The Night of the Hunter 1955 HD Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, a...

Rail Tramp Sland, updated 2013.

Hobo Terminology
Adam and Eve on a raft - Two fried eggs on toast. "Wreck 'em" if they are scrambled. "With their eyes open," if not.
Adventure - The encountering of danger, exciting and deangerious undertaking
Alley - A clear track in a railroad yard.
Alligator bait - Fried or stewed liver. Too costly now for hobos.
American nomad - A hobo who has been across the nation many times.
Anchor - A pick. Companion tool of the shovel or banjo. See: Banjo.
Angel - A person who gives more than you expect. One who takes an interest without trying to reform you.
Angel food - A mission house sermon. A mission preaching about the Bread of Life.
Apple knockers - Apple pickers.
Babe - A woman.
Back door bumming - To seek food at the back door to limit embarrassment.
Backslider - A weak person.
Bad actor - A dangerous person.
Balloon - A bedroll. A roll of bedding carried on the back, a bindle.
Banjo - A short-handled shovel.
Batter - To beg.
Beanery - A railroad eating house. Beanery queen is a waitress.
Beggar -"Beg" is one of those words which isn't derived from anything; it has always meant exactly what it means. Any person who won't work, and who lives by asking complete strangers for aid, is either lazy, mentally ill, or a saint. Don't assume you can tell the difference.
Behind the eight ball - In a difficult position, in a tight spot.
Bicycle tramp - A tramp who travels by bicycle. Sometimes they put lawn mower motors on the bicyle so they don't always have to peddle. They carry their belongs on the bicycle.
Big house - Jail.
Big Rock Candy Mountains - Hobo's paradise, as described in song by Harry K. McClintock.
Big house - The state penitentiary.
Bim - A woman.
Bindle - A bedroll that contains all of the hobo's belongs.
Bindle stick - A walking stick, used by hobos, sometimes hand carved, and used to carry a bindle. The stick is also used to clear paths through dense brush or for protection. Oftentimes it is autographed as hobos meet one another during their travels.
Bitch - A tin-can lamp with a shirt-tail wick.
Black bottle - Deadly poison allegedly given hobos in hospitals. Many hobos believe this bottle exists. It was used to kill the sick and the poor. The last place a tramp would want to go when he got sick was a hosiptal. There the doctors and the nurses would force him to drink from a mysterious "black bottle" which would kill them.
Black hole -A tunnel.
Black snake - A solid train of loaded coal cars.
Blind baggage (1) - To ride the train out of sight, not to be seen.
Bo, boes - A slang term used to describe an experienced hobo. A term for a pal, "Hey, bo" Originally meant a natural exclamiation intended to surprise or frighten.
Bogyman or bogeyman - A goblin, bug bear, a hobgoblin. A real or imaginary object of dread. The bogeyman comes in the middle of the night with his sack and steals bad children out of their beds and they are never seen alive again. Mothers said this rhyme to scare bad children at night that ended, "The bogeyman will get you if you don't watch out."
Boneyard - Any graveyard. Also refers to a hospital, or to a medical college where they practice on the bodies of departed hobos.
Boob, boobs - A simpleton.
Book of rules - A rule book which governs all facets of railroad activity. Each railroad has its own book, which must conform to minimum Federal Railroad Administration safety standards.
Bootlegger - A train that runs over more than one railroad.
Boomer - A drifter who went from one railroad job to another, staying but a short time on each job or each road. This term dates back to pioneer days when men followed boom camps.
Boston bum - One of those superior fellows, a high brow poser. Many of them do come from Boston or thereabouts.
Bottle wagon - An iron coal-car.
Box - A boxcar.
Boxcar art - Hobo inscriptions of their monikers around handholds, and on inside walls of a boxcar.
Boxcar tourist - A hobo.
Bracelets - Handcuffs.
Brakeman - The person who tends brakes on a rail car and assists in the operation of a train.
Branch line - A secondary line of a railroad, not the main line.
Bread line - A line of persons waiting for food to be given out as a charity.
Bread wagon - A horse drawn bakery cart or wagon.
Broad or brod - A woman, generally young and oppoosite of bat or blister, which means an old woman.
Buggy - A caboose; rarely applied to other cars.
Bull - Special agent (railroad security person usually driving white American cars and trucks) in around railroad yard charged with security and with catching hoboes. A railroad policeman. Also called flatfoot or gumshoe, but the distinctive railroad terms are cinder dick and 'bo chaser
Bum - A non-migratory non-worker. A worthless or dissolute loafer who would rather beg than work for goods or services. Lowest in the "hobo hierarchy." It is a term of many meanings, but in its most authoritative uses it refers to the lowest of vagrants.
Bump gums - To talk about nothing worthwhile.
Bunkhouse - A hobo term for a refrigerator car's end or ice compartment, which when empty provided a safe place to ride the train.
Bunkie - A tent mate.
Busting a gut - Your gut is your stomach area. To bust a gut is to engage in very hard physical labor so hard that you ache all over, even in your gut.
Butts - Cigarettes. The stem of a cigar picked up on the street.
Buy a drink - To pour a drink.
Cab - The crew compartment of a locomotive.
Cabbage head - A person who has used so many drugs in a lifetime that physical recovery is impossible.
Cabin car - A caboose.
Caboose - The end of train, a non revenue car.
Cacklers - White collar workers.
Cajun hobo - A hobo from Louisiana. A hobo who rides boxcars but prefers to be bare foot and eat food with a knife.
Cake eater - The nice boy of the town. Not used much by hobos.
Calaboose - The police station or the town lock-up. The jail (from "calaboose," which derives from calabozo, the Spanish word for "jail").
Call boy - A messenger who ran messages from the depot to the train crew and back.
Candy - Candy kid is the fellow who gets the good breaks. Candy job is the pleasant job. Candy team is the favorite span of mules in the outfit.
Canned heat - The use of intoxicants to fend off cold weather riding on freight trains. Also called tokay blanket and hump.
Cannon - a six-shooter.
Catching or Caught the west bound - One who is dying or has died.
Catch out - Hop or jump on a freight train.
Cat house - A brothel, which is sometimes called a notch house.
Catter - A hobo who rides on platforms of cars, tenders of engines, and similar places.
Cat wagon - A brothel on wheels visiting the chaste villages of the middle west or following the harvest crews. .
Chow - Now a common word meaning food.
City bum - a tramp who hangs out only in the city and never leaves it.
Clown wagon - A caboose.
Coal heaver - A fireman, sometimes called stoker.
Code of the Road - It demands that each hobo or tramp hide his identity under a road name, a moniker. The code of the Road is the unwritten laws by which hobo life is governed by.
C.O.F.C. - T.O.F.C - Container On Flat Car - Trailer On Flat Car.
Coffin nail - A term for cigarettes.
Collar and shoulder style - Everything is put on the table and the hobo guest helps himself.
Con - A con is a tubercular person. The con is the conductor on a train. An ex-con is a former convict.
Con game - This refers to any kind of graft involving trickery.
Con man - A grafter or trickster. It may mean ex-convict.
Cradle - A gondola or other open-top car.
Creep joint - A whorehouse where the girls are pickpockets.
Crew Car - Another term for a caboose.
Crib - A caboose.
Crook, crooks - A thief.
Crowbar hotel - A jail. Also known as a blue bar hotel or pokey.
Dead head - Heading straight for home with out stopping or making any side trips.
Dead head (verb) To move a new crew ahead of their train by auto and another train.
Dead one - A drunken hobo. Also a hobo who has just spent all his money.
Dead picker - A yegg who robs a drunk or dead one. He kicks him first to see if he is dead to the world and then robs him.
Dead soldier - An empty whiskey bottle lying beside the road.
Departure yard - The freight yard from which a newly-assembled train leaves. Usually a special yard in a large railroad freight yard.
Derelict - A social outcast.
Dick - A policeman. An older term for a railroad bull.
Dingbat - An old hobo who mooches off of other hoboes.
Ditch a train - To get off a train.
Ditched - To be thrown off the train, to be caught without the money to pay the fare.
Dodger - A person who shirks his duties and evades his responsibilities neither for purposes of graft, nor out of fear, but simply out of a overwhelming distaste for labor.
Doghouse - A caboose or its cupola.
Doggin' it - Traveling by bus.
Double up - To travel in pairs, to move with a boy.
Doughnut Christians - Men who fake being saved only to get coffee and doughnuts sooner.
Drifter - One who travels in no certain direction or path of travel.
Drummer - A yard conductor.
Drunkard - A late Saturday-night passenger train.
Dry mission - A Mission which allows no one who has been drinking. Oftentimes, one must consent to a breath test to be admitted. If the test shows any alcohol whatsoever, the person is not admitted.
Dummies - A tramp who pretends to be mute.
Dump or joint - Hobo hangout or gathering place. It also applies to a restaurant or flophouse.
Dutch - As in "in dutch" - trouble.
Dutch act - To committed suicide.
Easy mark - A hobo sign or mark that identifies a person or place where you can get food, money, or a place to stay overnight.
Eat snowballs - To stay up North during the winter.
Economic argument - Soap-box talk about economics. Generally opposed to the religious argument called angel food.
End bunker - The compartment at each end of an obsolete ice refrigerator car where blocks of ice were placed to cool the perishable freight.
Engineer - The person or pilot who operates a train or locomotive.
Extra - A regular freight train which runs as an extra train when sufficient overload business stakes up.
Extra gang - A crew that works on the railroad track.
Eye doctor - A panhandler who can catch the eye of his client and hold it without quailing. Also a pederast.
Eye opener - An early morning drink, often begged from the bartender when he opens up in the morning.
Faded bogey - A negro acting as an informer.
Fagot or fag - A road kid with homosexual tendencies.
Fall guy - The goat. The fellow who gets caught. In the world of crime he is one who takes the rap without squealing.
Fink - A scab. One who takes a striker's job. Good hobos frown upon this practice.
Flag, flagman - A railroad worker who manually signals presence and movement of trains.
Flatfoot - A cop.
Flat busted - Completely broke; without any money.
Flicker - To faint or simulate fainting.
Flimflam - To swindle, hoax or to trick.
Flimflam man - A person who practices petty trickery or deception. They use nonsense and silly talk to con others out of their money or goods.
Flintstone Kids - The latest generation of hobos. More likely to have orange hair, skateboards, and fleece than scraggly beards and long wool coats. Also known as the nose ring nation.
Flip - To board a moving train. The word accurately suggests the motion used.
Flipped, flipping frights - Hoboes who jumped aboard without paying.
Flipping a rattler - To boarding a moving box-car.
Floating fraternity - Transients.
Fog - Steam.
Flop - To sleep or a place to sleep. To prone the body.
Flop house - A cheap lodging house or any hobo hotel.
Flunkey - Camp waiter. Always male. A woman is a hasher.
Fly-away - A deserter from the army or navy.
Foot board - The metal catwalk on locomotives and freight cars provided for walking, standing on and riding along with equipment.
F.R.E.D. - E.O.T. - Fucking Rear End Device, End Of Train device. A small blinking red light on the back of the last car of a train.
Freeloader - A hobo.
Free lance passenger - Hoboes or train riders.
Freight, freights - A freight train. .
Frisk or shakedown - To search. It usually means search by the police. But train crews also go through the hobos.
Fruit tramps - A migratory (itinerant) who usually follows seasonal harvests by freight train.
Frog or frog eater - A Frenchman. A Canadian Frenchman is a pea soup.
Frog - The static portion of a switch which allows the wheel tread of a railroad car to cross from one track to the next.
Galvinizer - A car inspector.
Gandy gumbo - A hobo dish.
Gentlemen of the road - Hoboes that show signs of having been once white-collar workers.
Gentry - The leading natives of a place, the socially elect.
Get into the world quick - A child possessed of Wanderlust takes the first chance they can get to jump on a freight train.
Get the bell (verb) - A familiar term for orders or signal to depart. Get the bell, let's get outta here.
Ghosts - A tramp who pretends to be tubercular.
Ghost story - A plausible tale told to the housewife.
Give her the grit - A locomotive to usse sand on the rails.
Give him the works - To be given a job by a social agency, or sent to the rock pile by the judge.
Glims - Spectacles, or a light.
Go broke - To arrive somewhere. Also known as to blow in.
Go with the birds - To go south for the winter.
Going by hand - To walk. Hiking to the next water tank.
Going on the farm - When a train goes on the sidetrack. Also a railroad term.
Gondola - A short-sided, open-topped car used to hold scrap or garbage.
Gonger - An opium pipe. Source: American Tramp and Underworld Slang.
Good-dead - When applied to a criminal, much as the old frontiersman declared: "The only good Indian is a dead Indian." Source: American Tramp and Underworld Slang.
Graveyard shift - Night work, usually in the small or late hours.
Graveyard stew - Hot milk and toast.
Grease balls - A low life who lives off of things left behind by others.
Grease the track - Place grease on both rails so the wheels of the locomotive with spin and slow down the train on an uphill grade thus giving the hoboes chance to hop the train.
Greasy spoon - A railroad eating house. Bill of fare is colloquially known as switch list, fork is hook, butter is grease pot, hotcakes are blind gaskets, and beans are torpedoes.
Geese - Hoboes who prowl the night, these Waandering Willie most often steal from clothes lines.
Grifter - A petty swindler or confidence man. They may be one who operates a dishonest game of chance at a carnival or circus. They often drive a vehicle a stolen, unregistered, without insurance, not inspected and without a drivers license. When they become established to one place they may become squatters, often illegally connecting to utilities and other services. They take advantage of other people and that has become second nature to them in everything they do.
Grinder, grinders - Your teeth.
Grips - The bags trainman bring their personal belongs in for over-the-road work. Often black in color.
Guard rail - An extra section of rail placed inside the rail opposite a switch frog which prevents wheel flanges from taking the wrong path at the frog point.
Gummy - A hanger-on. A bum who goes along with the crowd but never contributes. A sort of dead head.
Gump - A chicken or a piece of meat.
Gunnells or guts - The truss rods or trucks of the train where hobos ride.
Gunsel - A young boy.
Gypsy - A wandering dark-skinned Caucasian people believed to have migrated to Europe from India, and known to be fortunetellers, musicians, etc. Also called Romany. To live or wander like a gypsy. A person who lives on the road, constantly traveling.
Hack - A caboose.
Haint - A ghost.
Hand car - An old-fashioned railroad pushcart used to inspect track or travel over it by pumping up and down on a see-saw hand lever. The older pushcart was moved by pushing a long pole against the ground, much like a keel boat.
Hand out - A parcel of food given out by the housewife. A lump.
Happy Hooligan - The hero - antihero of a hobo comic strip of the dame name, popular at the turn of the century and drawn by Zim and Opper.
Harness bull - A policeman who wears a uniform.
Hash house - A railroad restaurant or lunch stand. A cheap restaurant.
Haywire - When everything is balled up. A haywire outfit is something that is all tied and patched together.
Head end - The front of the train. In front of or near the engine.
Header - A freight yard worker who aligns track for arriving and departing trains.
Head lamp - One or more high intensity white lights on the head end of a train, engine or locomotive.
Hearse - A caboose.
Hermit - A hobo that travels by himself or sticks to himself.
Hide and seek - A hobo game practiced by traveling hoboes, now you see them, now you don't.
High-ball - A signal to start moving
High diver - A yegg who picks pockets.
High iron - The mainline track, so named because mainline track is made of heavier poundage and train stands higher off the ties than on yard track or spur lines.
High jacker - Yegg who robs hobos with a gun or by brute strength.
Hijack - A robbery.
Hillbilly, hillbillies - A person living in the backwoods or mountains of the Southern United States.
Hitch - Prison term or army term. Same as bit.
Hitting the grit - To be forced off a fast moving train.
Hitting the road - Getting back to riding the trains.
Hobby Hobo - A part-time hobo. A person who engages in hobo-like behavior (hopping freight trains, spending the night in hobo jungles) while on vacation from their full-time job and life. Also called: Weekend hobo.
Hobo - A migratory (itinerant) usually unskilled worker. Most respected in the "hobo hierarchy." The hobo is "independent." Unlike tramps or bums, the hoboes are usually very resourceful, self reliant and appreciative people. They avoid long term work commitments, preferring to be free to follow the call of the open road when it comes.
Hobo, hoboes, hobos, hoboing - One who wanders randomly from place to place looking for temporary homes and jobs.
Hobo alarm clock - A hobo term for a remote controlled switch which when activated awakens a sleeping hobo and alerts him to the approach of a train.
Hobo apple - Hobo apple is not a hobo expression or a food, it is an apple with the core removed and filled with peanut butter.
Hobo belt - These are areas in which y

