Magic, The Land Of Faerie And The Liberal Mind
April 4, 2018
Magic, The Land Of Faerie
And The Liberal Mind
The March-April Issue Of Foreign Affairs:
A Discussion
by
R.E. Prindle
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The March-April issue of Foreign Affairs arrived and once again it is dedicated to the denunciation of President Trump. As is well known Foreign Affairs is the propaganda arm of the Council On Foreign Relations. The CFR is not merely an informational service, it is also a potent influence within the government of the United States. Many members have even served as President of the United States. In fact, the last four presidents covering twenty-four consecutive years, that is Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama and had Hillary Clinton been placed a full twenty-eight, possible thirty-two years. Time enough to indoctrinate two and half generations.
Thus it was a bitter disappointment for them when Donald Trump made a run around end to win the White House. His mere candidacy had unleashed an unceasing barrage of hatred and since he has been under siege defending himself against innumerable CFR sappers. The March-April issue continues the assault. The five themed articles under the heading Letting Go are: Trump’s Lucky Year, Why the Chaos Can’t Last, The World After Trump, How The System Can Endure, The Rise Of Illiberal Hegemony: Trump’s Surprising Grand Strategy, The Post-American World Economy: Globalization In The Trump Era and Giving Up The High Ground: America’s Retreat On Human Rights.
As is evident the Liberal ‘system’ that the CFR presidents were putting in place and which would have been completed by the election of Hillary Clinton has been disrupted by the election of Donald Trump who is, in fact, dismantling the whole Liberal CFR system. Hence, an article on how the system can endure, one imagines, behind the scene: the so-called Dark Government.
This raises the question of what beyond specific goals as outlined in Foreign Affairs is the Liberal mind set. In the larger scope of human history to what psychological reality, Weltanschauung motivates the Liberal mind.
Many theories have been advanced about the motivating forces that direct human activity. The Hegelian/Marxist view is of course based on economics. But underlying theories such as Marxism is the fundamental dichotomy of the spiritual vs. the material. The fantasy of life vs. the reality. The Liberal utopian based ‘spirituality’ vs. the Conservative naturalistic based view of reality. The soft-headed vs. the hard-headed.
In many ways the Liberal mind is magical in nature. The Liberal desires and magically creates a reality that assumes that the desire is fact.
Thus Adam S. Posen who wrote the article The Post-American World Economy: Globalization in the Trump Era projects on the one hand the desire of the Liberal post-WWII system while on the other unconsciously contrasts the reality. The very title The Post-American World Economy contradicts the assumption that the Post-WWII US world order is still in operation. So, possibly, Trump is merely destroying the Liberal mental fantasy. Negating the magic. Post-American posits an end to the US domination and, indeed, under Obama the CFR destroyed the dominant role of the US with the result that a number of more or less equals are now jockeying for position.
Mr. Posen begins his article with the illusory view of this so-called seventy year post-war Liberal world order.
In the aftermath of World War II the United States set about building a global, rules base economic order. At the heart of the order it put the Liberal values of free trade backed up by U.S. power and bolstered by its growing legitimacy among other countries, prevented most economic disputes from escalating into mutually destructive trade wars, let alone military conflict. That allowed even the smallest and poorest countries to develop their social and economic potential without having to worry about predation by strange neighbors. By taking much of the fear out of the global economy, the U.S. led order allowed market decisions to be driven by business not bullying.
Adam S. Posen, The Post-American World
Economy: Globalization in the Trump
Era, pp 28-38
Having been present at the creation and having lived through the whole period in varying degrees of cognizance, I can tell you that the above view of the seventy years is contradicted fully by my own experience and understanding.
The problems of our times have become more difficult. The fantasy of the American Century has passed. It is no longer about ‘things’ but one of attitudes of which most that are held are not realistic. There is at the base of the matter still the conflict between the ‘spiritual’ and the materialist views; that is, the longing for the magical supernatural Land of Faerie vs. Science , or the reality of matter, or put another way religion vs. science. Let us review the evolution of human consciousness.
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One must assume that early man was as unconscious as are wild animals today. In other words, early man had no rational explanation for external reality. And this extends back into hundreds of thousands, millions, of years of pre-Homo Sapiens existence. Presumably the more recent nomenclature homo sapiens, wise or knowledgeable man, indicates the beginning of consciousness of the world outside the mind. As it took until the twentieth century before psychologists began to significantly understand the working of the human mind it can be easily seen that the learning process was long and slow. Man was barely conscious of either his own mind or the world outside his mind, working with very little true knowledge he came up with some pretty bizarre explanations of how things functioned.
He invested all animate and inanimate objects with life and sensation. Thus he created the supernatural and the natural. The world was filled with invisible beings both good and bad. Gods and Devils, Faeries, Elves, Gnomes, Elementals. The air was packed with demons and angels and what have you. This was true down to and including the beginning of history and well beyond, even into the nineteenth century. Gods came and went, old gods died, gods who failed in their duties were discarded or transformed. Each people had their own gods. In the clash of peoples and therefore gods, peoples went under and with them their gods.
In this mental context I would like to examine the period in European history from 1100 to 1300, a very critical and rich period in Europe and the Middle East that would eventually affect the world when the European diaspora took place from c. 1400 to the beginning of the twentieth century.
By1300 the Catholic, that is the Universal, Church was the dominant supernaturally based force in Europe and the ME- Middle East. In order to confirm its position it had to eliminate all other supernatural belief systems. This was no easy task as other supernatural beliefs systems had the same credibility as the Christian and the Catholic Church was never completely successful. This was a wonderful period and I hope I can successfully display it with some justice.
There were many competing supernatural belief systems competing at this time, many remnants of old decayed and dying gods as well as their successors trying to establish themselves against the dominant Catholic Church.
The old Greco-Roman systems still survived in out the way places and pockets and even in the popular mind. The old Egyptian systems had been mutating since the Assyrian invasions of the seventh century BC. No longer with a national State to support the religion it had infiltrated Christianity to a degree and went on mutating over the centuries but was still a potent force as an element of the Catholic faith.
Of course the backbone of Catholicism came from the Jewish religious system through Christianity. The Catholic Church took over Jewish religious sites wholesale. Thus the erstwhile Jewish capital of Jerusalem became the holiest site of Christianity in Europe. With the founding of the Mohammedan religion of Arabia the so-called Holy City fell into non-Jewish-Christian hands.
As Europe reorganized and became somewhat unified under the Carolingian kings of France, the idea of the Holy City in Moslem hands became intolerable in Church eyes and so just prior to 1100 the Church instigated the idea of liberating Jerusalem giving the period under consideration the name of the Crusades.
This was done for supernatural reasons. On the European side one was under God and on the Moslem side one was under their deity who went by the name of Allah. Thus one had the War of the Gods.
The ME had always been a hotbed of competing supernatural religious ideas. Innumerable Gods and Goddesses. Some intriguing mental projections in the bargain. Generally speaking few if any had completely disappeared. If the actual religion has been suppressed the guiding ideas lived on.
The human mind has continued to evolve, that is consciousness, so that the internal unconscious mind has been enlightened toward a correct appreciation of the external world. That is, as Freud expressed it, the personality or mind is integrated when consciousness has illuminated the unconscious. The period under consideration was an important period in the evolution of consciousness. It should be remembered that any of these imaginary beings had equal validity in the consciousness of people of the times. God or Faerie, same thing.
The Aryan Land of Faerie has as much a claim to reality as did the God of the Jews, Isis of the Egyptians, Cybele, the God of the Christians, however as Jews and Christians were dominant the other imaginary deities were not disproved but ridiculed and suppressed. Thus, in this tremendous period of the Christian crusades to recapture the religious capital of Jerusalem there were many unintended consequences. The Crusades opened the gates to admit ideas from the other suppressed belief systems. Thus, the Cathar religion of Manichean sympathies had migrated West from Iran through the Balkans to gain a firm foothold in Southern France, also known as the Occitan.
This was a large trans-Alpine area including the Aquitaine. This area fostered the romances of King Arthur and the Round Table which was a Faerie kingdom. A land of magic and enchantment both anathema to Judeo-Christianity. The wonderful romances, far outshining the dull Jewish bible, were developed during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
Thus the Catholic Church was confronted by a number of competing belief systems. The Cathar problem was solved in the midst of the Middle Eastern crusades by a crusade against the Cathars. A genocidal war against the unfortunate Cathars was conducted by the French at the instigation of the Church. This involved an actual man hunt to destroy the Cathars root and branch. Apparently the Church remembered the Amalekites.
That solution was really easy for the Church but the Arthurian romances that involved England, France, Germany and associated peoples could not be dealt with so easily. Indeed, when the main assault came against the Church it would come from the three countries mentioned. They required boring from within, co-opting the ideology. Catholic writers thus chose to change the direction of the romances from a warrior cult to one of a quest for spiritual perfection. This was achieved through the introduction of the character of Galahad, the son of the nearly perfect but flawed knight, Lancelot of the Lake.
At the same time a French series of works called the Chansons de Geste- Songs of Adventure- were written to discredit the Land of Faerie. A key text along this line was an amazing story titled Huon of Bordeaux. Bordeaux was a key Cathar city, sort of the Faerie capital, bordering the the key Cathar stronghold of Mont Segur. Galahad ascended to heaven from that stronghold along with the Holy Grail to lay the Arthurian threat to rest.
Huon of Bordeaux introduces the king of the Faerie Land, Oberon. Oberon and God are in a contest to see which would most successfully aid Huon in his quest to exonerate himself from a punishment imposed by the ninth century king of France, Charlemagne. Bear in mind this was a contest between two imaginarily real gods, God and Oberon, king of the Faeries.
Huon, had violated chivalric protocol by successfully defending himself against Charlemagne’s evil son, killing him in the process. Charlemagne then banishes Huon, allowing him back only if he succeeds in a number of seemingly impossible feats in the Holy Land against a Moslem king. Huon doesn’t have a prayer, however passing through a forbidden forest in the Holy Land he is confronted by Oberon, king of the Faeries. This is equivalent to running into the Catholic God. Oberon, after extracting a number of vows, gives Huon a horn which if blown in dire straits Oberon will appear with a hundred thousand troops to rescue him. Huon is cautioned to never use it unless his situation is beyond redemption otherwise.
Huon is the light-headed sort so he blows the horn to test it. Oberon appears with his 100K troops but is miffed because Huon didn’t follow instructions. In any event Huon through Oberon’s aid performs the impossible tasks Charlemagne set him and returns to Bordeaux before returning to Paris and the king’s court as instructed. Another boo-boo in a long string of boo-boos. Huon could have been the prototype of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan.
While absent from his home his brother Gerard had usurped his role and now refuses to give it up. Further adventures intervene but Charlemagne in the end comes to Bordeaux to receive evidences of Huon’s successes. Huon is unable to produce them as his brother has stolen them from him. At this time Oberon appears and magically exonerates Huon. As God had done nothing to help Huon one would think Oberon to be judged the greater than God but Huon irrationally chooses the ineffective God over Oberon even after Huon abdicates his kingship, and renounces Faerieland appointing Huon his successor. Right. Even though now King of Faerie Land Huon chooses to live happily ever after in his domain of Bordeaux while God is declared he victor in the contest with Oberon.
Meanwhile the Church was capturing the Arthurian Faerie Land so that as the fourteenth century began the Cathars, Faeries and the real life Knights Templar who had been associated with the Cathars had been disposed of. The Jews were suppressed and the Church and God were seemingly in control. However in the fifteenth century Constantinople, today’s Istanbul, was to fall to the Moslems releasing even more heretical ideas against the Catholic ideology that would result in the Enlightenment during which the European mind matured to the point where the scientific assumed prominence and scientific investigation began to reveal the true state of Nature. This development destroyed the basis of supernatural thinking placing all forms of the fantastic into defensive positions or beyond into fiction.
The Jews abandoned the idea of God, the Catholics refused to accept reality and Europeans who cherished the Faerie forced to blend the Faerie with science. That is to say, turn Faerie lands into fiction. Thus the Romantic Age took form in
Science continued to remove the Veil of Isis revealing nature to the human mind. The next big test was Darwin’s formulation of Evolution. The concept had been discussed for a hundred years previously but Darwin wrote the words that condensed evolutionary theory into fact. Romantics who had been holding on were now forced to adapt further. This adaptation produced the Second or Neo-Romantic who struggled in the face of scientific realities.
An interesting development occurred. Mankind refused to give up the supernatural. It would appear that the terrors of the real world required an imaginary refuge in which things could be controlled. Thus a transition from an imagined heaven or Faerie land began a conversion to an other world (parallel universe) that while equally unrealizable was equally comforting. The Pre-Raphaelites reached back into the past to idealize the world before the artist Raphael. From that beginning it blossomed into late nineteenth and early twentieth century novels. Among many others were the reactionary works of William Morris and the futuristic novels of the near great George Du Maurier. Du Maurier brought forward the Faerie projected into the future in a sort of science fiction.
In the US, L. Frank Baum created a modern fairy tale in his Land of Oz stories. This also meshed with the English Ruritanian novels of Anthony Hope and the US interpreter George Barr McCutcheon.
All these threads including Rider Haggard’s romantic African fantasies were brought together in the novels of the American Edgar Rice Burroughs. While not thought of as a Neo-Romantic, Burroughs was probably the greatest of the lot.
As a result of a brain injury as a young man Burroughs was capable of disappearing into his brain world to create amazing fictional realities.
His scientific background and romantic projections are nearly perfect blends. In his Tarzan series he employs Africa as a geographic reality but then transforms it into a romantic fairyland that could never exist. In his own way Burroughs character Tarzan is a reinvention of Oberon. This confused a lot of readers who insisted that the real Africa differed from Burroughs’ imaginary Africa. No contest.
For instance, Burroughs wanted to have tigers in Africa so he wrote them in to his Faerie Land. The magazine version of Tarzan of the Apes had tigers and made the story truly fabulous. However readers, being literal when their imaginations failed to embrace the flights of Burroughs’ fancy forced the writer to change the tigers to lions thereby wrecking the Faerie land Africa, this alternate reality that Burroughs wished to create. Burroughs himself was heavily influenced by the fairy tales of L. Frank Baum, with whom he became great friends, so that if you’ve read Baum and keep Oz in mind while reading Burroughs the stories take on an added dimension.
