the sawpit

The Real Root of the Immigration Crisis: Abortion

By John Scott Lucas

I recently discovered a Max Blumenthal video featuring interviews with conservative kids at the College Republican National Convention who support the war in Iraq making the mostly flaccid excuses for why they can't personally serve in the military. Check out the article and video here. There's a brilliant moment when disgraced Republican Tom Delay neatly ties the right to life movement to the immigration issue, saying that if all those babies who have been aborted in our country had been allowed to grow up, their numbers would be more than sufficient to fill the jobs currently taken by illegal aliens. So, if we made abortion illegal, we would no longer have an immigration problem in this country.

The discredited former power broker didn't mention anything about all those Americans who are unemployed yet refuse to pick grapes or sew low-cost tee shirts or work as domestic servants or gardeners. Still, his line of reasoning is truly an inspiration. Here's my answer to Delay: if we made abortion illegal today, we'd still have to wait for all those babies to grow up enough to take back all those jobs from the illegal immigrants. But if we freed all the American prisoners currently serving long mandatory sentences for minor narcotics offenses, we could fix the illegal immigration issue right now! Now, I know that Tom is a proponent of the Rockefeller Laws (they don't call him "The Hammer" for nothing), yet maybe he might be willing to consider more lenient sentencing guidelines, seeing as how he's looking at serving some jail time himself pretty soon.

Crossing Girard (Part 4)

We Finally Engage the Enemy

By John Scott Lucas

The rest of the morning was actually pretty dull, except for one thing — the turnout was staggering. Conventional wisdom holds that you see about 30 or 40% of the voter turnout before work, 10 or 20% in the middle of the day, and the remaining 50 to 60% after work. There were about 500 registered voters at this particular polling place. By lunchtime, well over 200 people had voted.

I went inside the church and asked if I could use the bathroom. I was politely told that I'd have to wait, because somebody was already using it. I really needed to pee badly, so I stood there on one foot and asked, "Okay, who wants to see a white man tap dance?" That cracked up the Deacon and his kid. When I finally got my turn, I noticed a long black robe and a pair of black hip waders hanging next to each other on the back of the door. My first thought was, "Hmm. Guess the Reverend is a fisherman." But something about that didn't quite add up. Then it dawned on me — this church practiced full-immersion baptism. These people didn't mess around.

Things were so quiet, that Zoe and Kate suggested that we break for lunch. We were gone less than an hour, but when we got back, there was a new group of volunteers sitting on metal folding chairs in front of the church. Zoe went over to introduce herself and discovered that they were all paid RNC voter challengers. These folks were paid $100 each by the RNC, ostensibly to challenge any voters who they did not believe had a right to vote at this particular polling place. None of them showed any inclination of doing any thing of the sort, because, for starters, none of them were from the neighborhood and, consequently, would have no way of knowing if somebody had a right to vote at this polling place or not just by looking at them.

I couldn't figure out what the RNC hoped to gain by paying good money to have people sit outside a polling place all day and do nothing, until one of them asked me if I could give her a ride so she could go vote at her own polling place, which was all the way across town. It turned out that none of these paid poll monitors were working anywhere near their own polling places. Three of them came from a halfway house for recovering substance abusers, and one, the thin older woman who had asked me if I had her $100 when we first showed up that morning, had answered a flier posted at the community center where she received food stamps and other government assistance. They had all shown up for the job before the polls opened, and then were transported by van far away from where they lived. They all seemed to be under the impression that if the RNC people who hired them came by to check on them, and they weren't at their station, they wouldn't get their $100. I could only conclude that the RNC had essentially paid five likely Democrats $100 NOT to vote. If this tactic was being repeated in battleground states all over the country, it could have been enough to tip the balance in favor of the Republicans.

Eric Hoffer once wrote, "Good and evil grow up together and are bound in an equilibrium that cannot be sundered. The most we can do is try to tilt the equilibrium toward the good." Republican scum were trying to tip the balance towards the Bush/Cheney machine. All I had to do to tip it back was give a few people rides to their polling places.

I'm not sure if any of these RNC paid poll challengers were aware that they were working for a party that generally does not support their own best interests. Maybe they knew full well, but they weren't in a position to turn down $100. They were all registered to vote, so they had to have at least some political awareness.

