A uniquely incisive take on reality--Review of Living the American NIghtmare

 A neat little review of my book Living the American Nightmare.  It's in the British socialist newspaper MorningStar. 

Click below

A uniquely incisive take on reality

Three Gifts of Music

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/12/23/three-gifts-of-music/

Work of National Importance--Militant Pacifism in WW2

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/12/16/work-of-national-importance/

J. Edgar's Legacy of Surveillance

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/12/09/j-edgars-legacy-of-surveillance/

Labor's Weakness

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/12/05/labors-weakness/

US Capitalism's Bully Boys

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/12/02/us-capitalisms-bully-boys/

1972: The Year I Figured out the USA

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/11/25/1972-the-year-i-figured-out-the-usa/

Bringing a Bit of Light to the Fog of War

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/11/18/bringing-a-bit-of-light-to-the-fog-of-war/

Black Women, Communism and the USA

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/11/11/black-women-communism-and-the-usa/

Please Help Me Get My New Book Done!

 

I am never comfortable asking for money. However, I am doing exactly that this one time. Please click on the link below for a description of my current book project. There is a Contribute btton there, as well. In case, you are wondering--I have a written agreement with a publisher and have already written around 15,000 words of the book. The publication date looks like it will be in autumn of 2023. Please seriously consider donating. Any amount helps.

Thanks for your time and support.

Ron J

Nowhere Land--A New Book from Ron Jacobs

Washington as Mephistopheles, Iranian Opposition Edition

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/11/02/washington-as-mephistopheles-iranian-opposition-edition/

The Globalization of the Revolutionary Will

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/10/28/the-globalization-of-the-revolutionary-will/

Open Letter to the Progressive Caucus in Congress

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/10/25/an-open-letter-to-the-progressive-caucus-in-congress/

A New Look at the Strategy of the Civil Rights Movement

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/10/21/a-new-look-at-the-strategy-of-the-civil-rights-movement/

Bob Dylan Lives (and Greil Marcus is Still Writing About Him)

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/10/14/bob-dylan-lives-and-greil-marcus-is-still-writing-about-him/

The Nuclear Site That Can't Be Cleaned Up

 https://progressive.org/latest/book-review-nuclear-site-cant-be-cleaned-up-jacobs/

It's time we demand peace from Congress

 https://vtdigger.org/2022/10/10/ron-jacobs-its-time-we-demand-peace-from-congress/

The Big Fools Say to Push On

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/10/07/the-big-fools-say-to-push-on/

Unnatural Consequences

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/09/30/unnatural-consequences/

New Collection titled Living the American Nightmare--New edition

Living the American Nightmare

The content is the same, but the book is set up more formally.

This is just a small collection of some of my essays and articles published on Counterpunch since January 2019. It is currently only available on Amazon, but should be available via other distributors in a week or so. Although you can find the pieces herein online, this is just in case you want to have a print or ebook version. Here's the First edition's back cover blurb "

The concept of an American Dream has been promoted like the latest Hollywood smash for decades. For too many residents of the United States, that dream has been more unattainable than true romance. In the twenty-first century, the American Dream is revealing itself to be a nightmare--something it's always been for many in the US and abroad. This collection of essays asks the question-is a nightmare still a dream? Is the American Dream a nightmare? " 

A Radical Scholar and Teacher Moves On

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/09/20/a-radical-scholar-and-teacher-moves-on/

Nationalism: An Unsacred Cow

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/09/16/nationalism-a-satanic-religion/

Rousing the Power of the Rank and File

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/09/09/rousing-the-power-of-the-rank-and-file/

Remembering Jackson

 

My friend Jackson died over Labor Day weekend. He was a couple years younger than me. I met him in January 1978 right after my friend D. and I made it to Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, CA. I was 22 then. Jackson came up to us in People's Park. He carried a rather beat-up guitar in one hand and a quart of Rainier Ale in a paper bag in the other. We started talking and drinking. Then he began playing some blues. The guitar was missing the high E string, so he compensated by playing some old blues songs in alternate keys. He told us about the 25 cent meal then being distributed every evening in a church basement on College Street a couple blocks from the park. After the meal, we headed to Earth People's Park—a crash pad owned and operated by the White Panthers. Jackson headed off to his next endeavor. The fellow “running” the crash pad that night was a guy D. and I had met in Englishtown, NJ the morning after a one day festival at the race track there that featured the Grateful Dead. We joined him and his fellow Bleecker Street Yippies in gathering all the food the vendors had left when the concert ended. Then we started a fire and cooked breakfast for the thousand or so festival goers who hadn't made it out of the grounds after the show. Anyhow, we said hey, he told us where we could sleep and then invited us to drink from the mason jar he had in his hand. It contained a rather potent psilocybin tea. I think D. and I slept for a couple hours before she and I headed back up to Telegraph at morning's light.