Burroughs didn’t stop with Tarzan and Africa but out of the same mind during the same period created another fairly land on Mars and another at the Earth’s core honoring the fabulous hollow Earth notion. Thus three complete Faerie lands.
Of course, there was already a fairly large body of Mars and space travel stories in existence but they took a fairly clumsy approach and turned it into a whole something else, sensational, perhaps, for the moment but without enduring appeal.
At the same time, early teens of the twentieth century, a man named Hugo Gernbach was taking science fiction to a whole new level beyond Burroughs that would result in the fantastic blossoming of sci-fi in the nineteen-fifties.
This was truly a romantic recreation of Faerie Land. Worlds beyond comprehension; the transformation of the Little Folk into space aliens of every description with their human counterparts. The true nature of sci-fi has been little appreciated.
The neo-Romantics of the second period also created the horror and fantasy genres that would dominate literature along with sci-fi. The two greatest and most enduring creations were the Frankenstein of Mary Bysshe Shelley of the first Romantic period and the greatest of the monsters, Bram Stoker’s vampire Dracula. Vampire stories had been around since Shelley’s friend Dr. Polidori wrote his short vampire piece. Varney the Vampire had made his appearance in mid-century England, attributed to Rymer but Stoker’s sensational novel formed the template for all future vampire stories including those of Anne Rice who was or is totally obsessed by the genre. Thus the supernatural transformed into quasi-scientific reality has survived to the present.
The Liberal mind evolved out of the Judeo-Catholic religious sphere, more specifically influenced by the Jewish aspects of the Old Testament, most especially by the notion of a people elected by god to rule mankind in his name. The notion is essentially amoral.
As the Jews are supposed to be creating God’s will on Earth, bringing his rule to all people they believe that means by any means necessary. That notion includes the elimination of whole peoples who may stand in the way of that realization. Thus the great Liberal novelist Victor Hugo would explain in his novel 1793 the advent of the new perfect Liberal world can never be achieved so long as ‘obstructionists’ live so that Liberals are justified in killing tens or hundreds of million or even a billion in what would be a vain attempt to eliminate differences of opinion.
Thus, today, we have the Liberals hoping, praying for the deaths of ‘old’ people who they fancy stand in the way of the realization of their utopia, while they imagine all people under say fifty are guided one mindedly by their utopian ideal.
On the other hand, Jews, Negroes and others believe that the whole White population of a billion people must be eliminated before their dreams can be realized. It was believed by them that their dream was approaching realization in this 2016 election.
This hope was upset by the maverick Donald Trump. Trump’s election set the Liberals off on a disappointed frenzy. Hence, Foreign Affairs issue Volume 97 no. 2 is devoted to expressing their disappointment by denouncing now President Trump.
Thus of the five articles under the collective Letting Go, three are definitely written by Jews, Eliot A. Cohen, Barry R. Posen and Adam S. Posen. The female contributor Sarah Margon is also Jewish. The only possible non-Jewish contributor is Jacob Sullivan, possibly of Irish derivation. As these articles are all assigned, that is written on hire, Sullivan may be assumed to be compliant.
It is evident therefore that the Jews are behind the extreme anti-Trump movement. While Trump seems to be obligated and subservient to the Jews for financial reasons their extreme opposition can only be based on the fact that Trump has taken a course independent of Jewish hopes and dreams.
The Jews, then, forming the core beliefs and fantasies of the Liberals give full and open access to the Liberal mind. The Liberals consider themselves to be justified sinners, the elect chosen by god to bring his heaven, his perfection to Earth as in heaven. There is no dissuading them, no ameliorating their extreme beliefs. They can only be quarantined or suppressed much as they hope to murder all opposition.
There is no room for discussion or compromises. Either they win or non-believers win. There is no other option.
Far Gresham’s Dilemma: A Short Story
January 24, 2018
A Short Story
Far Gresham’s Dilemma
by
R.E. Prindle
Pages torn from the memoirs of Far Gresham 12/25/1981
Edited by R.E. Prindle
My troubles had been increasing. I struggled to avoid what I knew would be the inevitable conclusion. I had seen the situation developing itself, had done my best to avert it by taking evasive actions years before, but the juncture and collision of the two forces were unavoidable. When the collision occurred I knew, I hoped that I wouldn’t, but I knew that I would buckle and collapse before the concentrated hatred of my enemies. My probable reaction had been impressed into my psyche decades before. I knew this, but I, as we all are, was powerless to resist this old imprinting. Coinciding with the objective phenomena had been the gradual disintegration of my personality. Self-analysis had cleared me of nearly all deleterious psychological reactions but now I was faced with trying to exorcise the central external factor which controlled my psyche; which compelled reactions in me which were irrational and beyond my control.
I was now approaching forty-two. Over the years as I had peeled back the layers of the onion seeking that core which would liberate me from my thralldom and allow me to face the world with a clear mind and cohesive purpose. I had resolved many aspects of my personality but this one remained beyond my grasp. All my efforts to convince myself to deal with this central problem had been rebuffed by my subconscious mind. I thought I had come close on several occasions, but fear always held me back. I had convinced myself that the event was of minor importance. I believed that, while this occurrence held me in thrall, that, while it had humiliated the child I had been, this terrible happening would turn out to be insignificant. I was both right and wrong.
I was too late to alter the outcome of my objective situation but I did find salvation for my subjective situation. The latter was of the greater importance to me. The period was one of very troubled sleep. I had had several successive weeks of disturbing dreams. They did not frighten me. I knew that negotiations were being undertaken by my conscious and subconscious selves. The violence of the dreams only indicated the significance of the matter under consideration. The dreams occurred every night and seemed to last through the whole night. Obviously a climax was imminent.
The revelatory dream, that dream that liberated me from the enthrallment to the traumatic circumstances was preceded by a brief little dream that set the stage for the major revelation. The dream was a quiet little dream, merely a vignette. It was a peaceful little dream set in a scene that was potentially terrifying. Strangely, it was not.
I became conscious of looking into a darkened warehouse filled with rows and rows and stacks and stacks of boxes. In the aisles there was a man searching frantically and desperately through the boxes in the gloom of the shadowy warehouse. There was no light. I didn’t know how he expected to find anything. But he continued to search in a manner approaching frenzy.
Aroused by the noise, a guardian appeared to investigate. I recognized him immediately; it was Death. Death had not the fearsome, ugly appearance as he is usually depicted. He was a kindly looking avuncular old man with an understanding expression on his face and a shock of gray hair. He had come out to investigate the noise. He found a Burglar in the House of Death. I recognized the Burglar too. It was me. I wondered what I was looking for.
The information was immediately forthcoming, for Death, without approaching the Burglar asked him what he was doing.
The Burglar was very distraught, his expression revealed a deep distracted anguish. He replied: ‘I’m looking for my dead self. My first personality was murdered and taken from me. I need him to make myself whole again.’
Death looked at the Burglar with some amazement: ‘Are you dead?’ he asked.
‘No.’ replied the Burglar, ‘It’s my original self who was murdered. I’m looking for his ghost.’
‘If you’re not dead then you can’t be here. Death told the Burglar in a kindly manner. ‘You must leave now or stay forever.’
But the Burglar was too distraught to comprehend his danger and blurted out: ‘But you don’t understand, I can’t leave until I find my original self.’
Death seemed to be amused rather than angered by this impertinent reply. He emitted a low warm chuckle: ‘I don’t understand? Ha. Ha. I don’t understand! If you have misplaced it or allowed it to atrophy then you have come looking in the very wrong place. You should search your own pockets first.’ His voice lowered to a tone of stern rebuke: ‘Leave now and bother me no more until I come for you.’
Darkness closed in from the edges until the middle disappeared. When I awoke I enjoyed a certain calmness amidst my general disturbance. I relaxed in a state of excitement. I knew what to do but I didn’t know how to go about it. I actively tried to compel my conscious to vex my subconscious to make it give up the secret. It was very reluctant to do so. One night in this long period of stormy dreams my subconscious presented me with a new metaphor to see if I could interpret it correctly.
When the dream took form I found myself in the playground of a grade school with another boy who was looking to me for guidance. The ground rose in three slight equal gradients to the school building which was perhaps a hundred yards in the distance. It was daytime but there was no light. No grass grows on a playground and there were only a few tufts around the occasional tree in this one. In the distance just outside the building stood a figure pointing something in my and this other boy’s direction. Taking time to get a clear look at this figure, who was a mere shadow, I discerned that he was pointing a rifle at me. This other boy said: ‘What is that red spot on your chest?’
I looked down and saw the red dot from a laser rifle centered on my heart. I immediately leaped to the side to get the dot off my heart knowing that with the laser beam on me the rifleman couldn’t miss. He stood stationary, but, now aware of the laser beam I rolled around on the ground, adopted stooping and standing postures, but no matter what I did the laser beam remained on my heart. Although I was clearly in his sights the rifleman didn’t pull the trigger. All this time the other boy kept advising me to be calm, that the rifleman wasn’t shooting. Good calm advice but the laser beam wasn’t aimed at his heart.
Finally, convinced that no shots would be fired, I ran from the schoolyard and headed for some city streets lined with middle class houses. I rushed toward them and was actually among the houses when a sentry who was stationed in a guard house which I had already passed commanded me to come back to him. I was beyond his reach and ought to have kept going but the sense of guilt which had pervaded my life prevented my continuing. I returned to the sentry box. I stood before the sentry awaiting his decision. I had broken into a nervous sweat, as had been my habit, and stood twitching guiltily. He did and said nothing. Ignored me.
Astonished at his lack of interest in me I began to wonder what this dream might mean and how it was related to my central childhood fixation. While I was standing there in my consternation my subconscious, deriding my inability to grasp the meaning of the metaphor, decided to show me the central fixation of my life, the one situation that controlled my responses to everyday life and all personal relationships. But this was no easy task. For I resisted. For this intense shame, humiliation and debasement had encased the memory behind a stout concrete block wall, or so it was represented in my dream. Perhaps the method of penetrating this wall had been suggested to me by an old movie I had seen years before, the name of the movie was The Children Of The Damned.
In this movie several intelligences from outer space had been sent to Earth to assume control of Earthmen. They were in the form of babies, the movie was produced in the wake of the Nazi Era so the babies, soon to be children, were blond and blue eyed. Obviously a thinly disguised simile for the ‘Blond Beast’. They were very aggressive. As eight-year olds their intelligence surpassed all but the most learned Earthmen. Earthmen soon grasped their danger and set out to destroy the super intelligent aliens. But the children’s penetrating intelligence, which was able to read minds, detected every plot against them. Finally a noble Earth martyr carried a brief case loaded with dynamite, a few years later he would have been able to fill his pocket with plastique, into the classroom. In order to foil the intelligence of the alien children he concentrated his thoughts on a brick wall. The children, standing in a semi-circle around him, directing their intelligence to shattering his wall, which was graphically portrayed in the movie. As the wall was destroyed bricks flying everywhere the martyr’s thoughts of the briefcase shown clear, of course, the children were too late. The bomb exploded blowing eight space kids and one noble martyr back into outer space.
So, as I stood in terrific anticipation, my subconscious directed an energy against the wall which separated me from my dead self; the assassinated child of my youth, the murdered child of another time; the hope of another universe. The concrete wall was disintegrating before my eyes. Fragments flew in every which way. As the hole in the wall was enlarged the object of the search by the Burglar in the House of Death revealed itself. Its full horror was exposed to my view.
My mind’s eye received the image. It was a scene, a snapshot. I can see this still photograph of my degradation today, now, just as it was presented to me on that night, in that dream. I was unable for several weeks thereafter to comprehend the scene. I could see the picture but try as I might I could not actually remember the sequence of events. Still my mind began to slowly reconstruct the situation.
This period of my life, from four to eight, had always been jumbled In my memory. I had never been able to arrange events of that period into chronological order. I was now able to unfold those years and reconstruct my life of that period.
The picture I was shown was simply this. A group of twelve children, we would all have been six or seven in the second grade, were standing in a semi-circle around a child in frozen motion on one foot in mortal terror and a cold sweat. Elsewhere on the playground, this was during recess, stood twelve other children in disarray. This was the incident that shaped my reactions to life, that directed my responses against my will.
There was still no memory. The scene was not brought to life, converted from a single snapshot into a cinematic motion picture. Nor has it since. The memory was and is too painful. Yet I have been able to reconstruct that terrible moment and the steps that led up to it.
Partially I did this from memory; partially from research. I never contacted any of my former classmates. I went back to the Valley and collecting the name of my classmates from the school archives and examining the archives of the Valley Star around those years I have been able to reconstruct the following account. As in all wars there was an ante-bellum period. It begins actually, before I was born.
My mother had never wanted me. In her family the eldest female cousin was given the rights of primogeniture. As I was the first born child of my mother and her three sisters, she had desperately hoped for a daughter so that she could leap to being chief among her sisters. Her disappointment when I was born was severe. She never forgave me for not being a girl, nor was she prepared to assert my rights against my female cousin born four years later. It is just as well that she abandoned me for I can never forgive her for having abandoned my rightful role as eldest cousin in my extended family. My cousin, Danielle, when she was born had displaced me. This early abandonment in favor of my cousin has also left its mark on my character. My mother was no mother to me.
She, while in high school inadvertently set in motion the animosity directed at me in the second grade. Such is the unpredictability and uncertainty of life. She, while in the twelfth grade, accepted a date with a boy by the name of David Hirsh. David Hirsh was the son of Solomon Hirsh who owned Hershey’s Department Store. I do not know what my mother’s parents did but I do know that they were not well to do, nor were they ever of the social station the Hirshes enjoyed. Well to do boys only date girls from a lower social stratum for one purpose. Perhaps my mother was too naïve to know this, or perhaps she flattered herself that this rich kid might actually fall in love with her. He, on his part, being a rich kid, expected to score. Go all the way as they expressed it in those days.