Because I was driving these people all over Philly, I really got a chance to get to know them and their neighborhoods. The folks from the rehab center seemed like really good people who were making a concerted effort to turn their lives around. One woman confided in me that she couldn't believe how fucked up the world got during the years she lost to her addiction. She said, "It's like I finally pulled myself together just in time for the rest of the world to go to shit."

One of the paid vote challengers was clearly still deep into her addiction. She was getting drunk on the job, which, as I've already pointed out, had no impact on her performance, but it certainly made a few people uncomfortable. By 3:00 in the afternoon, she was pretty blitzed. She started delivering an expletive-driven diatribe against religion on the front steps of the church. Now, in my humble opinion, loudly claiming that religion is bunk in front of a Baptist church might be a good way to incur the wrath of God, but the reaction from the Reverend was quintessentially liberal. She did not tell this woman that she had no right to blaspheme against God outside his own house. She simply stepped into the doorway of the church and politely told the woman, "Ya'll can't be swearing out here."

Driving voters to the poll on Election Day was my great contribution to the world. I only have two regrets. One was that I didn't do this in Ohio, where it might have made a difference in the final outcome, (Kerry carried Pennsylvania quite comfortably, but lost Ohio by a slim but decisive margin). The other was that, while I was driving somebody to the polls, the RNC scum stopped by and picked a fight with Zoe. Even outnumbered two to one, she completely demolished them. I would have gladly paid $100 to see that.

(To be continued)

Crossing Girard (Part 3)

Bambi and Thumper Kick Republican Ass

By John Scott Lucas

Before I went to bed, that night, I flipped through the channels on my hotel TV set. As I hadn't watched network television in some time, the sheer number of political ads seemed staggering, both for their overall negativity, and for the alarming ratio of Bush ads to Kerry, which I estimated to be about two to one in favor of Bush. The blatant lies of the Bush ads astounded and angered me. I didn't sleep well, because I was so agitated by what I saw on TV. By daybreak, I was so exhausted that I didn't hear my alarm go off. Fortunately, I had had the foresight to ask for a 5:00 AM wake-up call, so I had just enough time to shower, shave and dress and still make it down to the Election Protection offices in time for the 5:30 volunteer muster.

By 5:45, I had my assignment, and I was matched up with two law students, Zoe, a Harvard law student, and Kate, who was studying law at U. Penn.  We were a good team — they had the legal background, and I had a car. Zoe and Kate turned out to be something like the legal equivalent of "Bond Girls." Imagine "Bambi" and "Thumper" from "Diamonds are Forever," only as legal aides. Zoe's big brown eyes and Kate’s one-thousand watt smile could make you forget that they were not only whip smart, but perfectly capable of kicking your ass in a political knife fight. 

As we drove to our assigned polling place, we immediately started swapping war stories.  It was scary to think that the political system in America had come down to this — voter intimidation, disinformation, ballot tampering, and intentional disenfranchisement. The thought that we might be squaring off against somebody who actually had the audacity to challenge the right of American citizens to vote on the basis of race, income, or probable voting patterns, was thrilling and sickening at the same time. The atmosphere of an impending showdown informed even the most innocuous conversational gambits. Somehow we got on the subject of my years living in Los Angeles. 

I gave them my standard LA spiel: "Los Angeles is not a city, it's a disaster theme park. In the eleven years I was there, I lived through three major earthquakes, six brush fires, countless mud slides, one infamous riot, and two freeway road-rage shootings."

This last little bit of braggadocio prompted Zoe to tell me about her own near-death experience. Zoe and Kate first met while interning at Brooklyn City Hall. Zoe was in the very same room when Brooklyn City Councilman James E. Davis was shot. Kate missed the gunplay by a scant few minutes because she had gone out for coffee.

After Zoe finished her story, all I could say, was, "Okay, you win. That tops any story of mine."

Up until this moment I was entertaining the fantasy that Zoe and Kate would be the brave, dedicated crusaders, and I would be the noble tough guy who watched their backs. Once I heard Zoe's story about the Davis shooting, I recast myself as the plucky sidekick who drove them around. They were both smarter and tougher than me.

The polling place to which we were assigned was located in the front parlor of the rectory of a Baptist church, one block north of Cecil B. Moore Avenue. It was the kind of church with an illuminated cross hanging over the main entrance. The polls weren't open yet, but there was already a group of people waiting outside. 

As we got out of the car, a painfully thin, elderly black woman in a baseball cap came up to us and asked, "Are you from down the street? Do you have my $100?"

