A Message to You Reader
Sisters and Brothers,
In the last few weeks, I've struggled about continuing Life in the 21st Century. It’s come to a head doing taxes, the yearly total of $5,100 while Substack takes 15% ($712) for sending emails and processing credit cards. Which only makes you think, if you'd bring in fifty grand, they take seven for the same services, that'd be a ludicrously bad business decision. Five grand also makes you think, Hey, Lama, how about a little something for the effort. In this moneyed era I've lived, that's a life of experience, learning, and thinking not even cheaply priced. So it goes.
I have enjoyed writing, and if I have to say my ownself, and I will, producing plenty of fine writing and exceptional thinking in the last year, but honestly sisters and brothers, as there are no democratic politics in America, I'm only it for the money. I blame Ratigan, Ames, Jan, and Yasha for the present predicament. “You need to write. Substack's easy. People will give you money.” Simultaneously, I failed to take Dan Gillmor's sage advise, and it should be weighed heavily in such matters, to steer clear of Substack.
It might be another matter if people built on some of the thinking or at least offered thoughtful and correct critique, not simply a “great,” though always appreciated, or pissant gotchas on trivialities, appreciated not at all. I can count on less than one hand responses received that built on any thought I've put out in the last two and half years, all by women. The best was in response to a piece on Mother Sinead from a woman who long ago married into an Irish Catholic family, including brother-in-law priest. She thanked me, adding, “If the Church is to survive, they need to canonize her.” That was most excellent! I undertook the cause.
Maybe most weighing, I've been in the US for whole a year now and it is the height of the stupidest season, for me that can be heavy indeed sisters and brothers. I can, largely, ignore when I'm elsewhere on this planet, but being in these United States, at times it can hit hard, directly between the eyes, no matter the best practiced efforts of avoidance. For example, when Joe Biden stops in Wisconsin to praise the tighter digital shackles being forged by Microsoft on his way to Chicago to grab a bundle of money from the Obama money network, and it's your 91 year old mother who informs you Biden's in town today, then she asks why.
“To get money,” as in one way or other I've explained to her the process for 30 years. She's still a Democrat, giving Joe Biden money she doesn't have, so too all five siblings. Such are my powers of political persuasion.
Way back in 1992, working on the Brown campaign—a call to action against the growing dysfunction and corruption of American politics—I developed, using an 800 number and going around the established network of presidential media, a process raising $5 million in eight months, ten million when matched, no contribution over a hundred dollars. That wasn’t insignificant presidential primary campaign money in those days. Leaving that campaign having failed to stop the Clintons' ascension into the White House, I walked away from politics just when money really started flooding every aspect of the system. Twelve years later, appalled by the Iraq invasion and occupation, I walked into a campaign office in Burlington, Vermont for the first time since 1992, where I discovered Trippi had been pretty much the only person in the country watching and understanding what we did in '92. Instead of an 800 number, he had the internet, raising $50 million for Dean.
In Burlington, in the middle of the internet operation, I took the temporarily vacated seat of out of town Joe Rospars. Four years later, Rospars ran Obama's internet operation, providing the difference in money to beat the Clintons in the Democratic primary. As Biden's recent Chicago visit demonstrated, Obama also created quite an extensive and lucrative big money operation. Dean’s big money operation was no slack effort either, Stephanie. Trippi never received an Obama thanks, from Biden either for that matter. Make no mistake, Joe Biden wouldn't have been elected president in a million different worlds if he hadn't been Obama's VP, Obama wouldn’t have won the 08 primary without Rospars, and Rospars… – contingency friends, for want of a nail....
Then in 2016, when Trump got elected, the next morning I called Caddell, a partner in crime in ‘92. “Congrats Pat, someone finally full out used your strategy against DC and the national media and went to the top.” Contrary to belief, not in anyway discouraged by Pat, he had no part in the Trump ‘16 effort. But I know for a fact, over the previous ten years, Pat had on a number of occasions met with Trump. Pat was also on Fox that whole time. Trump watches Fox. Without a doubt, Trump heard more of what Pat was saying over those years than most.
After a couple seconds silence. Pat excitedly replied, “You know, so few people recognize that.”
I replied, “I was there on the front lines in ‘92 Pat, building bridges around and through the shithead presidential gatekeepers. Poking them in the eye and if the opportunity was presented would have kicked them hard in the nuts,” He laughed. A few of us had understood the the political opportunity was there in ‘92. It would have taken an exceptional political effort with Fortuna fully on our side. Perot showed us all the politics were there, it would take another quarter century to become so visibly obscene, and no one better represented that obscenity than Hillary, for even a political knucklehead like Trump to ride the fomented, frothing wave of reaction into the White House. Whatever Pat or I thought of Trump, and I can say myself, not much, neither of us shed a tear of his keeping the Clintons from returning to the White House.
This morning I ran across a book of writings by Samuel Johnson. I picked it up two years ago in a used bookstore in Mexico City. It made me think, dude, is there concrete all around or is it in my head? I'm traveling out of the “homeland” next week, maybe the thickness will lift, but sisters and brothers, that will not crack the nut of being able to follow in the very wise and honorable steps of the good Dr. Dolan. Reading Johnson made me once again assess the value of writing in this era. No more so than his line dripping in the very best Brit irony, “No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.” A line grown funnier and more poignant this last couple years.
Writing almost three centuries ago, at the beginning of modernity, Johnson had some astute observations about what became much modern writing, proving even more relevant in the newer medium of film making. In his essay “The Rambler,” Johnson writes,
“The task of our present writers is very different;...They are engaged in portraits of which every one knows the original, and can detect any deviation from exactness of resemblance. Other writings are safe, except from the malice of learning, but these are in danger from every common reader; as the slipper ill executed was censured by a shoemaker who happened to stop in his way at the Venus of Appelles.”
“But the fear of not being approved as just copiers of human manners, is not the most important concern that an author of this sort ought to have before him. These books are written chiefly to the young, the ignorant, and the idle, to whom they serve as lecturers of conduct, and introductions into life. They are the entertainment of minds unfurnished with ideas, and therefore easily susceptible of impressions; not fixed by principles, and therefore easily following the current of fancy; not informed by experience, and consequently open to every false suggestion and partial account.”
Amen, Amen, Amen
Thanks for reading, you subscribers are the children of the lord,
Joe