SOCIALISM

Commentary

by Richard E Noble

I’ve lived in the South now for about the last twenty-five years or so. I’ve lived up in ‘Yankee’ territory for an equal number of years. In any case, I don’t ever remember hearing so much talk about Socialism as I have in the last few years. I don’t know if this is a new topic in both the North and the South but, regardless, I find the whole dialogue rather interesting.
I live in Florida - the southern part of Florida, which, as all of us Floridians know, is the northern panhandle. Southern Florida is where all them damn Yankees live. All us rebels are hiding up here in Tallahassee, and Apalachicola. Every time I pick up a newspaper in this neighborhood, somebody is screaming about Socialism. To tell you the truth, I really don’t think that most folks down here know what Socialism actually is. But from what I see in the papers and the letters to the editor, it seems to be something between pagan devil worship and Adolf Hitler. In any case, it is a very bad thing. And I hear about how bad it is from both rich and poor. It is the enemy of freedom. It’s the antithesis of individualism. It’s mediocrity in the work place. It’s ... why it’s ah, prostitution and selling drugs to children; and it is everywhere and it’s right here - right here in this little town where I live in the Florida panhandle.
Boy, this is scary! But when I analyze this little Panhandle community I now call home, I find all this talk somewhat confusing.
I live in what most would call a poor community - traditionally, very poor. Many folks around here are on what they call - disability. From what I can gather, most of them think that getting disability is like getting an inheritance from some long lost relative, or winning the lottery. At best, they think it to be an early age retirement program of some kind. Now I don’t mean to scare all of you folks downtown but that check that you are getting comes from the state. Now don’t run out and tell this to all of your independent Capitalist friends and neighbors, but you are participating in an act of SOCIALISM! (Is that a felony or a misdemeanor?)
Other poor Capitalists in this community, buy their groceries with food stamps, or they used to. That’s a big RED Socialist no no, my good friends.
Like a lot of children in this community, my mother raised me from age thirteen to age eighteen on a widower’s pension. Sorry kids - single mommies and daddies - you’ve just been Socialized! (That’s kind of like getting ‘slimmed’ I think.) Then again, if you are on ADC (Aid to Dependent Children) you didn’t even have to become a widow, or even get married, and you got all of us good capitalists sending money to support you and your little bastards. [Bastard = a child born out of wedlock.] This may sound strange to all of you young women today, but back in the ‘old’ days a woman used to be ashamed to have a baby without first getting married - and married to a MAN. How chauvinistic! Can you imagine? I certainly hope that our society doesn’t regress to such male-dominated, anti-liberated, freedom inhibiting, antiquated standards such as the above ever again.
Interestingly enough, the biggest single employer in this area is the ... government. Nearly anybody who is anybody around "these parts” is a retired General or Admiral from the Military service. Sorry guys and gals but MILITARY (American flags and all) means employed by the state - means salaries coming out of taxpayers dollars. From the good capitalist point of view, your service and wounds all aside, any of us good capitalists would have done whatever it is that you think you did, if we were ‘called’. Even our current president supports that notion. Besides, why do you people all think that you should get a check for the rest of your life for just doing what you were supposed to do in the first place? Yours was not exactly a sacrifice. It was your DUTY, not to mention a steady job and the pay check you got for all those hours of sitting around on your ass and doing nothing in peace time. (Capitalist point of view - not the author’s). What about all of those extra coffee breaks and the free board and room supplied by us ‘capitalist’ taxpayers, for all of those years when nobody was shooting? Talk about sucking the system dry! (Ps: that was a conservative talking, not me.) Besides, you certainly couldn’t get more Socialistic than the all-for-one one-for-all military. If it ain’t Socialist, it is outright Communist. You don’t even get your “inalienable” rights when you’re in the Military. They decided that your Constitution and the Military are not compatible. You can’t have a democratic Military, for God’s sake.
The last prominent group here in my little town, are “good old boys” who left the farm, went to the big city, and have since retired from some union job. Well I don’t know if you would call ‘unions’ socialist ... you might like the word communist better. In case you have never noticed, the words worker and capitalist are not exactly synonyms. The whole socialist/communist movement in America was the brainchild of unionism. Workers are supposed to negotiate separately. Ganging up on the boss is not fair. What chance do the poor bosses have? It was the labor unions who were the first to be prosecuted under the anti-monopolistic Sherman Anti-Trust Act - it was not the big business Robber Barons, you know.
Workers joining together for better working conditions and better wages was against the law in this country right up until the Franklin Roosevelt administration. Before that, it was considered a conspiracy in restraint of trade and against the property rights of the bosses. It was unconstitutional.
And I hate to tell you this but “retirement” is no capitalist idea. You can bet your child labor laws that no red-blooded, American capitalist ever thought up the ridiculous idea of starting up a RETIREMENT FUND for lazy employees who think that they are too old to work - not without being pressured in one way or another by some Socialist/Communist union anyway.
What are you people crazy!!? Get your butts off them lawn chairs and get a damn job. As a famous ex-capitalist once said, let me make myself perfectly clear:
If you work for the State - pssstt don’t tell anybody, but you are engaged in a Socialist enterprise. And if you don’t like this arrangement, you can write to your congressman - but don’t mail it, because you certainly wouldn’t want to encourage that Socialistic postal system. Post office ... of the state, by the state and for the state.
If you are retired from some union, you’re not even good enough to be a Socialist, you’re a damn Communist and you know it! Everybody has known for decades that labor unions are Marxist, and that’s even worse than Socialist.
If you are retired from the Military you are just adding insult to injury. You had better just crawl up under your bed, my friend, because there is absolutely nothing democratic about the Marine Corps. As a soldier, not only are you a damn government employee Socialist, but you are also an active member of a right wing, radical, totalitarian organization - that kills people! No doubt about it, when you join the United States Military, you have just moved to another country. A country in which every dictator in the world would feel very much at home.
If you tell the Admiral that you wouldn’t follow his sorry butt to the latrine for fear that he would pee between the urinals, an you find yourself in the hole, or someplace worse, don’t waste your breath screaming about your Constitutional rights, because “they done gone, boy! We don’t have no Constitution he-ahh boy. And we don’t have no IN-DI-VID-U-ALS neither. You get me BOUY!”
If you are one of those who are complaining about living on a fixed income, and you want your COLA’s increased, you had best not fight for the abolition of Socialism here at home, because when they cancel your Socialist Social Security check, you will probably find yourself bagging groceries at your local ‘Hop and Stop’ in your new (bought with your own hard earned damn money) capitalistic, secondhand wheelchair.
Have you been to the hospital recently? Better check your Medicare. Whoops Medicare? Was that a capitalist program started by Henry Ford? You can bet your mass production, assembly line, sixteen hour day that it wasn’t, it isn’t, and it never will be.
You are out of work, and your unemployment checks are running out? Go talk to your Republican (I’m a capitalist) Senator, or Mr. Conservative (buy some bigger boot straps) news commentator, or newspaper editorialist, or rich radio talk show host. Unemployment checks? Why the newspapers are full of jobs. Turn in that Socialist government check and get a damn job. You probably belong to some damn union too. Socialist PIG!!
Speaking of pigs, do you work for the police department? the fire department? the Marine patrol? That’s all state employment. A no-no in a free capitalist society. By the way, do you work for the health department? the driver’s licensing burrow? the DNR?, the IRS? Urban renewal? the environmental protection agency, the J.P.T.A. (that’s Government funded, boys and girls) you’ve just been slimmed.
Did the boss give you a bucket of acid, instead of water and now you are collecting workmen’s compensation? Hang your head, my friend. Turn in that check, and get a job.
You’re receiving a Veteran’s check? A capitalist idea? I think not, Comrade! Turn it in! Get a job!
Your retirement is secure. You’re vested, you say. Another Henry Ford idea? Not hardly - Socialism, good buddy.
Is your book over due at the public library? Do you work at the public library? For God’s sake, become a capitalist and buy your own darn books, will you! Why should good capitalists like us pay out our hard earned dollars for books so that parasites like you can read for free? There is no free lunch, or book of the month, for that matter.
So you have a nephew who is a Forest Ranger? Your cousin works at a National Park - a STATE park? You enjoy having the family reunion at the COUNTY Park. Why don’t you and your Socialist-commie family celebrate in your own damn back yard, like all us good capitalists do. My God!!!
Are you a little behind on your college loan? Did you get your education through the GI bill? Are you in business due to a minority grant? Do you work at the Public Defenders office? Are you a Public Defender? Capitalist idea? In your dreams baby. Late for the PTA meeting at your neighborhood “public” school? Boy who thought up that tax gouger? Not an independent capitalist, that’s for sure.
Your Mom was a school teacher? Did she start her own school, and charge the neighborhood kids, like a good capitalist? Or did she teach at one of those pinko public institutions? I suppose that she belonged to one of those commie teacher’s union and is now retired and receiving her teacher’s pension check ... RIGHT ALONG WITH HER SOCIALIST SECURITY CHECK. Damn, what’s a good capitalist supposed to do?
A COUNTY hospital? Who the Hell is paying for that? State asylums? You have a COUNTY job? You work for the Federal prison system? the STATE prison system? the County jail?
Had your hospital bills paid by an Insurance Company? Work for an Insurance Company? Own an Insurance Company? The very idea of “insurance” is SOCIALIST or Communist inspired. Unions and worker fraternal organizations thought up that one. Today’s independent insurance company thought up how to take the not-for-profit union idea and turn it into billions for themselves. In the Capitalist world everybody takes care of themselves. They don’t “chip in” and share the load like a bunch of old time Communist Christians. Oh Yes, Yes Yes Yes - Christianity, original design’? Pure Communism.
You like the idea, “all for one, and one for all.” That is Socialism, MAN!
Love your neighbor as yourself? Don’t meditate on that too, too long you commie, socialist, pig!
Insurance is Socialist. The Capitalist part comes in when the owner of the insurance company claims bankruptcy, absconds with the employee’s retirement fund, or simply refuses to pay because your claim is too high, or too many of you “poor victims” have all claimed at the same time. That’s called “Laissez Faire”, pursuing one’s personal self-interest, or as any good Capitalist might say; Screw the woman and children, it’s every man for himself.
Had a disaster recently? One of them nice folks from the SBA or FEMA drop by? Give you a little money, did they? You’re employed by the SBA? Come on?! Have a little capitalistic pride. Turn the damn money in, and get a real job, man!
Just retired from running your own business all your life? Going to take your Socialist Security check and move into the government subsidized rent controlled apartment complex?
You know, before ya’ll start screaming “Socialist”, you had best scope out that signature on your own paycheck. It may be that you used to hate them, but now you is them. But please don’t blame me. I went to a for-pay private school to learn all of this, unlike most of you public school commies. And we weren’t chartered, either. You like Charter schools? Slimmed again.
Do we have to count the fact that my mother paid for my private education with her public Socialist Widow’s Pension?...Naa.
Hey, I think I have a new word. If not a pure-capitalist. I'm a rationalized-capitalist. (I certainly wouldn’t want to be an impure-capitalist.) A rationalized Capitalist - that’s kind of like a liberated-housewife, or a Baptist freethinker or a Southern Democrat.
PS: If you are employed by the Federal Reserve you should be intelligent enough to know that you are a Socialist. In fact, if you work in a bank – any bank – you are a Socialist. You are working for a Socialist organization. It is a perverse Socialist organization, I must admit, since only its failures are Socialized – the Savings and Loan fiasco followed by the Commercial banking failure. As long as banks are profitable they keep their profits. It is only when they go under that Socialism takes over. The Banking industry was bailed out by the American Taxpayer in the largest bank Collapse in World history. And they received this kindness with no payback required – no workfare for the wealthy bankers. It’s below their dignity, I suppose.
If you work for an insurance company – large insurance company – you have pretty much the same deal. When the profits are high the Insurance Company keeps them but when they become marginal the State or the Federal Government takes over – that’s us, the taxpayers.
Interesting to note; statistically the great majority of us do not get seriously ill until we reach 65. It is at this age that everybody is turned over to the Government Medicare System. Which means, that when the odds are good and the profits high the “Capitalist” Insurance Companies keep the profits, but when the pay-outs start, us Socialists take over? What a deal! Once again – no paybacks are required. We Socialist pick up the bill for the Insurance companies for free.
Railroads and Airplanes are also federally subsidized, along with farmers, tobacco growers and any large corporation that is deemed as “too big to fail”. We may inherit the entire pension plans of all of America’s past Corporate Giants – Ford, General Motors – whoever decides that they aren’t going to pay in the future.
It is interesting to note that Socialism has always been used to bail out Capitalist failures – the biggest contrived disaster in 1929 - But these Socialist activities are only ridiculed when they go to the poor or the workers, or the population at large. As long as these Socialists practices go to the wealthy, the Corporate Giants – even to the World Bank and the IMF, we hear not a peep from Congress or anybody else for that matter. By the way, when any bank in the WORLD has a problem – you’re going to bail it out, whether you want to or not.
Isn’t it time that us Socialists smartened up? If we are going to bail everybody out, back everybody up, take over their obligations and promises, subsidize, and finance the whole world – even our enemies - why don’t we, the general public, get a piece of the action WHERE’S THE MONEY! Where’s our money.