Cars had not attained the universality in 1936 that they posses at the present. David Hirsh had a car of his very own which he could drive to school and park for all to see. His status at school was very high. Picking my mother up in his new automobile he employed a trick that undoubtedly antedated cars. He drove her a few miles out of town, parking the car in a grove of trees by the side of the road he quite bluntly told her to put out or get out. My mother would not be intimidated by a boy who threw off the disguise of a knight in shining armor and announced he was nothing but an arrogant rich cad in a shiny automobile. She got out. Dismayed at this rejection of what he considered a low class broad who should have been grateful for his attention, he shot off a few uncomplimentary remarks about my mother’s national antecedents. Now, from 1900 to, say, 1940 when immigrant nationalities were still in process of acculturation, national antagonisms were high. Even in the thirties, after immigration had been closed down in 1924, foreign accents were common and ethnic traits still persisted. My mother while not having an accent could still be identified as a Pole by her vocal rhythms. She still clung to certain Polish articles of dress. She still had a romantic attachment to the Polish babushka, or kerchief worn over the head and tied beneath the chin. Thus in this ethnic jostling racial and national slurs were commonly expressed. Fist fights occurred over national differences. Immigrants were stopped on the streets by natives and compelled to recite the pledge of allegiance of kiss the American flag.
Therefore the following passage in historical perspective should not be alarming. It is history. It is the way it was. Hirsh knew that my mother was of Polish ancestry. Everyone knew everyone else’s national antecedents. It was important. Now, irritated to the point of distraction by my mother’s refusal of his improper proposal, mixing nationalities freely he called a dumb Polack and a stupid Bohunk. Either he was ignorant of his geography or in is frustration he lost touch with who he was talking to. Perhaps in his sexual rut he saw double. I don’t know.
There is an old saying: People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. This old saying applies to everyone but it especially applied to David Hirsh. For, as his name indicates, he was Jewish. One of the many nationalities with representatives in the United States. In a world of immigrant antipathies there are pejorative nicknames for every group of people. My mother’s mind was well furnished against any contingency of name calling.
As David Hirsh inched slowly along just behind my mother shouting these derogatory national epithets, as well as others even more personal, my mother absorbed in her disappointment was oblivious to everything else. Then regaining some composure she began to hear what he was saying. Taking umbrage at this very unjust conduct, she returned a few sharp epithets. She used words like ‘kike’ and ‘sheeny.’ Words that have all but lost their meaning today.
Disappointed in love, his heart filling with rancor at what he later described as that ‘arrogant Polack bitch,’ Hirsh heard those words flung back at him and his heart in turn became cold. With that marvelous ability that human beings have of disregarding their own provocative words and actions, David Hirsh immediately forgot his insult of ‘Put out or get out’ and the ethnic slurs he had first hurled at my mother. Swallowing hard he decided that he had been rejected because he was Jewish and my mother was an anti-Semite. He gave the car the gas, drove off in a shower of gravel and left her to walk home.
The matter might have rested there except for the fact that Hirsh was prone to dig his own grave. He would always be an adept at self-embarrassment because of his vindictiveness. Hirsh had boasted to his friends who he was going to date, what he was going to do to her and where he was going to do it. In those ancient times before macadam and concrete had completely altered the landscape as we knew it, the roads were graveled, especially in rural and semi-rural areas. As the Valley is very wet, deep wide ditches ran along each side of the road to drain the fields. Three of Hirsh’s friends, out to watch the action and verify Hirsh’s boasts, witnessed the whole thing from within a ditch. The next week at school Hirsh was not allowed to forget or even accept responsibility for his action. ‘She’ had done it to him. She must pay.
Two years later my mother married my father. As they say, I was the result of that union. Four years later my mother divorced my father. We went to live with her parents. While we lived there I entered Kindergarten at Emerson Grade School. At five I had not yet heard of class consciousness. I was apparently the only innocent in the room. At Emerson the classes were all of about twenty-five students. My room divided into two social classes. There were twelve students in each group, that I will call after one of the two classes in H.G. Wells’ story of the Time Machine, the Eloy. There were twelve students in the group I denominate Morlocks, plus myself. I remain uncomprehending of class differences to this day.
Amongst my classmates was a boy named Michael Hirsh. Michael was the son of the same David Hirsh who had dated my mother. David Hirsh had not forgotten the consequences of his unfortunate behavior. Thus the biblical heritage expressed itself as the ‘sins’ of the Mother shall be visited on the son.
Michael Hirsh, as I now believe, on his father’s instructions, set about to humiliate me to avenge his father’s humiliation of himself. Kindergarten was not a happy time for me. I was rejected by the Eloy and seeing the abject disposition of the Morlocks, I had no desire to take a place with them. Rejected by my mother because I was a boy, I was now rejected by my classmates.
I was a lonely boy and perhaps consequently a difficult one. Thus the year passed. I played alone in the schoolyard and remained ignorant of my situation.
Did I mention there was a war on? Yes, this was 1943 and 1944. Hitler and Tojo were out to conquer the world. Millions of men were in uniform. Industrial manpower was in short supply. Prior to the wars the Valley did not have a large Black population. Blacks were encouraged to migrate North to work in the factories as the White boys had been drafted for the war. Thus racial antagonisms were added to immigrant national antagonisms. I’m not bragging. Many times I have wished that I wasn’t that way, but I believe in equality before the law and fair play. Laugh at me if you will. It’s my way and I’m not going to change, can’t, won’t.
One day in Spring, just before summer vacation, as Kindergarten was drawing to a close three little Black kids were introduced into our midst. Here is where the direct meaning of my dream begins. A tremor went through the class. Today you can search the country over without finding a person who will admit that they were ever prejudiced against Black people. David Hirsh was no exception. Hirsh stayed as well informed as a busybody. Aware of the Black kids time of arrival he instructed his son Michael what to do when they arrived.
Michael, who had a habit of emphasizing his opinions with his projected index finger, shook it at each of us and told us that under no circumstances were we to fraternize with the Black kids. I thought this was wrong, but, already an outsider, I wasn’t going to make it worse for myself by objecting.
On the way to recess Michael Hirsh re-admonished us. Once outside, however, he added a new condition. He demanded that the Black kids sit on the edge of the sand box and not move during recess. This was going too far. I took offence. As I played alone I was not averse to the Black kids having to play alone, but I could not condone their not being allowed to play within themselves.
By coincidence I was standing between the Black kids and Hirsh who stood there shaking his finger at them. Hirsh stood before the Eloy who were gathered behind him. I have never been overly keen on fighting. I was always small for my age. Hirsh was a good two inches taller than me. I told Hirsh and the Eloy that I didn’t think it was right to make those kids sit there during recess. He told me that was the way it was going to be. I said, No, I might refuse to talk to them but I couldn’t allow this. I exhorted the Black kids to get up and fight with me against the injustice. Hirsh was dumbfounded. No one had ever challenged his authority before. I was not only challenging him I was offering to fight him. Those little Black kids left me hanging out to dry. They wouldn’t budge. Fortunately Hirsh was a coward. He had already stepped back into the protective pocket of the Eloy. I had envisioned Armageddon but now Hirsh and the Eloy had melted away.
I thought it was over. I had no idea of the seriousness of my crime. Michael Hirsh went home and bawled to his father. His father had not anticipated that his son would be challenged. He had failed to provide his son with the appropriate response. Michael Hirsh’s self-confidence was shattered. I had no idea what I had done. As my mother, by standing up for herself, had humiliated David Hirsh, so now I had likewise humiliated Michael Hirsh. David Hirsh was enraged. Failing to see the injustice of his cause, a second time, he determined on revenge.
After school the next day Hirsh padded up behind me and hissed into my ear: ‘We’re going to get you.’ I did believe he meant what he said. But the year was over and it would have to wait till next year.
At just this time my mother made her first attempt to abandon me. She arranged for me to go live with a family named Smith. The Valley straddles the River and is therefore divided into two distinct towns with two distinct characters; The East and West sides. The East Side was gradually claimed by the incoming tide of Blacks. The Whites moved out into the hamlets, or West Side. The Smiths lived on the West Side of the River. I transferred from Emerson to Thoreau. I was relieved, for I knew that had I remained at Emerson Hirsh and the Eloy would have their vengeance.
Except for the longer minutes with which childhood is endowed my relief was short lived. In May of that year the Smiths informed my mother that I could no longer stay with them. My mother, still unwilling to accept me, found room and board for me with a family named Johnson. On the East Side. In the Emerson school district. I was terrified. I returned to Emerson in the mid-First Grade. There was an electric shock amongst the Eloy as the message ‘He’s back’ flashed from mouth to mouth.
By this time I had forgotten the reason for my persecution. I was so concerned about the enmity of the Eloy that I never thought to reason why. My offense was certainly a justified one, or what I would have thought my so-called offence to have been. Actually Hirsh and the Eloy didn’t consider their action against the Blacks as unjust. Therefore, in their eyes, my offence consisted of an act of insubordination; a refusal to keep the place they had assigned me. The Eloy were unrelenting; I was harassed continually. The Morlocks either actively followed orders to interfere with me or were too timid to resist. The teacher acquiesced in the attitude of the Eloy. Perhaps David Hirsh put pressure on her after Michael informed him I was back. Authority is always week kneed. It will always accept the position of the stronger. Justice is not a factor in its decisions.
Taken by surprise, David Hirsh, his son and the Eloy could not obtain a revenge that would gratify their desires during the four remaining months of the first grade. David Hirsh thought long and hard on the matter. The Biblical answer was an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. The punishment must fit the crime. David Hirsh’s thoughts roved back to the celebrated Dreyfus Affair in France at the end of the nineteenth century. Dreyfus, a Jew, had been convicted of spying. Part of his punishment was a brutal degrading. He had been compelled to stand before his assembled brother officers as he was stripped of the insignia of his association with the French army; had them torn from his uniform and thrown in the mud. Ruminating on this famous cause celebre he associated it also with his son’s embarrassment. For as difficult as it is for me to conceive, Michael Hirsh took my objection to his injustice in the same manner in which I will describe my humiliation. In his mind David Hirsh sought to avenge both Dreyfus and his son on me.
Hirsh formulated his plan, instructed and drilled his son and the Eloy in the procedure. I remained with the Johnsons in a state of agony, fearing the approach of September.
I know that winter had not arrived as the leaves were still on the trees, so it is possible that I was gotten on the first day of school. I still do not know exactly what happened. I am only surmising from an interpretation of the photograph I was shown in my dream; or perhaps I am drawing up information reservoirs my subconscious still denies me access to. I have thought that my punishment was the requirement imposed on the Black children two years previously in Kindergarten. But in reality it was the ‘punishment’ I had had unknowingly imposed on Michael Hirsh. David Hirsh had instructed his son what to do. His son executed perfectly. At recess the Eloy arranged themselves in a semi-circle around me. The worthless Morlocks, who were excluded from all Eloy intercourse hung listlessly in the background where they belonged. In Kindergarten Hirsh had encountered me in the point position. Exposed, he had retreated into the protection of the Eloy behind him. His lack of character at that moment was the crime with which I was charged. Now, as the keystone in the arch surrounding me, protected deep within the pocket which enclosed me, from within which authority always works, coward that he was, all authority is cowardly, he was prepared to deal with me. I ha no problem with fear. I would have fought if challenged. I might have fought if Hirsh had been on point as in Kindergarten. Maybe the movie of the Alien Kids acted as a mild solvent, loosening the cover on my suppressed memory which decades later allowed me to recover a souvenir of this incident, for just as the Space Kids glared hatred at the Noble Martyr only to break his reserves too late, so the Eloy gathered around me and glared hatred into my soul. If they had all set upon me physically the result could have been borne, but I could not resist their cumulative concentrated hatred. I crumbled beneath the projected blizzard of hatred. David Hirsh achieved more than his goal. He not only humiliated me he killed my soul. Michael Hirsh, in the keystone was shaking the customary finger at me. He told me that I was to take a step toward him and stop when he told to stop. I raised my foot and he said stop. In that awkward position I was told to remain for the duration of recess. Thus I was substituted for the Negroes in Kindergarten.
I hope the reader doesn’t think badly of me. I don’t know that I am ashamed today although I resent myself for having complied. I know in my heart that they would have backed down if I had resisted.
Hirsh must have been the shadowy figure in my dream. His finger must have been the laser rifle, or perhaps the laser beam was a symbol of the hatred projected on me. The figure never fired because the laser beam represented a hatred that would never cease.
The memory of the event was immediately suppressed by me. I died at that moment. As Abram became Abraham and Jacob became Israel, so even though my name remained the same I became a different person, a stranger in a strange land. I therefore did not give an appropriate response to my punishment. David Hirsh had expected me to go the Michael Hirsh and the Eloy and beg forgiveness for my original sin, accept my punishment and go forth and sin no more. They were disappointed for I felt, not remembered, only their rejection. While I would never have asked their forgiveness, I might have tried to correct the matter.
Throughout the second grade I endured the active resentment of the Eloy joined with the passive acquiescence of the Morlocks, for they were forbidden to speak to me. They were powerless in their self-accepted mortification, useless in their ineffectuality. The symbol of authority, the teacher, without ever seeking my side of the story, said that I had been justly chastised. Authority lacks integrity completely.
I became a very distraught little boy.
As the second grade ended my mother informed me that I would be leaving the Johnsons. After the emotional wrench of leaving the Smiths I had prepared myself for further disappointment by making no attachment to the Johnsons. My only question was, where to next? I knew it was serious when she kneeled down to address me face to face. It’s always serious when an adult lowers themselves to a position of equality with the child.
She told me that she wanted me to enter the Children’s Home. The Municipal Orphanage. I went numb. First, I had a mother, or thought I did. Second, I had passed the back fence and stared horrified at the inmates. I didn’t know then that she meant to abandon me entirely but I subconsciously feared such a thing. I resisted stubbornly although I saw that no matter what I said she was going to put me there anyway. Finally, in an attempt to save face, I asked her if I would still have to attend Emerson. She said the Children’s home was in the Longfellow School District. Only have trusted this perfidious woman I severed myself from humanity and entered the House of the Distraught. The boys dorm was on the fourth floor. But my experience in the Orphanage is not germane to my story and I return to the war against me by the Hirshes.
