Loren Bliss: Dispatches from Dystopia

Photo by Loren Bliss copyright 1975. (Click on image to view it full frame.)

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VISUALS

Good luck for Roger Crowley: Two weeks ago Mr. Crowley contacted me via this space to ask if I could provide him a print of a photograph I made of his parents for The Seattle Sun in 1975, the cover of the 29 October issue and the illustration for Susan Chadwick's story on Seattle anarchists.

In retrospect I am quietly astounded by the visual truthfulness of the image; Ms. Chadwick, a daughter of Texas aristocracy, despised me as uppity white trash and made no secret of her contempt, the resultant tension a formidable obstacle to the psychic openness essential for meaningful documentary portraiture.

My best guess is it was one of those “shoot-it-when-you-get-a-chance” assignments, that Ms. Chadwick was not there to suppress my interaction with Louise and George Crowley and their wonderful canine companion Tycho.

Nor at this distance do I have any idea why I had the mounted print with me in Manhattan as part of my working portfolio; perhaps I had chosen it as a here's-what-the-real-picture-looks-like supplement to a selection of tear sheets from my tenure as The Sun's founding photographer. That's the only reason the image survived the 1983 fire: the fact it was not amongst the work stored in Washington state, presumably left behind only until I had a permanent address in the City, but thus destroyed forever instead.

Now even most of  those Sun tear sheets are gone, crumbled to the yellow dust of aging newsprint, but I made the photographic print as I did all my work then, on the incomparably fine DuPont Varilure paper – the quality which will never be seen again – and since it was a portfolio piece I processed it archivally: double hypo, hypo clearing agent, wash, selenium toner (just enough to make the grays come alive), then wash again.

The print is 36 years old; the digital copy above can only hint at the shadow detail, depth and overall tonal quality of the original. For this I even have technical data: Leica M2, 35mm f/2 Summicron, Tri-X at 320 in D-76 1:1.

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NULLE BASTARDO

There's no doubt the capitalists are intensifying their already wildly successful attack on our access to information – another example of why we should never forget “capitalism” is merely a euphemism for “fascism.”

The untold story behind the huge downsizing of U.S. newspapers and print journalism in general – how the Big Lie of “unprofitability” was used to shrink or shut down so many financially healthy publications and throw fully four-fifths of the journalists who had jobs in 2008 into hopeless unemployment by the end of 2009 – is ultimately a story of the New Censorship: censorship imposed by economic rather than political means.

Not coincidentally, the New Censorship is part of the New Paradigm of capitalist governance in the United States: absolute power and unlimited profit for the Ruling Class, total subjugation and genocidal poverty for all the rest of us.

Now, in 2011, jobless journalists are blacklisted by the Ruling Class Press merely for having been laid off. (Here in U.S., as under the older, more publicly jackbooted forms of fascism, only the politically submissive retain their paychecks.) Hence the nearly inconceivable number of women and men who have been permanently banished from the work to which they gave their hearts, minds and – in many cases – the entirety of their adult lives.

Meanwhile – bolstered by the de facto abolition of First Amendment rights imposed via the Patriot Act – our right to photograph is also under attack. The following is from this week's online journal of the National Press Photographers Association, of which I have been a member on-and-off since the 1970s:

"Unfortunately the (decision) by law enforcement officers to question, detain, and interfere with lawful activities by photographers under the guise of preventing terrorist activities has become a daily occurrence."

http://www.nppa.org/news_and_events/news/2011/05/suspicious.html

In other words, Spokane County's war against photography – and its corollary effort to turn us into a nation of rats – is merely one battle in tens of thousands.

Another perspective on the same problem – sometimes-violent governmental suppression of the public right to record public events – is detailed here:

http://www.truthout.org/turning-camera-police/1305910721

Anyone who believes these efforts are not byproducts of the New Paradigm and its resurrected Sicherheitsdienst – the Department of Homeland Security – is in denial if not dementia.