Merchants of Death

By Richard E. Noble

‘Merchants of Death’ is a book published in the 1930’s dealing with the history of the Arms industry. It is rather shocking, but not surprising. It has made me ask the question; What is treasonous in Arms selling - and if not “treasonous” how about simply immoral.
In the beginning no one would consider selling arms or weapons to anyone but their own clan. But in 1576 (and I am sure we can go back earlier than this) we find arms makers in Liege, Belgium, selling arms to the Spanish which were being used to kill their own countrymen. The Germans and Austrians acted similarly during the French Revolution.
Well, next we might ask how about selling defective arms? How about selling defective arms to your own people?
During the Civil War, J. P. Morgan bought rejected, known defective carbines from a government arsenal out west. He paid $3.50 each. Then he sold them as new, to General Fremont for $22.00 each. When the soldiers tried to shoot the Carbines, their thumbs were blown off. Consequently the Government refused to pay Morgan. But after the war, J. P. took the nasty old Government to court, and in a U.S. court of law, J. P. Morgan won his claim to payment on the grounds that a contract, even one involving the purchase of a defective, misrepresented product, was “sacred”. It goes without mentioning that no Civil War soldier was repaid a penny for the loss of his not so sacred thumb.
In 1893 Andrew Carnegie sold defective armor plating to his country; plating that was rejected by government inspectors during the day, and then shipped out at night. He was caught. He didn’t go to jail but was fined 15% of the total sales. But after Andrew had a little talk with his good buddy President Cleveland, the fine was cut in half. Again no payment or compensation was made to any of the soldiers and sailors who went down with their unprotected ships.
During the American Revolution a guy by the name of Deane was sent to France to negotiate with the French for weapons for the continental, revolutionary army. He got plenty, and for free. The French, who were, as usual, at odds with the British, gave Deane, for free, all that he wanted. He, in turn, sold them to the Continental Congress for six times their current market value and only added, patriot that he was, a 5% service charge or commission. This scandal was exposed by Tom Paine and others. But Deane was “exonerated” with the help of some of his other patriotic friends, like both Gouvernor and Robert Morris. In fact, after the smoke cleared, Paine's head was the one put on the block for breaking the code of secrecy the French had demanded in return for their gift of ’free’ arms to the colonies.
During W.W.I and W.W.II numerous companies in the U.S., France, and England conducted business in arms as usual before, DURING, and after these wars with no disgrace to their status, and virtually no public exposure (See Trading with the Enemy by Charles Higham and The American Axis by Max Wallace). Right now American weapons companies are selling to both the Arabs and the Israelis, and if we can project from past history, to the Chinese, the Russians, the Taiwanese, Japanese, and whoever has the where-with-all to purchase them, while we here at home argue over hand gun control, and the morality or immorality of getting a “Lewinski” in the oval office.

[Post Note: With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S. is the largest seller and proliferator of Arms – small and large – in the world.]

Hitler's Religion

Hitler’s Religion

by Richard E. Noble

Hitler believes in God. He believes that God is manifested through Nature. By observing Nature and Her goals and methods we come to an understanding of God.
God is cruel. God is powerful. God is without mercy but the Truth and purpose of His ways and methods, though apparently reason-less and haphazard, are truly methodical, plainly obvious and can not be denied. We can verify this by simply looking at our lives, our history, and the natural processes of all living things.
The first principle of Adolf’s God is death and/or killing. God kills all living things. God is the creator of death and the apparent murderer of all mankind and creation. With life comes death. But in death we find God’s purpose.
God’s reasons in killing and destroying all living things are for the promotion of perfection. God’s goal in creating species is their eventual perfection. The human species, as with all living species, is being guided by the hand of Providence towards perfection. Perfection will eventually be achieved by the survival of the fittest. The ‘fittest’ of whatever species will conquer and destroy the unfit, and eventually dominate and bring the species to its natural objective ... perfection. This is the Will of God. This is the plan of God. And if one looks at Nature closely, through all of Her cruelties, be they flood, famine, disease, pestilence or War, one sees the Hand of God at work.
It then logically follows that to assist God in His goal of the eventual perfection of all species, one should actively participate in His plan. To do the work of God on earth is to promote the perfection of the species and this is most easily and directly accomplished by eliminating, destroying, exterminating and killing the inferior.
The superior should be breed and promoted and the inferior should be killed and destroyed. To participate in the achievement of these goals is to act virtuously, and in accordance with the principles of Nature and the Will of God.
What we, as humans, have interpreted as Evil, is really the Hand of God working in its cruel, but necessary, way to promote its goal of the perfection of the species. Interfering in the work of God, by encouraging inferiority, of whatever breed or species, is the true nature of Evil. Protecting the sick, diseased, inflicted and dying is Evil. Compensating for the weak, the unproductive, the mistakes of Nature, is evil. To be a positive participant in attacking true evil is not only virtuous but courageous, even if at this moment in time it may seems murderous or cruel. To do the work of Evil is to promote the survival of the inferior. To do the work of God is to destroy the inferior.
The conundrum of the philosophies of ‘God’ has forever been the justification of good and evil. Adolf justifies, or rectifies Evil, and the cruelties of life, by creating a finite God who is seeking perfection through the processes of natural and social evolution. God, acting through Nature, and the processes of natural selection and natural destruction, and adhering to the basic principle of the survival of the fittest, is leading the world and its creatures through Divine Providence, to its eventual heavenly goal of
PERFECTION.


[This is my personal interpretation, based on incites from my studies of the work Mein Kampf.]

Nothing

“Nothing”

By Richard E. Noble

“Nothing” has been on my mind, ever since I can remember. As a child I often thought about “nothing”, day on end. As a teenager it was a constant pre-occupation. Little did I know that “nothing” was really that important. I have since discovered that “nothing” really matters.
“Nothing” is a key concept in Philosophy, Religion and Science. If you believe that “nothing” is possible, religiously speaking, you can be a Jew, a Catholic, a Protestant or a follower of Islam. If you believe that “nothing” is impossible you can be a Hindu, a Pantheist, an agnostic, possibly some type of Protestant or an atheist. Followers of Confucius, Tao, and Buddha don’t really care about “nothing”. They care about other things but not about “nothing”.
In Philosophy John Paul Sartre wrote a whole book about “nothing”. It was entitled “Being and Nothingness”. I’ve never read any book about anything that was more confusing than Mister Sartre’s book about “nothing”. Trying to figure out “nothing” isn’t easy. There is more to “nothing” than meets the eye.
Lots of Greek philosophers thought about “nothing” - Empedocles, Zeno, and Epicurus to name but a few. In Philosophy all of those who believe in “nothing” believe in God. In fact, they believe that God is “nothing”. If God were something, He could be defined, and God is beyond definition. Christians are the most devoted followers in their belief in “nothing”. To say that “nothing” is impossible would be to deny the divinity of Jesus. Because If God were something, He would have to be all things. He can not be one thing in particular. If He were all things, then all things would have to be divine. If all humans were consequently Divine then what would distinguish everybody else for Jesus? They had a big vote on this at the council of Trent or Nance or someplace. At this council the Pope and all his Cardinals voted strongly in the favor of “nothing”. The Roman Catholic Church has played a big part in establishing “nothing” throughout the world. Martin Luther once proclaimed that God was busy cutting rods from birch trees for those who persisted in asking questions about “nothing”.
Science is in a big ta-doo about “nothing” also. Lavoisier came to his notion that matter could neither be created nor destroyed. This is now called the Law of the Conservation of Matter. Mayer came to a similar conclusion about energy. Now we have the Law of the Conservation of both matter and energy. But these laws or theories give confirmation to the impossibility of “nothing”. Both Lavoisier and Mayer had established that something is always something and can never be turned into “nothing”. But then came that famous war correspondent and part time scientist, Albert Einstein. As a part of his theory of relativity he proclaims that Space and the aether are “nothing”. He claims that space and the aether are a mere attribute of matter. This is confusing but as long as matter and energy are still indestructible and only convertible, science is still Hindu.
But recently some folks are talking about anti-matter and matter and the notion that when they collide they annihilate one another and turn into “nothing”. If all the matter in the Universe could be annihilated then “nothing” can be possible. If nothing is possible then science is no longer Hindu but Judeo/Christian. God would be “nothing” and “something” would be His unexplainable miracle.

