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The Book of the Week is “Troublemaker, A Memoir from the Front Lines of the Sixties” by Bill Zimmerman, published in 2011. The author was a true activist– he sacrificed his livelihood and risked his life to work for causes he believed in. Kudos to him.
In his twenties, the author made a major life-decision that made him look like a righteous prick (excuse the crudeness). He opposed the powers-that-be via participating in street demonstrations and civil disobedience. Later on, he felt he was more likely to change the world via engaging in humanitarian actions and working within the system.
Born in December 1940, Zimmerman grew up on Chicago’s West Side. In 1963 in Greenwood, Mississippi, he helped African Americans register to vote. In May 1966, the author and other anti-Vietnam-War protesters occupied the administration building at the University of Chicago. He learned from an experienced activist, what to do in connection with making demands of the school officials, to get what they wanted.
President LBJ was running out of cannon fodder (who were mostly non-white, poor men) for his war in Vietnam. So he had the Selective Service System (the government’s military-draft authority) do away with students’ ability to defer their service until after graduating.
The older generation of men– WWII veterans– viewed draft dodgers as cowardly, unpatriotic and selfish. They were unaware that their tax dollars were paying for the U.S. military’s committing of atrocities; one kind involved torturing pairs of enemy soldiers (National Liberation Front guerrilla fighters) by taking them up in a helicopter, and throwing one out the door so the other would be terrorized into revealing his side’s State secrets.
The author wrote, “Flower power [a 1960’s idea pushed by antiwar activists and people in the counter-culture] meant freeing men from outdated norms of masculinity that sapped their sensitivity, their poetry, and their urge to share instead of dominate.”
It was widely know even then, that the three major ways to redistribute societal wealth, consist of: 1) reforming campaign financing practices so that election winners are those who get the most votes, not those who are wealthiest; 2) having the least unfair tax system– encouraging citizens to start entrepreneurial ventures via financial assistance while also taxing the super-rich on the back-end for having taken advantage of existing infrastructure and front-end incentives; and 3) having a social safety net for those individuals who have unluckily been born into sucky situations, and providing opportunities for everyone, as far as egalitarianism is possible.
As is well known, in the first half of the 1970’s, there were lots of behind-the-scenes shenanigans involving president Nixon’s sidekick Henry Kissinger, with his secret diplomatic missions and his role at the Paris Peace Talks, to purportedly end the Vietnam war. South Vietnam’s leader, Nguyen Van Thieu, ran a corrupt regime, and he was eventually forced into exile, compliments of American taxpayers.
That theme– the propaganda-suffused, and CIA-assisted ousting of various dictators around the world– had already become a cliche since the 1950’s. A Mad Lib could be made of it: “He then consoled himself by fleeing to ______ [a place that would accept him] with $_______ [money he had looted from his homeland that supplemented his offshore financial stashes, that also might serve as tax shelters if he had U.S. income] stolen from the aid the U.S. had given to _______ [his former territory].” In recent decades, for obvious reasons, there has been less of this Cold War nonsense.
Anyway, as is also well known, the Japanese in WWII dogmatically would have fought to the last man, guerrilla-style. It was known that America’s supposed enemies in Vietnam had the same mentality. Yet, regarding Vietnam, the unbloodied elites and chickenhawks in the U.S. government failed to take a lesson from both the WWII’s Japanese and from the French in Dien Bien Phu.
Fortunately, the vast majority of current world leaders have had enough of genocide and atrocities, and are ready to sit down at the bargaining table to negotiate the distribution of rare resources (especially those that will fulfill their energy needs) crucial to their homelands’ economic development for decades to come. Slowly but slowly, the world is making progress in the humanitarian arena.
Nevertheless, worldwide, human beings have evolved so that the super-rich now own:
- show business;
- professional sports teams;
- gambling entities;
- Silicon Valley, and
- Wall Street.
They have become one big, incestuous network, married to politics. The situation has spawned excessive (especially in the United States):
- pardoning of criminals;
- lawsuits;
- deregulation;
- smearing;
- lies;
- conflicts of interest, and
- deception via AI-generated images, and pre-recorded video clips (especially of the president!)
This calls for a funk reggae fusion rock parody.
ELITIST REVENUE
sung to the tune of “Electric Avenue” with apologies to Eddy Grant and whomever else the rights may concern.
[Ploys. Ploys.]
Now ov’r resources, there is violence.
And profi-TEER-ing to be done.
One hand washes the others.
And in charge, are fortunate sons. Oh, no
They gotta LOCK in their, elitist revenue.
They’re power-whores for hire. Oh
They gotta LOCK in their, elitist revenue.
They’re power-whores for hire.
Abortion, wars, and the border.
Can’t bear to watch a thing on TV.
In their world, it’s a challenge,
to push the envelope infinitely. Good God?
They gotta LOCK in their, elitist revenue.
They’re power-whores for hire. Oh
They gotta LOCK in their, elitist revenue.
They’re power-whores for hire. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no.
They gotta LOCK in their, elitist revenue.
They’re power-whores for hire. Oh
They gotta LOCK in their, elitist revenue.
They’re power-whores for hire.
We’ve gone extreme in this country.
Money and revenge are job-one.
Lawyering and manipulation,
and our Constitution is done. Oh no
They gotta LOCK in their, elitist revenue.
They’re power-whores for hire. Oh no
They gotta LOCK in their, elitist revenue.
They’re power-whores for hire.
Oh, Trump is discreet.
So is Wall Street.
Locking in the payday. Ratcheting up the spite…
Oh, they gotta LOCK in their, elitist revenue.
They’re power-whores for hire.
They gotta LOCK in their, elitist revenue.
They’re power-whores for hire.
Trump is discreet.
So is Wall Street.
AI is Fox’s playground, on the dark side all-around.
Oh, they gotta LOCK in their, elitist revenue.
They’re power-whores for hire.
They gotta LOCK in their, elitist revenue.
They’re power-whores for hire. Oh yeah
Locking in the payday. Ratcheting up the spite…
$ $ $
Anyway, read the book to learn much more about Zimmerman’s life and times.