Grumpy Old Man

“What no one seemed to notice was the ever widening gap between the government and the people. And it became always wider…..the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting, it provided an excuse not to think….for people who did not want to think anyway gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about…..and kept us so busy with continuous changes and ‘crises’ and so fascinated…..by the machinations of the ‘national enemies,’ without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us…..

“Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’…..must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing…..Each act is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next.

“You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone…..you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes.

“That’s the difficulty. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves, when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed.

“You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things your father…..could never have imagined.”

Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free, The Germans, 1938-45 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955)

I CAN ADD NOTHING TO THIS ALTHOUGH MY WIFE SURELY COULD IF SHE WERE SO DISPOSED.

I know, I know, you’re all sitting there thinking “Now the old fart is on his high horse again. When is he going to give us some slack?”

Well Kiddies, I ain’t gonna let up till you all learn your lessons and start convincing your friends that what I’m constantly on about is about to happen. And you don’t act like all those silly bastards out in Thailand that kept filming the Tsunami wave until it engulfed and drowned them because then it’s too fucking late.

Now what I want to do today is give you doubters out there a little practical evidence of what has happened in the past in this fair land of ours and what is almost certain to happen again in the very near future.

So pay close attention children as there will be a quiz at the end.

And you can begin by going here and reading all about something known as the Everett massacre then go to unsettling events, then follow the index list on the left hand side down to massacres until you see the Everett massacre. Then click on this. And you can also look at the page titled the Centralia Massacre which is quite long but it shows what it was like then and what I believe it will be like once again in the not too distant future.

Now the reasons I have chosen these two events for my little lecture today are threefold. First because they happened in the “Neck of the Woods” where I grew up and were part of the folklore that I was raised on. Secondly, because they are a part of history that has been mostly forgotten but are being daily reflected in American society today. And third, but by no means less important to me, my family was very deeply involved in all this.

Now my Grandfather, who is really the central character in this, was a very odd man for his time. In many ways. First he believed in equality for women. And to show just how much he believed in this when he and my Grandmother got married in 1905, 100 years ago, one of the first things he told here was that she was to take care of all the money. He would earn it but she was to make all the decisions. And of course my Grandmother, who was raised in the South, protested that this was sure to bring trouble between them if she were to make some decision that he did not agree with. And he promised he this would never happen. And he kept his promise. Never once did he ever question any of her monetary decisions.

Just as he later on, in the middle of the depression, paid for his daughter to go to college and become a school teacher so she would not be dependent on a man for a livelihood. This despite the fact that he could neither read nor write. So you can see that he was an odd duck to say the least.

And another thing he believed in religiously was the right of the working man to have a job and earn enough so that he and his family could live with dignity. Something he and his own family had never known. And true to his beliefs he became a union organizer in the very first days of union activity in the pacific Northwest and he eventually founded and became the first president of the Carpenters Union in Port Angeles, Washington. Not exactly a sinecure in those violent times I can assure you. And it was something that came to cost him everything he had except his life and it was quite close to costing him that also. Because when the depression came along and the timber industry in the Pacific Northwest went bust with a capitol B the Unions lost any powers they had gained and he became one of the first victims. He was fired from his job as foreman on a large job building a huge water supply main from the mountains down to Port Angeles, (This was built of wooden staves something akin to a very long barrel.) and spent the following NINE years out of work. This thanks to his beliefs and his Union activities.

Now what makes my Grandfather part of all this was the fact the he should have been in Everett that day. But by the “Grace of good luck and bad planning” as he always put it he was prevented from joining the men on the Verona by the very same Seattle Chief of Police that arrested the others on their return from the slaughter in Everett. This by the act of refusing my Grandfather and the men with him permission to land in Seattle when they arrived on the boat from Port Angeles. And while he did not arrest them he made them stay on board and until the boat sailed on it’s return voyage to Port Angeles. Thus quite possibly saving his life which was quite obviously NOT HIS INTENTION.

And at this time there was no such thing as unemployment compensation or any other form of help so my Grandparents lost everything they had. Which was not inconsiderable considering their low station in life this due to the fact that my Grandfather was also a very prudent man and he knew that without something “Put by” for his old age he would become totally dependent on his children for survival, something he did not desire in any way. So he had built a number of houses as rental properties to give him some form of income if he should become unable to work due to accident which was the fate of many in his profession. All of this was taken from him because he could not pay the property taxes! And in 1940 we lived in a tent in the middle of a forest. I won’t go into the details of how this came about but it was all we had. (By this time my parents were in the process of divorcing and I lived with my paternal grandparents.)

And just this alone can give you something to reflect on: An editorial in the San Diego Tribune reflected the intensity of the feeling aroused: “Hanging is none too good for them [the I.W.W.]; they would be much better dead, for they are absolutely useless in the human economy; they are the waste material of creation and should be drained off into the sewer of oblivion there to rot in cold obstruction like any other excrement.” This was written sometime about 1910 but does it remind you of anything? Perhaps what was being written in the NYC papers during the recent transit strike? And as the back of the Union movement has in reality been broken in the US the same conditions are already prevailing. With millions of working people unable to live on what they can earn. So how long do you believe it can go on like this? And how long do you think it will be before we have Armed men, (does the word Blackwater mean anything to you?) in the streets? And of course, the armed forces who have been well trained in Iraq and it will not take much of an effort on the part of the Neo-Nazi Con controlled MSM to convince them that any one who is opposed to the war and the prevailing conditions of millions of Americans are traitors and they are the ones who “Let You Down” so they have to be eliminated.

It’s happened before kids and it can damn sure happen again.