IT’S CHRISTMAS, CHEER UP!

By Richard E. Noble

There are only two kinds of people in the world - those that love Christmas and those that hate Christmas. I have always been a born and bred, true blue, Christmas hater. And I have very good, rational justification for my adherence to such an attitude. But as fate will have it and just to break my chops and bust my bubble, the all-knowing messengers from the above; the designers of the expanding universe; that impossible infinite brain who controls all the planets - sent me a bride whose birthday just happens to fall on ... December 25th.
What do you think of that? You’ve heard of the odd couple? How about a situation comedy with Ebenezer Scrooge and Santa Claus living in the same apartment?
It happens every year at about this time. My mind starts to search the dark and dingy corners of my bleak, unhappy childhood for all those tales of misery and neglect that linger like scar tissue on my inner personality and my wife starts bouncing around like a little elf, putting up Christmas lights, doing red and green needlepoint things, and playing Dean Martin’s “I’ll be home for Christmas” around September. That’s when I dig out my Edgar Allen Poe, and start making my annual inquires to the suicide hot line number to see if they are taking on any extra help.
I’ve always figured that I have the perfect attitude to talk to potential suicide candidates. First, I would listen to their terribly depressing story, and then, I’d say; “Well, sounds to me that you have a perfectly good reason for committing suicide BUT ... let me ask you this. If God could do all of this to you, what makes you think that He is going to lighten up if you commit suicide? You must realize that you are a person who is on God’s pooh-pooh list - if you know what I mean. Did you ever figure that it ain’t gonna get no better than this, and that maybe being a hopeless alcoholic is going to be the high point of your eternity? He put you here and did this to you – do you really want to find out what He has planned next?
THINK ABOUT THAT!
To tell you the truth, for the first five years or so of our marriage, just looking at my wife’s bubbling smile and rosy cheeks at this time of the year, gave me chronic morning sickness. In fact, this year, I’ve sent for my own home pregnancy test kit. Boy, that’s all that I need.
But enough of this fun and games, I’ve sat down here today to make all of you cry - after all, this is Christmas. But first, I have to get you all in the mood.
Tell me, do you have any retarded children? Anybody in your immediate family have an incurable disease? Did you ever back up out of the drive, over one of your own children? Come on, THINK! You couldn’t have lived through all of these Christmases without being miserable at least once in your life. Didn’t you ever say, “So what if our little Nancy got bit by a strange dog. How does anybody really know if that was actual saliva foaming around its mouth? And besides, this tetanus shot business is just another plot by Doctors to make themselves a bunch of extra bucks.”
So, are you getting into a crying mood yet? No? Then let’s think - cancers? terminal brain tumor? unemployment? bankruptcy? stock market crash? hunger? pestilence? poverty? starvation? nuclear fallout? war? Global warming? experimental research on the Easter Bunny? That’s not a lump, Honey, it is just a little fat - too many kielbasa sandwiches, more than likely.
But can you believe this! Do you see what’s happening? That’s right - my wife is starting to rub off on me. She is beginning to win the battle. I sat down here today to write something depressing. I hoped to make everyone cry, or, at least, get sick to their stomachs and puke. But, instead, all that I can come up with is this light hearted dribble about disease and suicide. I’ll tell you; this makes me want to barf! I’m disgusted with myself. I might just as well go write a Christmas list, or hang some silver tinsel.
I’d really like to tell all of you little kids out there that Santa Claus is really dead. But, I have recently read that he was a secret witness for the FBI. Seems that he was involved in some political gift-giving bribery scam and the FBI has issued him a new identity. He is presently living under an assumed name in some remote sheep herding village in northern Argentina. Don’t expect him this year, boys and girls.
So, you see, nothing is working out for me today. I really don’t think that I could depress anyone. Everything that I write about is positive. I think that I will just scrap this whole article, and ask my wife to write something cheery about how it feels to be sixty. I mean, she is the one who was born on December 25th, not me. Oh well, happy birthday, honey.
So, tell me, has anyone in your family ever lived long enough to collect Social Security? And I mean lived! Laying in an iron lung for fifteen years, back in the laundry room of some Jamaican nursing home in Miami, doesn’t count.
Well, the heck with this – everything that I think of sounds just too Rudolf-like. I guess that I am just going to resign myself to directing my feet to the sunny side of the street and decking the halls with bombs of holly – I mean balls ... that’s balls of holly.
So okay, have a Merry Christmas.

Minimum Wage

What’s Wrong with Minimum Wages?

Why Don’t We Just Leave the Well-off Alone?

By Richard E. Noble

I have worked for minimum wage or below for the majority of my employment career - which started when I was about ten years old. I have always known that it is because of me that the world, at large, and the U.S. in particular, has been going to hell in a handbag. My bosses have explained this to me over and over.
You see, it is because of my demanding this exorbitant minimum wage that we have inflation, constantly escalating prices, unemployment, teenagers idling on street corners and a vanishing industrial and manufacturing base.
Strangely enough, people who make exorbitant paychecks and profits as owners of businesses and CEOs and CFOs, and Doctors, Lawyers, Dentists, Stock brokers, people receiving dividends from their stock portfolios and Indian chiefs who own gambling casinos in Miami have just the opposite effect on the economy. Their pay increases do not cause inflation or increase prices; instead their extra money acts as a stimulus to the economy, promotes investment at home and abroad, creates jobs everywhere and, in general, makes the world a better place for everybody to live.
It goes like this: if you give Michael Jordan or some such wealthy person another billion dollars a week, as opposed to giving another dollar a week to each employee at the Nike factory in Slumbovia, or Bumslavia, or Weallstarvingistan - nothing negative, economically, occurs. Prices do not go up because Michael Jordan or another among the minority of the rich has more money. They already have everything they ever wanted. They don’t need to buy anything. How many Hummers, BMWs, yachts, and diamond rings can one person have? Besides if the price of a quarter mile long yacht goes from 147 million to 150 million who would notice. This increase wouldn’t even make it into the pages of Money Magazine.
You can give all the money you want to rich people and nothing in the economic world will change. This is an economic fact that was proven in the laboratory of real life economic science in 1929 by that great American monetary savant, Herbert Hoover.
On the other hand, an extra dollar in the pockets of a bunch of poor people automatically throws any economy into a tailspin. Right off, the price of M-D 20-20 skyrockets along with bread, peanut butter, and Chevrolet automobiles. This hits the commodity and retail markets immediately. The price of grain and legumes all over the world goes nuts. Farmers instantly begin double cropping, planting in-between the rows, and doubling up on fertilizers and polluting pesticides; government subsidies go through the roof, while profits to the farmers go down and the price of a tomato at the IGA in Wisconsin goes to a buck-fifty apiece. General Motors has to increase production, but the cost of labor in the U.S. is bankrupting them; so their new plant in China gets the contract while the DuPont family sells off all of their shares in Aunt Jemima Pancakes. It’s chaos.
If I, and those of my ilk, were willing to work for half or one third of minimum wage, my boss then could hire two or three more morons like me and, of course, the unemployment problem would vanish. This would also, more than likely, solve the illegal immigrant problem besides.
You see, if I were willing to pick tomatoes and sleep in an abandon building or old slave cottage or a farmer’s barn or root cellar while defecating in the woods or orchards or behind the hedges of better-off people in the San Bernardino mountains like illegal immigrants do, then the farmers would not have to encourage Coyotes to smuggle poor Mexicans and Central Americans across the Rio Grande and into Miami, Seattle, New York, New Jersey and Kalamazoo Michigan. Nor would they have to continue to falsify their labor and Social Security reports.
But because I, and others like me, are unwilling to do this, these poor farmers and packing house owners, and cottage-garment industry sweat-shop owners, and restaurant and construction company owners and landscapers, and concrete company and gas station owners, and grocery stores, and chicken and beef processing houses, and home cleaning and domestic services, and large chain department stores etc., all have to do all of these illegal, immoral things.
We minimum wage earners are like the pornographic video and bookstores in Holyoake, Missouri - we are the evil temptresses that lure the Jimmy Swaggarts and Tammy Faye Bakers into the snake pit of moral depravity; we are the Chunky Cheeses to the video game addict; we are the irresistible impulse luring the unsuspecting all over the world - we are the ones who are ruining the economic world. It is us, with our benign satisfaction with mediocrity, or unwillingness to achieve, and our ignorant and obstinate choice to remain unsuccessful.
Why is it that we continually choose to work at JR stores, and wash dishes in greasy-spoon type restaurants who provide no health insurance? Why do we continually take up residence in crime ridden ghettoes? Why the hell don’t we just move; why don’t we make application to better universities; why do we accept advice and principles from parents who are even dumber than we are?
All of our kind hearted, generous employers are, of course, very good people; they are not criminals - it’s us; it’s me. And you know, I don’t know what is wrong with me. I don’t know why I act like this. I have tried to get help for this problem but I have been unable to find any psychiatrists who are willing to work for minimum wage. They feel that if they work for any less than one hundred dollars a minute, research in mental health will be abandoned and more nutty bastards, like myself, will be put out onto the sidewalks and alleyways of the American inner cities. This, of course, will increase the perv quotient, promote crime, juvenile delinquency and the threat of terrorism everywhere.
It was because of people like me, way back when, demanding their pays to be raised to a minimum, that forced the textile mills to leave New England. It was the same type of ugly Americans in the Midwest and eventually in the South that forced these poor, patriotic hard working mill owners to go to South America, India and Asia where now, unfortunately, they are forced to deal with the same type ungrateful breed over there. We minimum wage earners keep breeding like flies - there seems to be no end to our kind.
What is the matter with us minimum wage workers? When will we ever learn?
If we continually ask for more money, this just makes the prices of things rise; and after the prices go up, we still don’t have any more money than we used to have. So what is the sense to it? What will it take for us to learn that we must figure out how to live on whatever it is that the boss is willing to pay us.
We certainly can’t ask the bosses to take less money. Why just look around - they are barely getting by on what they have now. And besides, there are so few of them and so many of us. I mean, if we took all the money from the 10% who own and control everything - all the rich people in the world - and divided it up among all the poor in the world - the price of peanut butter and jelly in the U.S. would be a thousand dollars a jar - M-D 20-20 would only be served at fine restaurants - golf courses would disappear and America would become one huge bowling alley - yes, every other cardboard house that the poor have built in the garbage dumps of the world might get a new tin roof - big deal.
Poor people just don’t seem to understand - if God wanted poor people to be better off, He wouldn’t have created Conservatives.

