A better and peaceful world is possible — a world where people and nature come before profits. That’s socialism. That’s our vision. We are the Communist Party USA.
Praxagora: I want all to have a share of everything and all property to be in common; there will no longer be either rich or poor; [...] I shall begin by making land, money, everything that is private property, common to all. [...]Someone will be disappointed. Someone will slave away. Some people, more than others. Knowing that fact is good way to prepare for that eventuality. In medicine, such activities are often called " Preventative." In life, such forethought is tagged "common sense." Noble intentions are often directed into action by absolutely idiotic, villainous, or incompetent boobs. Witness the Obamacare.
Blepyrus: But who will till the soil?
Praxagora: The slaves. (tr. O'Neill 1938, Perseus) Aristophanes - Ecclesiazusae ( loosely translated by me as " A Congress of Skirts, Broads, or Chicks"
When someone disturbs the universe, gender-universal and olfactory discernment, following flesh-free luncheon of cabbage, beans and onions, there is rarely a wholesome and loud thumping of table and cheers of acclamation for that person's heart-healthy choices froms God's cornupopoeia. A victim might even grab heavy object and shatter a pane of glass out of the nearest window in less of gesture of judgment, than an act of self-preservation.
The heart wants what the heart wants.
Thus, an intermural resident Praxagora might declare martial law and pronounce Zero Tolerance for breakers of wind - Vegan or Carnivore . . .and that is too bad. Individuals can only manifest an intrinsic virture by dint of personal behavior - not legal obeisaance.
Zero tolerance only works for Praxagora-lke harpies like Bill Moyers, Oprah and Rosie O'Donnell. Such people are free of common sense, because they see themselves as "uncommon."
Common people get hurt, on a daily basis, physically, spiritually and emotionally. Life happens dood and hard.
Nothing gets better, if you keep picking at it. A scab always forms a cut. The scab is good - the slice heals. When scabs get picked at, hurts can become infected ( especially if the picker has filthy fingers) and make the damage much more severe.
I am not a doctor, but I played one in the 1969 high school production of Harvey. Therefore, I have about as much medical knowledge as Leonardo DiCaprio, or Matt Damon. I triumphed as Dr. Lyman Sanders, M.D. in the Little Flower High School production of Mary Chase's immortal comic look at schizophrenia -Harvey.
As Dr. Lyman Sanderson,M.D., I failed to bring Mr. Elwood P. Dowd to his senses.
Dr. Sanderson: Think carefully, Dowd. Didn't you know somebody, sometime, someplace by the name of Harvey? Didn't you ever know anybody by that name?I did not order electro-shock therapy. I refused to ice bathe, Mr. Dowd. My level of tolerance was tested and eventually I came to realize that the very pleasant Elwaood P. Dowd did not require my butttering of his necktie.
Elwood P. Dowd: No, no, not one, Doctor. Maybe that's why I always had such hopes for it.
Thinngs are different, now.
In 1969, I was starring in Harvey. Dr. Martin Luther King had been with Christ for a year. The embers of West and South Side fires had cooled. Black teens came to the Little Flower High School Community Center to do and boogaloo down funky, funky Broadway. White families put up the modest homes for sale to predatory panic-peddling real estate moguls and Black families bought two-flats, bungalows and Georgians on both sides of Ashland Avenue.
That was my Selma moments.
I do ot remember the burnng out of any Back families, nor masscre of any Swedes, or Italians by 'Coloreds' -I remember getting my ass-kicked by Polish greasers at a dance in St. John of God for being a spud-eating Duper and yet only this past Sunday I treated myself and a female girl to several platefuls of pierogi,Gołąbki,Polskie naleśniki,Bigos and the heart-stopping joy of Placki ziemniaczane at Sawa's Old Warsaw in Broadview, IL.
Polska Sto Lat, I say! No, discriminating human being, especially one familiar with glorious history of Polish cuisine, could banish Sowa's Old Warsaw. To paraphrase Falstaff, "No, my good lord; banish McDonald's, banish Burger King, banish Wendy's: but for sweet Sawa, kind Old Warsaw, true Polish buffet, valiant butter-swimming pierogi Haven, and therefore more valiant, being, as it is, old Warsaw on Ogden Avenue, banish not it thy Hickey's company, banish not it thy Hickeys's pie-hole: banish plump potato pancakes, and banish all the world." He'p me, Jesus!
Were I to bring up the pummeling my 145 lb. 2ndGeneration Harp frame took at the hands and Stacy Adams'd Rat Stabber shod feet of the six Brylcreamed Polacks at every occasion of disappouintment, or set back, I might have joined the Bill Moyers PBS United Church of Christ-faux Unitarians, when Karol Józef Wojtyła ascended the throne of Peter. Likewise, I might have organized mass protests at Orchestra Hall when Chopin got tickled on the eighty-eights. Moreso, I'd escape the gustatory raptures steaming on the heaping bord of Sawa's Old Warsaw!
We are not a Nation of Cowards - not in 1919, 1969, or 2014. We have become a Nation of Scab Yankers.
We constantly pester and piss and moan for 'dialogs' that are monologs and 'conversations' that are monotone.
(John Bachtell is National Chairman of the CPUSA. He is active in labor, peace and justice struggles. He grew up in Ohio and currently lives in Chicago with his family.)White people are doing this pissing and moaning and they are same White people who worked with and for Saul Alinsky in 1969 and some even much worse. These White people have managed in convincing America's culture vultures that the United States of America is some Kafka-esque Death Camp run by AnteBellum crackers with bullwhips.
Ferguson and now Staten Island protests are thick with these White folks- devout scab yankers making sure that our Racial, Gender, Class and Behavior wound never heal.
The White folks are Red. CPUSA and all of its allies the Politicians, the Media, Academics, the Ambulance Chasers, and people too lazy to read.
I am with Black folks more hours in the day than people of my pinkish coloring. Guess what. They are too busy working for this collective nonsense - like that wonderful cop in the video.
I did not have the answers for poor old Elwood P. Dowd and he ended his days in the looney bin. My prescription for our wounds, stop picking at the scabs and don't listen to scab yankers.