 

Anyhow, we became good friends with Jackson over the years. When some friends of ours from back East joined us and we rented an apartment, Jackson was a regular—guitar and beer in hand. When there was something going on in People's Park or on Telegraph, Jackson was there. As we grew tight, he began to hint at his past. He had hit the streets when he was in junior high. His dad was a jazz musician who sometimes had work and sometimes didn't. His dad also struggled with a narcotics addiction. The family lived in a working-class district of Richmond, CA.--a working-class town dominated by industry and pollution. Jackson didn't talk about his family much.

 

Always a step or two ahead of the police in Berkeley, Jackson lived off of panhandling, some petty crime and busking. His easy smile and natural openness combined with a natural and smooth blues guitar styling usually ensured a decent audience until the cops ran him off. For a while he and a bass player also named Jack played regularly on the corner of Telegraph and Durant a couple blocks south of UC Berkeley's Sather Gate. After the street quieted down, we would all meet up at whatever bar or restaurant was selling cheap pitchers of beer for a night of drinking and talking shit until the place closed.

 

I left the East Bay in 1985. Mine and D.'s romantic relationship had ended a few years earlier and I was a new father of a son. His mom and I headed north to Washington state. I went back every year or so for a while and usually ran into Jackson. He was still playing his guitar. Sometimes he was drinking and sometimes he wasn't. Sometimes he was with a woman and sometimes he wasn't. When I moved east to Vermont in 1992, I had lost many of my connections to the Bay Area. Some of my friends had died, some were in prison, some were living lives their parents had wanted them to, some were up in the woods growing weed. I had no idea where Jackson was or what he was up to.

 

About two years ago, I received a Facebook friend request. It was from Jackson. We chatted back and forth over the next few months before I lost contact again. His missives went between remembering the old days, deploring his on again, off again unhoused situation, and rants about wearing masks. There were a couple more periods where he would start messaging me again and we would continue our conversations. He told me he was fighting cancer and was finally being housed in a decent place with a little privacy. He also told me that the place was dirty and dangerous, especially for women and young people. About six weeks ago, I lost contact again. I didn't think much about it.

 

This morning I saw a post from a mutual friend (someone who also crashed at that apartment mentioned above) that Jackson had died. Every time Jackson would begin drinking, he would splash a bit of the first can or bottle on the ground when he first opened it. The first time we drank I asked him why. It was “for the brothers and sisters gone before” was his reply.

 

So, a splash of beer for my brother Jackson.

When History Tells Us to Get On With the Struggle

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/09/02/when-history-tells-us-to-get-on-with-the-struggle/

Why Do People Want to be Nazis?

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/08/26/why-do-people-want-to-be-nazis/

Songs Against the Slavers' Hell

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/08/19/songs-against-the-slavers-hell/

Panama Red and Elvis

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2016/08/17/panama-red-and-elvis/

Is the Middle Class Even Real?

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/08/12/is-the-middle-class-even-real/

Nancy Does Taiwan While General Flynn Cleans His Guns

Pelosi is a Congresswoman not a Senator.  Piece will be corrected soon.  My mistake

https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/08/08/nancy-does-taiwan-while-general-flynn-cleans-his-guns/

Save People’s Park: An Open Letter to the City Council of Berkeley, CA

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/08/04/save-peoples-park-an-open-letter-to-the-city-council-of-berkeley-ca/

The Conflict in Ukraine and American Exceptionalism

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/08/03/the-conflict-in-ukraine-and-american-exceptionalism/

Train I Ride, Five Coaches Long

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/07/29/train-i-ride-five-coaches-long/

Fighting Back Against the Forever Lockup

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/07/22/fighting-back-against-the-forever-lockup/

Sins of the Father

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/07/15/sins-of-the-father-2/

As if Poverty and Debt Will Make Us Rich

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/07/08/as-if-poverty-and-debt-will-make-us-rich/

So This Is the Freedom We Kill Other People For?

Since this was written, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, a Black woman, has joined the Supreme Court... 

https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/07/01/so-this-is-the-freedom-we-kill-other-people-for/

On the Precipice of Global Civil (Class) War?