National Debt

The National Debt

With a “Noble” Solution

Richard E. Noble

A few presidents ago the National Debt was the most pressing thing that our political leaders and political hopefuls had on their minds. Ronald Reagan in his campaign for the presidency in 1980 told us all about a stack of dollar bills stretching from the planet earth to the moon. This stack of paper money was to represent the one trillion dollar mark in our advance to national bankruptcy. Our National Debt had not yet reached this benchmark in fiscal irresponsibility and Ronald Reagan was to be our knight in shining economic armor who would stop this catastrophe from happening.
Today this stack of dollar bills is probably bumping up against the planet Pluto but we hardly hear a murmur of the once prophesied impending catastrophe. I wonder why? Was the National Debt not really a legitimate problem? Was the Great Communicator merely communicating greatly or grandiosely? What the heck is the National Debt anyway?
The National Debt is the total amount that the government currently owes from all of its past borrowing. I guess that we could safely say that it is the mortgage that our governments, past and present, have borrowed on the United States of America. A budget deficit, on the other hand, is the amount by which expenditures exceed receipts in a single year. Today there is a simple way for the lay person to distinguish between these two things - the deficit is tabulated in Billions and the National Debt is now tabulated in Trillions.
In the two hundred years B.R. (before Ronald Reagan) the entire accumulated debt of all of our previous presidents amounted to 909.1 Billion dollars. So B.R., our country’s National Debt had not yet reached one trillion dollars - that stack of dollar bills had not yet reached the moon. Now, remember, that figure included all the debt accumulated from George Washington through Jimmy Carter. That 909.1 Billion dollars included all the monies borrowed for the American Revolution, the Civil War, World War I, World War II, Korea and Vietnam.
By the time that Ronald Reagan left office in 1988 the National Debt was 2,601.3 Billion or 2.6 Trillion. In just eight years Ronald Reagan had more than doubled what all the previous presidents from Washington through Carter had accumulated in the prior 200 years.
Okay, let’s give Ronnie a break. Let’s kick it up a notch. Let’s go to George H. W. Bush - Number Forty-One, as he is so lovingly referred to today.
Number Forty-One is the Yale graduate who accused Ronald Reagan of advocating Voodoo economics. By the time Number Forty-One left office in 1992 the National Debt was 4,002.1 Billion or approx. 4.0 Trillion dollars. If Ronald Reagan was practicing Voodoo, one must hesitate to ask what Number Forty One’s economic principles were based on. And, you know, these presidents today have a Council of Economic Advisers. The only problem with the Council of Economic Advisers is that when a Council member disagrees with the president or speaks out publicly against a president’s economic policy, he suddenly finds himself in search of a new Council to counsel.
But this is all beginning to sound like Republican bashing. Let’s go to B. J. Clinton. In my neighborhood B. J. stood for something other than Billy Jefferson, but we won’t get into that. So B. J. came into office in 1992 and by the time that he left, the National Debt was 5,606.1 Billion or 5.6 Trillion dollars. So Reagan gave us 2.6 Trillion, Number Forty-One gave us 4.0 Trillion, and B. J. gave us 5.6 Trillion.
Everyone says that what B. J. accomplished was good. Well, when it is compared to what Ronnie and Number Forty-One did, I suppose? Sounds to me like saying; Well, my Grandfather was hanged, my Daddy got the electric chair and now I’m serving life in prison. Guess that I am doing better than they did, huh? - I suppose, but most of us wouldn’t consider life in prison all that much of an accomplishment.
Today we have Bush Number Forty-Three.
Number Forty-Three has the debt up to somewhere between 7 and 8 Trillion. It is estimated that by the time that Number Forty-Three leaves office the National Debt will be somewhere around 10 Trillion dollars - give or take a Trillion. Like some famous politician once said; “A billion here and a billion there and pretty soon you’re talking some real money.” Billions no longer matter, it’s trillions now.
So there you go. And what does this all mean? I was listening to one economist on the TV the other day and he said;
“Economically, we are like the man who just jumped off the top of a one hundred storey building. The falling man passes the eightieth storey and a guy sticks his head out of a window and screams to the falling man; ‘How’s everything going?’
‘Everything is O.K. so far,’ the falling man replies.”
But, let’s not be pessimistic about this - you know - is the glass half-empty or is it half-full. Let us be “half-full” about all of this. It does no good to be half-empty because we are a lot worse off than half-empty. If we were only half-empty that would mean that we would still have something in our glass. At 10 Trillion dollars in debt we don’t even have a glass anymore. But whatever - let’s be positive.
Some politicians claim that the National Debt doesn’t really matter because it is money that we owe to ourselves. So even when the federal government just pays the interest on the National Debt it is infusing dollars into our economy - like giving a tax cut to the rich. But since Reagan, unfortunately, this is no longer true.
Before Reagan our government’s borrowing was financed by Americans. After Reagan our National Debt became so enormous that Americans didn’t have enough money to finance the Government’s borrowing - so we borrowed from foreign countries. Or would it be more economic to say that we sold our debt to foreign countries. In other words, we sold the mortgage, or foreigners bought our mortgage. Now countries like Saudi Arabia, Japan, China, the U.K etc. own a good part of our mortgage. If in the last few decades, it has appeared to you that your government has been acting like a foreign country, this may be a part of the reason.
But certainly, one day, we will pay off this mortgage and the American people will once again own their country?
This does not even seem to be in the realm of possibility. Politicians talk of balancing the budget as they did in the year 1999 for the first time in many decades. By the way, this supposed surplus that we had, momentarily, was only accomplished by pilfering money from the Social Security Trust Fund. Excess monies had been accumulated in the Social Security Trust Fund because of an increase in the Social Security tax in 1983. An increase was mandated to compensate for the baby boomers. From that year on, the Social Security had a surplus but everybody from Reagan to Clinton used the Social Security surpluses for other general fund spending purposes.
Balancing the budget - or having a year in which the government does not produce a deficit by spending more money than it receives - only manages to pay the interest on the National Debt. A balanced budget pays nothing on the principal or the debt itself. In order to pay down the debt itself, the government must create a surplus - spend less money than what it takes in every year. And then use those surplus monies to buy back Debt (treasury bonds).
Is this a possibility? Seems not. I have never heard a politician in my lifetime talk of paying down the principal on the National Debt. The political answer to the National Debt seems to be like our policy towards gays in the military - don’t ask; don’t tell.
So, I was thinking, why don’t we sell all of our mortgage to foreign countries and then claim bankruptcy. The only way these countries could get their money is if they have a bigger army than ours.
Or maybe these foreign countries who own our debt would forgive our debt like the World Bank sometimes does for under-developed countries - or like we did after World War II for a number of countries. But, of course, this is all ridiculous - we’re the richest country in the world, remember? Well, if we are the richest country in the world, why don’t we just pay everybody off?
Because we don’t have the money. So we are the richest country in the world but we don’t have the money to pay our debts - our mortgage anyway. I have many friends who are rich in a similar manner. How can we be rich and, at the same time, be the biggest debtor nation in the world? Are we rich, or aren’t we?
But don’t despair, I have more realistic solutions to this problem than depending on the charity of the rest of the world. I wouldn’t expect or hold my hope out for a European Marshall Plan for the U.S.A. either folks. My solutions are dynamic and they don’t involve raising taxes.
Today we have approximately 200 million working people, or tax paying people in America. These 200 million people pay about 1.2 trillion dollars in taxes each year. If we can increase the working population of the United States about 10 times its present number and we tax them all at the present rate, we would have a national income of 10 or 11 trillion a year. So then, if we could get our government to put one trillion aside each year, we could pay off the National Debt in about 10 or 11 years. I admit, this solution has its problems but, come on - is the glass half-empty or is it half-full? This would take care of any Social Security short fall also, I might add.
My second idea is even better. We don’t need any new taxes or new workers. This idea is a classic.
We simply continue with Number Forty-Three’s borrow and spend policies. As all of us economists know this can do nothing but increase the rate of inflation - but that’s good. If we can get the inflation rate to rise faster than the rate at which Number Forty-Three and his successors can borrow, one day we will have more pieces of paper with pictures of dead presidents on them than we have debt to pay.
This is that same idea that they told you about a few years ago. Remember they said; Buy yourself a big house that you can barely afford now, and pay off your balloon mortgage – twenty years later - with cheap, inflated money from your naturally escalating high paying job.
The Germans tried this print-more-money idea after World War I. It worked real well. They had a few minor problems. Like trying to figure out how many wheelbarrows full of paper money it would take to buy a loaf of bread. But so what, I mean, look at Germany today? They’re doing all right.
So there you go - is the glass half-empty or is it half-full. What me worry? Just call me Alfred E. Newman. To tell you the truth when I look at the past illegal immigration rate and the true rate of inflation over the last few decades, I think that my two suggestions are the government’s plan - or has been anyway. In 1974 I bought a Chevy van for $3,400, today a similar van sells for $34,000. I think that the inflation rate has been somewhat greater than the presently claimed 2.2%.
My advise to the next two generations of Americans is - buy wheelbarrows.
I have one other idea.
When the government spends more than it collects every year - it borrows. It prints up Treasury Notes and Bonds etc. Then it has the Federal Reserve - its personal banker - sell them to Americans and foreigner investors and foreign countries, at a specified interest rate. This is what makes our National Debt. This puts the government in a catch-22 situation. It can’t raise taxes - nobody likes that. It can’t charge tariffs on products coming into the country and put the cost of our government onto foreign countries and foreign manufactures. It could do this, especially when one considers that we now import 80% of what is sold here domestically - but it can’t, because we believe in “free trade”. Besides, most of our imports are from American based companies who went over seas to avoid paying taxes and hire cheaper labor in the fist place. Raising tariff rates would spoil their whole plan. So then how else could the government earn some money to pay its bills?
It could rent out rooms at the White House - but that is how we finance our political campaigns. So what can the government do?
Well, how about just printing up so much money every year and buying back some reasonable portion of our debt, without going through the debt making process of selling Treasury Notes, Bonds and Bills etc. via the Federal Reserve?
The first thing that everybody yells and screams about this idea is that it is inflationary. Yeah? And borrowing and creating more debt via the Federal Reserve and selling our country to China is better and un-inflationary? I suggest that we pass a law allowing only a certain percentage to be printed up in this manner - taking into consideration GNP and Inflation and the predictable population and economic growth.
The second problem with this idea is that it is against the Constitution. Yeah! So who gives a flying flip? This hasn’t stopped the last five or seven administrations from doing anything. Why should it stop us on anything as important as this? Besides, the Constitution on this particular point could very easily be reinterpreted - we wouldn’t even be forced to change anything or seek a Constitutional Amendment.
The next complaint with this idea is that when the American people and the other nations of the world find out about this shenanigans they will lose faith in our government.
I don’t think so - no one understands economics anyway. And if you think that will be the case, don’t tell them. As the debt miraculously goes down gradually every year, just tell everybody that it is because of good business management on the part of that particular administration - cook the books; or just add it to the total of taxes collected, nobody will know the difference; or tell everybody that it is a miracle. Everybody believes in miracles these days. When the press investigates and discovers that what is happening is economically impossible - just lie to them, like we do on everything else. What is the problem here?
As for the American people? What the heck do they care? They’re too busy trying to make a living to start trying to comprehend economics - least of all the Federal Reserve System. And need I point out that at this point in world economics – if the U.S. currency fails – the entire world economy fails. U.S. dollars are now used around the world in place of Gold. The U.S. dollar is today’s gold.
The bottom line is this: Printing money and skipping the Federal Reserve will no doubt create some inflation. But, using that money to buy back Treasury Bonds (Debt.) will be anti-inflationary. On the one hand, we are printing money to put into circulation, but using it to take money out of circulation by reclaiming debt on the other. If it is done properly - with due diligence - the one will cancel out the other and America will one day be debt free and it will cost nobody anything. This will not be a loss or gain - it will simply be a monetary transfer. We will transfer a bunch of one type of paper for another type of paper. If it is done right, nobody will know the difference. And if we want to add an additional check on inflation, when we start buying back our treasury bonds from the Federal Reserve with our “free paper”, temporarily raise the required reserve security demands. In other words, if the banks are required to hold 10% in reserve - raise that requirement to 12% or whatever. Then as time goes on and we see that inflation is under control, lower the requirement.
The last criticism that I can think of is that this idea would be putting trust in our government to do the right thing and keep things under control. In other words, somebody has to be sure that they don’t print up too much money every year. So set up an oversight committee - with the Federal Reserve Board, if that will make you happy. They will not like the basic idea in the first place - but they will just have to deal with it. As it is now, they (the Banks) are the only ones who profit from this National Debt business - so they like it; but if the debt is allowed to continue growing, it will mean possible bankruptcy for them and everybody else. As it is now the only hope for the world economy is continued projected economic growth, coupled with reasonable inflation. Today we have inflation and debt. With this suggestion we will still have the inflation - but we will eliminate the debt. And it is the Debt that will eventually kill us, not the inflation. The world can live with a controlled inflation - it has for centuries. And if this is done correctly we will have no more inflation than what is currently being created. Besides, there aren’t any good choices here; you can trust your government or you can trust the Federal Reserve and the International Banking community.
As I said earlier, facetiously, Germany did this but failed and bankrupted their country after World War I. But the Germans wanted to bankrupt their currency. They didn’t want to pay off their war debts and the smart money wanted to turn the middle class against the occupation government. So they simply printed up paper until it filled wheelbarrows. They did not use due diligence and have proper controls. They didn’t care. What they did was not a accident. It was a planned bankruptcy. You can be sure that the big boys in German currency had all their cash in something other than the Mark. Of course, there is the possibility that our National Debt is also planned. The design of the plan being to keep the general population thinking that they are broke, so that they won’t be suggesting any “free” social programs for the “welfare” state. I mean, you must have noticed that no matter how large the National Debt, we always have enough money for another war.