Hobo Terminology
Adam and Eve on a raft - Two fried eggs on toast. "Wreck 'em" if they are scrambled. "With their eyes open," if not.
Adventure - The encountering of danger, exciting and deangerious undertaking
Alley - A clear track in a railroad yard.
Alligator bait - Fried or stewed liver. Too costly now for hobos.
American nomad - A hobo who has been across the nation many times.
Anchor - A pick. Companion tool of the shovel or banjo. See: Banjo.
Angel - A person who gives more than you expect. One who takes an interest without trying to reform you.
Angel food - A mission house sermon. A mission preaching about the Bread of Life.
Apple knockers - Apple pickers.
Babe - A woman.
Back door bumming - To seek food at the back door to limit embarrassment.
Backslider - A weak person.
Bad actor - A dangerous person.
Balloon - A bedroll. A roll of bedding carried on the back, a bindle.
Banjo - A short-handled shovel.
Batter - To beg.
Beanery - A railroad eating house. Beanery queen is a waitress.
Beggar -"Beg" is one of those words which isn't derived from anything; it has always meant exactly what it means. Any person who won't work, and who lives by asking complete strangers for aid, is either lazy, mentally ill, or a saint. Don't assume you can tell the difference.
Behind the eight ball - In a difficult position, in a tight spot.
Bicycle tramp - A tramp who travels by bicycle. Sometimes they put lawn mower motors on the bicyle so they don't always have to peddle. They carry their belongs on the bicycle.
Big house - Jail.
Big Rock Candy Mountains - Hobo's paradise, as described in song by Harry K. McClintock.
Big house - The state penitentiary.
Bim - A woman.
Bindle - A bedroll that contains all of the hobo's belongs.
Bindle stick - A walking stick, used by hobos, sometimes hand carved, and used to carry a bindle. The stick is also used to clear paths through dense brush or for protection. Oftentimes it is autographed as hobos meet one another during their travels.
Bitch - A tin-can lamp with a shirt-tail wick.
Black bottle - Deadly poison allegedly given hobos in hospitals. Many hobos believe this bottle exists. It was used to kill the sick and the poor. The last place a tramp would want to go when he got sick was a hosiptal. There the doctors and the nurses would force him to drink from a mysterious "black bottle" which would kill them.
Black hole -A tunnel.
Black snake - A solid train of loaded coal cars.
Blind baggage (1) - To ride the train out of sight, not to be seen.
Bo, boes - A slang term used to describe an experienced hobo. A term for a pal, "Hey, bo" Originally meant a natural exclamiation intended to surprise or frighten.
Bogyman or bogeyman - A goblin, bug bear, a hobgoblin. A real or imaginary object of dread. The bogeyman comes in the middle of the night with his sack and steals bad children out of their beds and they are never seen alive again. Mothers said this rhyme to scare bad children at night that ended, "The bogeyman will get you if you don't watch out."
Boneyard - Any graveyard. Also refers to a hospital, or to a medical college where they practice on the bodies of departed hobos.
Boob, boobs - A simpleton.
Book of rules - A rule book which governs all facets of railroad activity. Each railroad has its own book, which must conform to minimum Federal Railroad Administration safety standards.
Bootlegger - A train that runs over more than one railroad.
Boomer - A drifter who went from one railroad job to another, staying but a short time on each job or each road. This term dates back to pioneer days when men followed boom camps.
Boston bum - One of those superior fellows, a high brow poser. Many of them do come from Boston or thereabouts.
Bottle wagon - An iron coal-car.
Box - A boxcar.
Boxcar art - Hobo inscriptions of their monikers around handholds, and on inside walls of a boxcar.
Boxcar tourist - A hobo.
Bracelets - Handcuffs.
Brakeman - The person who tends brakes on a rail car and assists in the operation of a train.
Branch line - A secondary line of a railroad, not the main line.
Bread line - A line of persons waiting for food to be given out as a charity.
Bread wagon - A horse drawn bakery cart or wagon.
Broad or brod - A woman, generally young and oppoosite of bat or blister, which means an old woman.
Buggy - A caboose; rarely applied to other cars.
Bull - Special agent (railroad security person usually driving white American cars and trucks) in around railroad yard charged with security and with catching hoboes. A railroad policeman. Also called flatfoot or gumshoe, but the distinctive railroad terms are cinder dick and 'bo chaser
Bum - A non-migratory non-worker. A worthless or dissolute loafer who would rather beg than work for goods or services. Lowest in the "hobo hierarchy." It is a term of many meanings, but in its most authoritative uses it refers to the lowest of vagrants.
Bump gums - To talk about nothing worthwhile.
Bunkhouse - A hobo term for a refrigerator car's end or ice compartment, which when empty provided a safe place to ride the train.
Bunkie - A tent mate.
Busting a gut - Your gut is your stomach area. To bust a gut is to engage in very hard physical labor so hard that you ache all over, even in your gut.
Butts - Cigarettes. The stem of a cigar picked up on the street.
Buy a drink - To pour a drink.
Cab - The crew compartment of a locomotive.
Cabbage head - A person who has used so many drugs in a lifetime that physical recovery is impossible.
Cabin car - A caboose.
Caboose - The end of train, a non revenue car.
Cacklers - White collar workers.
Cajun hobo - A hobo from Louisiana. A hobo who rides boxcars but prefers to be bare foot and eat food with a knife.
Cake eater - The nice boy of the town. Not used much by hobos.
Calaboose - The police station or the town lock-up. The jail (from "calaboose," which derives from calabozo, the Spanish word for "jail").
Call boy - A messenger who ran messages from the depot to the train crew and back.
Candy - Candy kid is the fellow who gets the good breaks. Candy job is the pleasant job. Candy team is the favorite span of mules in the outfit.
Canned heat - The use of intoxicants to fend off cold weather riding on freight trains. Also called tokay blanket and hump.
Cannon - a six-shooter.
Catching or Caught the west bound - One who is dying or has died.
Catch out - Hop or jump on a freight train.
Cat house - A brothel, which is sometimes called a notch house.
Catter - A hobo who rides on platforms of cars, tenders of engines, and similar places.
Cat wagon - A brothel on wheels visiting the chaste villages of the middle west or following the harvest crews. .
Chow - Now a common word meaning food.
City bum - a tramp who hangs out only in the city and never leaves it.
Clown wagon - A caboose.
Coal heaver - A fireman, sometimes called stoker.
Code of the Road - It demands that each hobo or tramp hide his identity under a road name, a moniker. The code of the Road is the unwritten laws by which hobo life is governed by.
C.O.F.C. - T.O.F.C - Container On Flat Car - Trailer On Flat Car.
Coffin nail - A term for cigarettes.
Collar and shoulder style - Everything is put on the table and the hobo guest helps himself.
Con - A con is a tubercular person. The con is the conductor on a train. An ex-con is a former convict.
Con game - This refers to any kind of graft involving trickery.
Con man - A grafter or trickster. It may mean ex-convict.
Cradle - A gondola or other open-top car.
Creep joint - A whorehouse where the girls are pickpockets.
Crew Car - Another term for a caboose.
Crib - A caboose.
Crook, crooks - A thief.
Crowbar hotel - A jail. Also known as a blue bar hotel or pokey.
Dead head - Heading straight for home with out stopping or making any side trips.
Dead head (verb) To move a new crew ahead of their train by auto and another train.
Dead one - A drunken hobo. Also a hobo who has just spent all his money.
Dead picker - A yegg who robs a drunk or dead one. He kicks him first to see if he is dead to the world and then robs him.
Dead soldier - An empty whiskey bottle lying beside the road.
Departure yard - The freight yard from which a newly-assembled train leaves. Usually a special yard in a large railroad freight yard.
Derelict - A social outcast.
Dick - A policeman. An older term for a railroad bull.
Dingbat - An old hobo who mooches off of other hoboes.
Ditch a train - To get off a train.
Ditched - To be thrown off the train, to be caught without the money to pay the fare.
Dodger - A person who shirks his duties and evades his responsibilities neither for purposes of graft, nor out of fear, but simply out of a overwhelming distaste for labor.
Doghouse - A caboose or its cupola.
Doggin' it - Traveling by bus.
Double up - To travel in pairs, to move with a boy.
Doughnut Christians - Men who fake being saved only to get coffee and doughnuts sooner.
Drifter - One who travels in no certain direction or path of travel.
Drummer - A yard conductor.
Drunkard - A late Saturday-night passenger train.
Dry mission - A Mission which allows no one who has been drinking. Oftentimes, one must consent to a breath test to be admitted. If the test shows any alcohol whatsoever, the person is not admitted.
Dummies - A tramp who pretends to be mute.
Dump or joint - Hobo hangout or gathering place. It also applies to a restaurant or flophouse.
Dutch - As in "in dutch" - trouble.
Dutch act - To committed suicide.
Easy mark - A hobo sign or mark that identifies a person or place where you can get food, money, or a place to stay overnight.
Eat snowballs - To stay up North during the winter.
Economic argument - Soap-box talk about economics. Generally opposed to the religious argument called angel food.
End bunker - The compartment at each end of an obsolete ice refrigerator car where blocks of ice were placed to cool the perishable freight.
Engineer - The person or pilot who operates a train or locomotive.
Extra - A regular freight train which runs as an extra train when sufficient overload business stakes up.
Extra gang - A crew that works on the railroad track.
Eye doctor - A panhandler who can catch the eye of his client and hold it without quailing. Also a pederast.
Eye opener - An early morning drink, often begged from the bartender when he opens up in the morning.
Faded bogey - A negro acting as an informer.
Fagot or fag - A road kid with homosexual tendencies.
Fall guy - The goat. The fellow who gets caught. In the world of crime he is one who takes the rap without squealing.
Fink - A scab. One who takes a striker's job. Good hobos frown upon this practice.
Flag, flagman - A railroad worker who manually signals presence and movement of trains.
Flatfoot - A cop.
Flat busted - Completely broke; without any money.
Flicker - To faint or simulate fainting.
Flimflam - To swindle, hoax or to trick.
Flimflam man - A person who practices petty trickery or deception. They use nonsense and silly talk to con others out of their money or goods.
Flintstone Kids - The latest generation of hobos. More likely to have orange hair, skateboards, and fleece than scraggly beards and long wool coats. Also known as the nose ring nation.
Flip - To board a moving train. The word accurately suggests the motion used.
Flipped, flipping frights - Hoboes who jumped aboard without paying.
Flipping a rattler - To boarding a moving box-car.
Floating fraternity - Transients.
Fog - Steam.
Flop - To sleep or a place to sleep. To prone the body.
Flop house - A cheap lodging house or any hobo hotel.
Flunkey - Camp waiter. Always male. A woman is a hasher.
Fly-away - A deserter from the army or navy.
Foot board - The metal catwalk on locomotives and freight cars provided for walking, standing on and riding along with equipment.
F.R.E.D. - E.O.T. - Fucking Rear End Device, End Of Train device. A small blinking red light on the back of the last car of a train.
Freeloader - A hobo.
Free lance passenger - Hoboes or train riders.
Freight, freights - A freight train. .
Frisk or shakedown - To search. It usually means search by the police. But train crews also go through the hobos.
Fruit tramps - A migratory (itinerant) who usually follows seasonal harvests by freight train.
Frog or frog eater - A Frenchman. A Canadian Frenchman is a pea soup.
Frog - The static portion of a switch which allows the wheel tread of a railroad car to cross from one track to the next.
Galvinizer - A car inspector.
Gandy gumbo - A hobo dish.
Gentlemen of the road - Hoboes that show signs of having been once white-collar workers.
Gentry - The leading natives of a place, the socially elect.
Get into the world quick - A child possessed of Wanderlust takes the first chance they can get to jump on a freight train.
Get the bell (verb) - A familiar term for orders or signal to depart. Get the bell, let's get outta here.
Ghosts - A tramp who pretends to be tubercular.
Ghost story - A plausible tale told to the housewife.
Give her the grit - A locomotive to usse sand on the rails.
Give him the works - To be given a job by a social agency, or sent to the rock pile by the judge.
Glims - Spectacles, or a light.
Go broke - To arrive somewhere. Also known as to blow in.
Go with the birds - To go south for the winter.
Going by hand - To walk. Hiking to the next water tank.
Going on the farm - When a train goes on the sidetrack. Also a railroad term.
Gondola - A short-sided, open-topped car used to hold scrap or garbage.
Gonger - An opium pipe. Source: American Tramp and Underworld Slang.
Good-dead - When applied to a criminal, much as the old frontiersman declared: "The only good Indian is a dead Indian." Source: American Tramp and Underworld Slang.
Graveyard shift - Night work, usually in the small or late hours.
Graveyard stew - Hot milk and toast.
Grease balls - A low life who lives off of things left behind by others.
Grease the track - Place grease on both rails so the wheels of the locomotive with spin and slow down the train on an uphill grade thus giving the hoboes chance to hop the train.
Greasy spoon - A railroad eating house. Bill of fare is colloquially known as switch list, fork is hook, butter is grease pot, hotcakes are blind gaskets, and beans are torpedoes.
Geese - Hoboes who prowl the night, these Waandering Willie most often steal from clothes lines.
Grifter - A petty swindler or confidence man. They may be one who operates a dishonest game of chance at a carnival or circus. They often drive a vehicle a stolen, unregistered, without insurance, not inspected and without a drivers license. When they become established to one place they may become squatters, often illegally connecting to utilities and other services. They take advantage of other people and that has become second nature to them in everything they do.
Grinder, grinders - Your teeth.
Grips - The bags trainman bring their personal belongs in for over-the-road work. Often black in color.
Guard rail - An extra section of rail placed inside the rail opposite a switch frog which prevents wheel flanges from taking the wrong path at the frog point.
Gummy - A hanger-on. A bum who goes along with the crowd but never contributes. A sort of dead head.
Gump - A chicken or a piece of meat.
Gunnells or guts - The truss rods or trucks of the train where hobos ride.
Gunsel - A young boy.
Gypsy - A wandering dark-skinned Caucasian people believed to have migrated to Europe from India, and known to be fortunetellers, musicians, etc. Also called Romany. To live or wander like a gypsy. A person who lives on the road, constantly traveling.
Hack - A caboose.ou tend to find hoboes, or where they hang out. Such as, along railroad likes, streams and waterways close to the railroad lines, etc.
Hobo bill of fare - Messages left often on water tanks telling newcomers information about the local area.
Hobo canteen - Made out of big gallon jugs, milk jugs and pop bottles used, but anything glass is an accident waiting to happen, and everything around a freightyard is metal.
Hobo clan - These are members of the fraternity who share the common situation on life, that of having a career of being a hobo. They are the Brethren and Sisters of the Road. .
Hobo cocktail - Hobo cocktail is not a hobo expression but is Black-American slang for a glass of water.
Hobo code or rules - These are a set of unspoken rules that govern hobo gatherings. One, all pots lets should be clean for the next user. Two, no hobo was to rob or steal from a fellow hobo inside of the camp. Three, avoid angering the town's people who are a source of odd jobs and handouts. Four, Thievery is to be avoided, or at least kept to a minimum. Only an occasional pie, vegetables gathered from the garden, fruit from the orchard, a clean shirt from the clothesline. Five, breaking in to a house or threatening local people is a serious offense amongst hoboes, and can be punishable by death. Etc, etc. Other rules may be share work in camp, like volunteering to get water, gather firewood, share food for communal meals, etc. See: The outside world.
Hobo culture - Fundamentally the story of a hobo's life. The hobo's life on the rails by riding the rails embodies for him a distinct culture, a way of life. Riding the rails was and is certainly a dirtier more dangerous, uncomfortable way of getting around than hitching, and it was this culture than kept it popular. The day of the hobo is gone, perhaps forever. The hobo was essentially a wanderer. A free spirited human, who put his personal freedom ahead of hs desire for worldly gain. He was neither greedy nor competitive. The real hobo is purely and simply a wanderer at heart and enjoys this way of life. To work a few days and get a few bucks in his pocket to pay his way, then move on, is a hobo's idea of living in style. In the 1920's someone said, "the hobo works and wanders, the tramp dreams and wanders, the bum drinks and wanders." The hobo was keen to work and earn his way, the tramps move around, but the bums staying put.
Hoboett - A female hobo.
Hobo graveyard - The track side burial site of a deceased wayfarer, usually at or near the site of his or her demise.
Hobo heart - People who share the same core beliefs and views that of the hobo or tramp. It is where your heart is, on the road or riding the rails. They all share the same share our stew and fellowship.
Hobohemia - The universe of the hobo.
Hobo identity - Part of American culture and mythology, which romanticized the frontier and rugged individualism, as well as technological developments such as the railroad. As hobo culture developed an enormous amount of literature began to be published about hoboes by self-proclaimed hoboes.
Hoboland - A term used to describe life or living in the world of the hobo.
Hobo language - Hobos drew the symbols of this new language with chalk on sidewalks, or carved them into trees, walls or doors to help their fellow travelers. See: Hobo signs.
Hobo lifestyle - The philosophy and personal experience with riding the rails. A free spirit traveler.
Hobo luck - When a hobo hits a new town, he believes that if he is turned down at the first
place he goes to, his luck will be poor in that town, and vice versa.
Hobo marks - Graffiti inscribed on train cars, buildings and railroad stuctures by hoboes placing their nicknames in chalk. In Germany this is now almost extinct. See: A-No.1 and J.B. King.
Hobo News - A newpaper started by James Eads How with articls on social and politica issues along with puns and jokes.
Hobo nickel - Originally carved nickels made out of wood, then later hoboes used actual US Minted nickels or 5 cent pieces.
Hobo night hawks - Police who disguise themselves as hoboes and search the trains at night for hoboes. The dead give-a-way is a lantern or flash light as they open boxcar doors searching for hoboes.
Hobo proof - A railroad line that offers a reward to any hobo who can successfully ride their hobo proof railroad.
Hobo Road - Hoboes that are currently on the road at the present time. Some hoboes have done it in the past, but the time line has moved on and they are no longer on the Hobo Road at the present time.
Hobo signs (1) - Beginning in the 1880's up until World War Two, hoboes placed markings on fences, posts, sidewalks, buildings, trestles, bridge abutments, and railroad line side equipment to aid them and others of their kind in finding help or steering them clear of trouble. Usually, these signs would be written in chalk or coal letting others know what they could expect in the area of the symbol. The classic American hobo of the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries communicated through a basic system of markings, a code though which they gave information and warnings to their fellow Knights of the Road. Today hoboes communicate with cellular phones, and e-mail.
Hobo stew - A stew cooked in a large pot made of small pieces of meat, potatoes, onions, carrots or other vegetables and herbs found in the area. Also see Mulligan stew.
Hobo stove (1)- They are made out of discarded 5 gal. buckets that were used to carry railroad spikes. With a good knife and a pair of pliers, you make a row of openings around the bottom like a can opener would, and flip it upside down and cut out a small door. Then you can scratch out a little ditch and set this over it and build a fire inside. Gets hot enough to cook on and at night you can't see the fire over about 20 foot.
Hobo symbols - The symbols or signs were usually used one at a time. Each of these symbols
represents a particular direction or warning, such as "Beware of dangerous dog", "A kind lady lives here", "People here will give you food for work", "this is a safe place to camp", etc. While these crude symbols were almost humorous appearance, they served a deadly serious purpose. They helped travelers to find work, food, and safe shelter in a difficult, often dangerous world. See: Hobo signs.
Hobo tent - Most 'bo's got a tent or tarp. You can lose your equipment most any time out there, due either to misjudgement of a train, or of people you're around, so knowing how to make a tent or at least get a good ground cloth is good stuff to know.
Hobo ticket - To hop or ride a freight train that is the price of the ticket.
Hobo Times - A publication that was published by the National Hobo Association.
Hobo union - A group of hoboes that have been crippled and disfigured hopping freight trains. Some tramps who had lost limbs or fingers had such monikers as sticks, fingers, lefty, or mitts.
Hobos versus Tramps - Some say hobos originally traveled to work, and tramps traveled for the sake of travel. Others say a tramp is a hobo west of the Mississippi and a hobo is a tramp east of the Mississippi. Others use the terms interchangeably.
Hobo walking stick - A hobo's is afraid of a big dog, dogstory, the carry a staff, walking stick. Many were carved and made into hobo art.
Hog - A locomotive.
Hogger - A term for an engineer.
Hoghead or hogger - The engineer. This is also a railroad term.
Hold down - To ride a great distance across the country without getting off to hunt for food, etc.
Home guard - Local tramps who don't ride.
Honey dipping - Working as a shovel stiff in a sewer, or any kind of unpleasant shovel work.
Honor of old age - A recognition of the Patriarch as a leader.
Hooch - Liquor. Source: American Tramp and Underworld Slang.
Hooker - A drink of strong liquor, as in "It took a stiff hooker of whiskey."
Hooks - Getting caught by the hands of John Law. As in, they will get their hooks in you if you go into that town.
Hookshop - A brothel.
Hooligan - A young hoodlum, a petty gangster.
Hoosier - The natives, generally simple fellows. Also called yaps, hicks or rubes.
Hoodwink - To trick or deceive.
Hopins - Potatoes and vegetables.
Hopper - Covered grain car, also called a grainier.
Hopping - Riding the rails.
Horse-style - Any unfriendly hostile town to hoboes. Their way of saying: hostile style.
Host - The railroad line on which a hobo is riding.
Hot box - An overheated journal box which is not detected in time that can cause fires and derailments.
Hot freight yard - A freight yard which employs one or more gung-ho bulls. Also see bull and gung-ho bull.
Hotel-de-Tramp - A "register" of tramp monikers on a railroad structure such as a water tank. A hobo or tramp must climb the water tank to register his moniker to be considered allowed to stay in the Hotel-de-Tramp. See: Name-de-road.
Hotbox - Overheated journal or bearing. Also called hub. This was a frequent cause of delay in the old days but is virtually nonexistent on trains that are completely equipped with ball-bearings. Trainmen are sometimes called hotbox detectors.
Hot squat - American tramp slang for the electric chair.
Hotshot - A train with high priority over other traffic. Fast train; frequently a freight made up of merchandise and perishables. Often called a manifest or redball run. A fast freight or passenger train.
Hot stuff - Stolen goods. Something that must be dropped.
Hotel de Gink - A charitable or a municipal lodging house. A series of residences where hoboes could eat, sleep, shave, and bath when times were tough. They were started by hobo Jeff Davis.
Hot train - Train with a high priority, usually heavily loaded with goods going to market. Other trains must often pull over at sidings to allow hot trains to pass.
Hot yard - Rail yard actively patrolled by unfriendly bulls.
House dog - A fellow who goes about hunting jobs, cleaning windows, beating carpets, etc.
Hump - Low hill in a switching yard used for sorting cars by gravity. In the hole - Waiting at a rail siding, usually for a train with higher priority to pass.
Hunkydory - Everything is fine.
Hut - a brakeman's shelter just back of the coal bunkers on the tender tank of engines operating through a tunnel. May also refer to caboose, locomotive cab, switchman's shanty, or crossing watchman's shelter.
Ice (verb) - To place blocks of ice into the end or ice bunker of an old reefer car.
Ice-boxes - A refrigerated box
Idler - A lazy person.
In heat - For a female animal (in this case, a dog), to be in heat is to be in a state of sexual excitement when she will accept mating from a male.
In hot water -To be in hot water is to be in trouble.
In the clear - A train is in the clear when it has passed over a switch and frog so far that another train can pass without damage.
In the hole - a train on a siding.
In the hole, into the hole - A term for a train which is standing on a siding waiting for another train to pass, conduct business or repair an equipment failure. A train is in the hole.
Itineracy - Traveling, journeys. Following a planned route of travel. A detailed or record account of a journey.
In transit - Riding the trains. In the summer the entire tramp fraternity may be said to be "in transit."
I-Wobble-Wobble - The I.W.W. whose nickname is "wobbles." I go after "slave wages." They take the lowest, most miserable labor that industrialism produces.
Jack roll - To rob.
Jack roller - A thief.
Jack Wanderlust - The evil spirit of unrest.that makes boys copy the ways of the hobo.
Jail bait - A girl below the legal age of consent for sex; an underage girl who tempts a man to sexual intimacy which is punishable by imprisonment
Jail bird - A fellow who brags about his vag record.
Jailhouse spuds - Waffled potatoes.
Jam nuts - Doughnuts.
Java - Coffee.
Jazz - Sexual intercourse.
Jigger - A strong solution of lye (paint acid) used by hoboes on sores.
Jerry gang - See gandy dancer.
Jerusalem Slim - Slang name for Christian god-man.
Jiggers - A common name given to tramps that others should "watch out!" for.
Jimtown - Jamestown, New York.
Jocker - An experienced hobo, usually in a kind of master-apprentice relationship with a breshun.
John Family - A term is sometimes applied to the farmers, sometimes to the police and again to the yeggs.
John Law - A name for the police or the legal system.
Joint - The point in bolted-rail track or joint end where two rails meet and are bolted together. Joints cause the railroad's clickity-clack.
Joint rail - A hobo term for bolted rail track.
Jolt - A jail sentence.
Journal box - The point of contact between freight car tracks and axles where internal lubricants reduce friction heat and provide for a smooth ride. A source for grease used in hobo first aid.
Jugs - Banks.
Jungle - Hobo's camp site. A hobo's summer home.
Jungle buzzard - A bum who loafs about the jungle begging from the hobos. .
Jungle-out - To wait or sleep in a jungle., I was jungled out when the border patrol rousted me.
Jungle up - Many wanderers (hoboes and tramps) would settle for the night in groups. These areas would be known as hobo jungles. To jungle-up is to camp out for the evening in the company of other like companions of the road.
Junker or junky - A fellow who uses drugs, called junk.
Junkie - A drug user. A heroin addict.
Jumping a train car - Meaning to never go home again, like the life of a wander or a rover.
Kangaroo court - A mock court held in jail for the purpose of forcing new prisoners to divide their money. A thief was stripped of all his clothing except his underwear and shoes. If the theif was on a train, he was told to "jump."
Keister - A suit case. Not often carried by hobos.
Kick - A pocket in the trousers.
Kick it apart - To lay out the details. Source: American Tramp and Underworld Slang.
Kicks - Shoes. Also called slides.
Kid simple - A nickname for a silly, stupid, foolish young kid with no experience of the road.
Kid tramp - Another name for a young kid on the Road.
Killing time - Having nothing to do or no place to go.
King of the Hoboes - An unofficial title awarded by fellow hoboes to a hobo on the road.
King of the Road - A title given to celebrate the hobo experience on the open road, one who is best schooled and educated in the lifestyle of the hobo. The National Hobo Convention awards the title each year and crowns a new King of the Road. In the golden age of the hobo (1880 until World War 1) it was an honor given by an unofficial vote of the hoboes on the road, to someone who survived, the most experienced and respected hobo of them all. "King of the Road," is also the title of a song by Roger Miller's greastest hit. "Third boxcar midnight train, destination Bangor, Maine. Old worn out suit and shoes, I don't pay no union dues. I smoke old stogies I have found, short but not too big around. I'm a man of means by no means, king of the road."
Knight - A soldier of the "Road."
Knights of the Road or Knights of the Rail - Another name for a hobo.
Knock about - See: Bum.
Knowledge box - Country school house where hobos sometimes sleep.
Lamb - A boy tramp or road kid. Boy companion of the wolf.
Lambs- An inexperienced young men or road kids.
Lambing - To herd sheep, a job avoided by respectablehobos.
Layabout - A person who is an idler.
Leather poke - A wallet.
Lee of a reefer - The ice-box in a refrigerator car.
Library - A cupola of caboose. Trainman occupying it was sometimes known as a librarian.
Library birds - Down and outers who loaf or roost in libraries.
Lighthouse - Stingy person. A procurer for a house of sin. Also one who is placed to watch for the bulls.
Limpy - A cripple. If he has a wooden leg he is peg.
Little Red Card - The membership card of the I.W.W. union. See Wobblies.
Little red wagon - A dump wagon.
Little school - A reformatory or house of correction.
Live off the fat of the land - The fat of the land is an expression that refers to having the best of everything. A place where the land is so "fat" you will need nothing else to be happy. A place where you can survive and prosper with out having to earn it, you just take what you need.
Lizzie tramps - The hitch-hikers and again to wandering families traveling in automobiles.
Loafer - From the German word for "land-runner," one who wanders around the countryside." Loaf, as a verb, is a back-formation from "loafer," and ought to be used to described someone who
travels around aimlessly.
Local - A trains that moves freight and materials on a short line.
Long haul trains - A long distance train, usually a minimum of 500 miles.
Looloo - A sexy woman.
Louse - A fellow who will steal the shoes of a hobo who befriends him.
Louse cage - a caboose.
Lowball - An old signal positioning of a ball on a mast. When the ball dropped down the mast this signified sow down or stop. Also see highball.
Lusher - A drunkard.
Lump - Food received at the back door; a handout.
Main guy - Same as captain. Refers to the person in charge.
Main stem - The chief hobo street in town.
Man-catcher - The shark's assistant who urges a job on the hobo - usually to fill a shipment of men.
Manifest - What the train is carrying. Fast freight carrying fruit or cattle.
Mark - A mark is a person or place good for food, clothes or money, but not advice.
Master of the Road - A hobo or tramp who knows the ways of the Road. He is an insider.
Milk wagon - A horse drawin milk cart or wagon. They drip water from melting ice.
Mission stiff - Tramp who stays in a mission or homeless shelter most of the year. Man who gets "saved" for food and a flop. A "retired" hobo or tramp who "gives up the road" for various reasons. Often, one will be forced to become a "stiff" due to health or age, but for some, this is the first step toward self-sufficiency and these persons become a vital part of society.
Moll - A woman who pals with hobos. This term is not used much by the hobos themselves.
Mooch - To beg, usually at back doors, or to steal.
Moocher - One who steals or takes without paying.
Mooching - A low form of begging.
Moper - A bum who is even lower than a moocher.
Mouthpiece - A lawyer.
Mud - Strong coffee mixed with weak milk.
Mug - A person's face.
Mulligan stew - Stew made from the combined contributions of everyone who wants some. A group of hoboes gathered around the jungle fire can keep a pot of stew perpetually refreshed by each contributing one thing- a scrap of bacon, a half-biscuit, a withered carrot stolen from someone's garden. No matter how small or mean the contributions are, as long as they are freely given the stew will be rich, warming, and nutritious, and the pot will stay full until everyone who contributes has had his fill.
Munie - A term for a municipal lodging house.
Mushfaker - A go-about itinerant repair man. He may solder pots or mend umbrellas. Sometimes hobos follow the art.
Nail - To hop a train.
Nailed - To successfully have hopped a train.
Newcomer - A hobo who has only recently arrived.
Newspaper beds - Sleeping on a bed and covered with newpapers.
Nickel note - A five-dollar bill.
Night walkers - These are people who police believed do not belong to the area and have no means of supporting themselves. They were often whipped and banished from town or sent to a workhouse
Nose bag - A lunch handed out in a paper sack.
Number 10 gunboat can - A number 10 can used for brewing coffee, cooking, urinating of defecating in.
Nuttery - A hospital for the insane. Also a nut factory.
O. B. U. - One Big Union. The ideal of the soap boxers.
Obeys - Post offices.
Ocean tramp - A type of tramp that travel from place to place by ocean travel. Often they get jobs working on commercial vessels, working as part of the crew. When they land in port they shortly get the urge to travel once again. It may not be for the love of salt air on their faces because often they have hard working jobs below deck. Perhaps being on land makes them feel connected or tied down and they may simply love the feeling of open water below their feet.
Odd fellows - A fraternal symbol meaning three doughnuts and coffee.
Often just "bull"- A security agent hired by the rail companies to keep the yards clear of tramps and hobo's.
Off-shift - A locomotive which is not in service.
Oilcan train - A train made up of mainly or exclusively of tank cars.
Old timers - These are experienced hoboes, who have been on the Road, and know the ways of the road.
Organ grinder - A profitable begging device, a barrel organ, that uses a trained monkey.
Old airedale - An old hobo who's spent his whole life on the road. Airedales seldom ride the trains at that age, instead walking wherever they go.
One-eyed bandit - A term for a boxcar with one door open and the other one shut.
On the hummer - Being on the bum but not down and out.
On the bum - Living the life of a vagrant.
On the fly - Getting on or off a freight train which has slowed down but not stopped. Also called "on the run."
On the road - Pertaining to a lifestyle whose adherents are on an extended trip or have no permanent home.
On the uppers - Being on the bum and nearly down and out.
Open-air navigator - A hobo riding freight on top.
Open Road - The system of railroad rails that can take you any where you have a mind to go or travel. As in the call of the "Open Road."
Opposing train - A train which approaches your train in the opposite direction.
Oscar - To walk away. Source: American Tramp and Underworld Slang.
Ossified - To get arrested.
Outside world, The - Any one not living in the world of Trampdom. It has its rules and regulations or code of ethics involves relations with the outside world. See: Hobo code or rules.
Overland - A long distance train or a train used for traveling long distances.
Over the road - Any track outside of the yard limits.
Packing the mustard - Carrying the hod.
Padding the hoof - Going by foot. A practice good hobos avoid.
Paddy-sticks - Usually sledgehammer handles carried by shacks.
Palooka - A roving boxer who lives in the past.
Pan, panning - To beg on the street, some times with a J. B. Stetson felt hat.
Pariahs of Society - A social outcast.
Panhandle - To beg on the street.
Paul Bunyan - A chronic, but none the less interesting, liar.
Pay station - A social welfare agency that gives out money. Very rare.
Pay streak - To have a job that pays well.
Pearl diver - A dishwasher.
Peanut farm - A workhouse where the inmates crack stones.
Pea soup - A french Canadian or Canuck. Often a lumber jack.
Peddler or bob tail - A short local freight train.
Pedicant - A young haughty or nasty male bitch.
Peg - A one legged person.
Peg house - A place where, if the hobo wishes, he may meet Angelina.
Pennsylvania salve - Apple butter.
Petticoat hobo - A female hobo.
Peoria - A thin soup. Generally potato water with salt.
The philosophy of tramping - Is a Ttramp's code of ethics.
Phoney man - A person who peddles cheap jewelry.
Picture frame - The gallows. Source: American Tramp and Underworld Slang.
Pie card - One who hangs around and lives on a remittance man or some other person with money.
Pie in the sky - One's reward in the hereafter. Source: American Tramp and Underworld Slang.
Piggyback - A flat train car that holds trucks or containers.
Pig's vest with buttons - Sow belly, or any fat bacon.
Pig train - A piggyback train, one composed of flat cars carrying truck trailers.
Piker - A hobo or tramp who walks.
Pile driver or Java - Coffee, but good strong coffee.
Pill peddler - The camp doctor. The label may fit any M. D.
Pin-money - An allowance of money or money to be able to pay for minor incidental expenses.
Pisshouse - A jail.
P. K. - The principal keeper of the little school.
Pimp stick - A cigarette. Source: American Tramp and Underworld Slang.
Pinched - To be jailed.
Pin puller - A brakeman or switchman.
Playing the spoons - Some hoboes have learned how to read a man's fortune in the rhythm of a pair of spoons. These spoon men are usually old Airedales who have left off riding the crates... they stay by the fires in the camps and jungles, tapping out the future against their knee in exchange for a half-can of beans or a strip of jerky.
Pogey - The workhouse. Sometimes the poor farm.
Points - The movable portion of a switch which allows the flanged wheel tread of a railroad car to cross from one track to the next.
Poison - A woman who is poison is one who can only mean trouble, especially to a man. Also can be your favorite drink.
Poke - A leather wallet. Also a gin mill.
Poorhouses - A public run establishment maintainedas a dwelling for paupers.
Poor roads of travel - These were the turnpikes of America after the Civil War. It was easier to walk the railroad tracks, and then these train men discovered it was easier to ride the train than walk the tracks.
Possum belly - To ride on top of a passenger train.
Possum drunk - Playing drunk to obtain information.
Potatoes and with it - A western jungle dish.
Potter's Field - A burial ground for the destitute ans the unknown in unmarked graves.
Pound your ear - To sleep in a bed.
Private varnish - A privately-owned beautifully appointed passenger car which can be leased or rented to individuals or companies.
Prize Tramps - These are hoboes and tramps who have learned the stock and trade of the Road.
Prone the body - To lie down and rest.
Proper tramp - One who follows the code of the Road.
Punk - A road kid. Often used in derision.
Punk and Gut - Bread and cheese.
Punk and plaster route - Traveling among the Pennsylvania Dutch.
Pusher - The straw boss. One in charge of the job.
Pushes - A gang.
Pussyfooter - A railroad policeman.
Put the boots to - To have sexual intercourse. Source: American Tramp and Underworld Slang.
Queer - Crooked, criminal. Source: American Tramp and Underworld Slang.
Raggedly man - A person who wears torn or worn clothing into rags. Wearing worn, frayed, or shabby garments. A person of rough or uneven character or aspect.
Ragman, rag picker - One who gathers and sells rags, and other junk for a living. The rag man would go through the neighborhoods in his horse drawn wagon, singing, "Rags! Rags!, Got any rags today?.........."
Railroad bull - A railroad policeman. See Bull.
Railroad cop - A railrad policeman. See Bull.
Railroad dick - A railroad policeman. See Bull.
Railroad or road flare - Road signal torches or lights. Engineers will even give them to you. Made of phospherous They'll start wet wood on campfire fire in the rain. They will keep man or beast out of stricking distance for about 10 minutes. They are hot enough a drop of it will go clear thru whatever it lands on. They can be used to bring water to a boil for coffee or soup, and they make a good firestarter
Rail rider - A person, most generally a hobo, who rides freight trains, usually illegally. Some know the engineers and are able to ride in the engine com-partment rather than in a box care or grainer.
Railroaded - Haven ridden or used to make reference to when some one rides a train.
Railroad fever - A malady for tramps call the victims of which there is no remedy. They are unable to settle down anywhere, and they must be constantly riding the trains. Only death ends their roaming of hopping the freight trains. A sickness that even A-No.1 had that he could never cure himself of but wanted to prevent others especially young kids. The only cure or rest was death.
Railroading - Not a railroad workers term but it means to take up riding the trains by hobos.
Railroad spike - Not a term but the actual object carried by many hoboes, to keep the railroad yardman from closing the door on them, which could result in him freezing to death or suffocating, as some freight cars were pushed into the rail yard and out of use for weeks at a time. Hoboes some times painted the tips or heads a color so they could identify as theirs.
Rail tramp - See: Tramp.
Ramble - To ramble (a Middle English for "roam") means to wander for pleasure, without a fixed destination.
Rambler - A through freight train.
Rank cats - The lowest of the genus bum.
Rat crusher- A box-car burglar. See "eight-wheeler". Probably from the "rattler" or fast freight train in which the "rat crusher" finds his loot. Source: American Tramp and Underworld Slang.
Rattler - A fast train, same as cannonball. In the West a box-car. A train.
Rattlers - A hobo who ride freight trains.
Rattle the hocks off her - to drive a freight train at high speeds causing the freight cars to shake, rattle and to roll.
Rat workers - They are box car burglers.
Razor back - A circus roustabout. Also an Arkansas hog.
Reading the rails - By hunkering down and putting your hand on a rail that's still warm from a train's passage, you can sometimes divine something about the train that just passed, or about a specific person on it, or about the places the rails eventually lead to.
Red card - I.W.W. membership card. See Wobbly.
Red cross - Morphine. Source: American Tramp and Underworld Slang.
Red lead - Ketchup. Source: American Tramp and Underworld Slang.
Redline - To condemn or scrap an old freight car.
Reefer - A refrigerated box car. Like many another railroad term it also belongs to the hobo's lingo.
Regional railroad - A smaller than a Class 1 line haul railroad which serves a specific region of the country.
Ride the cushions - To ride in a passenger train.
Ride the bumpers - Riding a freight car by straddling its coupler with one's legs.
Ridin' 'em high - Traveling on tops of boxcars.
Riding the cushions - Riding de luxe in a passenger train.
Riding the deck - Riding any railroad car on the roof. Not safe.
Ridin' the rods - An old-time hobo practice, now virtually obsolete. The hobo would place a board across truss rods under a car and ride on it. This was very dangerous even in pleasant weather, and the possibility was ever present that you might doze, get careless, become too cramped, or lose your nerve-and roll under the wheels.
Riding the blinds -To ride a train by swinging onto the vestibule at the front end of the baggage car, usually just behind the engine tender. This practice was deceptively dangerous; if the train "slacked off" while you were trying to squeeze through to the vestibule, the cars would come together and crush you in an instant.
Riding the rods - To ride a train by lying on a board set across the truss rods underneath, or sometimes just hanging on for dear life. Not as common by the 1930's, since train cars were no longer built with truss rods.
River rat - Someone who spends their life around the rivers and waterways. They would rather travel from place to place using inland waterways and rivers for travel. Also some one who lives in shacks, house boats, etc. along the rivers and waterways.
The Road - Living the life of a hobo.
Road bums - Another name for hoboes.
Road burn - A modern term, a state of mind one slips into after being "on the road" too long.
Road dog - Someone who hops trains. Someone who calls the road home, such as a hobo.
Road-kid - Young person who belongs to a gang.
Road kill - A dead animal found on the road. A dead animals in general.
Road news - This is information about what is happening on the Road. This is spread from the campfire, word of mouth, and by information left in hobo signs and monikers.
Roadsters - A name for hoboes or tramps (young and old) who travel the road.
Road wisdom - Having enough knowledge to survive on the Road.
Robbing the mail - Snatching food and milk delivered at the doorstep early in the morning.
Rock pile - A place, town or county lockup that puts prisons to work on the rock pile.
Rod - The metal struts underneath the floor of old freight cars, etc., which provided for structural integrity.
Rods - The underside structure of a freight car.
Roll - To roll means to rob a sleeping drunk.
Rolling a train - A hobo canvassing a train for prospective freight cars to ride, for a crew, inspecting a passing train for equipment or cargo problems
Roll out - To bed down for the night - by rolling out one's blanket or sleeping bag.
Roofers - A hobo who lay stretched out full length upon the metal roof of a passenger coach.
Roof walks - Wooden catwalks down the center of old boxcar roofs, used by 19th century brakeman to run from boxcar to boxcar in set and release hand brakes.
Romany rye - A person not a gypsy but who associated with gypsies, speaks their language.
Round house - A round building with a turntable in the center for housing and switching locomotives.
Roughneck - A freight brakeman.
Rubber hobo - A hobo that travels across the country in a rubber tired automobile, usually an older vehicle.
Rubber tramp - A tramp who owns a car, usually rusted out and undependable. They spend a lot of energy begging for gas money, but also provide transportation to other cities to bums, hobos and tramps for a fee. In a sense, they become a nationwide "taxi" service for transients.
Rustling the bums - Searching a freight train for hobos. In bygone days it was common practice for trainmen to collect money from freight-riding 'bos, often at the rate of a dollar a division.
Sagebrush philosopher - A gabby fellow from the West.
Sallies - Salvation Army hotels and industrial workshops.
Sap - The policeman's persuader. To get sapped means to be clubbed by the bulls.
Saps - A blackjack used by railroad bulls to beat hoboes.
Saw-by - When two freight trains meet on a single track mainline and one too long for the siding has to go into the hole, the shorter train passes the near tend of the longer train which is clear on the siding. While the shorter train approaches the far siding the longer train snakes through the siding and clears that end for the shorter train.
Scalawag - A worthless person or scamp.
Scamp - A rogue, or a good-for-nothing.
Scenery bums - These are hoboes who had money, so they avoided begging, they did not stay around long amd so they got off the road well before the fridged winter.
Scrape the mug - To shave. Source: American Tramp and Underworld Slang.
Scrape the pavement - To get a shave. Also to get tossed out of a building.
Scrappy - Aggressive; fond of fighting and arguing.
Screw your nut - To get wise to yourself.
Scoffing - To eat. To scoff regularly means to miss no meals.
Sea food - A sailor.
Second hand - An over-the-road railroad track repair worker.
Sell it to me - Trying to make me believe.
Set-down - To eat with your feet under the table. The reverse of the handout.
Sewer hogs - Ditch diggers.
Shack - A brakeman, occupant of caboose. Shacks master is a conductor. A railroad term.
Shacks - The brakemen.
Shackles - Soup. Source: American Tramp and Underworld Slang.
Shakedown - The same as frisk.
Shanty - A hastily built shack or cabin, a ramshackle dwelling.
Shark - A man who sells jobs to the hobos.
Sheets - Newspapers for a bed.
Shiner - A brakeman's or switchman's lantern.
Shop master - A railroad employee who oversees the work of shop workers. Also see shop worker.
Shop worker- A "non-railroad" freight yard worker who builds, rebuilds or repairs rolling stock, such a machinist, electricians, sheet metal workers, boiler workers, blacksmiths, painters, pipe fitters, and their apprentices.
Shoo fly - A railroad detour, when a track is built around some obstacle. Also means to avoid passing through a town if the police are hostile.
Short line railroad - A very small railroad with track from 1 to 150 miles in total length. Many are owned by a mine or manufacturing company.
Shuttle bum - A hobo that uses a transportation system to get from one point to another. May have originally applied to an out of work, itinerant textile worker.
Side-door Pullman - A box-car, a closed car. A boxcar used by hobos in stealing rides. Hobo's home en route.
Sitdown - An invitation to the kitchen table.
Slum - A derisive term for an uninviting stew or slumgullion.
Smell from the barrel, bottle or bag - To have a drink.
Smoke - A strong liquor. Denatured alcohol.
Smoky hole - A tunnel.
Snag - This is anything (metal straps, loads, wood or wire, etc.) hanging off the sides of a freight car which could hit and injure someone walking or standing nearby. A brakeman's and hobo's headache.
Snake - A railroad switchman. Hobo and railroad term for switchman. A snake is more friendly than a shack to the hobos.
Snipes - Other people's cigarette butts
Soapboxers - One who always has a story to tell.
Song and dance - To give the madam at the backdoor an interesting and entertaining argument.
Spotter - A late 19th century and early 20th century railroad employed bull whose job it was to infiltrate railroad unionization efforts and identify the perpetrators for blackballing. Also see bull.
Stake - Earned money or wages.
Stamp collectors - Tramps who travel from town to town collecting food stamps along a circuit.
Sterno - A dangerous alcoholic drink made by heating sterno can.
Sterno drunk - A transient who drinks steno, cheap wine, shoe polish or anything else he can get his hands on. Also see stern stove.
Stiff - A tramp.
Stir - A state prison. The big house or big school.
Stool pigeon - An informer, a rat, one who betrays to the police. See bull and spotter.
Straight and narrow - The way to eternal life and salvation. A term often used by A-No.1. Also to lead a clean life and stay off the tracks.
Stock pen - A yard office.
Stogy - An inexpensive cigar.
Summer hobo - Not really a hobo term, usually a college student that is homeward bound for vacation.
Surfing - Riding on the tops of rail cars while they are moving
Swamper - The person who cleans out the bar-room.
Sweet back - A hobo sheik who is only sampling hobo life.
Switch - A section of railroad track which allows a train to change tracks. A danger to anyone walking along the track in a line or freight yard which catches a foot by wedging or movement of remote switch tracking when a train suddenly comes along.
Switchman - A freight yard worker who assists in assembling of trains and alignments of tracks as ordered.
Switch stand - A manual (hand-thrown) or automatic (power-thrown) mechanism located at the points end of a switch. This mechanism throws switches from one track to another by means of the operating rod.
Tally - Meaning, "I understand," or "Count me in on it."
Tamp up - To assault or beat.
The big hook - A giant railroad crane used to clean up railroad wrecks.
The biscuits hang high - There's a scarcity of food handouts in a locality.
Thin ones - Small coins; dimes, nickels and pennies.
Ticket - A board board about a foot or a foot and a half long, with a groove cut in it. The groove would fit down over the rod, and made a seat for riding the rods.
Tin cans - Used by hoboes as cookware and as drinking cups. Tin cans they use for fruits, you
know, the kind that are coated on the inside. They're safe to cook out of, without fear of poisoning, and about 3 in different sizes can make up a whole cookin outfit.
Tin horn - A petty sport hanging around the main stem. He is sometimes called a rustler.
Tin roof - A free drink. So-called because it is "on the house."
Tip the office - To warn a fellow hobo by giving some signal.
Toadskins - Paper money.
Toppings - The dessert. Something toothsome to touch off a meal.
Town clown - The village constable. The town policeman.
Train-hoppers - People who ride trains without paying.
Train-hopper's kit - Such things include ear plugs, goggles, gloves, cardboard, a board, etc.
Trainman - Any member of an over-the-road train crew. See engine man.
Train time - The clock tramps live by, characterized by train schedules rather than a 24-hour day.
Tramp - A migratory non-worker.
Tramp art - Art work made by itinerants and hoboes. Generally made out of wood and is carved making use of simple tools, such as a pocketknife. hoboes making pieces in exchange for room or a meal became the romantic myth for tramp art.
Tramp essentials - They are: water is one of them, because if you're out it's the hardest thing to find. Every self-respecting tramp should carry a can opener, a knife, a spoon, tobacco, something to start a fire with. Candles are used to keep warm on wintertime trains. There's an amazing amount of heat cast by one candle, if you huddle in blankets around it.
Tramp traveler - One whose main occupation is to travel, a tramp.
Transient - The word "transient" is basically a work used to describe individuals who do not fit into other categories. When one gets to know a bit more about the individual, it can be determined what kind of transient he might be.
Trapeze artist - A hobo who rides the gunnells or rods.
Traveler - These are persons who are very similar to a hobo or tramp, but do not relate to being a hobo or tramp. They are usually antiestablishment much like the "hippies" of the 1950's and 1960's.
Traveler or traveller - A person who travels.
Turkey - A bundle, a suitcase or a canvas bag.
Turned down - Refused a mean or handout.
Twist a dream - To roll a cigarette.
Two-bit - Two-bit is American and Candian slang for worth next to nothing; cheap
Umbrella mushrooms - The itinerant umbrella fixers who travel around as hoboes or tramps.
Uncle Sam - A railway Post Office clerk.
Undercarriage - That portion of a freight car underneath the floor or chassis.
Uneducated - The act of confessing something you should not or did not do, having no smarts.
V - Five dollars. Source: American Tramp and Underworld Slang.
Vag or vag 'em - To be jailed or fanned out of town for being a vag.
Vagabond - One who wanders from place to place without any visible means of support. A tramp who wanders aimless.
Vagrant - A person without a settled home, vagabond or tramp. Many be one who wanders about or just has no place to go.
Vagrant (3)- From the Latin for "wander," vagrant should be used as a romantic adjective for "undecided."
Vampires of the road - These are gangs that often stick to one railroad line. They rob from hoboes. They wear black shirts and slouched hats.
Wander, wander, wandering - To move or travel about

