BLACKS

Citation preview

BLACKS Linh Dinh

I Postcards from the End of America

North Philly The corner of Broad and Erie is the Times Square of North Philly, but instead of flashy signs pushing Kodak, Samsung, Canon or Virgin Airlines, you have stark billboards urging you to “ELIMINATE YOUR DEBT” and “REBUILD YOUR CREDIT.” On utility poles, styrofoam signs promise, “JOBS! $400-$600 PER WEEK. CALL TODAY, START TOMORROW.” Is it legit? Ring to get sucked in, or you can stock your fridge, finally, by ditching your junk wheels for “$400,” according to one flyer, or “$250-$400,” per another. The biggest billboard touts “RAND SPEAR 1-800-90-LEGAL. He Eats Insurance Companies for BREAKFAST!” Are you aching all over, your skeleton permanently askew from that bus accident you weren’t even involved in? Are you emotionally spavined from having to dodge that abruptly swinging door? Now you know who to call!

With such signage, you know this is one broke neighborhood. The only high-rise is a long kaput National Bank of North Philadelphia. Its art deco grandeur gone to seeds, it’s now a 14-story eyesore, with all its windows broken or spray painted. On its sides are huge graffiti, FOREVER BONER. In fact, it’s known colloquially as the Forever Boner building. Here, there is no Planet Hollywood, Forever 21 or Disney Store, only a 99¢ DEAL outfit, with items for 59 and 79¢ also, though their sign also claims, “EVERYTHING 99¢ OR MORE.” With that logic, they can also flog a Lamborghini, though of course, in this hood, such whips only appear in rhymes. Hunched over on a beat up folding chair, a gypsy cabbie asks passersby, “Taxi? Taxi?” The Coke sign is broken. Crossing the street, a lanky man wears a “MY PRESIDENT IS BLACK” T-shirt, and here comes a middle-aged woman with consonants crowding her print blouse, SSSDDDMMMLLLRRRGGGFFF… She’s going into Black and Nobel, an urban literature purveyor with titles like Curse by Darkness, Ghetto Girl Games, If My Pussy Could Talk, Ride or Die Chick, Preacherman Blues (by Jihad) and Ghetto Ballerina by Philly’s own Tenia Jamilla. It’s about this valedictorian chick turned stripper, then whore. She has two main snuggly buddies, one loaded yet shady, one square. On the side, she also muff dives. Will our grasping heroine choose to be wined and dined until her facade fades, sags and crumbles, just like the Forever Boner edifice, or will she lock herself inside some dumbass room night after night to study for a degree at Howard University? While deciding, she continues to muff dive. Soon, though, one of her live dildoes will be wetted, for real, straight up. Buy book to find out more. “WE SHIP TO PRISON,” states Black and Nobel sign. Curious about Jamilla, I NSAed her twitter page to find this tagline, “Too Sexy and Too freaking smart…” I then clicked on a video to marvel at her bumptious assets seriously quaking to Wacka Flocka’s “We Don’t Fuck Wit Dat.” Jamilla sang along, “I don’t fuck with fake jewelry. I don’t fuck with fake clothes…” Atlanta verses are itee, I guess, but if you prefer more homegrown stuff, North Philly has plenty, as in Dark Lo’s “I fuck your girl once or twice, I don’t keep her / Naggin’ stalkin’ ass bitch, I don’t need her / Pussy has a funny smell,

I don’t eat her.” Or the currently jump suited AR-AB, “My aim nice when I’m tossin’ lead / Eyes closed I’d shoot a fly off your head.” And, “I’m hard as hell and I got hard for sale / Trash day I’m throwing bodies in the garbage pail.” Just before he got draped in prison garb, AR-AB briefly swept a playground and visited elementary school classrooms to prove that he was “more of an asset outside than inside.” Some people even signed a petition. It’s not clear who, since by AR-AB’s own admission, he “ain’t got no friends ‘cause they all been shot.” It’s hard to get kids to care about poetry, you know, so you’ve got to bring in a rhymer like AR-AB, someone they can relate to, being just down the block, and I don’t mean just cell. As a daddy of four, he also knows how to communicate with children. “Techs blast, chest splash, that’s a mess right there!” All of these images of butchery is making me damn hungry, dog, so let’s eat. Well, we can have cheap chicken at Church’s or Crown, or really, really cheap chicken at Checker’s, and if you want to go upscale, a platter of short ribs at Dwight’s, with two sides and corn bread, will set you back 17 bucks, but that’s way out of my range, so you’ll have to eat there alone, OK? We can also duck into the Clock Bar and get “COLOSSAL BUTTERFLY SHRIMPS. NOTHING LARGER,” but its concussive rap will knock out our few remaining brain cells. Drooling ketchup, we’ll collapse into an irreversible coma. Instead, let’s just drink ourselves full at the Broad Street Tavern. It’s a mellow trough for old heads, with more R&B than rap, and even has Steely Dan in the jukebox. I know, I know, it’s weird, but get over it. The music is rarely so loud, you can’t talk. Often, there’s no canned music at all, which is best. On the wall, a Miller Lite poster, “We Celebrate Black History Everyday! IT’S Miller TIME,” so to down pissy beer is to honor Frederick Douglass, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King? I discovered X my last year in high school, read all I could and wrote an essay, then composed another on him during my first year in college. Meet Chili Willie from North Philly. He comes here around 1:30PM each day. Sixty-nine-years-old, Chili served four

years in Korea, one in Vietnam, where he fought in Khe Sanh, then Hue, during the Tet Offensive, “I had buddies die in my arms.” Tour over, he missed his flight out of Saigon, “Cause I was getting some pussy.” In Korea, Chili fell in love with a Korean whore, “She was my woman. I gave her money for everything. Took care of her. We nearly got married.” “Why didn’t you?” “I told my sister about this, and she said, ‘You should marry your own kind’.” “And you listened to her? You were your own man, man! You should have done what you wanted to do.” It’s not exactly wise to wed a whore, though the Vietnamese have a saying, “Better to turn a whore into your wife, than your wife into a whore.” Chilli continued, “But I listened to my family. After I was sent to Vietnam, my girlfriend thought I had died. Someone told her I had died. But I saw her after that. She was pregnant, you know, with my child.” “You sure it was your kid?” “Yes.” “Did you ever see this kid?” “No. She got married to another GI, and moved to Hawaii.” “So your kid’s in Hawaii, with a stepfather?” “I think so.” In Vietnam, Chili made extra cash by funneling American cigarettes and liquor to the black market. He even sold gas and diesel pilfered

from the American base, “I was a businessman, a hustler. I’ve always known how to make money.” “But you could have gotten into some serious shit!” “But I didn’t.” Chili served 22 years, one month and 5 days altogether. With his pension set, he could relax a bit back in North Philly, where he lived with his ma. Until five years ago, he drained half a gallon of vodka a day, “and I could get two-dollar pussies up and down Erie Avenue.” “Two dollar pussies?! How much does it cost today?” “I don’t know, cause I ain’t buying no more.” I asked Chili if it was weird to land in Vietnam, “I mean, Vietnam is nothing like North Philly. Did you freak out when you first saw it. I was born and raised in Vietnam, and it still weirded me out when I returned there as an adult.” “No, it didn’t freak me out, because I had a job to do.” Chili did what he had to do, without flinching, at least not in this retelling. Now, America has a fully professional Army of sentient drones willing to be sent anywhere. In Africa, we have troops in 35 countries, and it’s a safe bet most of these guys and gals had never heard of Djibouti, Mauritania, Burkina Faso or Seychelles, etc., until they got their marching orders. In Cheyenne, I chatted with a woman who thought her daughter was stationed in North Korea. In Philly, I saw a war veteran panhandling with a sign stating he had been in “Sigon.” Another had served in the “Gulph War.” We sure don’t need to know where we are to start shooting. Behind the anti-terror smoke screen, we have created a nation of paranoiacs and psychos. As we kill and rape, many of us rap about raping and killing.

Leading me towards the back, Chili showed me a framed funeral program for one of his buddies, Ronald Joe French, with the deceased photographed in his Army dress uniform. Sunrise, 1942. Sunset, 2008. There is a long, uncredited poem, “Last Request,” with these lines: “Please don’t say that I gave up, / just say that I gave in. / Don’t say that I lost the battle, / for it was God’s war to lose or win. / Please don’t say how good I was, / but say I did my best. / Just say I tried to do what’s right, / to give the most I could, not less […] ” While it’s certainly no great literature, you can’t argue against its sweet, reverent and humble sentiments, for they reflect positively on the dead man’s family, and on all those who mourned him that day. What we hear and read reflect who we are. We are what we choose to hear and read. All over North Philly, you’ll see these “Sugar to Shit” stickers that steer you to the Reading Sucks website. Its masthead: “Reading SUCKS! until… A unique book—a vital tool for literacy—currently in production.” Say what?! No novice to reading, I can barely make out what I’ve just read, but subsequent sentences do clue me in: “Teenagers who HATE to read will love this book—and then actually want to read more books.” And, “Reading SUCKS! will have short concise stories written by Hip-Hop artists, athletes, prison inmates, soldiers, and HS students.” So this is an initiative to get teens to read, which is good, obviously, though it’s interesting that actual writers are considered unenticing, a turn off to reading. Tales told by rappers, jocks and criminals are preferred to stories by trained fiction writers, but part of the problem must be pinned on these same writers, for too many of them have spent their entire adult lives cloistered in universities. Since they barely associate with anyone unlike themselves, they hardly make sense outside the academy, and here I’m talking as much about emotional as literal sense. They can’t grasp what’s urgent to ordinary folks. To those who still think of American universities as hotbeds of radicalism, please note that former boss of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, is now President of the University of California system; Condolezza Rice was recently a Provost of Stanford; Patriot Act co-

author John Yoo teaches law at Berkeley; and even a well known “liberal” school like Bard is run by an Israel apologist, Leon Bostein. At many colleges, professors may be disproportionately Democrats, but that just shows the limits of American dissent. Protesting, they voted for Clinton then Obama, two war criminals, and to prove how really progressive they are, they’ll vote for the next Democratic mass murderer. Yes, the university will allow you to cross dress and rage against all the wrongs done to your subgroup, for this serves their divide-and-rule scheme, but don’t think too hard about what’s destroying us all. So the ones who more or less know spelling, grammar and syntax are out of touch, while the foot soldiers on the ground are stuck on “You know what I’m sayin’,” “Just sayin’” and “Aye.” Of course, the entire culture has been dumbed down to a frightening degree. According to the Journal of American Medical Association, 46% of American adults cannot comprehend the label on their prescription medicine, and The National Center for Education Statistics reports that half of our adults cannot read an 8th grade level book. Since most Americans no longer read much of anything beyond emails, texts and tweets, we should rejoice, I suppose, at each instance of book reading, though in a place like North Philly, they’re not soaking up Langston Hughes, Toni Morrison, Etheridge Knight or Sonia Sanchez, the last two Philly products, but Demettrea, Ca$h, Jazmyne or homeboy Brian Harrison, author of the novel Sugar to Shit (not to be confused with the website, though everything has gone from high fructose corn syrup to high fructose corn syrup). Here’s how Harrison defines himself, “Having an inner-city background and a suburban education, he combines these two forces and erupts in shear, flawless, diamondlike quality classics. While in the lowest moments of his life, surrounded by disaster and heartache, Brian Harrison narrowly finds his escape and turns his experience into an explicit, mind-blowing novel tht has never been told like this before.” Jamilla thinks she’s “Too Sexy and Too freaking smart,” and Harrison considers his novel a “flawless, diamond-like quality classic.” After leaving Broad Street Tavern, I saw a man in his early 30’s wearing this

T-shirt, “I NEVER CEASE TO AMAZE MYSELF,” and he wasn’t being goofy, “It’s true, I amaze myself every day.” Seeing that I was interested in his shirt, he even told me where I could get one, for only $3. How fitting that in a crumbling society that still stridently trumpets itself as number one, you’ll run into so many insanely narcissistic citizens with no sense of their shortcomings, though of course life will sucker punch you, good, even maim you thoroughly, until you learn what’s what, and in a moment of silence, alone, you can also reflect on all the humbling, even terrifying, clues to your smallness. Too many of us, though, would rather shoo away lurking insights with endless noise, alcohol or drugs. Numb, we rely on the pounding beat as our pacemaker. Sorry, dude, to sound like some preacherman dropping Ecclesiastes. I best shut my grill. If you want religion, though, there’s the Universal Church just a block from here. Sometimes they have, ah, Holy Oil from Israel and shit, and if you’ve been hexed by witchcraft, the evil eye, envy or just plain bad luck, they can also fix you up and shit. The first time I came to North Philly, I visited Etheridge Knight. I brought a yellow tin of jasmine tea. He fed me pork chops. This was in 1984, when I was dumber than dirt, naturally, though I had somehow managed to be featured with Knight in a poetry reading. This was at the Bacchanal, now long dead. Underaged, I had shown up on Mondays for their open readings. Speaking English not even a decade, I was presumptuous enough to think of myself an American poet, but then many young people see stardom in their future. They won’t just be good, but the best. An Oakland middle school teacher chuckled, “All of my kids think they’ll be stars,” and she taught 151 of them. “A star at what?” “They don’t know, but they’ll be stars!” As Mike Tyson observed, “They all suck, but they all think they’re superstars!” (That’s not an exact quotation, by the way, since I’ve

long lost that Ring Magazine.) So all these young’uns start out with visions of themselves as a future champ, CEO, kingpin or kick ass artist, but these hallucinations are quickly revised downward, until they find themselves pondering their spare change for the longest time, fidgeting, frowning and taking deep breaths, before deciding, finally, to buy that day-old donut. In 1984, I still thought that the right combination of words could wake up and transport everyone, bank tellers, bus drivers, butchers, and I was loco enough to think I had been chosen for the job. In any case, I had written so few poems by then, I could memorize them all. With my eyes closed, I’d recite without paper, clutching a beer bottle. The applause pumped up my confidence, and after a few weeks of this schtick, the organizer had me read with Knight. That night, as I was drinking a Rolling Rock at the bar, Etheridge ambled over. “You ready?” “Yeah.” “Are you a poet?” Annoyed, I stared at the man, “I’m reading with you and I’m not a poet?” “Just answer me. Are you a poet?” “Of course I’m a poet!” “OK, so let’s go read then!” That was the old fox’s way to get me riled up, and it worked. Later, Etheridge would jokingly call me “professor,” for my jejune seriousness, I suppose. I have never earned a college degree, and neither did Etheridge until 1990, the year before he died. Knowing Etheridge was very sick, I phoned him in Indiana. “Goodbye, Etheridge.”

“Goodbye, professor.” And goodbye, North Philly, at least for now, and let’s end with Etheridge’s words: My life, the quality of which From the moment My father grunted and comed Until now As the sounds of my words Bruise your ears IS And can be felt In the one word: DESPERATION But you have to feel for it.

Trenton I had been in Trenton, I dunno, maybe two hundred times before I decided to know it a little. For years, I would stop there on the way to NYC from Philly, or vice versa, but I was never compelled to wander from the Trenton Transit Center. This lack of curiosity is inexcusable, for “there is no place that isn’t worth visiting at least once,” as Evelyn Waugh wrote somewhere, and which I’d amend to “a bunch of times,” for each subsequent encounter can only deepen one’s understanding, for people are always infinitely fascinating, no matter where they may dwell, and how they cope with their environment cannot be but instructive. Shoot, man, even Northern Virginia is worth visiting more than once, I’d concede, though that would severely test any sensate being’s taste, hope, faith in humanity, tolerance, self-respect and sense of humor.

Having owned a car for less than two years in my life, and I’m two month-shy of 50, I’ve always been a walker, but I never really developed a passion for aimless walking until I lived in Italy in 20032004. Europe is a compact continent with an extensive rail system, so any of its city, town or village can be reached by train, and from the station, you’re free to wander as much as you want, without fear of missing your last train back, for there’s always one coming, it seems. The towns there are also much more accommodating towards walkers, and even the countryside is walkable, with public paths through fields and orchards. Then in 2005, I had the luck to be in East Anglia for nearly a year, thanks to a T.K. Wong Fellowship, so I was able to meander through many of the villages mentioned in W.G. Sebald’s dirge like masterpiece, The Rings of Saturn, which begins, “In August 1992, when the dog days were drawing to an end, I set off to walk the county of Suffolk, in the hope of dispelling the emptiness that takes hold of me whenever I have completed a long stint of work.” All the places described by Sebald had seen much better days, with some, Great Yarmouth, for example, considered laughable, when noticed at all. Sebald’s home city, Norwich, had also become the butt of jokes although it had been England’s second greatest city, but such is life, for everything will become (bad) jokes in due time, if not obliterated completely from this unfunny earth. Everything will become New Jersey, in short, if not, horror of horrors, Trenton, friggin’ New Jersey. OK, OK, so listen up, y’all, I was on State Street, just minding my own business, you know, slow sipping a Colt-45 on the steps of the Trenton Saving Funds Society, founded in 1901 and deader than your sex life, when this dude hollered, “You’re from Southeast Asia?” “Yeah. What?” “Ever heard of Angkor Wat?” “Yeah, that’s in Southeast Asia.”

“Ever heard of Nagasaki?” “Yeah,” I grinned, “but that’s not in Southeast Asia. That’s in Japan, man. That’s where they dropped the second atomic bomb!” Ignoring my irrelevant information, this man, about 30, continued to quiz and educate me, “Do you know where the word nigger comes from?” “Negro? As in a mispronunciation of negro?” “No, man. Negro comes from naga, and naga is a sacred snake. If you’re a Southeast Asian, you must know how sacred the snake is, for you guys have turned the snake into a dragon, like Bruce Lee, enter the dragon! So the black race is sacred. We are the original and most powerful race, but the white man can’t stand this, so they have corrupted our name from na-ga to nig-ger. Are you following me?” “Yeah.” “The white man would have you believe black people are only from Africa, but that’s nonsense! We were everywhere. We built Angkor Wat and the Egyptian pyramids. To keep us down, the white man has rewritten our history. He wants the world to think we’re just savages but we’re the original man, the true man and the greatest man. The Buddha was a black man. You ever noticed his full lips and kinky hair? King Solomon was black, and Jesus, of course, was black. From us, everything has come. We’re not just black, we’re all colors! See those people right there? What do you see?” “I don’t know. Three people?” “What kind of people?” “Black people?”

“No, no, no! One is blue black, one is reddish, and one is kind of yellow, like you. You see, black people can be all colors, because all colors come from black, but black itself is not a color. You got that?” By this time, I had taken out pen and paper to jot down this copious lecture. Across the street was the handsome First Presbyterian Church. Built in the Greek Revival style, it hides what’s left of Colonel Johann Rall, commander of German mercenaries during the pivotal Battle of Trenton in 1776. George Washington, his conqueror, now stands atop a fluted column lording over this city. When the monument was unveiled in 1893, the New York Times deemed it “the greatest day in the history of New Jersey.” Satisfied at having an eager student, the dude presented me with his profile, to appear more melodramatic against the slanting sunlight, then continued, “The pyramids are also a lot older than what the white man says. They’re more than 150,000 years old, and so is Angkor Wat! Do you know that light bulbs were found inside the pyramids? And batteries too, but all these facts have to be suppressed by the white man, because the white man can never admit that the Naga race, the so-called nigger race, reached a higher level of civilization thousands of years ago, when the white man was still living in caves!” As he was talking, a passerby saluted him, “Peace! God!” So he asked me, “Did you hear that?” “What?” “What he said.” “Peace? God?” “Yes. Peace! God! He called me a God, because I am a God. Every black man is a God, and you, as a colored person is also a God, but the white man is a corruption. He is in fact the devil, you heard me, and his days are numbered. A black scientist created the white man

6,600 years ago, but it’s time for the black race to reassert his superiority. Look, look,” and he pointed to his arm, leg, leg, arm and head in turns, “what do you have?” “What do you mean?” “What does that spell? The first word of each!” “Allah?” “Yes, Allah!” “But what does it mean? It’s just a linguistic accident, man! If we were talking another language, you wouldn’t have Allah at all!” “But we are speaking English, and English is the universal language. This is no accident. The time for Allah has come, and it will happen here, in America.” Many will have recognized by now that this man was spouting from the Nation of Islam’s teachings, and much has already been written about the Black Muslims’ problematic views on race, so I will only add that any man who thinks of an entire race as evil in origin and purpose is undoubtedly a racist, so this black man lecturing me was clearly a racist, and I cringe whenever anyone insists that black people cannot be racist since blacks are not structurally in power. To condemn, despise or demonize anyone for the color of their skin alone is the very definition of racism, and this is a moral, individual failing that can befall anyone, of any color, and at any time too, I should add, from moment to moment. To deny blacks of this moral agency, to posit that they cannot lapse or sink into racism, or rise above it, is to deny their very humanity, so what would that make you but the ultimate racist? Done with my education, for now, my lecturer left me his name, Melchezidek, meaning “My Righteous King,” and his phone number, then he hopped on this beat up bike and rode away. One can’t help

but wonder how can a man with such a world view function in the larger society, populated as it is with so many devils? In Trenton, though, as in most of our cities and towns, he may not have too, since blacks and whites are still mostly segregated in a society billed as post-racial when it elected a president who’s only half demonic in genetics, though entirely evil in actions, it has turned out, with yet another bloodbath coming with the incipient assault on Syria. The government that harassed then murdered Martin Luther King now commemorates him, in the most superficial manner, each year. Flatulent speeches are given, but no sanctioned maven ever asks why he was gunned down, or points out that the syndicate that squashed King continues to kill, torture or lock up anyone who can seriously shine a light on its sinister working. Witness the recent murder of Michael Hastings, for example, or the humiliation and breaking down of Bradley Manning. In any case, Trenton never recovered from the rioting that followed King’s assassination, though it was already in decline, with the erosion of its industrial base, and white flight, occurring well before 1968. Note that nearby Levittown, a prototypical suburb built from scratch, was completed by 1958. With its compact layout, Trenton is very walkable, though one must watch out for bullets, knives and cars careening out of control after their drivers had been shot dead. With four more months to go, Trenton has already tied its all-time record of 31 murders for an entire year, and the homicide figure only indicates a portion of the bloodshed, of course. On August 15th, for example, a 24-year-old ex convict kicked and punched his girlfriend, stabbed her dog to death, then shot two cops, sending both to the hospital, with one still in critical condition as of this writing, 14 days later. The shooter was himself killed by police bullets, and that is not counted as a homicide. So practice extra caution when wandering through North or East Trenton, and don’t you even think that the South or West Ward is entirely free of lacerating or puncturing surprises. Oh shoot, am I shot?! In short, it’s wisest not to trek through Trenton, but what the hell, let’s just go, and so I was putzing around Clinton Avenue when it started to rain hard, so soaking wet, I decided to duck into La Guira.

Opening the door, I entered a tiny vestibule to espy an apparition behind bullet-proof plexiglass, so I asked, “Bar?” After my grim ghost nodded towards a second door, I entered a darkened purgatory, hitched myself onto a stool, then inquired, “What kind of beer do you have?” “Every kind.” “Tecate?” “No, sorry.” “Rolling Rock.” “No, sorry.” “Uh, Yuengling?” “Yes!” I was the only customer. On TV, a swooning hostess asked some toothsome chica, “¿Como le gustan los hombres?” Grinning, she chirped, “Muy románticos! Buenos trabajadores! Altos!” She was about to choose between two well-inked beefcakes, half naked, with “Leo” and “Tauro” signs dangling on their toned chests, but suddenly, there was kicking, punching and hair pulling, for we had switched to the Steve Wilkos Show, as the bartender didn’t want me to be flummoxed by Spanish. I found out he was Dominican and had been in the US all of five months. Though his English comprehension was bare bones, we did try to converse, and all was friendly and pleasant until some middle-aged guy arrived and got all weirded out at my camera. He was the bar owner. To calm down this excitable crank, I explained that I was visiting Trenton from Philly, and only took photos to share the countless virtues of his lovely establishment with the rest of the world, and I was having a great time until I encountered his hectoring, irritated mug, but since he was being so rude now, I would never return, so he barked, “Don’t come back!” I

didn’t appreciate this pissy mofo ruining my hopped up sense of well being and equilibrium, a glancing nirvana that had cost me a dear $8, including tips, so I called him an asshole before I left. It turns out, though, that Mr. Martin Rodriguez has ample reasons to be touchy, for his dismal bar has become a ground zero for mayhem and police misconduct. A look at the recent history of La Guira, then, becomes a window into Trenton itself. In February of 2012, cops were called to deal with an unruly customer, Darrel Griffin, whom they roughly arrested, along with a second suspect, Michele Roberts, for reasons unclear, though a surveillance camera does show a police woman grabbing Roberts’ hair, screaming at her and slamming her head against the wall, all after Roberts has already been handcuffed and not resisting. Roberts claims she has only gone there to drop off a dish of lasagna for a private party, but the cops thought she was filming them with her cell phone, so they went berserk. In any case, no charges were ever filed against Roberts or Griffin, though both are suing the Trenton police for excessive force used in their (illegal) arrests. Though not one of Jacob’s cursed creation, and hence not inherently and irreversibly evil, Griffin is hardly a placid Buddha, however, or a turn-the-other-cheek Jesus. Hell, he might not be any kind of God at all. In 2005, a 20-year-old Griffin was charged with shooting Omar Hightower in the head. With such a slug stuck in his brain, Hightower suffered seizures for years until he finally died in 2013. Charges against Griffin were dismissed, however, because the state could not gather enough evidence against him. Peace! God! In April of 2013, La Guira again made the news when a surveillance camera caught officers of the New Jersey State Police strip searching a man down to his brief, as other patrons looked on. Caught twice now by La Guira’s annoying cameras, the cops have decided the remedy is to go after Martinez himself, by visiting his business often and citing him for petty or imaginary violations. They’re trying to shut La Guira down in retaliation, Martinez has protested to the press, for it is certainly no nuisance spot in this half-boarded up neighborhood.

Well, it is a crappy bar, but within its concrete, asphalt, garbage and broken glass context, it is a heavenly oasis where Gods and Goddesses can drain Coor’s Lite, Bud, Ciroc and Grey Goose as they bump, grind, shake and twerk. (See, see, Mr. Martinez, I am talking up your blasé shit hole, so you should give me a shot of Jameson the next time I walk in!) Guira is a Dominican percussive instrument, by the way, and a nice chunk of Clinton Avenue, where La Guira is located, could have gone kaboom! this last April, when scavengers removed a stove from an abandoned home, thus releasing gas from broken pipes. It’s not clear why gas was still kept on there, but not much works the way it’s supposed to in Trenton. Indicted for corruption, its mayor, Tony Mack, has refused to step down, though his continued presence has blocked state funds to this strapped city. “Napoleon” or “The Little Guy,” as Mack is known, claims he has been entrapped by the FBI. As its mayor tries to avoid prison, Trenton goes on falling apart. Leaving La Guira, I walked for miles through desolation and neglect, but it wasn’t just that, for people still had to live here. Each day they had to walk past these empty, boarded up or overgrown homes. Some were trying to ward off the degradation and violence with positive messages. On Martin Luther King Boulevard, a home owner had hung up a pink banner with a white cross over a purple heart, “Love One Another. John 3:34.” Not far away, I saw another banner on the wire fence of a garage. With two painted daisies, and lettering in four colors, it pleaded, “Can’t we do something different for OUR FUTURE?” Presently I came upon Olden Avenue, with its many Polish businesses, still thriving after many decades. Employing my standard salutation, I asked a man, “Hey, where can you get a drink around here?” “Let me see. You can go to Stevie Teetz. It’s just down the street. It’s a strip bar!”

“Oh, man, I don’t need no extra! I just want a beer!” In fact, I didn’t even care for a beer, but one often talks just to talk, and in a strange neighborhood, sometimes one talks just to see how one is received. In any case, onward I marched, past Stevie Teetz, and finally out of Trenton altogether, into Ewing, where I saw an “ARMED FORCES CAREER CENTER” at a strip mall. A uniformed soldier was getting into his SUV, so I waited for him to drive away before taking out my camera. Post 9-11, soldiers are often found in public, so it’s no longer a surprise to find yourself in the International House of Pancakes, for example, next to a crowded table of soldiers, and they won’t be in dress uniforms but battle fatigues. On TV, soldiers are also often inserted into commercials, newscasts, political events or sporting contests. This is done to remind us that we’re in an endless war and, more importantly, to condition citizens into accepting the presence of soldiers in civilian settings. The relentless erosion of the Posse Comitatus Act is mostly done on a visual and psychological level, for now, but already one sees soldiers with live weapons where they have no rights to be, but then the Constitution is but a quaint myth in contemporary America. Hardly anyone cares about it, not the Obama apologists, and certainly not our mesmerized youths with their eyes glued to Miley Cyrus’ ass. Children reared on Hannah Montana can now follow their sexually deranged, hair-horned and tongue wagging idol into a psychotic adulthood. Peace! God! I took my photos in full view of the recruiting office’s plate glass windows, with who knows how many eyes behind them, so within seconds, a uniformed soldier appeared to say that that was not allowed, so I smiled, apologized then walked away. He also smiled. After I had gone about twenty yards, however, and was already past the back of this building, two more soldiers came running out, with one asking me to stop, which I did. When he asked me my name, I readily gave it to him, though I really didn’t have to, as he had no jurisdiction over anyone in this civilian setting. I knew I had done nothing illegal, as taking photos in public is never against the law, though it may sometimes be rude. A second soldier then demanded I deleted my photos of the recruiting office, which I did, as he watched. (I knew I could still retrieve these images later, as long as I

didn’t shoot over them.) By this time, a third, older soldier had appeared, so four well-trained, gung-ho combatants had so far been dispatched to handle one dumbass, middle-aged retard with his beat up, often repaired camera with a dusty lens and missing eye piece. If they could get so excited over a harmless American at some stupid Jersey strip mall, imagine their possibly lethal overreaction to anything remotely suspicious in, say, Afghanistan or Iraq? There, even a munchkin raising a lollipop to his mouth might make one of our brave heroes jump, holler and discharge. Faced with this farcical situation, I laughed, shook my head and told the soldiers, “This is ridiculous. You will go to bed tonight thinking how absurd this is.” That’s when they gave me the predictable line about the heightened alert needed against the threat of terrorism, but I said a terrorist would not need to take a photo of their office, especially with a huge camera and standing in full view of their plate glass windows. As I’ve pointed out before, you can bomb a place just fine without snapping photos of it beforehand, but if you must scope out a public target, you can just stroll by and look at it, or you can go on Google Maps and get all the information you need about its exterior. Back and forth we went, with a soldier telling me that “it is illegal to take photos of a federal building,” which is not correct, or all those thousands of tourists snapping photos daily of the Capitol, White House and countless other buildings should be arrested immediately. One of the grunts wanted to walk back in, but the other was becoming quite heated, maybe because I had said, “You guys are being brainwashed into becoming so paranoid. Don’t you see how ridiculous this is?” When the pissed one snapped, “I’m defending our country,” I responded, “You’re not defending anything! You’ve been standing out here harassing me!” “Call the cops,” he said to his more composed partner. “Call the cops for what?!” I smirked. “What am I doing that’s illegal?”