Watergate

Carl Bernstein

“Loyalties, a Son’s Memoir”

Executive Order No. 9835

By Richard E. Noble

I’ve just finished reading a book entitled “Loyalties, a Son’s Memoir” by Carl Bernstein, the Washington Post reporter of Watergate fame.
Carl Bernstein’s dad was a lawyer. He was interested in politics. He got involved in the Roosevelt administration and served on several prominent committees. He joined the military in World War II and went over to Europe to fight against Fascism and Nazism. When he returned to his home, it seems to me, he found more of the same waiting for him right here.
On March 21, 1947 Harry Truman passed executive order 9835. This order was to trigger the American Inquisition of the late 40’s and early 50’s - the McCarthy Era.
This law basically stated that anyone suspected of disloyalty could be summarily dismissed from their government job. You could be called before a commission on information provided anonymously. You had no right to a lawyer, no jury, no trial. You weren’t allowed to confront your accusers, or to even know who they were. No proof or specific evidence was required, but yet if the board found that you were suspect, you would be fired from your job, and labeled as a subversive. You might never find another job. You might have to move from your neighborhood, change your name, lie, hide and keep the knowledge of your appearance before this inquisition committee a secret for the rest of your life. And this all could happen to you because you were a member of some labor union, or an associate of a member of a labor union. Or you were a member of a club that petitioned for the rights of blacks or minorities in America; or you wrote something positive about the Soviet Union, or you associated with someone who did. You could lose your job, your career and the potential for your whole life’s efforts on the false accusation of an anonymous, jealous fellow worker; someone who may have had a cousin in line for your job.
Carl Bernstein’s dad was one of these people. He was bigger than an unjustly accused victim though. He was an outright champion of the victimized. As a lawyer, he took it upon himself to defend over five hundred of these people brought before Mister McCarthy and his team of government investigators until finally like, Clarence Darrow before him, he was brought to the firing line by his political rivals and enemies. He lost his status and position. He lost his Washington career. He lost his ability to practice law. He ended up opening up a Bendix coin-operated Laundromat in a black neighborhood, and that is how he earned his living from that time on.
This is quite a story, in itself, but there is more.
Carl Bernstein’s dad, a defender of the liberal left was confronted by the McCarthy champions of the right. Two of McCarthy’s prominent Knights were the infamous Roy Cohn, and Richard M. Nixon.
Richard M. Nixon, the man who was forced to resign from the highest government job in the land, who had his whole career ruined; who lived the rest of his life fending off accusations and denying his being labeled a crook, and a criminal - this man’s life, very much in the pattern of his late rival, Alfred Bernstein, was brought to this disgraceful position, at least in part, by the son of his victim, Carl Bernstein. The man whose life and career Richard M. Nixon had once helped to destroy.

Animals

Animals

By Richard E. Noble

Dogs and cats are being butchered in China for their pelts. An undercover reporter went to China, posing as an agent for a fir buying firm and with a hidden camera filmed his experiences.
He showed film of little kittens in cages all cowering in the corner, while a man with a string looped on the end of a stick, strung it about the neck of one of the little kittens, then pulled it tight and lifted the kitten to the top of the cage where it was left to dangle, kicking, mewing and struggling until it died. While we all watched the little kitten struggle, the camera caught the faces of the kittens still in the cage awaiting their turn with the noose.
“Those kittens are cowering in the corner with fear in their eyes. It is almost as if they understand what is about to happen to them,” offered the show’s host.
In another scene a man is shown walking a dog on a leash. The dog is wagging its tail as he walks obediently at the side of his master. The dog’s leash is then hooked to a fence, and the owner then takes hold of a back leg of the animal, slits an artery up in the thigh, and as the dog yelps, wines and whimpers he proceeds to skin the dog alive. As he peels the hide off the living dog, the dog’s tail continues to wag in friendly adherence to its master’s torturous demands.
The reporter comments that some of these pictures will be imbedded into his mind forever. I knew the moment that he uttered that phrase it would be the same for me also.
I wanted to scream out in righteous indignation at the brutal unfeeling Chinese, but before I could squeak out even a peep, I saw the dead, cooked carcasses of turkeys and chickens on my dinning room table. I saw pork chops and steaks sizzling on my Bar-b-que grill. I saw burgers and sausages browning in my sauce pan. And so, I thought, we humans choose some living creatures to pet and others to torture.
And how does a man who would like to consider himself as “good” rectify this sight with justice and morality?
I guess he doesn’t. Like much else in this world and life about us we simply turn our heads and deny that it is happening. We hire others to do the killing and perform the dirty deeds and we avoid as best we can the responsibility for even our own appetites. Or we perform the dirty deeds ourselves, and say that we have done it because it is so. But what should we do?
Well, I suppose that we could stop killing and eating other living things. If we can’t do that, we could at the least be a little more humane. After all, animals are also the possessors of that divine spark that we humans call life. Is it not that spark we attribute to the image in which we have supposedly been created?
“Humane”? That’s an interesting word, isn’t it? Humane does that mean treating other living things kindly, or does it mean treating other living things as we treat other human beings? You know - Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
But, I am told that we are already doing that. It doesn’t seem to be working all that well.
Obviously we need to look for higher standards.

JEWS

Jews – History

By Richard E. Noble

In this process of my self-education - and I must educate myself, because no one else has the patience - as far as history, philosophy, theology, science ... man, just about everywhere you turn, there are Jews. So I decided that I had to read some books about the Jews.
I followed the Jews back to Moses. But there is a controversy about Moses. They are not even sure he really existed. But Mark Twain helped me out there. Mark said that if Moses didn’t really exist, there was probably someone around about the same time with the same name.
So okay, we have Moses, “the Law giver”. But Moses wasn’t the first Jew. Moses was found floating down the river by an Egyptian Princess who took him home and raised him as an Egyptian Prince. Moses has it made; but Moses messes up. He gets into a fight with an Egyptian Foreman who is whipping a Jewish bricklayer whom the foreman feels is screwing up one of the pyramids or something. Moses wins, but he wins too good. The other guy is dead. Moses then tries to defend and explain himself, but the only people who agree and understand his point of view are Jews - kind of like the 0. J. Simpson trial. So Moses heads for the hills, and moves in with a bunch of Jews.
But then I ask myself, if Moses wasn’t the first Jew, I mean, he was no Buddha. There were Jews all around even before Moses showed up at the construction site. So who was the first Jew, and where did all this Jew stuff really begin?
So I find the oldest Jewish historian that I can find, a guy by the name of Flavius Joesephus - no relation to Bo-sephus, the red-neck country guy. This is Joe-sephus. This guy is a story in himself we will do something on him another time. But, in any case, I start reading in order to find out who the first Jew in history really was. And this book written by Josephus starts off like this:
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”
It’s the Bible, man! Can you believe it? According to Josephus, the first Jew is Adam and the first Jewish Princess is Eve. Now I wish that this Josephus had done a little more research, because I’m wondering now, was God really Jewish, Himself?
But whatever, the first man and woman were Jewish. Well, I’ll be damned, who would have thunk it? And if that is the case, then we are all basically Jews. I mean everybody!
But what if I don’t want to be Jewish, I don’t even have one of them little beanies. The Pope even has one. But why shouldn’t he? He’s just as Jewish as all the rest of us.
I just don’t get it. If everybody is Jewish, what has everybody been arguing and killing one another about for all of these centuries?
More books to read, I guess. You know, I’m beginning to think that there is no end to all this reading and educating business. You’d think if God wanted me to know all of this stuff, He would have created me as an Encyclopedia salesman or Funkend Wagnall or somebody like that.