Beset by psychological distresses before I entered the Orphanage, my emotional anxieties increased a thousand fold. I have often compared the sensation to an excess of electrical current passing through a transformer. All fuses blew. Wires broke loose and flashed fire to the skies. There was a loud hum, a boom, and then silence. I do not know how I survived and recovered even though that recovery would take forty years. As shattered as I was I received no mercy from David Hirsh.
I was now eight. The two wars, the European and Pacific had ended. The Japanese Empire and the Axis Powers had gone down to defeat. The enormity of the Nazi policies became apparent after the war. The impression of the American people was incalculable. The terrific inhumanity of the Nazis was difficult to comprehend. The wholesale slaughter of people for which they had no use, both within and without the borders of Germany the murder of as many intellectuals as they could get their hands on, the slaughter and debasement of the Polish nation, other Eastern and Central European Slavs and, of course, the attempted extermination of the Jews were staggering to the American mind. The single mindedness of the Nazis in the pursuit of their goals was incredible. The human mind changed from the shock of recognition.
The destruction of the Jews created a feeling amongst the Jews comparable to my own upon entering the Children’s Home. For the five years after the war, the American Jews were devastated. They had suffered no discomfort in the US but the ant colony had been disturbed, all ants were affected. They began to see Fascists everywhere. They trembled in fear that it might happen, would happen, in the United States. A Jewish writer, Ben Hecht, stated the feeling most poignantly when he stated the feeling simply as: The Jews struck out.
David Hirsh took it very hard. For the Jewish immigrants America had been a land of unexampled opportunity and freedom from the national conflicts of which they had been a part of in Europe. Their history had been one of conflict. Prior to the nineteenth century they had been in conflict with Catholicism. After the French Revolution when the influence of Catholicism had waned they began a pan national confrontation with the Pan Germans and Pan Slavs. As they butted heads with the Slavs in particular it became apparent that the Slavs would not bend to the Jewish will. By mid-nineteenth century the conflict had become bloody. A group of French Jews decided that the only recourse was to remove the Jews from Slavdom and colonize elsewhere. The Jewish Colonization Association was formed. Beginning in 1860 it was begun to transfer the entire Jewish population from Slavdom to colonies ranging from Argentina to Canada. The majority came to the United States. The difference between the Pale of Settlement in Eastern Europe and the United States was as between night and day. A transition from the rural routes to Coney Island. From medieval technology to a land of scientific marvels. From the attentive supervision of the Russian government to the complete indifference of the American government. They arrived as opportunity became a byword for America. Most stayed where they landed in New York City. Solomon Hirsh, David’s father, who was not without resources, or at least had contacts with men with resources, looked West, staked out the Valley as his personal duchy and built up a successful department store.
David Hirsh, born in 1918 in the Valley knew nothing of Eastern Europe. His life had been a life of plenty when plenty was enough for anybody. Good clothes, good food, good cars, good social position. David Hirsh had never known any more discrimination than Poles, Italians, Greeks, Lithuanians or any one of dozens of nationalities. He had known less. So in those fifty years or so of immigration he as well as a great many Jews had grown lax in their attention to the religion of their fathers. A great many would probably have become lapsed Jews but for the events in Europe during the thirties and especially in the wake of the European war. Nazi atrocities reversed the trend and confirmed them in their commitment to Judaism. David Hirsh was one of these.
It didn’t happen here. David was now twenty-eight heading into the power years of his thirties and forties. He was rich and influential in the Valley community. Always good looking, tall and well proportioned, the weight one always gains with age had filled out his form and features admirably. He had married well. He had married the former Linda Webster, an Episcopalian. By so doing he had joined two Valley fortunes. The Hershey Department Store money and the Webster Coal Yard money. He had three lovely children, well, two plus Michael. The Department store and the Webster coal yards still prospered, although the increasing chain store competition after the wars would undermine the base of the department store and the Webster’s assumption of the continued use of coal didn’t foresee the switch to gas and oil would see the coal yards and department store sit idle and empty. Still David Hirsh had everything. Family, position and the money to buy anything he could conceive. He was an American citizen in the best of all possible worlds.
Always of an imperious temper and a vindictive mind he now brooded over the European disaster of the Jews, as did all Jews and knew not what to do. As usual he wanted revenge, which meant against all the goyim; for he believed the whole world was responsible as he and the Jews believed it had sat idly by and let it happen. His grief distorted his perception of reality; although to a certain extent he was right. For, while no one but the Nazis would have attempted such an atrocious deed, still the world had been rather indifferent to the fate of the Jews.
But if all the goyim were guilty he was faced with too many targets. Unable to find satisfactory victims for his anger, he turned to child abuse and directed this additional hatred to me. He didn’t exactly remember why he believed it but he believed that my mother was an anti-Semite because of her rejection of his rude advances. He projected his own inadequacies on me and in his mind made me the future father of a nation of anti-Semites. The memory of his humiliation because of his frustrated designs on my mother still rankled in his mind. It mattered not whether he had caused his own embarrassment. Reversing responsibility came easy to him as it does to most people. It only mattered to him that he had suffered humiliation, and from an inferior bitch in his mind. He always sought to avenge his thwarted crimes, to heap injury on injury, to add insult to insult.
I had not begged for forgiveness after my humiliation so he believed that I had not been hurt, that I had stood there In jest. His natural vindictiveness now augmented by his rage against the world, Hirsh had planned a nasty reception for me as I entered Third grade. However I had evaded his net that year by transferring from Emerson to Longfellow. He was unaware that he had already hurt me as much as mortal man can be hurt; for myself had died of remorse on that September morn. He had murdered my self-esteem and I could not continue in life. I carried my dead self around with me and my walking body was half dead. It would be forty years before I could retrieve my dead self from the House of Death and begin to re-integrate my personality.
But the challenge to Michael Hirsh’s dignity by my rebellion had been severe; although I neither knew nor cared. He was being groomed to be an ever victorious man of affairs; for some reason my revolt had shattered his self-confidence and lowered him in the esteem of the Eloy. He was never to attain the same kind of self-confidence as he had enjoyed in Kindergarten again. For this I was blamed although Michael was only of mediocre talent and authority and would have had and did enjoy much lesser stature in a world larger than his Emerson class.
It didn’t take the Hirshes more than a month to locate me in the Orphanage and at Longfellow. One day in late October I saw Michael Hirsh conferring with a third grade classmate, one of the Websters, although I didn’t know the connection at the time. I knew I was in for more trouble. I was but it wasn’t that bad. The kids of the Children’s Home were kept a separate group at Longfellow. The old two class Eloy-Morlock division was broken up. The Orphanage insulated me from direct vengeance. David Hirsh watched, he stalked. He was unhappy and frustrated. He brooded and planned. A thirty year old man, acting anonymously, waged his war against a defenseless eight year old boy. The third grade passed. Hirsh planned his move for my fourth grade.
In the fourth grade I understood why the Eloy-Morlock division had disappeared. As I was turning nine the organization of the world began to become apparent. I began to see more tings. There were probably two third grade classes at Longfellow but if so I was ignorant of the other. In the fourth grade there were definitely two different class rooms. One upstairs, in a large bright airy room where the Eloy were assigned and another in a half basement, the windows level with the ground, to which we of the Children’s Home were assigned as well as others who were not fortunate enough to be assigned upstairs.
Our teacher was a woman named Miss Marks. She was a very old miss. Miss Marks was a Sephardic Jew. Her ancestors had arrived from Brazil in 1654 in the first contingent of Jews to arrive in the United States. Her name as she pointed out to us several times had been Marques in Portuguese. Her ancestor who had landed as Marques turned up several years later as Marks. She was very international in her outlook. Our study program revolved around readings about children of other lands.
As improbable as it may seem, David Hirsh devoted great gobs of time to divining his next plan to wreak vengeance on me. The plan he devised was complex, requiring the involvement of dozens of people and the complicity of hundreds. Thus, should it fail his reputation would be placed in jeopardy. David Hirsh started his campaign in the spring of my third grade, just before the humidity of summer. He was powerful amongst the Jewish community and very influential among goys. His wife Linda, nee Webster, was equally socially and politically active as her husband. She was of top standing among the women of the town. Enlisting supporters they, together, began a campaign to separate the kids from the Children’s Home from their own on the reasoning that as a class of social lepers or ‘white niggers’ we were detrimental to their childrens’ welfare. They worked hard to have a separate facility assigned to us. Failing that they wanted that, at least, we might be made to attend classes within the walls of the orphanage as, in fact, was the case with the Catholic Orphanage down the street. We were to be contained so that we might not contaminate their children. This separation might have occurred in democratic America except for the almighty dollar, God bless it. The expense could not be justified. There was seemingly no real objection to the deed.
Frustrated in their ambition, driven by their vindictiveness, the Hirshes foolishly adopted Plan B. Incredibly it succeeded if only temporarily. But for one woman its success might have been permanent.
Hirsh still thought that I had merely sloughed off my lesson in the second grade. Thus in his mind I had not only humiliated his son in Kindergarten but had done the same thing in the second grade. I had been accorded he dignity of a rebuke by Michael Hirsh himself. There was a certain dignity to that that ought to be appreciated. Handled properly by myself I might have gained honorary admission to the Eloy. Now I was to be treated to the same indignity that the Black kids had endured. I was to be their ‘nigger’ forever.
The Hirshes now sought to separate their children from we of the Orphanage within the class. Miss Marks made the orphans sit together along one wall. The Hirshes influence in town was so great that the School Board was persuaded to prevent us from playing, not only with, but playing on the same playground with the parented kids. During recess Miss Marks was compelled to separate the Orphanage kids from the parented kids. We were compelled to sit on benches and watch the parented kids play. If an additional participant was needed one of us was called up.
As we stood before Miss marks while she, suppressing her embarrassment, explained this to us, it all seemed vaguely familiar. I couldn’t remember my ritual murder but I did remember Kindergarten. For many years I thought the fourth grade incident was the only revenge attempted. I saw through the attempt immediately. The notion was repugnant to Miss Marks, as it should have been to any honest and fair person. She implemented the requirement but reluctantly. Inadvertently I defeated the Hirshes in a minute. My victories over them were always Pyrrhic.
As recess began Miss Marks instructed us in the new program. Whether I remembered Michael Hirsh and the Blacks or whether I was as indignant in the fourth grade at such nonsense as I had been in Kindergarten, I don’t know. The others from the Orphanage sat down obediently. I grabbed a ball and ran off to play by myself in another part of the playground. As I couldn’t quickly persuade any of the others to follow me, I left them. Immediately there was a chorus of ‘You’ve got to sit down.’ It came from both groups. My reply was a very aggressive ‘Make me.’ No one was riding point that day. They never do when a fair fight is in the offing.
Then a ruse was attempted. Someone of the parented kids left the field and a substitute was needed. One of ours was called off the bench to come and tell me that I was selected as the replacement. I wish I could say that I said a witty or trenchant thing but angry people seldom do. I was angry. I just said ‘no.’
David Hirsh and Michael Hirsh had been parked in a side street facing the yard looking at the scene through their windshield expecting to enjoy my humiliation. They both stared in disbelief as their efforts were foiled again. David Hirsh’s head sagged to the rim of the steering wheel. Mechanically he turned the key in the ignition and angrily shifted into first. Both David and Michael’s faces twisted into expressions of chagrin. Their brows hooded their eyes, their mouths gaped as the edges turned downwards. Their perfidious design had failed again. Another bitter pill.
Miss Marks was overcome with shame and remorse. She had tried to recover her self-respect by offering me the role of substitute. A role I rightly took as another insult. Her Judaism was offended by such criminal discrimination. Unlike Hirsh she suffered from the restrictions which had been placed on her people at other times in other far places. Her Portuguese ancestors had been lucky to escape the Inquisition. They had found a refuge in Brazil only during the short period of Dutch control of the colony. When the Portuguese regained Brazil her ancestors fled to the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam, later to be called New York. She remembered, or knew this only too well. Rather than inflicting punishment on innocent others for remembered conflicts she sincerely wished to remove injustice from the world.
The second day of the segregation was too much for her. After school that day she informed the Principal of Longfellow that she would have to resign if the segregation continued. As the Hirshes, the instigators, were well known for their wish to segregate we orphans and they attended the temple together, so that David was well known to her, she then went immediately to him to whom she offered her unwelcome opinion. Nor was she kind or diplomatic. She vented her full indignation and threw her own guilt at his feet. David Hirsh was abashed. The next day the order of segregation was rescinded. She was a courageous woman. She acted as an individual, not as one of a collective.
The repercussions of the failure of their plan were very serious. The whole concept of what America stood for had been violated. In the aftermath the reflection on the consequences of their action caused many embarrassed faces in the Valley. As the prime movers, the Hirshes bore the brunt of the blame. The two lost some fair credibility. The concern was not so much the justice or injustice of their crime, for, in society the only concern is whether one succeeds or gets away with it. The credibility was lost because the Hirshes displayed poor judgment. While misjudging their own chances of success they had humiliated all the other people that they had involved. That is a cardinal sin. They never were to enjoy the same confidence again. Hirsh, as was becoming his habit, sacrificed a great deal to his vindictiveness. He was becoming his own worst enemy.
Hirsh was not one to learn from experience. Conscious of his loss of credibility which he now blamed on me, he now made two quickly and poorly conceived efforts to destroy my reputation, such as it was, and credibility, such as any enjoyed by orphans.
The far sides of the streets surrounding the Orphanage were lined with rows of fine mature maple trees. The branches spread over the streets and yards. There were a number of men, homosexuals and perverts, who stood near the tree trunks in the shade hoping for a little short action. We were prime targets. Deprived of love, denied respect, both sexes were susceptible to minor blandishments. My mother had always advised me not to talk to strangers so I always walked by them like they were not there.
Hirsh had determined to influence the direction of my future life. As the twig is bent, so the tree inclines, he said. So he got two social rejects, men who had made a life of doing dirty deeds dirt cheap in order to be associated in any capacity with the successful rich, to wait for me along the back fence. On that day I happened to be walking back from school with Richard Grainger. They mistook Richard for me.
One said to Richard: ‘Hey, you little bastard. Youi know where you’re going? You’re going to be a criminal and die in the electric chair. You’re a thief. God hates you and you are going to spend your life in prison.’