I had no idea what she was talking about, and neither did Zoe or Kate. 

We went inside the Rectory and introduced ourselves to the Polling Supervisor, a deacon of the church, and the Clerks of Polls, most of whom were women, and all parishioners.  Keisha had stressed the importance of making nice with the poll workers first thing, partly to establish a rapport in case a polling dispute arose, but mostly to secure access to the bathrooms. If we got on the wrong side of the poll workers, they could bar us from entering the polling place except for official business. In some neighborhoods, it would be a hassle to find alternate facilities. 

North Philly was unknown territory to Zoe and myself; even Kate, who was attending U. Penn, had never actually been in this part of town. Since it was a black, urban neighborhood, I assumed that most of the voters leaned to the left, but I didn't know how the locals would respond to us, and the divisiveness of the campaign made me expect the worst. As it turned out, we had nothing to fear. We were deep inside friendly territory. In fact, by the end of the day, I met only two Republicans, and merely saw one other — one very pathetic, very lonely Republican. But I’ll have to tell you about him later. 

The first and last two Republicans I would actually talk to that day introduced themselves to everybody at the polling place around 10:00 am. They were organizers for the RNC poll monitors. They were superficially friendly. They saw our Election Protection shirts and asked us if it was a Democratic organization. We assured them that it was non-partisan. One of them pressed the issue, asking, "Okay, that may be the official stance, but aren't most of you people Democrats?" We assured them that we were here to protect the right of all voters, regardless of their political affiliations or ours.

Just then, a jovial black man strolled up and loudly asked, "Which booths are for the REPUBLICANS?"  He was adding extra emphasis. "I wanna make sure I cast my votes for the REPUBLICANS!"

There was mischief in his eyes, and I was 99% sure he was shitting me, but I didn't want to take any chances in front of the RNC, so I politely told him that he could vote for any candidate from any machine.

(To be continued)

Crossing Girard (Part 2)

Here Comes the Cavalry!

By John Scott Lucas

For most of the 90's I was pretty much apolitical. Then the Clinton sex scandal happened, and I became completely disgusted with politics. I literally tuned out. I turned off NPR and started listening to music instead, and I was much happier that way. But it was hard to avoid the news of the 2000 election fraud in Florida. I started listening to the news again, and everything I heard about George Bush and his administration made me furious or sick to my stomach. By the time Bush started rattling his saber over Iraq, I just wanted to kill all Republicans. I had a lot of venom, but no constructive outlet for my anger. I wanted to do more than just vote on Election Day, so working as a volunteer poll monitor seemed like a good way to make a small difference. Since New York City, my home, is one of the bluest cities in one of the blue states, the election was never in any doubt here, so in 2004, I volunteered to work in Pennsylvania, the nearest battleground state.

I arrived in Philly on Monday night, just in time to attend a last-minute volunteer training session with Election Protection, a non-profit, non-partisan, legal defense group that is dedicated to ensuring the right of all citizens to vote. The training was held in a cavernous Baptist church, which had once been an Opera House. (Many of the events I am about to relate to you took place in Baptist churches. They are the cornerstones of most neighborhoods in North Philly.) A young preacher welcomed us all to his church, and, as he stalked back and forth across the stage, he warmed up the crowd with an inspirational story. 

The preacher sang out, "When I was kid, I spent a lot of time with my Grandmother.  Granny liked to watch old westerns on Saturday afternoons. 'Shoot 'em ups' she called them. And in every one of these 'shoot 'em ups,' there was a scene where the army was in a bad spot.  Surrounded by savage injuns. Out of ammo! Out of water! Nowhere to run!  Nowhere to hide! And then, the sorriest soldier in the troop, the one bleeding to death with his arm in a sling and his head all bandaged up, would hear a trumpet blare in the distance. And he'd look into the sun, and see a man on a white horse galloping over the horizon. And that sorry man, that man who had no hope just a few moments ago, would lift up his bleeding head and yell out, "Here Comes the Cavalry!" Now, I know that many of you here tonight are dejected, downtrodden, disappointed and disgusted. You're ready to give up on the political process in this country. You doubt whether voting makes any difference at all. You have no hope. Well, I want you to look around you at all the people in this hall. Lift up your eyes and look at all of these people. You know what I see? I see the cavalry! Somebody shout it out for me!"

And a few people shouted out, "Here comes the cavalry!"

And the preacher cupped his ear and shouted back, "I want to hear all of you!"