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Tiffany Williams gives us the missing perspective on the Strauss-Kahn rape case:

“(H)ere we are in the comments section in Vanity Fair, The New York Times, and ABC News where every fourth word is 'setup' and where the maid's getting very little empathy. I don’t think the people writing these comments or news stories are malicious. It's just a symptom of the way household workers are treated in the United States and around the world. They are servants, and therefore – for hotel guests and the people who can afford to have them clean their homes – barely human.”

“Because this 'just' involves a hotel housekeeper, there's not a lot of conjecture about the tragedy she'll face as she tries to put her own life back together. Even if the reason that reporters aren’t covering her story with humanity is that they want to respect our legal system's promise of 'innocent until proven guilty,' they're missing the broader point: this storyline isn't uncommon. No one is talking about the countless other household and hotel workers who have endured sexual harassment and assault at the hands of wealthy (or even middle-class) men around the world.”

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/05/17-13

And yet – especially here in Moron Nation – there are still those who stubbornly deny misogyny is class warfare.

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Capitalism's criminalization of poverty, radically intensified under its New Paradigm of U.S. governance, continues an onslaught “that began in 1996, when President Bill Clinton and House Speaker Newt Gingrich passed bipartisan welfare reform, whose results have been tragic to say the least.  The 1996 Welfare Reform Act authorized, but did not require, states to impose mandatory drug testing as a prerequisite to receiving state welfare assistance.  Back then, unproven allegations of criminal behavior and drug abuse among welfare recipients were the rationales cited by those in support of the bill’s many punitive measures that were infused with race, class, and gender bias.”

Such malicious accusations “rest on the assumption that the poor are inherently inclined to immoral and illegal behavior, and therefore unworthy of privacy rights as guaranteed under the Fourth Amendment. These proposals simply reaffirm the longstanding concept of the poor as intrinsically prone to and deserving of their predicament...(G)iven the disdain that has been shown for “entitlements” over the years, it won’t be long before this treatment extends to Social Security, Medicare, and even Financial Aid recipients.”

“With regard to welfare legislation, it’s beneficial to highlight where on the class ladder members of Congress stand.  According to a study by the Center for Responsive Politics released late last year, nearly half of the members in congress – 261 – were millionaires,” this compared to about one percent of all U.S. residents.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/05/14

In other words, we're already the oppressed subjects of an all-powerful oligarchy. Just as Karl and Freddie keep trying to tell us, “nothing to lose but them chains.”

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DIALOGUES

Cornel West's denunciation of Barack Obama, reported by Chris Hedges on TruthDig, then picked by by Common Dreams and any number of other humanitarian websites, generated a huge comment thread to which I made three significant contributions.

Hedges' report and the entire thread is well worth reading; my remarks will be found on the 7th and 8th pages:

“No longer can Barack the Betrayer cravenly hide behind the Big Lie those of us who legitimately criticize him from the Left are no different from the racist hatemongers who snarl at him from the Right.”

“Alas, what nether Mr. Hedges nor Mr. West dare acknowledge is the extent to which the Betrayer is the wholly-owned product of the capitalists' Machiavellian scheming – the latest manifestation of the most diabolically malicious cunning in history.

“Obama is the true all-time Janus of human politics. His serial treacheries traumatize the Left to stunned paralysis even as he engenders such racist fury in the white Working Class, it votes itself to Republican-inflicted suicide.

“None of this is coincidental; it has been years, even decades, in the planning. With the Betrayer's actions smoke-screened by Republican noise, he thus inflicts on us the New Paradigm of capitalist governance...”

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“I recognize we are all female at conception -- that all imbalance, disconnection and disharmony thus flows from patriarchy, the definitively unnatural condition that spawns hierarchy and eventually capitalism, leading to the ultimate fulfillment of both in fascism.”

“Thus too the absolute necessity of class struggle, recognized by Marx and Engels as the only viable form of resistance.

“Alas, class-struggle is everywhere obstructed by Moron Nation and its characteristically toxic hybrid of ignorance and fantasy.