To intimidate me, the other guy did pretend to use his cell phone, but he ended up not calling anyone, and they finally walked back inside. If this was Iraq, Afghanistan or, hell, Southeast Asia a generation ago, a smart mouth like me might be laid to rest in several chunks, then pissed on, but since this was only New Jersey in 2013, I have lived to relate this tiresome tale. Soon enough, though, these jumpy fellows will be well armed and blazing within your earshot, right here, in the Homeland. The War on Terror has been incoherent and nonsensical from the beginning. On the pretext of going after Bin Laden, a known CIA asset, the US invaded Afghanistan, then it attacked Saddam Hussein, whom it had propped up for decades, and now Washington is openly supporting terrorists in its war against Syria. On the home front, every terror plot going back to 9-11 has either been abetted by Washington, at the very least, if not entirely schemed by it. In Portland and Cherry Hill, such plots were used to entrap innocents, while in Boston, it was to frame its own assets while terrorizing the entire country, all for propaganda purposes. In short, the US can’t be fighting terror when it is the world’s most prolific and relentless generator of terror. Without terror, America would be out of business, literally. As the US is about to rachet up considerably the terror it has been unleashing on Syria, all Americans should feel sick to their stomachs, but most of us will simply sit back and watch, in boredom or great excitement, and when tired of this extra bloody entertainment, we’ll yawn and switch back to our regular programming.

Chester Traveling by train to Philadelphia, going North, you will pass by Chester, PA, a city that has been in decline for more than half a century. Founded in 1682, the same year as Philadelphia, Chester was a major manufacturer of US Navy ships from the Civil War until World War II. It also made ammunitions and automobile parts. Despite its relative small size, with a peak population of 66,039 in 1950, Chester was an industrial powerhouse. In 1926, Mrs. Marin Garvey won a $160 washing machine for coming up with an enduring slogan for her city, “What Chester Makes Makes Chester.” This was fashioned into a huge electric sign that impressed countless rail passengers until 1973, when it was dismantled. Who can forget the sight of Mr. D’ancona taking down the S, T, E and R? Many have sobbed to this day. Though Chester no longer produces anything, save babies and premature corpses, the same slogan adorns bright blue banners in its mostly derelict downtown. Entire buildings are abandoned and falling apart, its windows boarded up with graying plywood or left hollow. Others have first floors occupied by gasping businesses offering cheap clothes, wigs, way too expensive sneakers or Obama posters and T-shirts. “WE WON!” “HOPE WON!” “YES WE DID!” On sidewalks, black marketeers offer incense, body oils, bead necklaces, underwear and sox. The Cambridge Restaurant has been put out of its misery, thank you, Lord, for I sure won’t miss their home fries, but Italian Brothers is still hanging on. They do make decent hoagies. It is claimed that Chester’s Catherine DiCostanza made the world’s very first in 1925, to feed a starving gambler ambling over from Palermo’s Bar down Third Street. Lots of Italians back in the day, as well as Irish, Poles, Jews and Ukrainians. With Chester’s industries gone, they have mostly scattered. Recently, though, I walked by a downtown store front and

saw all white people inside, a truly rare sight in contemporary Chester. It turned out to be an art opening, with tentative or frustrated watercolors and oils of a snowy pine tree, a pensive cat, a covered bridge or Cubistic jazz musicians… On pedestals, lumpy ceramics. A shy, charcoal nude lounged on a smudgy, charcoal sofa. A man waved at me to come in, so I did, “Hey, what a surprise to see an art opening! Is everybody here from Chester?” “Not all of us, but we live nearby.” A woman appeared, “Did you sign our guess book? Come, come, sign our guess book.” As I printed my first name, though, she said, “We do have a suggested five dollar donation.” I have attended many art openings, from Soho to art school, to suburban old ladies’ watercolor society, but I have never encountered an admission fee, and five bucks also mean two Rolling Rocks at the Gold Room, one block over. Seeing me cringing, the lady added, “It’s for the wine and cheese.” “Forget it, forget it,” I crossed my name out, and walked out to her “No! No!” At many art openings, you do see hungry art students, an odd bag lady or a clearly homeless guy stuffing their faces with cheddar and crackers while draining Yellow Tail Shiraz or Duck Pond Chardonnay, so the five buck fee may be a measure to prevent undesirables from crashing this schlock fest. What made that art bad wasn’t so much execution but orientation. Rootless, it was indifferent to its surroundings, that is, it didn’t pay attention to Chester, didn’t care at all for it. No art is worthless if it reflects in any way its place of origin, so no painting, photo, poem or short story about Chester can be bad if it reveals any aspect of this place, but to do this, one must first pay close attention. Folk art is never without charm and interest, but much of cosmopolitan art is mediocre since it is removed, in time and distance, from its original

moment of inspiration. This cosmopolitan art may be partly salvaged by its backwoods dilution, distortion or bastardization, however, but the pleasure is likely mild, the humor unintentional. Seeing a show of Canadian Impressionist paintings in Ottawa, I remember thinking, Why? And would you care for Thai Suprematism, Ugandan Constructivism or Fijian Neo Geo? With globalism unraveling, we can return to the local in each sphere of our lives, and that means a revival of regionalism in all the arts. We’ve been jerked about by the distant media long enough, teased and dictated by distant cultural centers. It’s time we observe and listen to what’s right in front of us. It was a Saturday evening, but Chester’s main drag, Avenue of the States, was mostly empty. Even fifteen years ago, there would have been many shoppers, or loiterers, at least. Now, there was hardly a parked car to break in. On both sides of the street for an entire block, there was only one business open, Huddle Barbershop. On this scorching night, two box fans were kept on high. The owner/barber would work until 10PM, at least. In his window, a flyer with “Get To Know Your Candidates. ‘Let’s Get Back To Progress,’” with the faces of two smiling, suited yet unnamed individuals, one man, one woman, with the man much taller. Wanting to meet, or at least see some people, I decided to go to the Gold Room. On the way, I walked past the old Excelsior Saving Fund, with its sign reduced to “UND.” The Gold Room is large and cool, with three pool tables and five televisions. Once settled at the bar, one will notice two shelf altars featuring incense, the Vajaradhara and a beer-bellied Chinese God of Wealth, so is the owner Asian? No, just a black Buddhist. I came in as the daytime bartender was finishing her shift. Walking out, a middle-aged white guy hollered, “Your husband must be a wonderful man, because you are a wonderful lady!” She smiled, naturally. Minutes later, she said to some young guy, “Ah, you look wonderliscious today! That’s a new word. I’m gonna patent it!” Then she complimented some giggling and boobiliscious apparition, hovering at the far end of the bar, backlit by a Southern Comfort light from heaven or hell, “You’re so sexy. I can just hug

you!” A man in his late twenties then chimed in with a false note, I think, “I’d love to spend money on both of y’all.” This verbal orgy finally stopped with the new bartender, but she also gushed in her own way, with a low cut dress that flaunted a glittering, burning skull on her buttocks, and “MISFIT” in bold black on her back. What a pun, eh, with a skull as pelvic girdle, or dead head as live bottom, with the anus where mouth should be? “From my booty, death will rise,” she emitted wordlessly. “You may think you’re staring at my ass, but you’re just seeing your own cracked skull, sucka. I mean, sugar.” Thirty-years-old, Misfit was born in Chester, but left at 17 to work in a home for retarded people in Williamsport, in the idyllic Poconos. It didn’t pay very much, but it got her out of Chester. After nine years doing that, however, she took a $950 course to become an emergency medical technician, that is, an ambulance attendant, for which she was paid less than $2,000 a month, take home, then she was let go. She tried hard, but couldn’t land a similar job anywhere else, so she settled for this bartending gig. Misfit admitted that business was also down at the Gold Room, and no one she knew was doing well, “But we’re in a recovery nationally, right?” “No,” I said, “and it’s only going to get worse.” “You think so?” “Yes, I travel all over the country, and it’s the same shit all over, and everyone I talk to says they’re not doing well. Well, eight or nine out of ten, anyway. Almost no one is doing well.” “So what should we do?” “You just have to cover your own ass, that’s all.” I should have said, “You just have to cover your own skull, that’s all,” or better yet, “We just have to cover each other’s flaming skull, that’s

all.” As the only bar in downtown Chester, the Gold Room should survive for a while, so Misfit’s job is probably safe, but like many people these days, she must be willing to switch jobs at a moment’s notice, do something entirely different to survive. The word career has become nearly meaningless. We have all become career improvisers. At someone else’s mercy, we can fit in momentarily, but from their careful, cost-cutting calculation or sudden, inexplicable whim, we become misfits again, for that is what we are. We’re not misfits as fashion statement, but essentially. Try as we might, we cannot adjust ourselves dexterously enough to our rapidly shifting surroundings, of which we have no role in shaping. In Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” there’s a misfit who says, “I was a gospel singer for a while […] I been most everything. Been in the arm service, both land and sea, at home and abroad, been twict married, been an undertaker, been with the railroads, plowed Mother Earth, been in a tornado, seen a man burnt alive oncet.” He has also killed, robbed and been jailed, and though everything has happened to him, nothing matters, because nothing makes sense. Sounds familiar? You think you’re a housepainter? Wrong! A secretary? Wrong! A nurse? Wrong! A professor? Wrong! A pipe fitter? Wrong! A dock worker? Wrong! Though nothing adds up, one still has to eat daily, so one solution is to become a mass murderer, if only in an auxiliary capacity. At Concord and 7th, I saw a flyer in a torn plastic sleeve, stapled to a light pole: US MARINES • WE HAVE EDUCATION OPPORTUNITIES • NON COMBAT JOBS AVAILABLE • FULL TIME (ACTIVE DUTY) OR PART TIME (RESERVE PROGRAM) • FULL BENEFITS TO START/ FAMILY COVERAGE • DO THINGS THAT OTHERS ONLY DREAM ABOUT DOING BETTER YOUR FUTURE, CALL OR TEXT SERGEANT WILLIAMS

To kill or be killed is here presented as improving oneself and one’s family, as sheer survival, for in trading in one’s freedom, humanity and conscience, one will get adequate health care and nutrition, maybe even a home in a safe environment. To attain these basics, however, one must first become a berserker. Kill! Kill! Kill! In Harrisburg, I had encountered a National Guard poster: There are all kinds of moments you’ll experience where you serve the people of your community in the National Guard. If you’ve got it inside you, this is your time to act. The accompanying image showed soldiers standing outside a suburban home during some kind of rescue mission. This is very reassuring, for they are not threatened in any way, nor are they menacing anybody. They’re not kicking down some foreigner’s door and terrorizing his family, and most importantly, they’re not getting their nuts blown off seven or eight time zones away. As a National Guardsman, you’ll only be rescuing your neighbor’s siamese from some midget tree, this poster was implying, and you’ll be home in time to watch your dreadful Phillies. I wanted to get away from downtown Chester, drink in a neighborhood dive and hear, or overhear, what those folks have to say, so I decided to go to the Love People Lounge on Highland Avenue. I had no idea what that neighborhood was like, but I had seen this bar from the train, many times, and had always wanted to walk in because of its irresistible name. When I got there, though, I found out that it had been closed, with even its sign removed. Oh well, I thought, let’s find another place to drink, so I started walking. In many distressed cities, as in Detroit, Gary, East St. Louis or Camden, to walk into the unknown is to be a reconnaissance scout or a suicide, not so much a tourist, and Chester has a violent crime rate more than four times the national average, and it was sunny that day, meaning perfect for a mugging, but also ideal for a pleasant walk, and I was getting very thirsty for a Colt 45 or a Yuengling, so I

kept walking. In truth, it wasn’t half bad. I passed Give Me Suga, an inviting Caribbean joint serving jerk chicken and oxtail. I saw people sitting on their porches or steps, and two pudgy, middle aged men, one black, one white, sprawled on folding lawn chairs beneath a bouffant tree. Every so often I’d see a desperate sign offering a home for less than $20,000, cash, and presently I came to another house that looked abandoned, with no glass in its windows and its door boarded up, but there was a newish Direct TV dish attached to its wall. Is it possible that someone was watching a movie on demand, say, Titanic or The 40 Year Old Virgin, while lying on a bare mattress, with a half finished bag of Cheetos next to him? In winter, snow drifts into the gaping windows as he cheers our hapless Flyers. Since it is dark, and nobody’s outside, no one who’s up to any good anyway, he can comfortably piss from the second floor, his dick en plein air, as they say. With tall grass and weeds besieging, and no air conditioning or heat, this home is a rough-and-tumble, back to nature dwelling, a cabin in the woods, except no bears will attack you here, only men down to their last quarter or fix. There were no lit beer signs at the front, so Sporty’s West End Cocktail Lounge didn’t even appear open, but I could hear the hum of the air conditioning, so I opened the door and walked in. Sporty and his bartender seemed a bit startled to see me, but everything was cool as I sat down and ordered a bottle. It was just after 1PM, and I was the only customer. For the next two hours, the only other patrons only sneaked in to buy a six-pack or can to go. As she left, a woman in her late 40’s shouted to Sporty, “Make some money now!” “I’m with you on that!” Sporty then returned to his video game, with its thin, whistle like gun shots constantly discharging. Video blood splattered as he charged through his enemy, shedding corpses by the wayside. There was a pool table and five televisions, all left on, with the biggest one showing an episode of “Have Gun—Will Travel.” A sneaky Chinaman was caught reading other people’s mail, then later, some mustachioed crank snarled, “Who cares what any woman wants.” During a firefight, a bullet merely grazed a man’s elbow, causing him to rub it.

In most working class bars at this hour, you’d find old men, at least, and perhaps contractors who have finished their work early, but here, like I said, I was the only drinker. Dangling from the drop ceiling were stars, astroids and a round cornered piece of cardboard urging me to “CELEBRATE.” I noticed the young bartender had on a snug tank top, and a pair of black and white shorts, showing some sort of African design. There were signs all over the walls: FOUR THINGS YOU CAN NOT RECOVER 1- The stone after the throw…. 2- The word after it’s said…. 3- The occasion after it’s missed…. 4- The Time after it’s passed…. A BIG LATINO NITE Featuring A Ethnic Diversity For A Rollicking Good Time A ATLANTIC CITY BUS TRIP $25 NO LOITERING PERMITTED In This Establishment If You Don’t Have A Drink Or If You’re Not In Line To Play Pool. FEDERAL PRISON CONVICTED FELONS & DRUG DEALERS BEWARE 1 GUN = 5, 10, 15 YEARS OR MORE NO PAROLE OPERATION CEASE FIRE REPORT ILLEGAL GUNS 1-800-ATF-GUNS On the last was an illustration of a prison cell, with the silhouette of a man sitting on a cot, his head down. Across from him, an open toilet and toilet paper. A large handgun hovered outside the prison bars.

There was also a group portrait of movie gangsters, with Al Pacino’s Scarface in the middle, hoisting his badass M-16A1, then, high up on the wall, an image of Martin Luther King and Obama, their heads merging into one another, with “I HAVE A DREAM” on top, and “I AM THE DREAM” on the bottom. In almost every black bar, you’ll find images of Obama. At Scotty’s, near my South Philly apartment, there’s an Obama shrine complete with red tinsel, foil flags and a string of tiny lights resembling condomed pricks or aerodynamic milk bottles, all surrounding a sacred likeness of our Chief War Lord and Patron Saint of All Banksters. Hardly loquacious, Sporty finally grunted that the bar was empty because it was the end of the month, “Come back in a couple days, there’ll be people here.” Running out of beer money is hardly the poor’s biggest concern these days, for towards the 28th and 29th, the fridge may have long been empty, not to mention that pile of ignored bills, some still in their envelopes, unopened. Soon, the cable may be shut down, then gas, electricity and water, in that order. Chester is already half shut down. Martin Luther King spent three years in Chester, and graduated from Crozer Theological Seminary in 1951, and outside the Crozer Library, there’s a large bronze bust of King. On another visit to the Gold Room, I met a woman who said she was born on King’s birthday, “And that’s very special to my family, because King was such a special man, you know.” “I’d say he’s more important than any American in the last 50 years.” “I’m very glad you think so,” she smiled. I could feel myself getting a bit worked up, “Obama ain’t shit compared to King! King threatened them, and that’s why they had to kill him. King wanted to change this society. Obama doesn’t want to change shit!” I stared hard into her eyes. “If they’re propping up

Obama now, that can only mean Obama is serving them! He serves them!” “I agree with you,” she said, “I’ve always felt the same way. I’ve always known they had to kill him. Oh Lord, I think I’m going to cry. I’m going to cry!”

Wisconsin Before we start, I must admit that I didn’t set foot in Wisconsin this time, but only saw it from the train as I crossed it going West, then East. (I had been to Madison and Milwaukee before.) This, then, is really a train Postcard, but the long distance train is a community in itself. In fact, Americans seldom have such thorough conversations as when they’re trapped on a long distance train. If only more of us could be confined that way, we would relate to each other a whole lot better, but such a wish also conjures up citizens being packed into boxcars as they’re sent to hard labor, or much worse. How many Americans will cross this country without seeing any of it?

Ah, the ecology of the long distance train! If Lewis and Clark were alive, they would freak out over the outlandish fauna to be discovered on the Empire Builder! Where else will you find a woman trying to eat some very badly-made, meatless fried rice, only to give half of it to a stranger, “The plastic spoon is clean. I wiped it off real good with a paper napkin.” Since she couldn’t afford the $7.25 for chicken and rice at the Spokane station, she had asked for just rice, but then it tasted “like popcorn,” she discovered with a grimace. The other lady couldn’t afford anything at all, however. Hence, the leftover with a used spoon. Or take a young man from Missoula who was trying to hit on a woman by giving her a cup of instant noodles, “Yes, you can have it! I just ate one myself. It’s pretty good! Really, you can have it.” Tall and lanky, he wore a gray baseball cap backward, a Marines jacket and charcoal colored, thrift store trousers. Like his face, everything he had on was worn and faded. After spending $4.50 on those two cups of MSG-flavored ramen, he was left with just $13. Sitting in the lounge car, the woman of his fancy was with three friends, two of them male, and though they didn’t seem all that interested in his plight, the Missoula man kept sharing, “By the time I get to Fargo, hopefully it’ll be night, so I can sleep at the station. After that, I’ll find a shelter and stay there a week, maybe a month. It won’t be my first time in a shelter. A buddy was supposed to put me up, but after talking me into coming, he stopped answering the phone and even changed his friggin’ number, but I figure sooner or later I’ll run across him in Fargo. I’ll bitch slap him! I had a place in Missoula, but I gave that up, so he definitely has an asskicking coming for leaving me on the friggin’ street. I’ve spent all my money on this train ride, and I won’t go back to Missoula, because there’s nothing for me in Missoula. In Fargo, I’ll take any job I can get, dishwashing, janitorial… I can’t lift anything heavy because I had a car accident. In 2006, I had a seizure behind the wheel and cracked my skull, broke my back and a bunch of other bones.

“I have this bad habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, I guess. Funniest thing is, I got married in Lake Tahoe, California, then woke up the next morning on an Indian rez outside Minden, Nevada. How the hell did that happened?! My wife, this Indian woman, must have poisoned me. Twice, I’ve been on dialysis. I was down to 99 lbs., and I used to weight 200. I was 22, she was 46, and she died at 53. Suddenly, I was living on this Indian reservation. Yeah, I quit drinking when I woke up and married to that! “You’re lucky to have someplace to go after getting off this train. I thought I had a place! I’m all right, though, I have 13 bucks. I’m not worried. That’s enough for a pack of smoke and a meal, then I’ll check myself into a shelter.” Though train passengers are more affluent than bus riders, for sure, you’d be surprise by how many poor people you’ll find on Amtrak, for some towns have no air or bus services, while on some other routes, the fare differences between bus and rail are minor enough that one might as well take the much more comfortable and civil train. On the train, the top 20% or so go to the dining car for every meal, while the rest of us settle for the café lounge. Some skip eating and drinking altogether for their entire journey. Between Chicago and New York, I sat next to a friendly yet glum man who ingested nothing, not even a drop of water, for 21 hours, and near Clifton Forge, West Virginia, I overheard this dude boast that he had been starving for two days. He couldn’t bring himself to cough up $6.25 for a damn cheeseburger, he said, so he was boycotting it out of principle. Who can blame him? Give me the Dollar Menu or give me death! Going to your seat on a plane, you pass through the first class compartment, and there you can see, very starkly, the larger, couchlike seats with no shared armrests, more ample leg room and much better dressed people who have gotten on before you. They will also be the first ones to jump off. On a train, however, the dining car is like a mythical realm to the bad broth slurpers, with what’s

happening there only wafting downstream as improbable rumors crackling over the intercom: “Today’s seafood catch of the day is a mahi-mahi filet, served with two sides, at $23.75. The Amtrak signature steak is $25.75…” Yes, yes, I hear you, there are always rich and poor in any society that comes after hunting and gathering, but do mind that gap, eh! Since they know what it’s like to be ordered around, waitresses and bartenders tend to be the best tippers. Conversely, those who have only been waited on can be extremely demanding, if not rude, to the waitstaff. With their multiple requests, they will send a waitress scurrying back and forth to the kitchen, and they’ll nonchalantly ask that a menu item be tailored made. So fixated on getting their ways, some won’t relent even when they’re on a train. A woman from Sharon, Massachusetts complained to me about her dining car experience, “They only had one vegetarian dish, pasta with vegetables, so I ordered that, but I didn’t want the pasta, only the vegetables, but when I asked the waitress to withhold the pasta, she gave me all this attitude! She said they were already made, and I could pick out the vegetables myself, but I didn’t want to look at the pasta and be tempted to eat it! I’ve lost a lot of weight, you see, and I didn’t want that pasta in front of me. Everything I said drove this psycho waitress nuts! When I asked for skim milk instead of whole milk for my coffee, she just glared at me, and after I had told her I didn’t want a bun with my salad, she brought it out anyway! In fact, she brought out two! She was trying to get at me, you see.” When our train stopped in Milwaukee, I thought of Woodland Patterns, the best poetry bookstore in the entire country, and of Grace, who showed up there when I gave a reading in 2005. I had not held her since 1985. Giving me a tight hug, Grace said, “You haven’t changed,” then she stole one of the books I had brought for sale, I think. I can’t blame her. Like so many of us, Grace had wanted to be an artist. Erasing Grace and Milwaukee, the train chugged and whistled its way to Portage, and that’s where Kelly and his daughter got on.

With his body always tilting to the right, Kelly doesn’t walk, he staggers, and that’s how he entered the lounge car. Sitting across from me, Kelly had to strain to speak, and sometimes his eyes would shut, his head would droop forward and he’d nod off for ten seconds or more, “I was a sheet metal worker. My brother and I had a business. I didn’t have insurance for myself since I hardly ever climbed up that ladder. I was trying to save some money, you know…” “Kelly!” I had to grab his arm to wake the man up. “It’s my pain medicine. It puts me to sleep.” “You were saying you didn’t have insurance?” “Oh, yes, so I fell thirty feet! I’ve had operations on my right knee, upper right arm and back. I’m always in pain. On top of that, my wife is bipolar. I’m messed up in the body, she’s messed up in the head!” “So where are you going on this train?” “I’m taking my daughter on a trip. She’s 16. I want to clear her head…” “Kelly! You want to clear her head.” “Oh yes, I want to remove her from the bad influences. It’s impossible to raise a kid these days, because whatever you’re teaching them, it’s contradicted by the television and internet, so who do you think they’re going to listen to? My daughter was fine until she discovered boys a couple of years ago.” “So where are you going?” “We’re going to Portland, hang out for a couple of days, then rent a car and drive down to San Francisco.”

Though I could clearly see Kelly dozing off on Interstate 5, I only said, “Your daughter will love San Francisco! She hasn’t been there, right?” “She hasn’t been anywhere. My daughter has only visited Chicago and Milwaukee. I thought she would enjoy this trip more, but she’s been pretty blasé so far. She’s at her seat, texting. I thought I was sitting next to a ghost, and that’s why I came up to this lounge car.” “Maybe she’ll get into it more after a day or two.” “I can only hope. My daughter needs to see how large this world is. We live in a tiny town where everybody’s in everybody’s business. People know exactly how much money you have, and so the rich kids hang out with the rich kids. If you’re poor and you hang out with the rich kids, people would think you’re just sucking up to them.” Hit the road and you’re likely to learn a whole lot, but this can’t happen if you keep your eyes welded to that tablet. From Clifton to La Crosse, the train passed several sand mines, and we also saw idle boxcars loaded with sand. The fracking boom in nearby North Dakota and elsewhere has ramped up considerably sand mining in Wisconsin. Along with jobs and revenues, this mining has also generated silica dust that causes lung cancer and silicosis, and the miles long trains that rumble through cities and towns day and night disrupt traffic and sleep. Mining’s economic benefits must also be revised downward, since automation has trimmed the workforce, and mining’s boom and bust nature attracts transient, out of state workers who take much of their earnings elsewhere. Finally, since mining is always a tremendous act of violence against the landscape, thousands of acres of verdant Wisconsin are being turned into waste land just so this American joyride can zoom along for a tad longer. Like North Dakota, Wisconsin is also a casualty of fracking, but don’t tell this to Governor Scott Walker, for he’s so gung-ho about sand mining, he’s publicly thanked “God and the glaciers.” Just to stay chubby, we’re eating the country itself, not to mention a good chunk of this earth, but this self-devouring orgy is clearly

winding down, and as our world is tapped out, man will slide down the oily pole of modernity. With bombs and drones, then sticks and stones, everyone will fight everyone else for the remaining scraps. On the train, I met a man from Racine who gave me a preview of what’s coming. A Vietnam vet, George discussed what he had learnt about basic survival, but he only arrived at it via a preamble about a TV documentary, “If a story is passed from generation to generation, sometimes people put yeast in it, inflate it, sometimes it becomes astronomical, but PBS did such an excellent, extraordinary documentation, and that’s why I love PBS. I think every American should give them something, because they’d go from nature to biology, oceanography, photography… You name it and PBS covers it.” Before I engaged George, he had been sitting there for maybe an hour, just staring out the window. A thin, black man, he wore a sparse moustache and had on a “WISCONSIN” baseball cap. George started out speaking very softly, but gradually became more animated, “This show was about a Japanese who was living in a cave, and everybody thought, Oh man, this can’t be, but the Vietnamese did it! This one gentleman. Cookie… I can’t pronounce his name. Kekanazi? Cookienazi? It’s so tremendous, his great desire to survive, I could feel it! “So this man ate raw fish, he ate snails, anything that an American or average person would turn their stomach to or hold their nose and say, ‘I can’t eat that,’ but I’ve learnt in Vietnam, Don’t say what you can’t or won’t eat, because if you get hungry enough, and if you’re cut off from your supply, and your only means of survival is what God has put here on this earth, and you learn from the tribesmen and villagers of Southeast Asia or wherever… Man, you’ll find some of the best eating in the world! “I’ve eaten squirrel and water buffalo. I’ve eaten orangutan. We didn’t have to find them, they found us. We’d go into a sector that was really theirs, and they’d be hanging out in the trees and looking

at us. They weren’t scared. The baby orangutans would be inquisitive, curious, like children, and as we set up our base camp, they’d wait until we had our backs turned to snatch something and run off! They’d steal our food and weapons. They might take an M16, and as large as their fingers are, if you have the safety off, their finger would get caught in the M-16, and it would go off while they’re up in the trees! “We were invading their territory, so they had to be wondering, What are these strangers doing in my home? I’m not the invader, you are! You’re destroying my lifestyle, my habitat, my food supply, and I just want to know what’s going on down there? You have to look at it from an animalistic point of view.” To endure Vietnam, George had to adapt to its environment, and to survive in the jungle, he became a neo-primitive, but his quest for assimilation was so fierce, he even learnt to speak Vietnamese and Loatian, “People think the only dimension that exists is what we can see, but I’ve learnt from the Asians, from the Laotians, that’s not true. I speak Vietnamese and Laotian. Something comes natural. Vietnamese is part Chinese, French and Japanese combined. You may be Oriental, but if you go to Spain, you might recognize a word here and there, and you’d be like, How do I know that word? So I listened to the Vietnamese talk, and soon enough, I could also say la le, di di ma, di di ma wa, you know what I’m saying?” Actually, I had no idea what he had said, but not wanting to interrupt this man’s train of thought, I betrayed neither mirth nor bafflement. George, “If people keep telling you that you’re going to die, that we’re going to kill you, and if you give up your weapon, we’ll treat you nice. If they repeat that over and over, you’ll pick up the language too. “I went to Cambodia and Laos. Being there, what I found as the greatest experience, more than the war itself, is talking to the people, and instead of spending my time going to the village to get,

you know, I decided I want to get an education, and who’s better to tell you about a situation than the average American, the average Laotian? They told me stories that were absolutely unbelievable.” Finding an eager listener, George expounded at length on numerous topics, including sagging pants, “Every time I see them I always get into an argument or a fight, even at my age, because I can’t stand these ignoramuses. I’d say to them, ‘Remember you’re a man, and a black man, so pull your goddamn pants up! That’s right, I’m talking to you! We didn’t struggle all those years, didn’t go to demonstrations and marches so you can humiliate all of us like that!’ They’re acting like fools and animals, man, like penguins, because that’s not walking. They’re wobbling! If you’re black and you say anything bad about the black community, they’ll call you an Uncle Tom, but you have to get through to these knuckleheads. Take the knock out game. There ain’t nothing funny about that! Hitting old people from behind… You know that 62-year-old man they hit in Philadelphia? They’re lucky it was him and not me, because I’d have chased them down and pumped lead into their heads, then I’d call the police!” George on the sad shape of the American Indian, “They’re on everything but a horse.” He spoke of a Cherokee co-worker, “She escaped the rez at 15, ran off with a biker, a nut, and they’re still aren’t married 16 or 17 years later. ‘We’re still getting acquainted,’ she said. Acquainted! She can’t be older than 31 or 32, but she goes to the doctor more often than I do, She’s having another back surgery this summer. I said to her, ‘You have more pain, you go to more appointments than I do, and I’m 62. I’ve been hit with shrapnel, had a concussion, had my legs messed up from jumping out of airplanes, had my rib broken, but you’re in worse shape than me, and what have you done but ride around in a truck with your boyfriend? It just hurts me to see another suffering American, like you, not knowing what you’re entitled to, so you should reconnect with your tribe to get your share of whatever compensation the tribe is getting from the US government.’ She didn’t appreciate me telling her all this, and even got mad at me, so she said, ‘Mr. Shepherd, I’ve got work to do.’ I explained to her, ‘Not once have I made a pass at you.

