead, our stated mission in the world is much like the Nazis - being the only "Superpower" (the Uberland), and exerting "full spectrum dominance" (including economic and cultural) over every other country in the world - friend and enemy, alike.  Like, hey, this is our show.  The rest of you peons have to follow our lead, even though we have the worst schools, the worst health  care, and the worst environmental policies in the world.  Aren't we great?

THAT, of course, is exactly what I spend most of my time opposing or debunking, often at risk to self and others.  Even though  I was not a "peace activist" during the Vietnam War, I was by the time it ended, and I always loathed LBJ and the "military Keynesians" who thought that war and military spending were "good for the economy."  By the mid-1970's, prevailing sentiments were very anti-war, although in Montana, we expressed our opposition to war by ordering new weapon systems.  It was a huge fight by the few Enlightened Ones among us even to show up and tell the Air Force that we really didn't want any.  We thought it was all a conspiracy by the Republican fascists and war profiteers.  Well, they had an answer to that:  the Blue Dogs.  Now we had to fight them for control of the Democrat Party, or else leave and be Voices in the Wilderness.  In Montana, that's not a difficult choice..

Unlike the present, where every Republican poseur thinks he has to act like Rambo or the Terminator, this was a very anti-war environment in the mid-1970's.  There weren't any good guys who supported or pursued mindless wars over ideologies or territorial conquest.  So, the original idea of the book - to dissect and clarify one of the Allies' worst tactical disasters in WWII - ended up serving a different purpose.  Once again, the Poles were sold out; the Airborne forces were told to follow the tactics and spirit of Custer in a cavalry charge (or better, Thomas Meagher, Montana's Irish hero who lost more men than any other Brigade commander in the Civil War), and everyone acted like they were in Catch 22 instead of a serious historical event.  

I also saw Brewster's Millions for the first time a couple of years ago.  It was similar in tone to Bridge, and preceded it, so I guess they thought that kind of "military humor" would sell tickets, and it did.  Still, I can't help but feel sorry for the veterans who had to watch A Bridge Too Far thinking they would see something like the book which was so highly regarded.  

Of course, that's a perennial battle among film and literary audiences and critics.  Some stories make better books than films, and vice versa.  I suspect that even Attenborough and the serious side of this production threw up their hands at the scope and logistics of doing what they did, before CGI's.  Yeh, they could cut and paste the raw film to make it look like there were lots more people or planes in a scene than there actually were, but they needed a few, and it all had to be realistic, like the glider takeoff's behind C-47 Dakotas.   That was really a difficult "stunt" in this day and age, or even in 1977, for that matter, although there were still WWII vets able to fly and otherwise assist, so it wasn't like they had to reconstruct something no one remembered how to do (like, say, the mores of the Belle Epoche as portrayed in James Cameron's Titanic).     

Funny I should think of Cameron, but he is today's master of the giant epic with social implications - in fact, he may go down as the greatest thus far in this sort of epic realism over global (or galactic) issues.  (Montana Democrats:  what part of Avatar didn't you understand?  This is the Tar Sands, and Cameron is a leader in the opposition to it).  

Does he match Lean at his best (say, Dr. Zhivago?).  Again, it's a different era with somewhat different politics, but our common humanity is a big theme in all three.  Great film-makers is something we have in abundance, but little support for their work unless it is full of sex and violence....

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Postscript

It's not exactly on message, but I've been suffering from a minor crisis in my belief that there is a future for the United States and organizations like us - giant nation-states, de-humanized to the point of hardly having any human values or qualities at all.  I've also begun to speculate, for the  first time in my life, whether or not I'm not one of those early alien-abduction implants, genetically modified with alien DNA.  Of course, if they tested mine, I'm sure they wouldn't find anything (except, maybe, that I wasn't the natural son of my acknowledged father, and thus not connected with the Stephens family heritage, rich and interesting as it is - and usually quite admirable).  

Although this demotivated me a bit, and made me more cautious about proclaiming what I thought was my real family's views and traditions, it wasn't until I started reading some recent publications on UFO history, which started at Roswell when I was in utero, and continued in Montana and around our nuclear missile base to the extent that the Air Force quit keeping any records or testimony about it, and destroyed some of the crucial evidence which was presented to them.  The Little Green Men are real, here in GF, and one of the greatest sitings ever of a UFO was at the very baseball stadium where the Voyagers play, today.  So, there!

There's long been talk that the British Royal Family are also aliens - "reptilian," more or less in the manner of the "V" series which was done twice.  So, it's been a bit like Rosemary's Baby in these circles - would the new Prince bear signs of alien ancestry?  No such luck.  

The Epistemology Unit - making quality schools on the cheap

The Epistemology Unit  

Since I've met the new Superintendent in Great Falls as well as Denise Juneau (I only met her once, during her first campaign, but we have a lot of mutual friends, and we're FB friends), this may be an opportune moment to suggest a curriculum tweaking.  I'm proposing a week at the beginning of each school year devoted to issues in epistemology (the theory of knowledge)  -- intelligent speech, meaning, truth, scientific inquiry, logic, "linear programming", and the like.  In other words, teach the students the importance of what they are doing, why they are there, why it's good for them to be systematically studying the world they live in, its cultures and literatures, etc.  "Learning how (and why) to learn," as they used to say....

Believe it or not, most people (and obviously most voters and office-holders) don't understand this.  Not only do they not understand what a legislature or even Government writ large is there for - what it is supposed to do, what are the rules, etc.  They don't often understand what they are "managing" or paying for, either.  

(Consider our local nuclear arsenal, for an example.  We must be the only people in the world who want to have the "option" of destroying human civilization under a single command and from one particular military base).  

Apparently, our leaders (and far too many "educators") don't know what "education" is, or even whether or not it is a good idea.  They know about training, coercion, regimentation, obedience, discipline, etc.  But they don't seem to understand or care much about learning, and assimilating what we've learned into our behavior - both individually and collectively - in order to make the world and our local community a better place.  