We were young and small, at the impressionable age for imprinting. Richard was terrified and took the man’s curse literally. I had watched. Now forming my opinion I began to curse them as old bums and failures. Just as I had begun the other man realized their error and said: ‘Uh, oh, I think you nailed the wrong one.’ They had. They had also destroyed Richard’s life for he believed them, took their suggestion in, and fulfilled their prophecy.
Hirsh had failed again. He tried once more. The fall and winter had passed. Spring burst out once again. Hirsh had learned my habits. In those days before super markets and convenience stores there was an old dilapidated rundown little grocery store every few blocks. There was one two blocks from the Orphanage. We used to take our money gained from the deposits of beer bottles and whatever there to buy candy.
There, one Saturday, I found Michael Hirsh and thee of his friends waiting for me. I asked Hirsh why he was out slumming. Badinage passed between us. I went into the store to buy some candy. I was followed by Hirsh and his friends. They jostled around me while I paid. I elbowed back. Taking my candy I left the store followed by the Hirsh gang. Outside they gathered around me. But Hirsh reaching into my back pocket pulled out a candy bar and said: ‘Hey, Gresham, what’s this?’ He had placed a candy bar in my back pocket while jostling me in the store. In later years he would have been astute enough not to have taken it out of my pocket himself. He was young and inexperienced.
I said, ‘Looks like a Butterfinger.’
‘Yeah? Did you pay for this? Looks like you’re a thief, doesn’t it Gresham?’
‘That candy bar’s not in my hand, Hirsh. It’s in yours. Looks like you’re the thief.’ The grocer, seeing the candy bar in my back pocket as I left had come to the door.
‘Hey, mister,’ I said, ‘Michael Hirsh here stole this candy bar from you. Better make him pay for it. He’s got lots of money.’
Hoisted by his own petard again, Hirsh turned shamefaced, threw the candy bar down and he and his friends stalked off. His witnesses witnessed against him and Hirsh forfeited his hoped for role of a leader forever. The Hirshes would never learn.
What might have happened next remains unknown. I turned ten. At ten we were farmed out to foster parents. The Wardens took me way to the other side of town.
The Hirshes had been instrumental in the formation of my personality. My character was beyond their reach.
My dream had revealed the controlling fixation of my life. In the process my personality had completely disintegrated. The personality that had sustained me in place of my dead self was gone. I stood exposed and naked to the world while I groped to re-integrate my personality. It was a long row to hoe before my subconscious released the past to free me by a dream.
Edgar Rice Burroughs And The Ben-Day Dots
December 21, 2014
Edgar Rice Burroughs And The Ben-Day Dots
by
R.E. Prindle
Winsor McCay
Over the years I have come to wonder why Tarzan was such an immediate success. The premiss on the face of it is absurd. While fascinating it requires such a huge suspension of disbelief as to be staggering. Perhaps that is why such a significant percentage of his contemporary readers were revolted by ERB’s work. He had to put up with a tremendous amount of abuse although his acceptance was greater than his rejection. Something had to prepare the way for that acceptance nevertheless.
Little Nemo
The discovery of the unconscious that became prominent in the second half of the nineteenth century certainly opened the way for the strange and bizarre. It is not a coincidence that spiritualism and the paranormal became prominent at that time. Along with those came the rise of science fiction and fantasy. Tarzan is fantasy fiction while the Mars series of Burroughs is fantasy sci-fi.
Monsters like Dracula and Jekyll and Hyde established themselves in the popular imagination. Anthony Hope’s Prisoner of Zenda and the Graustark knock off by George Barr McCutcheon entranced ERB to the point of distraction. Jules Verne, of course, and the Oz stories of L. Frank Baum. When it came to the Mars stories ERB was merely the best exemplar of what by 1911 was an established genre.
Little Nemo
The public mind was being softened to accept not only the incredible but the impossible.
Printing improvements made both half tone and color illustration less costly and easier to produce. Is it any wonder that ERB’s period is one of astonishing illustrators. Remember that ERB tried to be a cartoonist himself before he took up writing. His goal was judging from his drawings to be a political cartoonist.
Thus one can only presume he followed book illustrators avidly. Arthur Rackham was knocking them dead while Denslow’s and John R. Neill’s Oz illustrations must have wowed the envious Burroughs. N.C. Wyeth must have blown his mind.
More importantly than the book illustrators though were the emergent four color Sunday Funnies of the newspapers in 1895. They were so exotic and strange even in my childhood but at the time they must have seemed incredible. Of course I had no idea what made them seem exotic. In fact, I had never heard of Ben-Day dots until the fabulous personality posters of the Sixties exploited them.
According to Wikipedia on the subject:
The Ben-Day printing process, named after illustrator and printer Benjamin Henry Day, Jr., is a technique dating from 1879. Depending on the effect, color and optical illusion needed, small colored dots are closely spaced, widely spaced or overlapping. Magenta dots, for example, are widely spaced to create pink. Pulp comic books of the 1950s and 1960s used Ben-Day dots in the four process colors (cyan, magenta, yellow and black) to inexpensively create shading and secondary colors such as green, purple, orange and flesh tones.
The Sunday Funnies thus must have had an astonishing effect on contemporary minds. As the comics Bill Hillman has reproduced on his site, ERBzine, indicate ERB was an avid follower of the genre. His earth borer used by David Innes in the Pellucidar series was most likely cadged from a comic strip.
Seeking relief from those long weary job hunting days of the first decade ERB sought relief by hanging around the Chicago Public Library. He was a card carrying member too. Who knows what volumes he borrowed or browsed through on the spot. The Library would have had its racks of the country’s newspapers on display including those of NYC. Thus ERB would have been familiar with the comic strips of Winsor McCay, The Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend and Little Nemo in Slumberland. Himself an avid dreamer, very familiar with nightmares, ERB must have relished McCay’s work.
Little Nemo
As it so happens McCay’s two most famous strips have a prominent place in the history of comics. In fact, just recently the Taschen Publishers issued a one volume complete collection in four color Ben-Day dots of the Little Nemo strip. At a size of 20 x 14 the strips are magnificently displayed. The accompanying 150 page text by Alexander Braun is a wonderful history of the period pointing out many developments that undoubtedly influenced ERB forming a background to his writing. Braun has a touch of genius too. Many strips of the The Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend are included in the ancillary volume, some full page.
The Rarebit Fiend strip began a little earlier than the Little Nemo strip of 1905. Thus both strips were running during 1905-09, the period of ERB’s deepest despondency. I will show how both strips are reflected in ERB’s writing.
To take the Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend first. Rarebit refers to the culinary dish Welsh Rarebit frequently referred to as Welsh Rabbit. The dish is simply melted cheese on bread although it can be a fondue. In the strip the dreamer overeats before bedtime producing a nightmare. The dreamers are all different while some of the nightmares are quite astonishing.
Burroughs’ emulation appears in Jungle Tales Of Tarzan in the story Tarzan’s first nightmare in which Tarzan overeats having the subsequent nightmare. My first reaction to the story was that Burroughs had been reading Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams. While he may have been I think McCay’s strip was a stronger or more immediate influence.
The Little Nemo in Slumberland influence appears in ERB’s first serious effort, Minidoka, put in a drawer and not published until 1998 by Dark Horse Comics.
The consensus seems to be that Burroughs wrote this short work c. 1905. The reasoning seems to be that because Burroughs wrote the story on stationery from this period that that proves it was written at that date. However ERB was an inveterate collector, read packrat, until he says he overcame the disease in the early twenties. So he says. So ERB was reluctant to throw anything away. The stationery proves nothing.
I have maintained that ERB wrote Minidoka c. 1908-09 based on internal evidence. We can now add the evidence of Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo in Slumberland strip. As the title implies this strip also revolves around dreams. It has a haunting surrealistic feel filled with strange characters and dream effects.
As I say, ERB haunted the Chicago library from 1905 to 1911 when he began writing The Princess of Mars. Thus he would have heard of the strip which was quite famous while following it at least periodically.
Minidoka reflects a Little Nemo quality. Little Nemo would then have been the catalyst that got Burroughs writing as he tried to emulate it in prose. As usual ERB combines a multitude of influences. He even states that the work is written in Ragtime Talk which meshes quite well with McCay.
Minidoka in itself can qualify as surrealistic before surrealism as does Mccay. That would not be extraordinary as the period from, say, 1880-1910 had a unified outlook not unlike the Sixties music scene when all bands played around a central motif.
As the work couldn’t have been written without McCay influence that places its probable composition date firmly in the 1908-10 range.
I heartily recommend the Taschen Little Nemo as an example of the current bookmaker’s art as well as for the astounding work of Winsor McCay. This rather astonishing video is available demonstrating McCay’s drawing expertise while showing him as the film creator of animation. He not only influenced Burroughs but Walt Disney said his own work would not have been possible without McCay.
A 1998 Japanese made movie called Little Nemo’s Adventures In Slumberland is available on Netflix. Ray Bradbury, no less, provided the story line.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcSp2ej2S00 There are numerous other videos too.
The Sixties And The Negro Revolution
Part 3a
Terraplaning Through The Ozone
by
R.E. Prindle
Always keep in mind 1954’s Supreme Court decision of Brown vs. The Board Of Education of Topeka as the basis of our interpretation of the Negro revolution. There are other things to consider. In that era before the internet, indeed, even as television networks were only developing, magazines were a key element in forming public opinion. Liberalism, even Communism, was the lens through which events were viewed. This was usually disguised as tongue in cheek conservative criticism.
The most important purveyors of this sort of public opinion were Time, Newsweek and Life. The first and last formed the Time-Life group of magazines all of which were very influential while disguising their Liberal bias very well. Life was the first to bite the dust probably being replaced by T-L’s People Magazine that more or less covered the same ground in a more contemporary fashion. Far back but vying with these was the William F. Buckley fronted National Review. Buckley was the most pernicious of all posing as the consummate Conservative while guarding the Liberal agenda from Conservative inroads.
These were New York based magazines so that it is not surprising perhaps that they were staffed mainly by Jews, including the National Review, hence Left Wing although disguised as right wing or objective, and heavily pro-Israel, Negro and definitely Jewish. It might seem odd that all pushed a Jewish agenda but then as New York City was 25% Jewish let’s just say they had a foot in the door.
Until Time-Life was absorbed by the Jews in the TL-Warner Bros. merger the Luces, Henry and Claire Booth who founded the empire ran a fairly useful organization. I read Time religiously and believed in the veracity of the magazine until I learned in their account of Howard Hughes departure from Las Vegas that they fabricated the story completely. Pure fiction and that this was done routinely.
Nevertheless as publishers of outstanding illustrated history books in extended series and phonograph record collections of very high quality they did their best to educate Americans of their past.
I finally chucked Time Life in after buying their mail order library, The Time-Life Reading Program. This was a series of 108 titles sent four volumes bi-monthly. They became progressively Red oriented, that is propagandistic. I read the first eighty or so titles then stopped although I have the full set of 108 less the replacement title of one volume.
As they were located in New York City they were enablers of the various revolutions giving national prominence to what were local situations. Andy Warhol would have remained a relative unknown except for Time while a relative nobody like Edie Sedgwick went nationwide with Life’s picture essay of her. Even Ed Sanders of the Fugs made the cover of Life as T-L constantly hyped the Greenwich Village Bohemian culture, enabling that culture to conquer America.
Newsweek was a Time wannabe that didn’t have what it took. One picked it up when Time wasn’t around which was rarely. Newsweek has gone defunct while pursuing a far left Jewish agenda. The signs are that Time sabotaged by the Jews through their merger will probably soon follow under Jewish editorship.
As commentary magazines there were Harpers, Atlantic, The Reporter and a host of others but they were minor in distribution compared to the giants Time, Life and Newsweek.
Time is of the essence of the period.
Movies and TV
Just as one’s dreams form a parallel reality alongside one’s waking life so movies and TV play a key role in the formation of one’s public life somewhere between dreams and waking reality. Contrary to claims made by the industry movies were not about entertainment but were purely propaganda disguised as entertainment. No serious history or study of movies exists to my knowledge although specific movies are being injected into articles as alternate reality. While movies may not be actually real they nevertheless create real memories and very influential memories that do affect your actions. And memory is the basis of consciousness. The memories are so powerful that one may adjust one’s personality to reflect what is on the screen. Thus when M.A.S.H. was on TV any number of Hawkeyes stalked the land assuming that persona. The Hawkeyes then cast the people around them in the various roles behaving as if those roles were real in fact. What a curse that was.
There was a changing of the guard that occurred in 1962. Within a few days of each other two movies were released the one being The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and the other Ian Fleming’ Dr. No. The former was the swan song of the old American mores while the latter established the new Freudian/Reichian pornographic image of the New America.
Liberty Valance featured the two aging stars of the thirties and forties John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart while being directed by the old warhorse, John Ford. Dr. No introduced Wayne’s successor Sean Connery. It was like Zeus replacing Cronus in the Age change from Taurus to Aries.
The two female leads also heralded the change. Vera Miles as the beautiful Hallie Stoddard Aryan model of Chivalry of virgin sensibilities exited stage right while like Aphrodite of old the new model woman Ursula Andress rose nearly nude from the sea as the pornographer’s delight. Indeed, soon an area legal for pornography would be created within a twenty mile radius of the Hollywood studios ensuring that pornography would triumph in America’s theatres.
Thus violence was personated in the form of James Bond (Sean Connery) and pornography in various forms of Bond heroines who might all have been named Pussy Galore were united. The future was cast. Out with the chaste and demure Vera Miles and in with the lusty, busty, big-assed Bond heroines chasing the Big Dick. I knew something had happened but I was left scratching my head.
Nineteen sixty-two also produced the morally relativist masterpiece Mondo Cane. The movie had tremendous impact as it demonstrated that nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so. Sixty years later its images flash through my mind
Thus the Jews through Freudian/Reichian psychoanalysis triumphed over and displaced Aryan European Chivalric mores.
Now, Freud and Reich were motivated by Freud’s total misunderstanding of the Unconscious. Freud looked inside himself and extrapolated his malaise as the normal for mankind irrespective of race or religion. If Freud was the Jesus of psychoanalysis then his disciple Wilhelm Reich was its St. Paul. While Freud was rejected by Aryans Reich was able to translate sex and violence into something palatable for them.