Great Great

Way to Go, Gnostic Guy!

A Little Matter Of Genocide

Metaphysics of Indian Hating and Empire Building (1980), a volume . The title of the book is taken from a statement by Russell Means, founder of the American Indian Movement, who spoke of ‘a little matter of genocide right here at home,’ by which he meant the ongoing genocide against the American Indians which is still in progress.

Friday, December 28, 2012

I am 63 Years old, a Jazz Guitarist & a Retired Homeless Hobo.

Exchange on GNOSTICMEDIA.com Chat Board BB. John Bernays on November 23, 2012 at 3:43 am Did you realise, that, although the Belief that my Great Grandfather’s Brother was a monster, I rather have a different view of his desires & reasons for his lifetime vocation of “Controlling Humankind.” A read of Sigmund Freud’s “Mankind and his Discontents” and a watching of the BBC Documentary “The Century of the Self” would make a thinking person realize, as I have, the Human Race is innately a Vicious and Savage Beast, especially in Crowds or Mobs ( Read Erik Hoffer’s “The True Believer” ) Freud was very very dispondant at Hitler, the Fall of Vienna, and his Studies had shown perfectly how Savage the Human could become. I know that Uncle Edward really wanted a way to End War, stop Violence against Helpless Poor People & Women, and other Higher Motives. Obviously, Freud’s Ideas are “Spot-On” as the YouTube Video i watched earlier yesterday by Jan shows that the many “Devices” these Tavistock people use to Control the People. Understand, I am 63 Years old, a Jazz Guitarist & a Retired Homeless Hobo. (Say,WHAT?) so, I have felt the Hatred America Rains upon the Homeless, Mentally Ill. But the Mannerisms of Bernays speech, understand, is the mannerisms of the Very Rich of the Early 1900′s. Bernays was not a Evil Man. He was Very Insulated, He never learned to Drive, he was not comfortable with people, he was a Solitary person, but he never meant his methods, nor Sigmunds, to be used AS IT HAS BEEN, since his death. Thank you Jan, as well, for opening my eyes to the Fallacy of The world according to Quantum Scientists is a holographic universal illusion. As many others, I had almost Embraced this. As well, I personally met & knew Agustis Stanley Owsley, Timothy Leary, Thomas Wolfe and Hugh Romney, I did LSD25 12 Times, had a Very Wonderful Vision on the 12th. then never wanted it again. My Father turned me on to Alan Watts & William Burroughs, I followed the Woody Guthrie “Path” and am a Close Friend of “Diamond Dave” the Last Surviving Beat Nick in San Francisco. Dave WHittiker is 73 Years old. I am very excited at the Information you, Jan, put fourth. Perhaps you are my Salvation…(Eh, Wot?) Jan Irvin on November 23, 2012 at 8:17 pm John Bernays… It’s good to hear from you, John, if you are who you say you are. I would love to debate your reasoning behind some of your statements. For instance, you’re aware that Edward worked for the “war is good” department to get us INTO the war? As well, he was part of the guys who sold the compulsory education system that we have today, that dumbs people down. For if you [the rulers] suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this, but that you first make thieves [and outlaws] and then punish them. -Sir Thomas More (1478-1535), Utopia, Book 1 No irony between the above quote and your statements. On the front page you’ll find John Taylor Gatto’s Ultimate History Lesson, which will prove you wrong on many other accounts: http://www.gnosticmedia.com/UHL_JohnTaylorGatto As well, you may be interested in studying the trivium study section to the left. However, you may already be familiar with some of it. Are you familiar with the works of Demosthenes? Of course your argument also rests on a false appeal to authority, or the ad vericundiam fallacy. Because someone who lies and manipulates others for their own gain and rather false direction, based on their own false notions of authority and right, often religious based for instance (Zionism is a good example of this type of behavior), rather than uplifting them through a proper education of the 7 Liberating arts, that Edward himself helped to eliminate and helped to advertise the very compulsory education system that dumbs men down into the very savages that you here discuss and complain about(! No irony there!) is hardly doing good for humankind. But maybe your dear grand uncle should have looked in the mirror. But as well, the same arguments are made for eugenics, etc. Of course he was behind many of those too. What about Edward’s influence on Gobbels? He also worked with the CIA, the CFR, the Tavistock Institute, he’s the very guy who promoted fluoride in the water as well…working for the aluminium industry. .. The damage from that is inestimable… speaking of dumbing down. There’s evidence that he was connected to the JFK assassination, as well as Project MKULTRA – of which I have strong evidence myself. He was also involved in Operation Ajax, and numerous others… I wonder, John Bernays, have you followed in Edward’s footsteps of propaganda? You seem to have “inherited” some of his talents for sophistry. You see, we must ask ourselves whom this type of behaviour benefits… because when we have a clear understanding of it, we know that it’s for the elites and oligarchs and their ultimate revolution against the masses, such as under the UN’s Agenda 21 and Fourth World Wilderness Conferences. So if you’d like to debate these issues, just to begin with, I’d love to have an in depth discussion. Welcome to the website. Yes, John, I had invited you to debate your points, but you never replied. For now the other forum is for invite only. If the others agree that a propagandist should be amongst us, then we may let you in at that time. However, none of the points you raised last time where accurate. Your uncle, for instance, worked for the War Is Good propaganda office to get us into the war, and you claim he was against it. Such things don’t fly around here. ========================================================================== Yes, John, I had invited you to debate your points, but you never replied. Did you? I did not receive a Invitation , my Email: Boxcarro@yahoo.com If the others agree that a propagandist should be amongst us, then we may let you in at that time. For now the other forum is for invite only. ===================================================================================== I Reply:

"A Propagandist? I am a Jazz Guitarist & Retired Rail Road Hobo, IE: Homeless. Having reached 62 Years in 1011, I finally received Senior Housing. I am a Total "Outsider" and being assaulted with name calling "Propagandist" rather seems rather presumptuous, or am I missing something? Does a Family Member being Defensive about Outsiders Opinions of a DEAD MAN'S values seem bad? You may notice a bit of Vitriol, I apologies. I am on the same Psychological Footing as you. Yet because I ask you to consider that Bernays, as well as Freud, became Despondent on the Violent Nature in Humankind, you accuse me, And Bernays helping the War Department, you know that was In League with Others, The war was 1916, his studies of Freuds Works were in the 1920's. His book "Propaganda" was 1928. I myself are totally grieved at the Gross Stupidity of the People around me. A Nation of Dumb Beasts. Gazing in to the TV with rapt canine slavering adoration. Yet I dropped out of School in 10th. Grade. In 1968 was placed in Mental Hospital, had ECT, spent Years & Years in Mental Hospitals. Yet somehow, the "Spark" of genius has remained alive. God Breathed- Compassion for the Most Hated, the Poor Filthy Homeless. Unless you walk a mile in their shoes, you cannot judge them." You know, I am sure, that the MEDIA/PROPAGANDIST has Created a HATRED against the Homeless- It Is Their Fault, The Deserve Nothing! And now, this will Split AmeriKKKa into Divides more deeply than Racism. CLASS WARFARE. You may think what you will, yet you speak about events & people I was THERE. I was on Sunset Strip in Summer 1967, I met Leary & Owsley, I took LSD25. I have been a Gifted Guitarist, had a severe CRIPPLING INDUSTRIAL ACCIDENT to my Left Hand in 1970, I recovered AFTER a VISION ON MOUNT SHASTA helped by some Psychedelic Lichens I picked (If It Presented Its-self To Me) and consumed with Water from the MAGICAL INDIAN MEADOWS SPRING- at over a MILE HIGH.