Worse, they couldn't care less whether their laws, policies, programs and bricks and mortar "institutions" are useful and productive.  In fact, the more problems and crises that occur, the more power they (the Technocracy, the Prison-Industrial Complex, Gangster Capitalism - whatever you want to call it) will have and the more "resources" they will have at their command.  Thus, perpetual war are posed as "the solution" to a declining resource base, declining economic expectations, and indeed, the end of democracy and our constitutional Republic, as well.  Perpetual War for Perpetual Slavery.  Isn't that the correct motto for the USA, today?

Although I'm from an "educated" or maybe "petty-bourgeois intellectual" family and background, I never really envisioned teaching, although I might have become a professor on a slightly different timeline.  But I could  see what was wrong with our institutions, government, foreign policy, etc.  If we understood it, couldn't we change it? 

When I saw and understood the need for epistemology in regular education courses, I endeavored to promote that - first, by joining Mensa (which has "gifted ed" as its pet charity), and then by earning a teaching credential (Broadfield Social Sciences) in the early 1990's. I made some effort at trying to develop high school courses in economics and philosophy, and I finally got a chance to do that in a private school.  

Many states already had certification in teaching k-12  philosophy and economics, but not Montana.  With all the interest in the arts and humanities, and the continuing pressure to upgrade science and math instruction, there was little concern about the "social sciences" or the more abstract questions and issues which philosophy addresses.   

The main thing I learned from this experience is that we can't just do one course in high school.  We need to interweave this thinking in everything we do from Day 1.  (Cf. Freakonomics - once these economics tools and insights are mastered, they  can be applied to anything).  We want students to become critical thinkers.  We want them to question authority, and particularly the insidious messages of commercial advertising and government war propaganda.  

So, what would the Epistemology Unit look like?  Here's a sample:

This is a school.  What does that mean?  Why do we have schools?  What functions do they serve?  Whose needs are they supposed to be serving?  Are they to be child-centered education - Montessori, A.S. Neal, etc. or must we have totalitarian Prussian-style "guns and factories" school systems, or the Benthamite Panopticon - everyone under constant surveillance, 24/7, and every aspect of the educational experience dictated by the State, as though the students were in prison?  

What different kinds of schools or learning environments have there been?  What was their purpose or function?  What do you like or don't like about our present school system?  What  would you change if you could?  

This is the approach taken by Bill Glasser, who was a big name in EDU reform 20 years ago and more.  He also invented "Reality Therapy" as a clinical psychiatrist - an important school of humanistic psychology in the 1970's - much of it derived from his experience as a prison shrink in a woman's prison, if I remember correctly.  The main idea is student self-government and empowerment, organized in open meetings with everyone sitting in a circle, and discussing openly any issue or problems they might be having.  The other less frequent meetings are about "big questions"  the material encompassed by philosophy and scientific understanding.  

So, it's the same idea.  And he had marvelous success for many years - too much, it would seem.  People don't seem to want that much "value" for their "public education dollars."  They'd rather spend the money on prisons, so they feel "safer," I suppose.

So, let's put together a "unit" which will cover the first week of school.  It doesn't need to take the whole day, but a lot of this time is already allocated as "orientation" or whatever.  This is simply a more comprehensive attempt to really orient the students to joys and best practice in learning and "development."  

Develop minds, not mines and pipelines.  The  way to a man's heart is NOT through his hot rod.  Children want to  learn new things and experience the world on their own terms, not through the filter of a police state or the drug-induced stupor of anti-depressants and other highly-toxic behavior-modifying prescriptions forced on them by a school system which is obsessed with conformity and obedience.  

Make school into a human place.  That's the bottom line

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The other big deal for me has always been languages, even though I can barely function in German and the Romance Languages, and speak or write no foreign languages fluently.   I know what the rest of the world does, and how much more successfully they can compete on a global scale.  We are the retarded idiots of the world, except perhaps for the top 5 % or so of public schools/student, and various private schools or programs.  

Take the International Baccalaureate system (IB).  If I remember right, it's two foreign languages for like 8 years - total fluency, in other words.  And math through calculus, etc.  Advanced science, massive readings in literature and the arts - it's designed to prepare the student for any university in the world, and it doesn't take a school to do it.  Originally, it was designed by Europeans who might be missionaries or development specialists, scientists, engineers, etc. in remote areas.  Their children were taught at home, but prepared to go back to Europe and enter a top university. Now, many public as well as private schools use this curriculum and testing which is recognized everywhere.  

They're doing the IB program in Missoula already, with a public high school (Hellgate) and a private IB k-8 school.  Since the material is all on-line, every school district could offer it, and allocate that student's share of the school budget to tutoring, culture tours, etc.  One teacher per 20 IB students would probably be quite sufficient - these are already motivated, organized kids, right?

Still, only a small percentage are going to want to do that - for the foreseeable future, anyway.  But as the value and even beauty of such understanding spreads, standards for everyone will rise - not enforced from without, but because people crave excellence and truth, not the blind, mechanistic programming they are receiving today in most of our schools and universities... 

It's the regular public "high schools" (originally envisioned as a career-preparing "higher school" or Hochschule to follow "grammar school" or Gymnasium) in the rest of the world that really put us to shame.  I wouldn't be surprised if there are U.S. school districts which discourage exchange students, simply because they are so much more advanced - usually several years ahead of their age cohort, here.  Of course, they usually come from middle-class backgrounds, and might have been sent to a boarding school or whatever, anyway.  This is a way to do it on the cheap, and learn about the fascinating American politics and culture.  Only the feeling, now, is more like horror than fascination, I would venture to say.   

Still, we're at least pretending to be the good guys.  But we don't know how to do that, and how to be honest, truthful, rational, scientific, ethical, and otherwise prepared for the future which now promises to be little more than an unmitigated nightmare of poverty and resource depletion, while a few burn up the labor of billions on their stupid, contrived wars, mandated by a totalitarian police state.  

Contra Baucus- selected comments and analysis

Revenge of the Vine -  the Baucus Cult in Western History

What's really wrong with Max Baucus?  