While most people know Freud, at least by name, many fewer have heard of Wilhelm Reich. Reich was a disciple of Freud. While Freud dressed his discovery of the psycho-analytic method in a lot of mumbo-jumbo he essentially deified his own subconscious desires for sex and violence and passed them off as universal. He didn’t take those desires to their logical conclusion however while Reich did. Reich’s vision was pure sado-masochistic sex and violence and by sex I mean merely fucking.
While this had been what Freud meant, when Reich held up his mirror for Freud to see Freud was revolted by himself and cast Reich from his organization. At that time his group was all Jewish as it was realized that psycho-analysis was a Jewish affair.
Reich continued on and wed Communist violence to his psycho-sexual political creation. Where he would have gone from there having been discredited by the psycho-analysts isn’t clear but that scourge who destroyed America without lifting a finger, Adolf Hitler, came to power in Germany. The German States were the center of the psycho-sexual scum.
As Hitler was antagonistic to Jews in general, when he came to power in 1933 all this intellectual treyfe with the exception of Freud, and he was to plague England, fled to the United States settling in its two culture forming centers, New York City and Los Angeles. Reich, the King of Scurf, was one of these figures. Hitler’s revenge on the United States. He remained on the East Coast peddling his sex and violence.
If Freud had rejected Reich US authorities followed suit in spades. They were so repelled by Reichian theories that, this is truly remarkable, they not only arrested him as a criminal lunatic throwing him into prison but actually collected his books and burned them. This was in anything goes America too.
The only thing other than Reich that the US was intolerant of was Jewish comic books that were also banned. The Jewish Horror comics such as William Gaines Tales From The Crypt were sado-masochistic, violent and pornographic while possible inspired by Reich’s approach to psycho-analysis.
I was an avid reader from eight to twelve of all the Gaines comics which I considered outre and even as I read them thought to myself that they shouldn’t allow them for little kids like myself. But, I read them eagerly. Still I didn’t know that what I was reading was sado-pornographic stuff. Didn’t know either term at the time. Apparently our parents did. These were vivid, vivid stories. Great pictures. Many of the images linger on. Perhaps I was revolted because I have always rejected pornography as a mental malaise. Not that that does me or anyone else any good because every Hollywood movie has a pornographic base while many for general distribution are worse than anything Gaines published. His line was named, humorously I hope, EC- Educational Comics. Believe it or not.
At any rate not all Reich’s books were burned as they were revived in the Sixties forming the basis of Bohemian sex and politics notions. So a new synthesis began to form, began to jell in the Sixties. The adoption of a new set of mores. It was realized that movies were an unrivalled propagandistic tool.
Dusan Makajevic, a Yugoslavian film maker made a perfect visualization of Freudian/Reichian sexual politics in his movie of 1971: WR: Mysteries Of The Organism. The modern world in a nut shell, no pun intended I don’t recommend it as without proper education its sexual presentation will certainly be misunderstood as pure pornography. Of course it is, but only as a visualization of the Freudian/Reichian unconscious and its consequences. E. Michael Jones gives an extended literary version in his Libido Dominandi that I do recommend. Perhaps read it first.
So, now, we have the perfect propagandistic tool that functions through both the conscious and unconscious minds in hands of Jews indoctrinated in Freudian/Reichian psychology. After WWII and the discovery of Hitler’s death camps the Jews became absolutely hysterical. Even though American Jews had never been in any danger, not even remotely, they now saw White Americans as potential if not actual Fascists intent on destroying them. This was serious.
William Paley of CBS, himself a Jew, believed American death camps were so imminent that he capitalized the careers of prominent Jewish performers- actors, comedians and such- and sold shares in their future incomes to gentiles. By this ploy he believed that when the round up came these few Jews would be spared for economic reasons. This is serious, indeed.
In any event the path to survival in their mental state was to divide and discombobulate. The Negro as a tool was at hand. While the Judaeo-Communists of the twenties and thirties had always used the Negro to sow discord and confusion, in the post-war US their effort was stepped up. The movies were the perfect vehicle to divide and control America. Hence we had all those horrid Sidney Poitier movies shaming Whites and glorifying Negroes. By 1960 this was nearly in full spate. Miscegenation was a popular device so there were numerous Negro male/White female pairings. Remember the movies are a third reality somewhere between waking and dreaming providing both conscious and unconscious very real memories from faked reality. What was seen wasn’t true but was accepted as such by suggestion. This is serious business while presented as entertainment, it was actually behavior changing propaganda. New mores for the masses.
The dialogue, then, was controlled and directed through films, the third reality.
And then there was Brown vs the BOE. The greatest divisive decision ever made and taken full advantage of by the Jews. Here was a way to protect themselves from a nation, they thought, of Hitlers thirsting for Jewish blood. After the great preliminary battles of the Fifties came the Sixties and the wedge that split the nation- the Civil Rights Battle.
Chap. 7: Marianne Faithfull: Faerie Queene Of The Sixties
January 27, 2013
Marianne Faithfull: The Faerie Queene Of The Sixties
by
R.E. Prindle
Chapter 7
We skipped a light fandango
Turned Cartwheels across the floor
I was feeling kind of seasick
But the crowd called out for more
The room was humming harder
As the ceiling flew away
And so it was that later
As the Miller told his tale
She said there is no reason
And the truth is plain to see
That her face at first just ghostly
Turned a white shade of pale.
–Procol Harum
Marianne A Few Years Back
Now in 1968 both Mick and Marianne’s life were rolling by while both were teetering on the edge. Shortly after Godard’s filming of Sympathy For The Devil in June Mick was signed by Donald Cammell for the lead role in his film Performance. The invitation to star didn’t come from nowhere. There are many links from Mick and his friends to Cammell. Cammell was already known to the Stones having met them in 1965 at the time of the Paris Olympia shows. He was naturally first attracted to Brian Jones but then found some kind of love for Mick. Over the subsequent years he formed many projects that he offered to Mick. As Mick’s asking price was a million or more the projects did not pan out.
Not only did Cammell know the Stones but his live in the Parisian model Deborah Dixon had had a menage a trois with Anita Pallenberg. She had moved on to Brian Jones, passing on to Keith with whom she was living when the movie was shot. She had also viewed and/or worked on the script with Cammell a year previously so she knew that she was playing opposite Mick in advance. She then, was well aware of what the movie entailed.
In addition Cammell knew Robert Fraser and Chris Gibbs while being involved with the American
Donald Cammell
Satanist Kenneth Anger. Anger was himself a disciple of the arch Satanist of the Golden Dawn, Aleister Crowley. Cammel’s father had known Crowley reasonably well while Cammell himself had at least seen Crowley live. His father even wrote a biography of Crowley, so let’s just say that the sex magic of Crowley and his Golden Dawn played a prominent role during the filming.
Mick would have brought his knowledge of The Master And Margarita to the proceedings. He may have persuaded Cammell to read the book or perhaps as a Satanist Cammell had already read it.
Marianne who had become pregnant perhaps in January or February was sent to Ireland during the filming so as to be out of the way for the sex stuff where she became distraught. She was giving herself and was being given a psychological beating that was disappointing all her expectations leading her into a deep depression. This was furthered along when she had a miscarriage at eight months losing the child. I would imagine the miscarriage was the result of the stresses Mick had placed on her by sending her away along with his sexual misconduct. It may have been her own subconscious rejection of Mick that caused her to subconsciously refuse to have his baby.
Thus as 1968 drew to a close as the Stones recorded their Satanic Majesties Request album Marianne was trying to recover from her miscarriage and put her life in order. She probably ought to have left Mick at the time but as she tacitly admits in an interview video on You Tube the reason that she went with Mick was because her own royalties were dropping and she had gotten used to the money. Mick was a source untapped. I think that this is an underlying cause of her anguish. Nineteen sixty-nine would be a traumatic year for all concerned.
2.
What To Do About Brian?
Marianne was a sentimental girl who formed sincere attachments to the people of her world. Thus Brian was not just someone on the scene but one might say a part of Marianne’s life. She cared for him. As we all know Brian Jones was the actual founder of the Rolling Stones. He named them and gave them their original musical direction. He held them together during the early stages. Naturally he considered himself their leader. He was actually a much more charismatic figure than Mick. While Mick was wiggling around all eyes were on Brian. There was just something about him.
This aroused Mick’s jealousy who once stated that the lead singer was supposed to be the center of attention. Mick also had the most powerful personality so that while he may not have been the leader he made himself the director. And then he and Keith shifted the direction of the music. While never a fan of the Stones I found myself reviewing the albums when I began writing of the group. My original opinion was only confirmed.
It became immediately apparent that Oldham’s first recordings done necessarily on the cheap were not good recordings, four track on primitive and worn equipment. While Brian and the Stones thought they were doing a good job imitating American Negro rhythm and blues it’s actually not even close. Mick makes a terrible imitation of a Negro blues shouter while its painfully obvious that the music doesn’t come close to the original. It’s so far off that it might as well be an original genre while being very close to a garage band.
Perhaps Mick who thought it impossible for an English band to pass themselves off as authentic was right to change the direction of the band to Negro influenced Rock and Roll. Brian was probably too close to his aspirations to know how far from the mark they were.
The original tunes are somewhat better but the inspiration for those soon ran dray so that by the 1966 and ‘67 albums Aftermath and Between The Buttons the band was quickly approaching the rocks. The West Coast fans were disappointed by both albums and, quite frankly, they’re not listenable today. As the albums veered toward English music hall Brian was quite right in thinking that they had abandoned his original intent. The 1968 Their Satanic Majesties Request, intended to be psychedelic in imitation of the Beatles Sgt. Pepper’s wandered off to a musical somewhere although one can sense the transition from the Old Stones to the New Stones of Beggar’s Banquet.
The cover of Satanic Majesties must have really sickened Brian as it had the boys dressed up in some sort of magician’s getup. A long way from Negro rhythm and blues.
Mick by Andy
Mick’s conception of the band judging from the current situation was always himself, Keith and Charlie. Bill Wyman, the bass player, being several years older was always an awkward fit. Mick marginalized him as much as he could until Wyman finally gave up terminating his role in 1993. So, was Brian forced out? Of course.
Andrew Oldham who promoted the Stones to a prominence far beyond their then abilities was the first that Mick pushed away in 1967. As a parting present Oldham turned them over to the American Jewish pirate, Allen Klein. As Oldham owned the masters to the Stones catalog he sold it lock stock and barrel to Klein who then legitimately owned them much to Mick’s chagrin.
As Brian was being marginalized by Mick, losing control of the band and its direction his behavior became erratic while he also sunk in the haze of drug addiction. It became obvious to the casual viewer of him on stage that his days must be numbered. On the Ed Sullivan show in the US he could barely stand on his feet but everyone was watching him placed back in the shadows by Mick.
Mick and Keith continued their petty harassments until Brian became a shambles of himself. After the Redlands bust the police turned their attention to Brian who hadn’t the emotional resources to bear the burden. It then in June of 1969 that Mick and Keith advised him that he was no longer in the band.
Brian either drowned in his swimming pool on the night of 7 July or was drowned. There is controversy over his death that may never be conclusively resolved.
Marianne, who by 1969 was not in a healthy sate of mind, was herself sinking into drug addiction, actually becoming a heroin addict, watched these proceedings. She was shocked by Brian’s death. And this came on top of her other woes. But life goes on. It is always painful when death removes a loved one from the building but painful or not the sun does not stand still in the sky nor do the bills stop coming in. Life goes on without missing a beat and you better had too.
So, Mick had movie offers coming in. Both he and Marianne as reigning pop couple were signed to do a movie in Australia. Ned Kelley an Australian bandit. In the 1840s when plays and books began celebrating former outlaws, highwaymen and crooks they were called Newgates after the equally famed Newgate Calendar of criminal trials. This would be a sort of Newgate movie.
Less than a week after Brian’s death Marianne and Mick arrived in Australia to begin their commitment; after all they had signed well before Brian’s death. Psychologically however all of Marianne’s misgivings were adding up to a heavy burden. While the reasonable approach may be that life goes on not everyone is so reasonable and I suspect Marianne was one of these. Perhaps, too, she realized that she and Mick were becoming estranged. Mick’s history was beginning to become apparent; his abominable treatment of women, Chrissie Shrimpton, of Oldham, of Brian; perhaps she began to wonder if she were next. While Mick may have had justifiable reasons for Oldham and Jones they may not have been that apparent to Marianne.
Certainly Brian was on her mind when the place touched down in Sydney. Exhausted by the long flight she and Mick checked into their hotel. Mick promptly flopped down on the bed to doze off. Marianne troubled in mind picked up a bottle of Tuinals and perhaps in a hypnoid state of grief and confusion dropped a hundred forty of them. Wow! That must have taken five or ten minutes. Shows determination. Who would do that if they weren’t serious about suicide.
For whatever reason Mick woke up and probably groggy himself scoped the situation. He rushed Marianne to the hospital for medical attention. But Marianne had overloaded her brain, she lay in a coma for six days.
The last thing on her mind before she suspended animation or slowed her synapses to a crawl was Brian. Since she was still alive although unconscious synapses must have continued; she must have continued to work on her problems, the anguish that had caused her attempt at self-destruction. Thus, when she came to Brian was still on her mind. I quote from her auto-biography Marianne Faithfull, pp.175-79:
By the time we got to the hotel in Sydney I’d forgotten not only where I was but who I was. I looked in the mirror. What I saw was a very thin, frightened face. I’d cut my hair, I was anorexic, and my skin looked cadaverous. I saw someone literally falling apart. Someone with blond hair and looking very scared. In my drug induced stupor I dimly recognized the ravaged face of Brian Jones staring back at me. I was Brian, and I was dead.
…At that moment Brian was my twin. I identified with him because he had been a public sacrifice; it was a role I understood.
Quite logically, I thought I was Brian.
It was all very rational in the way these things are when you’re unhinged. I reasoned that since I was Brian and since Brian was dead…(ellipsis in original) I had to take the rest of the pills so I could be dead too.
…The Tuinals were taking forever to kick in, I looked down and saw things on the street that shouldn’t have been there…And then I saw Brian Jones. At that moment I went into a coma that lasted six days.