Not once have I physically or verbally assaulted you, so why are you angry at me?’ And she is a beautiful woman, but as good as she looks now, she must have been a superstar as a teenager!” George knows something about getting his just compensation, for he had to fight the Department of Veterans Affairs for 10 years to be classified as a victim of Agent Orange. Before this, he was only getting “kibbles and bits” in disability payments. America’s neglect of her veterans is a disgrace, he said, “Why do we continue to spend money on murder and mayhem while our veterans sleep on the streets?” In spite of all this, George’s patriotism is unalloyed, “This is the greatest country on earth, and there’s nothing more beautiful than the sight of that flag flying. Each time I look at it, I just want to choke up. I knew in my heart I was born to be a soldier. I knew in my soul, I was born to be a warrior. I also knew that God did not put me here to be dormant or a fool. When I was a kid, I didn’t like cowboys and indians, I played with a Sherman tank. ” George signed up for an extra year of fighting in Vietnam, “I did it to save my brother, because I knew he wouldn’t be able to take it. There’s a law that said only one son from each family could be in Vietnam at a time. I had another reason, but it’s something civilians will never understand. It’s a burning desire called esprit de corps in the military, and in civilian life, it’s called compassion. It’s a love for those who have made the greatest of sacrifices so you, yourself, can go home. So you’re home and you’re walking around and you see the corner store, and you think of a restaurant you’d like to eat at, and everything is so nice, the trees, the vegetation, and you’re thankful that God has granted you another day on this earth, and somebody you know waves at you, ‘How you doing?’ and you go, ‘Hey man, what’s up!’ and everything should be just fine, but it isn’t, really, a pretty sight, because no one knows what you’ve gone through, and no one cares. How many beers can you have before you feel like killing yourself?”

George spoke of a Marine who served five tours, “On this fifth tour, he didn’t come back. I went to his funeral, and it was a closed coffin ceremony. You see, people think there must always be a body inside that coffin, but sometimes a coffin is just for show. Lots of time, there’s nothing to send back but some bone fragments, half a boot, bit of clothing, a bible or dog tag, so whatever you have, you put inside that coffin. If you have nothing, then it’s just an empty coffin that goes into the ground. “The captain was married to an Eskimo, and each time we came over, she always treated us like she had known us forever. He had such a beautiful, happy, peaceful family, and his kids had so much manners and were so humble. I’m their adopted godfather. I’d kill a brick for one of them kids.” George spoke lovingly of his late wife, whom he was married to for 33 years, and of a grandson who was shot for trying to help a stranger, “He saw this man step on a woman’s face, and he just had to do something, because that’s the kind of man he was. That’s how he was raised.” George’s son graduated from Clemson, and he himself went to three colleges and a vocational school. He’s also been jailed four times, however, “I didn’t hurt anybody. One of my convictions was for writing bad checks.” With his emphasis on family, education, discipline and personal improvement, George is typical of many working class Americans, especially of his generation, but his enthusiasm for the military is also all-too-common. Firmly believing in the dignity and honor of serving his country, he ignores its contradictions and abuses, many of which he has seen firsthand. After shooting the shit with and shooting Southeast Asian villagers, tribesmen and orangutans, George came home as a good American soldier, and the same Communists he risked his life fighting are about to buy weapons from American manufacturers, and why not, since America is an equal opportunity death merchant that has armed just about every country, militia or drug gang. Just call this toll-free number!

Though America’s ideology will gyrate, twerk or U-turn from moment to moment, her allegiance to war profiteering is unshakable, and as she destroys humanity, she speaks of civilization so constantly that the word itself has become suspect. “Democracy” and “freedom” she has long crapped on beyond recognition. From Portland to Williston, I sat behind a young man who spent all of his waking hours being mesmerized by a computer game. Candy, a gregarious woman with Sioux blood, asked him, “What are you playing?” Without looking up, he growled, “Civilization Builder.” “So what’s the point? Are you building up civilization from scratch?” “No.” “Are you defending what you already have?” “Sort of.” “Oh, I get it, you want to get a lot more!” “Yeah.” Now, before you laugh at this young man’s naked and childish admission to wanting more, remember that greed and lust for power are fairly universal traits that spread across the political spectrum, though only on the conservative end are they openly admitted to and even touted as virtues. The war instinct is also found in all surviving cultures, with tiny pockets of pacifism remaining thanks to the mercy or tolerance of their larger societies. Again, it is mostly those who self-indentify as conservatives or traditionalists who openly embrace war as not only necessary for the survival of society, but as a crucible for the development of each individual’s character. To them, a rejection of war is not just cowardly and unrealistic, but a refusal to, literally, become a man.

Exploiting these convictions, American war profiteers have few problems selling any war to the American public, and that’s why you see the generic “Support our Troops” stickers and signs everywhere, but what these unquestioning war supporters don’t realize is that, in this endless war that’s being waged by their masters, they’re also collateral damage and enemy. Fighting against themselves, they’ll wave the flag until they’re bombed back to the stone age, and perhaps by friendly fire even.

Jackson, Mississippi Riding the train from Chicago to New Orleans, I impulsively got off in Jackson, Mississippi. I had never thought about visiting Jackson, never even seen a photo of it, so I had no idea what I’d encounter. In the train’s lounge car, however, a boisterous game of dominoes, with much laughter and trash talking, already told me I was in the Deep South, and the towns glimpsed along the way, Tchula, Eden, Bentonia, spoke of a quietly dignified world that’s also besieged and crumbling.

Jackson is no town, however, but the state’s biggest city, and I couldn’t quite recall Johnny Cash’s smirking lyrics, “Well, go on down to Jackson, go ahead and wreck your health,” as I trudged around a sterile downtown of massive parking garages and stultifying office buildings, banks and hotels. Everything was grimly functional, at best, or else abandoned. There was no art or flirtation, no life. Perhaps this is a mistake, I thought, but quickly dismissed the lame conclusion, for wherever there are people, there’s beauty and instruction. Just keep walking! The disused Greyhound station had a meek sign announcing an architectural firm. Passing a forlorn men’s clothing store, I noticed a security guard imposingly perched on a stool right in the doorway. Maybe they should build him a pillbox. Having not eaten in 16 hours or so, I was fantasizing deeply about any three-piece, dark meat special with a biscuit thrown in, but I spotted no eatery, take out or bar. Yes, there was a sushi palace, but it was closed on Saturday, not that I was inclined to drag in my rank carcass. Having showered just twice in a week, I was not fit for any chichi sushi bullshit, and there was no way I’d turn my slim wallet inside out for a lacquered plate of Fukushima-irradiated or Corexitseasoned fish. For such a price, I better get a boatload. Snooping around, I paused to admire the rusting and boarded-up remains of the Sun-n-Sand Motel. Open in 1960, it served liquor even before Mississippi finally repealed its alcohol ban in 1965. At the capitol, one block away, politicians would vote no to imbibing, then amble here to booze. With its googie sign and technicolored poolside lounge chairs, it was built for a groovy, spacey future that never arrived. The racial tension of the 60’s culminated in the police killing of two black Jackson State students in 1970. White flight then commenced, suburban malls were built, so now, the empty and wrecked buildings are scattered throughout downtown, only to multiply as you stray North, but this decay is all-too-common across much of Mississippi, for many of its cities and towns are like quainter versions of post-industrial Detroit. This is the poorest state, after all, and the fattest, too, for obese and broke go chubbily hand-in-hand in this upside down nation. Mississippi also just misses on being the

least educated, so there goes the triple crown, Goddamn it! Under a lovely sun, though, things do rot more beautifully than with dirty snow. On a billboard with 32 women and a man, “Tyronne Lewis / Sheriff,” who’s actually depicted twice, small then huge, there’s this message, “Mother’s Like You Shape Our Future.” Of course, that apostrophe is redundant, but millions of Americans, even those majoring in English, routinely make that mistake these days, so it’s no indictment of Mississippi. Across this sinking nation, we’re just too glaze-eyed to give a fryin’ okra! In any case, Sheriff Lewis has much more to worry about than bad English, for he’s being charged with losing control of the Jackon prison. According to a grand jury report, the guards are terrified of their charge, and “the inmates seemed to be in control of the jail.” Look closely, my friend, and you’ll see that all the wheels are loose or already bouncing off this much abused and neglected vehicle. On a wall a few blocks away, there was Richard Wright next to one of his haikus: “There is where I am / Summer sunset loneliness / Purple meeting red” The writer’s punctuation has been stripped away, but whatever, it’s only a poem. On another wall were lurid portraits of “Shawn Earl” and “Pretty Boy,” presumably victims of violence. In death, angel wings have sprouted from their painted persons. In black neighborhoods across this country, these memorials are ubiquitous, a funky form of folk art. Sunrise, sunset, sunrise, sunset, and so the beat goes on. Bang! Bang! Bang! In 2013, Jackson attracted some rare national attention when it elected Chokwe Lumumba as its mayor (with 87% of the votes). A steadfast Black Nationalist, Lumumba had been Vice President of the Republic of New Africa, a secessionist entity that would include Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina. Until this could be birthed, Lumumba wanted to solidify black political power in Mississippi, a state that already had the highest number of black elected officials nationwide. Though western Mississippi was overwhelmingly black, blacks only made up 40% of its population, so a way to remedy this, according to Lumumba, was to encourage massive black migration into the state. In practice, this would also

mean a flood of whites fleeing it, for that’s how it has worked all across this country up until now, though on a smaller scale, as in a single street, neighborhood or city. Clearly, Lumumba saw blacks not as Americans but yet another nation that had been terrorized and raped by America, so the only solution was to be liberated from it. In 1998, Lumumba spoke in Washington DC, “We’re here in the governmental center of the citadel of imperialism, here amongst these buildings which have been built off the blood of our people […] and as we come into the city, we see the outskirts where the people live in poverty, where the buildings are crumbling and the people’s lives are crumbling and we come and see these monstrous buildings fortified by our blood, fortified from the wealth that they have stolen not only from colonies all over the world but from the African colony, the Puerto Rican colony, and the Native American colonies that exist right here inside America […] As we look back historically at this empire, we see how it has stretched out its tentacles all over the world, it has dug them deep into the veins of suffering people…” After only eight months as Mayor of Jackson, Chokwe Lumumba died in February 25th, 2014, and since the cause of death, heart failure, wasn’t immediately given, it fueled rampant speculation that he may have been offed by Uncle Sam. Now, cynics might dismiss Lumumba’s dream of a black homeland as a wish to create, say, another Liberia or Haiti, and they can also point to the tendency of successful blacks to move away from other blacks, a phenomenon that happens not just within national borders, but across them. A Republic of New Africa, then, will not only struggle to attract the best and brightest blacks, but may generate a steady stream of black refugees and immigrants of all levels. Though what Lumumba advocated was voluntary segregation, it was the forced kind, ironically, that yielded the last era of black selfsufficiency and relative prosperity. When black expertise and money could not be leeched from the community, there were black-owned businesses of absolutely every kind, not just those selling incense

sticks, body oils and wigs. Just as the “free market” is destroying the American working class, it eviscerated the black community. Unfettered capitalism kills from the bottom up, but so does every competitive, cut throat arrangement. If you’re outsprinted by a blink, you’re human garbage. Lumumba’s plan for black empowerment wasn’t merely demographic, however, but included structural components such as more citizen involvement in bank, business and land stewardship. He also aimed to turn around a gravely sick culture, and in this, at least, he’s not far from a conservative. In an interview with Final Call, Lumumba explained, “Rather than going to church, and yelling and screaming about it, complaining about it, rather than bad-mouthing the youth, my plan is to engage the youth […] In the course of talking about what to do, you can always talk about some things that you shouldn’t do. We’re going to have summer youth programs here, and in those summer youth programs they’re going to have a chance to do some manual labor, help pick up paper on the streets, but another three hours of their day is going to be spent learning skills […] This is going to do a great deal to help change the culture.” What’s most interesting to me about Lumumba’s aspiration, however, is that it’s mirrored by whites who long for white havens, although this wish might not be openly admitted to, especially if the wisher is a “liberal.” Mouthing racial (as well as class) platitudes, this self-absorbed master of self love recoils from all who differ from him to the slightest degree, although he’ll put on a jazz record, of course, and scarf Ethiopian once a year. To stroke his twitchy conscience, he’ll elect an Uncle Tom, twice even, and pretend that it ain’t so. Though the working poor of any color have daily, direct experience of the multiculturalism espoused by the liberal affluent, their opinions on its pros, cons and limits are peremptorily dismissed from “enlightened” conversations. In any case, when nations crumble, they often crack along racial or ethnic lines, and there’s no reason why it won’t happen here, but since racial hatred is as barbaric as they come, I don’t wish to live long enough to witness this catastrophe. From 1882 to 1968, white mobs lynched 539 blacks in

Mississippi alone, the most in the entire nation, but now, there are white groups who keep tabs of the staggering number of black-onwhite murders, maimings, rapes and recreational assaults. Seeing their share of the population decreasing relentlessly, they speak of a white genocide. As for the elites, though they don’t welcome social unrest, since it’s bad for business, they will benefit from increasing racial animosity since it distracts from the serial crimes they’re inflicting on us all. Beat, I hiked past boarded-up or burnt-out houses that were overgrown with weeds or vines, or impaled by gnarly trees. These were interspersed by well-kept homes, however, and when I saw a man striding out of one, I asked him to point me to the nearest beer trough. Lugging my backpack around, I had sweated away all my fluids. “I can’t think of any that’s open right now, but I’ll sell you a Coors Lite for a buck, and it’s cold too!” Sounded fair to me, so I handed him a dollar. So far, everyone I had seen was black, but presently, I came across a white-haired white man jabbing a long steel rod repeatedly into the ground of an empty, dirt plot. At 80%, Jackson has the second highest percentage of blacks of all American cities over 100,000 people. With 84%, Detroit is top. “What are you looking for?” I shouted. Lifting his bulbous-nosed, razor nicked visage, the gent in pale gray Tshirt and dirty khaki pants slowly spoke. To let his thoughts coalesce, he’d often take a breather in mid phrase. “Old bottles, usually. I’ve found clay marbles, and sometimes even coins from the Civil War.” “Wow, they must be worth a lot!” “Not really. I do it for fun, not for profit.” When I told him I was from Philadelphia, and had just gotten off the train, he counseled, “You should be careful walking around this

neighborhood. There are lots of crimes around here, and drug dealing. Farish Street is kind of a bad deal, because they let it go so bad. I think you should head back downtown.” “But you’re here!” “Well, I’m a cop,” he smiled and wiped his brows. Before leaving the unarmed officer, I did extract from him directions to a nearby tavern, though with this warning, “It can get a little rough in there.” Satisfied with the information, I went on my way. Farish Street turned out to be worse than advertised, with formerly handsome buildings now roofless and empty, their window and door frames left hollow or covered by warped or kicked-in plywood. Colorful, crude murals covered some of the sheets. The brick sidewalks, trimmed trees and stylish lamp posts appeared to be recent, half-assed efforts at restoration, for they contrasted ludicrously with the unchecked vegetation gaining on the ruins. During segregation, Farish Street was actually one of the liveliest black business districts in the entire country, an equivalence of Memphis’ Beale Street, but staring at it now, a visitor might hallucinate that this mess is somehow related to General Sherman’s brief courtesy call to Jackson in 1863. My hoppy oasis turned out to be a small, red building with no name, just a Pabst Blue Ribbon sign dangling. Across from it, concrete foundations were all that remained of three houses. Though downtown was within sight, it looked like the sticks in the other direction, with more unkempt trees and grass than pot holed and cracked asphalt. Outside the bar door, several people mulled around a charcoal grill redolent of smoked meat, yumm, yumm, and they all saw me march down the middle of the empty street. “This must be the place!” I shouted and grinned quite inanely before entering an empty bar. Inside, the walls were also painted red, with here and there, a mini skirted or bikinied beer babe on a torn edged poster. I spotted two small American flags, but no homage to Obama. A disco ball anchored the ceiling. Mirrors multiplied the room’s dimensions,

made it feel a tad bigger. Soon, the owner followed me in. In his mid 60’s, the mild man sported a white and magenta floral shirt and panama hat. Rewarding myself a bit, I shunned Pabst and Bud and ordered a Heineken, this joint’s high end offering. In many places around the world, an obvious stranger can expect to be fleeced, but here I was treated not just equally, which is all a man can ask for, but even quite generously, as I would find out. Settled, I said to the owner, “Sir, I’d like to order a plate of whatever you’re cooking outside.” “It’s not ready,” he answered, “and it’s not for sale. You can go out and ask them, though.” I wasn’t sure what he meant, exactly, but I ordered a bag of potato chips just to have something in my maw. “I walked a few miles,” I continued, “but didn’t see any bar. I just got off the train.” “We’re the only one around here.” “So where’s everybody, if you’re the only one that’s open?” “A lot of them went to the football game.” “Jackson State is playing at home?” “No, in Arkansas.” “People drove all the way to Arkansas?!” “Sure did.” That’s a seven-hour round trip, but such is the devotion to the local team in many parts of America. In countless small towns, the streets are deserted if there’s a high school football game many miles away. If only such unity and singularity of purpose could be deployed for anything other than cheering for touchdowns, we wouldn’t be in

such deep shit. Instead of columns of guerrillas, we have caravans of fans. Every now and then, an old guy would mosey in, and he’d be dressed rather nattily in slacks, button shirt and a hat. According to several signs, even muscle shirts and backward caps were banned here, much less sagging pants. Starting a card game, the owner and a patron played mostly in silence, unperturbed by thumping music or television chattering, jingles and come-ons. Not just an old man’s bar, this was an old fashioned establishment, and all over its walls, aging itself was mockingly celebrated: “You’re living in the Metallic Age: Gold Teeth, Silver Hair and a Lead Bottom,” “LIFE is not passing you by, it’s trying to run you over!” “Your motor is still running, But your warranty has expired!” “IF YOU WERE A CAR, YOU’D BE AN ANTIQUE!” “TOO OLD TO ROCK ‘N ROLL, TOO YOUNG TO RANT ‘N RAVE,” “You’re stuck between the ‘Young and the Restless,’ and the Old and the Senseless!” “OLDER THAN DIRT!” Like old men everywhere, these guys couldn’t avoid discussing their health and, by extension, diet. From where I sat, I could only catch an odd fragment here and there, something about eating only one meal a day, how catfish is preferable to shrimps, and how skinless hot dogs are best. After a lifetime of toil and near misses, a man is lucky to have all four limbs, a functioning brain and be outside earshot of Lil’ Wayne and such as he attempts to postpone his induction into the Greenwood Cemetery, not a long field goal away. Older than bad luck, the men in the no-name bar remember only too well the day Medgar Evers was shot in Jackson, and how his fertilizer salesman killer wasn’t convicted until three decades later. They shudder at the memory of the bloody Woolworth sit-in downtown. Though they lived through Freedom Summer, and have helped to elect one black politician after another, they have come to realize the limitations, bordering on impotence, of the vote, for in Jackson, as in communities across America, incomes continue to dip, jobs disappear and young people are sent off to incomprehensible wars,

while at home, robbing and killing have become a career choice for too many citizens. Fed up with violent crimes, Jackson even elected one Frank Melton. In office from 2005 to 2009, this loose canon liked to illegally pack guns, illegally carry a police badge and illegally lead drug raids and sweeps with a personal band of body guards and teens, many of whom had criminal records. Innocently dubbed “The Lawn Crew,” Melton’s posse once destroyed a purported drug den with sledge hammers, all without even a search warrant. Swinging with such glee, Melton slashed his hands with broken glass and had to be patched up at a hospital. Viewed as a folk hero by many Jacksonians, Melton never saw the inside of a jail cell, while others were nauseated enough by the mayor’s antics to prevent his reelection. Since another bag of potato chips wouldn’t do it, I wandered outside to find a woman tending the barbecue. Again, I pleaded, “When you’re done, ma’am, I’d like to buy a plate of whatever it is you’re making.” “It’s not for sale,” she stared at me, “but I’ll give you some!” I had never been given a free plate of food in a bar, but that’s exactly what happened about 15 minutes later as the lady placed a styrofoam container of sausage, pound cake and deviled egg in front of me, and this will remain one of my most memorable meals, I swear, since it was served up with such sweetness. This became the theme of the day, for on the way to catch my New Orleans bus, I was also given an excellent piece of fried chicken by a homeless man with tattoos all over his face. “You eat it, brother. These church people just gave it to me. It’s still hot, too! I’ve had enough, and was just going to throw the rest away.” I wish I had more to report about Jackson, but my time there was short, though considering what’s lurking beyond the horizon these

days, having little time anywhere might not be a curse. Still, there are plenty who can’t wait for the fireworks to begin, for they think their daddy of daddies will emerge from the red, white and blue smoke. Just before I stepped on the bus, a balding white man with fresh scabs on his face, arms and legs begged money for his “seizure medicine.” I gave him that, plus an extra buck. Jackson State ended up beating Arkansas-Pine Bluff 33-30, by the way, so life was good in Jackson, sort of, until the next tribal clash.

Champ Ali in Camden Going from Philly to Camden, I take a train across the Ben Franklin Bridge, then get off at Broadway. In 1969 and 1971, fire bombs were thrown, shop windows smashed and businesses burnt and looted all around this area. The 1969 riot was sparked by a false rumor that a black girl had been beaten by a white cop. An unknown sniper then killed white policeman Rand J. Chandler and a 15-year-old black girl, Rose McDonald. Days later, 125 heavily armed cops raided the Martin Luther King Memorial Center and arrested Charles “Poppy” Sharpe. The

Associated Press reported that “a half dozen machetes, and quantities of switchblade knifes, bows and arrows with ‘killer tips,’ home-made axes and spears, a shotgun and a .22-caliber pistol” were confiscated. Also seized were “43 bags of heroin valued at $500 and three ounces of marijuana.” As a young man, Poppy had his own gang, the Monarchs. Later, he founded Black Believers in Knowledge and Black People’s Unity Movement. BPUM hijacked a school board meeting and tried the same with the city council before being thwarted by a pistol-waving white councilman. Poppy openly acknowledged inciting the 1969 riot and relished the time he spat on a police commissioner. In 1972, several Camden cops testified that those bags of heroin had been planted, however, and there were other frame-ups. As Camden turned from white to black, Poppy became part of the establishment, but he never achieved a higher post than head of the Mayor’s Youth Council. Poppy on his beginning, “I was a tough guy. I had an enormous criminal record.” On his gang, “We fought for prestige and bragging rights. Today they fight for the right to take your life.” On his power, “I think my tongue was just as deadly as their bullets. They couldn’t handle it. I’d get in their face and point my finger and they couldn’t move. I think their souls left them.” On his legacy, “They talk about history. It’s not his-story. In Camden, it is my story. I put the faces where they are today.” One of those mugs was Angelo Errichetti, Camden’s last white mayor. He was jailed three years for corruption. After Errichetti came five blacks and one Latino to mislead this post-industrial, post-white flight disaster of a city.

Milton Milan was convicted of numerous crimes, including extortion, taking cash from the Mafia, laundering drug money and using campaign contributions to take vacations in that island of enchantment and “sun-washed backyard of the USA,” Puerto Rico. Milan was put away for nearly seven years. In 2011, his 24-year-old son decided to give the Milan brand another try. Announcing his candidacy for city council, the young man shared, “I believe my father… was pretty good. Some negative things happened.” Arnold Webster was snagged for wire fraud and sentenced to six months’ house arrest. Leaving office, Webster sneered, “They are talking like somebody’s mismanaged something. There isn’t anything here to mismanage.” To be fair, Webster did manage to snuff out Mischief Night. Like Devil’s Night in Detroit, Camden had its rash of arson fires on the night before Halloween. The worst was in 1991, when an army of firefighters fought 133 fires over two nights, and abandoned houses weren’t the only structures targeted. Grass, trash, cars and businesses were also lit up. After nine years on Haddon Avenue, Krazy Discount was burnt down. The Camden Courier Post quotes Sook H. Lee, its Korean immigrant owner, “It’s all gone. Business was good. I like this neighborhood. Some people are bad but not all of them. I want to rebuild as soon as possible. Before Christmas,” and she has. Her store is still standing in 2015. How much is Lee’s insurance, I wonder? Trying to save Camden from burning to the ground, firefighters became targets for bottles, rocks and bricks lustily hurled by “teens” and “youths.” Year in and year out, Camden’s rape and murder rates rank among the worst in the country, but it also spends much more per student in its abysmal public schools. This shouldn’t surprise, since it’s costlier to handle undisciplined and violent kids, of which Camden is abundantly gifted. For 2014, 23 of its 26 public schools rank among the bottom 70 for all of New Jersey. Addressing state representatives, Chris Christie held up three fat fingers, “How bad

has it been in Camden? How ‘bout this—Last year, only three students graduated college ready.” Chris Hedges on Camden, “The only white people visible daily on the city’s streets are the hookers.” Though certainly not true, it is a memorable statement that’s akin to Paul Theroux’ “Since arriving in Albania I had not seen a straight line.” Crossing six-laned Martin Luther King Boulevard, I spot two Caucasians, only one of whom is a literal whore. Amanda shouts at me, “Hey you!” “Hey!” “Do you have a couple of bucks?” “I have to see this guy first. I’ll see you later. ” When I saw Amanda just three months earlier, this once-beautiful woman was already a mess, but she’s much worse now. There’s a black spot on her diseased gum and her yellow teeth have rotted further. Like old, leaning gravestones, they’re ready to be knocked from their foundation. A crusty black scar oozes from her right shoulder blade. Old scars from two stab wounds are hidden by her dirty tank top. Living on the streets since 2011, she’s been raped, beaten and stabbed. Locked up twice, for eight and six months, Amanda was rather safer inside, but it was much harder to score behind bars because, well, she couldn’t put out. Twenty-nine-years-old, Amanda is from Brownville, NJ, population 2,383 and 74 miles from Camden. Amanda got married at 16, then at 19, she tried to join the Army. After scoring 92 on her Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery test, Amanda discovered that she was pregnant, however, and so her military career had to be aborted. Amanda then became a nurse for eight years, “I was a good nurse too.” When Amanda was 24, her four-year-old son died of leukemia at Children’s Hospital in Camden. He was her only child. An intern nurse

had injected the boy with an antibiotic to which he was allergic. “Mommy, I’m going to die, my son told me. I don’t want to die, he said. I kept hearing that over and over and over, and that’s why I got on drugs, because when you’re high, the pain goes away.” “How long have you been on heroin?” “Three years.” “So you only got on it when you came to Camden?” “Yeah.” “Did you do drugs before? Did you do coke?” “I only smoked weed. I tried coke but I don’t like uppers.” Amanda said she needed money for a bus ticket to go see an aunt in Toms River, so I gave it to her. An hour and a half later, though, I still saw her wandering up and down Broadway. “I thought you were going to Toms River!” “I bought food. I hadn’t eaten in three days.” “There’s The Cathedral,” a soup kitchen. “You know about that. Come’on.” “That’s where I just went, on Friday.” “You don’t starve for three days. You can always go to The Cathedral.” “I couldn’t go.” “No?”

“I was too busy that day.” “Doing what?” “Getting high,” she said rather sheepishly. We cracked up. “You’ve got to get your priorities straight!” “I know.” Then, “Hey, are you going to take pictures of the President?” “No. Obama is in town?” “Yeah.” “I didn’t even know. Why is he coming here?!” “I don’t know.” “He’s coming here to hang out with you!” “Yeah, right.” “Where will you take him?” “Somewhere where I can pick his pockets,” Amanda laughed. “You should put him in a headlock.” “Yeah, right. I’m going to fuckin’ have the fuckin’ secret service fuck me up! Beat down my ass!” “I just heard a black woman say, ‘Obama is sexy as hell!’” “Fuckin’ no! He’s fuckin’ definitely not!” “You wouldn’t fuck him?”

“No, he has gray hair, and I don’t go with black guys.” I laughed. “You don’t like black guys? But he’s half white.” “I don’t care. There’s still the other half.” All around us, black people were walking back and forth. Later, Amanda repeated, “I don’t like black people.” “But you’re in Camden! There’s nothing but black people here.” “I know.” “You should go to Toms River and chill. Get out of this shit. Your luck is going to run out.” “My luck is going to run out.” “One of these days, you’re gonna be, you know, dead. This city is so fucked up.” “That’s right.” “It doesn’t matter how tough you are.” “You ain’t tougher than a gun or a knife.” “Some crazy motherfucker! Some loser!” “Desperation is a motherfucker!” Then, “You know what you should do? You should write a story. You should write about three different girls and make it a book. Sex sells.” “I just want to hear stories of how people are getting by.”

So that was on May 18th, 2015. Appearing at a community center, Obama declared: “I’ve come here to Camden to do something that might have been unthinkable just a few years ago — and that’s to hold you up as a symbol of promise for the nation. (Applause.) Now, I don’t want to overstate it. Obviously Camden has gone through tough times and there are still tough times for a lot of folks here in Camden. But just a few years ago, this city was written off as dangerous beyond redemption — a city trapped in a downward spiral. Parents were afraid to let their children play outside. Drug dealers operated in broad daylight. There weren’t enough cops to patrol the streets. So two years ago, the police department was overhauled to implement a new model of community policing. They doubled the size of the force—while keeping it unionized. They cut desk jobs in favor of getting more officers out into the streets. Not just to walk the beat, but to actually get to know the residents—to set up basketball games, to volunteer in schools, to participate in reading programs, to get to know the small businesses in the area. Now, to be a police officer takes a special kind of courage. And I talked about this on Friday at a memorial for 131 officers who gave their lives to protect communities like this one. It takes a special kind of courage to run towards danger, to be a person that residents turn to when they’re most desperate. And when you match courage with compassion, with care and understanding of the community—like we’ve seen here in Camden—some really outstanding things can begin to happen. Violent crime in Camden is down 24 percent. (Applause.) Murder is down 47 percent. (Applause.) Open-air drug markets have been cut by 65 percent. (Applause.) The response time for 911 calls is down from one hour to just five minutes. And when I was in the center, it was 1.3 minutes, right when I was there. (Applause.) And perhaps most significant is that the police and residents are building trust. (Applause.) Building trust.”

