Author: Chuck Young

A 21st century psychotherapist steps into a time machine and comes out in Atlanta in 1855. Having no other marketable skills, he hangs out a shingle and promises new remedies for mental illness. A well-dressed gentleman knocks on the door and inquires if the psychotherapist might come to his plantation to examine the slaves.

“Most of them are well satisfied with their position and work hard within their natural limitations,” says the gentleman. “But a few appear to suffer most severely with drapetomania, dipsomania and dyaesthesia aethiopica. Even after whippings, they continue to defy my rules, either by subterfuge or outright defiance. I do not understand their affliction, which is cause for much suffering among them and financial losses for myself.”

After looking up drapetomania (compulsive running away), dipsomania (compulsive drinking) and dyaesthesia aethiopica (compulsive avoidance of work) in the latest journals of negro behavior, the psychotherapist goes to the plantation and convinces the psychotic slaves to talk with him for 50 minutes each week.

“I think I know what the problem is,” says the psychotherapist after a few months of research. “Your slaves had unhappy childhoods because they come from dysfunctional families. Their parents were often absent and even when they were around, they didn’t appreciate their children for their true selves. In some sense, your slaves are living in the past, acting out childhood fear and anger that is deeply buried in the unconscious.”

“And what do you recommend as a remedy?” says the gentleman.

“The best psychology has to offer right now is continued brutalization, on the theory that their race is incapable of deeper insight,” says the psychotherapist. “I think the evidence  indicates that re-traumatizing the already traumatized is ineffective for a small number of stubborn cases, as you have discovered. For the stubborn cases, I would suggest another form of therapy…”

If the 21st century psychotherapist was Freudian, he might now recommend years of talk therapy for the slaves until they had a clear understanding of their parents and siblings.

If the psychotherapist was Jungian, he might recommend dream journals and more creative outlets for the slaves so they could get insight from active imagination.

New York City — Is there anything less threatening than a morbidly obese cop on a motor scooter?

Okay, 25 morbidly obese cops on motor scooters–that’s even more unthreatening. When I’m out in the streets chanting, “Show me what a police state looks like! THIS is what a police state looks like!” I think I have a right to be oppressed by proper storm troopers who have spent enough time at the gym to bristle instead of sag. They don’t have to be television actors or anything, but as a taxpayer, am I getting my money’s worth when I’m being beaten and arrested by a parade of fried dumplings?

I’m going to be fair here and admit that I did see a morbidly obese cop on a motor scooter run over somebody’s foot last fall. That was moderately threatening until the ambulance arrived.

Note to Mayor Bloomberg: Is this why you banned the 32 oz. Big Gulps? All the guards at your cement bunker on East 79th Street were getting diabetes?

Note to Commissioner Kelly: Make your cops get off the motor scooters and chase those anarchists on foot. It’s good exercise. You might lose some anarchists, but think how much less embarrassing it will be to display fewer bulges in blue uniforms the next time Obama ties up midtown for a fundraiser.

At least 60% of the NYPD looks like the governor of New Jersey. Where is your pride?

It must be uncomfortable to have a hundred pounds of potbelly squeezing like toothpaste out the edges of those bullet-proof vests. They aren’t fooling anyone, using those vests like girdles.

It’s probably even more uncomfortable to work for a mayor who is cutting your pension while claiming you as a soldier in his “personal army.” That would be the same mayor who was worth $5 billion in 2002 when he was first elected mayor and promised to work full time in office. Now he’s worth $23 billion. How many cops on scooters made $18 billion while working full-time for the city?

At the next big general assembly of Occupy Wall Street, I’m going make a motion that we have no demonstrations at all for the next three years and let the NYPD just waste away from lack of exercise. It’s hard to believe those guys have done anything since the last big OWS demonstration on May 1 except eat Big Macs and play with their gadgets from the Department of Homeland Security. Who will protect the ruling class and harass black teenagers when everyone in the NYPD has occluded arteries?

