RUDIMENTS, pt. 318
Making Cars (robeson part two)
America always represented
a strangeness to me, something
I was somehow unable to stretch
my arms around. My father was
always full of his gung-ho stuff
about America, the Navy, service,
might and right - in whatever
order he gave it. I never cared,
just because I hated all that. I'd
bet my friend's sister that my
father had never even heard of
Paul Robeson. Or Vance Packard
either. Packard was one of those
guys who wrote consumer-culture
books about how wasteful and
dumb American production, goods
and service had become; un-knowing
citizens, driveling away their time
loading up with endless crap and
then just throwing it away when
finished, to get new. This was
all in like 1959, mind you. People
were skinny at least. Now all
that crap has made everyone fat.
His book 'The Waste Makers'
cold now be retitled 'The Waist
Makers,' and he'd still have it right.
As I saw it, the problem wasn't
so much the consumption as it
was the dullness of the people.
In the Constitution and Bill of
Rights, etc., the 'pursuit of
happiness' - whatever it was,
short of boffing your neighbor's
wife at will - was guaranteed
to everyone. All these wasteful
people he was always carping on,
they all died happy, with smiles
on their faces, because of all the
crap they'd amassed. So, if that
crud was their happiness, wasn't
that why they were here?
-
Mostly I just gave up. All that
literal and rational stuff was
never going to be for me. The
world was like a bad joint, a
plumbing joint I mean, a coupling
of pipes, done lousy and poorly.
Shit was leaking out everywhere.
I was set to walk away. I was
set for Africa Mission work, way
away from everything, with maybe
my best friend a lion and a local
native named Joboko Umblaha
to get me around for the Lord.
Thus the seminary, and that whole
silly priest idea. That too all fell
apart. I ended up fiery and fervent,
but right back home where I'd
started, and, evidently, Joboko
ended up somewhere along
Broadway selling belts and
sneakers from a sidewalk-vendor
table.
-
In 1943, at age 46, Paul Robeson
reprises his Othello, on Broadway.
A huge success, and afterward
he toured the land, performing
to non-segregated audiences. He
was spoken of as 'the representative
of a highly desirable tomorrow
which, by some lucky accident,
we are privileged to appreciate
today.' He was the man of the
future, and America was going
to change. It may have seemed,
for a moment anyway. But black
returning from the war were
subjected to terrifying outbursts
of racial terror and violence from
racists determined to show that,
actually, nothing had changed.
Having just fought a war in the
understanding that they were
fighting for, and backing too
their own rights and freedoms,
this came as a surprise. Robeson
marched, with three thousand
delegates behind him demanded a
meeting with Truman, and got it.
He demanded an American crusade
against lynching (4 black men had
just been lynched in Georgia).
Truman 'cooly observed that the
time was not right.' Robeson
warned him of trouble (actually
right then was the beginnings of
his own). Truman stood up
abruptly, and ended the meeting.
Asked by a reporter if it wouldn't
be finer to just turn the other cheek,
Robeson replied : 'If a lyncher hit
me on one cheek, I'd tear his head
off before he hit me on the other.'
From that moment on, the US
government moved in to discredit
Robeson at every turn. It blocked
his employment prospects, and
had him get denunciations from
all sides. He called the US fascist.
Universal condemnation ensued.
He spoke while others chanted
back: 'We are Hitler's boys,' and
'God bless Hitler.' At a rally in
Peekskill, NY, a few miles south
from Beacon, he barely escaped
with his life. His passport was
confiscated, and he was hauled
before HUAC hearing boards
and was effectively imprisoned
in his own country. He was
unable to get work, as the FBI
threatened any theater that
booked him. In 1958, passport
renewed, he spring away, back
to England. A suicide attempt
later had slashed and bloodied
on a hotel floor, rushed to a
London hospital he received
heavy sedation and massive doses
of electroconvulsive therapy
before being transferred to a
somewhat less Draconian
hospital. In 1963, he came
back to America and lived
out the remaining thirteen
years of his life as a 'private
citizen with very occasional
public interventions.' There
were manic interludes and
depressions, but mostly he was
just very quiet. When he died
in 1976 (I remember it) most
all of the obituaries expressed
a 'respectful incomprehension.'