Wow man, that sounds pretty damn good, with murder down 47 percent and all, but is that true? Here are the figures: 2005—33 murders 2006—32 murders 2007—42 murders 2008—54 murders 2009—34 murders 2010—37 murders 2011—47 murders 2012—67 murders 2013—58 murders 2014—33 murders 2015 as of August 31st—57 murders From 2005 to 2014, this city of 77,332 people averages 43.7 homicides a year, but Obama took 2013, which has the second highest murder rate in the last decade, and compared it to 2014, the second lowest, and triumphantly declared a 47 percent reduction. There are still four months left to 2015 and Camden already has 57 murders, one of the highest ever. Will Obama come back next year and celebrate the doubling of Camden’s murder rate from 2014 to 2015? As for violent crimes being down, the local head of the NAACP has suggested that the police is downgrading many aggravated assaults

to simple assaults to brighten the grim statistics. If you’re whacked across the forehead with a tire iron in Camden, perhaps it’s only recorded as a high five gone bad? Maybe a drive by shooting is just a transit strike? A slug through the heart is an emphatically enhanced love tap? Neighborhood Scout just ranked Camden as the most dangerous city in the entire country, a crown it’s well familiar with, so if Camden is our “symbol of promise for the nation,” it’s best we visit our local firing range more often. To get a longer perspective on Camden, I’ve here today to chat with Jamaal “Champ” Behnett Ali, owner of Total Car Care. First, though, I must get into a jabbering mood, so I slip into Off Broadway for two bottles of Yuengling. The afternoon crowd is a bunch of middle-aged farts like myself. This bar has signs everywhere prohibiting just about everything. “ANYONE LEANING ON MIRROR WILL BE ASKED TO LEAVE IMMEDIATELY” is one I haven’t seen. On the jukebox, the O’Jays bark, “What they do!” Then croon, “They laugh in your face / All the time they want to take your place / The back stabbers.” I follow Champ into his spartan office. He’s only been open since February. “OK, Champ, so you were born in Camden?” “Yes, born and raised, and I’m 62-years-old.” “You never lived anywhere else?” “No.” “OK, so you’ve seen all the changes in Camden…” “Yes, I have.” “You think it’s getting better or worse?” “Better.”

“Wow, really? What do you mean?” “The policing is better. The mayor is better. There are fewer drug sites. If a neighborhood had 50 drug sites before, now it’s down to five or six.” “Fifteen?” “No, fifty! Fifty or sixty!” “Fifteen is bad enough, but 50?!” “Yeah, but now there are much less. Camden’s no longer an open air drug market.” “But the demand is still there.” “Yes, but they’re making it a lot harder for the drug dealers. The police have a new method. I don’t know exactly what it is, but they’re there. Their presence makes a difference.” Champ with rug showing his son, Jamaal “Scoot” Barker Champ with rug showing his son, Jamaal “Scoot” Barker Hanging on the wall is a large dinner table-sized rug showing a young man with long, thin dread locks framing his mild face. It’s Champ’s only son, Jamaal “Scoot” Barker. His size 12 black sneakers rest on the windowsill. Champ also wears dread locks. Though bear-thick, imposing and with huge hands, Champ exudes gentleness. “Champ, I want to ask about your son’s name. Your last name is Behnett Ali, but his is Barker…” “In some circumstances, the children take their mother’s name, and not the father’s name because, uh, it might not be the father. I’m not

saying that’s the case with him.” Champ looks over his shoulder towards the rug. “That’s how you keep your lineage.” “OK.” “Because you know for sure that’s your mother, you know what I’m saying?” “But you know that’s your son, though.” “I know that’s my son, yeah, and he was in the process of correcting his name also.” “The first time I met you, you said you wanted to open a halal store, so I thought you were Muslim.” “I am.” “So you’ve changed your name?” “No, I didn’t, I corrected it. All I did was add a title to the end of my last name.” Ali means “elevated.” Plenty of folks in Camden are elevated, of course, night and day. To get elevated, Amanda has become a borderless body. Hundreds pass right through her. Raised as a Jehovah Witness, Champ first became aware of Islam at age 15, but his conversion was gradual and he only fixed his name at age 47. “My mother died when I was twelve, and I got sidetracked for a while, for maybe ten years. After that, I started to get conscious again. I was confused. My mother was a good person, and I blamed God for her passing. It’s because of my lack of knowledge.” “Did she get sick?” “She had cancer.”

“Where was your dad?’ “He raised us.” “So he was around?” “Yeah. I have three brothers and eight sisters.” “Wow, that’s a lot, that’s twelve kids! What kind of work did he do to raise so many kids?” Champ tilts his head back, laughs. “That’s insane, man,” I continue. “Yeah, he’s old school.” “What kind of work did he do?” “He did labor work. He worked for the American Dredging Company, then he started his own business. He had what’s called these days a bodega. At one point, he had three of them.” “That’s pretty good!” “Yeah, he was one hell of a dude, man. He was an entrepreneur. He was also a mechanic. He owned houses. He had 15 or 20 of them.” “So you got that from him, your business sense.” “Well…” “You learnt how to handle money from him.” (I know a Vietnamese businessman who had his young kids count wads of cash, so they wouldn’t be intimidated by money, he said.)

“I don’t know about that,” Champ chuckles, “but I do have a lot of skills. I went to Pennco Tech to learn how to be a mechanic.” “How many businesses have you had?” “This is my biggest endeavor, but before that, I had a towing business. I also did cleaning. If a business went under, you know, we’d go in and strip everything, get it all out. You just keep at it, man.” There are half a dozen cars and vans in Champ’s garage. As we talk, his employee Bill, around 50-years-old, is busy working on one. “You mentioned old school.” “I’m old school now.” “Yeah, I met the guy at the Universal Tonsorial Parlor…” “You’re talking about Russ Farmer.” “He’s also old school.” “Yeah.” “This is a funny question, but I feel that old school values are slipping. Would you agree?” “Yeah, but it’s the way this thing is set up, man. Poverty is set up by the gun. That lack of control is part of it. If you can’t do what my parents did for me when I was a kid to keep me in line, then you’re going to lose control of that kid, and that kid is going to start disrespecting people and… it just boils over.” (When I talked to Russ Farmer seven months earlier, he stated, “The world that I knew has been taken from me, simply because they’ve erased all the existing boundaries that were created for me. You see,

I had boundaries in my life. I had limitations. I knew where to go, what not to do, what to do. My parents created boundaries. The neighborhood created boundaries. All those boundaries—have been erased. I didn’t know kids killing their parents, or parents murdering their children. Education was always quality education. Everything was in place. Where are the boundaries today?”) “But, but, what do they gain by breaking down this discipline?” I ask Champ. “It’s a business, man, it’s a business. It trickles down. It’s the court system…. For instance, if you get locked up for something stupid, if you’re a kid and you have some marijuana on you or something, what’s your chance of getting a job when you get out? You ain’t getting no job.” “Your life is ruined.” “Yeah.” “Over nothing!” “Yeah.” “But Champ, what does society gain from this breakdown?” “It’s money, man, it’s money. You can look at it this way: If you’re in poverty, then there’s going to be more crimes, and I’m going to have more control over you, because you’re going to come back and see me again anyway. You ain’t gonna have no means to be self sufficient, so I’m gonna get paid for housing you, for feeding you and you’ll have to buy what you need off of me. It’s the whole nine… It’s just like what they’re doing in Missouri now. They changed it. They were making it so people couldn’t even pay a ticket. If you don’t have all the money, they’ll lock you up!”

“But Champ, I’m genuinely… I’m baffled because I see a kind of decay in many cities, and even in many small towns, so there’s a social breakdown.” “OK, all right. They’ve got a war on opiates now, but in the 60’s and 70’s, it was an epidemic, and they didn’t have no war on it then. They’re having it now because it only affects people that look like me.” Junkies do come in all colors, however. Champ sees this as an accident, “The heroin wasn’t intended for them. It was intended for us, to keep us down.” “OK, Champ, I want to talk about your son. He seemed to be doing all right in high school, but after that, he got in trouble quite a bit.” “Well, my son, ah… he got my DNA. Like I said, we’re entrepreneurs, but what actually changed my son was… we had a home invasion. Some guys came in and it was him, his daughter and his daughter’s mother. They pulled guns on my son and announced a robbery, whatever, and that changed his outlook on life.” “How old was he when that happened?” “Eighteen.” “So did he decide to become a tough guy?” “Well, you don’t lay down like that. That’s when he said, ‘That ain’t gonna happen to me no more.’” “So did he get a gun or something?” “No, I never seen him with a gun but, you know, kids are kids… I never seen him with a gun.” “But this home invasion changed his whole personality?”

“As far as the street, yeah. As far as the street because, ah, my son was a rapper. He did music. He wrote lyrics. He was like that, that was his thing. I used to tell him, ‘Hey man, I don’t like some of the stuff you write,’ and he would say, ‘Dad, it’s like going to the movie. This ain’t real. It’s like you go to a movie, you watch the movie and then you leave. That’s it!’ So I said, ‘OK, as long as you don’t act it out.’ It’s just kids having fun, you know.” Online, there are 14 tracks by Scoot and Ty of the Young Legends crew. Among the titles are “Homicide,” “Want War,” “Now It’s A War” and “I’m Rich Bitch.” “Cannon” is punctuated throughout by gunshots and here are snatches from “Life Getting’ Crazy”: “I ball without the jersey and wristband… I play the block like I’m 610… Working on my million, living each day like it’s my last ‘cause niggas are killin’… Camden is where I’m from, and it’s the realest / You gotta feel it, motherfucker, it’s the Murder Cap… Life is getting’ crazy now / Every day is getting’ worse and the day is gettin’ shorter now… Bitch, just one shot, I get him murdered.” It sure ain’t Fats Waller with his “I don’t stay out late / Don’t care to go / I’m home about eight / Just me and my radio,” or even RUN DMC with their “We are not thugs (we don’t use drugs) but you assume (on your own) / They offer coke (and lots of dope) but we just leave it alone.” Homicidal hip hop is no more intrinsic to black culture than, say, Miley Cyrus, Honey Boo Boo and the Jerry Springer Show are to white. Who want it this way? Who benefit? Scoot rapped the above at age 21. For two years before that, he warmed the bench for a division II basketball team in, of all places, Oskaloosa, Iowa, population 11,555 and 93.3% white. Scoot didn’t like William Penn University very much. Back in Camden, he ended up in and out of jail for drugs, theft and forgery. Champ only remembers the theft charge, for which Scoot got 20 months. It was just his son being in the wrong place at the wrong time, Champ explains, “He didn’t have anything to do with it. The people who did it picked him up, then the cops pulled their car over.”

All of Scoot’s anxieties, dreams and troubles were emphatically dissolved on November 30th, 2011 when he was shot 15 times by a 27-year-old drug dealer, Daron Trent. Scoot left behind two daughters, Adaiye and Asiya, by two different women. Champ never went to the trial, “If he got twelve or a hundred years, it’s not going to bring my son back.” Most curiously, there’s a “R.I.P. Scoot ‘Jamaal Barker’ Public Figure” FaceBook page with entries from the dead man himself: October 27, 2012 • Loving and missing my two beautiful girls adaiye and asiya,daddy watching over you.Mom i love you, your the glue that’s keeping this family together while I’m gone. YL/E.O.S/G.M.E keep making me proud i hear yall niggas. December 3, 2011 • DADDY’S LITTLE PRINCESS ADAIYE & ASIYAH!! DADDY WILL ALWAYS LOVE YALL. NOTHING OR NOBODY WILL EVER CHANGE THAT.IM NOT GONE I JUST GREW BIGGER WINGS TO PROTECT YOU. December 3, 2011 • GETTING MONEY ENTERTAINMENT (G.M.E) WISH WE COULD OF THIS SHIT TOGETHER IT WOULD OF BEEN FIRE. KEEP YA HEAD UP BOYS DON’T WORRY ABOUT ME IM CHILLEN LOOKING DOWN ON YALL. December 3, 2011 • YOUNG LEGENDS ..I LOVE YOU GUYS I DIDNT LEAVE YALL I SIMPLY TOOK MY TALENTS TO HEAVEN. SETTING UP A “STU” WAITING FOR YALL TO JOIN ME.

With rappers dropping left and right, there must be so many stus in the beyond, bless us all, blasting the nastiest rhymes. Make sure you wear industrial strength headphones in your coffin. Champ, “My son was the sweetest kid. If he saw you talking to me just once, he’d do anything for you after that. He helped me with my towing business. My son knew how to get down and dirty. He was a family man. He loved his daughters.” Often, people are the worst judge of what’s closest to them, whether it’s a parent, child, spouse or hometown, but why should this surprise, since we’re also nearly always the worst at assessing our own talents and character. “All right, Champ, one last question… Do you think old school values can be recovered?” “No.” “No?!” I guffaw. “No, nothing stays the same, bro.” “That doesn’t sound good. I’m talking about basic stuff like family and discipline. The new stuff is not doing anyone any good!” “The new stuff ain’t been around that long. You never know how it’s going to turn out.” “When did you get married, by the way?” “1985, when I was 32.” “And you’ve only had one wife?” “Yeah.”

“That’s rare these days. That’s what I mean by old school. You don’t believe in, like, dumping your wife if you see somebody better.” “But that concept is gone, bro. It’s not coming back. That’s not how they do it now. It’s done.” “Would you like it to come back?” “Yeah, but there are too many reasons why it ain’t gonna happen.” “What are the reasons?” “People don’t have no respect.” “But that better come back too. Self respect. Respect for each other.” “Listen, none of this is important. It’s just a test. The important thing is you pass this test. God gave us a blueprint to live our lives by, and you have to follow it to the best of pour abilities, but if you don’t do that, if you don’t attempt to that, then old school ain’t coming back, bro.” “So you think God is important as a foundation?” “Yeah. If you pray five times a day, you don’t have time to think about bad stuff, do you?” “Do you do that every day?” “I try to the best of my abilities.” “But your son didn’t do that. He wasn’t Muslim.” “Yes, he was. He took his shahada.”

“OK, Champ, one last question… Camden used to be more mixed, but now it’s almost all blacks and Hispanics. There’s something about the segregation of this society, you know, that’s overlooked.” “Yeah, and that ain’t going away. Even when they were here, it was segregated. When I first moved into South Camden, it was an Italian neighborhood, and Whitman Park was Polish.” “Race has been in the news a lot lately because, you know, Ferguson and… the shooting just yesterday, so are you optimistic about racial relations as we moved forward?” “No.” “No…” “Like I was saying, it don’t have nothing to do with race. If you follow God’s teaching, then it don’t make a difference what color you are, but if you start making your own rules, then all of this stuff happen.” “OK, one last question… You said they want it this way. They want this confusion, right?” “If you want to call it confusion, yeah, but it’s a plan. There is no confusion, bro.” “But who are they?” “Ah man, I don’t know if we have time for this… It’s the people who run this country, bro, the one percent. They want it this way. Nothing is gonna change.” “So you’re not optimistic about the country’s future?” “No, but I don’t even care about it. I hate to put it that way, because my grandkids are coming behind me, but they already know that Allah is where it’s at, so they ain’t got nothing to worry about either.

This is nothing. What I’m doing here is nothing. It’s just something to keep me focused and out of trouble, but it’s nothing.” Camden’s most famous resident ever is Walt Whitman, and in 1888, our egalitarian bard opined to Horace Traubel, “The nigger, like the Injun, will be eliminated: it is the law of races, history, what-not: always so far inexorable—always to be. Someone proves that a superior grade of rats comes and then all the minor rats are cleared out.” Quite a few people can be categorized as minor rats these days, and they are certainly at the mercy of the superior rats. Unable to reach or even identify these superior rats, billions of minor rats are left to fight over scraps of garbage and tear each other apart. This carnage will only get much worse.

Atlanta Knowing you can’t run from their jokes, bus drivers will crack a few, so on the endless leg from Washington to Atlanta, the driver intoned, “I don’t believe in Lost and Found, ladies and gentlemen, only eBay. If you forget something on this bus, you can find it on eBay.” Later, he chastised us all because someone had pissed on the toilet’s floor. As the cheapest means of traveling long distance, MegaBus is bareboned. Most stops have no shelter, so no bathrooms. Riders may have to wait for their bus, which may be quite late, in withering heat, snow, sleet or hurricane. In Atlanta, however, there’s the amenity of a MegaBus snack truck that also sells pregnancy tests ($3), tasers ($20) and pepper sprays ($7). What perils could possibly befall these downtrodden or cheapskate travelers? Use your imagination. If Donald Trump sat next to you and

grabbed your pussy, wouldn’t you be glad you had bought that pepper spray or taser? If these failed to dissuade our commander-inchief, you could use your pregnancy test in the bus’ john. Of course, those in the middle class or above would likely shudder at the thought of riding Greyhound, much less MegaBus. On the bus, there was an actual comedian, Chris Thomas. As “The Mayor,” Thomas had hosted RapCity, a show on Black Entertainment Television. His best loved joke, “I saw this little white girl the other day. She said, ‘You have such big lips! I wish I had lips like yours!’ I said, ‘Bitch, hold still,’” and Thomas bunches his fist. Soft spoken, The Mayor never aimed for humor before getting off in Charlotte. The MegaBus stop in Atlanta is right outside the CivicCenter subway station, and when it’s very cold, passengers go underground to escape the wind. I saw a ragged, middle-aged black man, likely homeless, dancing quite cheerfully. Laughing, a woman joined him. They jerked and twisted. “I’m dreaming of a black Christmas!” she growled. There is much to love about the South, and not the least is its food. Soon after arriving in Atlanta, I had some excellent collard greens and mac and cheese with my meatloaf at Metro Deli Soul Food. About half of the merchants inside Sweet Auburn Curb Market were black, but there were also several Korean grocers. The new South is more diverse than you think. In North Charleston in 2012, I chanced upon Lion’s Den, a bar in a black neighborhood that was owned by an Indian-American. Living there since 1982, the confident, affable man had even run for city council. He boasted of carrying four passports, American, English, Kiwi and Indian, and had visited 53 countries. His bar was decorated with a “WE SUPPORT OUR TROOPS” banner and statues of Shiva, Parvati and Buddha. Of course, two Southern states, Louisiana and South Carolina, gave us our first two Indian-American governors.

In the hills of Tennessee, an old, befuddled lady told me, “My doctor, you know, he’s not black. He’s something.” She meant Indian. Each time I travel through the South, I’m struck by the waning of its accent. Attending high school in Northern Virginia from 1978-81, I heard Southern accents much more often than I have in recent trips to Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana and Tennessee. True, I haven’t wandered into rural areas, but it’s sad that natives of Savannah, Raleigh or Charleston, for example, should sound more or less like Yankees. While television and movies have homogenized American English, the disappearance of the Southern accent can also be attributed to the national media’s relentless shaming of the South. Tired of being depicted as racist morons, many Southerners have neutered and deformed their speech. The South still knows that Washington is the enemy, but this cognitive advantage is canceled out if you hate yourself. In Durham, I saw a sticker, “GOOD NIGHT WHITE PRIDE,” with one man about to slam a bicycle on another man, sitting on the ground. I had seen the same sticker in Leipzig, Germany. How bad can the South be if blacks from all parts of the country are moving there? Often referred to as the capital of Black America, Atlanta has many thriving black businesses, including a bank, Citizens Trust, and a car dealer, Wade Ford Inc, that rakes in half a billion bucks yearly. In Sweet Auburn, I encountered a tiny yet remarkable business owned by one Big Mouth Ben. What attracted me to it was a bicycle that was mostly wrapped in bright yellow tape, with an orange sign above it, “DREAMS AHEAD / PROCEED WITH DETERMINATION.” There was also a flyer, “I WENT FROM BEING HOMELESS ON AUBURN AVE TO BEING A BUSINESS OWNER ON AUBURN AVE! COME INSIDE TO HEAR THE STORY.”

At six-years-old, Big Mouth Ben saw, at a gas station, a man return a Coke bottle for ten cents, “My eyes got that big!” so he filled his red cart that day with empties and made two bucks. Though scoring 98 on his ASVAB to join the Air Force, Big Mouth Ben was also accepted by the University of Georgia, so he attended and thrived, but dropped out after three years to become a rap star, for he had made a name for himself in Athens. Back in Atlanta, Big Mouth Ben floundered as a rapper, so he secured a government office job, but quit to co-found a mail-order business. He wanted to be a millionaire by 30, and a billionaire by 40. After thriving for several years, his cash cow was poleaxed by online shopping. Destitute, Big Mouth Ben sold drugs and got hooked himself. Still, he managed to find work as a garbage man, and actually “loved it,” until a reckless car crushed his pelvis. “It was excruciating pain. If you offered me billions of dollars to go do that again, I wouldn’t do it,” he told Wesley Shelby Jr., a television host. After willing himself through rehabilitation, Big Mouth Ben could swagger again, so used his wheelchair as a cart to peddle soft drinks, water and snacks on the streets. Always a hustler, he also sold add spaces on his modest wheels. “If you want to sell it, let me tell it.” Wheelchairs can’t fly, however, so Big Mouth Ben switched to a bicycle, and this he wrapped in bright yellow tape, for it represented sunshine. Now, Big Mouth Ben could push refreshment in The Bluff, West End, Kirkwood, College Park and Riverdale, etc. Our hero was everywhere. A recent rap explains: Man, I love these streets, But, man, these streets, They f$$k wit me. East Point, they f$$k wit me.

Decatur, they f$$k wit me. […] Big Mouth Ben loves the streets. The streets love Big Mouth Ben. I show you nothing but love, And most of them are my friends. Man, I’m well connected. Man, I’m well respected. […] Robbing me, you might get jumped By these bystanders. […] Keep my foot on the pedal. I hustle so hard, I deserve a gold medal. Keep money in my pocket. I know that’s what you don’t like. I ain’t worried about you, though. I got it all on my bike. […] I stayed down and I prayed. I stayed down and I made. My dream now a reality, I got it made in the shade. […] Atlanta is my city, For all the love they show me. Big Mouth Ben couldn’t quite shake his drug habit, however, so he ended up homeless and curled up, on cardboard, under an overpass. “What turned everything around was a spiritual awakening.” God leveled with Big Mouth Ben, “I promised to love you, regardless. If you want to be under the bridge, I’ll love you under the bridge. If you want to go to prison, I’ll love you in prison. But it’s up to you, where you want to be loved.”

Big Mouth Ben got clean, applied himself and the result is a convenience store that also sells hoodies and T-shirts that say, “CAME FROM NOTHING.” Big Mouth Ben raps, “I really want success, so I act like it. I want to see a million, so I act like it […] Determination is my weapon, so I’m acting like it.” What a pleasure it was to meet this gentle and gregarious man with a crooked mouth. I also caught a glimpse of Tanya, his college sweetheart and wife. Continuing down the street, I entered EbenezerBaptist Church. Smallish and plain, it has a grand place in American history thanks to its former pastor, Martin Luther King Jr. There were less than a dozen visitors in the dimly lit church. Settling into a pew, I listened to a recorded sermon which spoke of being fiscally responsible. King always preached personal responsibility. In a 1957 sermon about “loving your enemies,” King said, “We must face the fact that an individual might dislike us because of something that we’ve done deep down in the past, some personality attribute that we possess […] and we’ve forgotten about it; but it was that something that aroused the hate response within the individual. That is why I say, begin with yourself. There might be something within you that arouses the tragic hate response in the other individual.” Examine yourself first, King advised. In contrast to our political correctness, King never absolved nor indicted an entire race. King was a father-figure not just to his flock, but to millions of Americans as he rose in stature. To his critics, though, he was just a sex maniac and plagiarist, just a hypocrite and phony, in short, but what they really object to, I believe, is King’s vision of a colorblind, post-racial America. Not only that, they don’t think it’s possible. King didn’t just focus on race but class, and he charged that the state robbed its citizens to wage war endlessly, so of course it killed him.

Its nemesis silenced, the state then named streets after King, honored him with a national holiday, erected a huge Made-in-China statue of him in DC and, most ironically, deforms his legacy to ensure ongoing racial division and strife. Since identity politics enrages all of us all the time, it’s a most useful tool for the state. Fragment and strangle. Dead, King serves the state. After eight years of our first black or, rather, biracial president, the country is riven by racial divisions, with the media looking everywhere for evidence of white racism only. Everybody else is a victim, for they’re all penned together, most racistly, as “people of color.” That evening, I went to Little Five Points to check out its lively cluster of shops and bars. At FinleyPlaza, I encountered half a dozen Black Israelites, preaching. I had seen their brethren in Philly, Washington and Minneapolis. Like Black Muslims, they also believe whites are devils, thus unredeemable. Between strident outbursts, a Black Israelite calmed down, chuckled and explained to another black man, “Of course, I’d like to kill most of them, and keep the rest as slaves, but until then, I can only spread the good words.” At his feet was a sign, “We Are The True Chosen Nation Of The Bible / The Twelve Tribes of Israel,” with each of them black, Hispanic or Native American. Beware of any “chosen people,” for what could be more suprematist or racist? Such a concept, seriously embraced, allows any man, tribe or nation to enslave, loot or murder with righteousness. In the mild weather, I strolled among the bar hoppers, heard their laughter and noticed stores named Fearless Weirdos, Criminal Records, Posse Riot and World Piece. At a wig shop, there was a flyer, “NO! In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America.” Nearby, a young beggar sat in the semi-dark, his cup empty.

After two pints in Brewhouse Cafe, I exited to discover I was gravely underdressed, for the temperature had plummeted. Heading for the train, I passed two gutter punks lying on grass, with only one in a sleeping bag.

Point Breeze Southerner Fred Reed writes about Yankee hypocrisy, “You’ve heard about white flight. In nearly about every city in the North, white people streak for the suburbs so’s not to be near black people, and then they talk about how bad Southerners are for doing the same thing […] Fact is, you can see more social, comfortable integration in a catfish house in Louisiana than you can in probably all of Washington.” As of 2010, Philly was 41% white, 43.4% black and 6.3% Asian, and I would guess there are more whites and Asians now, thanks to obvious gentrification in several neighborhoods. See what I just did there, equating gentrification with fewer blacks? But that’s just how it is in contemporary America, where fewer blacks in any

neighborhood means fewer crimes, better schools and rising house prices. Even Spike Lee can’t refute this. I live in Passyunk Square, a white, Asian and Hispanic neighborhood that’s adjacent to Point Breeze, a gentrifying ghetto. Broad Street is the dividing line, and for the longest time, it would not be wise to cross into Point Breeze, unless you were begging for a mugging. I know one white guy who was relieved of his wallet, at gunpoint, and a white woman who was punched and kicked by a bunch of black teens, just for the fun of it. Just before Christmas, a black acquaintance had his apartment burglarized, with the thief breaking in by taking out the air conditioner from a window. He took that, plus the television and a Michael Kor watch. “It’s weird he knew where it was. I kept it in a drawer. I think he’s a friend,” or a lover of this gay man. With 24,137 people, Point Breeze had 112 burglaries in 2017. With its cheap rent and proximity to Center City, Point Breeze has lured many non-blacks over the years, however, and the first group to move in were poor Asian immigrants. In 1984, I visited an overcrowded house that had people sleeping in the living room. I remember a tiny pregnant woman, lying on the floor. By 2000, there were 900 Vietnamese in Point Breeze, or 12% of the population. Now, Point Breeze has Indonesian groceries and restaurants, an Indonesian storefront mosque, a Chinese Buddhist temple, and a Laotian one. At St. Thomas Aquinas, a magnificent church founded by Italian immigrants in 1885, there are Vietnamese and Indonesian services each Sunday. Rocky marries Adrian in this church. From its website, “St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Community, through our cultural diversity, united in our expressions of faith, lives the Gospel message in our neighborhood through worship, education, service, and advocacy.” Inside, there’s a beautiful shrine to the Vietnamese Catholic martyrs of the 18th and 19th centuries. For following the Western religion

and, in many cases, supporting the invading French, at least 130,000 were tortured and killed by Vietnamese authorities. I know all you lovers of diversity can’t wait to move into Point Breeze now, for it has every color in the rainbow, but by the time you get here, there won’t be too many African-Americans left, I’m afraid, so let me give you a quick tour of black Point Breeze. Our first stop is Scotty’s Bar, famous for its Obama shrine. Our handsome, half-white 44th president is seen smiling inside an oval, blue background frame, with tinsel and colored string lights all around him. Other black men are honored throughout Point Breeze for, well, being shot. Walk around and you’ll run into their wall portraits, such as that of “FAT CAT.” Seen holding his daughter, he was killed in 2005 at age 23. In the bay window of a well-kept middle-class home, there are two colorful banners with purple stars and red roses. Under the message “ALWAYS AND FOREVER” is the face of a young soldier in uniform. Nearby, there’s a framed print of a black Jesus. Since it’s just around the corner, let’s stop in Sit on It, my favorite black bar in Point Breeze, and it’s dirt cheap too. Here, the bartenders are Miss Cynthia, Miss Mary and Miss Rose, all old ladies. Fifty-four, Rose is divorced and has four grown kids, “They’re doing OK, except my boy. He’s giving me a bit of trouble.” Rose works three days a week, and is also a home nurse. Although Rose lives five miles away in West Philly, she still comes here to drink on her days off. “You don’t get sick of looking at the same people?” “No, no, I love the people here. I’m a people person!” She certainly is. Rose remembers every name and is always cheerful. “Yours is easy. I just think of Ding a Ling!”