However, none of the points you raised last time where accurate. Here I Retort: You say these things, yet as an Outsider you cannot make these allegations, You are wrong, to take me to task on things you are Totally Ignorant of, not being Family.> Your uncle, for instance, worked for the War Is Good propaganda office to get us into the war, and you claim he was against it. Such things don’t fly around here. And by the way, his being alive or dead is IRRELEVANT to the research and facts… that’s called an appeal to emotion – another fallacy. That’s like claiming I shouldn’t talk about Hitler because he’s dead. In fact, your uncle influenced Goebbels techniques – which costs Europeans millions of lives.. Your uncle was a sick, sick man, and appealed to his own ad vericundiam to do his thinking for him… He should only be remembered for the criminal he was. Jan Irving, along with Freud’s Kabbalistic, and long ago disproved non-sense… Also specifically for dumbing the masses down and controlling them… Oedipus complex and cocaine, that’s what Freud left us My Retort: The Reason FREUD is demoted is BECAUSE DRUG COMPANIES HAVE TAKEN CONTROL of PSYCHIATRY, you pompous ass!Your fallacies are so abjectly pathetic that you are blind to yourself. THIS IS MY ATTACK ON HIS HATIST AGENDA: What is your beliefs on Orthodox Jews as to our being opposed to the State of Israel and its War Crimes? Do you see JEWS as did Gerald L.K. Smith, Gerald Winrod, Gordon Winrod, David Duke Et Al. Are Jews the Source of World Misery. When I received over 130 Electroshock Treatments at a Mental Hospital in 1969, was it Because or In Spite the Fact that I was NOT a KOSHER Jew, my Jewish Father having married a Cherokee Indian Girl? Does my marry of a Mexican Girl to father Children "Race Mixing" and do you consider me a "Race Traitor?" Lets lay out the reasons for you obvious Disputable Reasoning. As for the Trivium, I have educated myself through CONSUMPTIVE Reading, for 60 Years. My IQ was measured in the 4th. Grade, & I was recommended for classes at Baylor University, where I took classical Violin, 1958-59. I was 8 Years old. American education was a little bit better when I was a child, under Eisenhower, I suppose you weren't yet born, so your education, being after the 1965 OUTRIGHT TAKE DOWN of the Education System, can be meaningless. More From Jan Irvin Gnostic Media For if you [the rulers] suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this, but that you first make thieves [and outlaws] and then punish them. -Sir Thomas More (1478-1535), Utopia, Book 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQiW_l848t8&list=PL463AA90FD04EC7A2&feature=player_embedded When he fought to put fluoride into the water, which provably dumbs people down, how was he trying to help them again? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluoridation The facts of fluoride, known long ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_3MRUqUJlYk

Jan Irvin becomes Unable to Suppress His Psychopathic Hatred of a Dead Man, so Attacks ME as a Surrogate for my Uncle! I am put in JESUS place as the Sacrifical Scape Goat! Way to go, Gnostic Guy!

Your uncle created the beasts he then created control systems to manipulate and sell to. He created the very marketing used to sell the masses the shit, and the TV you complain about. He was there with John Dewey, helping to create this compulsory education system that dumbed the masses down, rather than empowering them with the 7 liberating arts of the trivium and quadrivium – the very arts he used to control and manipulate them, along with Freud’s Kabbalistic, and long ago disproved non-sense… Also specifically for dumbing the masses down and controlling them… Oedipus complex and cocaine, that’s what Freud left us, along with a new technique of hypnosis and intelligence gathering – the ultimate ad vericundiam – putting on a white coat and getting people to tell you their secrets. Your uncle has sold these very problems you complain about to the masses. If he was an honest man, he’d have empowered them with the trivium and quadrivium, rather than mind controlling them with it. He’d furthermore not have been involved in selling a cover up regarding the Civil War’s hall carbine affair. Your ad hominem attacks and appeal to ridicule, your other fallacious attacks, only show your intellectual bankruptcy, and not anyone who’s more advanced by any stretch of the imagination. I’m an autodidact and I don’t rely on the BS Wundtian Phds to do my thinking for me. When you’d like to step up to the plate as an intellect and not sling fallacies like the sophist your uncle was, then we’ve decided to let you in. But name calling like a child gets you no where. It’s my site, it’s not a public forum, so of course I’m the gatekeeper. That’s a bit lame to try to attack me for.

Jan does not COMPREHEND the meaning of "OPEN SOURCE."

Gnostic Media is open-source, independent media that pulls you outside of the box and into the heart of cognizance itself.

Reply Lucretia on October 25, 2012 at 4:21 pm Alan Watt of http://www.cuttingthroughthematrix.com talks about Edward L. Bernays almost every other talk he gives. Bernays created Front Organizations with “Experts” to guide the culture. Democracy itself is a Front Organization. The second poem Alan I have linked below Alan says the techniques of Bernays creates a 99% accuracy in how your life and your culture will go! I have also posted a few links which Alan posted on his site regarding Bernays and all his influence. July 21, 2010 Alan Watt “Cutting Through The Matrix” LIVE on RBN: Poem Copyright Alan Watt July 21, 2010: For Freud, Bernays, Skinner, Kinsey et al.: Evil Creatures of the Most Heinous Kind, Raping, Reshaping the Human Mind: “Many Fronts has This Long War of Terror, Implemented Top-Down, Covering Each Sector Of Society, Creating Mindsets of Humankind, Plundering and Altering the Human Mind, Standardizing for the Collective, Quality Control, Complete in Victory, Except for the Soul Which by Poverty and Fear They Hope to Destroy, The Physical — Emasculated Man and Girl is Boy, Masters of Behaviour Scoffed with Assurity, Demanding Access to Young Before Maturity, Culture Creators on Board with Brother Press, Plus Academia, They’re All Conscienceless, Pity the Knowing Few Who are Self-Led, Who Walk as Strangers in Lands of the Dead” © Alan Watt July 21, 2010 http://cuttingthroughthematrix.com/radio/Alan_Watt_CTTM_Live_on_RBN_JulAug2010.html Aug. 31, 2010 Alan Watt “Cutting Through The Matrix” LIVE on RBN: Poem Copyright Alan Watt Aug. 31, 2010 Scientific Indoctrination: Scientific Indoctrination on Each Generation, Leads to Passivity, Close to Vegetation: “Your “Present” is Designed, as Your Masters Know With 99% Accuracy The Flow Your Life Will Go, Scientific Indoctrination with Terms Sounding Cool, Programming with “New Norms” Way Back in School, “Your” Generation’s Fads will Affect Your Outlook, Past is Altered, with Announcement of Each E-Book, Always Doing “Your Thing,” Since You Know Best, Yet “Your Thing” and Opinions are Same as the Rest, Your Life Will be Transitioned Just Like Your Friends, New Societal Dysfunction in the Script That Never Ends, Moral Relativity in Judging, Except Obey Your Master, Observing You Constantly, to Save You From Disaster, The Brightside is Playtime, when Nothing is Forbidden, Then You’re Up on Facebook, Nothing Can be Hidden, Eventually You’re Jaded, Yes You and All Your Kind, Reality Unfurled the Way the Masters had Designed” © Alan Watt Aug. 31, 2010 VIDEO: “The Century Of The Self” by Adam Curtis. Part 2 : http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-678466363224520614&hl=en Crowd Psychology Manipulation 1 of 24: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8E1ywBCCu8A Governments Employ Scientists in Behaviour Modification to Manipulate the Public (Bernays Techniques): http://cpexposed.com/latest-news/david-camerons-behavioural-insight-team-dangerous-mind-manipulation-la-common-purpose Bernays gets America to Invade Guatemala by Propaganda Campaign–The Century Of The Self Pt. 2: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-678466363224520614&hl=en Freudian/Bernays Connection of Writer of 10:10s Propaganda Movie “No Pressure”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Curtis as Alan has well pointed out Bernays created Front Organizations with “Experts” to guide the masses. Democracy itself was a front organization. Log in

thankstaking- Native American Pequot Tribe's 1637 Thanksgiving: A Travesty Options People are taught about the First Thanksgiving which was celebrated by Pilgrims and Wampanoagans in 1621, but history seems to ignore the 1637 travesty. Jill Stefko By Jill Stefko on Nov 16, 2010 1 comment First Thanksgiving Led to Pequot Massacre - Public Domain Wiki Commons (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e2/Thanksgiving-Brownscombe.PNG ) US schoolchildren learn about the first Thanksgiving when Pilgrims and the Wampanoagans, also “Wampanoags,” celebrated their first harvest in by giving thanks and feasting. Samoset and Squanto taught the Pilgrims planting and other survival skills, so Pilgrim leader Captain Miles Standish invited them, Chief Massasoit and other Wampanoagans to the three day celebration. Wampanoagan Roots of Thanksgiving The Wampanoagans had six yearly harvest festivals. The Maple Dance, thanking the Creator for maple trees and their syrup, was the beginning of their new year. Next was the Planting Feast, when seeds were blessed, followed by the Strawberry Festival, celebrating the first fruits of the season. Summer’s Green Corn Festival gave thanks for ripening corn and late fall’s Harvest Festival gave thanks for the harvested crops, which coincides with the first Thanksgiving. There’s a dearth of information about the Midwinter Festival, the last one of the old year. First Thanksgiving: Squanto’s Journeys Squanto, a member of the Pokanokit Wampanoagan Nation, was from Patuxet. In 1605, he traveled to England with English explorer John Weymouth, where he learned the language. After he returned to New England Squanto was captured by a British slaver and sold to Spaniards in the Caribbean Islands. A Franciscan priest helped him get to England via Spain. Squanto found Weymouth, who paid his way home. While in England, Squanto met Samoset, Wabanake Tribe member, who also left New England with an English explorer. They returned to Patuxet in 1620. When they arrived, they found a deserted village and skeletons of those who had died from smallpox, which English slavers brought with them. They stayed with neighboring Wampanoagans. In the spring of 1621, Squanto and Samoset were hunting near Patuxet and saw Pilgrims in the deserted village. They watched the colonists for several days before they approached them and offered to teach them New World survival skills. Pequot Tribe’s 1637 Thanksgiving Massacre When news spread in England about the New World paradise, more Puritans and others immigrated. They considered the land as public domain because there were no fences. Colonists seized land, captured AmerIndians for slaves and killed the rest. The Pequot Nation hadn’t agreed to the peace treaty Squanto negotiated and fought back in what’s called “The Pequot War.” In 1637, over 700 Pequot men, women and children gathered for their Green Corn Festival. In the predawn morning, they were surrounded by Dutch and English mercenaries who ordered them to come outside. Those who obeyed were shot or clubbed to death while women and children huddled inside the longhouse and were burned alive. The next day the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony declared this travesty "A Day of Thanksgiving" because helpless people were murdered. The 1637 massacre happened because colonists wanted revenge for a murder of an English trader who kidnapped children. They suspected Pequots killed him. William Bradford, in his History of the Plymouth Plantation, celebrated the travesty as a victory, and Pilgrims thanked God for giving them swift triumph over their enemy. Future “Thanksgiving” Massacres Led to the Holiday’s Recognition Colonists and their AmerIndian allies attacked more villages. Women and children over the age of fourteen were sold into slavery; the rest, murdered. Ships full of slaves left New England. Bounties were paid for AmerIndian scalps. Churches, in what is now Stamford, Connecticut, declared a second day of "thanksgiving" to celebrate victory over “heathen savages.” Colonists kicked decapitated Pequots’ heads through the streets while they feasted. Wampanoagans weren’t immune from persecution. Their chief‘s decapitated head, impaled on a pole in Plymouth, Massachusetts, was on display.

“Thanksgiving” celebrations were held after all massacres. George Washington suggested that one day of “thanksgiving” each year was to be commemorated, instead of celebrating every massacre. Later, Abraham Lincoln decreed Thanksgiving Day to be a legal national holiday on the same day he ordered troops to march against the starving Minnesota Sioux.

Thanksgiving Illusions about Pilgrims These Pilgrims, Puritans, weren’t merely religious conservatives persecuted by the English King for their beliefs. They were revolutionaries who intended to overthrow the government. The English considered the Puritans as religious bigots who wanted to found a new nation, independent from England. The New England Puritans used any tactics, including treachery, torture and genocide to achieve their goals. Pilgrims viewed AmerIndians as heathens, instruments of the Devil. Squanto, the only baptized Christian, was regarded as an instrument of God to provide for their survival as his chosen people. Increase Mather, in a 1623 “thanksgiving” sermon, gave prayers of gratitude to God for the smallpox plague which wiped out many Wampanoagans. The Wampanoagans didn’t totally trust the colonists. Squanto loved Weymouth who had been his mentor and, most likely, thought the Pilgrims were like him. One of his tribe’s religious traditions was to give charity to the vulnerable and hospitality to anyone who came to them with needs. The Wampanoagans, who supplied most of the feasts’ food, were invited to the first Thanksgiving celebration to negotiate a treaty that would secure Plymouth Plantation’s land, former Patuxet site, for the Pilgrims Pequot Tribe’s 1637 Thanksgiving Massacre: A Tragedy The Pequots weren’t the only AmerIndians who were persecuted. Cherokees and other Eastern tribes endured the Trail of Tears, Nunna daul Tsuny, “The Trail Where They Cried," when they were ousted from their land and traveled a thousand miles to “Indian Territory” in the West. Approximately 4,000 AmerIndians died during the journey. An estimated 150 to 300 Lakota Sioux men, women and children were killed and 51 wounded in the Wounded Knee massacre. The list goes on…. Thanksgiving should be a time for showing gratitude for food and fellowship, but, to the AmerIndians who suffered from the “thanksgiving” massacres, it wasn’t. Is All That Turkey and Stuffing a Celebration of Genocide? By Laura Elliff, Vice President, Native American Student Association Thanksgiving is a holiday where families gather to share stories, football games are watched on television and a big feast is served. It is also the time of the month when people talk about Native Americans. But does one ever wonder why we celebrate this national holiday? Why does everyone give thanks? History is never simple. The standard history of Thanksgiving tells us that the “Pilgrims and Indians” feasted for three days, right? Most Americans believe that there was some magnificent bountiful harvest. In the Thanksgiving story, are the “Indians” even acknowledged by a tribe? No, because everyone assumes “Indians” are the same. So, who were these Indians in 1621? In 1620, Pilgrims arrived on the Mayflower naming the land Plymouth Rock. One fact that is always hidden is that the village was already named Patuxet and the Wampanoag Indians lived there for thousands of years. To many Americans, Plymouth Rock is a symbol. Sad but true many people assume, “It is the rock on which our nation began.” In 1621, Pilgrims did have a feast but it was not repeated years thereafter. So, it wasn’t the beginning of a Thanksgiving tradition nor did Pilgrims call it a Thanksgiving feast. Pilgrims perceived Indians in relation to the Devil and the only reason why they were invited to that feast was for the purpose of negotiating a treaty that would secure the lands for the Pilgrims. The reason why we have so many myths about Thanksgiving is that it is an invented tradition. It is based more on fiction than fact. So, what truth ought to be taught? In 1637, the official Thanksgiving holiday we know today came into existence. (Some people argue it formally came into existence during the Civil War, in 1863, when President Lincoln proclaimed it, which also was the same year he had 38 Sioux hung on Christmas Eve.) William Newell, a Penobscot Indian and former chair of the anthropology department of the University of Connecticut, claims that the first Thanksgiving was not “a festive gathering of Indians and Pilgrims, but rather a celebration of the massacre of 700 Pequot men, women and children.” In 1637, the Pequot tribe of Connecticut gathered for the annual Green Corn Dance ceremony. Mercenaries of the English and Dutch attacked and surrounded the village; burning down everything and shooting whomever try to escape. The next day, Newell notes, the Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony declared: “A day of Thanksgiving, thanking God that they had eliminated over 700 men, women and children.” It was signed into law that, “This day forth shall be a day of celebration and thanksgiving for subduing the Pequots.” Most Americans believe Thanksgiving was this wonderful dinner and harvest celebration. The truth is the “Thanksgiving dinner” was invented both to instill a false pride in Americans and to cover up the massacre. Was Thanksgiving really a massacre of 700 “Indians”? The present Thanksgiving may be a mixture of the 1621 three-day feast and the “Thanksgiving” proclaimed after the 1637 Pequot massacre. So next time you see the annual “Pilgrim and Indian display” in a shopping window or history about other massacres of Native Americans, think of the hurt and disrespect Native Americans feel. Thanksgiving is observed as a day of sorrow rather than a celebration. This year at Thanksgiving dinner, ponder why you are giving thanks. William Bradford, in his famous History of the Plymouth Plantation, celebrated the Pequot massacre: “Those that scraped the fire were slaine with the sword; some hewed to peeces, others rune throw with their rapiers, so as they were quickly dispatchte, and very few escapted. It was conceived they thus destroyed about 400 at this time. It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fyer, and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stincke and sente there of, but the victory seemed a sweete sacrifice, and they gave the prayers thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them, thus to inclose their enemise in their hands, and give them so speedy a victory over so proud and insulting an enimie.” The Pequot massacre came after the colonists, angry at the murder of an English trader suspected by the Pequots of kidnapping children, sought revenge. rather than fighting the dangerous Pequot warriors, John Mason and John Underhill led a group of colonists and Native allies to the Indian fort in Mystic, and killed the old men, women, and children who were there. Those who escaped were later hunted down. The Pequot tribe numbered 8,000 when the Pilgrims arrived, but disease had brought their numbers down to 1,500 by 1637. The Pequot “War” killed all but a handful of remaining members of the tribe. Proud of their accomplishments, Underhill wrote a book (above) depicted the burning of the village, and even made an illustration (below) showing how they surrounded the village to kill all within it.

How The American Mind is Shut, Locked & Sealed against Truth

The Role of Force, Patronage,
and Privilege

from the book

Public Opinion

by Walter Lippmann

 

"It has happened as was to have been foreseen," wrote Hamilton, " the measures of the Union have not been executed; the delinquencies of the States have, step by step, matured themselves to an extreme which has at length arrested all the wheels of the national government and brought them to an awful stand." . . . For "in our case the concurrence of thirteen distinct sovereign wills is requisite, under the confederation, to the complete execution of every important measure that proceeds from the Union." How could it be otherwise, he asked: "The rulers of the respective members . . . will undertake to judge of the propriety of the measures themselves. They will consider the conformity of the thing proposed or required to their immediate interests or aims; the momentary conveniences or inconveniences that would attend its adoption. All this will be done, and in a spirit of interested and suspicious scrutiny, without that knowledge of national circumstances and reasons of state which is essential to right judgment, and with that strong predilection in favor of local objects which can hardly fail to mislead the decision. The same process must be repeated in every member of which the body is constituted; and the execution of the plans framed by the councils of the whole, will always fluctuate on the discretion of the ill-informed and prejudiced opinion of every part. Those who have been conversant in the proceedings of popular assemblies, who have seen how difficult it often is, when there is no exterior pressure of circumstances, to bring them to harmonious resolutions on important points, will readily conceive how impossible it must be to induce a number of such assemblies, deliberating at a distance from each other, at different times, and under different impressions, long to cooperate in the same views and pursuits."

Over ten years of storm and stress with a congress that was, as John Adams said, "only a diplomatic assembly," had furnished the leaders of the revolution "with an instructive but afflicting lesson" in what happens when a number of self-centered communities are entangled in the same environment. And so, when they went to Philadelphia in May of 1787, ostensibly to revise the Articles of Confederation, they were really in full reaction against the fundamental premise of Eighteenth Century democracy. Not only were the leaders consciously opposed to the democratic spirit of the time, feeling, as Madison said, that "democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention," but within the national frontiers they were determined to offset as far as they could the ideal of self-governing communities in self-contained environments. The collisions and failures of concave democracy, where men spontaneously managed all their own affairs, were before their eyes. The problem as they saw it, was to restore government as against democracy. They understood government to be the power to make national decisions and enforce them throughout the nation; democracy they believed was the insistence of localities and classes upon self-determination in accordance with their immediate interests and aims.

They could not consider in their calculations the possibility of such an organization of knowledge that separate communities would act simultaneously on the same version of the facts. We just begin to conceive this possibility for certain parts of the world where there is free circulation of news and a common language, and then only for certain aspects of life. The whole idea of a voluntary federalism in industry and world politics is still so rudimentary, that, as we see in our own experience, it enters only a little, and only very modestly, into practical politics. What we, more than a century later, can only conceive as an incentive to generations of intellectual effort, the authors of the Constitution had no reason to conceive at all. In order to set up national government, Hamilton and his colleagues had to make plans, not on the theory that men would cooperate because they had a sense of common interest. but on the theory that men could be governed, if special interests were kept in equilibrium by a balance of power. "Ambition," Madison said, "must be made to counteract ambition."

They did not, as some writers have supposed, intend to balance every interest so that the government would be in a perpetual deadlock. They intended to deadlock local and class interest to prevent these from obstructing government. "In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men," wrote Madison, "the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed, and in the next place, oblige it to control itself " In one very important sense, then, the doctrine of checks and balances was the remedy of the federalist leaders for the problem of Public opinion. They saw no other way to substitute "the mild influence of the magistracy" for the "sanguinary agency of the sword" except by devising an ingenious machine to neutralize local opinion. They did not understand how to manipulate a large electorate, any more than they saw the possibility of common consent upon the basis of common information. It is true that Aaron Burr taught Hamilton a lesson which impressed him a good deal when he seized control of New York City in 1800 by the aid of Tammany Hall. But Hamilton was killed before he was able to take account of this new discovery, and, as Mr. Ford says, Burr's pistol blew the brains out of the Federal party.

When the constitution was written, "politics could still be managed by conference and agreement among gentlemen" and it was to the gentry that Hamilton turned for a government. It was intended that they should manage national affairs when local prejudice had been brought into equilibrium by the constitutional checks and balances. No doubt Hamilton, who belonged to this class by adoption, had a human prejudice in their favor. But that by itself is a thin explanation of his statecraft. Certainly there can be no question of his consuming passion for union, and it is, I think, an inversion of the truth to argue that he made the Union to protect class privileges, instead of saying that he used class privileges to make the Union. "We must take man as we find him," Hamilton said, "and if we expect him to serve the public we must interest his passions in doing so." He needed men to govern, whose passions could be most quickly attached to a national interest. these were the gentry, the public creditors, manufacturers shippers, and traders, and there is probably no better instance in history of the adaptation of shrewd means to clear ends, than in the series of fiscal measures, by which Hamilton attached the provincial notables to the new government.

Although the constitutional convention worked behind closed doors, and although ratification was engineered by "a vote of probably not more than one-sixth of the adult males,'' there was little or no presence. The Federalists argued for union, not for democracy, and even the word republic had an unpleasant sound to George Washington when he had been for more than two years a republican president. The constitution was a candid attempt to limit the sphere of popular rule; the only democratic organ it was intended the government should possess was the House, based on a suffrage highly limited by property qualifications. And even at that, the House, it was believed, would be so licentious a part of the government, that it was carefully checked and balanced by the Senate, the electoral college, the Presidential veto, and by judicial interpretation.

Thus at the moment when the French Revolution was kindling popular feeling the world over, the American revolutionists of 1776 came under a constitution which went back, as far as it was expedient to the British Monarchy for a model. This conservative reaction could not endure. The men who had made it were a minority. their motives were under suspicion, and when Washington went into retirement, the position of the gentry was not strong enough to survive the inevitable struggle for the succession. The anomaly between the original plan of the Fathers and the moral feeling of the age was too wide not to be capitalized by a good politician.

Jefferson referred to his election as "the great revolution of 1800," but more than anything else it was a revolution in the mind. No great policy was altered, but a new tradition was established. For it was Jefferson who first taught the American people to regard the Constitution as an instrument of democracy, and he stereotyped the images, the ideas, and even many of the phrases, in which Americans ever since have described politics to each other. So complete was the mental victory, that twenty-five years later de Tocqueville, who was received in Federalist homes, noted that even those who were "galled by its continuance"-were not uncommonly heard to "laud the delights of a republican government, and the advantages of democratic institutions when they are in public."

The Constitutional Fathers with all their sagacity had failed to see that a frankly undemocratic constitution would not long be tolerated. The bold denial of popular rule was bound to offer an easy point of attack to a man, like Jefferson, who so far as his constitutional opinions ran, was not a bit more ready than Hamilton to turn over government to the "unrefined" will of the people. The Federalist leaders had been men of definite convictions who stated them bluntly. There was little real discrepancy between their public and their private views. But Jefferson's mind was a mass of ambiguities, not solely because of its defects, as Hamilton and his biographers have thought, but because he believed in a union and he believed in spontaneous democracies, and in the political science of his age there was no satisfactory way to reconcile the two. Jefferson was confused in thought and action because he had a vision of a new and tremendous idea that no one had thought out in all its bearings. But though popular sovereignty was not clearly understood by anybody, it seemed to imply so great an enhancement of human life, that no constitution could stand which frankly denied it. The frank denials were therefore expunged from consciousness, and the document, which is on its face an honest example of limited constitutional democracy, was talked and thought about as an instrument for direct popular rule. Jefferson actually reached the point of believing that the Federalists had perverted the Constitution, of which in his fancy they were no longer the authors. And so the Constitution was, in spirit, rewritten. Partly by actual amendment, partly by practice, as in the case of the electoral college, but chiefly by looking at it through another set of stereotypes, the facade was no longer permitted to look oligarchic.