Poverty

Poverty

Commentary

By Richard E. Noble

Poverty seems to be both universal and timeless. But, as with pornography, everyone recognizes it when they see it, yet find the concept impossible to define. My reading in philosophy has led me to believe that nothing can be understood adequately unless it can be defined.
So far the simplest and most straight forward definition that I have is that poverty is a lack of money or material possessions.
This definition, of course, is very vague. Almost all of us can attest to having a lack of money and material possessions - to some degree - but we don’t necessarily consider ourselves to be living in a state of poverty. Today many consider the State of Poverty to be a real place - namely Mississippi. But even given this terrible set of circumstances most of us would agree that we would rather be poor in Mississippi that in India or Bangladesh, Bangkok or Baghdad.
So what is poverty? Let me give it a shot here:
Poverty is that state or condition in which an individual or a group of individuals within a given society or structure are unable to provide for themselves adequately.
Right off, I see that the problem with this definition is the word “adequately”. Who or how do we determine what is adequate?
Let’s try again:
Poverty is that state or condition in which an individual or a group of individuals are unable to provide for themselves in a manner acceptable to the majority of the people composing the group or community of which the said individual or group of individuals is a part or member.
This would make poverty into a relative concept. In other words whether a person is living in poverty or not would be determined by the judgment of the majority living within that particular group or community. And I would say that this is the case or fact of the matter. What would be considered poverty in Denmark might not be what is considered poverty in Bangkok.
But whether in Bangkok or Mississippi whatever we decided is poverty, this state is determined by “money” and or “material possessions”. It is not a state of mind. It is a condition that exists in economic reality.
And what determines a person’s relative poverty is a matter of what he owns or earns. If what he owns or what he earns is below a certain standard then it is deemed that he is living in a state of poverty.
The solution to poverty would then be that an individual or group of individuals living in poverty must somehow have their material possessions or quantity of money enhanced to that degree considered to be acceptable by the surrounding society or group.
So obviously, if we determine who are poverty stricken within a given society and we “give” them money and or material possessions in sufficient quantity we could eradicate poverty from within our society or any given society.
But as far as I know there has never been any society that has found this to be an acceptable method for the eradication of poverty. There are a million problems with this method and I don’t think that I have to elaborate.
But before we even get to the possibility of the above as a solution we must all be brought to accept that poverty does exist in reality within our particular societies.
In the early days of human civilization poverty was somewhat glossed over by the institutions of slavery and peasantry. And in these early days both slavery and peasantry were accepted as destined, inevitable, acceptable and in most cases established by God. Most of the early religious leaders - Buddha, Jesus Christ, Mohammed, and many of the early Jewish prophets - saw an “injustice” in this attitude. They set out on the charitable mission of reforming the established acceptance of poverty and turning the eradication of poverty into a religious goal. Instead of the elite and successful being the “chosen people” of God - Egyptians, Romans, Greeks etc., these reformers taught that the “poor huddled masses” were the “chosen” and if not the chosen at least they were to be included and not excluded from God’s select circle.
This went on rather haphazardly until Calvin and others of his time began to spin the story of God’s love back onto the lives of the rich and famous - and I would say that this is pretty much where we stand today on this matter.
The debate after Calvin was picked up though once again during the enlightenment. Certain social thinkers - Godwin, Voltaire, J. S. Mill, Karl Marx and many, many more - began to suggest that poverty was not a condition established by God or that this condition was not inevitable but was brought on by society in general. This did not sit well with the Generals of society. One of the first defenders of the status quo and society in general was Malthus.
Malthus suggested that the reason that poverty, starvation and destitution were growing at such an alarming rate was very simple. Food supply increased arithmetically while people increased geometrically. Therefore starvation, destitution, and poverty were inevitable. It was not so much that the rich were not willing to share or that society in general was inadequate, but more because of mankind’s sexual practices - and especially the sexual overindulgence of the poor and poverty stricken.
Today conservative thinkers like George Will still advocate this same notion. George Will says that the eradication of poverty in the U.S. is simple; all we have to do is stop teenage pregnancy. George says this because 55% of all women living in poverty in America today were once pregnant teenagers. I would also bet that over eighty percent of us alive today were born of a teenage mother or a very recent graduate from teenagerhood but ... whatever.
Both of these answers I find problematical. First Malthus:
If the question is: How can poverty be eradicated or how can we eliminate poverty. Neither of these answers addresses the issue.
If as Maithus suggested we have people who are living in poverty or who are of the poverty stricken class, produce fewer children - we would still have “poverty”. We could have fewer people living in poverty provided we do not have more people immigrating into this class (peasant) from other societies or that the economic circumstances within the society do not deteriorate thus reducing more and more people to a state of fewer and fewer material possessions or less and less monetary income. Poverty as you will remember is an economic condition. It is defined by how much money and or material possessions a person has.
Mr. Will’s solution would also fail to eliminate “poverty”. People would still be living in a state of poverty if teenage girls did not become pregnant. If all the daughters of the wealthy in America were allowed to become pregnant as teenagers and all the poor and poverty stricken in America were prevented from giving birth as teenagers the ranks of those living in Poverty would probably not be changed one iota. We may have fewer teenage girls living in poverty but poverty would remain.
By keeping your daughter free from teenage pregnancy you may decrease her chances of living a life of poverty but you certainly won’t eliminate poverty. Poverty depends on how much money a person earns or has access to – not on whether she is a teenager or if she is pregnant.
This also applies to those who advocate education as a means of eliminating poverty. You can educate a child and thus give him a greater chance of earning more money - but this will not eliminate poverty. You can educate everybody in the world but if the world does not have enough jobs of above poverty level income available you will simply have smarter people living in a state of poverty. You will probably have the additional challenge of trying to outsmart brighter thieves and burglars. Then you will have to create brighter police officers - that may prove to be even more difficult that eliminating poverty.
If in the time of Malthus all poverty was in the peasant class, then it would follow that poverty could have been eradicated by eliminating all peasants. But if I have my history in tact, peasants were the people who did the farming - they did the hoeing and the cultivating. So if the peasants were all eliminated the food supply would also have been eliminated. In which case Malthus’s bright idea would not only have eliminated “poverty” it would also have eliminated “prosperity”. One may have been born with a silver spoon in his mouth but if there is no pudding or porridge or Campbell’s chicken noodle soup what good is your silver spoon?
The bottom line is - if the peasants constituted “poverty”, in order to eradicate poverty the peasant material condition must be enhanced - somehow.
If a pregnant teenage girl must live in “poverty” because she is only capable of working at a job that provides a poverty sustaining wage - if she delays her pregnancy ten years but at the end of that time she is still only capable of working at a job which pays poverty sustaining wages, then what have you accomplished?
There is an elephant in the living room here that neither Malthus or George Will want to face. As long as you have jobs that supply only poverty sustaining wages you will have poverty.
Now we are getting to the real problem.
If your “system” demands that your employers must, of necessity, pay wages that sustain poverty - you either have to learn to accept poverty - shake your head and blame it on God as they have in the past - or you have to tweak the “system”.
The system can only be tweaked in so many ways as I see it.
You can leave the employer alone and “subsidize” those who must perform the poverty producing jobs by some sort of redistribution of wealth via taxation; or you can standardize the pay rate so that no job is poverty sustaining; or you can do a combination of both of these alternatives until there are no people living under the conditions that the majority of the people of this society find inadequate.
Unfortunately the poor can not eliminate poverty. One poor person can work and possibly change his condition but this does not eliminate the economic conditions that dictate the necessity of poverty. Poverty is not individual but systemic - only the wealthy or those who control the supply of money and the opportunity of attaining money can eliminate poverty - in other words those who control the “system”.
If we apply the Willie Sutton Principle here; If a situation can only be satisfied by money, then those with the money or those who control the supply of money are the only ones who can apply the solution. This means business, banking, government - society.
The poor have to be willing, able and have the capacity to earn the money if it is made available. This is understood. There will always be those that are incapable - but that is a much different problem.
In the U.S. it is estimated that there are between 36 and 40 million people living in what is defined by the government as poverty. Unemployment is estimated to be between 4% and 5%. That means that one third of these people are currently registered to be looking for employment. There are no statistics on undocumented workers or on the criminal underclass of chronically unemployed. So this means that over two thirds of these people (36-40 million) are currently employed. These people are working to maintain their poverty. You can either raise their wages, or give them what they need. As long as society allows employment that pays wages that sustain poverty - there will always be someone who is living and working in a state of poverty. You can not educate away poverty; you can not de-populate poverty; you can not racially cleanse away poverty. To remove poverty requires “money” - somebody is going to have to pay for it.

My Wife's Religion

My Wife’s Religion

by Richard E. Noble

It is funny, religion is one thing that my wife and I never really talked about. I didn’t ask her and she didn’t ask me. Until one day after we had been married for a number of years, she suggested that we go see the new movie Jesus Christ Superstar. She had heard some songs on the radio and she liked them. So I said okay. As we watched the movie it became obvious to me that my wife was not too familiar with the plot of this story.
“Who is that guy supposed to be?” she would ask.
“That’s Jesus,” I would say.
“No, no; not that one. I know Jesus - for God’s sake! The guy standing next to him?”
“Well, that’s Peter. You know ... Upon this rock, I will build my church.”
“Huh?”
“Peter, the apostle? Jesus’s right-hand man?”
“Why is Jesus’s mother following him around everywhere?”
“Jesus’s Mother?”
“Her! ... Mary?”
“That’s not Jesus’s mother, that’s Mary Magdalene.”
“Who’s Mary Magdalene?”
“Well ... ah ... she’s kind of like an apostle.”
“An Apostle? She looks like a tramp.”
“Yes, well she is … or was. She was a lady of the night, or whatever. Then she met Jesus and straightened up.” My wife looked at me kind of funny. “Well, I don’t know. That’s the story. I’ve heard from other sources that she might have been Jesus’s girl friend, or maybe even his wife.”
“Ahh ha!”
On the way home from the theater, I asked my wife what religion she was raised in. She said she was a Protestant.
“What kind of Protestant?” I asked.
She didn’t know. She said that she would call her mother when we got home and find out for sure.
“Well,” I said to her, “it doesn’t really matter. Did you go to Sunday School or anything like that?”
“Of course I did.”
“Well what kind of things did you learn there?”
“Ahh, I learned how to make nifflies, and roast pork with sauerkraut.”
“That’s good. I like roast pork with sauerkraut. What’s a niffly?”
“Oh those are really good. There like a kind of noodle. You eat them with lots of butter and salt. Umm ummm.”
My wife didn’t know Mary Magdalene from a whole in the wall. She didn’t know why Jesus was on trial. She didn’t know that He was a Jew. She didn’t know about the gates of Heaven being closed. She didn’t know about redemption, original sin, purgatory or what the pope had to do with anything. She knew how to make nifflies, and baked sauerkraut with roasted pork. But yet, knowing right from wrong never gave her a second’s pause. When it comes to right and wrong, I ask her. And she always seems to be right; certainly righter than I am. How does she do that, I wonder?