“That’s right!” I laughed. Since it’s the afternoon crowd, the patrons are all old heads. With so many young black men dead or in prison, those who make into old age tend to be exceedingly mild and pleasant. The worst of the tribe cull themselves. When I walked into Sit on It on January 2nd, several strangers shouted, “Happy new year!” In North Charleston, South Carolina, I chanced upon a ghetto bar that was owned by a South Asian who wouldn’t allow anyone younger than 35 to enter his establishment, “They cause too many problems,” he smiled. In Trenton, a Middle Easterner who owned a liquor store told me he had set up a bar, “But it wasn’t worth it. Too many fights.” Point Breeze was home to John Blake and the Heath Brothers, but since this is 2018, you’re not going to hear any jazz in Sit on It. Even for those with white hair, it’s mostly rap, varied by a bit of rhythm and blues, soul and rock oldies. Across the bar is an 86-year-old Korean War vet. Like us, he’s eating two small pieces of fried chicken, free of charge. It’s a bit salty, yes, but damn good! In Jackson, Mississippi, I wandered into a black bar in a frightful neighborhood littered with burnt out houses and, what do you know, they gave me a free plate of food, since it was a barbecue day. Like Sit on It, it was filled with older folks, nattily dressed. As with many black neighborhood bars, Sit on It is actually not blackowned, but neither are most ghetto grocery stores and restaurants, and one can only conclude that blacks generally can’t compete with non-blacks in running small businesses. Even the black barbershop, that social institution, is being undercut by Asian barbers. On YouTube, there’s a hilarious commentary by Jay Love, a Philly homeboy, on black vs. Asian hair cutters:

Y’all sitting there, criticizing me, because I didn’t get my hair cut at a black barbershop […] Y’all got some motherfucking nerve, saying that shit. You goddamn right I don’t like going to black barbershops […] I don’t go to black barbershops because they’re not professional. The Asian barbershops don’t cut hair as good as the black barbershops. If you get a baldy or low fade, you go to the Asian joints, that’s all good or whatnot. I mean, they cut you down […] If I was getting a hustler two or three, I would basically have a black barber shape me up, because the Asians don’t know how to shape up for shit. So for a basic haircut, Jay Love prefers the Asians: I’m not gonna go to no black barbershop. They’re unprofessional […] You don’t conduct yourselves like businessmen. Every time I go to a motherfucking black barbershop, y’all motherfuckers up in the air. Instead of doing my hair, it takes you 45 minutes to do anybody’s hair, because you’re busy leaving out the barbershop, answering your cellphone in the middle of cutting somebody’s hair, leaving out the barbershop, talking to your girl for 15 minutes. I guess you must have forgotten that your client was in the chair, and maybe you think he don’t got nothing better to do with his day […] Y’all talking about Floyd Mayweather, the latest fight, this sports event or gossiping about how many bitches you fucked […] You know, nobody wants to hear that. Providing a quicker service, Asian barbers also charge less than half of their black peers’ prices. At Da’ Thairapist Hairquarters, a haircut by Skeet da Barber costs $25, but it’s $30 if you want an appointment, which must be made at least 24 hours in advance. If not, it’s $35. It’s curious that socialist, universal brotherhood types are usually quite militant about supporting multiculturalism, when it’s in fact a capitalist tool to drive wages down and squeeze the most from each worker. More insidiously, it can often turn him into a caricature, for

in any multicultural society, each ethnic group is forced to become more specialized in its working, and thus social, roles. Just think of all the Latinos in the kitchens of American restaurants, serving whatever food. With my chance of becoming a professional athlete near zero, I might have to paint finger and toe nails for a living. Others with longer limbs and a much better vertical leap may decide to shoot hoops all day. Before integration, there were many more black business owners, for they had to provide not just their own bars, restaurants and barbershops, but also banks, insurance companies and car dealerships, etc. Though meant to blur racial differences, integration actually accentuates them. James Howard Kunstler dissects: The Civil Rights victories of 1964 and 1965—the public accommodations act and voting rights act—created tremendous anxiety among African Americans about how they would fit into a desegregated society, so the rise of black separatism at exactly that moment of legislative triumph was not an accident. It offered a segment of the black population the choice of opting out of the new disposition of things. Opting out had consequences, and over several generations since then, the cohort of poorer black Americans has grown only more oppositional, antagonistic, and economically dysfunctional—with the sanction of America’s non-black “diversity” cheerleaders, who remain adamant in their own opposition to the idea of common culture. Ah, but race, ethnicity and border are but reactionary social constructs, designed to keep us apart! Though dwelling on this resource-depleting population time bomb and babbling 7,000 languages, we are all kin. Those who think such may consider moving to, say, Equatorial Guinea, where they can decide for themselves if border, ethnicity or race matters. Most of us are bred to function reasonably well within one society only. Expelled for just an hour,

most would freak. At the very least, home is where they speak your language. At Sit on It, there’s a curious sign, “Grab Your Passport All Abroad / Cynthia’s World Travel To China / BIRTHDAY Celebration.” Miss Rose, “Cynthia is not going to China! It’s just a China-themed party, right here!” Cynthia has worked at Sit on It for two decades. Thoroughly at home in Point Breeze, she doesn’t really want to go anywhere, and hasn’t. The world, though, is coming right at her, and with the cut throat competition intrinsic to multiculturalism, Cynthia may even find herself evicted before too long.

II Obscured Americans

unz.com Obscured American: Vern the Vietnam Vet Linh Dinh • March 19, 2016 • 3,100 Words • 57 Comments • Reply 15-19 minutes Vernon (Right) in Friendly Lounge Looking for Vern for over a week, I finally found him in the Friendly Lounge. Vivacious Kelly was bartending. Overhearing Vern say how he had to take his helmet off because of the letters “VC,” Kelly looked perplexed, “Why?” “Because VC stands for Viet Cong,” Vern clarified. “Viet Com?” When you’re young and beautiful, you can say just about anything and people will find it delightful, but perhaps I’m just revealing my old fart mind set. Yes, Kelly, VC stands for Viet dot com. Actually, it means venereal coconut. Down the bar, ex roofer Angelo jumped in a few times to thank Vern for his service, while Tony the cook stewed over his boss while scratching lottery tickets. Italian Felix sometimes refers to Vern as “the angry black man,” but I’ve seen no evidence of it. Sipping his red wine, he’s always soft spoken and smiling. What’s even more ironic is Felix was known in his younger days for getting into fights. Vern and Felix live in the same old folks’ home, where the sex life is much less dormant than you’d think. “Women there don’t have to worry about getting pregnant,” Felix explained. “You should go down there and get some action.”

Vern had a different take, “Older women need to regain dignity and understand where the limits are.” OK, then, let’s hear more from the 70-year-old: My father was a grease monkey. He got up in the wee hours of the morning and I had to cook his breakfast. When my father died in 1970, they replaced him with three men. My mother came from a farm. She wanted to be a dietitian, but she was fortunate enough to become a wire technician for GE. My mother converted us to Catholicism, so I’ve been a Catholic for most of my life. I have five siblings, but one died at birth. I’d go online and look at the house where I was born and raised, and it’s all boarded up! I was blessed with good neighbors. The Taylors and Caseys would have us over. I mean, my family couldn’t afford a record player or TV, but the Caseys would invite us over to watch television, and we would go in our underwear or whatever. It was nice. Their house is boarded up too. They’re dead now. They educated us on how to be above what most people thought what African Americans were, or are, in society. I had a good upbringing. My aunt taught me how to set a table, and what fork, what knife and what spoon to use. I was drafted. I just turned twenty. Women always bring me the bad news. My sister grabbed the mail that day and she came to me. This was in August. I had enrolled at PennState and wanted to be an architect. I only had a month to go before I’d be in school.

They drafted a lot of African Americans from Philadelphia. You had to fill out all of these crazy papers and whatnot. They examined you and so forth. So yes, you’re inducted! Ha ha! It was a shock because I didn’t know what it meant to have that happen to you. At that time we were still involved in the Korean conflict, and there were other world conflicts, so it was very difficult to understand the significance of what I was being caught up in. I needed to get a letter of deferment, so I got a letter to say that I had already been accepted at PennState, but the draft board said, No, no! You got your draft notice. You’re in! I missed it by a month, but I don’t regret it. It was a lesson. I had never been exposed to discrimination, so I didn’t know what it was. We needed jungle training, so they sent us to Fort Polk, Louisiana, and it was an experience I would really like to forget, because Fort Polk, Louisiana was one of the dirtiest, most ignorant places I’ve ever experienced. There was a town not far away called Leesville, Louisiana, and I remember taking a bus into town, and there was a guy named VernonCastle. He was a businessman and he owned everything in town, the motion picture theater, the grocery store, his name was everywhere, and that was the first time ever in my life I saw “WHITE,” and then an arrow pointing, with “COLOURED.” I thought, Kiss my ass, you all can stick this town up your ass. I got back on the bus and never went back into town. I was thinking, I’m going to fight for fuckin’ America and you bastards want to talk this shit?! I never went back into town, never spent another dollar in Louisiana. That night, they gave us our orders on where we would be transferred, Korea or Vietnam. I got my orders. It was around Christmas time. Mine said Vietnam.

We were flown to Oakland, California, then Braniff Airlines flew us over. Coming into Saigon at night, I remember the fox holes, and the bunkers with the gunners, along the runway, protecting the aircraft. I was assigned to the 25th Infantry Division, 3rd Brigade, in Pleiku. The 3rd Brigade had already established a base camp in Pleiku. It was called Titty Mountain. Later a general came and said to us, “You can’t call this Titty Mountain. From now on, we’re going to call it Dragon Mountain!” He didn’t want to say that over the radio. He was a pussy. I was assigned to intelligence. My responsibility was to draw maps and overlays so people in the field understand where they are and where they need to go and whatnot. I had a radio there, which was unusual, ha ha! It was for my own personal use. I listened to whatever they had in Vietnam. It wasn’t music. I listened to… what was her name? Hanoi? Hanoi? Yes, Hanoi Hanah! My name is Vernon, and my last name is Cothran, so I put VC on my helmet. Everybody else had their initials on their helmets. Colonel Shanahan came down and said, “Take that helmet off! You can’t have VC on your helmet!” There was a cook that got mad at the Colonel and cussed him out, so the old man told his staff, I want that guy to be sent to the front line, immediately. He was talking all that crap, so the old man went, “No, uh uh. Off you go!” The first thing you learn is to keep your mouth shut, but the cook was drunk. I don’t know what happened to him. I never saw him again. Being in Vietnam, I thought about my father and my mother, because I’m here, they’re there. If something happens to me, who’s going to take care of them?

I had a friend who wanted to be engaged to me. Maria, Maria Stuckey, bless her soul. Her family lived up the street from us. We had a big house on the corner, and they lived at 4828 Olive Street. Those were good days. I have a picture of her sitting in our living room. That’s just before I was about to leave. She was very concerned, and I appreciated that from her. I couldn’t make a commitment because I didn’t know if I was going to live or die. My priority was I wanted to deal with my mom and dad. That was my priority. In Pleiku, I had a friend who was very articulate, and I liked that. She was able to, ah, comfort me, to give me a feeling of comfort. My friend Bee in Philly always teases me, “There’s your son! There’s your son!” I’d say, “Don’t start any crap! Next thing, you’ll have me getting sued, because somebody wants to say, ‘He’s the father!’” I don’t want to hear about it. It may cost me money. My dad said he was sorry he never served, and that’s why I was proud to go in. My brother went into the Air Force, and I was drafted into the Army. It worked out, you know. The whole experience matured me. When I came home, instead of me being an architect, I became a humanitarian. I started to work for non-profits to develop issues to save… humanity. I became the Executive Director of the Public Housing Agency in Chester County. I managed over 12 hundred units. That was an interesting experience. My board member, Paul Rie, used to tease me. Our office was not far from the YMCA. Paul said, “You know, they hung a black guy in front of that Y.” I thought, Wow, but he and his wife were very good to me. I miss him. There was an orphanage outside of Pleiku. I never experienced hunger, but when I went to the orphanage, a little kid ran up to me and grabbed my leg. It touched my heart, so, how should I say this…

we stole these C-rations. They were just sitting there, getting wet in the rain, so we’d take four or five boxes, as many as we could. We’d put them in a jeep, said we were going to town to get a haircut, get something to eat or do the laundry, whatever, and we’d take them to the orphanage. That was a good feeling. When I came home, I brought that attitude back. When I got here, I looked at people and understood. This is home, man, this shouldn’t be happening here, so I set about trying to correct some of the things and whatnot, so it was all good. We’re all brothers, regardless of the color of our skin. You and I are brothers. Religions and politics cannot change that. We’ll always be brothers because that’s the dynamics of life. Some bastards were such racists. They would come to town and rub their Caucasian skin and say “no same same” to the Vietnamese while pointing to the African American soldiers. They expected different treatment. They were very cocky and arrogant and felt superior even to the population that was there. God is going to straighten all this out. It’s going to be good. I don’t know when because I can’t tell you what his schedule is. He tells me what his schedule is. He’s going to straighten it out here on earth because, like I said, we’re all brothers. If you were in a foxhole, ten, fifteen feet away from me and you ran out of ammo, you’re not going to say, I’m not asking that N person for his rolls. I made some of my best friends in Vietnam. There was an aristocratic clothing store at 17th and Chesnut. Jackson and Moyer. His grandson was in my unit. Best friends! The Biddle family, his grandson was there. We became good friends. Nigel Virgil Temple West was in my platoon. I met a lot of people, and came home with a lot of friends. My best friend, Frank Norquist, got me home early. He married a diplomat’s daughter. During that time, if you were drafted, you went. Many of the rich kids didn’t wiggle out. A

lot of them volunteered. They went in. That changed my whole concept. Those guys were great. I’m careful walking on soft ground now, because I remember the punji stick pits, where they’d defecate on the bamboo ends to infect the wounds of whoever stepped on them. I don’t want to say primitive, you know, but they had weapons that were used centuries ago. I wasn’t a tunnel rat. I was too big to be a tunnel rat. A lot of the women were spies, and they would be mutilated for being spies, and I mean mutilated. When we went up Route 14, the women would follow us on those, ha ha!, Lambrettas that they could fit four or five people. The prostitutes had to go where the money was. If I watch Hamburger Hill, it’s so realistic, it hurts. I don’t need to see movies. The best Vietnam movie is Platoon. I’d go back. It was a great nation, with friendly people. When I was taken out, thank you, Jesus, it was three or four days before the Tet Offensive, when all kinds of hell broke loose. They took me to base camp to grab my things, and then from there, they took me to Saigon. That night, everything got bombed. All hell broke loose. They attacked Saigon too, and three of the guys who had gotten there before me were killed, and didn’t make it home. They died on their last day. As the Tet Offensive started, I was on a plane, Braniff Airlines, going to Oakland, and when I got there, I kissed the ground. Thank you, Jesus! I was never so glad to see America. You go somewhere where you don’t have any rights or privileges, where it’s “Yes, sir! No, sir!” I was so glad to be out of there. I wanted

to get out of my stinking clothes, out of my uniform, turn all of that crap in. My friend Frank called me and said, “I don’t want you to go home for a couple of weeks. I want you to come to West Covina and stay with us.” His brother was a realtor out there. Frank said, “Listen, my brother has a house, but nobody has bought it yet, so you can stay there. We’ll hook up for breakfast and dinner and, you know, check out some things in West Covina.” Frank took me to this house looking out over L.A., and I was thinking, Damn, these people are living large! Ha, ha! That was my first experience of L.A., and my first experience of dealing with people on that level. I understand what money means now, and I want to have money. Frank said, “There’s a sickness in your mind that you need to let rest before you go home.” I tell you, I could have gone back and kill everybody in my family. Sat down, had a meal then gone out to do what I had to do. That’s why I tell people, “You have to understand. When someone teaches you how to kill, it doesn’t go away.” So, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!!!! I went to Frank’s wedding in Omaha. Everyone was as white as snow. I was the only black person. I’ve never been married. I proposed to a girl, but she thought it was a joke. We were working together. I had a Corvette, and she had this chiffon dress on, with all the pleats. The Corvette had leather seats, so she kept saying, “I’m going to get all sweaty.” My old neighborhood was African American, and it was respectable. People had jobs and could afford their houses. When we moved out of North Philly, my parents were paying $75 a month for mortgage on a four bedroom house. Now, I wouldn’t even drive down 52nd Street. The economy changed. People lost jobs. Everything changed.

The system screwed everything up. We need more jobs. Jobs and education are the solutions, especially education. People don’t value composure. When they passed the law that you couldn’t beat your child, the little bastards got cocky and became who they are today. Like my brother said to his 14-year-old son, “I’m going to kick your ass and whoop it to the max, and I’m gonna put the phone in front of you, so if you want to call the police, call them, but you better make sure you have a place to live because you won’t stay the fuck here.” I’ve always voted, but I’m not voting this time. I’m not happy with any of the people on the table at this time. Not the Republicans, not the Democrats, I’m not happy with any of them. Hillary is 68-years-old. Marco Rubio would have been a good choice, but he’s too young and he already quit. Donald Trump is an asshole. Ted Cruz is a racist bastard, I don’t care for his shit. He shuts down the country for stupid shit, I don’t want him in. Paul Ryan, Speaker of the House, I don’t want him in. To put it bluntly, Yes, I’m antiRepublican. I like Bernie Sanders, because he says it like it is, like it should be… I have a funny feeling that this is going to be the worst election in the history of America. There are going to be riots. There are already riots. Obama had a Republican Senate and a Republican House. They haven’t given him a chance. He’s still discriminated against, from when he was running for President to the present day. Hillary Clinton had to have a private email service because she didn’t want him in her business. I will not vote for her.

Obama got rid of a terrorist. He’s going to elect a Supreme Court representative. He improved the economy and employment for everyone. He has been a cohesive personality, uniting ethnicities of our nation, but it is those ignorant individuals who still live in the age of Hitler and all these other assholes that pulled him down and prevented Obama from accomplishing more. The economy has improved since Obama’s been in. A Republican better raise somebody from the dead, cure somebody of leprosy and walk on water to get my vote. I’ve always voted Democratic. I’m a liberal. I believe in unifying and helping. I just don’t feel that America needs to be the policeman of the world. You saw what happened with the Iraq War. It was bad information. We’re here in the middle of the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean. All that crap that comes out of the East and Far East… pick up your shit and do something for yourself! I’ll be so glad when the good Lord comes and brings everything back to normal.

Hank the Christian Constitutionalist America has become an eviscerated country draped in a gigantic flag. Day by day, its culture becomes more grotesque and obscene, a luna park of lunacy. Leached of essence, it burps up slogans, but who’s convinced? What define America, exactly? Paul Craig Roberts narrows it down to the Constitution and Christianity, “All Americans have a huge stake in Christianity. Whether or not we are individually believers in Christ, we are beneficiaries of the moral doctrine that has curbed power and protected the weak.” And, “The other cornerstone of our culture is the Constitution. Indeed, the United States is the Constitution. Without the Constitution, the United States would be a different country, and Americans would be a different people. This is why

assaults on the Constitution and assaults on Christianity are assaults on all of us.” You’re not going to get away with that in most American universities! In this nominally Christian country, Christians are routinely caricatured as buffoons and fanatics. They don’t wear crosses as much as burn them on African-Americans’ front lawns. Don’t show them Mel Gibson’s The Passion of Christ, or they’ll torch the nearest chopped liver joint. These thoughts about Christianity and the Constitution were triggered by my recent encounter with a 70-year-old black man, Hank. Twice a week, he stands outside for about ten hours to inform us all of our systematic degradation. On Mondays, you’ll find Hank and his large sign at UPenn, while on Thursdays, he can be found near Independence Hall, right outside the National Museum of American Jewish History. Hank was dressed very shabbily, and I suspect it’s not really due to poverty, but neglect. He’s simply too preoccupied with his thoughts to bother. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. Hank is also wifeless. My father was mostly a truck driver. My mother did domestic work when she was able to, when she wasn’t home raising children. I had two brothers and a sister. When we were able to take care of ourselves, when we could go back and forth from school, my mother worked. Back then, you could walk the street as a nine-year-old and not worry about being kidnapped or raped. People can’t do that nowadays. The atmosphere has become so fearful and hostile for everybody. It’s considered child abuse to not keep an eye on your kids. We came along. We had wonderful Christmases, wonderful Easters, a wonderful grandmother, wonderful cousins. Easters were happy occasions, and our grandmother, we would go visit her. I’m not

saying everything was peach and cream, but it certainly wasn’t all this horror and mess, and all this negative stuff. I went to a parochial school in a negro neighborhood, bordered by the Irish. I went to a high school that was probably 80%, 90% Italians, Irish, Polish, everybody, you know, whites. Also, most of my teachers in grade school were nuns and priests, so they were white also. The neighborhood stores were Jewish, some were Italian. We did have a few Negro shops, and the door-to-door salesman were a mixed bag. They were colored and whites. It was safe enough then for people to go door-to-door and sell things. The men who were driving horse and wagons were a mixture. I had experiences with all kinds of people. One of our closest friends was Billy Lee. He was a white kid who was brought up by a Chinese family. That wasn’t even a consideration. There was no discussion at all of race, in my experience. Billy Lee was friends with my older brother, but he was a friend of mine too. My brother worked in a Chinese restaurant from the time he was 12years-old. After high school, I went to a seminary. God has always been important to me. I never got married. I was reading Jeremiah the other day. God would not allow Jeremiah to get married, because he wanted him. God said in the first chapter, “I ordain you from your womb. You’re going to be my prophet, and I’m going to make you a destroyer.” Well, he didn’t make Jeremiah a physical destroyer of Israel, but he made Jeremiah the one to preach the destruction of Israel. I enjoyed being around people. I worked some years in a department store, and the people there were very friendly, very nice. The owners, everybody was really friendly.

Mostly, I worked in power generation. I was a maintenance worker at Limerick and Peach Bottom nuclear plants. We maintained all the equipment, pumps, turbines, generators, etc. There was a constant replacement of parts. I also worked at coal and oil plants. When I was growing up, there wasn’t an emphasis on everything being about race. Throughout human history, people have disliked somebody for whatever reason, racial reasons, but it wasn’t drilled into you by the news media day after day, after day. You didn’t get it at school that race is all there is about life. My daily life wasn’t filled with any racial animosity or discomfort. I went to church. I was in the Boy Scouts. We went to a camp in the Poconos. One time, somebody said that they put us in this lousy campsite because we were colored, but there were these Jewish kids who were using the same facility, and they were saying, “Maybe they assigned us this campsite because we’re Jews!” It wasn’t serious. I’m not saying we had a life devoid of any racial remarks or comments, but it was never taken seriously. It’s like the word nigger. When I was growing up, I hardly ever heard my father or mother mention the word. I didn’t know the word. One time, I heard the word nigger roach, so I thought nigger roach was some kind of insect! We sat around and talked about baseball. Nobody made a big deal about the word nigger. I could think of one or two occasions when I was called that, but it wasn’t something I built my life on. You had Irish being called micks. You had Italians being called dagos. It wasn’t anything serious. Nobody made a major case about it. Now, you’ll go to jail for saying “nigger,” you are so bad. It was a more civil society in the 50’s. There were problems in the southern cities in terms of legal segregation, which they got rid of. You had instances of lynching here and there, I don’t know, I wasn’t there, but I understand that lynching took place not only against blacks, it was also done on whites, but they’ve blown it up to be a white-on-black thing.

Anything that they could find to be negative about whites, they did, especially in the South, so the governor down there was blocking people from going to school. I’m not saying it wasn’t something serious, but you had all these other schools that were not being blocked. In the South, you got the University of Mississippi that wasn’t being blocked, and you got all these schools in northern cities that were not being blocked. All these blacks were going to Columbia, PennUniversity, but they made it out like it was some national calamity. Yes, the laws were unfair, so they corrected them, and that should have been it, but they harped on it in the media every year. They had all these shows and features on ancient racial unfairness, over and over and over and over. It was unnecessary. Now they go on and on about slavery, but when I was in school, I didn’t hear about slavery until, I think, 7th grade. My parents and my parents’ parents never talked about slavery. They talked about the Phillies and the Milwaukee Braves. These were people who were tailors and truck drivers. They were professional people. You just didn’t hear this nonsense. Today, children go to school and all they hear about is slave ships and all this slave nonsense. It’s extreme and it’s unnecessary. There are more important things in life than to keep bringing up somebody’s great-great-great-grandfather’s miserable experience. All tribes, all people, have had some experience with slavery. In America, it was the Christians who actually abolished slavery. It was abolished because Jesus Christ said, “Love your neighbor.” So the Christians who abolished slavery are persecuted the most for being slave owners. Throughout the world, particularly in Africa, there is slavery, even today. It never stopped being a slave continent. Sudanese Arabs have been enslaving Sudanese black Christians all throughout the 20th century, yet all these phonies in this country ignore it. The NAACP

ignores it. W. E. B. Du Bois, who was the founder of the group, he joined the Communist Party before he died. He was a Communist all his life, but this isn’t talked about. All they want to talk about is what the white man did, what George Washington and Thomas Jefferson did, but they grew up in a world where there’s always been, from the beginning of mankind, slavery. It was considered acceptable and moral. Aristotle, Plato and pagan natural law taught that slavery was OK. All throughout Asia Minors, they believed it. In Asia, they believed it. Koreans kept slaves, and the Chinese did. When the Christians understood from Jesus Christ that it was wrong, and they started to abolish it, these enemies of God turned their wrath on the Christians who abolished slavery. Jefferson and Washington were not proponents of it. They derived wealth from it because there it was. You grew up in a household and there were slaves from your father and from your mother, etc, but as they grew older, they understood from the teachings of Jesus Christ that this was not right, so they sought to undo it, but all these people who hate America and hate the views of Jefferson and Washington portray them as evil slave owners. Even today, there’s this Arab group in the Middle East that’s enslaving women. Sex slaves, raping little girls and nobody’s talking about it. Obama is having his coffee and steak, and he doesn’t give a hoot. This new obsession about race is used to manipulate black people in particular. Black people in the cities, coming from the South, were looking to maintain their tradition, which was home and the family, but many caved in to the circumstances. In the city, they were tempted with lax, easy, lenient punishment for committing crimes. When judges were not enforcing the laws, many blacks began to suffer. When behavior breaks down in one instance, it breaks down in

other areas. Blacks became not responsible for their children and for their families, so they would leave their wives, or they were impregnating girls and not taking care of their children. The earlier society with black people had traditional mores, traditional rules and behaviors. It was a much better society, much more civil. I remember as a child that there were one or two black families in the neighborhood that people felt you should not associate with, but overall, that was not the case. What has happened is that that one or two black families became the majority. When I was growing up, you did not hear “racism,” or all these other governmental terms. There was no “diversity.” It was America. We were colored or black, but we were Americans. You certainly didn’t hear “African-Americans.” You heard a lot of positives about being an American. Joe Louis, a very important black fighter, he talked about how proud he was to be an American. Jackie Robinson was proud to be an American. All that was instilled in us. You didn’t grow up to hate your country. There wasn’t antagonism towards law enforcement. Like any group or organization, you’re going to have bad apples here and there, but in general, there was no disrespect for police officers. There wasn’t this: He’s the enemy so we have to correct and change him. I stopped watching TV a long time ago because it’s all anti-God. The commercials have taken on the same air. Anything that’s vulgar and profane, if it insults God, Jesus Christ, they’ll push it out right away. When I was growing up, if you said, “Oh, my God,” people would say, “Don’t take God’s name in vain!” Today, they teach everybody to say that. If a movie comes out, and the scriptwriter only has “Oh, my God” 100 times, they’ll say put it in 200 times, so you grow up hearing oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. Everybody is saying it. It’s no big deal.

All these T-shirts I see, “Just Do It,” so right away, it conveys a sexual message. There was a time when you would be appalled at a little girl saying a cuss word. Now, you’ll hear them say mother this, mother that. It’s no big deal. All this came about to make sure that future generations would not have the Christian restraints of their parents. Stalin talked about it. Alinsky talked about it. Lenin said, “Give me the children and I’ll change the world.” They all know the way to corrupt and demoralize the people is through the young. Don’t let them hear about righteousness, don’t let them hear about God. That’s why today they are walking around with “Just Do It.” Anything that conveys sex is good. My parents and grandparents would have been appalled. Another thing is, in Catholic schools or public schools, if you misbehaved, your parents expected the teacher to give you a whopping, and if it got known when you came home, you got another whopping. It was expected that girls should behave better than boys. Today, they teach you, “Well, you’re a girl but you’re just like a boy, etc. There’s no difference. Don’t make a big deal about it. Do whatever you want to do.” There’s no value in being chaste anymore. A woman can stand around in all kinds of crooked postures. Back in the day, a woman would be ashamed to be standing around with a crooked posture. They’re taught to be crude, vulgar and profane. We’re seeing the results of two generations of deliberate, godless, profane, vulgar teachings in American society. And all these new words. “Transsexual” didn’t exist 50 years ago. These words are made up, which means the things they are talking about are made up. Just like “homosexual,” that word was coined probably in the early 20th century. Prior to that, you never heard such

a term. They made it up, then they tell people, “You are a special kind of person. This is who you are. You were born this way.” All of a sudden, you are no longer a man or a woman, you are something else. God didn’t just make men and women, he made all these different genders, with rights. They make these things up, then they go to the government and say, “You need special laws for these people.” If you are a man who loves a man, you are still a man who loves a man. You are not something called a homosexual. If you are a woman who thinks she is a man, you are still a woman and not a transsexual. What they’re aiming for is to get back to pederasty. NAMBLA, the North American Man/Boy Love Association is a favorite of the ACLU. Before too long, they’ll say that it’s good for a 12-year-old to have a male mentor. Pederasty was encoded in the 8th Century B.C. by this fellow, Lycurgus. He enacted it into law in 8th Century Sparta. Athens took it up later. Other Greek cities began to do that too. You get that from Plutarch, from his Lives. Plato borrowed from Lycurgus, but we never hear about Lycurgus because he’s so close to pederasty. People who are smart want to sneak this stuff in. They don’t want to hit you with a broad brush. They sneak around the corner. Under God’s law, there are some things man cannot do. God says, “No! No! No!’ so George Bernard Shaw, Bertrand Russell and all these big-headed people who thought so well of themselves, they went to work to push God out of the way. Julian Huxley, Margaret Sanger and Adolf Hitler were in the same group. They all believed in natural law. John Dewey, too. How he got to be in charge of American education, I’ll never know.

Marx dedicated his book to Darwin. When Darwin came out with evolution, they loved that. “Oh, wow! Now, we don’t need that Genesis stuff!” They believed that everything depends on what man… What did the Greeks say? Yes, man is the measure of all things. They believed that man decides what’s right and wrong, and they weren’t going to have God get in the way. All these people believed in eugenics, of course, Nietzsche said, “The heck with man.” So this is what they’ve been doing since the end of the 19th century. We had Ralph Waldo Emerson working on it in America. All these forces have been converging together against American society, which is God-based, and against the American Constitution, which is God-based. Freud was another problem. Psychology has done a terrible thing, because right away, they said, “We’ve got the answer, and it has nothing to do with God.” Freud and Jung said, “Let’s look at the human mind. Let’s push God aside, and let’s figure out what this thing is all about, on our own.” God already told you what the mind of man is. They said, “We’ve got a better idea. Man is divided into these compartments. The subconscious, the unconscious, etc, etc, and this is the libido,” so they built all this other stuff up, just like with evolution. They build up all these scenarios, from their own minds, put it in a book and go to the university, “This is the truth! If you give me the correct answer to this, I’ll make you a B.A., or a B.S.!” A lot of the illness or the evil in society has been deliberately injected into our people through the media and the schools, especially by those people who are hidden. I’m thinking of the planners like John Dewey and Antonio Gramsci. He was an Italian Communist. He said he was going to make American culture stink. He was going to make American culture so bad that it stinks.