The American people came to believe that their Constitution was a democratic instrument, and treated it as such. They owe that fiction to the victory of Thomas Jefferson, and a great conservative fiction it has been. It is a fair guess that if everyone had always regarded the Constitution as did the authors of it, the Constitution would have been violently overthrown, because loyalty to the Constitution and loyalty to democracy would have seemed incompatible. Jefferson resolved that paradox by teaching the American people to read the Constitution as an expression of democracy. He himself stopped there. But in the course of twenty-five years or so social conditions had changed so radically, that Andrew Jackson carried out the political revolution for which Jefferson had prepared the tradition.

The political center of that revolution was the question of patronage. By the men who founded the government public office was regarded as a species of property, not lightly to be disturbed, and it was undoubtedly their hope that offices would remain in the hands of their social class. But the democratic theory had as one of its main principles the doctrine of the omnicompetent citizen. Therefore, when people began to look at the Constitution as a democratic instrument, it was certain that permanence in office would seem undemocratic. The natural ambitions of men coincided here with the great moral impulse of their age. Jefferson had popularized the idea without carrying it ruthlessly into practice, and removals on party grounds were comparatively few under the Virginian Presidents. It was Jackson who founded the practice of turning public office into patronage.

Curious as it sounds to us, the principle of rotation in office with short terms was regarded as a great reform. Not only did it acknowledge the new dignity of the average man by treating him as fit for any office, not only did it destroy the monopoly of a small social class and appear to open careers to talent, but "it had been advocated for centuries as a sovereign remedy for political corruption," and as the one way to prevent the creation of a bureaucracy.] The practice of rapid change in public office was the application to a great territory of the image of democracy derived from the self-contained village.

Naturally it did not have the same results in the nation that it had in the ideal community on which the democratic theory was based. It produced quite unexpected results, for it founded a new governing class to take the place of the submerged federalists. Unintentionally, patronage did for a large electorate what Hamilton's fiscal measures had done for the upper classes. We often fail to realize how much of the stability of our government we owe to patronage. For it was patronage that weaned natural leaders from too much attachment to the self-centered community, it was patronage that weakened the local spirit and brought together in some kind of peaceful cooperation, the very men who, as provincial celebrities, would, in the absence of a sense of common interest, have torn the union apart.

But of course, the democratic theory was not supposed to produce a new governing class, and it has never accommodated itself to the fact. When the democrat wanted to abolish monopoly of offices, to have rotation and short terms, he was thinking of the township where anyone could do a public service, and return humbly to his own farm. The idea of a special class of politicians was just what the democrat did not like. But he could not have what he did like, because his theory was derived from an ideal environment, and he was living in a real one. The more deeply he felt the moral impulse of democracy, the less ready he was to see the profound truth of Hamilton's statement that communities deliberating at a distance and under different impressions could not long cooperate in the same views and pursuits. For that truth postpones anything like the full realization of democracy in public affairs until the art of obtaining common consent has been radically improved. And so while the revolution under Jefferson and Jackson produced the patronage which made the two party system, which created a substitute for the rule of the gentry, and a discipline for governing the deadlock of the checks and balances, all that happened, as it were, invisibly.

Thus, rotation in office might be the ostensible theory, in practice the offices oscillated between the henchmen. Tenure might not be a permanent monopoly, but the professional politician was permanent. Government might be, as President Harding once said, a simple thing, but winning elections was a sophisticated performance. The salaries in office might be as ostentatiously frugal as Jefferson's home-spun, but the expenses of party organization and the fruits of victory were in the grand manner. The stereotype of democracy controlled the visible government; the corrections, the exceptions and adaptations of the American people to the real facts of their environment have had to be invisible, even when everybody knew all about them. It was only the words of the law, the speeches of politicians, the platforms, and the formal machinery of administration that have had to conform to the pristine image of democracy.