Not many of us are taking the opportunity to dance on Max's grave - not yet, anyway.  Of course, he isn't dead, yet, which you'd never know from yesterday's Tribune with about 4 pages of nothing but tributes and praise for the man I have long called "The worst Senator in History" - meaning US history, of course.  I'm sure there were a few Romans or maybe even Latin American oligarchs who were worse.
  
The fact is, he's at the most dangerous point in his long career of serving Wall Street and just about every murderous, corrupt constituency in our Body Politic.  He's about to "reform" the tax system, to even better reflect the interests and "requirements" of the 1%.  Watch closely.  There will be a lot of sleight-of-hand, here.  Not that it's necessary.  The evidence indicates that he has no serious critics outside the Green Party and the Occupy movement (and of course Single Payer Healthcare advocates, who he treated like common criminals.  That would include Brian Schweitzer.).  

The Pope and Archbishop of Canterbury acting in concert would not be able to persuade Baucus and his crew of the need for any sort of ethical principles or social responsibility.  They have adopted the "self-interest" ethics of Ayn Rand along with every sort of intellectual dishonesty and disregard of scientific understanding - all the while pretending to represent the highest realms of intellectual excellence and legal "professionalism", from Harvard to Stanford, Yale, and now, Chicago.  They're all Straussians, now - like the guy who took away Oppenheimer's security clearance as much as Leo, or the Nazi Party favorite, Richard.  Maybe they're all Waltz Kings, after all.  Look at the success of Schwarzenegger, that echt Viennese King of the video rental store.  

It's Nietzschean, too, in its descent from Emerson and the early environmental radicals like John Muir or Gifford Pinchot.  The pursuit of excellence for a few, and mass sacrifice and tyranny for the many.  The pattern is clear, and I was just reminded of it by one of my unknown friends' posts:

"What I want to fix your attention on is the vast, overall movement towards the discrediting, and finally the elimination, of every kind of human excellence – moral, cultural, social, or intellectual. And is it not pretty to notice how “democracy” (in the incantatory sense) is now doing for us the work that was once done by the most ancient Dictatorships, and by the same methods? You remember how one of the Greek Dictators (they called them “tyrants” then) sent an envoy to another Dictator to ask his advice about the principles of government. The second Dictator led the envoy into a field of grain, and there he snicked off with his cane the top of every stalk that rose an inch or so above the general level. The moral was plain. Allow no preeminence among your subjects. Let no man live who is wiser or better or more famous or even handsomer than the mass. Cut them all down to a level: all slaves, all ciphers, all nobodies. All equals. Thus Tyrants could practise, in a sense, “democracy.” But now “democracy” can do the same work without any tyranny other than her own."
~Screwtape, From Screwtape Proposes a Toast, C. S. Lewis, 1959

Paul Stephens: When I used to associate with a lot of intellectual conservatives, they were always trying to get me to read this - I was more or less anti-christian, though, based on personal experience, so never read him. The above is right-on.

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Steve Kelly was one of the first to count coup.  "God is alive," he said, e-mailing his lists the story from the NY Times of Baucus calling it quits.  

Melinda Gopher's tweets soon followed.  She supported Mike Taylor against Baucus in 2002, and most NA's I know have long-standing grievances against Baucus as well as the Baucus family, itself.  (Disclaimer:  The Baucus family is from Great Falls, and actually neighbors - lived on the same block with the Diehl's, Swanberg's, and Peter's - all close friends of my family, as well.)

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Melinda Gopher
I was the one #Democrat that vowed to primary the most powerful Senator, in the #USSenate, while other state Democrats cowered...
Share · 1 · 11 hours ago near Missoula, MT · 

I reply:  "John Driscoll did it, so did Bob Kelleher - major Democratic party leaders - real labor guys, and social democrats.  Both were crucified by the Baucus Machine.  Max always pretended he didn't know what was happening - "plausible deniability," they call it."

Melinda Gopher
Believe the next person to lead #Democrats should be #LandlessIndian descendant
Share · 12 hours ago near Missoula, MT · 
Options

Melinda Gopher
#Baucus failed in his ENTIRE Congressional career to address #LandlessIndians needs...#13starflag

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Doug Wendt
Max Baucus 'our' "Senator from K Street" because of his ties to corporate lobbyists is RETIRING which makes his vote for unhinged massacres last week even more despicable. The Waterton Police faced hundreds of rounds & only stopped the bad guys last week when they paused to reload huge magazines. 4,000 dead in US from guns since Newtown. This ad puts the wrong headed liberal interpretation of the 2nd Amendment in context:

The Best Gun Control Commercial Ever Produced?
http://www.buzzfeed.com/copyranter/the-best-gun-control-commercial-ever-produced
A man walks into his office with a rifle. He takes aim at his boss, and fires...

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Paul Stephens:

People assume I have some sort of personal grievance with Max.  I don't.  I've never had a conversation with him outside of public forums.  I just consider him one of most evil politicians I have ever seen or heard of, sellling out to the bad guys in nearly every case that matters, and getting nothing worthwhile in return - like closing Malmstrom, or promoting Single Payer healthcare, instead of destroying it.  He's also largely responsible for destroying Montana Power, via his connections with Goldman, Sachs, who under commission from PPL, packed the Board, paid off the preferred stockholders, and then liquidated the company, selling the generating assets to PPL, which was the whole point of the exercise (PPL was looking to replace its nuclear capacity, which it expected would soon be shut down).  Essentially, they were stolen, and Max or his people (along with Racicot) were in the loop all along.  

There are many other areas where Max's "leadership" has resulted in tremendous destruction to the economy (especially Montana's, and rural/small towns across the country),  "ending welfare as we [the 1%] know it," the health-care system, education (NCLB, the Race to the Top, etc), research & development ("intellectual property" for corporations, not for people), and foreign policy in general.  Max has supported all the wars, the PATRIOT Act, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (getting Clinton to sign it, which he was inclined to do, anyway), and other Republican, corporate "de-regulation" and "free trade" policies.  Max is the quintessential "neo-liberal" and was even one of the original "New Democrats" from the '70's which included Evan Bayh, John (and Bob) Kerry, Gary "Monkey Business" (Senator from CO - can't think of his last name), Bill Clinton, and Al Gore.  