The Bus

Put ‘em on the Bus

Commentary

By Richard E. Noble

Compassion for the poor in the U.S. is a waste of time. Americans do not believe that there are poor, hungry people in America.
My wife doesn’t believe in poverty: my wife who needs, at the most recent estimate, seven thousand dollars worth of dental work; my wife who hasn’t been to a beauty parlor in at least thirty years; my wife who buys her clothes and furniture at the Goodwill; my wife who has traveled, along with her husband, all over the United States picking fruits and vegetables, living under bridges and equipment shelters, washing dishes in crummy restaurants, sweeping floors and working as a transient laborer the majority of her life; my wife who at best can qualify for a minimum wage job anywhere in America; my wife who was once keeping index cards for a cook book which she had tentatively entitled, “One Hundred Different Ways to Cook Chicken Necks”; my wife who, if she happens to get sick tomorrow can look forward to a cot in the corridor at the local hospital because we have no health insurance and throughout our entire working careers never, ever have had any health insurance; my wife who can’t even join in the country song … “A big old brew, my double-wide and you” because the best that we have ever been able to afford is a single-wide; my wife who called the property appraiser’s office last week because our property evaluation went ‘up’ to eleven dollars and thirty-six cents; my wife who recently received a call from a mortgage company who said that if we owned our own property, they would refinance our property, site unseen, for 100,000 - Carol was laughing so hard the man finally hung up; my wife who considers the minimum Social Security benefit a windfall.
My wife doesn’t think that she is poor; she thinks that she is “middle class”.
This is the problem here in America. We have “middle class” folks, like my wife, who watch a show about prison conditions in this country, and who say to themselves; “Man, what can I do to get into that place? free medical and dental, room and board, my own private room, church services, conjugal visits, vocational training, and educational and career training programs. It will take me the rest of my life to earn those benefits out here in the “free” world. And if I can finagle a life sentence, I don’t even have to worry about old age benefits. Wow! That’s as good as the United States Marine Corps, better working conditions, more rights, and no bullets, mud or barbed wire either.”
We have been living in a country where the welfare benefits have been better than the going to work benefits. But that has all been changed - we no longer live in a “welfare” state we live in a “well-fare” state. But here is the Catch-22; when all of the hard working people complained about how even life in prison was better than their lot as honest hard working people, the “middle class” decided that the prison system needed a downgrade. When working people complained that people on welfare had better health care benefits than they did, the “middle class” folks solved the problem by removing health care benefits from welfare recipients. Hardly pays to complain, does it? Next time any of you poor, underprivileged complain; please don’t mention my name - or any names for that matter.
In the past, I would have suggested that the homeless be packed up, put on a bus and brought to a farm out in North Dakota, but I am sure that by adhering to even Geneva Convention rules, or the SPCA the farm will very shortly be better than conditions in parts of New York, Chicago, and L.A., and people all over America will be marching to North Dakota demanding equal rights.

Christianity

Christianity

By Richard E. Noble

I was born a Christian, raised a Christian, and have lived all of my life in highly Christian areas, and in, for the most part, what the world would consider a Christian Nation. But still I have trouble in defining what a Christian actually is.
Most reference books will inform you that a Christian is a person who follows the teachings of Jesus. But I can not consider this a true definition. People claiming to be Christians range all the way from pacifist (Quakers), to barbarian (Nazis), and every stage of development and opinion in-between. What Jesus may or may not have preached is almost indiscernible when viewed from the perspective of the various teaching of all of the various sects claiming to be Christians. So disregarding the various interpretations of the teachings of Jesus, what unifying quality would all of the various Christians agree to?
I think all Christians would agree that Jesus was God - or is of a Divine Nature. I don’t know for sure, and there may be Christian sects who follow the teachings of Jesus but who do not believe in the divinity of Jesus, but if there are, I am unaware of them. If I am not mistaken Albert Schweitzer was such an individual. He wrote a very interesting book, entitled: “In Search of the Historical Jesus”. Albert’s conclusion was that the historical record was much too obfuscated to find any accurate evaluations. He further concluded that Jesus was not God and had made no claims to being God that could be corroborated, historically. Yet Albert went on to live his life in accordance with what he believed to be the philosophy of “love” as proposed by the “prophet” Jesus. But I think most would agree in today’s language a Christian would be a person who devotes himself to the notion that Jesus Christ was Divine, the Son of God, and a God, himself
So then I wonder, is this the belief or opinion of the majority of the World?
It is not. The majority of the world does not believe that Jesus was God or that he was of a Divine Nature.
That is shocking, isn’t it? In fact, did you know that the early Christian Church argued and debated over this very notion for quite some time? It was still being debated in the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries. There was Nestorius and Saint Cyril. There was the Council of Ephesus and the Council of Chalcedon where they were arguing over the human and divine coordination of Christ. The entire authenticity of the Bible, New Testament and Old, is challenged by Tom Paine in his “The Age of Reason”. To think that most of the population of the world does not believe in this, the most fundamental of Christian beliefs, is difficult to come to grips with.
Most of China, over one billion people do not believe that Jesus was, or is God.
India is mostly Hindu or Buddhist and they do not believe that Jesus was or is God.
The Arab world is mostly Islamic, and they do not believe that Jesus was or is God.
Japan and Russia are not Christian nations. Shintoism prevails in Japan and supposedly atheism in Russia.
Jews, of course, have never believed that Jesus was Divine, or a Savior for that matter. And Jesus was one of them. Jesus was or is a Jew depending on who you ask.
From the perspective of the peoples of the world, then, if you are a person who believes in the divinity of Jesus, you are the member of a minority religious, cult group. Your group may be the largest of any such group, but nevertheless, a minority when placed beside all of the other beliefs of the present world. When you take a particular sect of Christianity (Baptist, Methodist etc.) the figures placing you in a minority opinion become even greater. In a good many parts of the world today you would be considered strange and your beliefs odd; you would be labeled as different, an outsider.
Christians like to take heart that, as a whole they represent the largest single belief in the world, but yet in truth they are still a minority of the peoples of the world, and if all of the different Christian sects are assembled in a room to discuss for example, the Christian Bible - traditionally or Historically, they have ended up killing one another.


1 History of Western Philosophy Bertrand Russell pp 366-375.

Thanks

Thanks for the Birds

By Richard E. Noble

I just returned from a visit to “my hometown”. It was a tough and rugged place to be raised and it hasn’t changed any. It was an emotional ride over the hilly countryside of laughter and tears. Laughing with all of my remaining friends about the good old days and tearing-up over the living conditions and circumstances that some Americans are forced to live under.
Actually, in many ways, conditions are pretty much the same as those that I was reared under. My old friends see the town through their sixty year old eyes as better then and horrid now. But Christmas trees were a lot bigger then and girls a lot prettier than they are today, at least as I remember it.
But certain things definitely are different. The tenements and the streets - the patchwork of potholes and tar, aren’t that much different. But crime has been escalated to the unimaginable. One of my old buddies owns a business down in the “combat” zone. He has roil-up steel doors, no windows, and surveillance cameras that provide a picture of the streets outside so that the patrons inside can keep a watch on their cars while they are eating their pizza or having a beer. My hometown has been voted twice as the stolen car capital of America.
I stayed at my friend’s apartment which was one block up from the street where I spent my first twenty-seven years. All night long the police cruisers race about town screaming their warnings. The emergency vehicles, ambulances, rescue vehicles and fire trucks blast their sirens. Beeps, screams, battle cries and horns blast all through the night. My buddy’s police scanners, at the shop and at home, keep a constant report of where the action is. Not because he is a crime buff but to keep tabs on how close the bad guys are to his home or business, so that he can get out his own personal fire power and/or take protective steps. This is not Beirut, Lebanon or Jerusalem. This is “my old hometown” ... once a part of the industrial capital of not only the good old U.S.A., but the world.
As you might have guessed, I woke up early every morning. I got dressed and went walking down the narrow, dark second floor tenement steps and out onto the street. It was shocking. The sun was shinning, birds were singing, and hundreds of little kids with backpacks were banging about, playing tag and rough-housing on every corner waiting on the school buses. I laughed as I thought about it. The sun up in the sky has no choice - it must shine wherever God commands. The kids are stuck. They can’t choose where they will be born. But the birds could fly someplace else; but they don’t. They were singing their merry songs, just as if they were in an apple orchard or blueberry patch in Paradise. I said to myself as my eyes, moistened and glassed over, ‘Thank God for the birds.” They have guts. The whole morning was ablaze with their music. Even the clattering of the crows sounded sweet. If I had a camera I would have taken a picture of them propped up like clothes pins on the drooping telephone wires, or lining up in the crevices and window sills of the tenements or perching on the rims of the open garbage cans that lined the sidewalks.
The sweetest sound I ever heard.
I thought of them as whispering their little songs of hope into every school child’s ear. And I knew, though I don’t remember it now, that they must have been whispering to me many, many years ago, way back when ... in “my hometown”.