*****

---

Democracy watch

Noam Chomsky

The Victors The Agenda of the Doves:1988 The Mortal Sin of Self-Defense The Decline of the Democratic Ideal excerpted from the book Deterring Democracy by Noam Chomsky Hill and Wang, 1992, paper p215 Few, regions of the world have been so dominated by a great power as Central America, which emerged from its usual oblivion in the 1980s, moving to center stage as the traditional order faced an unexpected challenge with the growth of popular movements, inspired in part by the Church's new orientation towards "a preferential option for the poor." After decades of brutal repression and the destructive impact of the US aid programs of the 1960s, the ground was prepared for meaningful social change. The mood in Washington darkened further with the overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship. The reaction was vigorous and swift: violent repression, which decimated popular organizations. The ranks of the small guerrilla organizations swelled as state terror mounted. "The guerrilla groups, the revolutionary groups, almost without exception began as associations of teachers, associations of labor unions, campesino unions, or parish organizations . . ." with practical and reformist goals, ex-Ambassador Robert White testified before Congress in 1982. The same point was made by the assassinated Salvadoran Jesuit intellectual Father Ignacio Martin-Baro, among many others. A decade later, the United States and its local allies could claim substantial success. The challenge to the traditional order was effectively contained. The misery of the vast majority had deepened, while the power of the military and the privileged sectors was enhanced behind a facade of democratic forms. Some 200,000 people had been killed. Countless others were maimed, tortured, "disappeared," driven from their homes. The people, the communities, the environment were devastated, possibly beyond repair. It was truly a grand victory. Elite reaction is one of gratification and relief. "For the first time, all five of the countries are led by presidents who were elected in contests widely considered free and fair," Washington Post Central America correspondent Lee Hockstader reports from Guatemala City, expressing the general satisfaction over the victory of "conservative politicians" in elections which, we are to understand, took place on a level playing field with no use of force and no foreign influence. It is true, he continues, that "conservative politicians in Central America traditionally represented the established order," defending the wealthy "despite their countries' grossly distorted income patterns.... But the wave of democracy that has swept the region in recent years appears to be shifting politicians' priorities," so the bad old days are gone for ever. The student of American history and culture will recognize the familiar moves. Once again, we witness the miraculous change of course that occurs whenever some particularly brutal state excesses have been exposed. Hence all of history, and the reasons for its persistent character, may be dismissed as irrelevant, while we march forward, leading our flock to a new and better world. The Post news report does not merely assert that the new conservatives are dedicated populists, unlike those whom the US used to support in the days of its naiveté and inadvertent error, now thankfully behind us. It goes on to provide evidence for this central claim. The shift of priorities to a welcome populism is demonstrated by the outcome of the conference of the five presidents in Antigua, Guatemala, just completed. The presidents, all "committed to free-market economics," have abandoned worthless goals of social reform, Hockstader explains. "Neither in the plan nor in the lengthier and more general 'Declaration of Antigua' was there any mention of land reform or suggestion of new government social welfare programs to help the poor." Rather, they are adopting "a trickle-down approach to aid the poor." "The idea is to help the poor without threatening the basic power structure," a regional economist observes, contemplating these imaginative new ideas on how to pursue our vocation of serving the suffering masses. The headline reads: "Central Americans to use Trickle-down Strategy in War on Poverty," capturing the basic thrust of the news story and the assumptions that frame it: aiding the poor is the highest priority of this new breed of populist conservatives, as it always has been for Washington and the political culture generally. What is newsworthy, and so promising, is the populism of the conservatives we support, and their ingenious and startlingly innovative approach to our traditional commitment to help the poor and suffering, a trickle-down strategy of enriching the wealthy-a "preferential option for the rich," overcoming the errors of the Latin American bishops. One participant in the meeting is quoted as saying: "These past ten years have been gruesome for poor people, they've taken a beating." Putting aside the conventions, one might observe that the political outcomes hailed as a triumph of democracy are in no small measure a tribute to the salutary efficacy of US terror, and that the presidents who hold formal power, and their sponsors, might have had something other than a war on poverty in mind. There is also a history of trickle-down approaches to relieving poverty that might be explored. Such an inquiry might lead us to expect that the next ten years will be no less gruesome for the poor. But that path is not pursued, here or elsewhere in the mainstream. While the three-day conference of populist conservatives was taking place in Antigua, thirty-three tortured, bullet-riddled bodies were discovered in Guatemala. They did not disturb the celebration over the triumph of freedom and democracy, or even make the news. Nor did the rest of the 125 bodies half with signs of torture, found throughout the country that month, according to the Guatemalan Human Rights Commission. The Commission identified seventy-nine as victims of "extrajudicial execution" by the security forces. Another twenty-nine were kidnapped and forty-nine injured in kidnap attempts. The report comes to us from Mexico, where the Commission is based, so that human rights workers can survive now that the US has succeeded in establishing democracy in their homeland. The UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL) reports that the percentage of the Guatemalan population living in extreme poverty increased rapidly after the establishment of democracy in 1985: from 45 percent in that year to 76 percent in 1988. A study by the Nutritional Institute of Central America and Panama (INCAP) estimates that half the population live under conditions of extreme poverty and that in rural areas, where the situation is worse, thirteen out of every hundred children under five die of illnesses related to malnutrition. Other studies estimate that 20,000 Guatemalans die of hunger every year, that more than 1000 children died of measles alone in the first four months of 1990, and that "the majority of Guatemala's four million children receive no protection at all, not even for the most elemental rights." The Communique of the January 1990 Conference of Guatemalan Bishops reviews the steady deterioration of the critical situation of the mass of the population as "the economic crisis has degenerated into a social crisis" and human rights, even "the right to dignity, . . . do not exist." Throughout the region, the desperate situation of the poor majority has become still more grave with the grand triumph of our values. Three weeks before the Antigua conference, in his homily marking the completion of President Alfredo Cristiani's first year in office, Archbishop Rivera y Damas of San Salvador deplored the policies of his administration, which have worsened the already desperate plight of the poor; the new conservative populist so admired in Washington and New York "is working to maintain the system," the Archbishop said, "favoring a market economy which is making the poor yet poorer." In the neighboring countries, the situation is much the same. A few days after the encouraging Washington Post report on the Antigua meeting an editorial in a leading Honduran journal appeared under the headline "Misery is increasing in Honduras because of the economic adjustment," referring to the new trickle-down strategy that the Post found so promising - actually the traditional strategy, its lethal features now more firmly entrenched. The main victims are "the usual neglected groups: children, women, and the aged," according to the conclusions of an academic seminar on "Social Policy in the Context of Crisis," confirmed by "the Catholic Church, the unions, several political parties, and noted economists and statisticians of the country." Two-thirds of the population live below the poverty line, over half of these below the level of "dire need." Unemployment, undernourishment, and severe malnutrition are increasing. The Pan American Health Organization estimates that of 850,000 children born every year in Central America, 100,000 will die before the age of five and two-thirds of those who survive will suffer from malnutrition, with attendant physical or mental development problems. The Inter-American Development Bank reports that per capita income has fallen to the level of 1971 in Guatemala, 1961 in El Salvador, 1973 in Honduras, 1960 in Nicaragua, 1974 in Costa Rica, and 1982 in Panama. Nicaragua was an exception to this trend of increasing misery, but the US terrorist attack and economic warfare succeeded in reversing earlier gains. Nevertheless, infant mortality halved over the decade, from 128 to 62 deaths per thousand births: "Such a reduction is exceptional on the international level," a UNICEF official said, "especially when the country's war-ravaged economy is taken into account." Studies by CEPAL, the World Health Organization, and others "cast dramatic light on the situation," Mexico's leading daily reports. They reveal that fifteen million Central Americans, almost 60 per cent of the population, live in poverty, of whom 9.7 million live in "extreme poverty." Severe malnutrition is rampant among children. Seventy-five percent of the peasants in Guatemala, 60 percent in El Salvador, 40 percent in Nicaragua, and 35 percent in Honduras lack health care. To make matters worse, Washington has applied "stunning quotas on sugar, beef, cocoa, cheese, textiles, and limestone, as well as compensation laws and 'antidumping' policies in cement, flowers, and operations of cellulose and glass. " The European Community and Japan have followed suit, also imposing harmful protectionist measures. The environment shares the fate of those who people it. Deforestation, soil erosion, pesticide poisoning, and other forms of environmental destruction, increasing through the victorious 1980s, are traceable in large measure to the development model imposed upon the region and US militarization of it in recent years. Intense exploitation of resources by agribusiness and export-oriented production have enriched wealthy sectors and their foreign sponsors, and led to statistical growth, with a devastating impact on the land and the people. In El Salvador, large areas have become virtual wastelands as the military has sought to undermine the guerrillas' peasant base by extensive bombardment, and by forest and crop destruction. There have been occasional efforts to stem the ongoing catastrophe. Like the Arbenz government overthrown in the ClA-run coup that restored the military regime in Guatemala, the Sandinistas initiated environmental reforms and protections. These were desperately needed, both in the countryside and near Managua, where industrial plants had been permitted to dump waste freely. The most notorious case was the US Penwalt Corporation, which poured mercury into Lake Managua until 1981. The foreign-imposed development model has emphasized "nontraditional exports" in recent years. Under the free-market conditions approved for defenseless Third World countries, the search for survival and gain will naturally lead to products that maximize profit, whatever the consequences. Coca production has soared in the Andes and elsewhere for this reason but there are other examples as well. After the discovery of clandestine "human farms" and "fattening houses" for children in Honduras and Guatemala, Dr Luis Genaro Morales, president of the Guatemalan Pediatric Association, said that child trafficking "is becoming one of the principal nontraditional export products," generating $20 million of business a year. The International Human Rights Federation, after an inquiry in Guatemala, gave a more conservative estimate, reporting that about three hundred children are kidnapped every year, taken to secret nurseries, then sold for adoption at about $10,000 per child. The IHRF investigators could not confirm reports that babies' organs were being sold to foreign buyers. This macabre belief is widely held in the region, however; indicative of the general mood, though hardly credible. The Honduran journal El Tiempo reported that the Paraguayan police rescued seven Brazilian babies from a gang that "intended to sacrifice them to organ banks in the United States, according to a charge in the courts." Brazil's Justice Ministry ordered federal police to investigate allegations that adopted children are being used for organ transplants in Europe, a practice "known to exist in Mexico and Thailand," the London Guardian reports, adding that "handicapped children are said to be preferred for transplant operations" and reviewing the process by which children are allegedly kidnapped, "disappeared," or given up by impoverished mothers, then adopted or used for transplants. Tiempo reported shortly after that an Appeals Judge in Honduras ordered "a meticulous investigation into the sale of Honduran children for the purpose of using their organs for transplant operations." A year earlier, the Secretary-General of the National Council of Social Services, which is in charge of adoptions, had reported that Honduran children "were being sold to the body traffic industry" for organ transplant. A Resolution of the European Parliament on the Trafficking of Central American Children alleged that near a "human farm" in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, infant corpses were found that "had been stripped of one or a number of organs." At another "human farm" in Guatemala, babies ranging from eleven days old to four months old had been found. The director of the farm, at the time of his arrest, declared that the children "were sold to American or Israeli families whose children needed organ transplants at the cost of $75,000 per child," the Resolution continues, expressing "its horror in the light of the facts" and calling for investigation and preventive measures. As the region sinks into further misery, these reports continue to appear. In July 1990, a right-wing Honduran daily, under the headline "Loathsome Sale of Human Flesh," reported that police in El Salvador had discovered a group, headed by a lawyer, that was buying children to resell in the United States. An estimated 20,000 children disappear every year in Mexico, the report continues, destined for this end or for use in criminal activities such as transport of drugs "inside their bodies." "The most gory fact, however, is that many little ones are used for transplant of organs to children in the U.S.," which, it is suggested, may account for the fact that the highest rate of kidnapping of children from infants to eighteen-year-olds is in the Mexican regions bordering on the United States. p227 Brazil is another country with rich resources and potential, long subject to European influence, then US intervention primarily since the Kennedy years. We cannot, however, simply speak of "Brazil." There are two very different Brazils. In a scholarly study of the Brazilian economy, Peter Evans writes that "the fundamental conflict in Brazil is between the 1, or perhaps 5, percent of the population that comprises the elite and the 80 percent that has been left out of the 'Brazilian model' of development." The Brazilian journal Veja reports on these two Brazils-the first modem and Westernized, the second sunk in the deepest misery. Seventy percent of the population consume fewer calories than Iranians, Mexicans, or Paraguayans. Over half the population have family incomes below the minimum wage. For 40 percent of the population the median annual salary is $287, while inflation skyrockets and even minimal necessities are beyond reach. A World Bank report on the Brazilian educational system compares it unfavorably to those of Ethiopia and Pakistan, with a dropout rate of 80 percent in primary school, growing illiteracy, and falling budgets. The Ministry of Education reports that the government spends over a third of the education budget on school meals, because most of the students will either eat at school or not at all. The journal South, which describes itself as "The Business Magazine of 7 the Developing World," reports on Brazil under the heading "The Underside of Paradise." A country with enormous wealth, no security concerns, a relatively homogeneous population, and a favorable climate, Brazil nevertheless has problems: The problem is that this cornucopia is inhabited by a population enduring social conditions among the worst in the world. Two-thirds do not get enough to eat. Brazil has a higher infant mortality rate than Sri Lanka, a higher illiteracy rate than Paraguay, and worse social indicators than many far poorer African countries. Fewer children finish first-grade school than in Ethiopia, fewer are vaccinated than in Tanzania and Botswana. Thirty-two percent of the population lives below the poverty line. Seven million abandoned children beg, steal and sniff glue on the streets. For scores of millions, home is a shack in a slum, a room in the inner city, or increasingly, a patch of ground under a bridge. The share of the poorer classes in the national income is "steadily falling giving Brazil probably the highest concentration of income in the world." It has no progressive income tax or capital gains tax, but it does have galloping inflation and a huge foreign debt, while participating in a "Marshall Plan in reverse," in the words of former President Jose Sarney, referring to debt payments. It would only be fair to add that the authorities are concerned with the mounting problem of homeless and starving children, and are trying to reduce their numbers. Amnesty International reports that death squads, often run by the police, are killing street children at a rate of about one a day, while "many more children, forced onto the streets to support their families, are being beaten and tortured by the police" (Reuters, citing AI). "Poor children in Brazil are treated with contempt by the authorities, risking their lives simply by being on the streets," AI alleged. Most of the torture takes place under police custody or in state institutions. There are few complaints by victims or witnesses because of fear of the police, and the few cases that are investigated judicially result in light sentences. For three-quarters of the population of this cornucopia, the conditions of Eastern Europe are dreams beyond reach, another triumph of the Free World. A UN "Report on Human Development" ranks Brazil, with the world's eighth largest economy, in eightieth place in general welfare (as measured by education, health, hygiene)-near Albania, Paraguay and Thailand. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) announced on October 18 that more than 40 percent of the population (almost fifty-three million people) are hungry. The Brazilian Health Ministry estimates that hundreds of thousands of children die of hunger every year. Recall that these are the conditions that hold on the twenty-fifth anniversary of "the single most decisive victory of freedom in the mid-twentieth century" (Lincoln Gordon, US Ambassador to Brazil at the time)-that is, the overthrow of parliamentary democracy by Brazilian generals backed by the United States, which then praised the "economic miracle" produced by the neo-Nazi National Security State they established. In the months before the generals' coup, Washington assured its traditional military allies of its support and provided them with aid, because the military was essential to "the strategy for restraining left-wing excesses" of the elected Goulart government, Ambassador Gordon cabled the State Department. The US actively supported the coup, preparing to intervene directly if its help was needed for what Gordon described as the "democratic rebellion" of the generals. This "de facto ouster" of the elected president was "a great victory for the free world," Gordon reported, adding that it should "create a greatly improved climate for private investment." US labor leaders demanded their proper share of the credit for the overthrow of the parliamentary regime, while the new government proceeded to crush the labor movement and subordinate poor and working people to the overriding needs of business interests, primarily foreign. Secretary of State Dean Rusk justified US recognition for the regime on the grounds that "the succession there occurred as foreseen by the Constitution," which had just been blatantly violated. The US proceeded to provide ample aid as torture and repression mounted, the relics of constitutional government faded away, and the climate for investors improved under the rule of what Washington hailed as the "democratic forces." The circumstances of the poor in Brazil continue to regress as austerity measures are imposed on the standard IMF formula in an effort to deal somehow with this catastrophe of capitalism. The same is true in Argentina, where the Christian Democratic Party called on its members to resign from the Cabinet in March 1990 "in order not to validate, by their presence in the government, the anti-popular [economic] measures of the regime." In a further protest over these measures, the Party expelled the current Minister of the Economy. Experts say that the socioeconomic situation has become "unbearable," and that a third of the population lives in extreme poverty. ~ The fate of Argentina is addressed in a report in the Washington Post by Eugene Robinson. One of the ten richest countries in the world at the turn of the century, with abundant resources and great advantages, Argentina is becoming a Third World country, Robinson observes. About one-third of its thirty-one million inhabitants live below the poverty line. Eighteen thousand children die each year before their first birthday, most from malnutrition and preventable disease. The capital, once considered "the most elegant and European city this side of the Atlantic," is "ringed by a widening belt of shantytowns, called villas miserias, or 'miseryvilles,' where the homes are cobbled-together huts and the sewers are open ditches." Here too the IMF-style reforms "have made life even more precarious the poor." p230 David Felix concludes that Argentina's decline results from "political factors such as prolonged class warfare and a lack of national commitment on the part of Argentina's elite," which took advantage of the free-market policies of the murderous military dictatorship. These led to massive redistribution of income towards the wealthy and a sharp fall in per capita income along with a huge increase in debt as a result of capital flight, tax evasion and consumption by the rich beneficiaries of the system; Reaganomics, in essence. In oil-rich Venezuela, over 40 percent live in extreme poverty according to official figures, and the food situation is considered "hyper-critical," the Chamber of Food Industries reported in 1989. Malnutrition is so common that it is often not noted in medical histories, according to hospital officials, who warn that "the future is horrible." Prostitution has also increased, reaching the level of about 170,000 women or more, according to the Ministry of Health. The Ministry also reports an innovation, beyond the classic prostitution of women of low income. Many "executive secretaries and housewives and college students accompany tourists and executives during a weekend, earning at times up to [about S150] per contact." Child prostitution is also increasing and is now "extremely widespread," along with child abuse. Brutal exploitation of women is a standard feature of the "economic miracles" in the realms of capitalist democracy. The huge flow of women from impoverished rural areas in Thailand to service the prostitution industry-one of the success stories of the economic takeoff sparked by the Indochina wars-is one of the many features of the Free World triumph that escape notice. The savage working conditions for young women largely from the rural areas are notorious; young women, because few others are capable of enduring these conditions of labor, or survive to continue with it. Chile under the Pinochet dictatorship is another famous success story. Antonio Garza Morales reports in Excelsior that "the social cost which has been paid by the Chilean people is the highest in Latin America," with the number of poor rising from one million after Allende to seven million today, while the population has remained stable at twelve million. Christian Democratic Party leader Senator Anselmo Sule, returned from exile, says that economic growth that benefits 10 percent of the population has been achieved (Pinochet's official institutions agree), but development has not. Unless the economic disaster for the majority is remedied, "we are finished," he adds. According to David Felix, "Chile, hit especially hard in the 1982-84 period, is now growing faster than during the preceding decade of the Chicago Boys," enthralled by the free-market ideology that is, indeed, highly beneficial for some: the wealthy, crucially including foreign investors. Chile's recovery, Felix argues, can be traced to "a combination of severe wage repression by the Pinochet regime, an astutely managed bailout of the bankrupt private sector by the economic team that replaced the discredited Chicago Boys, and access to unusually generous lending by the international financial institutions," much impressed by the favorable climate for business operations. Environmental degradation is also a severe problem in Chile. The Chilean journal Apsi devoted a recent issue to the environmental crisis accelerated by the "radical neoliberalism" of the period following the US-backed coup that overthrew the parliamentary democracy. Recent studies show that about half the country is becoming a desert, a problem that "seems much farther away than the daily poisoning of those who live in Santiago," the capital city, which competes with Sao Paolo (Brazil) and Mexico City for the pollution prize for the hemisphere (for the world, the journal alleges). "The liquid that emerges from the millions of faucets in the homes and alleys of Santiago have levels of copper, iron, magnesium and lead which exceed by many times the maximum tolerable norms." The lands that "supply the fruits and vegetables of the Metropolitan Region are irrigated with waters that exceed by 1000 times the maximum quantity of coliforms acceptable," which is why Santiago "has levels of hepatitis, typhoid, and parasites which are not seen in any other part of the continent" (one of every three children in the capital has parasites). Economists and environmentalists attribute the problem to the "development model," crucially, its "transnational style, "in which the most important decisions tend to be adopted outside the ambit of the countries themselves," consistent with the assigned "function" of the Third World: to serve the needs of the industrial West. p248 On a visit to Europe a few days before he was assassinated by elite government forces in San Salvador in November 1989, Father Ignacio Ellacuria, rector of the University of Central America, addressed the West on the underlying issues. You "have organized your lives around inhuman values," These values " are inhuman because they cannot be universalized. The system rests on a few using the majority of the resources, while the majority can't even cover their basic necessities. It is crucial to define a system of values and a norm of living that takes into account every human being." p254 In the aftermath of the Vietnam War, the common interests were to overcome the "crisis of democracy" that arose at home with the awakening of the ignorant masses, to reverse the declining fortunes of US business in the face of international competition and lowered profitability, and to overcome the threat of Third World "ultranationalism" that responds to domestic concerns and popular pressures rather than the transcendent needs of the rich industrial societies. The common interests therefore required an attack on labor and the welfare system, expansion of the public subsidy to high-technology industry through the standard Pentagon funnel and other measures to enrich the wealthy, a more aggressive foreign policy, and domestic propaganda to whip the ignorant masses into line in fear for their lives. Such policy proposals were advanced by the Carter Administration, then implemented under Reagan; military spending, for example, was in general accord with Carter Administration projections apart from the shape of the curve, a brief propaganda success at the outset having been exploited to accelerate spending, which then leveled off. Throughout the period, the public continued its long-term drift towards support for New Deal-style welfare state measures, while in articulate opinion the "L word" ("liberal") followed the "S word" ("socialist") into disgrace and oblivion, and government policy, with general bipartisan support, implemented the agenda of the powerful. The common interests were outlined by the experts as state management shifted from Carter to the Reaganites, committed to the use of state power as an instrument of privilege. In the domain of international policy, a perceptive analysis by Robert Tucker in Foreign Affairs gave a foretaste of what was to come on the eve of the inauguration. The costs of the Vietnam War had compelled a temporary abandonment of the postwar policy of containment in favor of détente, he observed, but now a more activist foreign policy was required for a "resurgent America." Tucker distinguished between "needs" and "wants." Domination of the oil-producing regions of the Middle East is a "need"; therefore we should be prepared to use force to bar threats arising "from developments indigenous to the Gulf' that might endanger our "right of access" or our "economic well-being and the integrity of [the nation's] basic institutions." Turning from "the realm of necessity," Tucker identified a second major area where forceful intervention was in order: Central America, where we have only "wants," not "needs." Our right to satisfy our "wants" in this region is conferred by history: "We have regularly played a determining role in making and unmaking governments, and we have defined what we have considered to be the acceptable behavior of governments." Thus "reasons of pride and historical tradition" confer upon us the authority to ensure that "radical movements or radical regimes must be defeated" while "right-wing governments will have to be given steady outside support, even, if necessary, by sending in American forces." Such intervention should be relatively costless for us, so the liberal counterargument is voided, he argued. Tucker feared that "the prevailing public mood" might permit only the halfway measures of "moderate containment" and impede the proper pursuit of our "wants." He therefore recommended the conventional appeal to "security interests" to manufacture consent to these imperatives; as events were to show, the refractory public was less malleable than he had anticipated. Meanwhile Jeane Kirkpatrick derided the idea that "forceful intervention in the affairs of another nation is impractical and immoral," while the editors of the New Republic deplored Carter's "failure to defend the capitalist democratic idea" and his "moralistic excesses," urging military intervention if necessary to rescue the ruling killers in El Salvador, and preference for a Somoza over the Sandinistas if these are the only realistic alternatives. The bloody onslaught on Central America ensued. p325 A fundamental goal of US policy towards Latin America (and elsewhere), long-standing and well documented, is to take control of the police and military so as to assure that the population will not act upon unacceptable ideas. One goal, then, will be eventually to restore something like the Somozist National Guard, following the prescriptions of the Carter doves. A secondary goal is to destroy any independent press. Sometimes this requires murderous violence, as in El Salvador and Guatemala. The broad elite approval of the practice is evident from the reaction when it is carried out: typically, silence, coupled with praise for the advances towards democracy. Sometimes market forces suffice, as in Costa Rica, where the Spanish language press is a monopoly of the ultra-right. More generally, there are two legitimate forces in Latin America: first and foremost, the United States; secondarily, the local oligarchy, military, and business groups that associate themselves with the interests of US economic and political elites. If these forces hold power without challenge, all is well. The playing field is level, and if formal elections are held, it will be called "democracy. " If there is any challenge from the general population, a firm response is necessary. The establishment, left and right, will tolerate some range of opinion over appropriate levels of savagery, repression, and general misery. In Nicaragua, it will not be so simple to attain the traditional objectives. Any resistance to them will be condemned as "Sandinista totalitarianism." One can write the editorials in advance. Perhaps the political coalition constructed by Washington will be unable to meet the demands imposed upon it by the master. If so, new managers will be needed. One option is a turn to the right, a virtual reflex. Vice President Virgilio Godoy may qualify as an adequate hardline autocrat, and ex-Contras should be available to use the terrorist skills imparted to them by their trainers from the US and its mercenary states. Or others may be found to do the job, as circumstances allow. Another option is to follow a different and also well-traveled road. There is one mass-based political organization in Nicaragua. It may disintegrate under repression, or social and economic deterioriation, or simply the inevitable pressures under monopoly of resources by the right-wing and its imperial associate. Or it may regain the vitality it has at least partially lost. If it remains, and if it can be brought to heel, perhaps its leadership can be assigned the task of social management under US command. The point was made obliquely by the Wall Street Journal, in its triumphal editorial on the elections. "In time," the editors wrote, "Daniel Ortega may discover the moderating influences of democratic elections, as did Jamaica's Michael Manley, himself formerly a committed Marxist." Translating from Newspeak, the US may have to fall back on the Jamaican model, first working to undermine and destroy a popular movement, then lavishly supporting the preferred capitalist alternative that proved to be a miserable failure, then turning to the populist Manley to manage the resulting disaster-but for us. The point is widely understood, though generally left tacit in polite commentary. As if by instinct, when the election returns were announced Ortega was instantaneously transformed from a villain into a statesman, with real promise. He can be kept in the wings, to be called upon if needed to follow our directions, if only he can learn his manners. The policy is routine. Once the rabble have been tamed, once the dream of a better future is abandoned and "the masses" understand that their only hope is to shine shoes for Whitey, then it makes good sense to allow a "democratic process" that may even bring former enemies to power. They can then administer the ruins-for us. A side benefit is that populist forces are thereby discredited. Thus the US was quite willing to permit Manley to take over after the dismal failure of the Reaganite free-market experiment, and would have observed with equanimity (indeed, much pride in our tolerance of diversity) if Juan Bosch had won the 1990 elections in the Dominican Republic. There is no longer any need to send the Marines to bar him from office as in 1965, when the population arose, defeating the army and restoring the populist constitutional regime that had been overthrown by a US-backed coup. After years of death squads, starvation, mass flight of desperate boat people, and takeover of the rest of the economy by US corporations, we need not be troubled by democratic forms. On the same reasoning, it is sometimes a good idea to encourage Black mayors- if possible, civil rights leaders-to preside over the decline of what is left of the inner cities of the domestic Third World. Once demoralization is thorough and complete, they can run the wreckage and control the population. Perhaps Ortega and the Sandinistas, having come to their senses after a dose of reality administered by the guardian of order, will be prepared to take on this task if the chosen US proxies fail. Years ago, a Jesuit priest working in Nicaragua, who had been active in Chile prior to the Pinochet coup, commented: "In Chile, the Americans made a mistake," killing the revolution there "too abruptly" and thus failing to "kill the dream." "In Nicaragua they're trying to kill the dream," he suggested. That is surely a more rational policy, because if the dream is not killed, trouble might erupt again. But once the hope of a more free and just society is lost, and the proper habits are "ingrained" (as in Manley's Jamaica, according to the World Bank official whose satisfied evaluation was quoted earlier), then things should settle down to the traditional endurance of suffering and privation, without disturbing noises from the servants' quarters. If all works well, Maynes's establishment left will once again be able to celebrate what he calls the US campaign "to spread the cause of democracy." It is true, he observes, that sometimes things don't quite work out. Thus "specialists may point out that the cause of democracy suffered some long-run setbacks in such places as Guatemala and Iran because of earlier CIA 'successes' in overthrowing governments there." But ordinary folk should not be troubled by the human consequences of these setbacks. More successful is the case of Grenada, where the cause of democracy triumphed at not too great a cost to us, Maynes observes, "and the island has not been heard from since." There has been no need to report the recent meaningless elections, the social dissolution and decay, the state of siege instituted by the official democrats, the decline of living conditions, and other standard concomitants of "the defense of freedom." Perhaps, with luck, Nicaragua will prove to be a success of which we can be equally proud. Panama is already well along the familiar road. With proper management, then, we should be able to leave the Sandinistas, at least in anything like their earlier incarnation, down somewhere in "the ash heap of history" where they belong, and "return Central America to the obscurity it so richly deserves" in accord with the prescriptions of the establishment left (Alan Tonelson, Maynes's predecessor at Foreign Policy). Outside of the official left-right spectrum, the nonpeople have other values and commitments, and a quite different understanding of responsibility to something other than themselves and of the cause of democracy and freedom. They should also understand that solidarity work is now becoming even more critically important than before. Every effort will be made to de-educate the general population so that they sink to the intellectual and moral level of the cultural and social managers. Those who do not succumb have a historic mission, and should not forget that. Deterring Democracy Index of Website Problems of Population Control The Post-Cold War Era Nefarious Aggression excerpted from the book Deterring Democracy by Noam Chomsky Hill and Wang, 1992, paper p107 For US elites the easing of Cold War tensions was a mixed blessing. True, the decline of the Soviet deterrent facilitates US resort to violence and coercion in the Third World, and the collapse of the Soviet system paves the way to integration of much of East and Central Europe into the domains that are to "complement the industrial economies of the West. " But problems arise in controlling the ever-threatening public at home and maintaining influence over the allies, now credible rivals in terms of economic power and ahead in the project of adapting the new Third World to their needs. Here lie many problems, of a potentially serious nature. It was therefore hardly surprising that Gorbachev's initiatives should have elicited such ambivalent reactions, tinged with visible annoyance and thoughts as to how they could be exploited to Washington's advantage; or that his unilateral concessions and offers were so commonly interpreted as moves in a game of PR one-upmanship, in which our side unfortunately lacked the talent to compete. The "Unsettling Specter of Peace" raises "knotty 'peace' questions," the Wall Street Journal observes.' Crucially, it threatens the regular resort to the military Keynesian programs that have served as the major device of state economic management through the postwar years. The Journal quotes former army chief of staff General Edward Meyer, who thinks that a more capital-intensive and high-tech military will ensure "a big business out there for industry": robot tanks, unmanned aircraft, sophisticated electronics-all of dubious use for any defensive (or probably any) military purpose, but that is not the point. It is, however, a rather lame hope; how will the public be bludgeoned into paying the costs, without a plausible Red Menace on the horizon? p108 Business circles have long taken for granted that the state must play a major role in maintaining the system of private profit. They may welcome talk about free enterprise and laissez-faire, but only as a weapon to prevent diversion of public resources to the , 7 population at large, or to facilitate the exploitation of the dependencies. The assumption has been that a probable alternative to the Pentagon system is investment for social needs. While