Such were my thoughts on Monday morning, the first birthday of Occupy Wall Street. I was with about 800 people of the Strike Debt branch of OWS who gathered at 55 Water Street, an unloved and unused Vietnam memorial with no grass in the tradition of Zucotti Park before the original occupation. The future of parks under late-stage capitalism: Nothing that requires maintenance, even for the casualties of empire.

One of New York's Fattest rolls along to protect Wall Street's Fat Cats from Occupy activists

I have known Nick Bryant since 1995. He was new to New York from Minnesota then, and looking to make a jump from reporting for a science news service to writing for a mass audience. I noticed that he was persistent and ethically motivated and I thought, “He might be a good reporter.” We got to be friends, and had many long discussions about the nature of evil, which was his preferred subject matter as he tried to make a move into general circulation magazines. When he wasn’t chasing doctors at AIDS conferences, he was chasing outlaw bikers and Satanists.

On one such foray in 2002, he stumbled on a scandal that I had never heard of. The scandal centered around the Franklin Community Federal Credit Union, which was created to serve a poor black neighborhood in Omaha, Nebraska. During the 70s and 80s, its manager, a man named Larry King (not the talk show host), ran the Franklin as a Ponzi scheme and looted over $40 million, which he spent on an opulent lifestyle and Republican fundraising. King sang the National Anthem at the Republican convention in 1984 and served on several committees of the National Black Republican Council. He had a townhouse in Washington, DC, where he threw parties with many prominent guests. In August 1988, he threw a $100,000 party at the Republican convention, and appeared in a video in which he and Jack Kemp urged blacks to vote for George H. W. Bush. In November 1988, his Ponzi scheme crashed and the Franklin was shut down by the National Credit Union Association and the FBI.

All run-of-the-mill scandal stuff, and uncontroversial in the basic facts, except that as King was climbing into the upper levels of the national Republican hierarchy, Omaha was boiling over with rumors that he was also running a pedophile ring, pandering children out to rich and powerful men in Omaha, even flying the children to Washington, Los Angeles and New York for orgiastic, abusive parties with even richer and more powerful men.

Larry E. King

Between college and graduate school, I worked for a year in a factory in Verona, Wisconsin, which is a few miles and a paradigm shift outside of Madison. It wasn’t the worst place to work. We had a union. We had benefits. We chopped, folded and riveted large sheets of metal and turned them into the air diffusers that you can see in the ceilings of theaters and other large buildings.

I did the night shift for a while with a guy named Elmer. In his fifties, Elmer had been a farmer and hunter for most of his life, and in 1974 was operating a giant sheet metal shear. Elmer would cut it, and I would stack it. After our orders were filled, we’d sit around and get drunk, because there wasn’t any supervision at night. Sometimes we got drunk before the orders were filled, and we were both lucky to escape the shear with our fingers still attached to our hands.

As we drank peppermint schnapps at 4 a.m., I listened to Elmer’s stories about his life with great interest. Most of my friends in Madison had parents who worked for the government or the university. Elmer seemed to be as smart as any of them, but with a life experience that put him on another planet.

It was obvious that Elmer hated his job. He wanted to be outside, trapping muskrats and selling their pelts. I hated the job too, and ruminated about why anyone would think that hard work was a virtue. What was worse–having a job, or not having a job? If you worked eight hours a day and then got drunk, or watched television, to forget about the grinding assembly line, what kind of a life was that? What about raising your kids? Taking part in your community? Culture? Why not organize labor in such a way that that everyone had a useful job for four hours, and then could pursue their own happiness? Was there any lack of things that needed to be done? Was there any lack of people who wanted to make contribution in some way? What was the point of overworking some while underworking others?