While hanging, for many years, on Mike Mansfield's coat-tails, Max had none of the common touch or working class values of Mansfield, and thus has been the greatest disappointment to the Democratic base, although his effective use and doimination of the media, public and private, has largely obscured that fact.  Even more disappointing for more sophisticated observers is how shamelessly Max has maintained the support of some of the best activists and progressive leaders, who seem to ignore everything he has  done since the 1980's, when he may have actually tried to be one of the good guys.  But no good deed went unpunished, and like so many others, Max just caved in, and became the active agent of all that is wrong with our country and its government.  

Little-noted so far is Max's tremendous influence and even domination of the Obama Administration.  Jim Messina, a hero and complete creation of the Baucus Machine, got Obama re-elected, or at least takes credit for it.  So, add to the long list of Baucus's own sins and indiscretions, the creation of a President who might yet destroy the country which  once enslaved his people and ancestors.

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Truthout
The Obama administration is suggesting a compromise with Republicans to tie your benefits to something called "Chained CPI."

http://www.upworthy.com/you-will-not-believe-what-the-government-is-planning-to-do-to-your-poor-gentle-sweet-old-grandma-2?c=to1

You Will Not Believe What The Government Is Planning To Do To Your Poor, Gentle, Sweet, Old Grandma

www.upworthy.com

It doesn't mean you'll get your benefits cut. It just means you'll get less money. Totally not the same thing.

Paul Stephens: Especially pernicious because inflation is grossly understated by Soc Security, etc. Plus, those who lived freelance or in the black economy most of their lives get only the barest subsistence - my total income, with SSI and Food Stamps, is a little over $800/month. I could work part-time in a minimum wage job, but only a few of them are exempt from having your other benefits reduced in compensation. I'd have to make at least $500/month to have a worthwhile gain (i'd lose SSI, Food Stamps, etc), and I figure my time's worth $25/hr - that's what I'd charge for informal consulting, tutoring (to those with middle-class incomes - I do a lot of it for free), photography, writing, etc. But of course there is no work available for me. Somehow, I've been blacklisted. 
And that's a paradox in itself - no one has paid me or hired me for that sort of work in all the years since I most needed it, after being fired by Diamond Cab. It's like that was a punishment which all my other friends and associates recognized!

Peyton Farquhar LMAO. Obama the tyrant who will throw granny under the bus finally proves that he is no different from George the dumber. Both blue & red teams work for Wall Street.
Like · Reply · 5 ·

Brenda Roehrich Peyton. Obama is NO tyrant. That requires balls. He does this shit because he is spineless. I wanted Hilary Clinton as President; not Mr. fucking nice guy.
Like · 10 hours ago

Sarah Sparklers AND they're treating MILITARY retirees the exact same way. LIES and cheating.
Like · Reply · 3 · 11 hours ago

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The "free trade" and Pharma sell-outs for which Baucus was most culpable are described, below.   He was actually the deciding vote, and one of only a few Democrats who supported the "Part D" $50 billion/year giveaway to the drug cartels, as well as all the overprescription rackets and resulting health disasters attributable to it.  

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ZNet Daily Commentary: Tremendous Pharmaceutical Profits or Totally Protected Plunder? By Dawn Paley


Tremendous Pharmaceutical Profits or Totally Protected Plunder?

April 22, 2013 By Dawn Paley

http://www.zcommunications.org/tremendous-pharmaceutical-profits-or-totally-protected-plunder-by-dawn-paley

What the TPP really means for Latin America
Quieter is better. That seems to be the motto driving the negotiations of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The trade deal was initially called the P2, and it was a two-way affair between New Zealand and Singapore. Chile and Brunei joined the negotiations, which were renamed the P4. Then the US joined, and the deal was re-branded as the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement (TPP). Today, negotiating countries are splayed across the globe like a constellation only a highly trained astronomer could recognize. In addition to the first five, the TPP now includes Australia, Malaysia, Peru, and Vietnam. Canada and Mexico recently joined the talks and Japan is vying to participate in the negotiations
The next round of negotiations will take place in Lima, Peru, and proponents are pushing for a final agreement by fall.
But the language of TPP promoters rings hollow for those who have tracked the progress of other trade agreements, like NAFTA. “They’re saying that it’s going to open up opportunities for exporting more Mexican goods to other countries, like to Asia… That Mexico will become more competitive in other markets,” said Manuel Pérez-Rocha, associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, and member of the Mexican Action Network on Free Trade (RMALC). Pérez-Rocha pointed out there’s little concrete evidence that Mexican exports to Asia will increase as an outcome of the agreement. “Mexico has actually signed many Free Trade Agreements with other countries, and its dependency to the US market hasn’t changed a bit,” he told the Americas Program.

Another public radio Pledge Week.

Save your money.  You're going to need it when Baucus-Obama cut your Social Security


KUFM's "pledge week" has become a Montana institution, or at least one which needs serious psychiatric (as well as journalistic) help.  I listen to the professional liars and bullies like William Marcus, telling us what a great thing KUFM and "Montana Public Radio" is for us (of course, it's great for Missoula), and how they need all this money to pay for the vital NPR propaganda, without which  the corrupt Baucus Machine and AIPAC Zionism couldn't exist. 