perhaps technically feasible by the abstract standards of the economist, this option interferes with the prerogatives of owners and managers and is therefore ruled out as a policy option. But unless driven by fear, the public will neither choose the path that best serves corporate interests nor support foreign adventures undertaken to subordinate the Third World to the same demands. Problems of social control mount in so far as the state is limited in its capacity to coerce. It is, after all, hardly a law of nature that a few should command while the multitude obey, that the economy should be geared to ensuring luxuries for some instead of necessities for all, or that the fate-^ even the survival-of future generations be dismissed as irrelevant to planning. If ordinary folk are free to reflect on the causes of human misery (in Barrington Moore's phrase), they may well draw all the wrong conclusions. Therefore, they must be indoctrinated or diverted, a task that requires unremitting efforts. The means are many; engendering fear of a threatening enemy has always been a powerful tool in the kit. The Vietnam years awakened many minds. To counter the threat, it was necessary to restore the image of American benevolence and to rebuild the structure of fear. Both challenges were addressed with the dedication they demand. The congressional human rights campaign, itself a reflection of the improvement in the moral and intellectual climate, was skillfully exploited for the former end. In the featured article of the Foreign Affairs annual review of the world, Robert Tucker comments, cynically but accurately, that since the mid 1970s "human rights have served to legitimize a part of the nation's post-Vietnam foreign policy and to give policy a sense of purpose that apparently has been needed to elicit public support." He adds "the simple truth that human rights is little more than a refurbished version of America's historic purpose of advancing the cause of freedom in the world," as in Vietnam, a noble effort "undertaken in defense of a free people resisting communist aggression." Such State Department handouts are all that one can expect about Vietnam in respectable circles; the plain truth is far too threatening to be thinkable. But the comments on "America's historic purpose"-also conventional-do merit some notice. Such rhetoric would elicit only ridicule outside of remnants of pre-Enlightenment fanaticism-perhaps among the mullahs in Qom, or in disciplined Western intellectual circles. In the Reagan years, a "yearning for democracy" was added to the battery of population control measures. As Tucker puts it, under the Reagan Doctrine "the legitimacy of governments will no longer rest simply on their effectiveness, but on conformity with the democratic process," and "there is a right of intervention" against illegitimate governments-a goal too ambitious, he feels, but otherwise unproblematic. The naive might ask why we failed to exercise this right of intervention in South Korea, Indonesia, South Africa, or El Salvador, among other candidates. There is no inconsistency, however. These countries are committed to "democracy" in the operative meaning of the term: unchallenged rule by elite elements (business, oligarchy, military) that generally respect the interests of US investors, with appropriate forms for occasional ratification by segments of the public. When these conditions are not satisfied, intervention is legitimate to "restore democracy." p113 In the early Reagan years, the Soviet threat was manipulated for the twin goals of Third World intervention and entrenching the welfare state for the privileged. Transmitting Washington's rhetoric, the media helped to create a brief period of public support for the arms build-up while constructing a useful myth of the immense popularity of the charismatic "great communicator" to justify the state-organized party for the rich. Other devices were also used. Thanks to the government-media campaign, 6 percent of the public came to perceive Nicaragua as a "vital interest" of the United States by 1986, well above France, Brazil, or India. By the mid 1980s, international terrorism, particularly in the Middle East, assumed center stage. To appreciate the brilliance of this propaganda feat, one must bear in mind that even in the peak years of concern, 1985-6, the US and its Israeli ally were responsible for the most serious acts of international terrorism in this region, not to speak of the leading role of the United States in international terrorism elsewhere in the world, and in earlier years. p114 To fit the part, a menace must be grave, or at least portrayable as such. Defense against the menace must engender a suitable martial spirit among the population, which must accord its rulers free rein to pursue policies motivated on other grounds and must tolerate the erosion of civil liberties, a side benefit of particular importance for the statist reactionaries who masquerade as conservatives. Furthermore, since the purpose is to divert attention away from power and its operations-from federal offices, corporate boardrooms, and the like-a menace for today should be remote: "the other," very different from "us," or at least what we are trained to aspire to be. The designated targets should also be weak enough to be attacked without cost; the wrong color helps as well. In short, the menace should be situated in the Third World, whether abroad or in the inner city at home. The war against the menace should also be designed to be winnable, a precedent for future operations. A crucial requirement for the entire effort is that the media launch a properly structured propaganda campaign, never a problem. A war on drugs was a natural choice for the next crusade. p115 Seventy percent of the Bush-Bennett drug budget was for law enforcement; if the underclass cannot be cooped up in urban reservations and limited to preying on itself, then it can be imprisoned outright. Countering criticism from soft-hearted liberals, Bennett supported "tough policy" over "drug education programs": "If I have the choice of only one, I will take policy every time because I know children. And you might say this is not a very romantic view of children, not a very rosy view of children. And I would say, 'You're right'." Bennett is somewhat understating his position when he says that punishment is to be preferred if only one choice is available. In his previous post as Secretary of Education, he sought to cut drug education funds and has expressed skepticism about their value. The flashiest proposal was military aid to Colombia after the murder of presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan. However, as his brother Alberto pointed out, "the drug dealers' core military power lies in paramilitary groups they have organized with the support of large landowners and military officers." Apart from strengthening "repressive and anti-democratic forces," Galan continued, Washington's strategy avoids "the core of the problem"- that is, "the economic ties between the legal and illegal worlds," the "large financial corporations" that handle the drug money. "It would make more sense to attack and prosecute the few at the top of the drug business rather than fill prisons with thousands of small fish without the powerful financial structure that gives life to the drug market." It would indeed make more sense, if the goal were a war on drugs. But it makes no sense for the goal of population control, and it is in any event unthinkable, because of the requirement that state policy protect power and privilege, a natural concomitant of the "level playing field" at home. As Drug Czar under the Reagan Administration, George Bush was instrumental in terminating the main thrust of the real "war on drugs." Officials in the enforcement section of the Treasury Department monitored the sharp increase in cash inflow to Florida (later Los Angeles) banks as the cocaine trade boomed in the 1970s, and "connected it to the large-scale laundering of drug receipts" (Treasury Department brief). They brought detailed information about these matters to the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and the Justice Department. After some public exposes, the government launched Operation Greenback in 1979 to prosecute money-launderers. It soon foundered; the banking industry is not a proper target for the drug war. The Reagan Administration reduced the limited monitoring, and Bush "wasn't really too interested in financial prosecution," the chief prosecutor in Operation Greenback recalls. The program was soon defunct, and Bush's new war on drugs aims at more acceptable targets. Reviewing this record, Jefferson Morley comments that the priorities are illustrated by the actions of Bush's successor in the "war against drugs." When an $8 billion surplus was announced for Miami and Los Angeles banks, William Bennett raised no questions about the morality of their practices and initiated no inquiries, though he did expedite eviction notices for low-income, mostly Black residents of public housing in Washington where drug use had been reported. There may also be some fine-tuning. A small Panamanian bank was pressured into pleading guilty on a money-laundering charge after a sting operation. But the US government dropped criminal charges against its parent bank, one of Latin America's major financial institutions, based in one of the centers of the Colombian drug cartel. There also appear to have been no serious efforts to pursue the public allegations by cartel money-launderers about their contacts with major US banks. The announced war on drugs has a few other gaps that are difficult to reconcile with the announced intentions, though quite reasonable on the principles that guide social policy. Drug processing requires ether and acetone, which are imported into Latin America. Rafael Perl, drug-policy adviser at the Congressional Research Service, estimates that more than 90 percent ~ of the chemicals used to produce cocaine comes from the United States. ', In the nine months before the announcement of the drug war, Colombian ~ police say they seized 1.5 million gallons of such chemicals, many found | in drums displaying US corporate logos. A CIA study concluded that US exports of these chemicals to Latin America far exceed amounts used for any legal commercial purpose, concluding that enormous amounts are being siphoned off to produce heroin and cocaine. Nevertheless, chemical companies are off limits. "Most DEA offices have only one agent working on chemical diversions," a US official reports, so monitoring is impossible. ~ And there have been no reported raids by Delta Force on the corporate | headquarters in Manhattan. Reference to the CIA brings to mind another interesting gap in the program. The CIA and other US government agencies have been instrumental | in establishing and maintaining the drug racket since World War II, when J Mafia connections were used to split and undermine the French labor unions and the Communist Party, laying the groundwork for the "French connection" based in Marseilles. The Golden Triangle (Laos, Burma, Thailand) became a major narcotics center as Chinese Nationalist troops fled to the region after their defeat in China and, not long after, as the CIA helped implement the drug flow as part of its effort to recruit a mercenary "clandestine army" of highland tribesmen for its counterinsurgency operations in Laos. Over the years, the drug traffic came to involve other US clients as well. In 1989 General Ramon Montano, chief of the Philippine constabulary, testified in a public hearing in Manila that drug syndicates operating in the Golden Triangle use the Philippines as a transshipment point to other parts of Asia and the West, and conceded that military officers are involved, as a Senate investigation had reported. The Philippines are on their way to "becoming like Colombia," one Senator observed. p119 There are good reasons why the CIA and drugs are so closely linked. Clandestine terror requires hidden funds, and the criminal elements to whom the intelligence agencies naturally turn expect a quid pro quo. Drugs are the obvious answer. Washington's long-term involvement in the drug racket is part and parcel of its international operations, notably during the Reagan-Bush administrations. One prime target for an authentic drug war would therefore be close at hand. p120 Hodding Carter, Wall Street Journal observed The mass media in America have an overwhelming tendency to jump up and down and bark in concert whenever the White House-any White House snaps its fingers." p120 Shortly after the November 1988 elections, 34 percent of the public had selected the budget deficit as "George Bush's No. 1 priority once he takes office." Three percent selected drugs as top priority, down from previous months. After the media blitz of September 1989, "a remarkable 43% say that drugs are the nation's single most important issue," the Wall Street Journal reports, with the budget deficit a distant second at 6 percent. In a June 1987 poll of registered voters in New York, taxes were selected as the number 1 issue facing the state (15 percent), with drugs far down the list (5 percent). A repeat in September 1989 gave dramatically different results: taxes were selected by 8 percent while the drug problem ranked far above any other, at a phenomenal 46 percent. The real world had hardly changed; its image had, as transmitted through the ideological institutions, reflecting the current needs of power. A martial tone has broader benefits for those who advocate state violence and repression to secure privilege. The government-media campaign helped create the required atmosphere among the general public and Congress. In a typical flourish, Senator Mark Hatfield, often a critic of reliance on force, said that in every congressional district "the troops are out there. All they're waiting for is the orders, a plan of attack, and they're ready to march." The bill approved by Congress widens the application of the death penalty, limits appeals by prisoners, and allows police broader latitude in obtaining evidence, among other measures. The entire repressive apparatus of the state is looking forward to benefits from this new "war," including the intelligence system and the Pentagon (which, however, is reluctant to be drawn into direct military actions that will quickly lose popular support). Military industry, troubled by the unsettling specter of peace, scents new markets here, and is "pushing swords as weapons in the drug war," Frank Greve reports from Washington. "Analysts say sales for drug-war work could spell relief for some sectors, such as commando operations, defense intelligence and counterterrorism," and Federal military laboratories may also find a new role. Army Colonel John Waghelstein, a leading counterinsurgency specialist, suggested that the narco-guerrilla connection could be exploited to mobilize public support for counterinsurgency programs and to discredit critics: A melding in the American public's mind and in Congress of this connection would lead to the necessary support to counter the guerrilla/narcotics terrorists in this hemisphere. Generating that support would be relatively easy once the connection was proven and an all-out war was declared by the National Command Authority. Congress would find it difficult to stand in the way of supporting our allies with the training, advice and security assistance necessary to do the job. Those church and academic groups that have slavishly supported insurgency in Latin America would find themselves on the wrong side of the moral issue. Above all, we would have the unassailable moral position from which to launch a concerted offensive effort using Department of Defense (DOD) and non-DOD assets. p121 "Substance abuse," to use the technical term, takes a terrible toll. The grim facts are reviewed by Ethan Nadelmann in Science magazine. Deaths attributable to consumption of tobacco are estimated at over 300,000 a year, while alcohol use adds an additional 50,000 to 200,000 annual deaths. Among fifteen-to-twenty-four-year-olds, alcohol is the leading cause of death, also serving as a "gateway" drug that leads to use of others, according to the National Council on Alcoholism. In addition, a few thousand deaths from illegal drugs are recorded: 3562 deaths were reported in 1985, from all illegal drugs combined. According to these estimates, over 99 percent of deaths from substance abuse are attributable to tobacco and alcohol. There are also enormous health costs, again primarily from alcohol and tobacco use: "the health costs of marijuana, cocaine, and heroin combined amount to only a small fraction of those caused by either of the two licit substances [alcohol and tobacco]," Nadelmann continues. Also to be considered is the distribution of victims. Illicit drugs primarily affect the user, but their legal cousins seriously affect others, including passive smokers and victims of drunken driving and alcohol-induced violence; "no illicit drug . . . is as strongly associated with violent behavior as is alcohol," Nadelmann observes, and alcohol abuse is a factor in some 40 percent of roughly 50,000 annual traffic deaths. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that 3800 nonsmokers die every year from lung cancer caused by breathing other people's tobacco smoke, and that the toll of passive smoking may be as many as 46,000 annually if heart disease and respiratory ailments are included. Officials say that if confirmed, these conclusions would require that tobacco smoke be listed as a very hazardous carcinogen (class A), along with such chemicals as benzene and radon. University of California statistician Stanton Glantz describes passive smoking as "the third leading cause of preventable death, behind smoking and alcohol." Illegal drugs are far from uniform in their effects. Thus, "among the roughly 60 million Americans who have smoked marijuana, not one has died from a marijuana overdose," Nadelmann reports. As he and others have observed, federal interdiction efforts have helped to shift drug use from relatively harmless marijuana to far more dangerous drugs. One might ask why tobacco is legal and marijuana not. A possible answer is suggested by the nature of the crop. Marijuana can be grown almost anywhere, with little difficulty. It might not be easily marketable by major corporations. Tobacco is quite another story. p139 The reactionary statist tendencies of the post-Vietnam period arose in response to a dual challenge: the decline of US dominance of the international order and the popular activism of the 1960s, which challenged the dominance of the same privileged sectors at home. Neither Kennedy's "Grand Design" nor the efforts of the Nixon Administration succeeded in restricting Europe to its "regional interests" within the "overall framework of order" managed by the United States, as Kissinger urged. There was no alternative to the trilateralism embraced by the Carter neoliberals, who, like their predecessors, were no less troubled by the popular democratic thrust at home-their "crisis of democracy" that threatened to bring the general population into the political arena in a meaningful way. As already discussed, these challenges inspired a campaign to restore the population to apathy and obedience and thus overcome the "crisis of democracy," and to enhance business power generally. By 1978, UAW President Doug Fraser had seen the handwriting on the wall. Resigning from the Labor-Management Group, he denounced the "leaders of the business community" for having "chosen to wage a one-sided class war in this country-a war against working people, the unemployed, the poor, the minorities, the very young and the very old, and even many in the middle class of our society," and having "broken and discarded the fragile, unwritten compact previously existing during a period of growth and progress." A year later, in another recognition of reality, Cleveland's populist mayor Dennis Kucinich told a UAW meeting that there is only one political party in the United States, the pro-business "Demipublicans."' The period of steady economic progress was over. The challenge of rival powers was real for the first time since World War 11, and the fragile social compact could not be sustained. Programs designed through the 1970s were implemented, with an extra touch of crudity, during the Reagan years with the general support of the other faction of the business party and the ideological apparatus. The historical and planning record and underlying institutional factors provide good reason to expect the post-Cold War era to be much like the past as far as relations between the United States and the Third World are concerned, apart from tactics and propaganda. "Radical nationalism" and experiments with independent development geared to domestic needs will raise the danger flags and call forth a reaction, varying with circumstances and the functions of the region. The same continuity is to be expected with regard to the concomitants of these policy goals, including the persistent support for human rights violations, the general hostility to social reform and the principled antagonism to democracy. Democratic forms can be tolerated, even admired, if only for propaganda purposes. But this stance can be adopted only when the distribution of effective power ensures that meaningful participation of the "popular classes" has been barred. When they organize and threaten the control of the political system by the business-landowner elite and the military, strong measures must be taken, with tactical variations depending on the ranking of the target population on the scale of importance. At the lowest rank, in the Third World, virtually no holds are barred. If the security forces are under control, the death squads can be unleashed while we wring our hands over our painful inability to instill our passion for human rights in the hearts of our unworthy allies. Other means are required when control of the security forces has been lost. Nicaragua, the obsession of the 1980s, was one such case, a particularly dangerous one because it was feared that the government in power was one "that cares for its people," in the words of Jose Figueres, referring to the Sandinistas who, he said, brought Nicaragua the first such government in its history, popularly elected in a free and fair election that he observed in 1984. It was for expressing such improper sentiments as these that the leading figure of Central American democracy had to be rigorously excluded from the US media throughout the 1980s. It is therefore not at all surprising that hostility to the Sandinistas was virtually uniform in media commentary and other elite circles. The official reasons (human rights, democracy, the Soviet threat, and so on) are too far-fetched to take seriously, and were, in any event, thoroughly refuted so many times, with no effect, as to reveal the pointlessness of the exercise. The real issue is the one Figueres identified. Throughout, the only debatable question has been tactical: how to restore Nicaragua to "the Central American mode" and impose "regional standards"-those of the US client states. Such matters as freedom of the press and human rights aroused profound libertarian and moral passions in Nicaragua, as distinct from the death squad democracies next door, or other states with vastly worse records but with the compensating merit that they too were properly respectful of US priorities. Similarly, elections in the terror states revealed heartening progress towards democracy, but not in Nicaragua, where radically different standards were applied. The 1984 elections were intolerable to the United States because they could not be controlled. Therefore Washington did what it could to disrupt them, and they were dismissed and eliminated from history by the media, as required. In the case of the long-scheduled 1990 elections, the US interfered massively from the outset to gain victory for its candidates, not only by the enormous financial aid that received some publicity, but-far more significant and considered quite uncontroversial-by White House announcements that only a victory by the US candidate would bring an end to the illegal US economic sanctions and restoration of aid. In brief, Nicaraguan voters were informed that they had a free choice: Vote for our candidate, or watch your children starve. These efforts to subvert the 1990 election in Nicaragua are highlighted by a comparison to the reaction at exactly the same time to elections in neighboring Honduras. Its November 1989 elections received scanty but generally favorable coverage in the US media, which described them as "a milestone for the United States, which has used Honduras as evidence that the democratically elected governments it supports in Central America are taking hold." President Bush, meeting with Honduran President Rafael Callejas after his election, called the Honduran government "an inspiring example of the democratic promise that today is spreading throughout the Americas. A closer look helps us to understand what is meant by "democracy" in the political culture. The November elections were effectively restricted to the two traditional parties. One candidate was from a family of wealthy industrialists, the other from a family of large landowners. Their top advisers "acknowledge that there is little substantive difference between the two and the policies they would follow as president," we learn from the press report that hails this milestone in the progress of democracy. Both parties represent large landowners and industrialists and have close ties with the military, the effective rulers, who are independent of civilian authority under the Constitution but heavily dependent on the United States, as is the economy. The Guatemalan Central America Report adds: "in the absence of substantial debate, both candidates rely on insults and accusations to entertain the crowds at campaign rallies and political functions"-if that sounds familiar to a US audience, it is not mere coincidence. Popular participation was limited to ritual voting. The legal opposition parties (Christian Democratic and Social Democratic) charged massive electoral fraud. Human rights abuses by the security forces escalated as the election approached. In the preceding weeks there were attacks with bombs and rifle fire against independent political figures, journalists, and union leaders, condemned as a plan to repress popular organizations by the head of the Coordinating Committee of Popular Organizations, ex-rector of the National University Juan Almendares. In preceding months the armed forces conducted a campaign of political violence, including assassination of union leaders and other extrajudicial executions, leaving tortured and mutilated bodies by roadsides for the first time. The human rights organization CODEH reported at least seventy-eight people killed by the security forces between January and July, while reported cases of torture and beatings more than tripled over the preceding year. But state terror remained at levels low enough not to disturb US elite opinion. Starvation and general misery are rampant, the extreme concentration of wealth increased during the decade of "democracy," and 70 percent of the population are malnourished. Despite substantial US aid and no guerrilla conflict, the economy is collapsing, with capital flight and a sharp drop in foreign investment, and almost half of export earnings devoted to debt service. But there is no major threat to order, and profits flow. In short, Honduras, like Colombia, is a praiseworthy democracy, and there is no concern over the "level playing field" for its elections, unlike those in Nicaragua. Even El Salvador and Guatemala, murderous gangster states run by the US-backed military, are considered democracies. Elite opinion expresses considerable pride in having established and maintained these charnel houses, with "free elections" permitted after a wave of slaughter, torture, disappearance, mutilation, and other effective devices of control. Physical destruction of the independent media and murder of editors and journalists by the security forces passes virtually without comment-often literally without report-among their US colleagues, among many other atrocities. Occasionally, one hears an honest comment. Joachim Maitre of Boston University, one of the leading academic supporters of Reagan Administration policies in Central America, observes that the US has "installed democracies of the style of Hitler Germany" in El Salvador and Guatemala. But such candor is far from the norm. Nicaragua, however, was different, because of the threat of independent nationalism and social reform, heightened by the loss of US control of the security forces-a problem that has arisen elsewhere as well, and a serious one, because the standard device for repressing and eliminating undesirable tendencies is then no longer available. In the case of Guatemala and Chile it was necessary to resort to economic strangulation, subversion, and military force to overthrow the democratic regimes and establish the preferred regional standards. In the case of the Dominican Republic in 1965, direct invasion was required to bar the restoration of a constitutional regime. The response to the Cuban problem was direct aggression at the Bay of Pigs, and when Soviet deterrence made further such attempts unfeasible, an unprecedented campaign of international terrorism along with unremitting economic and ideological warfare-again, surely not motivated by the reasons advanced in the official government-media line, which are hardly credible. Other cases require different measures, including Panama, another long-term target of US intervention, to which we turn directly. p143 We may continue to think of the Third World in the terms used in early post-World War II planning: as the region that is to "fulfill its major function as a source of raw materials and a market" for the Western industrial societies. One long-standing source of international conflict was the Soviet empire's failure to fulfill its function in the required way. This problem, it is hoped, will now be remedied as Eastern Europe advances towards the conditions of Mexico, Brazil, and the Philippines. The fear of "creeping Communism" can then be put to rest, as the modem forms of colonialism expand towards their natural borders. The three major power groupings are eagerly swooping down upon the collapsing Soviet empire (as on China, a few years earlier) in search of markets, resources, opportunities for investment and export of pollution, cheap labor, tax havens, and other familiar Third World amenities. These efforts to impose the preferred model of two-tiered societies open to exploitation and under business rule are accompanied by appropriate flourishes about the triumph of political pluralism and democracy. We can readily determine the seriousness of intent by a look at the reaction to popular movements that might actually implement democracy and pluralism in the traditional Third World countries, and to the "crisis of democracy" within the industrial societies themselves. The rhetoric need not detain us. We may also take note of the broad-if tacit-understanding that the capitalist model has limited application; business leaders have long recognized that it is not for them. The successful industrial societies depart significantly from this model, as in the past-one reason why they are successful industrial societies. In the United States, the sectors of the economy that remain competitive are those that feed from the public trough: high-tech industry and capital-intensive agriculture, along with pharmaceuticals and others. Departures are still more radical in most of the other state capitalist systems, where planning is coordinated by state institutions and financial-industrial conglomerates, sometimes with democratic processes and a social contract of varying sorts, sometimes not. The glories of Free Enterprise provide a useful weapon against government policies that might benefit the general population, and of course, capitalism will do just fine for the former colonies and the Soviet empire. For those who are to "fulfill their functions" in service to the masters of the world order, the model is highly recommended; it facilitates their exploitation. But the rich and powerful at home have long appreciated the need to protect themselves from the destructive forces of free-market capitalism, which may provide suitable themes for rousing I oratory, but only so long as the public handout and the regulatory and protectionist apparatus are secure, and state power is on call when needed. What, then, is the probable evolution of US policy towards the Third World in the post-Cold War era? The answer to this question, implicit in the earlier discussion, was announced loud and clear by the Bush Administration on December 20, 1989: More of the same. But not precisely the same. One problem is that some adjustments are needed in the propaganda framework. The US invasion of Panama is a historic event in one respect. In a departure from the routine, it was not justified as a response to an imminent Soviet threat. When the US invaded Grenada six years earlier, it was still possible to portray the act as a defensive reaction to the machinations of the Russian bear, seeking to strangle us in pursuit of its global designs. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff could solemnly intone that in the event of a Soviet attack on Western Europe, Grenada might interdict the Caribbean sea lanes and prevent the US from providing oil to its beleaguered allies, with the endorsement of a new category of scholars created for the purpose. Through the 1980s, the attack against Nicaragua was justified by the danger that if we don't stop the Commies there, they'll be pouring across the border at Harlingen, Texas, two days' drive away. There are more sophisticated (and equally weighty) variants for the educated classes. But in the case of Panama, not even the imagination of the State Department and the editorial writers extended that far. Fortunately, the problem had been foreseen. When the White House decided that its friend Noriega was getting too big for his britches and had to go, the media took their cue and launched a campaign to convert him into the most nefarious demon since Attila the Hun, a repeat of the Qaddafi project a few years earlier. The effort was enhanced by the "drug war," the government-media hoax launched in an effort to mobilize the population in fear now that it is becoming impossible to invoke the Kremlin design-though for completeness, we should also take note of the official version, dutifully reported as fact in the New York Times: "the campaign against drugs has increasingly become a priority for the Administration as well as Congress as a diminishing Soviet threat has given Washington an opportunity to turn to domestic issues. The propaganda operation was a smashing success. "Manuel Noriega belongs to that special fraternity of international villains, men like Qaddafi, Idi Amin, and the Ayatollah Khomeini, whom Americans just love to hate," Ted Koppel orated, so "strong public support for a reprisal [sic] was all but guaranteed." Why did Americans hate Noriega in 1989, but not in 1985? Why is it necessary to overthrow him now, but not then? The questions that immediately come to mind were systematically evaded. With a fringe of exceptions-mostly well after the tasks had been accomplished- the media rallied around the flag with due piety and enthusiasm, funneling the most absurd White House tales to the public. while scrupulously refraining from asking the obvious questions, or seeing the most obvious facts. There were some who found all this a bit too much. Commenting on the Panama coverage, David Nyhan of the Boston Globe described the media as "a docile, not to say boot-licking, lot, subsisting largely on occasional bones of access tossed into the press kennel," happy to respond to lies with "worshipful prose. " The Wall Street Journal noted that the four television networks gave "the home team's version of the story. " There was a scattering of skepticism in reporting and commentary, but most toed the line in their enthusiasm for what George Will called an exercise of the "good-neighbor policy," an act of "hemispheric hygiene" expressing our "rights and responsibilities" in the hemisphere-whatever the delinquents beyond our borders may think, as revealed by their near-universal condemnation. The Bush Administration was, naturally, overjoyed. A State Department official observed that "the Republican conservatives are happy because we were willing to show some muscle, and the Democratic liberals can't criticize because it's being so widely seen as a success:" the State Department follows standard conventions, contrasting "conservatives," who advocate a powerful and violent state, with "liberals," who sometimes disagree with the "conservatives" on tactical grounds, fearing that the cost to us may be too high. These salutary developments "can't help but give us more clout," the same official continued. As for the general population, many doubtless were also enthusiastic about the opportunity to "kick a little ass" in Panama-to borrow some of the rhetoric designed by George Bush's handlers in their comical effort to shape an effete New England aristocrat into a Texas redneck. But it is interesting to read the letters to the editor in major newspapers, which tended to express hostility to the aggression, along with much shame and distress, and often provided information, analysis and insights that the professionals were careful to avoid. A more professional reaction was given by the respected Washington Post correspondent David Broder. He notes that there has been some carping at "the prudence of Bush's action" from "the left" (meaning, presumably, the National Council of Churches and some centrist liberals, anything else being far beyond his horizons, as is the idea that there might be criticism on grounds other than prudence). But he dismisses "this static on the left" with scorn: "what nonsense." Rather, the invasion of Panama helped to clarify "the circumstances in which military intervention makes sense." The "best single definition" of the "new national consensus," he goes on to explain, was given by Reagan's Defense Secretary, Caspar Weinberger, who outlined six "well-considered and well-phrased" criteria. Four of them state that intervention should be designed to succeed. The other two add that the action should be deemed "vital to our national interest" and a "last resort" to achieve it. Oddly, Broder neglected to add the obvious remark about these impressive criteria: they could readily have been invoked by Hitler. p200 UN Ambassador Daniel Moynihan in a cablegram to Henry Kissinger on January 23, 1976, reported the "considerable progress" that had been made by his arm-twisting tactics at the UN "toward a basic foreign policy goal, that of breaking up the massive blocs of nations, mostly new nations, which for so long have been arrayed against us in international forums and in diplomatic encounters generally." Moynihan cited two relevant cases: his success in undermining a UN reaction to the Indonesian invasion of East Timor and to Moroccan aggression in the Sahara, both supported by the US, the former with particular vigor. p200 Former UN Ambassador Daniel Moynihan in his memoir of his years at the United Nations, where he describes frankly his role as Indonesia invaded East Timor in December 1975: "... within a few weeks some 60,000 people had been killed, "10 percent of the population, almost the proportion of casualties experienced by the Soviet Union during the Second World War." "The United states wished things to turn out as they did, and worked to bring this about. The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success." Deterring Democracy Index of Website Home Page Democracy in the Industrial Societies Force and Opinion Afterward excerpted from the book Deterring Democracy by Noam Chomsky Hill and Wang, 1992, paper p331 No belief concerning US foreign policy is more deeply entrenched than the one expressed by New York Times diplomatic correspondent Neil Lewis, quoted earlier: "The yearning to see American-style democracy duplicated throughout the world has been a persistent theme in American foreign policy. " The thesis is commonly not even expressed, merely J presupposed as the basis for reasonable discourse on the US role in the world. The faith in this doctrine may seem surprising. Even a cursory inspection of the historical record reveals that a persistent theme in American foreign policy has been the subversion and overthrow of parliamentary regimes, and the resort to violence to destroy popular organizations that might offer the majority of the population an opportunity to enter the political arena. p332 In the client states of the Third World, the preference for democratic forms is often largely a matter of public relations. But where the society is stable and privilege is secure, other factors enter. Business interests have an ambiguous attitude towards the state. They want it to subsidize research and development, production and export (the Pentagon system, much of the foreign aid program, and so on), regulate markets, ensure a favorable climate for business operations abroad, and in many other ways to serve as a welfare state for the wealthy. But they do not want the state to have the power to interfere with the prerogatives of owners and managers. The latter concern leads to support for democratic forms, as long as business dominance of the political system is secure. If a country satisfies certain basic conditions, then, the US is tolerant of democratic forms, though in the Third World, where a proper outcome is hard to guarantee, often just barely. But relations with the industrial world show clearly that the US government is not opposed to democratic forms as such. In the stable business-dominated Western democracies, we would not expect the US to carry out programs of subversion, terror, or military assault as has been common in the Third World. p334 ... the United States was committed to restoring the traditional conservative order. To achieve this aim, it was necessary to destroy the anti-Fascist resistance, often in favor of Nazi and Fascist collaborators, to weaken unions and other popular organizations, and to block the threat of radical democracy and social reform, which were live options under the conditions of the time. These policies were pursued worldwide: in Asia, including South Korea, the Philippines, Thailand, Indochina, and crucially Japan; in Europe, including Greece, Italy, France, and crucially Germany; in Latin America, including what the CIA took to be the most severe threats at the time, "radical nationalism" in Guatemala and Bolivia. Sometimes the task required considerable brutality. In South Korea, about 100,000 people were killed in the late 1940s by security forces installed and directed by the United States. This was before the Korean War, which Jon Halliday and Bruce Cumings describe as "in essence" a phase-marked by massive outside intervention-in "a civil war fought between two domestic forces: a revolutionary nationalist movement, which had its roots in tough anti-colonial struggle, and a conservative movement tied to the status quo, especially to an unequal land system," restored to power under the US occupation. In Greece in the same years, hundreds of thousands were killed, tortured, imprisoned or expelled in the course of a counterinsurgency operation, organized and directed by the United States, which restored traditional elites to power, including Nazi collaborators, and suppressed the peasant- and worker-based Communist-led forces that had fought the Nazis. In the industrial societies, the same essential goals were realized, but by less violent means. Once its institutional structure is in place, capitalist democracy will function only if all subordinate their interests to the needs of those who control investment decisions, from the country club to the soup kitchen. It is only a matter of time before an independent working-class culture erodes, along with the institutions and organizations that sustain it, given the distribution of resources and power. And with popular organizations weakened or eliminated, isolated individuals are unable to participate in the political system in a meaningful way. It will, over time, become largely a symbolic pageant or, at most, a device whereby the public can select among competing elite groups and ratify their decisions, playing the role assigned them by progressive democratic theorists of the Walter Lippmann variety. That was a plausible assumption in the early postwar period and has proven largely accurate so far, despite many rifts, tensions and conflicts. European elites have a stake in the preservation of this system, and fear their domestic populations no less than the US authorities did. Hence their commitment to Cold War confrontation, which came to serve as an effective technique of domestic social management, and their willingness, with occasional mutterings of discontent, to line up in US global crusades. The system is oppressive, and often brutal, but that is no problem as long as others are the victims. It also raises constant threats of large-scale catastrophe, but these too do not enter into planning decisions shaped by the goal of maximization of short-term advantage, which remains the operative principle. p352 David Hume, First Principles of Government ... the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and to observe the implicit submission with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. When we enquire by what means this wonder is brought about, we shall find, that as Force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. 