pearl harbor…

All kinds of takeaways for me — I haven’t watched your video yet, but will.

Too many to list. But his overall angle is really important. That all too many Americans (and Uncle Sam, of course) for far too long have ignored, forgotten about, or didn’t even realize that our far-flung empire includes millions of American citizens in its territories, and they’ve been abused, oppressed, used as human guinea pigs, etc. etc.

I felt ashamed, so many times, over the course of reading How to Hide an Empire. But it should be required reading in our schools, and all our reps need to read it too.

Kipling’s famous defense of colonialism, where he called it “the white man’s burden,” was directly about the Philippines.

At the time Kipling was living in Vermont. When the USA acquired the Phillipines and Cuba in the Spanish War, there was actually a debate in the country about whether or not a democracy could also be an empire. Kipling wrote his poem in defense of empire, which to him was predicated on the idea that the Christian west should share the benefits of progress and enlightenment by directly ruling third world peoples (of course “third world” is a later, cold war term…but you know what I mean.)

from Rudyard Kipling, “The White Man’s Burden: The United States & The Philippine Islands, 1899.”

Take up the White Man’s burden—

Send forth the best ye breed—

Go send your sons to exile

To serve your captives’ need

To wait in heavy harness

On fluttered folk and wild—

Your new-caught, sullen peoples,

Half devil and half child

wv wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

WV,

You’ve gotta read that book. I recently finished it and learned a ton. Was going to post about it here.

Really, really good history. Chomsky and Zinn would be proud of Immerwahr.

(I’ve switched things up recently. Used to buy my books. Now I’m checking them out of the library when I can, especially new stuff. But this book is worth purchasing.)

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Yeah i was thinking about ordering his book. Usually i wait awhile until books end up ‘used’ on the net and i can get them for two or three bux.

But then, lately I’ve refrained from buying political books. They tend to sit around my house for ages and i never get to them. Too many. Plus…as i enter the late-stages of my life I find it hard to find ‘reasons’ to cram more political details into my mind. I ask myself “whats the point” in me learning more ‘details’ about the corpor-o-tacracy (or whatever one wants to label it). It doesnt help me any to know more details, really. I already know the basic blueprint of how it works and how it has worked. So is it really the best use of my limited time to learn more ‘details’ of the disgusting biosphere-killing work of the corporotacracy? I mean, its like reading more about Hitler or Stalin. It wouldnt be a bad thing to learn more details of their butchery, but…what is the point? So…thats where I’m at with reading pol books. But watching short vids is different for me. I’ll do that. But a whole book? It doesnt seem worth my time anymore. Thats a job for young people. (I might buy the book just so i can give it to a young human)

As far as what the writer is doing? Great stuff. Zinn-level stuff. (which is high praise for me)
I have always known that I knew very very little about the ‘territories’. A much needed addition to general readership american ‘pol lit’.

His name just appeared on the side of my youtube screen not long ago. Thats how i stumbled across him.

Mainly nowadays, when i want to read, at night, i find myself drawn more to stories, novels. I’m reading “A People’s Future Of The United States,” and an autobio by the ornery comedian Paul Mooney. Mooney was Richard Pryor’s mentor back in the day. He said Richard really spent a lot of time reading Malcolm X’s writings. He understood radicalism very well. But politics came second to cocaine for Richard Pryor. He loved drugs. Loved’em. Another leftist wrecked by drugs.

w
v

w
v

Understandable, WV. I get the idea of saturation points. I reach them too. Which is why I mostly read novels as well. But I like to mix things up and do non-fiction at times. Two really good books on evolution, which I’ve mentioned, and Immerwahr’s book . . . breaking up a bunch of novels and one short story collection.

Currently reading Wallace Stegner’s Crossing to Safety, which I love. I wish I had read him years and years ago. He’s a fantastic writer. A writer’s writer. And this is a beautiful novel.

More recent readings:

Highly recommend Sally Rooney’s Conversations With Friends, Ben Lerner’s Leaving the Atocha Station, Valeria Luiselli’s Lost Children Archive, and Jenny Offill’s Department of Speculation.

Loved all of them. But I think the book that’s moved me the most in recent months is The Overstory, by Richard Powers. About trees and people who love trees. I learned a ton about tree lives, their communities, families, communications, defenses, and the tragedy of our destruction of those trees.

Anyway . . . thanks for the tip about Mooney. I had not heard of him before. Makes me want to take another look at Pryor, too.