Once again, this is behind a paywall---a year's subscription to Counterpunch is a mere $25.  Check it out...

https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/06/26/on-the-precipice-of-global-civil-class-war/

Slavoj Zizek Does His Christopher Hitchens Impression

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/06/22/slavoj-zizek-does-his-christopher-hitchens-impression/

The Demons of War Hunker Down in Ukraine

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/06/14/the-demons-of-war-hunker-down-in-ukraine/

From Goldwater to the New Deal

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/06/10/from-goldwater-to-the-green-new-deal/

Heading Towards the Setting Sun

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/06/06/heading-towards-the-setting-sun/

Gwangju May 1980:A Real Movement for Democracy

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/06/03/gwangju-may-1980-a-genuine-movement-for-democracy/

When War is Too Easy

 In 1965 I lived in Peshawar, Pakistan on a small US military base. The base existed to spy on China and the Soviet Union. In the summer of 1965 a war broke out between India and Pakistan over the nation of Kashmir. For those who don't know, Kashmir is a region on the subcontinent that is claimed by both India and Pakistan. It is also the home of a longtime independence movement. After a summer of increasing hostilities in other parts of the country, the war came to Peshawar. On my tenth birthday, the Indian Air Force bombed military and civilian areas near the US base where my family lived with a couple hundred other US citizens. The next day, US troops dug deep long trenches in the yards of the Americans, place sheets of plywood over them and covered the plywood with dirt. These would be our bomb shelters. They also painted every window on base black and began enforcing a curfew that required us to turn off all electric lights at dusk. For the next week, the bombers came every night. We spent most nights in the trenches in our backyards. Anti-aircraft guns fired all around us and we heard the ack-ack of the guns and the bombs whistle as they fell, then explode. It was both scary and adventuresome. My siblings who were with me in that trench continue to deal with the trauma it created. After a week of bombing, the Pentagon evacuated the women and children from the base. After an overland journey to Kabul, Afghanistan and then a flight on a C-130 outfitted for troop transport, we ended up living in military barracks in Karamursel, Turkey. We stayed there for three months. The nations supplying weapons to each side halted their shipments and a truce was negotiated at peace talks in Tashkent.

This was my first brush with war. The other was when my father deployed to DaNang, Vietnam in late 1968. Despite a couple close calls, he made it home physically intact and relatively stable emotionally. My experience in Pakistan taught me two very important things. The first was that war is a foolish, if not downright idiotic method of problem solving. The second lesson was that a war could be ended if the combatants ran out of weapons and ammunition.

That week of huddling through the night in hastily-made air raid shelters while bombers dropped their ordnance a couple miles away and heavy artillery on the ground tried to shoot them down was enough war for me. I knew then that I would not allow the draft to take me. I wasn't going to die for that nonsense and I wasn't going to kill. The lessons I learned from my experience seem to be the exact opposite of the lessons learned by those who make and profit from war.

My week of war is nothing compared to those who have fought in wars or lived in countries where war ripped apart their lives. However, that week is considerably more experience than the majority of those politicians and profiteers who now insist on escalating the war between Russia and Ukraine. These men and women, who act as if war is a Hollywood film or a video game, act as if they have little understanding of the trauma they are inflicting. Nor do they seem to be considering alternatives to the escalation they champion. Their lives as US citizens are lives full of triumphalism and military madness—a madness that sees war not as a last resort, but all too often as the only resort. Even after the debacles in Afghanistan and Iraq, these politicians and all too many who vote for them reject the compromise peace requires in favor of combat; combat most often carried out by working class men and women.

Instead of spending billions of dollars on weaponry for Ukraine's military, banning all things Russian and reviving the lend-lease legislation of World War Two, the US should be insisting on a ceasefire and a negotiated peace. This approach may lack the optics of war, but is most likely where the war will end up, anyhow. Unfortunately, for the reasons stated above and more, Washington demanding a ceasefire is unlikely to happen any time soon. The madness of war is in place. This war is just too easy for US politicians and their constituents, especially those who make money from war: no body bags of US troops, big profits and no protests. It is the perfect war crime.