And more people shouted back, "Here comes the cavalry!"

And the preacher looked annoyed and said, "Is that the best you can do?!"

And he egged us on until every man and woman in that hall shouted out, with feeling, "HERE COMES THE CAVALRY!"

Now, Election Protection is a non-partisan organization, and I am certain that every single volunteer would defend a citizen’s right to whatever their politics, but I am equally certain that 99% of the volunteers in that church on that Monday night were Kerry supporters. The hall was abuzz as we split up into smaller groups for instructions. The preacher's pep talk had struck a chord and energized the crowd.

The hall divided into smaller groups for training. A young law student from Maryland, named Keisha, stood on a chair with a bullhorn and gave my group a crash course in what we could expect at the polls and how to respond. The biggest concern was that Republican groups like the RNC were paying people $100 a head to challenge voters. This tactic was intended to discourage minorities and the poor, who were considered more likely to vote for Democrats. Like many of the scummy things Republicans do, it is a perfectly legal tactic, but it was our job to make sure that this tactic didn't become harassment. If we started to see a pattern to the kinds of people the challengers turned away, or if the number of challenges became excessive, we were to call Election Protection, and they would send a lawyer. Election Protection even provided cell phones to the volunteers with important numbers programmed into the speed dial.

Other things we were to look out for included police officers standing outside of the polling place with the intent of intimidating voters, or official-looking men distributing bogus voter guides like the ones handed out in Milwaukee. The Milwaukee pamphlets in question purported to be issued by an African American Political Action Committee, but contained all sorts of disinformation calculated to scare off poor and minority voters. The pamphlets claimed that voters who had outstanding parking tickets or unpaid utility bills were ineligible to vote, and other such nonsense. Keisha explained that the first order of business, should anybody spot somebody distributing misleading literature such as this, would be to call the Election Protection lawyers. Then she added, "If you feel comfortable with confrontation, you can warn these people that they are breaking the law." I smiled at this and thought, "Keisha, right now, I am very comfortable with confrontation." More to the point, I was itching for a fight. I would have liked nothing better than to vent four years of frustration with the Bush Regime on some Republican goon.

(To be continued)

Crossing Girard (Part 1)

By John Scott Lucas

When watching men of power in action it must be always kept in mind that, whether they know it or not, their main purpose is the elimination or neutralization of the independent individual - the independent voter, consumer, worker, owner, thinker - and that every device they employ aims at turning men into a manipulable "animated instrument" which is Aristotle's definition of a slave.

Eric Hoffer

West Girard Avenue is the razor-thin line that separates Philadelphia's affluent, white cultural center from the sprawling, mostly poor, black suburbs of North Philly. There is a trolley line that runs down the middle of this six-lane street – cross Girard, and you are literally on the wrong side of the tracks. South of Girard, you see renovated town houses with flower pots and gleaming limestone stoops. There are cute shops, trendy cafés, and pristine grocery stores. The very instant you cross Girard, you see walled up tenements, vacant lots, sorry bodegas, and drug pushers. I would not believe the transition could be so stark if I had not seen it myself.

Girard Avenue is named after Stephen Girard, a French merchant marine captain who settled in Philadelphia in 1750, and made his fortune investing in shipping, real estate and banking. He helped to finance the War of 1812. He founded the Second Bank of the United States, and another eponymous bank, which is still in business today. At the time of his death, Girard had no children and no love for any of his surviving relatives, so he bequeathed his entire fortune, the largest in America at the time, to charitable causes. His pet project was a boarding school for, "poor male white orphan children." From its inception, Girard College (as it is now known) was a lightning rod for controversy; but, contrary to what one might suspect, the issues of racial and sexual segregation were amongst the last to engender a court challenge. The first big suit brought against Girard's charter involved charges of blasphemy.

Stephen Girard was an atheist, and his will specified, in no uncertain terms, that religion would never be taught, and that members of the clergy would never be allowed, within the walls of any institution that bears his name. Christian groups were outraged, and insisted that not only should religion be a mandatory part of the curriculum, but also that clergymen should be the only approved instructors. Daniel Webster argued for the plaintiffs and scored a partial victory. Since the Pennsylvania State Constitution mandated that religious instruction be provided for at all primary and secondary schools, public or private, Girard was forced to add religion to its curriculum. But there was nothing in the Pennsylvania State Constitution that said that religion had to be taught by clergy members, so the Girard College was free to bar clergy from campus. Still, I'm sure that all moral citizens took solace in the knowledge that Girard College was instilling Christian values in its exclusively white, exclusively male student body; and, indeed, the Trustees of the City of Philadelphia remained faithful to the racial and sexual exclusions stipulated in Girard’s will for over 100 years.

