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Paul Krassner published The Realist (1958-2001), but when People magazine labeled him “father of the underground press,” he immediately demanded a paternity test. And when Life magazine published a favorable article about him, the FBI sent a poison-pen letter to the editor calling Krassner “a raving, unconfined nut.” “The FBI was right,” George Carlin responded. “This man is dangerous — and funny, and necessary.” While abortion was illegal, Krassner ran an underground referral service, and as an antiwar activist, he became a co-founder of the Yippies (Youth International Party).
Krassner’s one-person show won an award from the L.A. Weekly. He received an ACLU (Upton Sinclair) Award for dedication to freedom expression. At the Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam, he was inducted into the Counterculture Hall of Fame — “my ambition,” he claims, “since I was three years old.” He won a Playboy Award for satire and a Feminist Party and in 2010 the Oakland branch of the writers’ organization PEN honored him with their Lifetime Achievement Award. “I’m very happy to receive this award,” he concluded in his acceptance speech, “and even happier that it wasn’t posthumous.”
Paul is a friend, and colleague through the Advisory Board for In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal. He asked to do an interview with me. I agreed.
Paul Krassner: Do you think that Donald Trump will face an impeachment and a criminal case or will he get away with it? Same with Mike Pence? If they are both kicked out of the White House, would Paul Ryan become the next president which he wanted when he ran as Mitt Romney’s vice president?
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: To preface, I will note: personally, neither an expert nor an authority – good rule of thumb, do not believe me. I’m simply Scott trying to reason through things. I may veer off the tracks of the question.
As a necessary statement at the outset, often, prediction seems best left to historians. Also, prediction seems harder than ever because the world became more complicated. Synoptic judgments about anything seems hard, let alone near future extrapolations from the synopses.
Even so, many of these thoughts will not seem novel or necessarily profound, at least not to those railroaded through life on propaganda. As per Paul Mooney’s statements about the US, it has a propaganda system that is unreal, in its influence and ubiquity.
Although, if I can reason to a possible outcome, I should note Bob Wilson’s observation: the political Left’s view of big business and the Right’s view of government are both probably correct.
In America, there are over 320 million citizens looking at the spectacle, even the circus act or “freak show” – as someone dead mentioned on many occasions. Most things go noticed now. Social media makes everyone a commentator too.
Also, I say this, apparently, as a Canadian, and in other ways not so much. Not only the United States of America, the world as well, with the velocity and power of modern high technology, sits in the front row seat to the freak show. Some things became obvious to more American citizens, and the world, than before, especially the fence-sitters.
A friend of mine in California is an independent mathematician. He has been keeping intermittent track of Trump compared to previous presidents. By his estimations, Trump has done worse than any other president this early in their administration.
Most of the others ‘had the courtesy to die’ before potential impeachment. For these first questions, I looked at various sources. They did not help me. Some say high odds for impeachment. Others tell of low chances. It depends, but seems like a possibility.
With the antics on the campaign trail, whether word or deed, some thought Trump, as a Republican presidential candidate, would fail. Once elected, and past the shock, the open attacks on women’s rights, science and, therefore, medicine, shook some of the country.
Especially women, which seems to have the silver lining, citizens continue the venerable American tradition: community and societal mobilization for the good. I suspect with the ugly behaviour and talk around, and about, women tied to attack’s on women’s rights.
Women in the US will continue to protest and fight for their rights more, probably than ever. It seems instructive to note. The current generations of women represent the most formally educated and free women, globally speaking, likely in human history.
As long as things do not become too acrimonious, though things will likely become worse before better, American citizens may gather together from the ground up. To an extent, I agree with the official Pryor torchbearer, Dave Chappelle. It is important to show “local politics reigns supreme.”
In the North American countries, as appears known in tacit sub-cultures, we live in technologically advanced and ideologically primitive societies with majoritarian or democratic rule. In that, in the democratic system, the majority rules the state, the nation, or the country.
Most Americans adhere to the eldest ideological stances, relative to recorded human history, in the canon. Through the majoritarian vote, the same dominant sector’s adherence to the archaic ideologies with emotional appeal linked to high technology yield enormous power.
We need constructive alternative programs for civil society outside of the mainstream of politics. We need Americans to revive, and Americans – in Christian terms – need the ‘resurrection’ of, the ‘spirit’ of the 1960s.
That means the time of flux, change, and expansive vision, and so the possibility for the constructive future rather than destructive one based on anger, desperation, and contractive conceptions of human possibility.
Take, for example, the American protest of the Vietnam War. The protests happened during the fighting. US citizens protested the current, ongoing, wars prior to the main fighting. Now, citizens continue to protest with proportioned critical thought about institutions with power too, in the world’s most powerful democracy – though much evidence to the contrary, simultaneously.
Now, to the Wilson point, in a strange, or maybe not so bizarre, coming together, big business and government became one. It is flaunted too, especially cruelly as the majority of ordinary people see stagnant or declining wages for decades – and the need to be competitive with sweatshop workers, often in slave labour conditions, halfway around the world.
American citizens, with good reason, distrust institutions – and, unfortunately, each other – and have the indignation and anger to make change, but directed in messy, destructive, and even counterproductive, ways. I see a big signal of this being true.
Both the political Left and, some of the, Right, speaking loosely and simply, became enraged over Trump’s election, and the administration’s decisions. Even so, the hammer is pounded on the Left and laid to rest on the Right, as a partial observation.
Hammer blows to the Left’s goals, principles, and values. Mild, consistent pressure on some of the Right’s ones. It’s not equal opportunity punishment. Two big targets seem attacked, with one common victim set.
The least among us, as the victims. Women’s rights and science, in general, as the targets. To the former, women won the right to vote, in 1920 – not simply propertied or land-owning women. Women won the right and privilege to equal access to jobs and careers, to a significant extent.
Now, take the “Global Gag” rule, the targeted defunding of, by Human Rights Watch’s analysis, a human right: “equitable access to safe abortion services is first and foremost a human right.” Women will die throughout the world as a direct result of the recent Global Gag rule.
As you know, when decades prior running an underground referral service, abortion, and reproductive health technologies in general, continue to remain new, and the frontier of the modern attacks on women’s rights.
By the way, based on Human Rights Watch, any, even most or all, pro-life positions become anti-human right by implication. Denial of abortion equates to denial of a human right – take your pick, for or against.
To the latter, to the assault on science and scientists, the placement of non-scientists or non-science fact respecting people into positions of both tremendous power and influence, and relevance for science, and the further defunding of scientific programs.
The United States will damage its scientific and cultural reputation. Also, the reduction in the quality of science education, and provisions at the highest level, will reduce the depth and precision of the scientific decisions made by America. Decisions that speed global warming.
If not impeached, with Trump, we seem lucky, even in another colder country – though warming. We know the president’s ideology: me. We understand Trump’s motivation: to be liked. He can, by accident, benefit the general population, if benefits exist for his ego through feeling liked by people.
If Pence becomes president, we have a whole other set of issues with a sincere Christian fundamentalist: “I’m a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican, in that order.” If Ryan, the federal government may outlaw carbohydrates.
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