“The Uncle Joe Memorial”

By Richard E. Noble

To me War is Uncle Joe.
When I was a little boy and fascinated with six-shooters and guns, and playing army with my box full of little tanks, and trucks, and infantrymen, I was looking through a photo album with another of my uncles, my Uncle Ray. The album was filled with pictures of my Uncle Ray and my Uncle Joe in their army uniforms. Seeing my uncles all dressed up in their uniforms prompted me to ask;
“Uncle Ray, did you ever kill any Germans?”
My uncle laughed. Why was he laughing, I wondered? I suppose that it was the naiveté of a child enthusiastically talking about War and killing as if these things were positive achievements for mankind. I’m sure that he realized instantly from the gleam in my eye and the thrill in my voice, that if he said, “Darn right, I did. I wiped out a whole platoon of them suckers!” he would have been an instant hero. But, I’m sure, as much as he wanted the admiration and hero worship of a young idol seeker of about six or seven years of age with eyes just burning to hear a tale of war, victory, and brave endeavor - and knowing that he could tell me any number of lies and I’d never know the difference - made him see a humorous situation written all over my little face.
“No, no,” he said still laughing. “I never left Fort So-and-So. The closest that I got to see any war was at a John Wayne movie.”
“But, but. . .” I said pointing to his picture in his army suit, “you were a soldier.”
“Oh yes, yes,” he explained. “But there were millions and millions of us soldiers who never even shot a weapon. I spent most of the war shooting off a typewriter in this far away foreign land called California.”
Needless to say, I was gravely disappointed. My hero, Uncle Ray, was a typewriter shooter assigned to killing enemy file cabinets in California. Boy, you would think that he could have, at least, knocked down a German - or beat one up - or something. But no, unfortunately, my Uncle Ray was one of those guys who could not tell a lie. He probably read too many cheery tree stories.
But then, seeing all the disappointment dripping from my face, he quickly added; “If you want to know about killing and shooting bad guys, you’ll have to ask your Uncle Joe.”
“Uncle Joe?”
“That’s right. Your Uncle Joe is the man who saw the action. He can tell you all about it.”
I was very glad and proud that I had an uncle who saw action and killed a bunch of enemy people - but Uncle Joe?
Uncle Joe was somewhat of a family mystery. He was semi-mystical. When anybody in the family mentioned his name, a look came over them - as if they were talking about someone who didn’t really exist. Someone who had died a long, long time ago. But Uncle Joe wasn’t dead. He was alive and periodically, I would bump into him. He died before I was twelve years old, yet I can describe to you, in detail, every one of the few encounters that I had with Uncle Joe throughout those years.
Uncle Joe lived as a kind of recluse. He lived somewhere in the neighborhood, but I never did know where. I think that he lived in a little apartment up on Center Street. The apartment was above a small neighborhood tavern known as Coza’s Cafe’.
Uncle Joe had these deep penetrating eyes. They seemed to be sunk deep into his skull - like they were trying to hide back inside his head. The skin around his eyes was always somewhat yellow - funny looking. When I asked my mother about it, she told me it was because my Uncle Joe had contracted malaria during the war. He always looked yellow and . . . . well. . . ghostly.
I learned about Uncle Joe, little by little. He got put together in my life like a picture puzzle - a mass of little jagged pieces, frayed, torn and never quite fitting together properly.
Uncle Joe was the brave, warrior guy who saw all the action and killed all the Germans, but Uncle Joe looked like the saddest, most sensitive, all-alone person who I had ever met. He never got married. He never had any children. And, even though he lived just around the block someplace, you very rarely saw him. Whenever my mother or my aunts talked about Uncle Joe, they talked in “used-to-be's”. Uncle Joe used to be like this; or Uncle Joe used to be like that. Uncle Joe used to be something. Uncle Joe used to be someone, but now . . . what is he? Who is he?
Uncle Joe popped into our apartment one Christmas. My Dad, who was a man of very few words, loved my Uncle Joe. Whenever Uncle Joe walked in that door everybody laid it onto him. He was the wailing wall of the family. Whenever he popped his head out of his “foxhole” it seemed that everyone in the world came running towards him with their arms wide open. And there would be “crying and the gnashing of teeth” as they dumped all of their petty problems and grips onto his shoulders. My mother could moan and cry and bellyache to poor Uncle Joe for hours. I remember sitting on the parlor floor on this particular Christmas, and saying to myself, “Why don’t these people just shut up; can’t they see that they are just going to scare Uncle Joe away? He is just going to fly off someplace.” Uncle Joe was the butterfly – the delicate, sensitive loving butterfly. Didn’t they realize that they were going to chase him right out of the house and that he might never come back?
From my perspective, Uncle Joe was the one who needed the comfort. He was the one who obviously needed the hug and someone to say; “It’s all right. Don’t worry. You’re safe.” But instead, he got the exact opposite. He was the toxic dumpsite for everybody else’s pent-up frustrations - everybody else’s problems. He was the one who understood everyone, but also the one who everyone else didn’t understand. He was the mystery man.
A week later when my older sister and I were taking down the Christmas tree, we found three envelopes scattered among its branches. They had our name written on them - my name on one, my sister’s on another and my brother’s on a third. When we opened the envelopes we found a dollar bill inside. The name of the giver was not to be found on the envelope anywhere.
My sister and I stood for a moment looking at our dollar bill and the unsigned envelope. Then, we looked at one another. Without hesitation, we both said, Uncle Joe! Who else would give and not want anything in return - not even a thank-you, or a hug, or a kiss. Who else did we know who would leave dollar bills hanging in the Christmas tree anonymously - probably the only three dollars that he had.
I still, to this day, don’t know what Uncle Joe did for a living. He didn’t work at the mill or own a car, or a house, or own anything as far as I knew.
One time, my mother was getting back at me for showing too much attention towards my grandmother. I always liked my grandmother. She would cook the same dish that my mother would prepare, and I would eat my grandmother’s and not my mother’s. My mother would get infuriated.
“1 use the exact same recipe that your grandmother uses; in fact, she is the one who taught me how to make this dish.”
“Sorry Mom,” I’d say. “You can blindfold me or put me into a dark closet; I’ll still be able to pick out grandma’s pirogues over yours every time.”
Well finally, this one day, my mother blew her top; “You think that your grandmother is so darn wonderful; well let me tell you this, sonny boy - that woman is the same woman who threw your favorite Uncle Joe out into the street when he came home from the war.”
Boy, my mother knew how to hurt. Could that possibly be true? I didn’t believe my mother. My grandmother was a round, jolly, barrel full of hugs and kisses and chocolate pudding with milk on the top; and cheek-pinching and smiles and laughter.
“I don’t believe you,” I said. “Why would Grandma throw Uncle Joe out into the street?”
“Because he didn’t have a job - that’s why, smarty pants!”
“So?”
“So, your wonderful grandmother didn’t want your Uncle Joe, war hero, sitting around her house and eating her food, without paying any rent.”
Well, I wasn’t going to argue with my mother, but I also knew that she had a sharp tongue and could often say things without thinking - even make up things, sometimes. But just having this new knowledge made me look at my grandmother differently. Could anybody do that to their child? Work was important, but a son? . . . home from the war? Could my grandmother have done such a thing?
One day I was puttsing around helping my Uncle Ray with something. I popped the question; “Did Grandma really throw Uncle Joe out into the street after he came home from the war just because he didn’t have a job and couldn’t pay her any rent?”
My Uncle Ray stopped dead in his tracks. He turned and looked at me.
“Who told you that?” he asked. I lowered my head, shuffled about, and kicked at the concrete at my feet. He could tell that I wasn’t about to squeal. “Well,” he said sitting down on an old crate. “Your grandma did put Uncle Joe out, but your description was not exactly the way that it happened. You see, when your Uncle Joe came back from the war, he wasn’t the same as before he left.”
“I know. He got malaria.”
“Yes, he did have malaria, but he had something else also - something that nobody had a name for; and no cure for either.”
“What was it?”
“Well it is hard to describe. It is something that comes with war and killing people. It makes a man different inside. When your Uncle Joe came back, he was different. He didn’t want to work or even look for a job. He sat in your grandmother’s living room and just stared out the window.”
“So what? I do that sometimes.”
“Yeah, but your Uncle Joe did it day after day after day - for a long, long time. Your grandmother was worried about him. He couldn’t just sit there in the parlor staring out the window for the rest of his life. He was making himself sick inside. Your grandmother tried and tried and tried. She talked and talked, but Uncle Joe just sat there staring out the window and smoking cigarettes. Finally one day she just couldn’t stand it anymore. She packed his bag and brought it to him. She told him that if he wasn’t going to live anymore . . . he would just have to find someplace else to die.”
“So what did Uncle Joe do?”
“He left. Then after awhile he got a job, and pretty soon, he was all right again.”
“What is Uncle Joe, anyway?”
“Well,” my Uncle Ray said with a smile. “Uncle Joe is kind of a Jack-of-all-trades. You know, he was always the kind of guy who could do anything - and be good at it too.”
My Uncle Joe is a part of the reason that I don’t like war. It always seemed to me that my Uncle Joe was a casualty of World War II. Somehow his life ended over there in Burma or Bataan or wherever it was, but his name never got carved into a wall or put on a plaque. Unfortunately he was still alive. But what was he? Who was he? Where did he live? What did he do for a living? Who did he care about? Who cared about him?
War sprouts bodies like my Uncle Joe. Guys who make it back, but don’t make it back. They live under bridges, and in flophouses, out in some woods, or in empty apartments. My Uncle Joe fought on the “right” side in World War II. No question about it. He didn’t fight no “Little Hitler”; he fought the real Hitler - the democracy hating, Jew killing, monster who wanted to take over the world and didn’t care who or how many died in the process. No mistake there, my Uncle Joe fought on the right side - for the good guys. But yet he couldn’t find his way back from Burma - and why? He was right; they were wrong. What’s the problem?
War creates a lot of heroes. We get a lot of plaques and a lot of monuments. We get bronze guys on horses - concrete guys with swords. We get statues, and walls, and pillars, and pits, and ponds and lakes, all surrounded by canons, and cartridge boxes and stars and stripes and flags - lots and lots of flags. But war also creates a hell of a lot of Uncle Joes.
There are no memorials to the Uncle Joes. I doubt if there ever will be. How do you carve a ghost out of marble? How do you paint a picture of a man searching for the soul he lost on Pork Chop Hill or in some Vietnam village or on Bataan or at the Battle of the Bulge or in Flanders Field? How do you make a statement about a man who no longer has anything to say?
The Uncle Joe War Memorial? what would it look like?
My guess is that these Uncle Joe types would not want a memorial. They would probably tell the public to keep the money and put it into the hot lunch program at the public schools.
So don’t start up a collection or hire a sculptor just yet. These guys probably like living under the bridges and in those empty apartments - it’s now a tradition; a very, very old tradition.
I don’t know about you but there is a part of me who lives in an empty apartment; a part of me who would rather live under a bridge; a part of me who doesn’t want any hugs and kisses; a part of me who just wants to be left alone - all alone; a part of me who thinks that he has nothing left inside of him - nothing left to give; a part of me who would just like to die - to die in peace; and may they all someday rest in PEACE; someday . . somehow, somewhere - may we all rest in PEACE. . . amen.