By the end of World War II, suburban sprawl engulfed the campus of Girard College, and the all-white school was now surrounded by an all black, middle class neighborhood. In 1954, two black students from North Philly, Foust and Felder, requested admission to the College, but were refused per the explicit instructions in Girard's will. Foust and Felder brought suit against the Trustees of the College. To make a long and complex story short, after years of contentious litigation, the U.S. Supreme Court found that, since the Board of Girard College was an agency of the State of Pennsylvania, their refusal to admit Foust & Felder constituted a violation of 14th Amendment rights. In 1968, noting a "lack of foresight" on Girard's part, the Supreme Court ordered that the phrase, "poor, white, male orphan” be struck from Girard's will.

Girard College now accepts boys and girls of all races and colors based solely on need and merit. There is a statue of Stephen Girard just inside the entrance of the College he founded and endowed. It shows Girard surrounded by boys and girls, both black and white, who look up at him with adoration in their eyes. He stands amongst them with outstretched arms, a serene expression on his face. Replace Gerard’s mid-19th-century business suit with a sky blue robe and a pair of sandals, and maybe add a beard and some long hair, and you could easily slip the tableau onto the grounds of any Catholic Church, with the inscription, "Suffer the little children to come unto me."

I think if Girard could have foreseen this statue, he'd have screamed until he was blue in the face.

Philadelphia is a city that honors its history. So it is not surprising that the next major avenue north of West Girard is named in honor of Cecil B. Moore, the lawyer and Republican (yes, Republican) political candidate who lead the fight to desegregate Girard College. (Although many of the older residents of North Philly still call the street by its original name – Columbus). All of this back-history is pretty much local lore in North Philly. I learned most of what I've just sketched out, and everything I haven't gotten to yet, in a single day from the voters and poll watchers that I worked with in the City of Brotherly Love on November 2nd, 2004.

(To be continued)

Blame it on Bush

by John Scott Lucas

For the second time since George W. Bush usurped the Presidency, America has suffered an unprecedented disaster. And, just as with 9/11, the unholy triumvirate of Bush, Cheney and Rove contributed to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina through their criminal negligence. In 2001, FEMA warned that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S., yet the Bush administration cut New Orleans flood control funding by 44 percent to pay for the Iraq War. All of us whiney Liberals have been warning for years that Monkey Boy’s private oil war was making America less safe. We were all expecting another terrorist attack on American soil – we got something much worse. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 destroyed two large office buildings. Katrina destroyed an entire city.

Unfortunately, a natural disaster does not provide a convenient excuse to invade a sovereign nation the way that a terrorist attack does, so the most compassionate thing this "Compassionate Conservative" could do for poor New Orleans was fly by on his way home to D.C. and gawk for 20 minutes. On the day the levees burst in New Orleans, Bush was telling a handpicked crowd of veterans that the so-called "War on Terror" was for the 21st Century what World War II was for the 20th. This would have been shameful demagoguery on a slow news day, but to make such a fallacious claim at the very moment that millions of Americans were losing everything they ever had is beyond despicable. A recent Sidney Blumenthal article explains the sordid story behind this tragic event:

A year ago the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed to study how New Orleans could be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the Bush administration ordered that the research not be undertaken. After a flood killed six people in 1995, Congress created the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, in which the Corps of Engineers strengthened and renovated levees and pumping stations. In early 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued a report stating that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in U.S., including a terrorist attack on New York City. But by 2003 the federal funding for the flood control project essentially dried up as it was drained into the Iraq war. In 2004, the Bush administration cut the Corps of Engineers' request for holding back the waters of New Orleans' Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80 percent. Additional cuts at the beginning of this year (for a total reduction in funding of 44.2 percent since 2001) forced the Corps to impose a hiring freeze. The Senate had debated adding funds for fixing New Orleans levees, but it was too late.