I've been following KUFM and its "evolution" since 1979, when I was a volunteer participant at a station which was little better than what we have, now, at KGPR - the Great Falls station.  But it did get enough to pay several salaries from UM, as well as all the other bills.  Basically, fund-raising (the goal of which, in 1979, was about $40,000 - say, $100-150,000 in today's money) was just to buy and produce local, independent programming, upgrade equipment, and to pay for the NPR programming which KUFM then used sparsely, and at little cost.  
Terry Conrad imagined himself a much better programmer of jazz than the NPR staff, although they did use Piano Jazz (Marian McPartland), and some classical programming from NPR like the late Fred Calland's, St Paul Sunday Morning, the LA Philharmonic (produced by KUSC), Chicago Symphony and Lyric Opera, (from the venerable WFMT), etc.  Terry had a degree in music education, and extensive commercial jazz station experience, and had worked in both Chicago and Detroit.  KUFM didn't even carry the Metropolitan Opera in those days, which was commercially syndicated to private FM stations, and thus unavailable in that market. 

That was also the time-frame when KUFM started paying its announcers, who were previously only volunteers, or work-study students, etc.  It was still mostly a university station, not "community radio" which we hear so much about (negatively) here in Great Falls.  And as such, it was intellectually elitist, somewhat "New Age" or counter-culture, and otherwise socially concerned and a major cultural hub and resource.  As soon as I saw how it worked, I returned to Great Falls with the goal of starting one, here, or even a commercial "fine arts" station like KFAC, Los Angeles, which I had learned to rely on, there.  (KUSC was just a student station, but at a very good music school, so they had programming I listened to in the late 1960's).  

This was the time when Minnesota Public Radio, KUSC, and some other major stations quit NPR and started American Public Radio (now American Public Media), but it was mostly about music and cultural programming, not hard news.  NPR has managed to maintain rigid control over news programming at least since the Bush Administration, when several of the more "liberal" or independent voices were summarily dismissed. 

KUFM does well on two counts - the BBC (which was itself gutted during the Thatcher years, and made worse by New Labor, which was even more "connected" to the imperialist enterprise), and a few local news and public affairs programs, or independent ones like Alternative Radio from Boulder, CO (KGNU, which I  participated in starting, but didn't stay long enough in Boulder to see it completed).  Where they don't do well is in broadcasting any Pacifica content, which they have tried from time to time (the Pacific News Service). There are hundreds of people who yearly ask them to carry Democracy Now!, and Mr. Marcus and Sally Mauk, the News Director, unilaterally refuse to do. Why is this permitted - for them to veto the most valuable program they could possibly carry?

Locally controlled and programmed public radio is like a public library or history museum.  It's at the very center of a community's cultural and intellectual life.  And I've spent the  last 30 years trying to get local people to understand and support that.  Those who did were immediately captured by the charm of KUFM's programming, while ignoring  Missoula's monoply control over our local finances, programming, and "market share". 

Some of them were UM alums, and thus thought it was a matter of keeping the Bobcats (and KUSM TV, which originated there) out of the Great Falls market.  If we "went independent", and broke away from KUFM, they would lose money, as well as political influence.  That's what it's about, and why I haven't sent a dime to KUFM for more than 20 years.  

As  for the Bobcat-Grizzly rivalry, that has been resolved with MT-PBS studios in Missoula, and much closer cooperation between the two "official" stations.  However, MSU still has a campus volunteer station, and their main NPR station is KEMC from MSU-Billings.  (Originally, of course, EMC was not part of MSU, which is another big part of the problem of monopoly centralization of our intellectual and cultural lives and resources).  

Great Falls is the one city  in the country which needs a local, honest, truthful source of public information and analysis.  We're a world-power - something like the 5th largest nuclear arsenal in the world, and the most easily deliverable.  We can literally destroy 150 or more cities in less than an hour - anywhere in the world.  And there are still people here  - lots of them - who think that's a good idea!  See what I mean about crazy?  

We haven't had a local newspaper since the 1960's.  The Tribune continues to mock and ridicule the few remaining progressives and independent thinkers who are trying to save our local economy, dismantle the nuclear doomsday machines, and preserve the environment which sustains us all.  We need a local, full-time public radio station, financed by mill levies like the Library and County museums.  We can raise all the rest of the money through our own "Pledge week" which we started in 2000, but thanks to Dan Rice and Frank Clinch, was illegally shanghaied and diverted back to Missoula or somewhere.  

Now is the time to do it.  Don't send any money from the 594 zip codes to Missoula.  Just hold on to it, and maybe we can find a few Great Falls people who want to take back the station which the paranoid  Republican nut-jobs and Griz fans stole from us.  

The Ugly American, revisited

Why things keep getting worse


It often seems to me that the whole basis for our present education and cultural system is to PREVENT children (and others) from learning anything "controversial" which might be directed at or applied to "the powers that be."  This is the theory of totalitarianism, of one-party rule.  

"We know the truth, and we're going to make you believe it, too."  That is what they're  saying.  They're also saying "We're better than you" (more powerful, richer, etc), "so we get to tell you what to do, and make you do it if you refuse to "cooperate."  Certainly, this is the "theory"  of the modern public high school, libraries, museums, symphonies, and other parts of the supposedly highly-educated and sophisticated "cultural infrastructure."  

That's the theory, the principle, upon which our present system rests.  The Republicans might talk about Natural (God-given) Rights, the Constitution, the Rule of Law, and many other good things, but when you corner one and discuss it with her, you find that she doesn't understand those concepts at all, or at most, on an "operational" level.  (How can we use this concept, theory, etc., as a weapon against the Democrats, the Liberals, the Environmentalists, the Socialists, our workers, competitors, etc.?)

The Democrats used to be liberal, for civil rights, for protecting the environment, for curbing corporate power and excess military spending, for public education, public health, universal health care, etc., etc.  The prevailing Democrat Machine, today, has literally and figuratively abandoned every one of those positions!  It's unbelievable!  It's as though Royalists wiped out their own royal family and then went and found some foreign prince to be their king.  

Marxism has an explanation.  It's called "the dialectic."  The process by which things change, and the logical explanations how and why this happens.  It's perennial.  It's universal.  Therefore, it must be part of human "social genetics", which could also include actual cellular genetics, but not necessarily.  It's a "software vs hardware" issue.  