'Tis therefore, on opinion only that government is founded; and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular. p354 The comparison between the Soviet and US satellites is so striking and obvious that it takes real dedication not to perceive it, and outside of Western intellectual circles, it is a commonplace. A writer in the Mexican daily Excelsior, describing how US relations with Latin America deteriorated through the 1980s, comments on the "striking contrast" between Soviet behavior towards its satellites and "US policy in the Western Hemisphere, where intransigence, interventionism and the application of typical police state instruments have traditionally marked Washington's actions": "In Europe, the USSR and Gorbachev are associated with the struggle for freedom of travel, political rights, and respect for public opinion. In the Americas, the U.S. and Bush are associated with indiscriminate bombings of civilians, the organization, training and financing of death squads, and programs of mass murder"-not quite the story in New York and Washington, where the United States is hailed as an "inspiration for the triumph of democracy in our time" (The New Republic). In El Salvador, the journal Proceso of the Jesuit University observed: The so-called Salvadoran "democratic process" could learn a lot from the capacity ( for self-criticism that the socialist nations are demonstrating. If Lech Walesa had been doing his organizing work in El Salvador, he would have already entered into the ranks of the disappeared-at the hands of "heavily armed men dressed in civilian clothes"; or have been blown to pieces in a dynamite attack on his union headquarters. If Alexander Dubcek were a politician in our country, he would have been assassinated like Hector Oqueli [the social democratic leader assassinated in Guatemala, by Salvadoran death squads, according to the Guatemalan government]. If Andrei Sakharov had worked here in favor of human rights, he would have met the same fate as Herbert Anaya [one of the many murdered leaders of the independent Salvadoran Human Rights Commission CDHES]. If Ota-Sik or Vaclav Havel had been carrying out their intellectual work in El Salvador, they would have woken up one sinister moming, Iying on the patio of a university campus with their heads destroyed by the bullets of an elite ammy battalion. The comparison was broadened in a seminar on Christian opportunity and mission called by the Latin American Council of Churches in San Jose, Costa Rica, reported in Mexico's leading daily. Participants contrasted positive developments in the Soviet Union and its domains with the circumstances of Central America, "marked by United States intervention and the rightward tum of control of govemment power." The pastoral letter "Hope against Hope" announced at the end of the meeting went on to say that in this context, "military, institutional, financial, political and cultural powers, means of communication, as well as the power of some churches 'indifferent to social problems' will be deployed with greater force in Central Arnerica, 'with serious consequences for the impoverished majority"'; the reference is presumably to the fundamentalist churches backed by the US in an effort to divert the poor population from any struggle for amelioration of the conditions of this meaningless life on earth. The decade of the l980s "was notable in the region for the growth of the gap between rich and poor, a political rightward tum and a conservative offensive on the economic front." The goal of the Central American peace plan was to "put the Nicaraguan revolution on neoliberal-democracy tracks and to defend governments such as the Salvadoran." With these results achieved, the US-backed regimes and their sponsor will "bury the demands" about human rights and social justice. The same comparison was drawn by the [exilted] Guatemalan journalist JulioGodoy after a brief visit to Guatemala. He had fled a year earlier when his newspaper, La Epoca, was blown up by state terrorists-an operation that aroused no interest in the United States; it was not reported, though well known. At the time, the media were much exercised over the fact that the US-funded joumal La Prensa, which was openly aligned with the US-run forces attacking Nicaragua, had missed an issue because of a shortage of newsprint, an atrocity that led to passionate diatribes about Sandinista totalitarianism. In the face of this crime, Westem commentators could hardly be expected to notice that the US-backed security forces had silenced the one small independent voice in Guatemala in their usual fashion. This is simply another illustration of the total contempt for freedom of the press in Westem circles, revealed as well by the silence that accompanies the violent destruction of the independent Salvadoran press by state terror, the routine closure of newspapers under absurd pretexts and the arrest and torture of joumalists in the Israeli-occupied territories and sometimes in Israel proper, the stomming of the headquarters of a major South Korean broadcasting network by riot police to arrest the leader of the union on the charge that he had organized labor protests, and other such contributions to order and good form. Eastern Europeans are, "in a way, luckier than Central Americans," Godoy wrote: "while the Moscow-imposed government in Prague would degrade and humiliate reformers, the Washington-made government in Guatemala would kill them. It still does, in a virtual genocide that has taken more than 150,000 victims . . . [in what Amnesty International calls] a 'government program of political murder'." That, he suggested, is "the main explanation ' for the fearless character of the students' recent uprising in Prague: the Czechoslovak Army doesn't shoot to kill.... In Guatemala, not to mention El Salvador, random terror is used to keep unions and peasant associations from seeking their own way"-and to ensure that the press conforms or disappears, so that Western liberals need not fret over censorship in the "fledgling democracies" they applaud. There is an "important difference in the nature of the armies and of their foreign tutors. " In the Soviet satellites, the armies are "apolitical and obedient to their national government," while in the US satellites, "the army is the power," doing what they have been trained to do for many decades by their foreign tutor. "One is tempted to believe that some people in the White House worship Aztec gods-with the offering of Central American blood." They backed forces in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua that "can easily compete against Nicolae Ceausescu's Securitate for the World Cruelty Prize." Godoy quotes a European diplomat who says, "as long as the Americans don't change their attitude towards the region, there's no space here for the truth or for hope." Surely no space for nonviolence and love. One will search far to find such truisms in US commentary, or the West in general, which much prefers largely meaningless (though self-flattering) comparisons between Eastern and Western Europe. Nor is the hideous catastrophe of capitalism in the past years a major theme of contemporary discourse-a catastrophe that is dramatic in Latin America and other domains of the industrial West, in the "internal Third World" of the United States, and the "exported slums" of Europe. Nor are we likely to find much attention to the fact, hard to ignore, that the economic success stories typically involve coordination of the state and financial-industrial conglomerates, another sign of the collapse of capitalism in the past sixty years. It is only the Third World that is to be subjected to the destructive forces of free market capitalism, so that it can be more efficiently robbed and exploited by the powerful. p364 It is often not appreciated how profound and deeply rooted is the contempt for democracy in the elite culture, and the fear it arouses. When political life and independent thought revived in the 1960s, the problem arose again, and the reaction was the same. The Trilateral Commission, bringing together liberal elites from Europe, Japan, and the United States, warned of an impending "crisis of democracy" as segments of the public sought to enter the political arena. This "excess of democracy" was posing a threat to the unhampered rule of privileged elites-what is called "democracy" in political theology. The problem was the usual one: the rabble were trying to arrange their own affairs, gaining control over their communities and pressing their political demands. There were organizing efforts among young people, ethnic minorities, women, social activists, and others, encouraged by the struggles of benighted masses elsewhere for freedom and independence. More "moderation in democracy" would be required, the Commission concluded, perhaps a return to the days when "Truman had been able to govern the country with the cooperation of a relatively small number of Wall Street lawyers and bankers," as the American rapporteur commented. Irving Kristol adds that "insignificant nations, like insignificant people, can quickly experience delusions of significance." But as a leading neoconservative, he has no time for the softer means of manufacture of consent, which are, in any event, not warranted for insignificant people outside the domains of Western civilization. Hence the delusions of significance must be driven from their tiny minds by force: "In truth, the days of 'gunboat diplomacy' are never over.... Gunboats are as necessary for international order as police cars are for domestic order." These ideas bring us to the Reagan Administration, which established a state propaganda agency (the Office of Public Diplomacy) that was by far the most elaborate in American history, much to the delight of the advocates of a powerful and interventionist state who are called "conservatives" in one of the current corruptions of political discourse. When the program was exposed, a high official described it as the kind of operation carried out in "enemy territory"-an apt phrase, expressing standard elite attitudes towards the public. In this case, the enemy was not completely subdued. Popular movements deepened their roots and spread into new sectors of the population, and were able to drive the state underground to clandestine terror instead of the more efficient forms of overt violence that Presidents Kennedy and Johnson could undertake before the public I had been aroused. p366 In accordance with the prevailing conceptions, there is no infringement of democracy if a few corporations control the information system: in fact, that is the essence of democracy. The leading figure of the public relations industry, Edward Bernays, explained that "the very essence of the democratic process" is "the freedom to persuade and suggest," what he calls "the engineering of consent." If the freedom to persuade happens to be concentrated in a few hands, we must recognize that such is the nature of a free society. Since the early twentieth century, the public relations industry has devoted huge resources to "educating the American people about the economic facts of life" to ensure a favorable climate for business. Its task is to control "the public mind," which is "the only serious danger confronting the company," an AT&T executive observed eighty years ago. And today, the Wall Street Journal describes with enthusiasm the "concerted efforts" of corporate America "to change the attitudes and values of workers" on a vast scale with "New Age workshops" and other contemporary devices of indoctrination and stupefaction designed to convert "worker apathy into corporate allegiance." The agents of Reverend Moon and Christian evangelicals employ similar devices to bar the threat of peasant organizing and to undermine a Church that serves the poor in Latin America, aided by intelligence agencies and the closely linked international organizations of the ultra-right. Bernays expressed the basic point in a 1928 public relations manual: "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society.... It is the intelligent minorities which need to make use of propaganda continuously and systematically." p368 A properly functioning system of indoctrination has a variety of tasks, some rather delicate. One of its targets is the stupid and ignorant masses. They must be kept that way, diverted with emotionally potent oversimplifications, marginalized, and isolated. Ideally, each person should be alone in front of the television screen watching sports, soap operas, or comedies, deprived of organizational structures that permit individuals lacking resources to discover what they think and believe in interaction with others, to formulate their own concerns and programs, and to act to realize them. They can then be permitted, even encouraged, to ratify the decisions of their betters in periodic elections. The rascal multitude are the proper targets of the mass media and a public education system geared to obedience and training in needed skills, including the skill of repeating patriotic slogans on timely occasions. p372 Control over investment, production, commerce, finance, conditions of work, and other crucial aspects of social policy lies in private hands. Unwillingness to adapt to this structure of authority and domination carries costs, ranging from state force to the costs of privation and struggle; even an individual of independent mind can hardly fail to compare these to the benefits, however meager, that accrue to submission. Meaningful choices are thus narrowly limited. Similar factors limit the range of ideas and opinion in obvious ways. Articulate expression is shaped by the same private powers that control the economy. It is largely dominated by major corporations that sell audiences to advertisers and naturally reflect the interests of the owners and their market. The ability to articulate and communicate one's views, concerns, and interests-or even to discover them-is thus narrowly constrained as well. p373 The United States is near the limit in its safeguards for freedom from state coercion, and also in the poverty of its political life. There is essentially one political party, the business party, with two factions. Shifting coalitions of investors account for a large part of political history. Unions, or other popular organizations that might offer a way for the general public to play some role in influencing programs and policy choices, scarcely function apart from the narrowest realm. The ideological system is bounded by the consensus of the privileged. Elections are largely a ritual form. In congressional elections, virtually all incumbents are returned to office, a reflection of the vacuity of the political system and the choices it offers. There is scarcely a pretense that substantive issues are at stake in the presidential campaigns. Articulated programs are hardly more than a device to garner votes, and candidates adjust their messages to their audiences as public relations tacticians advise. Political commentators ponder such questions as whether Reagan will remember his lines, or whether Mondale looks too gloomy, or whether Dukakis can duck the slime flung at him by George Bush's speechwriters. In the 1984 elections, the two political factions virtually exchanged traditional policies, the Republicans presenting themselves as the party of Keynesian growth and state intervention in the economy, the Democrats as the advocates of fiscal conservatism; few even noticed. Half the population does not bother to mark the ballots, and those who take the trouble often consciously vote against their own interest. ... during the Reagan years. The population overwhelmingly opposed the policies of his Administration, and even the Reagan voters in 1984, by about three to two, hoped that his legislative program would not be enacted. In the 1980 elections, 4 percent of the electorate voted for Reagan because they regarded him as a "real conservative." In 1984, this dropped to 1 percent. That is what is called "a landslide victory for conservatism" in political rhetoric. Furthermore, contrary to much pretense, Reagan's popularity was never particularly high, and much of the population seemed to understand that he was a media creation, who had only the foggiest idea of what government policy might be. It is noteworthy that the fact is now tacitly conceded; the instant that the "great communicator" was no longer of any use as a symbol, he was quietly tucked away. After eight years of pretense about the "revolution" that Reagan wrought, no one would dream of asking its standard-bearer for his thoughts about any topic, because it is understood, as it always was, that he has none. When Reagan was invited to Japan as an elder statesman, his hosts were surprised ... to discover that he could not hold press conferences or talk on any subject. Their discomfiture aroused some amusement in the American press: the Japanese believed what they had read about this remarkable figure, failing to comprehend the workings of the mysterious occidental mind. p376 ... unless the rich and powerful are satisfied, everyone will suffer, because they control the basic social levers, determining what will be produced and consumed, and what crumbs will filter down to their subjects. p377 Consider political commentator Michael Kinsley, who represents "t~7 left" in mainstream commentary and television debate. When the State Department publicly confirmed US support for terrorist attacks on agricultural cooperatives in Nicaragua, Kinsley wrote that we should not be too quick to condemn this official policy. Such international terrorist operations doubtless cause "vast civilian suffering," he conceded. But if they manage "to undermine morale and confidence in the government," then they may be "perfectly legitimate." The policy is "sensible" if "cost-benefit analysis" shows that "the amount of blood and misery that will be poured in" yields "democracy," in the conventional sense already discussed. As a spokesman for the establishment left, Kinsley insists that terror must meet the pragmatic criterion; violence should not be employed for its own sake, merely because we find it amusing. This more humane conception would readily be accepted by Saddam Hussein, Abu Nidal, and the Hizbollah kidnappers, who, presumably, also consider terror pointless unless it is of value for their ends. These facts help us situate enlightened Western opinion on the international spectrum. Such reasoned discussion of the justification for terror is not at all unusual, which is why it elicits no reaction in respectable circles just as there is no word of comment among its left-liberal contributors and readers when the New Republic, long considered the beacon of American liberalism, advocates military aid to "Latin-style fascists ... regardless of how many are murdered" because "there are higher American priorities than Salvadoran human rights." Appreciation of the "salutary efficacy'' of terror-to borrow John Quincy Adams's phrase-has been a standard feature of enlightened Western thought. It provides the basic framework for the propaganda campaign concerning international terrorism in the 1980s. Naturally, terrorism directed against us and our friends is bitterly denounced as a reversion to barbarism. But far more extreme terrorism that we and our agents conduct is considered constructive, or at worst insignificant, if it meets the pragmatic criterion. p378 The guiding principle is clear and straightforward: their terror is terror, and the flimsiest evidence suffices to denounce it and to exact retribution upon civilian bystanders who happen to be in the way; our terror, even if far more extreme, is merely statecraft, and therefore does not enter into the discussion of the plague of the modem age. The practice is understandable on the principles already discussed. Sometimes, the adaptability of the system might surprise even the most p388 The continuity of US policy is well illustrated by the record of the Atlacatl Battalion, "whose soldiers professionally obeyed orders from their officers to kill the Jesuits in cold blood," Americas Watch observed on the tenth anniversary of the assassination of Archbishop Romero, proceeding to review some of the achievements of this elite unit, "created, trained and equipped by the United States." It was formed in March 1981, when fifteen specialists in counterinsurgency were sent to El Salvador from the US Army School of Special Forces. From the start, the Battalion "was engaged in the murder of large numbers of civilians." A professor at the US Army School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia, described its soldiers as "particularly ferocious": "We've always had a hard time getting [them] to take prisoners instead of ears." In December 1981, the Battalion took part in an operation in which hundreds of civilians were killed in an orgy of murder, rape, and burning-over 1000, according to the Church legal aid office. Later it was involved in the bombing of villages and the murder of hundreds of civilians by shooting, drowning, and other methods, the vast majority being women, children, and the elderly. This has been the systematic pattern of special warfare in El Salvador since the first major military operation in May 1980, when six hundred civilians were murdered and mutilated at the Rio Sumpul in a joint operation of the Salvadoran and Honduran armies, a slaughter revealed by Church sources, human rights investigators, and the foreign press, but not the US media, which also have their psychological warfare function. The Lawyers Committee for Human Rights alleged in a letter to Defense Secretary Cheney that the killers of the Jesuits were trained by US Special Forces up to three days before the assassinations. Father Jon de Cortina, Dean of Engineering at the Jesuit University in El Salvador where the priests were murdered, alleged further that the US military instructors were the same US soldiers who were trapped in a San Salvador hotel a few days later, in a highly publicized incident. In earlier years, some of the Atlacatl Battalion's worst massacres occurred when it was fresh from US training. The nature of Salvadoran army training was described by a deserter who received political asylum in Texas in July 1990 after the immigration judge rejected a State Department request that he be denied asylum and sent back to E1 Salvador. In this "fledgling democracy" the wealthy are immune from conscription; rather, teenagers are rounded up in sweeps in slums and refugee camps. According to this deserter-whose name was withheld by the court, for obvious reasons-conscripts were made to kill dogs and vultures by biting their throats and twisting off their heads, and had to watch as soldiers tortured and killed suspected dissidents, tearing out their fingernails, cutting off their heads, cutting a body to pieces "as though it was a toy and they played with the arms for entertainment," or starving and torturing them to death. Recruits were told that they would be assigned the same tasks, and that torturing people and animals "makes you more of a man and gives you more courage." In another recent case, an admitted member of a Salvadoran death squad associated with the Atlacatl Battalion, Cesar Vielman Joya Martinez, testified on his first-hand experience in state terror, providing detailed information about the murder operations with the complicity of US intelligence advisers and the government to the highest level, including evidence extremely relevant to the murder of the Jesuit priests. His testimony is corroborated by an associate who also defected, in allegations to a Mexican rights commission. After an initial pretense that it would investigate Martinez's story, the Bush Administration proceeded to make every effort to silence him and ship him back to probable death in El Salvador, despite the pleas of human rights organizations and Congress that he be protected and that his testimony be heard. The treatment of the main witness to the assassination of the Jesuits was similar. It might be noted that the treatment of the murdered Jesuit intellectuals themselves is not really different. Their murder and the judicial inquiry (such as it is) received attention, but not what they had to say. About this one will find very little, even when it would take no initiative to discover it. For example, the August 1990 conference of the American Psychological Association in Boston had a series of panels and symposia dealing with the work of Father Martin-Baro, including one in which the videotape of his California talk shortly before his assassination was played. The conference was covered by the Boston Globe, but not these sessions. On the day they were held, the Globe preferred a paper on male facial expressions that are attractive to women. First things first, after all. When Antonio Gramsci was imprisoned after the Fascist takeover of Italy, the government summed up its case by saying: "We must stop this brain from functioning for twenty years." Our current favorites leave less to chance: the brains must be stopped from functioning for ever, and we agree that their thoughts about such matters as state terrorism had best not be heard. The results of US military training are evident in abundance in the documentation by human rights groups and the Salvadoran Church. They are graphically described by Reverend Daniel Santiago, a Catholic priest working in El Salvador, in the Jesuit journal America. He reports the story of a peasant woman, who returned home one day to find her mother, sister, and three children sitting around a table, the decapitated head of each person placed carefully on the table in front of the body, the hands arranged on top "as if each body was stroking its own head." The assassins, from the Salvadoran National Guard, had found it hard to keep the head of an eighteen-month-old baby in place, so they nailed the hands onto it. A large plastic bowl filled with blood was tastefully displayed in the center of the table. To take just one further example, striking because of the circumstances, we may turn back to January 1988, when the US completed its demolition of the Central America peace accords, exempting its murderous clients from the provisions calling for "justice, freedom and democracy," "respect for human rights," and guarantees for "the inviolability of all forms of life and liberty." Just as this cynical success was being recorded, the bodies of two men and a teenage boy were found at a well-known death squad dumping ground, blindfolded with hands tied behind their backs and signs of torture. The nongovemmental Human Rights Commission, which continues to function despite the assassination of its founders and directors, reported that thirteen bodies had been found in the preceding two weeks, most showing signs of torture, including two women who had been hanged from a tree by their hair, their breasts cut off and their faces painted red. The reports were given anonymously, in fear of state terror. No one failed to recognize the traditional marks of the death squads. The information was reported by the wire services and prominently published in Canada, but not by the US national press. Reverend Santiago writes that macabre scenes of the kind he recounts are designed by the armed forces for the purpose of intimidation. People are not just killed by death squads in El Salvador.-they are decapitated and then their heads are placed on pikes and used to dot the landscape. Men are not just disemboweled by the Salvadoran Treasury Police; their severed genitalia are stuffed into their mouths. Salvadoran women are not just raped by the National Guard; their wombs are cut from their bodies and used to cover their faces. It is not enough to kill children; they are dragged over barbed wire until the flesh falls from their bones while parents are forced to watch.... The aesthetics of terror in El Salvador is religious. The intention is to ensure that the individual is totally subordinated to the interests of the Fatherland, which is why the death squads are sometimes called the "Army of National Salvation" by the governing ARENA Party, whose members (including President Cristiani) take a blood oath to the "leader-for-life," Roberto d'Aubuisson. The armed forces "scoop up recruits" from the age of thirteen, and indoctrinate them with rituals adopted from the Nazi SS, including brutalization and rape, so that they are prepared for killing with sexual overtones, as a religious rite. The stories of training "are not fairy tales"; they are "punctuated with the hard evidence of corpses, mutilated flesh, splattered brains and eyewitnesses." This "sadomasochistic killing creates terror," and "terror creates passivity in the face of oppression. A passive population is easy to control," so that there will be plenty of docile workers, and no complaints, and the sociopolitical project can be pursued with equanimity. Reverend Santiago reminds us that the current wave of violence is a reaction to attempts by the Church to organize the poor in the 1970s. State terror mounted as the Church began forming peasant associations and self-help groups, which, along with other popular organizations, "spread like wildfire through Latin American communities," Lars Schoultz writes. That the United States should turn at once to massive repression, with the cooperation of local elites, will surprise only those who are willfully ignorant of history and the planning record. Father Ignacio Ellacuria, rector of the Jesuit University before he was assassinated along with Father Martin-Baro, described El Salvador as "a lacerated reality, almost mortally wounded." He was a close associate of Archbishop Romero and was with him when the Archbishop wrote to President Carter, pleading in vain for the withdrawal of aid from the junta. The Archbishop informed Father Ellacuria that his letter was prompted "by the new concept of special warfare, which consists in murderously eliminating every endeavor of the popular organizations under the allegation of Communism or terrorism . . ." 73 Special warfare-whether called counterinsurgency, or low-intensity conflict, or some other euphemism-is simply international terrorism-and it has long been official US policy, a weapon in the arsenal used for the larger sociopolitical project. The same has been true in neighboring Guatemala. Latin America scholar Piero Gleijeses writes that in the traditional "culture of fear," ferocious repression sufficed to impose peace and order; "Just as the Indian was branded a savage beast to justify his exploitation, so those who sought social reform were branded communists to justify their persecution. " The decade 1944-54 was a unique departure, marked by "political democracy, the strong communist influence in the administration of President Jacobo Arbenz (1951-54), and Arbenz's agrarian reform"-"years of spring in the country of eternal tyranny," in the words of a Guatemalan poet. Half a million people received desperately needed land, the first time in the country's history that "the Indians were offered land, rather than being robbed of it": A new wind was stirring the Guatemalan countryside. The culture of fear was loosening its grip over the great masses of the Guatemalan population. In a not unreachable future, it might have faded away, a distant nightmare. The Communist Party leaders were regarded by the US Embassy as the sole exception to venality and ambition. They "were very honest, very committed," "the only people who were committed to hard work," one Embassy official commented. "This was the tragedy," he added: they were "our worst enemies," and had to be removed along with the reforms they helped to implement. The nightmare was restored in a coup organized by the CIA, with the cooperation of Guatemalan officers who betrayed their country in fear of the regional superpower, Gleijeses concludes. With regular US support, the regime of terror and torture and disappearance has been maintained, peaking in the late 1960s with direct US government participation. As the terror somewhat abated, there was "a wave of concientizacio' (heightening of political awareness)," largely under Church auspices. It inspired the usual reaction: the army "intensified the terror, murdering cooperative leaders, bilingual teachers, community leaders, and grassroots organizers"-in fact, following the same script as in El Salvador and Nicaragua. By the early 1980s, the terror reached the level of wholesale massacre in the Indian highlands. The Reagan Administration was not merely supportive but enthusiastic about the achievements of their friends. Recall that the Guatemalan generals are moderates who observe the pragmatic criterion. When Indians who had fled to the mountains to survive drifted back, unable to cope with the harsh conditions and begging forgiveness, "the army was generous," Gleijeses observes: "It no longer murdered the supplicants, except now and then, as a reminder." When order was once again restored, the generals accepted US advice and instituted a democratic facade, behind which they and their allies in the oligarchy would continue to rule. p397 Rousseau's classic lament that people are born free but are everywhere in chains p397 Those who adopt the common-sense principle that freedom is our natural right and essential need will agree with Bertrand Russell that anarchism is "the ultimate ideal to which society should approximate." Structures of hierarchy and domination are fundamentally illegitimate. They can be defended only on grounds of contingent need, an argument that rarely stands up to analysis. As Russell went on to observe seventy years ago, "the old bonds of authority" have little intrinsic merit. Reasons are needed for people to abandon their rights, "and the reasons offered are counterfeit reasons, convincing only to those who have a selfish interest in being convinced.... The condition of revolt," he went on, "exists in women towards men, in oppressed nations towards their oppressors, and above all in labour towards capital. It is a state full of danger, as all past history shows, yet also full of hope." p401 Whether the instinct for freedom is real or not, we do not know. If it is, history teaches that it can be dulled, but has yet to be killed. The courage and dedication of people struggling for freedom, their willingness to confront extreme state terror and violence, are often remarkable. There has been a slow growth of consciousness over many years, and goals have been achieved that were considered utopian or scarcely contemplated in earlier eras. An inveterate optimist can point to this record and express the hope that with a new decade, and soon a new century, humanity may be able to overcome some of its social maladies; others might draw a different lesson from recent history. It is hard to see rational grounds for affirming one or the other perspective. As in the case of many of the natural beliefs that guide our lives, we can do no better than to choose according to our intuition and hopes. The consequences of such a choice are not obscure. By denying the instinct for freedom we will only prove that humans are a lethal mutation, an evolutionary dead end; by nurturing it, if it is real, we may find ways to deal with dreadful human tragedies and problems that are awesome in scale. p407 Few in the South would contest the judgment of the Times of India that in the Gulf crisis the traditional warrior states-the US and UK-sought a "regional Yalta where the powerful nations agree among themselves to a share of Arab spoils . . . [Their] conduct throughout this one month [January-February 1991] has revealed the seamiest sides of Western civilization: its unrestricted appetite for dominance, its morbid fascination for hi-tech military might, its insensitivity to 'alien' cultures, its appalling jingoism...." The general mood was captured by Cardinal Paulo Evaristo Arns of Sao Paulo, Brazil, who wrote that in the Arab countries "the rich sided with the US government while the millions of poor condemned this military aggression." Throughout the Third World, "there is hatred and fear: When will they decide to invade us," and on what pretext? Within the US, the major issue remains the unraveling of the society under the impact of the Reagan-Bush social and economic programs. These reflected a broad elite consensus in favor of a welfare state for the rich even beyond the norm. Policy was designed to transfer resources to privileged sectors, with the costs to be borne by the general population and future generations. Given the narrow interests of its constituency, the Administration has no serious proposals to deal with the consequences of these policies. It is therefore necessary to divert the public. Two classic devices are to inspire fear of terrible enemies and worship of our grand leaders, who rescue us just in the nick of time. The enemies may be domestic (criminal Blacks, uppity women, subversives undermining the tradition, etc.), but foreign demons have natural advantages. The Russians served the purpose for many years; their collapse has called for innovative and audacious tactics. As the standard pretext vanished, the domestic population has been frightened-with some success-by images of Qaddafi's hordes of international terrorists, Sandinistas marching on Texas, Grenada interdicting sea lanes and threatening the homeland itself, Hispanic narcotraffickers directed by the arch-maniac Noriega, and crazed Arabs generally, most recently, the Beast of Baghdad, after he underwent the usual conversion from favored friend to Attila the Hun after committing the one unforgivable crime, the crime of disobedience, on August 2, 1990. The scenario requires Awe as well as Fear. There must, then, be foreign triumphs, domestic ones being beyond even the imagination of the cultural managers. Our noble leaders must courageously confront and miraculously defeat the barbarians at the gate, so that we can once again "stand tall" (the President's boast, after overcoming Grenada's threat to our existence) and march forward towards a New World Order of peace and justice. Since each foreign triumph is in fact a fiasco, the aftermath must be obscured as the government-media alliance turns to some new crusade. The barbarians must be defenseless: it would be foolish to confront anyone who might fight back. Moreover, the notable rise in the moral and cultural level of the general population since the 1960s, including the unwillingness to tolerate atrocities and aggression, a grave disease called "the Vietnam syndrome," has further limited the options. The problem was addressed in a National Security Policy Review from the first months of the Bush presidency, dealing with "third world threats." It reads: "In cases where the U.S. confronts much weaker enemies, our challenge will be not simply to defeat them, but to defeat them decisively and rapidly." Any other outcome would be "embarrassing" and might "undercut political support," understood to be thin. The intervention options are therefore restricted to clandestine terror (called "low-intensity conflict," etc., often assisted by mercenary states), or quick demolition of a "much weaker enemy." Disappearance of the Soviet deterrent enhances this second option: the US need no longer fight with "one hand tied," that is, with concern for the consequences to itself. Deterring Democracy

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