The Bush regime has one purpose only, to wage war on Iraq. (Stripping homosexuals of their rights and overturning Roe v. Wade are merely political bones Bush tossed to the radical right for helping to almost elect him.) Bush was handpicked by the oil companies to run for the Presidency for the express purpose of trumping up an excuse to invade Iraq, and the oil companies only allow him to stay President as long as he keeps the war going. That's George W's one and only job. Alas, the tragedy of New Orleans does not fit neatly into the dumb show of "Uh-muhrka again' th’ Terrorists." It's "off point." W. is about as concerned with the plight of millions of homeless Americans as a beautician is concerned with global warming, and no better equipped to deal with the problem.

Not that any of this matters. Bush will probably blame the hurricane on the Iranians, Fox News will swear it's the truth, and the next thing you know, we'll be bombing Tehran in order to make the world safer for the people of New Orleans.

American Nightmare

by John Scott Lucas

When Bush and Cheney came into office in 2000, I marveled at how clueless they both were, and I feared for the future. The way I saw it, the Republican vision of America looked a lot like Bogotá, Columbia – a place where a handful of filthy rich people lord over the dirt-poor masses. Who would want to live in such a place? Then I drove through Anaheim on my way to Disneyland and realized that the Republican vision is already alive and well.

Anaheim, California is the American nightmare. Let me make this perfectly clear, I am not saying that Anaheim is a metaphor for the American nightmare, or a symptom or a symbol. Anaheim is the American nightmare. And in the center of Anaheim is Disneyland, an oasis of vapid fantasy in the middle of a sprawling desert of harsh reality. Once inside Disneyland, you can't see anything outside the park, even from the top of the highest ride. Nothing mundane is allowed to intrude on the Disneyland experience. But to get to the gates of Disneyland, you have to drive several miles on surface streets through the city of Anaheim, and, let me tell you, Anaheim is a sorry sight. Anonymous low-rent apartment buildings dominate the landscape. Most of these were thrown up overnight using shoddy construction methods and designed to last just long enough for some real-estate speculator to make a quick buck, but, because of the relatively mild weather in California, they are still standing years after they should have collapsed or been razed. This is the worst thing about suburban sprawl in California – all that transient architecture seems to last forever. There are no parks or green spaces to break up the endless vistas of apartment blocks, no churches or grand public buildings to relieve the visual monotony. There can be no sense of pride in a place like this, so it is not surprising to see so many balconies festooned with broken bicycles, odd bits of furniture, and laundry hung out to dry but never brought in.

As you get closer to the main entrance to Disneyland, you begin to encounter the pathetic hangers-on of the theme park world – the dozens of tawdry motels and restaurants that survive solely on the overflow from the big attraction. These businesses make an effort to capitalize on their neighbor's fame, but it seems like a sorry afterthought to me. It's like looking at a child's rendition of the Pieta done in Play-doh. One hotel looks like a Swiss chalet and has a bear for its logo. There is a restaurant that is modeled after a Southern plantation. I don't know why they bother with the charade, because they're certainly not fooling anybody. Everybody knows the difference between a whale and a remora.

Disneyland is exactly the same as one of those tourist resorts in Mexico or Thailand, where they need high walls and armed guards to keep the destitute locals out of their carefully constructed paradise. It costs a lot of money to get into Disneyland, and, while Disneyland would never turn away anybody who has the cost of admission, most of the patrons are affluent and most of them are white. By contrast, the residents of the surrounding neighborhood are mostly poor and minorities. Am I over-reaching here? Only by a matter of degrees, I think. Sure, I know that Anaheim, for all its shortcomings, is an infinitely better place than a Brazilian shantytown or even some of the rural communities of Appalachia, but it really bugs me that Disneyland, this gorgeous triumph of the imagination, is smack dab in the middle of a complete shit hole.

The only question now is how do we wake up from this nightmare?

Editor update: Perhaps this song will help (courtesy of TMBG).

American Cheeseburger

by John Scott Lucas

I frequently find myself struggling to articulate what it is that defines an American. It's not like anybody has specifically asked me to do this, at least not since I had to grapple with
de Tocqueville in college, but it's an issue that was pounded into my brain from an early age. When I was an exchange student traveling around the UK, the question had immediate relevance. By some cruel coincidence, I always seemed to be visiting a town that was near an American military installation. Shamefully, American soldiers do not make the best cultural representatives. According to the English locals, Yanks from the nearby air base would show up "down the pub" with their loud shirts and loud voices and get soused and obnoxious. They'd get grabby with the barmaid, gripe about the warm beer, disparage soccer as a poor substitute for American football, and top it all off with some pronouncement such as, "If it weren't for America, you'd all be speaking German now!" At least, that was the local take on Americans. I wasn't a soldier, or a lout, but I was a Yank, so I was lumped into the same group and damned accordingly. If I politely pointed out to an English shopkeeper that I'd been shortchanged, they'd scowl at me, and say, "You, Yanks! Let me tell you something…" And, suddenly, I had to defend my entire nation just to get my lousy 20 pence back.