So, understanding what is happening, we can often second-guess the "leaders" who keep repeating the mistakes of the past.  But we can only do so if there is relative freedom to express and communicate what we know.  An "information-free society" is the same as one which is saturated with useless and counterproductive information to the exclusion (and disbelief) in any real truth or understanding.  

==============

I've just read a fascinating book, a best-selling novel (more than 6 million sold in the 1950's and early '60's) called "The Ugly American."  It was a sensation.  I remember it clearly, from the many book reports on it through my years of Junior High and High School.  I don't believe I completed it, myself, or maybe I couldn't use it because someone else in the class already had.  And the best of it is the last chapter, where these two working journalists (possibly with CIA connections, themselves - that was common, then) wrote about the defeat of the French and the moves by the US to take over and support the French Imperialist project.  Of course, we would have never fought in WWII if we'd known it was to maintain French colonial power in Indochina, and similar things.  India, Burma, and Pakistan explicitly said that they would help the British in WWII only with a firm promise of independence afterwards.  That happened, although the Old Guard monarchists who were still part of the Raj did a lot either to distort or prevent the governments from working.  It was the Partitioning that was disastrous, and we're still maintaining one in the Korean Peninsula, against all good judgement and historical perspective.  

The Ugly American even became an excellent movie starring Marlon Brando, which I've seen a couple of times in recent years.  The title character is a Republican businessman with a working-class wife (he is working-class, himself, but self-made worth $20 million in today's money) who take American values seriously, and help villagers with local materials and means to transform their subsistence economies into something compatible with health and cultural enrichment.  Their programs, which cost little or nothing, are successful while the $100 million "development" projects from the 1st world only lead to wars, ecological catastrophe, and enrichment of prevailing elites.  Almost certainly, Kennedy's Peace Corps was based on many of the same insights and experience.  

All this is clearly dramatized in the book, but is largely absent from the film.  [TUA was published in 1958, but written from experience in the 1954 Dien Bien Phu aftermath, as well as the whole "Asian situation".  The principle setting of the book is a neighboring fictional country which is in danger of collapse from the neighboring wars and revolutions.] The film (which I need to watch, again) seemed more intent on the personalities of the people involved (easier to dramatize than the policies, themselves).  And in a world like today's, where there literally are no "good guys" (and those who are portrayed as such are unspeakably ignorant and self-centered), we have no role models.  The best we have simply refuse to act outside the affective domain.  There is no theory; it's just "feel good and get along."  That's their highest virtue, which is more than most of the sociopaths who run things, now.  

Russell the Revolutionary

The following piece was written last summer.  I thought maybe I'd already published it as a blog or something, or included parts of it in another post, but I can't find it anywhere.  So, here it is.  

I didn't attend any of the Russell Auction events this year (not even the Native American shows, which I've usually visited in the past), but it looks as though nothing much has changed.  Artists who rent rooms and try to sell their works outside the auction format were reportedly disappointed,  while the main event auction at the Heritage Inn  was record-setting.  They still seem to be selling works out of the Museum, which is always tricky, and Tom Gilleon, a local artist I've met a time or two, had a work that sold for $225,000 - a record, they say, for a local, living artist in these auctions.  

What I did write about the Russell when I still had the Tribune blog was similar to this essay, so you may have already heard something like this from me.  The local "Charlie Russell community" is as diverse and often at odds with each other as any other group of independent thinkers, each with his or her own connections to the Russell legacy.  But I think we have turned the corner in finally doing what this essay proposes:  that we take back the Russell and his work from the boosters and promoters (and profiteers) whom Russell, himself, despised.  

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Russell the Revolutionary
7-11-12

Charles Bent Russell.  Remember that guy?  His mother was a Bent, his great-uncle killed at Taos in the territorial transition following the Mexican War.  The Bent's were as important to the development of the Southwest as, say, Pierre Chouteau or Manual Lisa were to the Upper Missouri.  And Fort Benton and the American Fur Company were basically just the "Northern Branch" of the same enterprise based in St. Louis.  (Thomas Hart Benton was the first and greatest "Senator From Missouri," and a bloody imperialist to the core - John Charles Fremont was his son-in-law, and together, they are credited with securing the conquest of California, among other things).

So, the local "boosters" of economic development, whom Russell vociferously opposed, were none other than Russell, himself, his family and associates.  He was at the center of what future sustainability historians might see as a "revolutionary cell" - bent (no pun intended) on overthrowing the natural, sustainable, long-term regime - that of the Plains Indians. 

But Charlie rebelled and recanted (his family had owned slaves pre-Civil War).  Russell is the guy who really "turned Indian."  Once he saw the process with his own eyes, he couldn't help but join the Resistance, and defend Native peoples with all his abilities and resources.  And that is why the local Great Falls business community has always hated him, and tried to suppress or otherwise get rid of his work.  It's worth a lot in oil money, so that's where most of it has gone - to the Oil Barons and the the museums they established.  The proverbial "supply and demand."  

Some of us have been diligently following this process, and attempting to alter it whenever the opportunity arises.  Since I practically grew up playing around Russell's home and studio, and the beginnings of the Museum which now exists, I claim some right to have an opinion on these issues.  Unfortunately, that's just about all that I can do.  And few, if any, listen.  There aren't a lot of people who share a love for the work of CM Russell who also have an understanding of the history and politics behind his work - especially that pertaining to Native Americans and their plight and struggle.  

For many, he has simply become a brand name - a "profit center" for our local community so that even something as simple and important as the Russell Auction cannot withstand the pressures of dealers, local convention and tourist businesses, and the demands of political expediency in managing the affairs of the City of Great Falls.  Randy Gray, a former Mayor, was a long-time chairman of the Russell Museum board.  And many other prominent local people served on it - few with any distinction or credit to themselves.  Replacing these people with a "National Board" (which does include a few wealthier Montanans - basically, you have to buy your way on to it) has been disastrous - even while the bricks and mortar (and debts) pile up.  