There’s a DVD that’s put together by a state legislator, Curtis Bowers. It’s called Grinding America Down. It’s very good in terms of what some of these Communists, these philosophers, what their intent was for America, and they have succeeded. The Communists have infiltrated American institutions, the schools, the government, the parties, to get rid of the godly foundation of this country, so they can use their own selfish power to run American society. Communism wants to control people, and it wants to control their assets, their riches. We’ve had Communists in this country since the 1920s, especially with the ACLU under Roger Baldwin, who was its Communist founder. The ACLU is working every day to continuously corrupt political parties, and they’ve been very successful with Democrats, and the Republicans have not been much of a resistance. William Penn said, and this is from Romans 13, in the Bible, that government comes under the authority of God. He cited the origin of government in God’s Bible. This is where government comes from. Benjamin Franklin said that, “Except the Lord build the house, they build it in vain,” citing from the Bible. He was talking about the Constitution of our country. People think of Ben Franklin as some kind of anti-Christian. He was a Deist, they say. That’s ridiculous! Ben Franklin was a Christian Presbyterian governor who wrote proclamations about prayer in the classroom. Ben Franklin said on June 6th, 1787 that “I’ve lived a long time, and the more I live, the more convincing proofs I see of God’s governance in the affairs of man.” That’s in James Madison’s notes. In his autobiography, Benjamin Franklin wrote that “atheism is not known in America,” but they don’t teach that. Where did the

Founding Fathers come from? Did they come out of nowhere? The founding churches built this country, not the Founding Fathers! In these gift shops, they have these little books about Benjamin Franklin, but it’s all trivial nonsense. Or go into the BourseBuilding. A year or two ago, they had a big statue of Franklin, down in the basement. You can ask him a question, “Ah, how many children did you have, Ben?” You push this button and Franklin will answer. It’s just incredible, the length they’ll go to make our Founding Fathers look silly! A year ago, they had a big display sign of the Founding Fathers drinking champagne. I said to the security, “Do you know the administrator to this building? Well, you tell them I’m out here, and I’m protesting this caricature, this aberration of our Founding Fathers.” He said, “I will.” There used to be a cardboard caricature of Benjamin Franklin, with a mechanical arm that was going up and down, selling hamburgers and hot dogs, in front of the BourseBuilding. At the American Philosophical Society, they have a statue of Benjamin Franklin dressed in a toga! They have him dressed as a pagan! Columbus said, “The Lord put it in me.” Now, you’d think everybody would know at least one quote from the founder of America? They don’t know one quote from Christopher Columbus! Thomas Paine was not an American citizen. He was a Britisher. He was successful when he wrote that pamphlet, Common Sense, which excited a lot of people because it talked about sunshine patriots, etc, There was a lot of good prose that excited people. As a matter of fact, “Common Sense” was suggested by Benjamin Rush. Thomas Paine wanted to call it, “Plain Truth,” but Rush said, “Common Sense is better.”

Thomas Paine was great until one day, he decided to write The Age of Reason. He lost friendships because he blasphemed God. Paine showed that he was a Deist, if not an atheist altogether. Thomas Paine is celebrated by people in this country who wants to continue to tear down America. I stop in Washington Square, and I see people reading all this trivial nonsense about William Penn. On a sign, it mentions how William Penn was concerned about making a green city. The man came here because he was persecuted in England and put in jail! He came here to build a haven for people who were being persecuted! Also, the Quakers were at the forefront in the abolition of slavery, and that should be on the sign, not some nonsense about how he lay out some plants for a park in the city! But that’s what they do. They take you away from the important things, and give you the trivia and entertainment. It’s done deliberately. There is no such thing as a separation of church and state! They made it up, and they’ve gotten everybody to believe it. In 1947, they had a ruling in the Supreme Court, separation of church and state. Before that, God was everybody’s authority. Authority in America was God, then they started this nonsense in the Supreme Court. We’re living under Communists, a Communist in the White House, and this Communist Hillary Clinton, and all these other fools. That’s why we’re in this mess today. The world doesn’t have the respect it had for America anymore. All these Christians are being slaughtered, raped, destroyed, and people are saying, “Where is America?” America didn’t have to save South Korea. America went there out of the love that Christ taught, “Love thy neighbor.” In 1949, Truman said, “All men are created equal because we’re made in the image of God.” A couple years later, when South Korea was under attack, they

came to Truman’s office and cried, and that man said, “You’ve got our troops,” and he sent MacArthur. He didn’t have to. America does these things out of a loving, godly heart. We had a reputation of going to the rescue of people who were in trouble, people who were being besieged by an enemy, by an oppressor. That was our reputation. Today, you have in the Middle East all these slaughters going on, and people are saying, “Oh, my goodness, what happened to America?” America used to be a force for righteousness. Now, it’s acting like an evil nation, because we have an evil man in the White House. Obama doesn’t care. He was brought up as a Communist. His father was, his mother was, all of the family. Stalin gave them direction. Stalin said, “Break them down in their religion, break them down in their morality, break them down in their spiritual life, and America will crumble inside.” Stalin was right.

Eddie the Housepainter When 46-year-old Eddie found out I’d been interviewing people, he wanted to talk. “You can write a book about me!” and that’s true enough, but then again, I’ve never met an uninteresting person. Within a minute, Eddie was showing me photos of women on his cell phone. There was plenty of skin and at least one crotch shot. These voluptuous ladies had sent these boudoir selfies to him, Eddie growled, his eyes sparkling. Eddie’s a beefy dude, with a head like an Olmec statue. Though he wears a permanent scowl, it’s a friendly scowl. Eddie was in Friendly Lounge with his housepainting boss, Tony, an Italian dude who used to live in the neighborhood. After talking to Eddie, I checked out his FaceBook page. “im a fun loving guy who just wants peace in my life,” he introduces himself, and the first two photos feature Eddie with white women. In one, he’s in some bar and wearing a white T-shirt, “WHITE GIRLS LOVE ME.” With his arms outstretched, Eddie’s surrounded by eight white females and one bald white guy. The women appear to be in their 30’s and 40’s, though one, wearing granny glasses, has sweated, cursed and imbibed her way through nearly six decades, it seems. You go, grandma! In the other photo, two beaming blondes drape themselves all over Eddie. Below these shots, there’s a video of Oprah Winfrey begging her audience to vote for Hillary Clinton, and down the page, there’s a computer animation of Donald Trump making his most grotesque faces while sitting on a toilet.

Talking to me, Eddie brought up the pains of being rejected by his dad all his life. The rates of American children being born out of wedlock have been rising, calamitously, for decades, and currently stand at around 40%. Among blacks, it’s 72%. I’ve known Tony since high school. He lives in the suburbs too. I grew up in West Philly, right around the corner from the zoo, then I moved to the suburbs. I’ve been working with Tony for two years. I was in Boston for ten years. The only reason I came back here was because I had the cancer and everything. After they did the surgery, my family wanted me to come back, you know, be closer to home, in case it happens again. I was doing work. The customers loved the work. Their relatives were from Boston, and they were like, “Do you travel?” I said, “If it’s worth it, yeah.” So they put me on a job up there, and my ex-girlfriend, I stayed at her house for a while, then I bought my own place. When I moved up there, I just got work, work, work, work. I loved it up there! I loved it! I loved it! I loved it! It’s funny because I’m not like most black guys, black people, you know. I love the water, being out there on the water, fishing and all types of stuff, and there are so many bodies of water up there. That’s where I get my peace of mind, you know what I mean? I sit there and don’t have a care in the world. I didn’t have my own boat. I was renting the stuff right there. Here, it’s not the same because you can’t get in the water. I love fresh water. Fresh water is beautiful. I like deep sea fishing, salt water and all that, but freshwater is beautiful.

This whole summer, I didn’t hit the water at all. I didn’t even swim this summer. Did you hear what I just said, Tony? This whole summer, I didn’t even swim. Like, what the fuck! They have lakes up there, and they have park rangers and they’ve got grills up there, where you can grill, volleyball nets, all that stuff. It’s $4 a car-load, so you can have six people in a car. It only takes $4 to get in there. You can swim, fish, play volleyball, and you can do that almost any time. Everybody kept telling me that it’s crazy to move up there, like they’re so prejudiced up there, but they’re not. They were so nice. The first day I got up there, people were opening doors for me. They were like, “Hey, how are you doing?!” It was totally different from here, you know, and I loved it, just loved it. It’s not racial at all. There were so many mixed couples, so many Brazilians, Ecuadorians, all types. Puerto Ricans, Chinese, Asians, all, all, everything. They did have a bad rap, but it’s just not correct. They do still have certain areas. They still have these little gangs. Like, one of my buddies wanted to take me to a club. We get there, and I have to park down the street. They had already gone inside the club, but I had to park. When I got close, walking, two dudes stopped me. There was a black guy and a Puerto Rican guy. They were like, “Yo, you got the wrong color on.” So I opened my mouth, and I said, “You’ve got to be kidding me,” and I was laughing. “You don’t know my lifestyle. You’re coming at me like that?”

As soon as I opened my mouth, though, they were like, “Oh, you’re not from around here. Where are you from?” I said I’m from Philly, so they were like, “You’re cool, man.” I laughed at them, basically. There are different levels with me. You get mad, you get angry and you get upset, you know what I’m saying? I try not to get angry, at all. Angry takes me to a totally different place, which is not good, so I try not to do that. I try to stay at one focal point and, even though I’m mad at you right now, I’ll still say something stupid so that you laugh. Let’s say you’re just bothering me. I’ll walk outside or something, then come back in, and I’ll start fucking with you back, but in a fun way. Even though you were fucking with me in a bad way, I’ll come back and fuck with you, in a good way. I always try to turn a negative into a positive. You’re not going to defeat me by your words or whatever, you know, because I’m very smart. In the 7th grade, I used to smoke weed and stuff like that, came to class all high, and I still got A’s on my tests. They kept me after school, you know, because I was cheating, and I still got the same grade, so they were like, “You’re so smart to be so dumb.” My sociology teacher said, “You shouldn’t be getting high. You’re too intelligent for that.” It stuck with me all my life. Like, me and him are FaceBook friends. I texted him, “Hey Mr. Coleman, blah, blah, blah. Yo, thank you for saying that to me when I took your class,” and he was like, “Well, Eddie, I don’t remember what I said.” I told him, “You said that I was so smart to be so dumb,” and I always took that into my brain. My kids are mixed. I love white women. Ha, ha, ha!

We all bleed the same damn color. People don’t realize that racism is taught. If you take an Asian kid, a black kid and a white kid and put them in the sandbox, they’re going to play, until somebody say they can’t play with that child. It’s the parents. The parents may come up to that kid, “Get out of there! You can’t play with them!” You know what I mean? The kids will act how kids act. They don’t know no better. They’ll play! Me, I have no problems at all. You respect me, I respect you. Like I said, I have mixed kids, but growing up, I was shot at because I was black. I walked through the wrong neighborhood. Somebody tried to shoot me with a harpoon! I’ve been through some shit. I can’t help it if I’m black. I can’t help that. That’s what he does, you know, scuba diving. He didn’t hit me. I was lucky I got pushed out of the way. This was growing up in the suburbs, Lansdowne, Yeadon, Upper Darby. I got shot at, you know what I mean, because I walked on the sidewalk. Cops in Darby, they beat me up. It was a domestic call. My wife was white, OK? We had kids, mixed kids. The argument was next door, not my house, but they came at my house, threw me down the steps, beat me up, put me in a cop car, then turned around and told me, “If you don’t want to go to the hospital, you better give me your address,” so I gave them my address. They were like, “You don’t live there. A white girl lives there.” They were like, “Where you live at?” I gave them the address again. They were like, “You don’t live there! You go to the hospital,” so guess what? I went to the hospital. They beat me the fuck up! They took me from my house. She was living there, with me! I couldn’t even fight back. My wife said, “That’s my husband,” but they made her go back in the house. This was ‘92.

I came home the next day. They ripped my shirt. I had a button shirt. They cut it in the back, with a razor, so I’m walking in my shirt with a hole in it. They made me walk home without no shoes. So I went to my old neighborhood. I talked to my mom and all that, and we went to the Lansdowne police station, because we knew an officer there. They said there was nothing they could do about it, because there’s a code of silence among the police officers, or so they said, so my sister took it to a different level. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Mary Mason? WHAT? My sister took it to a radio station. They had a picture of me. They had a picture of my clothes. They had a picture of me all beat up and everything. Over nothing! Over nothing! Literally. I was beaten up over nothing! I ended up suing them but, again, I was young, so I settled out of court with them. I ended up getting, like, $45,000. If I kept it going, I would have gotten a whole lot more. Like I said, again, then I was selling drugs. I had an arsenal. I had guns and stuff like that, you know. I was going to blow the police station the fuck up, you know what I mean, but the police station was right next to a school, so I couldn’t do that. No, I didn’t have a record then. I never got caught. They were arguing next door. It wasn’t us! They went to the wrong house and fucked me up! I’ve got three friends that are police officers. I trust them, but I don’t trust those other ones. As soon as I saw them, it’s, “Yes, sir,” whatever, but they threw me to the ground and worked me over!

For two years, they harassed me. They banned me from that town. If they saw me driving, they’d pull me over. They were like, “You’ve got two minutes to get out of this town!” I had to move back to my mom for a little while. My wife and kids, too. I never got bitter over that. I get sick of reading stuff now in the news. I think about my children’s security. It pisses me off, you know. Like I said, again, I already lived that life. Innocent people getting beaten up by the cops, getting killed, that could have been me, I could have gotten killed. That night. What I was doing was, I was avoiding that act, you know, which was kind of hard to do, because certain roads led that way, so I had to take back streets just to keep away. Again, I was still young too. I was going to blow the hell out of that police station, you know what I mean? I had the artillery to do it, but, again, glory to God and all that. God had my back! Otherwise, that police station and whoever was in it was gone! There’s a kid that I went to school with, they killed him in a cell. Now, when they put you in that cell, they take your shoe strings, they take your belt and they take your shirt from you, so how are you going to hang yourself? He’s 6-4. How do you hang yourself when you’re 6-4 and you’re in a 6-foot cell? You can’t! He was a good kid, but he was a bad kid, you know what I mean? I forget how he got locked up. He got locked up for something. They killed him the same night. They locked him up, then they killed him. You can look it up. It’s on the internet still. My wife stayed with me. Five years later, we split up, but it wasn’t over that. I had three children with her, my oldest three.

She got mad because I moved on. I had another woman. I was just having another kid. I had a reason to dump her, you know what I mean? If you’re in a relationship, and you’re not growing. You’re supposed to grow together. She cheated on me. I’m sure she did. She got caught twice, so when she started doing it, I started doing it. She did it first, she did it first, she started it. All I did was work. I worked, then came home, I swear to God! I was bringing home $1,300 cash a week. I was taking out vent systems, heaters, boilers and all that. I was bringing all this money home. It’s heavy work, back-breaking stuff. All you wanted to do was go home to your shower and that’s it. Eat, then sleep. I was mad because she was collecting welfare. It’s like, “Why are you collecting welfare?” We’ve got plenty of money. We had a good life. It’s because of her girlfriends. It was like, “You can get this, you get that.” Now, I had no insurance and stuff. I told her, “You can get the medical, and you can get the food stamps, but don’t get the cash,” but she went out and got it all. She got all the benefits, so I ended up in the system. I told the judge, “How are you locking me up, when my kids live with me? Like, what are you talking about? This is my house. My kids live with me and everything.” Well, it was because of her, she was getting welfare, but I didn’t know. I was getting locked up for a month here, a month there, you know. When they locked you up in the state of Pennsylvania, they suspended your license, so how could you get to work? If you had a driving job, you couldn’t do it. It’s fucked up! I told the judge, again, here you go, “My kids live with me. I don’t owe her nothing. Why am I here? If you look at the record, you’ll understand what I’m talking about here. I’m confused. You guys locked me up, like, six fuckin’ times,” so he said, “Ma’am, why is he here?”

“Oh, I’m trying to get more money, blah, blah, blah blah,” so he looked and found out that she had a warrant out, so he said to me, “Mr. Calvin, you want me to lock her up? What she’s doing is welfare fraud.” I said, “Your honor, no.” I said no. “We’re not together no more. I didn’t suffer from you guys. I was in the system. I was in jail six times, but I’m done now.” I said, “No, that’s my kids’ mother. Don’t lock her up.” He went to her, and he said, “Ma’am, this is a hell of a nice guy. Why did you do this to him?” She had no answer. She was acting real stupid. I looked at her and I said, “I told you you wasn’t going to get no money.” That’s what I said to her. “I told you you weren’t going to get no money. The judge could have locked you up, no matter what I said. You heard what he said. It was welfare fraud. You’re stupid for even bringing me in here.” I had three kids with her, my oldest three. I have a kid that’s getting ready to turn four, up in Boston. All of my other kids are here. I’ve got 24, 21, 20, 16, 15 and one that’s getting ready to turn four. I grew up without a father, so I was going to make sure I’m not going to be like my father, you know what I mean? My three oldest, I put money into their accounts, in their names. They each have $50,000 in their bank account, right now. They’ve got more money than I do. Now, my younger ones, my 16 and 15-year-old, they’ve got about $10,000. The baby don’t have shit, you know what I mean, but she’s going to get hers. I was doing the smart thing with the money. Like I said, I grew up without a father, so I’m going to provide for my kids, no matter what. I’ll suffer later, but as long as my kids are OK, then I’m happy.

When I did get to know my father, I met him in church. I was 16 years old when I got to meet my father. I went to church with my mom. I was 16. Again, I was selling drugs, but I was also working at McDonald’s and going to school. He comes into church, sits behind us and goes like this to my mom. Taps on her shoulder, “Who’s that?” She almost cursed in church. “It’s a shame you don’t know your own son!” I turned around and almost flipped, but then I realized I was in church. I was like, “You made me and you don’t know who I am?!” When she got pregnant by him, she was with him for, like, five years. She said, “I’m pregnant,” and the next day, he was gone. My father did this to five other women, the same exact thing, because I have five brothers. He did the same thing to each one of the women. My father, I almost killed him, in church. I was so angry. Yeaah. Yeaah. I was like, “How can you not know who I am? Where was you at?” Like, “Why don’t you want me? What did I do to you? I didn’t do anything to you. You made me,” but there was nothing, not a fuckin’ word, not a fuckin’ word. I never called him dad. I never called him pop. There was nothing until I turned 18. When we graduated high school, I paid for his parking to come see me graduate. That’s fucked up. Now, my grandfather and grandma loved the shit out of me. I knew them. I knew them since I was three! My grandparents, they loved me. They knew who I was. My grandpop and grandmom used to always brag about me when I walked down the street, when I walked by the house, everything like that. They’d say, “There goes my grandson.” They would tell people,” There’s my grandson.”

My father came to my graduation because I begged him to come. Face to face, I was like, “I’m your son. Aren’t you proud of me for graduating, at least?” He was like, “Well, she has money.” I paid for his parking. I paid for his ticket. We got, like, three graduation tickets, and you had to pay for two more. I paid for it. I paid for him. It was $10 or something. He didn’t want to pay $10 to see his son graduate. That’s why I made a promise to myself. I said that when I have kids, no matter what happens between me and the girl, my kids are going to know who I am, and that I was there, so that’s what I’ve done. Tony gets mad that a lot of his crew don’t have cars and stuff, but when my son, my first born, made me a grandpa, I gave him my truck. I know what it’s like to be on a bus with kids, grocery shopping and all that, with the kid wrapped around you, and you carrying bags and getting on a bus. I know what it’s like, so I gave him my truck. I told Tony, “I ain’t got no vehicle, man. I gave it to my son. I ain’t got no car!” But it made me feel good, because I would never be like my father. Never! When I hear people, because I hear people all the time, like how they hate their mom, how they hate their dad, and I’m like, I can see how you hate your dad, and you must have a reason, but at least you’re living together. I didn’t have that. All I had was my mom. You’ve got a mom and a dad, so you should be happy, you’re lucky, because I didn’t have that.

Rudy Dent a 9-11 First Responder On February 18th, I was in Detroit to attend a presentation, “The War on Islam: 9/11 Revisited, Uncovered & Exposed.” Sponsored by the Nation of Islam, it featured Kevin Barrett, Richard Gage and Christopher Bollyn. Prefacing, Ilia Rashad Muhammad remarked that 9/11 is more relevant than ever, since it has been used to curb the freedoms of all Americans, especially Muslims. Moreover, it has “literally impacted America, and the world, like never before.” As a pretext for endless war, 9/11 hasn’t just deformed this whole earth, it threatens to destroy it. Reminding us that false flags are far from unusual, Kevin Barrett cited 10 famous examples from history: Nero allegedly burning Rome; Gunpowder Plot; sinking of the USS Maine; sending of the Lusitania, a passenger ship loaded with explosives, into a war zone; Pearl

Harbor; Gulf of Tonkin Incident; Israel’s attack on the USS Liberty; bombing of the USS Cole; 1993 World Trade Center bombing; all the post 9-11 false flags, including Orlando, Charlie Hebdo and the ones in Paris in November of 2015, etc.; 9/11. Richard Gage patiently proved that the collapse of all three WTC buildings couldn’t have been caused by fire. He paid particular attention to Building 7, which was hit by no plane and suffered almost no damage before it collapsed, at free fall speed, into its own footprint. Gage stated that nano-thermite was found in WTC dust samples, and asked why 163,000 tons of concrete pulverized in midair? His organization, the 2,500-strong Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, simply wants a proper investigation into what happened. Christopher Bollyn began by thanking Louis Farrakhan as “the only religious leader in our nation who has addressed the gigantic, horrendous fraud of 9/11.” Then: 9/11 was carried out to kick start the War on Terror, a Zionist war agenda of aggression, terrorism and conquest which continues to this day […] We will not have peace as a nation, or a world, if we continue to accept the deception of 9/11 […] If the government and media are lying to us about 9/11, it means that they are controlled by the very same people who carried out 9/11 […] Both 9/11 and the War on Terror were conceived and planned in Israel in the 1970’s by Israeli military intelligence […] The War on Terror is an Israeli stratagem, a ploy pushed by Netanyahu—since 1979—to trick the United States into waging war against Israel’s enemies. With the 1979 Jerusalem Conference on International Terrorism, the book Terrorism: How the West Can Win and speech after speech, Netanyahu’s central project is the War on Terror. Bollyn pointed out the absurdity of Bibi’s stance considering that Israel was founded on terror, is maintained by terror, and had a master terrorist, Menachim Begin, as one of its prime ministers.

All three speakers were raptly received by an audience of about two thousand, all but a dozen of them Black Muslims. Mingling afterwards, I met Rudy Dent, a retired fireman, ex cop and Vietnam vet. Flying from NYC, Dent was only in Detroit for a few hours. This mild, affable man is known for an InfoWars interview, conducted in Times Square on September 11th, 2014. It already has 2.4 million views. Dent spoke of firemen being in Building 7 “calling for additional hand lines to mop up the isolated pockets of fire.” Because no skyscrapers had ever collapse due to fire, they never suspected this 52-story building would suddenly become their tomb. Explaining that fire cannot, by itself, burn hot enough to melt steel, Dent related: What we had in the WorldTradeCenter, and I saw myself, was molten, lava-like pockets of molten steel, all right? I spent the night on the pile searching for bodies, and I saw that with my own eyes. So who are you going to believe? Are you going to believe a bunch of government bureaucrats, or my fellow brothers, which I lost 343 guys that day? And I lost Tommy O’Hagan, Bruce van Hines and Kenny Cumple, and I can never forget that. I think of that before I go to bed. I think about it first thing in the morning when I wake up, and it’s in honor of them and their family that I will continue to do everything I can to make the rest of the world wake up to the fact that this was a false flag operation. In Detroit, I tagged along as Dent was driven to the airport. We talked about his life, world view and, of course, experience of 9/11. I saw the contradiction in real time, absolutely. You know, I was there in 1993. I was inside the building with the FBI. I saw the immensity of that explosion. It was surreal. I mean, it was fully intended to bring down, to topple the building. It blew a hole in the ground, through the concrete, about three stories down.

You know, they waited, then they did it again. In 2001, I was there to see the third building come down, and what caught my attention were not the explosions, because I’m used to explosions. I spent two and a half years in Vietnam, so I’m used to explosions, but when I saw my fellow firefighters jump in a panic reaction to the loud noise of an explosion, which they’re not used to, and they’re not trained for, that’s what shocked me. My fellow firefighters, they’re professional guys, but for the most part, they’re not combat veterans, right? I looked at the building where the explosions came from, and that’s when I saw building 7 come down. You know, the real simple thing anybody can see, from the start, is that if they look at Tower 1 or 2, it’s disintegrating from the top down. It’s being demolished, pulverized and blown up, from the top down, while the base remains solid. The difference with Building 7 is they blow it up from the bottom, and you see the whole building come down intact. That’s something any layman can look at and say, “Wait a minute! Something’s wrong here. Something is very, very wrong here.” I spoke out right away, on FaceBook, then I met Richard Gage. That’s when I started to speak out on behalf of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth. Richard brought it to the public’s attention. He broke into the mainstream and had them begrudgingly acknowledge that there was a Building 7. Otherwise, we would still not even know that Building 7 went down, so he was a key player. Given the legitimacy of Architects and Engineers, specifically focusing on their area of expertise, they could not be marginalized and dismissed. The mainstream media interviewed Richard only with the intent of luring him into a trap. That is, of having him make a comment such as, “Well, it’s a conspiracy theory, you know,” but he avoided every trick and trap they tried to lure him into, and he responded by saying, “That’s a political assumption. We’re not political. We are specialists

in our area of expertise, and we’re questioning the 9/11 Commission’s findings.” I don’t know if you know this story, but Richard bought pizza for all of his associate architects, just to get them to come in and listen to him. Otherwise, nobody wanted to hear anything about “conspiracy theories,” and against the government, no less. That’s a big stretch and, you know, almost un-American. Being involved with this has cost me friends, family, health. You spend long hours researching it, and that’s time you’re not doing what you’d normally be doing. I used to be very physical. I used to like to do a lot of landscaping. Spending long hours sitting down, researching stuff, takes a toll on your eyes, and it’s not good for your health. Friends, you know, who are still stuck in cognitive dissonance, you’re at odds with them, and family. Just because they’re family doesn’t mean they’ll go along with you. They’re stuck where they are. It’s a painful trip for everybody. People who’ve really gotten into researching 9/11, something didn’t sit right with them, so somewhere along the line, they had a kind of trauma, you know, a trigger that got them into actually looking into it a bit further, and thinking for themselves. I conveyed my disbelief on the web, on FaceBook, but I knew what I was dealing with. Cognitive dissonance is a powerful thing. I took my time and let my FaceBook friends get to know me. I would address it a little bit at a time, with a little bit of evidence. I’d impartially ask questions. If I went too far, I’d get a deafening silence, because nobody wanted to stick their neck out. It was like saying, “Yeah, I believe in flying saucers.” It’s a touchy subject that affects your credibility. I simply took it real slow. People got to know me then, finally, instead of a deafening silence, people started responding, adding more information, based on their own research.

All these videos that were coming out, I’d share them. Now, if you go on the web, the information you’re getting is phenomenal, so it’s not even you sharing what you know, but you benefiting from other people sharing what they know. In the beginning, there were firefighters who were there telling what they saw, as survivors, but a lot of them went out with injuries, with lung problems. I had lung problems myself. We lost a lot of experienced firefighters from that day, and directly afterwards. There were guys who came down really sick. For about two or three months, I had all kinds of gray, black phlegm coming out of my lungs. We’ve got a new batch of firefighters who are trained and disciplined to follow orders and not question, so they follow the official line that’s handed down the chain of command. This is what happened, this is what the 9/11 Commission said. That’s it. They left it at that. As for the older guys, most of them are gone. They were forced to retire with lung problems and things like that. For the most part, 9/11 is not discussed in the firehouse. I sense, from talking to the guys, right there in the firehouse, that there’s a morale problem. They’re starting to understand that they have no protection from this new kind of, ah, sudden collapse syndrome. If it were to occur again, they would be expected to just charge into a building, as they did before, and put their lives on the line. The training in the New York City Fire Department is absolutely top notch. The people in the research of standard operational procedures are really the best you can get. They don’t want any man to come back and haunt them for a lack of training, but here, you have a situation where there’s no corrective measure to prevent a repeat of what happened.

As with soldiers, there is no respect for firemen at all. You know Henry Kissinger. Did you see his famous quote? He said, “Soldiers are dumb, stupid animals to be used.” As a result of that false flag operation, we lost more people on that day than we did at Pearl Harbor. Now, Pearl Harbor was also a false flag. We have broken the Japanese code, and we knew an attack was imminent. FDR had to comply with the wishes of the Zionists, you know, the Globalists’ intent to start World War II. They needed a false flag, so Pearl Harbor was that false flag. From there, they got their World War II, and their myth of a six-million Holocaust. I researched that, and that’s a complete lie. All you have to do is go to the International Red Cross and look at their detailed findings, because they had access to the so-called concentration camps, which were in fact work camps. Auschwitz itself, I’ve posted on that. There’s a very good video called, “One Third of the Holocaust,” and it explains all that. There’s a lot going on. Right now, as a result of 9/11, we’re sending off our sons and daughters to invade sovereign nations, based on preemptive strikes and false flags, to kill people we have more in common with than the people who are sending us. And they come back in boxes, they come back missing limbs, they come back with traumatic brain injury, post traumatic stress disorder, and currently committing suicide at the rate of 22 per day. You don’t see that on the front page, where it should be, every day. So, that’s another proof that the mainstream media is in the hands of the enemy, and it’s not doing its job. It’s all connected. It’s all part of the big picture. I was arguing with an academic who was doing a detailed research on Hitler and how the Zionists funded his early beginning. OK, fine, that’s all good and well,

but if you’re going to look at something, look at every relevant dimension of it. So anyway, I tried to explain that to him, and he said, “Well, what does my research have to do with America?” I said, “Really? Did you really ask me that?! And you’re supposed to be intelligent?” In the time of the Renaissance, there were big, strong warriors who wore heavy armor and were hoisted by a pulley system onto the saddle of their Clydesdale, right? With their lance, very powerful, they were the tanks of their day. When they got injured, the procedure was to take a sword and put it in the fire until it got orange, then they laid it in the wound to cauterize it. There was no stitching or anything like that. It used to take ten men to try to hold that warrior down, until they discovered that all it took was a young, pretty maiden, you know. All she had to do was put her hand on the back of the warrior’s wrist, and he wouldn’t scream out, he wouldn’t fight back, he would take it, right? Now, that’s a good example of how we have been chained, and given a taboo in our brain against even daring to question the so-called Holocaust, their big cash cow. I’m here to tell you it is an outright, utter lie. In my town, I have a lot of good friends that are Jewish, and there are a lot of decent, good Jewish people who are no different than any of us. They work, they even go to war, pay their taxes, they’re no different than us. They may not even be religious, they’re secular, right? They just happen to be Jewish, but those same people are being used. In America, the population of Jewish people is 2%. Within that 2%, there are 4% who are the hardcore, extremist elements who are the policy makers, who run and control America.