Brian Jones
When I first spotted Brian he was far below at street level, but greatly enlarged…Various parts of him- his face, his hands- expanded and extended toward me as he spoke, and then he rose straight up as from a shaft of air until he was directly opposite the window of our room.
…He beckoned to me the way spirits traditionally beckon to mortals in the movies. I passed through the plate glass and found myself outside. But instead of standing suspended above the street, I was now in an unstable landscape that pulsed and shifted as we spoke. I had I assumed gone over to the other side.
The grandeur and enormity of the place had the phantasmagoric mood of illustrations by Edmund Dulac or Durer engravings of Hell. As we were walking along, I realized that Brian had no more idea of where we were going than I did. Obviously he had woke up dead, not known where he was and decided to call for me!
It was the nicest chat I ever had with him, actually. He told me how he had woken up and put out his hand for his bottle of Valium, and about the panic that seized when there was nothing there. He said he had been lonely and confused and had brought me to him because he needed to talk to someone he knew.
We strolled blithely along as the quivering earth crumbled away on either side of us, and he told me about the miniature coronation set with Beefeaters and the coach and horses. He said he like books about railway bridges, guides to switching boxes, George McDonald’s fairy stories and Fox’s Book of Martyrs.
…Afterward he became weepy like the Mock Turtle in Alice In Wonderland and said he was sorry to have put me to all this trouble. He didn’t seem to know he was dead. I’m sure this happens frequently…They don’t know where they are. Hence ghosts.
…’Brian, Dear, isn’t this lovely, I said, trying…to distract him from grisly realities. But my sudden descent to small talk must have tipped him off that something was wrong. I was speaking to him in the patronizing way people talk to mad people, children and small dogs. Nevertheless, he plunged ahead in typical Brian fashion.
“Death is the next great adventure.” he said portentously. This something I used to go around saying myself, so I nodded wisely.
“Oh, yes, I quite agree,” I said fervently, as if we were speaking of a new religion. Or a new drug.
…”Welcome to death!” he said brightly.
…”Oh, is that where we are?” I asked.
…We came to the edge of the Dulac landscape. It dropped off abruptly and completely. There was a very obvious point where you chose to go over the edge or not. Brian said, “Coming?” and slipped off the cliff. I drew back. I heard a chorus of voices calling to me, but I wasn’t ready just yet.
Getting back took a long time. I was stranded in a desert town. The color had been drained from everything. The houses were empty. I was in Albania! Wandering down long deserted streets with names like the Avenue of the 17th October. Looking pretty incongruous, people I knew floated by (their feet didn’t quite touch the ground.) I called out, but they hurried past as if they hadn’t seen me.
I was lost in an airport. People came up to me and asked me the sort of questions you ask a child stranded at a railway station. “Are you lost, dear?” “Do you know your name?” And I would answer, “I’m waiting for Mick to come and get me.”
This was obviously the crisis of Marianne’s life. She associates her life with the desolation despair of Brian’s. She must have had the fate of Chrissie Shrimpton in mind, who Mick had crushed so completely. Mick had treated Chrissie and Brian in much the same way. Certainly Marianne could see the same fate for herself on the horizon. So now in an attempt to escape she slips into a Tuinal coma. She doesn’t explain what medical procedures were used to sustain her but she maintained mental activity throughout the coma.
Essentially the first half of her coma is a near death experience and a pretty interesting one. Wonderful, wonderful story; I could have stood another dozen pages. I’m sure she could call it up if she wanted to. I’ve had a couple near death experiences myself. They really leave indelible memories as this has done for Marian. It is possible to relive at any time you choose. I can run both concurrently through my mind.
Marianne’s problem at this time has been building since 1964 when the the life she living came into conflict with her youthful ideals obtained in the convent school. In those years she was much influenced by the chivalric literature of King Arthur, especially the quest for the Holy Grail.
Now, only the pure of mind and body, I. e. virginal, can ever hope to experience the Holy Grail. It takes only one sexual encounter. Even the great Lancelot who was tricked into a sexual act by Elaine forfeited the Grail even though he was innocent of intent. In chivalric terms Marianne was way beyond any hope of redemption. She must have known that. Thus the earth heaved beneath her feet and crumbled away beside her.
Having left Brian at the brink her way back was through a desolate wasteland of colorless desert. Thus, all hope had been lost. Her awakening must have been bleak, as her life would soon become.
She doesn’t mention the Arthurian fairy tales by name but she does recreate a dream landscape from the fairy tale illustrations of Edmund Dulac. (coincidentally Edmund Of The Lake). It is possible that she also confates Dulac with Arthur Rackham, another famous illustrators of fairy tales and also King Arthur.
Marianne also references other of her formative reading bringing in Alice In Wonderland, quintessential for the druggies of the sixties, plus George McDonald’s fairy stories and significantly, Fox’s Booke Of Martyrs. Very good browsing by the way as is Butler’s Lives of the Saints which is terrific.
I wondered if Brian liked books about railway bridges and the surprising guides to switching boxes? There can’t be too many of the latter so ‘switching’ may have a different reference point. It may mean switching horses in mid stream as Marianne said to Mick when she opened her eyes: Wild horses couldn’t drag me away.
The landscape ‘pulsed and shifted’ which may refer to her emotional instability. The Allman Brothers had a great line in one of their songs; See that clock up upon the wall? Rushing tides could make it fall. So possibly she could feel the ground moving out from beneath her feet.
‘He said he had been lonely and confused and brought me to him because he needed someone to talk to someone he knew! Sounds like Marianne is reversing the situation as it was only possible that she brought Brian to her reinforcing the similarity of their situations vis-à-vis Mick.
Then some more chit chat and Brian passes into the Great Beyond while Marianne stands on the brink at road’s end. Great story. I know where that’s at. In one of my experiences my heart stopped and I was standing in a huge empty concrete bunker type thing wondering what to do next. I dead no problem with being dead but I had no instructions what to do next. ‘Oh, well..’ I thought and turned to my right to start hoofing it when my heart started up and I was back in bed.
Obviously for Marianne her medical crisis passed and she was to return to consciousness. But then getting back took a long time. The first part of her fantasy then my have lasted a day or possibly two while reconstructing her nervous system took a little longer leaving room for mistakes that she feels might have occurred. She has obviously began to come to in her post-singing career with its overwhelming challenges that she wasn’t able to successfully deal with. The Avenue of the 17th October sounds as though it may be the Bolshevik October Revolution, if so she got the date wrong, it was the 25th not the 17th. She is obviously returning in a depression. I can dig that, too.
Marianne’s own brief interpretation of her experience is on p.178:
In anguished relationships like the one I had with Mick; it’s much easier and more satisfactory for all concerned if the one playing my role dies, after which I could turn into a sainted mythical figure- like Brian- and no longer be a threat to anyone and- more importantly- no longer be a bother to anyone.
They martyred Marianne…thus Fox’s Book Of Martyrs.
Marianne knew she had come to a turning point in her life or, rather, a dead end. She could no longer rely on Mick, he was a weak reed, a failure as the man he posed to be. At this time she chose to renew her acquaintance with her father at his sex shop who she says was a man Mick could never hope to be. Thus, goodbye Mick. She had been financially dependent on him and having known money liked it. Why not? But she was in no position to make money or at least sufficient money. Royalties of a diminished sort would keep coming in. There was seldom a year that went by that something wasn’t released in her name although she wasn’t recording. As she says Oldham had a re-release of her greatest hits edged in black on the streets before she recovered.
But she would have to record again, perform again for any real money. It was not possible to return again as the Virgin Queen of yesterday. As she was part of the myth making period she would always be the Faerie Queene of the sixties, she was secure in that position, but with four tarnished wings. She sank into a deeper depression finally ending up sitting on her wall above the bomb pit, thinking what to do next.
Her resurrection, such as it was, will be the topic of Chapter 8.
Pt. II Edgar Rice Burroughs And The Accreted Personality
March 14, 2012
Part II
Edgar Rice Burroughs And The Accreted Personality
by
R.E. Prindle
Time may fly but life seems long. Long enough for circumstances to alter your personality more than once. Consider for instance the National Guardsman secure in job, wife and family who is jerked out of his ideal existence to take a tour of duty in Iran or Afghanistan, foreign wars which betray the promises of his enlistment which were to defend his home state. Do you think a personality change didn’t occur when he received his notice? If he was kept in for several tours of duty over a period of years so that his former existence doesn’t appear to him as a dream that took place in a parallel universe? And if he comes home without an arm or a leg or, perhaps, both, that he doesn’t suffer from reminiscences or have a dual or multiple personality. You can bet he does. Nor does your life have to be as hard as the National Guardsman for your own personality to acquire personality accretions over your lifetime, all of which are stored in your mind and may be reassumed at any time.
As I said in the first part, these various existential states don’t disappear, they become part of your reminiscences whether suppressed or remembered and as possible fixations or idees fixe they influence your daily actions.
So now, let’s turn to the life of Edgar Rice Burroughs to illustrate the idea of the accreted personality. Psychology is simple if you don’t make it complex by mystifying it. I hope I can make Burroughs’ story clear without unnecessarily complicating it. I will try to use Occam’s Razor judiciously.
Edgar Rice Burroughs, who would become very famous as a fiction writer, entered this world of pain of pleasure on September 7, 1875 in Chicago, Illinois. He was parented by George T. and Mary Burroughs, he of Anglo-Irish ancestry and she of Pennsylvania Dutch, that is say, German. Eddie always considered himself pure English at a time when being English meant something, a much depreciated coin these days.
George T. was an upright man who had been an officer on the Union side in the Civil War a scant ten years previously. George Custer had not yet gone down at the Little Big Horn nor was Sitting Bull yet starring in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West. George T. had two other sons, George and Harry, who were born just after the Civil War.
George T. was a whisky distiller while at this time the Whisky Trust was coming into existence. George T. was an independent sort who needed the Trust less than they wanted him. I don’t say the Trust was responsible but George T. was burned out. Chicago loved a good fire.
The relationship between Ed and his parents was not a warm one. His father made his life difficult, seemingly on purpose, while his mother seems to have been rather cold. Burroughs seldom mentions her nor were any of his characters named Mary, or George for that matter.
Nevertheless, born into a world of creature comforts with high expectations in a fine house on Chicago’s West Side with two Irish maids Ed began life in a happy state of mind walking down the street singing Zippity Do Dah or the equivalent. He stayed that way for about eight years until his first personality changing event occurred.
Eddie attended Brown School in his neighborhood. I haven’t been able to find out much about Brown but the schools stands out as special in Ed’s mind. The school had several prominent graduates one of which was the showman, Flo Ziegfeld. As Ziegfeld was Jewish it is quite possible the school was close to Maxwell St. Maxwell St. would figure prominently in Ed’s later novel, The Mucker.
One day when Ed was eight he found a big twelve year old Irish kid by the name of John belligerently blocking his way. It isn’t known whether he was walking with future wife Emma Hulbert or not but I suspect he was. At any rate John threatened to beat him up. Thoroughly terrorized Ed took to his heels and as he did so several suggestions entered his terrorized mind. To be in terror is to enter a hypnoid state in which all ones psychic defenses are lowered or discarded. Suggestions are easily fixated in your mind. Thus at the age of eight Ed’s original personality was submerged, he assumed his central childhood fixation. Not only was he emasculated on his Animus but, perhaps because he shamed himself in front of Emma, he transferred his Anima to John; he then set up John as his ideal of manhood wishing to be just like him.
The result was that John became his favorite name. In his future novels he named a disproportionate number of characters both good and bad John. His two key characters were both named John- John Clayton, aka Tarzan Of The Apes and John Carter of Mars. Both have the initials JC referring to Jesus Christ, one supposes. Thus on the masculine side their names commemorate John the Bully while on the feminine side Jesus Christ. Ed also wore a book under the assume name of John McCullough.
As Ed was shamed by running, defenses against cowardice are liberally sprinkled throughout his works with justifications for the advance to the rear maneuver, or running.
Particularly troubling to him was the occupation of his Anima by a male. Probably not very usual but given the limited range of responses available to humans, probably not that uncommon. But this result of the fixation was particularly troubling to him appearing in a succession of his initial output of the ‘teens.
The clearest exposition of the results of this fixation was reproduced in the pages of Ed’s second novel, The Outlaw Of Torn. The hero of the novel is a boy of Ed’s age on the street corner, who is the king of England’s son c. 1400 AD. The King has a quarrel with his fencing instructor, De Vac, who then avenges himself by kidnapping the son, Norman.
The scene is that Norman is playing in the garden under the watchful eye of his nurse/Anima when De Vac appears outside the garden gate- I. e. Ed’s mind- luring Norman to him. Norman has passed the gate when his nurse who had been chatting with another woman notices. She rushed through the gate where De Vac struck her dead. Thus his Anima was outside Ed’s mind when she was destroyed.
Now, this is the replication of a dream story. The meaning is that Norman/Ed was safe inside when De Vac/John caught him, as it were, with his pants down, killing and assuming the role of his Anima. The nurse represents his Anima or right brain which was then disabled.
So, as an eight year old boy Eddie has an emasculated Animus, left brain, and destroyed or shattered Anima, right brain. This has to be dealt with in some way so he can carry on and survive.
What Burroughs does then is create a myth to repair the damage as well as he can. De Vac now on the run with his prize who he must conceal takes Norman to a three story house in the slums of London built on stilts out over the water of the River Thames. The two live in this attic/mind for three or four years. During this entire period De Vac is dressed as an old woman. So, here we have the emasculated Animus combined with the dead Anima with the waters of the feminine flowing beneath the house, I.e. Burroughs’ self.
The two live this way for three or four years, Norman never leaving the attic. At the end of this period De Vac dons men’s clothes and takes Norman to a ruined castle in the Shires. The remarkable thing about this castle is that on one side, the right side, the roof has completely fallen in, can’t be used.
The interpretation is that Ed so identified himself with John that he had to put his own life on hold until he turned twelve, the same age John had been. At that point he recovered or began to recover some control of his Animus while his Anima remained destroyed.
De Vac then began to train Norman in the manly arts to be a killing machine to attain physical vengeance for De Vac on the King.