Several important works from the collection have already been sold, as well as the works of other Western artists closely associated with the Russell Tradition.  Imagine Russell as one of the 5 best-known French Impressionists.  That was approximately his stature among the Western American painters and sculptors (and writers, film-makers, etc.), and it still is.  His work is our greatest treasure, and using and abusing it as has been done in recent years (clearly marked by the firing of Elizabeth Dear and dispersing the archives she assembled in preparing the Catalogue Raisonne) is simply another sign of the decline and impending destruction of our Satanic nuclear garrison town, and the legal-political machines which control everything here.

What is a "legislator?"

More about problems with legislators and legislation

This might be considered an earlier and more detailed version of my post of a few day ago.  This one dates from the last Session, January 5, 2011.  It also elaborates on what we need to do to fix the education system (NOT "privatization", but more like "re-publicazation"  - what we have, now, is anything but a public system, as anyone knows who has suffered under it and its absurd rules and policies).  

What, exactly, is a "legislator?"  

In Montana, it's someone who has been elected to represent a Senate or House "District" in the Montana Legislature.  


What does this require or imply?  The short answer is "virtually nothing."  And with term limits, even the "on the job training" which used to allow the "successful" ones to keep running and stay in office no longer applies.  I was heartened to see that a few hours of the opening sessions of the 2011 Legislature were devoted to briefings by legal scholars.  At least, they recognized the problem.  

Basically, these "legislators" could just as easily have been picked at random, or according to some sort of popularity contest determined by how many people they know, or how much money they have to buy psychologically manipulative TV ads or slick brochures - in other words, how good they are as liars and manipulators of public opinion.  

There are no qualifications whatsoever in terms of their understanding or experience in government, the law, or any particular area of public policy expertise like the environment, infrastructure planning and maintenance, public education, law enforcement/prisons, etc.  And practically speaking, the only skills that count are fund-raising and maintaining an efficient media (propaganda and "public relations") machine.  

Legislators are not required to have a college degree, or even a high school diploma.  They don't have to believe in God, economics, engineering, environmental science, or any other sort of higher learning.  Nor do they have to be "ethical" in any meaningful sense.  All they have to do is to obey the "laws" which they themselves or their predecessors have already passed - which are very often contradictory or simply absurd.  

And most importantly, they don't even have to know what government is, or believe in any sort of principles underlying a free society, a Republic, a Democracy, or anything of the kind.  In many state legislatures, they do have to swear or affirm their support for the existing Constitution of the United States as well as their State Constitution.  It is clear that in Montana, many people have been elected who don't support or understand either one.  But this is derivative from the fact that those who vote for them needn't do so, either.  

Indeed, one need not be literate, well-informed, a property owner, gainfully employed, or possess any other qualities which would be necessary, say, to get a driver's license, automobile or health insurance, or secure a loan from a bank.  Yet, in Montana, a homeless person may be restricted from voting even if he has a PhD or some other superior demonstration of intelligence and respectability.  (It isn't clear that a homeless person would be barred from running for the Legislature, since one needn't live in the District being represented, but one might have to prove citizenship and a period of residency in the state).  But being born in a different country may make one's very presence here "illegal" - regardless of any other qualifications or interest in the future of Montana and the USA.

What, then, should be the sort of preparation which a real "legislator" or "congressperson" needs to have?  

I am not one to admire or defend the legal profession as it presently exists - much less the "criminal justice system" (now recognized as being little more than corporate slavery).  But the traditional preparation for the bar is certainly much of what a real legislator should have mastered.  

Law schools, of course, are a fairly recent invention, although the philosophy of law ("jurisprudence") has been an academic study throughout history.  Practicing lawyers, after a standard "liberal arts" education, were basically apprenticed, and many, like Abraham Lincoln, had no college or university education whatsoever.  They merely "read law" while working for a practicing lawyer or judge, and after years of such study, passed the bar exam.  Until fairly recently, one didn't need to go to law school in order to take the bar exam.  Like so many other fields, the major universities changed this to increase their own attendance and revenues.  

Merely being a great lawyer, teacher, accountant, physician, etc. is not enough to get a license to practice.  One must have the degree and "credits" from an accredited college or university.  Is it any wonder, then, that the professional class has become synonymous with self-regulating state monopolies?  

This is totalitarianism of the worst kind, because it deprives us of our basic rights to take responsibility for our own lives, and those of our families and communities.  If one doesn't have the right to learn, to heal, to produce one's own food and medicines, and trade the products of one's labor with others, how can we possibly be considered "free", or living in a "free society?"    

But getting back to what sort of preparation should be required of a Legislator, we can point to the "Greats" curriculum at Oxford centered on the study of the history of ideas - principally philosophy, politics, and economics.  One begins with a knowledge of Latin and Greek, or at least a thorough study of the classics in translation.  Nowadays, one might substitute one Asian language (Mandarin or Japanese, Hindu or Arabic) and one Romance language (French or Spanish) for the study of Greek and Latin.  But a knowledge of other languages (and cultures) is absolutely essential.

In most countries of the world, students complete their secondary education being able to fluently speak and understand at least two other languages besides their own.  There is no doubt in my mind that the decline of America's position in the larger world is due mainly to the fact that such requirements don't exist, here.  Indeed, such real education is actively discouraged in every field that promotes corporate interests and the economic/military power of the state.  

In "The Education of Henry Adams," the son and grandson of two Presidents, claimed that all one really needed to learn in school was German, French, Spanish, and mathematics.  All the rest could better be learned from life experience, from independent or guided reading, and the development and self-realization consistent with an ethical, free society.  He might have added "learning how to learn" and "becoming a life-long learner" - but that is implicit in what he wrote in the rest of the book.  

Most "progressive" or "humanistic" education theories support or emphasize those things, too, as well as having mentors and exemplars from whom one can learn directly.  Rows of students listening to a teacher lecture and completing reading and writing assignments is virtually worthless as a learning experience, yet that is what we spend most of our money on in "public education" - at the same time starving libraries and educational broadcasting, museums, music education, and all sorts of community programs which don't require massive spending and a whole professional class to maintain them.  No wonder so many opt for home schooling, unschooling, community schooling, or whatever.  