We have a sadly predictable, knee jerk reaction that’s instilled in us, so that we feel compassion for the poor Jews who were actually burnt alive in an oven, and all the stories they put out, you know, when in fact, it was nothing but a cover story to cover the real atrocity that they committed, and the millions of people that they exterminated, and the fact that they were behind, that the Rothschild bankers were instigating, orchestrating and profiting from World War II. So it’s all connected, and our minds have been polluted with over 70 years of indoctrination to actually believe this stuff, and see the world through our enemy’s eyes, being incapable of seeing their lies. When we dare to venture into looking into that, we risk alienating a lot of friends. Living in my town, I saw what was being done by the Ultra Orthodox and Orthodox, the way they took over the town. As a police officer, I believed I could handle myself because I knew the laws, then I found out the laws were being circumvented by politicians who were bought and paid for by the bloc vote, the Ultra Orthodox Jews, a religious hate cult. A really good perspective is Henry Ford’s book, and they bought it all up and destroyed as many as they could. Ford sponsored scholars to go around the world and study the Jewish issue, and they wrote a book called The International Jew, and that’s what the problem is. This Zionist political movement is a globalist movement. They may be born in a country, grew up in it and even be successful in that country, as German Jews were, you know, but they have no loyalty to their hosts. After four years, I was happy to get out of the police department because I could see that the prison industrial complex was a profitable business, by design, just like the Holocaust industrial complex.

It’s a vicious, repetitious cycle where you have victims victimizing, and as long as you have an influx of perpetrators to use as slave labor, stamping out license plates, making lights and stuff like that, it’s a profitable business. Why do you think all these entrepreneurs want to get private prisons and build them? One of them sued the state because they didn’t provide him with enough prisoners. We don’t care if they’re innocent, go out and arrest them!

III On Blacks

Black and Blonde Nowadays, the United States exports almost nothing but weapons, noises, images and attitudes, and among the last, the black ghetto, keeping it real, thug, gangsta life is being gobbled up eagerly by millions all over, from Jakarta to Istanbul, to Berlin. White, yellow or brown, many pose enthusiastically as dwellers of the American black ghetto. Their fantasy makeover is derived entirely from music videos and Hollywood films. In East Germany, the catalyst was Beat Street, one of the first hip hop movies. Released in 1984, it was shown in East Germany merely a year later. Communist censors deemed it an indictment of Capitalism and the United States. To East German youths, however, it provided a mental escape from their Communist confinement. By spraying graffiti and break dancing, they could imagine themselves as living beyond the Iron Curtain. Germany’s fascination and identification with American minorities started with the American Indian, whom many Germans still admire for his purity, simplicity and toughness. There is a saying, “An Indian feels no pain.” “Ein Indianer kennt keinen Schmerz.” Just as the Germanic chieftain Arminius resisted Rome, defeating it in 9 AD, the Amerindian is seen as a heroic warrior against much superior force. He’s also the antidote to the white man’s corruptions. Of course, Germany is still very white and, in many ways, the epitome of white civilization. Nevertheless, there is a longing among many Germans, at least occasionally, to strip away the deforming gown of civilization and be savage. Pagan impulses tug at the brand name underpants of each German.

Since the Amerindian is the ideal man, his society must be perfect, or nearly so. A most curious German, Christian Prieber, even had a plan to turn a Cherokee settlement into Utopia. Born in Saxony in 1697, Prieber was chased out for his subversive ideas, so he fled to England, leaving behind his wife and children. In 1735, Prieber arrived in the New World. After brief stops in Savannah and Charleston, Prieber ended up by 1736 in Great Tellico, a Cherokee town in present-day Tennessee. Accepted into their community, he quickly became their counselor. Prieber’s residence with the Cherokees ended after seven years, however, when he was arrested by the British. Accused of being an agent for the French, Prieber died in jail a year later. Ludovick Grant, an English trader, described the prisoner, “he is a very extraordinary Kind of a Creature; he is a little ugly Man, but speaks almost all Languages fluently, particularly English, Dutch, French, Latin and Indian; he talks very prophanely against all Religions, but chiefly against the Protestant; he was setting up a Town at the Foot of the Mountains among the Cherokees, which was to be a City of Refuge for all Criminals, Debtors, and Slaves who would fly thither from Justice or their Masters […] being a great Scholar he soon made himself master of their Tongue, and by his insinuating manner Indeavoured to gain their hearts. He trimm’d his hair in the indian manner & painted as they did going generally almost naked except a shirt & a Flap. He told these people that they had been strangely deluded, that they had been tricked out of a great part of their Land by the English […] He proposed to them a new System or plan of Government, that all things should be in common amongst them, that even their Wives should be so and that the Children should be looked upon as the Children of the public and be taken care of as such and not by their natural parents […] that they should admit into their Society Creeks & Catawbaws, French & English, all Colours and Complexions, in short all who were of these principles […] He enumerates many whimsical Privileges and natural Rights, as he calls them, which his citizens are to be entitled to, particularly dissolving Marriages and allowing Community of Women,

and all Kinds of Licenciousness […] it is a Pity so much Wit is applied to so bad Purposes.” There is no evidence the Cherokees went along with Prieber’s social engineering, though they did accept his practical advice on how to deal with the treacherous and exploitative white man. He also taught them English measurements of distance and weight. An enemy of private property, organized religion and the nuclear family, Prieber was a Communist before his time. His gravitation towards the Cherokees is further proof of his rejection of Western Civilization. The Indians also provided him with a more malleable clay, he thought, to sculpt his Utopian masterpiece. The more one identifies with the primitive, the more one rejects the elaboration and refinement of advanced civilization. Germans are among the most civilized, and I don’t measure that by bombastic monuments, but by the subtlest civilized gestures. Outside the entrance of a shopping mall toilet, I noticed management had left bowls of water and dog food, and inside each bathroom stall at my university, there is a toilet bowl scrubber to use if necessary. Germans also rarely jaywalk or litter. Of course, they have also produced guys with names like Bach, Beckmann and Sebald. I work on Beethoven Street. Hey, rambling schmuck, and what about dudes with names like Mengele, Heydrich and, uh, Hitler?! I’m talking about civilization’s forms, not its moral contents. Except when they go berserk, Germans are among the most domesticated. In this, they resemble the Japanese. Both have been superbly toilet trained. Urbanized and cultured, Germans miss their earthier, more savage selves, and this persistent longing has surfaced in movements such as Wandervogel [Wandering Bird], Völkisch [Folksy] and Blut and Boden [Blood and Soil], the last of which painted the Jew as a degenerate, urban egghead, and the true German as a rigorous, pure and timeless being that’s dirt coated, sun splashed and wind lashed, not unlike an American Indian. In the 70’s, some German anarchists dubbed themselves Stadtindianer, or Urban Indians. (They were modeled after an Italian group, Indiani Metropolitani. “We have unearthed the

battle ax!” went a rallying cry. “Abbiamo dissotterrato l’ascia di guerra!”) With the advent of hip hop, German malcontents have a contemporary role model. Instead of the mythical American Indian, they can now mimic American ghetto blacks, as purveyed by Hollywood. In Beat Street, there are many panoramas of the South Bronx, with its abandoned homes, garbage and graffiti. With no such slums, Germany didn’t look quite gritty or cool enough, so the ghetto had to be willed into being. So far, German graffiti sprayers, window breakers and litterers are only partially successful, but give them time. They’ll get there. Leipzig’s most ghetto-like neighborhood is Connewitz, and it’s not because poor people live there, but because it’s a stronghold of Communists and Anarchists. There’s hardly a building that’s not repeatedly marred by spray paint, and most of the graffiti are free of political contents. It’s just vandalism. Defending it, a young female Leipziger explained to me, “They don’t really care about private property.” All of the mom and pops that make up the majority of Connewitz businesses must be repainted constantly. That this is such a huge waste of manpower and resources doesn’t bother the “green” progressives of Leipzig. On December 12th, 2015, the left went violent when less than a hundred rightists marched through Connewitz. A thousand Communists, Anarchists and other self-proclaimed militants hurled stones and bottles, set fires, injured 69 cops, damaged 50 police vehicles and broke scores of windows in their own neighborhood. Banks, including local credit unions, were particularly targeted. As an indication of the German police’s restraint, none of the raging leftists were hurt, though 23 were arrested. I walked through Connewitz the next afternoon. Seeing all the broken windows, I could easily picture a day when all of these businesses would be forced to evacuate, leaving this once lovely section to resemble the menacing and dismal black ghetto of the hip German

rebel’s fantasy. You can’t be oppressed if you don’t dwell in the ghetto. Rap has gone a long way since Beat Street. Though it is a diverse form, its most salient characteristic is aggression. One doesn’t even need to understand the lyrics to grasp this. With its extreme narcissism, glorification of violence and contempt for women, quite a bit of rap is also against any civilization, not just the white man’s. Other musical genres, such as punk and heavy metal, also flaunt antisocial attitudes, but they don’t have the circulation of rap, and some of their worst practitioners aren’t international icons. Ya, ya, I’m just an old head who don’t know nothing about creativity. I’ve never heard of Blumio, the Japanese-German who fillets and fish wraps the news in rhymes, and I ain’t got no appreciation for the exhilarating, rapid fire flow of Samy Delux when he claims, quite rightly, of course, that he’s Germany’s best poet, “Ich bin so Schiller, so Goethe / So bitter, so böse / Noch immer der größte / Poet der hier lebt.” “I’m so Schiller, so Goethe / So acerbic, so wicked / Still the greatest / Poet who lives here.” One of the earliest German hip hop albums was called “Krauts with Attitude,” a clear nod to N.W.A., “Niggers with Attitude.” N.W.A. has become very mainstream, of course, as attested by the 2015 release of Straight out of Compton. Around Leipzig, I now see stickers and posters of seven masked German militants, under the heading “STRAIGHT OUT OF CONNEWITZ.” With their hatred of the state, nation and law and order, German leftist radicals see American ghetto blacks, as portrayed in movies, music videos and newscasts, as kindred spirits. Of course, they have no familiarity with ordinary black folks who go to work and church, and cherish quite traditional values. Seeing blacks rioting in American cities, these Germans cheer and look forward to doing the same. Hating not just the worst aspects of civilization, but nearly all of it, they just want to tear everything down, for Utopia, you see, is just beyond the blood red horizon.

In Berlin, there’s a graffiti of a black man pointing a gun, “HANDS UP.” In Leipzig, there’s a painted silhouette of a man hovering over an upturned skateboard, with a balloon tied to his wrist, “KILL COPS.” In Leipzig, one end of a bench has, “NO BRAIN.” The other end, “HATE COPS.” All of the anti-cop graffiti I’ve seen in Germany are written in English, by the way. This is only appropriate since many of these radicals’ firmest and most up-to-date beliefs have also been imported from the USA. Even the slogans are often the same, i.e., “NO MAN IS ILLEGAL.” Believing themselves so progressive, they’re actually just puppets of the empire. No Arminiuses, they’re bit players in Rome’s master scheme. Media masturbated, they’re preparing their own kind for rape.

Blacks, Cops and a Sinking Economy In Ethnic America, Thomas Sowell observes: American pluralism was not an ideal with which people started but an accommodation to which they were eventually driven by the destructive toll of mutual intolerance in a country too large and diverse for effective dominance by any one segment of the population. The rich economic opportunities of the country also provided alternative outlets for energies, made fighting over the division of existing material things less important than the expansion of output for all, and rewarded cooperative efforts so well as to make it profitable to overlook many differences. Racial, ethnic and religious differences can be overlooked as long as there are rich economic opportunities, but absent this expansion of output for all, pluralism collapses and explodes into mutual resentment, finger pointing and violence, and we’re only at the beginning of this hell. Those on the lowest rungs have a near monopoly on street crimes (as opposed to boardroom heists). Perennially at the economic bottom, blacks crowd American prisons. The right attribute this to the natural outcomes of inequality between races. The left blame it on racism. What can’t be argued is that blacks have been hurt tremendously by the relentless importation of cheap labor for menial work. How ironic, then, that blacks are loyal to a Democratic Party that has robbed them of employment and dignity. Liberal immigration policies harm blacks more than anybody.

In theory, blacks can leave the heavy lifting, garbage and grease behind, attend college then glide into the financial or tech sectors of our “new economy.” They can follow the lead of Marvel’s new Iron Man, a 15-year-old black girl who is a tech genius and graduate of MIT. Outside the superhero universe, less competitive people of any color or age are lucky to snare a minimum wage job at McDonald’s or Chick-fil-A. With a 2015-16 enrollment of 11,331, MIT has 524 blacks, or 4.6%, as compared to 14.4% for the general population. Even this low number comes with an asterisk, however, thanks to affirmation action, a racist policy that hurts all non-blacks as well as blacks that don’t need this stigmatic prosthesis. Ron Unz points out: The more conspiratorially-minded racialists, bitterly hostile to immigration, sometimes speculate that there is a diabolical plot by our ruling power structure to ‘race-replace’ America’s traditional white population. Perhaps a hidden motive along these lines does indeed help explain some support for heavy immigration, but I suspect that the race being targeted for replacement is not the white one. By July 4th, there had been more than 2,000 shootings this year in Chicago. Though only a third of its population, blacks commit more than 70% of the city’s murders, and this huge discrepancy is repeated across the country. Teaching a political writing class in Leipzig, I showed my German students the Philadelphia Police Department’s YouTube channel. Video after video had black men committing crimes. Though I hadn’t picked the day or sequence, I pretty much knew what we would see. In Bensalem, a Philly suburb, I paused at an electronic billboard to stare at one black crime suspect after another.

At Jones Corner Bar, a black dive in Steelton, PA, the news came on to show a murderer’s face. “It’s a brother!” someone shouted. Way too often, it is. A month earlier, there had been an armed robbery at Jones, and three months before, someone had been shot just outside. I’ve wandered through dozens of unfamiliar European and Asian cities late at night without fear of physical harm. In the US, this would not be too wise, mostly because of black crimes. Though all Americans recognize this menace, it’s not supposed to be aired, and even the term “black crimes” is taboo in polite company. Feeling increasingly superfluous, blacks have been lashing out and popping everybody, including cops. Cops shoot blacks and other races, sometimes preemptively. If we were still a sane country, each shooting would be examined singly, but the left only see police abuse. As for the right, blacks are just getting their deserts. Micah Johnson, the alleged sniper in Dallas, was blown to bits by a robot-delivered police bomb. Was there no other way to neutralize the suspect? Increasingly, our law enforcement resorts to summary execution. In this left/right, black/white society, few can admit that America has a problem with police brutality and black crimes, and that unchecked immigration exacerbates both. What hurts us benefits our rulers, however, for they get low wages, disunity among an increasingly pissed off populace and support for even more surveillance and iron-fisted policing. It won’t be their blood that will be spilled this summer and beyond. On May 18th, 2015, Obama came to Camden, New Jersey, a majority black city with one of the nation’s highest crime rates. A huge crowd lined the route of the President’s motorcade, and the mood was quite festive, with dancing and drumming. Flags were waved. The

cops who provided security that day had to endure a hail of verbal abuse, however. One young white cop was given so much crap, a young black woman behind me said to her friend, “Why are they all in his face like that? That is so rude!” Draped in an indigo thobe, a black man with a bullhorn followed a black cop around to harangue him nonstop. An older black woman yelled at another black cop, “Why are you on that side? With them?! When the shit hits the fan, you’re going to be on this side with us!” Since 1981, Camden has had five black mayors and one Hispanic one. Even in a black-ruled city, many blacks see cops as the enemy. After the Dallas murder of five policemen, a line of cops stood outside a closed 7-Eleven, with protesters milling near them. Some could be seen to laugh, dance, shout or point fingers at the police. When the TV announcer asked the on-site reporter what was going on, she explained that people had been stranded because of suspended bus services. When a bus came and went, and most protesters stayed put, it’s fair to assume that some of them enjoyed taunting and gloating too much to leave this victory party. The war continues.

Death of a Nation? A hundred-and-fifty-one years after the abolition of slavery, America has a half white, half black president, a black Nobelist in literature, whites who attribute not just every form but instance of black dysfunction to white racism, blacks who demand reparations, the mainstreaming of innumerable black slang terms, including “diss,” a new phrase “negro fatigue” and the bumper sticker, “IF I HAD KNOWN THIS, I’D HAVE PICKED MY OWN COTTON.” It has often been stated that slavery is America’s original sin. In 1751, Benjamin Franklin ruminated on its cons and pros: The Labour of Slaves can never be so cheap here as the Labour of working Men is in Britain. Any one may compute it. Interest of Money is in the Colonies from 6 to 10 per Cent. Slaves one with another cost 30 £. Sterling per Head. Reckon then the Interest of the first Purchase of a Slave, the Insurance or Risque on his Life, his Cloathing and Diet, Expences in his Sickness and Loss of Time, Loss by his Neglect of Business (Neglect is natural to the Man who is not to be benefited by his own Care or Diligence), Expence of a Driver to keep him at Work, and his Pilfering from Time to Time, almost every Slave being by Nature a Thief, and compare the whole Amount with the Wages of a Manufacturer of Iron or Wool in England, you will see that Labour is much cheaper there than it ever can be by Negroes here. Why then will Americans purchase Slaves? Because Slaves may be kept as long as a Man pleases, or has Occasion for their Labour; while hired Men are continually leaving their Master (often in the midst of his Business,) and setting up for themselves. There are also these drawbacks:

The Negroes brought into the English Sugar Islands, have greatly diminish’d the Whites there; the Poor are by this Means depriv’d of Employment, while a few Families acquire vast Estates; which they spend on Foreign Luxuries, and educating their Children in the Habit of those Luxuries; tile same Income is needed for the Support of one that might have maintain’d 100. The Whites who have Slaves, not labouring, are enfeebled, and therefore not so generally prolific; the Slaves being work’d too hard, and ill fed, their Constitutions are broken, and the Deaths among them are more than the Births; so that a continual Supply is needed from Africa. The Northern Colonies having few Slaves increase in Whites. Slaves also pejorate the Families that use them; the white Children become proud, disgusted with Labour, and being educated in Idleness, are rendered unfit to get a Living by Industry. Still, it was worth it, and that’s why Franklin kept several slaves himself. In 1759, however, he joined Thomas Bray’s association to support schools for black children, and in 1787, Franklin became president of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage. Franklin died, then, with the hope that blacks would one day be free and equal to whites. After blacks were freed, they had to compete with poor whites and white immigrants for work. Illiterate, ignorant and dependent after centuries of slavery, American blacks were even worse off than blacks from the West Indies. In Ethnic America, Thomas Sowell explains: Unlike slaves in the United States, who were issued food rations and were often fed from the common kitchen, West Indian slaves were assigned land and time to raise their own food. They sold surplus food in the market to buy amenities for themselves. In short, West Indian Negroes had centuries of experience in taking care of themselves in a significant part of their lives, even under slavery, as well as experience with

buying and selling. Contemporary observers noted that the slaves in the West Indies worked perceptibly more energetically on their plots of ground than on the land they worked for slave owners. They had the kind of incentives and experience common in a market economy but denied American slaves for two centuries. In 1873, James Shepherd Pike of the New York Tribune wrote an influential series of articles that was later turned into a book, The Prostrate State: South Carolina under Negro Government. While pointing out that the black man “showed great magnanimity and forbearance in not cutting the throats of the masters’ families when he was emancipated,” Pike painted black-run South Carolina as “the most ignorant democracy that mankind ever saw”: It is barbarism overwhelming civilization by physical force. It is the slave rioting in the halls of his master, and putting that master under his feet. […] The question is often asked if education is not the remedy for the blackness of darkness that prevails in South Carolina. Yes, indeed, if that were possible […] here is a race to be educated in the very elements of manhood. They have to be taught positively and negatively […] They have to be taught not to lie, not to steal, not to be unchaste […] Education, to be what it ought to be with the existing race of negroes in the South, means to educate them out of themselves, means to undo the habits and practices and modes of thoughts and want of thought engendered by centuries of slavery. In 1888, Walt Whitman didn’t sound any more optimistic: The nigger, like the Injun, will be eliminated: it is the law of races, history, what-not: always so far inexorable—always to

be. Someone proves that a superior grade of rats comes and then all the minor rats are cleared out. Booker T. Washington, though, certainly believed the black man had a future and, moreover, was a huge asset to the nation. In 1895, Washington appealed to Southern whites to rely on blacks rather than European immigrants: To those of the white race who look to the incoming of those of foreign birth and strange tongue and habits for the prosperity of the South, were I permitted I would repeat what I say to my own race, ‘Cast down your bucket where you are.’ Cast it down among the eight millions of Negroes whose habits you know, whose fidelity and love you have tested in days when to have proved treacherous meant the ruin of your firesides. Cast down your bucket among these people who have, without strikes and labour wars, tilled your fields, cleared your forests, builded your railroads and cities, and brought forth treasures from the bowels of the earth, and helped make possible this magnificent representation of the progress of the South. Casting down your bucket among my people, helping and encouraging them as you are doing on these grounds, and to education of head, hand, and heart, you will find that they will buy your surplus land, make blossom the waste places in your fields, and run your factories. While doing this, you can be sure in the future, as in the past, that you and your families will be surrounded by the most patient, faithful, law-abiding, and unresentful people that the world has seen. As we have proved our loyalty to you in the past, in nursing your children, watching by the sick-bed of your mothers and fathers, and often following them with tear-dimmed eyes to their graves, so in the future, in our humble way, we shall stand by you with a devotion that no foreigner can approach, ready to lay down our lives, if need be, in defense of yours, interlacing our industrial, commercial, civil, and religious life with yours in a way that shall make the interests of both races one.”

In his 1899 book, The Philadelphia Negroes, W.E.B. DuBois observed: In the city of Philadelphia the increasing number of bold and daring crimes committed by Negroes in the last tenyears has focused the attention of the city on this subject. There is a widespread feeling that something is wrong with a race that is responsible for so much crime, and that strong remedies are called for. […] 4 per cent of the population of Philadelphia having Negro blood furnished from 1885 to 1889, 14 per cent of the serious crimes, and from 1890 to 1895, 22 1/2 per cent. […]

we may conclude that young men are the perpetrators of the serious crime among Negroes; that this crime consists mainly of stealing and assault; that ignorance, and immigration to the temptations of city life, are responsible for much of this crime but not for all; that deep social causes underlie this prevalence of crime and they have so worked as to form among Negroes since 1864 a distinct class of habitual criminals; that to this criminal class and not to the great mass of Negroes the bulk of theserious crime perpetrated by this race should be charged. […] His strange social environment must have immense effect on his thought and life, his work and crime, his wealth and pauperism. That this environment differs and differs broadly from the environment of his fellows, we all know, but we do not know just how it differs. The real foundation of the difference is the wide-spread feeling all over the land, in

Philadelphia as well as in Boston and New Orleans, that the Negro is something less than an American and ought not to be much more than what he is. Argue as we may for or against this idea, we must as students recognize its presence and its vast effects. I dug up some old observations so we can see how far, or how little, we’ve gone as a nation. During the decade ending in 1895, Philadelphia had nine murders. Nine in ten years! With just 50% more people, Philly already has 135 murders this year as of July 14th. Making up 43.3% of its population (according to the 2010 census), blacks commit more than 80% of Philly’s murders, year in and year out. What would DuBois make of this outrage? Booker T. Washington hoped for “a new heaven and a new earth” predicated on “material prosperity” and “a blotting out of sectional differences and racial animosities and suspicions, in a determination to administer absolute justice, in a willing obedience among all classes to the mandates of law.” I don’t see it coming. After a week of black attacks against the police in Texas, Tennessee, Minnesota, Missouri, Indiana and WashingtonDC, there will be Day of Rage protests in 37 American cities today, in support of Black Lives Matter, and next week, dozens of gun-toting New Black Panthers will descend on Cleveland to raise hell at the Republican National Convention. To close, I will quote at length from a July 9th FaceBook post by Jay Stalien, a Baltimore cop: I have come to realize something that is still hard for me to understand to this day. The following may be a shock to some coming from an African American, but the mere fact that it may be shocking to some is prima facie evidence of the sad state of affairs that we are in as Humans.

I used to be so torn inside growing up. Here I am, a young African-American born and raised in Brooklyn, NY wanting to be a cop. I watched and lived through the crime that took place in the hood. My own black people killing others over nothing. Crack heads and heroin addicts lined the lobby of my building as I shuffled around them to make my way to our 1 bedroom apartment with 6 of us living inside. I used to be woken up in the middle of the night by the sound of gun fire, only to look outside and see that it was 2 African Americans shooting at each other. It never sat right with me. I wanted to help my community and stop watching the blood of African Americans spilled on the street at the hands of a fellow black man. I became a cop because black lives in my community, along with ALL lives, mattered to me, and wanted to help stop the bloodshed. As time went by in my law enforcement career, I quickly began to realize something. I remember the countless times I stood 2 inches from a young black man, around my age, laying on his back, gasping for air as blood filled his lungs. I remember them bleeding profusely with the unforgettable smell of deoxygenated dark red blood in the air, as it leaked from the bullet holes in his body on to the hot sidewalk on a summer day. I remember the countless family members who attacked me, spit on me, cursed me out, as I put up crime scene tape to cordon off the crime scene, yelling and screaming out of pain and anger at the sight of their loved ones taking their last breath. I never took it personally, I knew they were hurting. I remember the countless times I had to order new uniforms, because the ones I had on, were bloody from the blood of another black victim…of black on black crime. I remember the countless times I got back in my patrol car, distraught after having watched another black male die in front me, having to start my preliminary report something like this: Suspect- Black/ Male, Victim-Black /Male.

I remember the countless times I canvassed the area afterwards, and asked everyone “did you see who did it”, and the popular response from the very same family members was always, “Fuck the Police, I ain’t no snitch, Im gonna take care of this myself”. This happened every single time, every single homicide, black on black, and then my realization became clearer. I woke up every morning, put my freshly pressed uniform on, shined my badge, functioned checked my weapon, kissed my wife and kid, and waited for my wife to say the same thing she always does before I leave, “Make sure you come back home to us”. I always replied, “I will”, but the truth was I was never sure if I would. I almost lost my life on this job, and every call, every stop, every moment that I had this uniform on, was another possibility for me to almost lose my life again. I was a target in the very community I swore to protect, the very community I wanted to help. As a matter of fact, they hated my very presence. They called me “Uncle Tom”, and “wanna be white boy”, and I couldn’t understand why. My own fellow black men and women attacking me, wishing for my death, wishing for the death of my family. I was so confused, so torn, I couldn’t understand why my own black people would turn against me, when every time they called …I was there. Every time someone died….I was there. Every time they were going through one of the worst moments in their lives…I was there. So why was I the enemy? I dove deep into that question…Why was I the enemy? Then my realization became clearer. I spoke to members of the community and listened to some of the complaints as to why they hated cops. I then did research on the facts. I also presented facts to these members of the community, and listened to their complaints in response. This is what I learned:

Complaint: Police always targeting us, they always messing with the black man. Fact: A city where the majority of citizens are black (Baltimore for example) …will ALWAYS have a higher rate of black people getting arrested, it will ALWAYS have a higher rate of blacks getting stopped, and will ALWAYS have a higher rate of blacks getting killed, and the reason why is because a city with those characteristics will ALWAYS have a higher rate of blacks committing crime. The statistics will follow the same trend for Asians if you go to China, for Hispanics if you go to Puerto Rico, for whites if you go to Russia, and the list goes on. It’s called Demographics Complaint: More black people get arrested than white boys. Fact: Black People commit a grossly disproportionate amount of crime. Data from the FBI shows that Nationwide, Blacks committed 5,173 homicides in 2014, whites committed 4,367. Chicago’s death toll is almost equal to that of both wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, combined. Chicago’s death toll from 2001– November, 26 2015 stands at 7,401. The combined total deaths during Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003-2015: 4,815) and Operation Enduring Freedom/Afghanistan (2001-2015: 3,506), total 8,321. Complaint: Blacks are the only ones getting killed by police, or they are killed more. Fact: As of July 2016, the breakdown of the number of US Citizens killed by Police this year is, 238 White people killed, 123 Black people killed, 79 Hispanics, 69 other/or unknown race. Fact: Black people kill more other blacks than Police do, and there are only protest and outrage when a cop kills a black man. University of Toledo criminologist Dr. Richard R. Johnson

examined the latest crime data from the FBI’s Supplementary Homicide Reports and Centers for Disease Control and found that an average of 4,472 black men were killed by other black men annually between Jan. 1, 2009, and Dec. 31, 2012. Professor Johnson’s research further concluded that 112 black men died from both justified and unjustified police-involved killings annually during this same period. Complaint: Well we already doing a good job of killing ourselves, we don’t need the Police to do it. Besides they should know better.