Wisconsin workers were ready to fight, ready for a general strike call, but the Democratic Party just wanted a recall election

The History Channel mini-series “Hatfields & McCoys” reminded me of Clint Eastwood’s “The Unforgiven.” Both productions showed a lot of violence in all its fascination while making it squalid, absurd, arbitrary and devastating to the victims and everyone around the victims. Both productions take as their theme men creating theaters of heroism for themselves out of their own hatred and sense of honor. Both productions show the theaters crumbling in the end as the violence becomes too stupid and meaningless even for the prime agents to continue.

“Hatfields & McCoys” also reminded me of football. You’ve got two well-defined teams who place group loyalty above all other values, even as they claim the ethics of Christianity, which does not place group loyalty above all other values. So there is no substantive moral difference between the Hatfields and McCoys any more than there is a substantive moral difference between the Minnesota Vikings and the Arizona Cardinals. The only reason to join or root for one side over the other is because it makes you feel good to be part of something bigger than yourself. That’s attractive, and indeed the series attracted huge numbers of viewers. “Hatfields & McCoys” is reported to be the second biggest non-sports event on basic cable ever with over 13 million viewers.

I myself sat through all three two-hour segments, even though that meant watching about 20 commercials for every sordid killing. It’s hard keeping your head in a 19th century family feud when somebody is touting car insurance or credit cards every eight minutes, just as it is hard to keep your head in the game when someone is touting car insurance or credit cards with every change of possession.

Does the United States make anything besides car insurance and credit cards?

What if Shakespeare was interrupted by a talking lizard every eight minutes?

“Hatfields & McCoys” reminded me not only of football but of Democrats & Republicans, who also have very little substantive moral difference and a need to believe that there is a substantive moral difference, or else no one would pay attention to them.

The patriarch of the McCoys (Bill Paxton) looked to Christianity for justice and predictably descended into nihilistic alcoholism and madness, ultimately dying in a house fire of his own making. He seemed like a parable for the Tea Party. The patriarch of the Hatfields (Kevin Costner) looked to Christianity for forgiveness. He ended up a sadder but wiser old man in the tradition of Jimmy Carter and Al Gore who improved on morally substantive issues immediately upon leaving power.
Johnse Hatfield, circa 1882 and 2012, hated by both sides

In journalism and in life, it is best to admit it when you’re wrong, and I was wrong last week. In my haste to write something timely about the triumphant return of Occupy Wall Street to the front lines of protest on May 1, I assumed that Fox Five New York and the NYPD were uniquely stupid as they colluded on a story about the possibility of Arab terrorists secreting bombs in their “cavities,” as the reporter referred to certain familiar orifices that are usually unmentioned on television. Fox Five led their 10:00 pm newscast with the story and I, in my cynicism, thought that only the minions of Rupert Murdoch could lead the news with an imaginary explosion of fecal matter and viscera on a day when Occupy Wall Street had tied up traffic all over Manhattan.

Boy, was I naive.

ABC, CBS, CNN, BBC, MSNBC, NPR, Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Guardian, Christian Science Monitor, Daily Mail, Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post and hordes of other corporate media also played up the imaginary explosions of fecal matter and viscera. My mistake was googling only “cavity bomb,” which was the intense focus of Fox Five. What I should have done was google “body bomb,” “implanted bomb,” “breast implant bomb” and “belly bomb.” Those kind of bombs were everywhere.

In a typical report on April 30, Diane Sawyer, solemn and furrowed, announced on ABC World News that as a nation we had reached the eve of the anniversary of Osama bin Laden’s assassination. “US authorities,” she said, were “studying a new terror threat tonight” and chief investigative correspondent Brian Ross would tell us of “heightened concern in the air and on the ground.”

Ross then reiterated that unnamed authorities were afraid of body bombs that would “target Americans.” The idea was “not far fetched” because “medical experts” said there was plenty of room in the gut for “surgically implanted explosives.”

“The surgeon would open the abdominal cavity and literally implant the explosive device in and amongst the internal organs,” said medical expert Dr. Mark Melrose, standing in front of a dark, ominous anatomical painting of the human gut.