I love my country, and I am proud to call myself an American, but, just as Allen Ginsburg noted in his sloppy but brilliant poem, "America," I have a hard time defending my country and my people when it and they do so many things which I can't reconcile with what I feel are true American values. Which is why I so desperately long for something immutable and unqualified that defines America and Americans. To paraphrase Justice Potter Stewart, "I can't define what America is, but I know it when I see it." In single week in California, I had the great fortune to see two places that define the best and the worst of America.

The best can be found at In-N-Out Burger, the fast food franchise that time forgot. While the big multi-national chains have re-invented themselves over and over again to keep up with current trends, In-N-Out has felt no need to change its employee uniforms, its décor, or its business philosophy since 1948. You can memorize the entire menu at a glance. In-N-Out serves hamburgers, cheeseburgers, fries, sodas and shakes. That's it. There are no salads, no veggie burgers, no grilled chicken sandwiches, no Caesar dressing, no jalapenos. Nothing is "extra," "extreme," "super," "mega," "insane," or "macho." Burgers come single, double, or triple. Drinks come in small, medium and large. This dedication to simplicity would be enough on its own to win my heart, but what really makes me bow down at the temple of In-N-Out Burger is the quality of the food. No commercially made burger on Earth comes anywhere near the perfection of an In-N-Out "double-double with cheese," made from 100% USA Grade A beef, never frozen. Their French fries are made from whole potatoes that are peeled and sliced fresh to order and double fried in pure vegetable oil. It's pure, it's honest, it's beautiful.

Scott and Sloshy go to Hammerland

by John Scott Lucas

I'm in L.A. for a week and a few days. Came out here to visit my buddy Josh, and spend some quality time with Sloshy, the son of a mutual friend of ours in New York. (Nickolaus = Nickoslosh = Sloshy). Got in on Saturday and it was flat, flat, flat, from El Porto to Lunada Bay. I know because I spent 90 minutes looking at El Porto, Rosecrans, Mimosas, Manhattan Pier, Hermosa Pier, Topaz, Diamond, Redondo, the Avenues, Rats, Haggerties, P.V. Cove, Lunada Bay and everyplace in between. Flat. So we were rather surprised when we came out for a morning surf and discovered that Hammerland was solid over-head plus and pumping. 

First day out for both me and Sloshy since late October, and the inside at El Porto is so mean-spirited even on a small day, that were were pretty sure we were going to die. But we actually managed to fight our way out past the inside sets, and that meant that we had both accomplished First Day Back Goals (FDBG's) 1 and 2, which are, respectively, get in the water and make it outside. Then we paddled around for a long time because the cross currents were so crazy that you could ride a long shore drift 100 yards in one direction in no time flat and then paddle in a few yards and suddenly be carried right back to where you started just as quickly if you weren't watching your position, so, by default, we both accomplished FDBG 3, which is to get your paddle rhythm back. Then we both hung out for about 45 minutes trying to screw up the courage to take off on one of these steamers. It was high high tide and the waves were about 80% closing out as soon as they jacked up, and I wasn't really in the mood to get caught in the spin cycle at Hammerland on my first day back on a really heavy day, so I let a lot of waves pass me by. The offshore breeze was so strong that it was sending a spray like a fire hose over the backs, and each time I let a wave slip by without going for it, I'd get slapped in the face with 20 gallons of water. The waves were calling me chicken. Bawk, bawk, bawk!

A pod of about 20 dolphins cruised by, and I checked them out, and they checked me out, and they seemed to think it was pretty funny seeing me out there, because humans are such pathetic swimmers compared to dolphins, but they were cool about it, and they didn't tell me to get lost or anything, so I figured they didn't mind me being there. I am always thrilled to get close to Dolphins in the wild, but it also puts me a bit on edge. You look into their eyes and see a higher intelligence, and it's so clear that you are just a visitor to their world, a world in which they are not just better adapted, but, indeed, one of the masters of their environment, and you can't help but feel humbled.