The seven medieval "liberal arts" were somewhat different than what we think of, today, and included grammar, logic, rhetoric (epistemology - the theory of knowledge as presented in speech as well as written composition/exposition), and the four branches of mathematics - arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music.  With that foundation, one proceeded to study theology, ethics (moral science, including history and politics), medicine, and the natural sciences (primarily cosmology, biology, and other aspects of "natural philosophy.")

Paradoxically, the "liberal arts" today are considered irrelevant and useless - to be distinguished from "practical" studies like business, accounting, medicine, engineering, or scientific research, as well as the "fine arts".  Yet, it is obvious that the real Liberal Arts are the foundation for all other learning and practice.  In some respects, math and science are much better taught and understood than they were 50 or 100 years ago - even in American public schools, which rank near the bottom in achievement in these (and all other) subjects, relative to other "developed" prosperous nations. 

"Computer literacy" could go a long way towards enabling our society to function at a higher level.  However, simply being able to do e-mail or Facebook, or even spread sheets, CAD graphics, or other workplace skills seems to have little value in helping students (or future legislators) to think more clearly and critically.  

Artistic creativity is also much advanced in today's quality high schools, but such schools, instead of being the norm, are ever rarer and more exclusionary in their enrollments.  Most "education reform" now consists of closing down "failing schools", but few of those displaced can get into better ones.  In many cases, they literally have to "win the lottery."  Mostly, they are shunted into already overcrowded regular schools, thus forcing them to move from poor to totally failing.  

And the corporate "charter schools" have most of the same problems, with a much greater cost to the taxpayers and/or other sources of funding.  Still, they are so much superior to the failed state bureaucracy schools that virtually all public school students would attend an independent, self-governing charter school, magnet school, or other "reformed" institution if they had the means or were permitted to do so.  

In Montana, the public education system is very nearly as bad as it is in the inner cities.  Test scores (now a practically worthless measure of anything) are marginally better, but the numbers of students mastering calculus in the K-12 systems, for example, is still less than 10%.  I recently read that only 8% of college students are enrolled in a foreign language course - and this is NOT because they are already fluent in 2 foreign languages, as nearly all European, Japanese, Korean, or Russian students are.  

In America, we still hold on to the archaic "English system" of weights and measures, which even the English and Canadians no longer use.  This in itself costs us the equivalent of years of schooling in science, engineering, and international trade and other relations, since our high school and college graduates don't even think in the same terms as the rest of the world.  And we are arrogant and proud of the fact that other nations must adapt to our ignorance, rather than improving the quality of our own understanding!  

A knowledge of history is practically extinct in our secondary schools, and is certainly short-changed in the state colleges and universities - even for those who plan to teach history or broadfield social sciences.  Someone said that "All we learn from history is that we don't learn from history," and that is now taken to be a justification for ignoring our own history entirely - let alone that of other nations and peoples.  

The study of psychology is similarly reduced to psycho-babble, without history or context, and usually restricted to the ideas of "rehabilitation" or other counseling, rather than the development of the mind and spirit.  In my own field, economics, I have despaired of ever being able to communicate even the simplest concepts of value and cost, substitution, or the meaning of property, production, and trade.  I would venture to say that not one out of 10 Montana legislators understands the concept of "opportunity cost", or that more government spending and services requires more taxes on those most able to pay them.  It is as though the "laws" or principles of economics simply don't exist for government officials or legislators.  And even when they do, it's in the form of some sort of convoluted, special case idea like a Keynesian "stimulus" policy which is the equivalent of a shot of adrenalin (borrowed, costing 1/3 of one's annual income) for a body which is already in cardiac arrest.  

Instead of "future focus" and the 7th Generation Rule of Native Americans, our state and federal governments operate on the principle that "in the long run, we'll all be dead."  And even then, don't collect any taxes from the deceased.  Unlike the Federal government, Montana must have a "balanced budget," but there is no requirement that pension funds, Worker's Comp, or other future liabilities must be taken into account.  Meanwhile, the "conservative, free-market" (itself a contradiction in terms) advocates claim that any "surplus" must be "given back" to "those who earned it" - meaning, usually, millionaires or billionaire corporations who have stolen or expropriated their wealth at the expense of Nature, indigenous people, or the working poor - not to mention the less-wealthy and powerful taxpayers.  Military force, "the criminal justice system," and the printing press are the sources of all this "surplus" wealth - not the "discipline" and "entrepreneurial genius" of a few patent-holders and the highly-trained, privileged, and organized "professional class."

One needn't even go into foreign policy and our local global nuclear military strategies to realize that we are on a course which could easily end human civilization as we know it, at any time.  Yet, those are issues which you will never see discussed in the Montana legislature, except to lobby for more budget-busting "missions" of the same kind. 

Continuing to burn coal and other carbon-based fossil fuels, alone, will mean the end of the world as we have known it during the past 10,000 years.   Yet, our governor and a majority of the cabinet (all Democrats, at this point) see nothing wrong with accelerating this process.  Thus, it is especially important to recognize Superintendent Juneau and Attorney General Bullock for their votes against leasing more state land to the coal monopolies.  One wonders if they would have voted the same way if "their side" was in the majority.  Many such votes are only possible because they are meaningless - i.e., the other three Democrats were able to take the heat, while a Native American and an Attorney General really interested in justice obviously couldn't do so.  In any case, they are to be commended - especially Juneau, whose own budget would have been reduced, under existing funding formulas, by the failure to lease the School Trust lands for coal development.  

But to add insult to injury, the price at which these irreplaceable coal resources were leased, was only a small fraction of its market value.  One can only marvel at the other 3 Democrats on the Land Board - all of them supported by the Montana Conservation Voters and other environmental groups - and their flagrant disregard for the most basic environmental (and fiscal) responsibility.   And yet, "liberal, progressive" pundits claim to be totally mystified why those who voted Democrat in 2008 largely stayed home in the mid-term elections, and why the Republicans won by a landslide.