Ban the Damn Guns

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/05/27/ban-the-damn-guns/

Some Thoughts on the Russia-Ukraine Conflict in Week Number Twelve

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/05/18/some-thoughts-on-the-russia-ukraine-conflict-in-week-number-twelve/

The Game is Bigger Than the Parks It’s Played In

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/05/13/the-game-is-bigger-than-the-parks-its-played-in/

Winston Churchill’s Rap Sheet: A Record of Empire

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/05/06/winston-churchills-rap-sheet-a-record-of-empire/

We Need an International Antiwar Movement, Not a Cheerleading Squad for the Arms Industry

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/05/03/we-need-an-international-antiwar-movement-not-a-cheerleading-squad-for-the-arms-industry/

What About History?

This is behind a paywall that can be opened with a mere 25/year subscription to Counterpunch +

https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/05/01/what-about-history/

F*ck You, Motherf*ckers

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/04/29/fuck-you-motherfuckers/

Love and Death, War and Peaceniks

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/04/22/love-and-death-war-and-peaceniks/

Neoliberalism is Not a Noun

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/04/15/neoliberalism-is-not-a-noun/

Desperation, Fear, Facebook and Hope, Always Hope

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/04/08/desperation-fear-facebook-and-hope-always-hope/

Supporting Militarism Will Not Bring Justice, Only Death

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/04/06/supporting-militarism-will-not-bring-justice-only-death/

April 4, 1968

Blast from the Past.....

https://mronline.org/2006/04/04/april-4-1968/ 

Why Spill Any Blood?

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/03/30/why-spill-any-blood/

The Empyreal Horn of Wadada Leo Smith

 This is another piece behind the Counterpunch firewall.  Well worth the 25 bucks a year for the exclusive content.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/03/27/the-empyreal-horn-of-wadada-leo-smith/

Queen Victoria's Goddaughter

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/03/25/queen-victorias-goddaughter/

NATO, the Cold War and the roots of the war on Ukraine

 https://kboo.fm/media/108332-nato-cold-war-and-roots-war-ukraine

War should never be applauded. Avoid it at all costs.

 https://vtdigger.org/2022/03/15/ron-jacobs-war-should-never-be-applauded-avoid-it-at-all-costs/

NATO and Its Assimilation of Europe

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/03/15/nato-and-its-assimilation-of-europe/

When the University was Antiwar

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/03/11/when-the-university-was-antiwar/

Calling for More War is Not a Desire for a Just Peace

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/03/09/calling-for-more-war-is-not-a-desire-for-a-just-peace/

An Antiwar Primer

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/03/04/an-antiwar-primer/

Bertolt Brecht's poem A War Primer

Fascism is a Movement, Not Just a Man

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/03/02/fascism-is-a-movement-not-just-a-man/

Imperial Idiocy's Newest Battleground

 Extra note Robert Kagan (mentioned in this piece) was also a co-founder of the neocon Project for a New American Century and the husband of a key architect of the dismembering of the elected 2014 Ukrainian government, Victoria Nuland.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/02/25/imperial-idiocys-newest-battleground/

The Ugly Marriage of Postmodernism and Neoliberalism

Yet another piece published in Counterpunch's subscriber only section.  It bears repeating-- this section is worth the $25/yr subscription!

https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/02/20/the-ugly-marriage-of-postmodernism-and-neoliberalism/

I'm Reckoning on a Day of Reckoning

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/02/16/im-reckoning-on-a-day-of-reckoning/

The Responsibility of the Intellectuals-Is It Still a Thing?

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/02/10/the-responsibility-of-the-intellectuals-is-it-still-a-thing/

Close the Bases, Reduce US Wars Abroad

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/02/04/close-the-bases-reduce-us-wars-abroad/

Hunter S. Thompson: A Certain Type of Witness

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/01/28/hunter-s-thompson-a-certain-type-of-witness/

Ukraine as Game Board

https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/01/26/ukraine-as-game-board/ 

Peter Weiss and his Piece de Resistance

 This meditation on Peter Weiss' The Aesthetics of Resistance is located in Counterpunch's subscriber only section.  Once again, I encourage you to subscribe if you haven't already.  25 dollars a year for exclusive articles, reviews, commentary and other goodies every week...it's worth it.  I believe there are special prices for low income readers.  Thanks......

https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/01/23/peter-weiss-and-his-piece-de-resistance/

Where Greed is a Virtue and Poverty Your Own Damn Fault

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/01/18/where-greed-is-a-virtue-and-poverty-your-own-damn-fault/

Me, Richard Nixon and the War on Drugs

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/01/14/me-richard-nixon-and-the-war-on-drugs/

Some Hazy Cosmic Jive

https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/01/07/some-hazy-cosmic-jive/