Who’s Racist? Over three days last week, at least 150 blacks attacked whites at random around TempleUniversity. Victims were surrounded, punched and kicked. Wallets and phones were stolen. Rocks were thrown at passing cars. When cops showed up, one was knocked from her bike and a police horse was even punched twice in the muzzle. Most of the assaults took place on Friday. On Saturday, Joe Lauletta, a father of one victim, reported on FaceBook: I spent last night in the ER at St. Mary’s HospitaI. I received a call from my daughter Christina after my sons football game. She was crying, I couldn’t understand her, my heart dropped, I became scared, I said what is the matter? Dad, I was jumped, I’m beat up pretty bad. Where r u? Temple, they stole my phone. We’re heading to the police station. I do not hear from her until she gets to her apartment. Rage is running through my mind the whole time. She said she is getting a ride home and wants to go to St. Mary’s. I find out that her and her 2 male friends where badly beaten by a group of 30-40 black teenagers on their way home from the Temple football game. This happened after they got off the subway at Broad and Cecil B Moore. These sick animals held her down and kicked and stomped on her repeatedly. Thank god, the people from the pizza place intervened. They arrested 2 people at the scene. I have not let Christina out of my sight, she is resting. Every part of her body is badly bruised, it makes me cry just thinking about it. No broken bones. If you have children at Temple, tell them to be careful. Please keep Christina Lauletta in your thoughts. CBS Philadelphia describes another victim’s ordeal:

He says around 9:30 Friday night he was leaving work when he saw what looked to be at least 200 juveniles walking in large groups.He said he overheard police saying the kids were playing the knockout game. He says a juvenile around 10 years old started shouting obscenities at him and grabbed his phone out of his hand. The student says the juvenile then came back and threw the phone at him, striking him in the face. Around 15 minutes later, the student says he was walking with his girlfriend when they were approached by at least seven juveniles. The student says he went to hit the TemplePolice alert button when his girlfriend was struck by one of the juveniles. As the student was chasing them away, he says he was struck in the face by a someone he estimates to be eight years old. This is not new. In 2014, five black girls, aged 17, 15, 15, 15 and 14, committed three separate attacks on random white people at TempleUniversity. Struck across the face with a brick, a 19-year-old white student suffered a fractured jaw and nearly had her teeth knocked out. Her 15-year-old assailant, Zaria Estes, was given a 2 ½-6 year sentence. Across America, gangs of blacks have beaten random people for decades, just for the sport of it. This cathartic recreation has been dubbed wilding, catch and wreck, knock out game or flash mob, and it can happen at parks, shopping malls, state fairs or even your living room. In 2012, a mentally-handicapped woman was relaxing on her stoop in Chester, just outside Philadelphia, when she was attacked by six black teenaged girls. When the terrified woman tried to flee inside, they rushed into her living room to continue the savage beating. Had

these girls not posted their exhilarating workout on FaceBook, they might never have been caught. A white bartender at my neighborhood dive was attacked, just outside her front door, by a group of black kids around 12 years old. After throwing a rock at her head and knocking her down, they kicked her a few times as she curled up on the ground, then they scattered. “Just like that, it was over. All I could do was go inside and cry.” Not surprisingly, the latest incident at TempleUniversity has received scant media attention. Though AP did cover it, it never pointed out that these were racial crimes. As usual, only “teens” are fingered, with their race not mentioned. Had mobs of whites attacked random blacks, the entire world would have known about it by now. Locally, a black writer editorializes in the Philadelphia Inquirer that gentrification is ultimately responsible. In “BehindTemple attacks, rage often comes with exclusion,” Solomon Jones explains: In a city where poverty is concentrated outside the universities, we can’t truly expect the poor to watch jobs and wealth and excess pass them by without any reaction at all. To be sure, violence is the wrong response. And the kids who engaged in it will surely be prosecuted, as they should be. But I believe those teens are expressing something that has long simmered beneath the surface. They are expressing the rage that comes with exclusion. They are expressing the hurt that comes with invisibility. They are engaged in the inevitable push and pull of change. TempleUniversity, my alma mater, has reached out to the community with scholarships for local youth, according to spokesman Ray Betzner. They’ve put reading programs in place, tutored high schoolers and even talked to their own

students about respecting longtime community residents. But Temple would be wise to reach out into the community with an eye toward creating stronger relationships and greater opportunities for the young people who’ve been pushed aside by a generation of exclusionary development. The community would be wise to reach back. So these attackers are among “people who’ve been pushed aside by a generation of exclusionary development.” Like many urban universities, Temple is surrounded by black ghettos, but these are being gentrified thanks to a steady influx of white suburbanites and immigrants. If you’re barely treading water, and your rent jacks up because of gentrification, you’ll be pissed too. Who wants to be evicted? Blacks, though, are always the victims, and never agents, of any neighborhood’s improvement. Why is that? In Detroit, a post-apocalypse ghetto of burnt out houses, gutted factories and urban raccoons, Mexicans revived a section near downtown. Unlike the rest of Detroit, there are plenty of restaurants and shops in Mexicantown, and it’s perfectly safe to walk around. If there were fewer Mexicans, blacks would have more jobs, obviously, so why are our borders wide open? In “Race and Crime in America,” Ron Unz suggests that Hispanics are being imported to replace blacks. They can do the same jobs, sans mayhem. In 1992, East Palto had the highest murder rate in all of America. Then a transformation happened as Hispanics flooded in. Ron Unz: Over the last twenty years, the homicide rate in that small city dropped by 85%, with similar huge declines in other crime categories as well, thereby transforming a miserable ghetto into a pleasant working-class community, now featuring new office complexes, luxury hotels, and large regional shopping centers. Multi-billionaire Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and

his wife recently purchased a large $9 million home just a few hundred feet from the East Palo Alto border, a decision that would have been unthinkable during the early 1990s. The more blacks there are in a neighborhood, the more crimes, the lower the housing values and the more dysfunctional the public schools, and everyone knows this, including, say, a fresh-off-the-boat immigrant from Mali or Bangladesh. Black maladaptation is only getting worse. What you have, then, is a group that will largely be excluded from better jobs, universities and housing. As long as the United States shall last, blacks will be an underclass. Their symbolic successes, as in having a half-black president, can’t gloss over the fact that the majority of them are barely afloat. The in-state tuition for TempleUniversity is $15,688, and the school accepts 56% of its applicants. It’s reasonably priced and easy to get in. Only 13.1% of Temple students are black, however, in a city with 44.1% blacks. Before you charge racism, do consider what Walter Williams has to say: Among high-school students who graduated in 2014 and took the ACT college readiness exam, here’s how various racial/ethnic groups fared when it came to meeting the ACT’s college readiness benchmarks in at least three of the four subjects: Asians, 57 percent; whites, 49 percent; Hispanics, 23 percent; and blacks, 11 percent. However, the college rates of enrollment of these groups were: Asians, 80 percent; whites, 69 percent; Hispanics, 60 percent; and blacks, 57 percent. Though all races are being admitted to college too liberally, blacks benefit the most, for only 1/5th of blacks in universities should even be there. Feeling out of place, blacks across the country are demanding separate dormitories.

Blacks are also given preferred treatment when it comes to government jobs and contracts, so the academy, state and media are all in their favor, yet their failures have only increased. In Ethnic America, Thomas Sowell observes, “The [black] race as a whole has moved from a position of utter destitution—in money, knowledge, and rights—to a place alongside other groups emerging in the great struggles of life. None have had to come from so far back to join their fellow Americans.” Having achieved not just civic equality but, at times, even favored treatment, blacks still often find themselves on the losing end of life’s struggles. If you dare to suggest that individual blacks should bear at least some responsibilities for their failures, however, you will be branded a racist. So I’m a racist for writing this, Walter Williams is a racist for pointing out that most blacks attending college shouldn’t be there, and Joe Lauletta is a racist for calling his daughter’s attackers “sick animals.” Everyone is a racist except those 150+ blacks who attacked whites unprovoked. To many black apologists, blacks can’t be guilty of anything, be it murder, rape, a brick across your face or even racism, because everything they do is just a response to relentless white racism. I’ll insist, though, that these black apologists are the worst racists of all, because to deny someone of moral agency is to reduce him to an animal. As for the media, their steady suppression or excuse of black misbehavior is an encouragement of even worse. This has to be intentional. They’re enabling more riots, more catch and wrecks, more knock out games. Teaching in Germany, I showed my students the Philadelphia Police Department’s YouTube channel, without comments. One video after another had a black person assaulting or robbing somebody. When a

Hispanic criminal suddenly appeared in the 9th video or so, some students couldn’t help but grin, for they were fleetingly spared of the monotony. Since the students wanted to learn about the US, I gave them an authentic, unedited glimpse. At their local cinema, Straight Out of Compton was playing. It’s very cool to act black in Germany. Of course, black apologists will claim that American blacks only rob because they’re oppressed and poor, though I don’t see how this explains the 22,000+ black-on-white rapes/sexual assaults reported yearly, as compared to zero white-on-black sexual attacks. (See table 42 of the Department of Justice’s Criminal Victimization in the United States reports for 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008, the last year available.) Oh yes, white women are so fetishized, blacks can’t help but rape them. None of them can help doing anything, I get it. What a gross insult this is to decent blacks. Again, to deny someone of moral agency is to reduce him to an animal.

Blacks, Jews and You Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in 1835, “Among the ancients, the slave belonged to the same race as his master, and often he was superior to him in education and enlightenment. Freedom alone separated them; freedom once granted, they easily intermingled. The ancients therefore had a very simple means of delivering themselves from slavery and its consequences; this means was emancipation, and when they employed it in a general manner, they succeeded.” When slaves and masters are biologically identical, full equality between them is possible, post-slavery, but if they are physically distinct, what you’ll have is exactly what the United States must endure, for as long as it exists. Hypothetically, let’s just say the differences between blacks and whites are only skin deep, that they’re exactly the same otherwise, with equal mental and physical potentials, but even if this is true, black Americans will always be branded, by themselves and others, as descendants of slaves, so this alone will eternally cause social division and discord. Even Africans who arrive long after slavery ended are colored by this crime, shame and endless source of outrage, just as any white is somehow guilty of all the ramifications of racial slavery, even if he’s Irish, Polish, Czech or a fresh-of-the-boat Moldavian who’s never heard of Abraham Lincoln or Martin Luther King. Blacks as ex slaves and whites as ex slave drivers has become the cartoony backdrop to all American conversations about race, so that any anti-social or violent act by blacks can be explained away by a mainstream media chorus of black apologists. Michael Brown, for example, couldn’t help but steal a cigar, shove an Indian clerk out of the way, walk down the middle of the street, ignore a white cop’s command to move onto a sidewalk then, most

fatally, reach into the cop’s car to grab officer Darren Wilson and his gun. Now, a man of any color in any country who does that is asking to be shot, and if you were the cop, I’m sure you would have blasted your 6-foot-4, 292-pound assailant also, and this is no he said, she said, for Brown’s DNA was found on Wilson’s weapon, which means that he was right on top of Wilson, and not at a distance, with his hands up. Truth, though, didn’t get in the way of widespread rioting, Brown’s beatification, the birth of Black Lives Matter, Brown’s mother’s appearance at the National Democratic Convention and her publication of Tell the Truth & Shame the Devil: The Life, Legacy, and Love of My Son Michael Brown, whose kindle edition can be yours for only 99 cents at Amazon. With the Ferguson riot constantly in the news, I often consulted the St Louis Post Dispatch so, by chance, found out about Daniil Maksimenko. A 22-year-old Bosnian immigrant, Maksimenko was delivering pizza when he was fatally shot by three black men. They didn’t want to risk anyone fingering them for stealing a pizza, I suppose. In contrast to Michael Brown’s death, Maksimenko’s meant absolutely nothing to the black apologists that make up our mainstream media, for there was no analysis or debate, and no concern for his devastated family. Granted, black on white crimes are daily occurrences, so this was hardly a special case. In June of that year, a white woman delivering pizza was stabbed 50 times by two black teens in Cedartown, GA. If the races were reversed, you can be sure the entire world would have heard about these outrageous murders. As a tireless walker, I must have logged at least a thousand miles through hundreds of cities and towns across the United States, so I’ve seen many black ghettos with ruins of Polish, Italian or Irish churches, or Jewish synagogues. It’s obvious the people who built these had every intention of staying there for generations, so it wasn’t because of racism, but the very real fear of being mugged,

killed or raped by blacks that they abandoned their fine homes, dear neighborhoods and magnificent places of worship. I have a close friend from Singapore who two years ago moved to San Francisco, for work, with his Croatian girlfriend. Since they didn’t know the Mission from the Castro, they innocently rented a tiny room in Bayview, which at $1,280, they deemed expensive enough. They lasted but a few days. He emailed me that “it felt dangerous” just to walk through Bayview to their apartment, so they “desperately” fled to Los Gatos. Once more, it wasn’t racism but a healthy survival instinct that prompted these two to hightail from a neighborhood that’s known for its social justice advocates, anti violence murals and colorful death shrines to murder victims. Trayvon Martin, though, was killed by a half white, half Hispanic, George Zimmerman, who claimed self defense, and an all-women jury, of five whites and a Hispanic, agreed. Although all grew to dislike Zimmerman, they believed he had to shoot because Martin was sitting on top of him, while raining down blows that bloodied Zimmerman. Commenting on this case, James Howard Kunstler outlines a culture of young black men that “is oppositional to virtually every other group in America, white, Asian, Hispanic, et cetera, and the only response to it from the jittery ‘others’ is a set of excuses for black opposition and failure.” Most incisively, Kunstler adds: The Civil Rights victories of 1964 and 1965—the public accommodations act and voting rights act—created tremendous anxiety among African Americans about how they would fit into a desegregated society, so the rise of black separatism at exactly that moment of legislative triumph was not an accident. It offered a segment of the black population the choice of opting out of the new disposition of things. Opting out had consequences, and over several generations since then, the cohort of poorer black Americans has grown only more oppositional, antagonistic, and economically

dysfunctional—with the sanction of America’s non-black “diversity” cheerleaders, who remain adamant in their own opposition to the idea of common culture. During segregation, blacks operated their own country, so to speak, with their own banks, hotels, stores and restaurants, etc., so they were self-sufficient, because they had to be. With integration, blacks can take their money to superior, non-black businesses, and that’s why you see almost no black businesses any more, not even in the blackest neighborhoods. Walk through any black ghetto and you’ll find corner bodegas run by Hispanics, Koreans, Chinese or Arabs, bars owned by whites or Asians, fried food takeouts with bullet-proof plexiglass operated by Chinese or Hispanics, and nail salons run by Vietnamese. Even many ghetto barbers are Chinese or Vietnamese. In every field besides sports, entertainment and politics, blacks are failing spectacularly against all other races, a fact readily admitted to by blacks and black apologists themselves as evidence of America’s racism and oppression of blacks. America is racist, but so is every other country and person, for racism, at core, is merely an extension and manifestation of innate self-love. One loves oneself, family then nation, which is made up of those that share one’s language, above all, as well as culture and history, if not also a physical similarity. Loving oneself and kind doesn’t mean having a right to violate anybody else, obviously, and if one favors another race over one’s own, then that, too, is racism. No one is color blind. Rabbi Nechemia Coopersmith explains, “Wherever we go around the world, we feel that instant connection when we bagel each other. And being part of a big global family means each of us has an international network of people who genuinely care and will help each other […] Every Jew is my responsibility; we are different parts to an organic whole.”

If Rabbi Coopersmith had to give a job or some money to a Jew, German, Muslim, Mongolian or Ugandan, who do you think he would choose? Watching team sports, racism can be diffused because several races may be present on one’s favorite team, but with individual sports, especially combat ones, racism often comes to the fore, for no one likes to see his approximation being humiliated, beaten bloody or knocked out cold, a sight almost as infuriating as seeing, for blacks, Michael Brown lying face-down in the middle of the road. As whites were being whupped by blacks in actual rings, Rocky had to emerge on the screen to stroke white pride. Similarly, yellows are stoked by Bruce Lee, though he’s actually 3/8th white. In boxing, the competitive yellows are mostly found in the more ridiculous sounding weight classes, such as straw and junior fly, so when an outlier like Manny Pacquiao dominated as a welterweight, billions of yellows went berserk, but boxing, like all other human endeavors, shows that, no, the races aren’t equal. If you can measure between two of anything, one will come up short. None of this is anybody’s fault, obviously, because we didn’t make ourselves, after all. In multicultural America, there is one race that has a unique historical grievance against it, and this race is also at the very bottom of society, a situation that promises to be permanent, so black rage will only increase, with plenty of abetting from black apologists. If blacks can be admitted to universities over better students, given contracts over better firms, hired over more qualified candidates and be harder to fire because of a possible discrimination lawsuit, then aren’t they privileged instead of oppressed? Thanks to statesponsored racism, even a just-arrived Nigerian millionaire, say, can snap up a set-aside minority contract over an Irish whose family has endured poverty in America for centuries.

This preferential, deferential or condescending treatment is necessary, many will argue, because blacks were held down for so long, but affirmative action taints all black achievements and causes much resentment among those who are bypassed to make room for less competent blacks. Shut up already, they were slaves! There is another race with a claimed historical grievance, but in this instance, it’s against all of Christendom, for Christians looked the other way, assisted or directly murdered six million Jews, it has been drilled into each Western head. Holding key posts in American banking, judiciary, media, entertainment and government, Jews have lots of leverage, it’s safe to say, so in still white-majority America, “white” has become a dirty word that connotes genocide, pillage, oppression and undeserved privilege. Since no population would demonize itself so liberally, it’s clear whites themselves don’t control their media and academy. The media aren’t just a brainwashing tool to control your intellectual, psychological, social and political life, but a blackmailing threat dangling over each politician and potential dissident. With media, you can cowe even the most powerful. Moreover, the constant whitewashing of the worst black behavior usefully divides America and outrages the majority into supporting the militarization of the police, which is already being deployed to browbeat all Americans. Quite openly, the police state burnishes its weapons. To cripple resistance, minds must be corrupted and characters weakened, so it’s no surprise to see American music becoming progressively more degenerate and/or violent, with black hip hop leading the decay. Much of this has been accomplished under the stewardship of Jewish impresarios such as Lyor Cohen, Todd Moscowitz, Jimmy Iovine, Doug Morris, Lucian Grainge and Leonard Blavatnik, etc. Jewish Jerry Heller managed NWA, or Niggaz Wit Attitudes, who rapped, “I’m sneaky as fuck when it comes to crime / But I’m a smoke

’em now and not next time / Smoke any motherfucker that sweats me / Or any asshole, that threatens me / I’m a sniper with a hell of a scope / Takin’ out a cop or two, they can’t cope with me.” For a change, you can enjoy Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, another Heller baby, “Jump up on the Bones dick and ride / Pass the pussy on the left hand side / Bone, bone, bone, bone, bone, bone, bone / Bone, bone, bone, bone, bone.” Very few, though, dare to even whisper about Jewish power. E.A. Ross wrote in 1911, “In his defense of Flaccus, a Roman governor who had ‘squeezed’ his Jewish subjects, Cicero lowers his voice when he comes to speak of the Jews, for, as he explains to the judges, there are persons who might excite against him this numerous, clannish and powerful element. With much greater reason might an American lower his voice today in discussing two million Hebrew immigrants united by a strong race consciousness and already ably represented at every level of wealth, power, and influence in the United States.” Then too, Jews fought hard for open borders, “The systematic campaign in newspapers and magazines to break down all arguments for restriction and to calm nativist fears is waged by and for one race. Hebrew money is behind the National Liberal Immigration League and its numerous publications […] In order to admit their brethren from the Pale the brightest of the Semites are keeping our doors open to the dullest of the Aryans!” As we can now see in the US and Europe, Jews will advocate for open borders even when none of their kind is lined up outside, for to dilute each society but their own is an aim in itself. For such a glancing exposure of Jewish power, Ross has been flushed down the memory hole, Ron Unz believes, and yet, at the risk of joining Mr. Ross, Unz has now published a series of unflinching articles on, among other things, Jewish collaboration with the Nazis, Jewish guilt in JFK’s assassination and 9/11, and, most remarkably,

the elaborate Holocaust myth, as propped up by a shoahload of bogus scholarship and hundreds of tear jerking movies. Unz hasn’t just stuck his neck way out, but placed it on the third rail! Like Gilad Atzmon, Israel Shamir and others, Unz is opposed to the Jewish ideology, with its we’re the chosen people, and goyim are merely beasts in the shape of men, here only to serve us. Unz is certainly not anti-Jews as an ethnicity, for otherwise, he would be against himself and all members of his extended family. In any case, if the Holocaust was the most shocking atrocity of World War II, why was there no mention of it for nearly 20 years after the war ended? And why did Anne Frank only die after six months in a “death camp”? Unz, “It seems rather odd to me that a young Jewish girl who fell severely ill at Auschwitz would have spent so much time in camp hospitals and eventually die there, given that we are told the primary purpose of Auschwitz and other such camps was the efficient extermination of its Jewish inmates.” Unz also exhumes Jacob Schiff to show how this Wall Street banker jump started the Bolshevik Revolution, so it was really a deep hatred of Russia, and not any idealism, that triggered the bloodiest chapter in human history. Though only 4% of Russia’s population, Jews made up 80-85% of the early Soviet government, Unz points out, and they dominated the Gulag administration and the terrifying NKVD. Since this Jewish-dominated regime killed tens of millions during its first two decades, Unz concludes that “in per capita terms Jews were the greatest mass-murderers of the twentieth century, holding that unfortunate distinction by an enormous margin and with no other nationality coming even remotely close. And yet, by the astonishing alchemy of Hollywood, the greatest killers of the last one hundred years have somehow been transmuted into being seen as the greatest victims, a transformation so seemingly implausible that future generations will surely be left gasping in awe.”

To too many, though, this Jewish role in genocide is only a cause for celebration, not shame or remorse. In 2016, the Times of Israel published a gushing portrait of “a strikingly handsome radicalrevolutionary, Lev Davidovich Bronstein—otherwise known as Leon Trotsky.” “He founded the Red Army, commanding it with vicious blood-thirsty gusto.” In Mexico City last year, I visited the home of Trotsky’s brief squeeze, Frida Kahlo, and found it to be an elegant, comfortable and spacious compound. There, I inspected old, large canvases of Kahlo’s ancestors, and noticed, hovering over her daybed, the stern faces of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao. Bemused, I perused one of Kahlo’s last oils, a self-portrait, as usual, but with a giant head of Stalin, the man who had ordered the assassination of Trotsky. Safe in her wealth, Frida loved both of these world-class butchers. In the very heart of Mexico City, just on the edge of beautiful Alameda Park, is El Museo Memoria y Tolerancia. Passing by, I noticed a cattle car, of the type that transferred Jews to the “death” camps. Inside, there’s the Holocaust and Tolerance Education Center. As many Mexicans as possible must be inducted into the Jews as greatest victims ever cult. Like blacks with slavery, Jews use the Holocaust to silence all critics. Thus immuned, they can continue to slaughter Palestinians, wreck more Muslim countries, push refugees into Europe and fragment societies. If you push back, you’re a gas chamber loving Nazi. Pinched by two eternally aggrieved forces, does the pale huperson even stand a Chinaman’s chance?

IV Fiction

Stewart Crenshaw, American Icon More than a century after his death, Stewart Crenshaw still provokes endless debates. With a single sublime or hypocritical decision, Crenshaw forever affixed himself to American history. Like Billy the Kid, Tokyo Rose, Muhammad Ali, or Jeffrey Dahmer, Crenshaw is an American icon, but whereas the others had to become outlaws to insinuate themselves into our consciousness, Crenshaw was never a criminal. Although he enslaved himself, he was never imprisoned. What Crenshaw did only went against the most deeply held beliefs of his time, and maybe even of our own. In Friarspoint, Mississippi, Stewart Crenshaw is a cottage industry. There, his name graces (or defaces) just about every large building. Gift stores sell Crenshaw T-shirts, key chains, whips, banjos, chains and mugs. There is a Crenshaw Diner where you can order a daily special of cornmeal, half a pig’s foot and a glass of water ($3.95). Crenshaw’s rather generic face is immortalized with a bronze bust behind the beautiful courthouse. Every day, dozens of buses carry thousands of tourists (mostly from Mobile, Alabama and from Japan) to the Crenshaw Plantation. The majority will ignore the big manor house to crowd into the ramshackle hut at the very edge of the property. Within its dim, narrow confines, they can jostle each other to take fuzzy pictures of the blanket on which Crenshaw spent countless nights groaning in happiness after another insufferable day spent out in the field hacking sugarcanes in 100 degree weather. They can examine his boots, hammer, felt hat, wooden spoon, nails and sickle. A small plaque on the wall encapsulates Crenshaw’s biography for the ignorant and the forgetful:

Stewart Crenshaw was born in 1802 in Savannah, Georgia. His father owned an ironwork and young Crenshaw grew up amid luxuries and a dozen books. In 1828, both his parents died in a fire. Crenshaw sold the family business and moved to Friarspoint, where he bought 300 acres of uncultivated land (the very ground you’re standing on). On this property Crenshaw built what he thought was a Georgian house, a smoke house, a barn, a stable and slave quarters. Situated on a small rise, the Big House is distinguished for its axes of symmetry, straight lines and deceptive angles. The long gravel road that leads to the twelve steps that leads to the colonnaded porch is shaded by two rows of cypresses. Spanish mosses, magnolias and rose bushes grace the surrounding gardens. Crenshaw was no farmer but he knew enough to decide that the black soil on his land would be ideal for sugarcane. He went out and bought 20 slaves, men, women and children, at just over $700 a head, all belonging to one extended family. Then he did something that would shock an entire nation. Crenshaw told his new slaves that the Big House, and everything in it, was theirs to keep. He would move to a hut on the fringe of his own property. The patriarch of the slave family was a man named Ezekiel Moses. Moses could not understand Crenshaw’s bizarre decision. He was certain that this man was playing a trick on him. As soon as they took over the Big House, all hell would break loose. Angry white men would rush over from the town to tie them to individual stakes then set them on fire. Crenshaw reassured Moses: “I just paid $15,000 for you’all. Why would I allow them to burn my property?” Moses stared into Creshaw’s grinning blue eyes: “But why are you doing this?” “Because I am your master. As a master, I can demand that you become my master. I have the right to be your slave.”

“To be a slave is not a right,” Moses corrected him, smirking. “But you’re wrong, my friend. Being a slave is the only right a man has.” Moses knew he was talking to a fool. He would have laughed in this fool’s face if he wasn’t so angry at him for making a mockery of his people’s misery. Moses spat on the ground: “So how long is this game gonna last?” “It’s not a game, my friend.” “Are you my slave at this moment?” “Yes, I am.” “Then stop calling me friend.” Moses waited a night to move his family into the Big House. For the first week, they confined themselves to a single room next to the kitchen. The vast manor house was taken over room by room. It took Moses’ clan nearly half a year to possess the entire structure. Standing on the front porch each morning, Moses could see Crenshaw working by himself out in the field, a tiny figure half hidden in the canes. The pale man hardly knew what he was doing. One of Moses’ sons would run out periodically to show Crenshaw the basics of sugarcane farming. After sunset, someone would bring him rice, beans and chicken gizzards. Crenshaw supplemented his meager diet by growing spinach and cabbage on a thin patch. Even without an overseer, he would work from sunup to sundown every day but Sundays. Word soon got out of Crenshaw’s strange behavior. Every day there was a mob outside the front gate. They did not dare scale the fence because Crenshaw had warned them, very loudly, that anyone who

did so would be shot on sight. (Moses had lent him a shotgun for the occasion.) Among the merely curious and the hostile were abolitionists who extolled (or slandered) Crenshaw as a saint. “He’s doing penance for your sins!” they would shout over the hoots and jeers. Newspapers from all over the country, and even a few from Europe, sent hundreds of reporters, but Crenshaw would grant none of them an interview. Moses was not so reticent, however. Initially frightened by the volatile mob just outside his front gate, he gradually became used to their angry and joyous presence. At first he would stand in the window of the master bedroom on the second floor, peeking at the rabble through a tiny crack in the curtains. Then he would banter with them while standing on his front porch. Finally Moses would sit on a large chair just inside the wrought iron fence to answer their questions. “Is Crenshaw a fool, Mr. Moses?” “He’s very brave.” “He must be mad!” “He’s also a genius.” “Why would you say that?” “Only a genius can create a new paradigm.” “Can you repeat that?” “A new paradigm.” “How are you treating him?” “Like a son.”

“Is he getting enough to eat?” “I wouldn’t want to starve him.” “What does he do in his spare time?” “He prays.” “What else does he do?” “He sings and he writes” “He writes?!” ‘Yes, he writes.” “What does he write?” “A slave narrative.” “By oil lamp?” “By candlelight.” “You allow him to do that?” “I have nothing to hide.” “Does he complain much?” “He’s always cheerful.” “But he can’t be happy!” “He is lonely.” “Does he need a wife?”

“No, other slaves.” “Why don’t you buy him some?” “He doesn’t believe in miscegenation.” Although the novelty of a white man slaving for a black man never wore out completely, the crowd eventually thinned until there were usually no more than a dozen spectators a day. Some days there were none. Crenshaw and Moses were allowed to return to the tedium and solipsism of their respective lives. The years passed . . . Can a slave actually think in years? Not very likely. A slave cannot even think in days. One cannot conceive of a future one has no part in planning. As Crenshaw got up each morning, he would feel nothing but dread, bordering on nausea. Sometimes he would throw up the miserable food he had eaten the previous night. He really could not believe what was ahead of him. Through the entire morning, he could only think of the cornmeal awaiting him at lunch. At some point in the early afternoon, however, Crenshaw would snap into a sudden calmness. His guilt, anxieties and self-pity would all be gone. His mind would be so limpid it could range over everything. For maybe half an hour Crenshaw could forget he was a slave. But the late afternoon brought with it an even more intense dread than the early morning. As Crenshaw lay on his itchy blanket late at night, his past would return to him as an appalling fantasy. It was always swarming with phrases and body parts. Savannah would be remembered as a brightly-lit street, then as a dim house, then as a tiny basement room. The twelve books he had read would be reduced to the word “book.” Once, Crenshaw thought he would just march into the house and shout, “Game’s over.” I’ll teach that damn Moses a lesson! He didn’t

do this, however, not because he had given Moses his word but because it would ruin his self-portrait. It would cheapen this story. Living in the Big House, walking on carpet among the mahogany furniture, Moses refused to feel smug or vindicated. Any radical change in one’s circumstances normally brings with it an embarrassed disavowal of the past and the realization that here, finally, is the truth. But Moses’ composure did not allow him to become giddy over a mere reversal of fortunes. Though his present already felt more real, more authentic, than his past, he wasn’t sure which was more of a mistake. When he was a slave, Moses would think, wistfully and desperately, that even his life had to count as human experience. He even thought that any life could be taken to represent human experience as a whole. Now he knew, once and for all, that any man’s life is totally arbitrary and represents absolutely nothing. Moses’ enjoyment of his new life was also sharpened and soured by flashes of anger. He never forgot that he was still legally, and essentially, a slave. Although Moses and Crenshaw lived within sight of each other, they never entered one another’s houses and they never exchanged more than a few words. Whatever either one said sounded like mimicry to the other. They may have swapped lives, but they still could not enter each other’s universes. When Moses was still a (real) slave, he could take paths through the woods to meet clandestinely with other slaves from nearby plantations. Now he was trapped within his own home. His world had actually shrunk. If he walked out the gate he would be considered a runaway and hunted down like an animal. Neither free nor truly a slave, Crenshaw and Moses were bound to each other for life. In rare, bitter moments, Moses would curse Crenshaw for denying him the moral high ground, and the dignity, of being a slave, while still enslaving him.

In his rare, bitter moments, Crenshaw would curse Moses for denying him the moral high ground, and the dignity, of being a slave, while still enslaving him. A real slave or not, Crenshaw felt slave enough. His existence as a slave became so relentless, so familiar, so inevitable, that he gradually came to think of it as the natural condition of man. Being a slave became synonymous with life itself. On an April afternoon in 1861, Crenshaw decided to take a nap after lunch. He had never shirked work like that before. His last glimpse of this earth was of a starling flitting across a cloudless sky. His last thought was, I deserve this. Moses would not discover Crenshaw’s corpse lying on the ground until three or fours days later. Moses went more conventionally. He died of a heart attack at dawn on January 31, 1865. In spite of what Moses claimed, it is not at all clear if Crenshaw ever wrote a slave narrative. No authentic manuscript has been discovered. Within a year after Crenshaw’s death, more than a dozen volumes were published, all purported to be his autobiography. The heftiest one leveled off at just under three thousand pages. The slimmest: a five-page pamphlet. Among the unlikely titles were Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Absalom! Absalom!, The Autobiography of Malcolm X and The Joy Luck Club. Moses stridently denounced all these absurd books as travesties of his slave’s tragic and magnificent life. As a real slave, however, he had no legal claims over his fake slave’s intellectual properties. At each opportunity, he would brandish a ream of mud-smeared manuscripts as the only authentic writings of Stewart Crenshaw. No one took him seriously. It was obvious to all those who had a chance to glean through their messy contents that Moses was the true author.