“Right in there?” Ross asked incisively.

“Right in between the intestines, the liver, and the stomach,” said Melrose.
Crack ABC reporter Brian Ross questions 'medical expert' Dr. Mark Melrose about placement of a dreaded Arab ass bomb

I got home at 10:00 pm on the nose, and the first thing I did was take off my shoes after 14 hours of May Day marching with 30-40,000 other conscientious objectors to capitalism. My feet hurt, okay? My second priority was turning on the local news, which happened to be Fox Five New York. According to my watch, it was 10:02. I didn’t see the first few seconds of the story, but it must have have been the lead. There was Ray Kelly, the chief of police, talking about…not Occupy Wall Street?…no, it was a video of him on some talk show, warning of the apparently imminent threat of Arab terrorists “implanting” bombs in their bodies and blowing up airplanes and buildings.

The reporter, whose name I didn’t catch, showed a mug shot of a sullen swarthy Arab terrorist who had confessed to “helping” his brother implant such a bomb. The reporter then interviewed a “security expert,” whose name I also didn’t catch. As I say, my feet hurt and I wasn’t paying full attention. The security expert speculated that the most you could fit into a man’s “cavity” would be a one pound bomb, and such a weapon probably couldn’t bring down an airplane. A woman, he said, could at most fit a one-pound bomb in one cavity and a two-pound bomb in her other cavity.

The reporter wanted to know what would happen if a large number of Arab terrorists implanted many such bombs on their bodies. The security expert said that many such bombs inside many such Arab terrorists, probably looking even more sullen and swarthy than usual, would increase the likelihood that our x-ray machines and first-rate Homeland Security personnel would detect them before they could blow up the airplane.

The next story was about some Republican heavyweight endorsing Romney. Maybe it was Giuliani, the great hero of 9/11. His name came up, I remember that. To reiterate: my feet were still hurting.

The third story started with the anchor saying something like, “In other security concerns today, Occupy Wall Street marchers paraded down Broadway…” The reporter asked several non-marching pedestrians, “Are you annoyed yet?” Some said yes, some said no, which was, I thought, very fair and balanced. More than 30 marchers were arrested, she reported. Ray Kelly, she further reported, estimated that the city had spent $30 million on Occupy Wall Street security since last fall.
The NYPD's new "biggest fear": The ass-bomb terrorist

With hindsight gained by googling “MoveOn” and “co-opt” after the fact, I can’t claim that nobody tried to warn me. Many websites with left and even liberal politics had said in so many words, “Be wary of this organization called the 99% Spring. It is a Trojan horse for the Democrats.” I just didn’t read that anywhere in a timely fashion. I’ve had a lot of stuff on my plate lately. That’s my excuse. And in my ignorance, I responded to some spam about “nonviolent direct action training” organized by MoveOn and got invited to this 99% Spring thing on April 10 at the Goddard Riverside Community Center in Manhattan. Somebody even called me all the way from San Francisco to make sure I was a sincere seeker on the left and would be attending, along with 120,000 others in training sessions around the country.

Which I did. The meeting was a few blocks from where I live. The spam said it was “inspired by Occupy Wall Street.” I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I was vaguely hoping that whatever the 99% Spring was, it would start a chapter of Occupy Wall Street on the Upper West Side, conveniently near my abode, and agitate for the Democrats and MoveOn to move left.

The first clue that my evening might go otherwise was the sign-up table, where there were a bunch of Obama buttons for sale and one sign-up sheet for the oddly named Community Free Democrats (are they free of community?), which is the local Democratic clubhouse. That killed the “inspired by Occupy Wall Street” vibe right there. No piles of literature from a zillion different groups, as there had been in Zuccotti Park. No animated arguments among Marxists, anarchists, progressives, punks, engaged Buddhists, anti-war libertarians and what have you. Just Obama buttons, which didn’t appear to be selling.