“One such fantasy is the "aliens from outer space" hypothesis, which gives the status quo the imprimatur of "supreme beings" – a seal of approval given patriarchal tyranny also by the Abrahamic gods, Yehveh, Jesus and Allah...

“Is it mere coincidence the "spaceman" cult arose immediately after the resurrection of matriarchal values – feminism, environmentalism, neo-Paganism – began to challenge capitalism?

“What then if patriarchy – which appeared only about 4,000 years ago – is an alien virus loosed on Planet Earth to guarantee the enslavement and destruction of our species?

“Which – regardless of its (unknown) source – it is obviously doing.”

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“The percentage of whites who voted in 2008 actually declined, and of those who did vote, only 43 percent voted for Obama. (McCain got 55 percent.)”

“More to the point, 58 percent of working class whites voted for McCain – "working class" defined as income of $50,000 per year or less...

“Meanwhile, we should never forget that under capitalism's New Paradigm, all of us are real-time Working Class – that is, disposable as slaves or serfs. The only exceptions are those to the manor born, the hereditary aristocracy, the one percent that owns or controls the national wealth and thus every aspect of life (and death) in the United Estates.

“The real tragedy in all this is that the only viable Working Class leadership – real-time Working Class that is – exists within minority communities. But the white majority is too vindictively racist to accept such leadership, now or ever...”

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/05/16-1

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The best of my comments this week were posted on the website of The News Tribune, Tacoma's Ruling Class daily. These were real doozies, frankly surprising me they weren't suppressed forthwith:

“Wake up, people: workers thrown away as if we were garbage or worn-out machines – more and more of us hungry and homeless and sentenced to death by lack of health care – that's capitalism in action.”

http://www.thenewstribune.com/2011/05/15/1666167/older-unemployed-workers-suffer.html

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“With the rich aristocrats continuing to downsize the national economy by their methodical looting – with the same thievery now applied to government services as well – any transit not up and running now will NEVER be built.”

“Meanwhile existing transit is in danger of being shut down – exactly as Pierce Transit is already doing. 

“This is particularly true now so many voters believe the newest aristocratic Big Lie: that transit is a form of welfare.

“The fate of transit thus mirrors the fate of working families...

“Simple: the elimination of government services will eliminate us – which is, of course, it's ultimate purpose. Why risk the bad publicity of death camps when abandonment (as in the destruction of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and – yes – transit) will do the same thing?

http://www.thenewstribune.com/2011/05/19/1671018/light-rail-to-fway-delayed.html#disqus_thread

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“Medical marijuana  is ultimately a religious issue, which is why the Republicans – the storm-troopers of fundamentalist Christian theocracy – are opposing it, and why they will become infinitely more fierce in their opposition as the 2012 elections approach.”

“What too many of us fail to recognize is that underlying the prohibition of medical marijuana is the same (savage) Christian doctrine that denies all U.S. patients adequate pain relief in any form.

“The problem -- the (insurmountable) theocratic barrier to adequate pain relief -- is the (ignorant) belief illness and its associated suffering is god-ordained punishment for sin: yet another dismal example of how the United States is unique amongst industrial nations in its rejection of scientific truth.

“Like so so many other beliefs of Abrahamic religion (Judaism, Christianity, Islam), the doctrine of illness and/or disability as divine retribution makes sense only if one regards god as the great all-seeing sadist in the sky.”

http://www.thenewstribune.com/2011/05/21/1673847/medical-pot-bill-stalls.html

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Why the sudden tolerance on the part of TNT?

I have no idea, but I'd guess instructions have come down the chain of command to encourage Lefties to expose our political selves: makes it easier for the DHS to round us up when the order is given, as it surely will be. (Painfully crippled and 71 years old with a bad heart, I hardly give a damn: the secret police are just one more terminal affliction.)

But those of you who are younger and/or in better health should take better care of yourselves. Therefore never forget what Lev Bronstein said: “in any gathering of three or more self-proclaimed revolutionaries, there is at least one agent of the Okhrana.”

LB/21 May 2011

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