One can’t be sure of what effect the encounter had on his personality but the next year after the confrontation his father took him from Brown transferring him to an all girl’s school. George T.’s reason for this was that there was a fever going around and he wanted to protect Ed from it. How one would be safe from a communicable disease in a girl’s school isn’t clear so perhaps Ed’s father had another reason.
In Ed’s psychological state it is not unlikely that he went into a fairly serious depression while emasculated and crippled he may have become very effeminate. The placement in the girl’s school may have been one of disgust and to teach the boy a lesson to act like a man.
The humiliation on top of the emasculation was difficult for Ed to bear. He pleaded and pleaded to be transferred from the girl’s school. His pleas were heard although his father didn’t send him back to Brown but a couple miles across town to Chicago’s Harvard Latin School where Ed stayed through what would have been his Junior High years. During this period, the date isn’t clear, Ed fell off his bicycle banging his head against the curb; it isn’t known whether it was the right or left side. This left him dizzy and walking round in circles for three or four days, then the obvious effects disappeared. George T. then jerked him out the Latin School and sent him West to his brothers’ cattle ranch in Idaho. He doesn’t seem to have attended any school for the year he was in Idaho. However he learned to be a cowboy and had a great time.
Even without school the period was not without intellectual stimulation. George and Harry Burroughs were graduates of the Sheffield Scientific School attached to Yale University but not yet integrated with it, along with their partner Lew Sweetser. Sweetser was a fairly remarkable guy deeply interested in psychology when the subject was just beginning to assume its modern form.
William James had just published his two volumes on Psychology but I haven’t been able to discover who Sweetser’s teachers may have been at Yale. Departments of Psychology were rare at American Universities in the 1880s. However, as Sweetser apparently studied whatever psychology was available it seems certain that he would have been at least aware of Charcot’s experiments at the Salpetriere that were world famous. It is also clear that he was familiar with the idea of the sub- or unconscious. However much Ed may have retained, as he himself was relatively well informed on psychological matters when he began writing the foundations of his knowledge were probably formed at Sweetser’s knee.
Having left Ed in the wilderness for a year, George T. then moved him to the East Coast to Massachusetts’ Phillips Academy. Ed was now being moved around almost with the frequency of a military brat with its devastating personality consequences. Having consorted with a rough bunch of fellows for a year, Ed was now in an elite school without a great deal of preparation.
He was in Idaho at the end of Wyoming’s Johnson County War when the big ranchers squeezed out the small ranchers. Many of the small ranch soldiers whose shootings were classified as murders had fled to Idaho where Ed knew one or two; from the company of murderers, or killers at any rate, he was now in with a bunch of elitist schoolboys.
When his brothers had attended Yale their father had refused them an allowance that would have allowed them to associate with their richer school fellows as equals. If he continued the practice with Ed at Phillips then an extra burden was placed on the kid that would help explain his behavior. At any rate he assumed the posture of clown to gain acceptance while neglecting his studies. Naturally he was requested to leave.
Certainly he could have expected to return home and attend school in Chicago but this was not his father’s plan. His father enrolled him at the Michigan Military Academy outside Detroit billed as The Paris Of The West which is most laughable. This was the second great psychological trauma in his life adding another major accretion to his personality. Ed rebelled at being sent away again.
This was not merely rejection but also a condemnation of him by his father. As Ed saw the situation, with a great deal of accuracy, the Military Academy was just a holding pen for juvenile delinquents whose parents didn’t know how to handle them so they put them away in what was essentially an asylum or reform school where they could get some ‘discipline.’
Ed was horrified at these suggestions about himself coming from his own father. He rebelled at the rejection and its implications. He left the academy to return home or as his biographer Porges puts it, he ran away. George T. wasn’t going to put up with that. He collared Ed and dragged him back to Detroit, told him to stay put or…who can say or what? At any rate crushed and rejected Ed had no choice but to obey, but his mother and father died for him that day, slain by their own hand. Thus when Ed’s literary alter ego Tarzan came into existence in 1912 his parents had been slain by murderous apes and Tarzan was an orphan as Ed imagined himself.
General Charles King, Soldier and Author
Ed stayed at the Academy into 1896 when he was between twenty and twenty-one. He took the Commandant of the Academy, Charles King, as his surrogate father and mother. Because King was a captain in the Army, later a general, Ed decided he wanted to be an Army officer too. It is also noteworthy that King was a successful author of novels which Ed may have wanted to emulate when he too chose to become an author. One of King’s first novels was An Apache Princess while Ed’s first commercial effort was titled A Princess Of Mars.
Ed attempted in vain to win an appointment to West Point but failed. Then in 1896 while serving as an instructor at the Michigan Military Academy Ed foolishly abandoned his post choosing to join the Army as an enlisted man before the school term ended.
By now twenty years old his past with its many personality accretions had formed him. His original personality had been destroyed to be replaced by that caused by John. The accretions accumulated as he was shifted from school to school and West to East to MidWest leaving him dazed and confused while the final accretion of that youthful period was the devastating rejection by his parents all of which left him depressed and fatalistic. The high expectations of his childhood had been completely eliminated. The bright young boy had been transformed into a gloomy young man. But no former personality had disappeared; they all lived on in his unconscious where circumstances could revive any or all at the appropriate moment.
But, one is still alive and one must toddle on. Ed was not lazy or adverse to work. His intellectual interests were vast. He was a great wide ranging reader.
In the next part then, let’s turn to his personality forming accretions from reading and his general intellectual , social and political milieu.
A Review: Psychoanalyzing Captain America
August 10, 2011
A Review
Psychoanalyzing Captain America
by
R.E. Prindle
From Out Of The Depths
Must we be responsible for our own dreams?
–Sigmund Freud
In answer to the above question by Herr Doktor Professor Freud in his dream book, The Interpretation Of Dreams. published in the year 1900 Prof. Freud said that dreams were the royal road to the unconscious. He then proceeded to suppress the conscious will releasing the unconscious will to dominate the personality.
Of course in 1900 movies, TV and comic books were in the future and unforeseen by the Professor. It is through those media that the unconscious visualizes itself. The Dream is manifested, the unconscious becomes realized.
In the case of the movie, Captain America: The First Avenger, first came the dream then came the comic book, then with movie technology undreamed of in 1940 when Joe Simon and Jack Kirby conceived the character, brought to the screen today. Comic books and movies are true projections of the unconscious. As might be seen by anyone with a ticket Capt. America is less a story than a dream, a dream that Sigmund Freud defined as wish fulfillment. So, one must examine the movie as a wish from the subconscious fulfilled as a visualization on the screen. What does the dream-wish fulfill?
First off we have a powerless wimp being knocked about by the big bad bully. We have a brief anti-bully list and then move on. However in this Cain and Abel story the rolls of bully and bullied are clear. The wimp then wishes to join the army to fight Hitler and is rejected on several counts of inferiority. But, never fear, the last shall be first.
Now, in 1940 the US was not at war with anybody while the America First Committee was determined to keep the country that way. But a powerful coalition led by the Jews had determined the European conflict was a ‘just’ war while it was morally compulsory for the US to butt in somewhat like Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Libya and a few other places today. Unlike Viet Nam the usual suspects who opposed that war endorse all the current wars. The voice of dissent is unheard throughout the land.
So, bearing Freud’s Interpretation Of Dreams in mind that demonstrates the connection between dreams and the unconscious, Captain America is a daydream or psychological projection of Jack Kirby’s ne Jacob Kurtzberg and Joe Simon’s of Brooklyn N.Y. The relationship of these comic book writers to Judaism is explained by Rabbi Simcha Weinstein in his book Up, Up, And Oy Vey!: How Jewish History, Culture, And Values Shaped The Comic Book Superhero. This quote explains the real life origin of Capt. America:
Growing up in poverty, Kirby (born Jacob Kurtzberg) dreamed of being an artist but was forced to drop out of Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute after only one day because of financial hardship. Instead Kirby worked on newspaper comic strips under gentile-sounding pseudonyms such as Jack Curtis, Curt Davis, and Lance Kirby until he finally settled on the name Jack Kirby.
Kirby and his partner, Joe Simon, worked at Martin Goodman’s Timely Comics, where the mostly Jewish staff openly despised Hitler. When Goodman saw the preliminary sketches for Captain America, he immediately give Kirby and Simon their own comic book. The character was an instant hit, selling almost one million copies an issue. “The U.S. hadn’t yet entered the war when Jack and I did Captain America, so maybe he was our way of lashing out against the Nazi menace. Evidently, Captain America symbolized the American people’s sentiments. When we were producing Captain America we were outselling Batman, Superman and all the others.” Simon later commented.
Well, not quite all the others, as Whiz Comics Captain Marvel was the best selling comic of both the war years and the later forties. Certainly my favorite.
As in the years before the War The America First Committee enjoyed overwhelming popularity amongst Americans I would question Simon’s notion that Captain America overwhelmingly represented American opinion. As there were six million Jews in the country I might suggest the response from that quarter of ‘Americans’ was more overwhelming than elsewhere. Jews might easily have accounted for sixty to eighty percent of sales.
It is also probable that no real American would ever have invented a corny jingoistic persona like Captain American. The image was certainly repulsive to me as a child. My prime comic reading years were from 1947 to 1950 and I and my entire generation rejected Captain America while embracing Captain Marvel. Even then Superman was a distant competitor to Captain Marvel which is why DC comics sued Whiz for copyright violation.
We disliked the hokey repulsive jingoism of Captain America as well as his dumb outfit and the stupid shield. (I’m speaking as a nine year old here.) Of course we knew from nothing about Judaism and almost less about any other religious sects but there was something othery about Capt. America and Superman although we embraced the equally Jewish Batman.
The origins of Captain America then emanated from the Jewish dream subconscious of Jack Kirby which was quite different from ours. He, therefor, as all writers must, made Capt. America in his real existence and from his dream fantasies. Thus, giving his creation the goy name of Steve Rogers he nevertheless gave him a Brooklyn Jewish origin. As Rabbi Weinstein also a Brooklyn Jew explains Jews had a sort of dual identity as powerless Jews posing as goys in a powerful goy world. Thus the sickly ineffective Rogers undergoes a scientific experiment that turns him essentially from a 98 lb. Jewish weakling into an all powerful goy Charles Atlas. I’m sure Kirby saw those ads while growing up.
Rogers having now been turned into a Superman had to have a name. Superman being taken Super Jew was out for obvious reasons or even Super Hebrew, there was no Israel at the time, so Kirby settled on Captain America. Rabbi Weinstein again:
Of course a more literal reading of the costume is that it is the American flag brought to life. Captain America’s star is, after all, five-pointed, not six pointed like the Star of David. The flag-as-costume notion reinforces the ideal of assimilation [Jews ‘becoming’ Americans]. By literally cloaking their character in patriotism, Kirby and Simon became true Americans.
In 1940 there was a desperate struggle going on between the Jews and America First who the Jews styled as American Fascists, i.e. actual Hitlerites. By that line of reasoning the Jews became the true Americans, creators and protector of genuine American Democracy while Anglo-Americans or Native Americans or America Firsters were out to destroy the great American Dream the Jews had discovered. This is the theme of Philip Roth’s novel The Plot Against America backdated to this period. The movie Captain America could easily be subtitled The Plot Against America Foiled.
Rabbi Weinstein once again:
Despite the patriotic appearance, Captain America’s costume also denotes deeply rooted [Jewish] tradition. Along with other Jewish-penned superheroes, Captain America was in part an allusion to the golem, the legendary creature said to have been constructed by the sixteenth century mystic Rabbi Judah Loew to defend the Jews of medieval Prague. “The golem was pretty much the precursor of the superhero in that in every society there is a need for mythological chracters, wish fulfillment. And the wish fulfillment in the Jewish case of the hero would be someone who could protect us. This kind of storytelling seems to dominate in Jewish culture,” commented Will Eisner.
According to tradition a golem is sustained by inscribing the Hebrew word emet (truth) upon its forehead. When the first letter is removed, leaving the word met (death) the golem will be destroyed. Emet is spelled with the letters aleph, rem and tav. The first letter, aleph, is also the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, the equivalent of the letter A. Captain America wears a mask with a white A on his forehead- the very letter needed to empower the golem.
So, you and I thought the A stood for America but it is actually a symbol of Judaism. Captain America then is an unconscious dream projection of the Jewish subconscious following Freud’s thought in his Interpretation of Dreams. Now we know who and what the Captain America or The First Avenger is.
2.
Like Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America the movie is backdated to 1940 although as the US is already in the war perhaps 1942-43 although in Kirby and Simon’s dream vision they could have already employed the usurped power of America in 1940. However the movie writers, are writing today so assume different interpretations and aspects.
In point of fact Hitler no longer exists except in the Jewish mind so the relevance of the movie is hampered. Goys are not reliving the Hitler experience on a daily basis. To correct this and bring the Nazi threat forward Hitler is relegated to an inept showman while the real brain behind Nazism is the Hydra.
The Hydra in Greek mythology was a matriarchal year deity with seven heads and one neck, Six of the heads prepresented the last six months of the year while the seventh head and neck represented the recurring and indestructible year. Everytime a head was cut off it grew back as time does march on.
When the Patriarchy was displacing the Matriarchy the story changed somewhat. Hercules was sent to fight the Hydra and everytime he cut off a head three grew back. Thus the Hydra is represented in the movie as a Red Octopus with eight arms thus embracing the world. Ils sont partout. Obviously Hydra is a dream projection of anti-Semitism the arch fiend of the Jewish unconscious.
The Jewish Doctor Erskine, Reinstein in the comic, playing God botches his first attempt at creating the superman, Hydra/Cain, but finds perfection in Capt. America/Abel. Thus Cain is blighted while Abel is God’s favorite. While Captain America begins as a song and dance man belittling Hitler on stage, when the fighting starts Hitler is relegated offstage while the super-Hitler, Hydra, steps front and center.
While the Americans that Rogers as Capt. America have nothing like the incredible weapons and organization of Hydra they are nevertheless with their bare hands able to defeat him. He is however immortal like all dream fears so that as Arnold said: He’ll be back.
The action is standard comic book action fare and needs no further comment. You could have written it yourself. Pretty clicheed but if you like this stuff you’ll find it very satisfying.
However Captain America remains a Jewish hero in American drag with a purloined identity.
Cartoon Jack Kirby
I, Dynamo 