I myself can remember the
newscasters of the day, Cronkite,
Rather, Brokaw, whoever they
all were, and their pathetic,
slavish shows like 60 Minutes
and the like, trying to hide their
nasty pomposity behind some
righteous and non-comprehending
drivel for the consumption of
fools. They all should have
been slapped.
-
I had absolutely no compunction
in denouncing this stupid country.
Vietnam and all those draft-board
and gung-ho nazi types, they could
all go read history if they wanted
to. In 1901 President Theodore
Roosevelt had lunch at the White
House with Booker T. Washington.
(Robeson, at that time, was 3). After
that lunch, North Carolina Senator
Benjamin Tillman said : 'The action
of President Roosevelt in entertaining
that nigger will necessitate our killing
a thousand niggers in the South
before they learn their place again.'
THAT was the world and the country
into which Paul Robeson was born.
To the maid who discovered him
on the hotel floor, with slashed
wrists, Robeson gasped over and
over, 'I am unworthy. I am unworthy.'
-
I could write more; I have more.
But I think this point was made. I
entered a world and a life decidedly
at odds with itself and I wanted no
part of supporting it. It was bad
enough to face things like government
schooling, coercive taxation, rules
and regulations at every turn, all
within a system, from top to bottom,
made up of ignorant fools who were
crooks as well. Memorial Day men
and boys, I always figured, knew
right where that flagpole should
be stuck. They just wouldn't admit
it. Well, yes, they probably would.
What I mean is they would never
admit TO it.
-
I've always loved things like reading,
writing, research, and art. The rest of
the world, the solid world around me,
could go scratch. There'd always be
someone to hammer nails, hang
sheetrock, build things, fix things, and
all that. Just not me. In putting the
notes together for this little sidetrack
to Robeson, I also ran across some
really good notes on Harry Truman.
The middle initial 'S', as I've pointed
out in other places, is meaningless
and stands for nothing. The political
hacks who put him up to running
felt he needed that 'initial' to, in
their eyes, give his name more
substance. Yeah, right.
-
"At no point in the praise of Harry
Truman does anyone ever mention
what he actually did to the United
States and to the world. First, he
created the National Security State.
He institutionalized the Cold War.
He placed us on a permanent
wartime footing. He started the
vast hemorrhage of debt which is
killing us. Why did he do this?
First, maybe the good reason: When
the Japanese, much provoked by us,
attacked, we had not got out of the
Depression that had followed the
crash of 1929. The Roosevelt New
Deal had tried, but it was not a solution.
There was still great unemployment
and the specter of violent social
change. War gave us full employment.
War removed our commercial rivals
and put an end to the colonial empires
of our allies, empires we took over
in the name of 'self-determination,'
democracy, and Grandma Moses,
an icon of the day. Truman and his
advisers decided that they would, in
effect, declare war on a vile religion
known as Communism and its
homeland, the Soviet Union; the
demonization of which started in
1947, when they were no threat to
the American Empire and its clients.
Although the US had not been
invaded since the British burned
Washington in 1814, Truman & Co,
deliberately created a siege mentality.
The Russians were coming, they told
us. They created, to protect us, the
National Security Act, passed in 1947.
The government was able to regiment
the American people, keep the allies
on a tight leash, and lock the Russians
up in their northern cage. In 1950, the
American republic was quietly retired
and its place taken by the National
Security State, set up secretly and
outlined in a document not to be
made public for twenty-five years.
National Security Memorandum 68.
War and Navy Departments were
combined into a single 'Defense'
Department while the CIA, an
unconstitutional secret police,
was invented."
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