This is what co-optation looks like

On Thursday, January 5, I was waiting for the elevator in the lobby of my building when I was joined by a woman who lives up the hall from me. She was carrying a grocery bag with The New York Times poking out the top. “Why did you buy it?” I asked. “They just raised the price to $2.50. Who can afford that for a daily newspaper?”

“I have a very large birdcage,” she said. “It’s the only newspaper that fits the bottom of my birdcage.”

My neighbor is a classical musician who makes a living at it. She pays attention to politics and votes. She buys things. She’s a little older than the actors playing obedient yuppies in the NYT commercials that beg for subscriptions, but is otherwise their ideal reader.

“The only thing I don’t like about the Times is all the color pictures,” she continued. “One of my budgies is listless, and I think it might be chemicals leaching out of the pictures. So I cut them out before I put the paper in the cage. I may have to take my budgies to the vet.”

Afterward I sat in my apartment and thought, “Wow, that was the perfect lead to a Thomas Friedman column, one of those deals where he has a chance encounter that resonates with symbolism for some earth-shaking problem, like the death of print. Would Friedman see the budgies as upper management at the Times, making disastrous business decisions for the entire 21st century and crapping on journalists by cutting their benefits? Or would the budgies be the readers, listless with their diet of toxic ink? Or would the budgies be reporters caged by corporatism? The world is a flat birdcage, and the metaphors would drop like turds from the sky. Is it for Tom or myself that I cry?”

Perhaps I was being unfair, I further thought. Perhaps the Times had changed and I didn’t notice because I hadn’t read it regularly since the last millenium. Oh, I glance at it almost every day online. But a careful read? Nah. I hadn’t bought one outside of an airport for years. So, for $2.50, I bought a paper copy—“the world’s best journalism in its original form,” as the commercials say— the very same issue that my neighbor put on the bottom of her birdcage.

Are even birds dropping the habit of reading The Times?

Manhattan–After watching the Packers beat the Vikings on Monday Night Football, I had insomnia, so it was kind of an accident that I checked my email at 2 a.m. and discovered the police were clearing Zuccotti Park. Everyone had been expecting an eviction since it all started on September 17, but not expecting it at that particular moment. On my cell phone, there were several frantic texts from Occupy Wall Street begging for community support. So I hopped on a slow subway and arrived at Chambers Street about 3 a.m.

About a half mile north of the park, I was alone on the sidewalk for a couple of blocks. The only indication that something might be wrong was the racket of several helicopters with spotlights. Walking down Church Street, I ran into little clumps of stragglers who described a scene in which hundreds of police in full riot gear arrived at the park and presented a demand that the occupiers pack up their stuff and leave. If they did that, the police said, the occupiers would be allowed to return in a few hours without tents or tarps, after the park was cleaned. Bloomberg had tried that transparent ruse before, so a violent police eviction ensued with dozens of arrests, pepper spray and baton whacking, as the occupiers linked arms and tried to hold their space. Bloomberg and his cops also promised that everyone would get their belongings back after the eviction. But this also was a transparent ruse, as the the police tossed everything, including the 5000-book library, randomly into dump trucks that were in all likelihood destined for a landfill or garbage scow.

“Hey, there goes my tent!” said a kid at the corner of Fulton and Church, pointing at an overloaded dump truck roaring by about 3:30 a.m.

“Heil Bloomberg! This is Nazi Germany, not America!” said one guy giving the Nazi salute to dozens of cops.

“Hey, there are people being shot in the head right now in Egypt,” said another guy.

“That’s supposed to make me feel better about this?” said the first guy.

“I’m just saying that calling the cops Nazis isn’t non-violent communication,” said the second guy, obviously a graduate of the Non-Violent Communication Workshop in the park.

“Do the cops look like SS troops or not?” said the first guy.
Occupy Wall Street is driven out of Zuccotti Square by brutal police action, but is not going away