6. Tourism for the well-to-do, another blight of capitalism, by G.S.
12th March 2006
Posting 6. to General (no specific category), by George Salzman
Nancy Davies <> forwarded me a letter with the preface: “Note: forwarded message attached. This is from JK, he mentions you and the struggle.” After losing my cool Friday evening in rage and telling her I didn’t want her to forward any more of his messages, I chilled down, apologized to her, and yesterday morning, still rankled by his obliviousness, wrote him as follows, where the material in boldface is my emphasis, and the italicized comments in parentheses are mine:
J, I’m inserting remarks in your note below.
George
Subject: everything
From: JK <>
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2006 08:09:29 -0800 (PST)
To: Nancy Davies <>
Hi Nancy, Sorry it’s been so long. I’m getting ready to go back to the good old USA (Ha! Ha!), probably March 15 to May 15, then Europe till Nov 15, then the USA and maybe India next Jan/Feb - Mexico can wait. Unfortunately, I don’t think I can get to Oaxaca for quite a while. Traveling is agreeing with me and I figure I’d better move while I have the energy. You mentioned parallels - I see the parallels you see, but I see them as minuscule, and others are more glaring (the inquisition of christianity and espec Spain = the purge trials of Stalin = the mind set of Latin America down to Fidel. (What do you mean by “the mind set of Latin America”? It’s as if homophobia — I’m guessing — isn’t present in the good old USA.) There could never be a parallel to Rachel Corrie in the Moslem or Fidel world - she’d be dead before anybody heard of her. It’s good to bring out the contradictions of the system and push improvement, but I’m grateful we have contradictions (What does this mean?). At last someone who replied to George actually had something to say about the difficulty of speaking out in much of the world (he was leftist but he didn’t mean in the USA) and had some compassion for people living under unbearable silence (Who was this that you’re referring to?) - I think in the long run shutting people like you up is more debilitating for society than all sorts of inequality. It’s easy to see the diff in health and educ in Cuba now and before, it isn’t as easy to see the harm done by regimenting minds, and it is easy to see the harm done to straight and gay bodies in the fight to control minds. Of course you are right to fight injustice but I don’t understzand how anybody as old as I am can be so messianic, and of couse I feel injustice that you consider minor and vice versa (minor only in the sense of less ghastly, not that it isn’t ghastly). Life is great, hopefully I’ll reform some day and do good. Love, J
(J, I think you’re far too gentle on yourself, and that you’ve never really dealt with the tough questions. As long as you can satisfy your lust for travelling, seeing marvelous architecture, and enjoying exotic (to we westerners) foods, you’re ready to accept the horrendous PHYSICAL deaths and mutilations — remember some 50 to 60 thousand people die of starvation and its associated plagues EVERY SINGLE DAY — and essentially pay no attention, rationalizing that the Crusades, the Inquisition, etc. (Oh! Yes, let’s get a little of your anti-Communism in too, Stalin and Castro) were/are worse. It’s similar to the kind of so-called “cost/benefit” analysis that the promoters of genetically modified foods use. It’s not a question, or at least it shouldn’t be, of trying to justify the good old USA and the contradictions you welcome, as you dance around the world using money over which you happen to have legal control as a result of your birthplace, your retirement income, and the contradictions that maintain your relative privileges. Have you thought about how much wealth is squandered by the well-to-do people of this world while billions live and die, and millions are murdered to maintain the injustices? Talk about freedom to think, you’re not in Cuba or Stalin’s Soviet Union, so you can give it a shot. Don’t think I don’t like to have fun. I do, but not at the expense of other people. I like you personally, but I don’t respect the life you’re leading, and what seems to me the shoddy pseudo-intellectualizing that “justifies” it. Of course Nancy will call me down for being judgemental, but I spent most of my life being trained (in physics and mathematics) to evaluate, think critically, to make judgements, supposedly good skills, and for what? To keep my mouth shut?)
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Subject: Dancing around the USA, then Europe
From: JK <>
Date: Mon, 10 Apr 2006 09:48:43 -0700 (PDT)
To: George Salzman <>
Hi George, Judgmental, Shudgmental, I do realize I provoked your reply. I trust my critical thinking abilities and am as grateful for the awareness and insights that came with the study of French lit and phil as you with the study of physics and math. I will keep the list of writers you mentioned in your latest e mail and look at them when I’m settled in Mexico and hope for new insights. I don’t know most of them but since Pinter is on the list, perhaps some others are worthy; certainly the fact that subcom marcos is on the list iindcates there is prob a lot of pablum. Beautiful baby face and baby thoughts (true, I haven’t read much of him). Your scolding takes me back to the good nuns of my childhood, instilling guilt and the need for sacrifice - a 50s Catholic will never get over it - and that was not all bad - But for the grace of God, there go I. It was interesting to hear Joe B lives in Wincheser Va of which I know little in spite of the fact that I was a novice at the Trappist Monastery there. Does he welcome visitors? I think the 2 yr experience was good for me in spite of falling in love with another novice and getting kicked out. It indicates my difficulty in incorporating spirituality and gay sexuality in my life and growing up with the homophobia of the McCarthy area ( I remember at around 13 yrs old reading about the danger posed by homosexuals in the state dept and and feeling without being able to articulate it to myself that this included me) and then the homophobia of the cuban rev feeling the diff of incorporating gay sexuality with political life. The new leftist hope of Peru has distanced himself from some of his crazy family but his mother said all gays should be shot and I think this shows that homophobia and the left is still a combination to be feared, similar to a vjisceral anti semit apparent in the attack on Chomsky (comments I have heard over the years have given me the impression that anti semit is part of latin culture) and as you said it has some basis in econ and polit reality, and so some gays prob epitomize the selfish indiv west in the eyes of ultra altruistic socialists. So I am lenient on myself as I was not in my youth (I gave $500 to Balto Core in the 60s when it was a lot of money and meant putting off going to Europe, went on a union educ project in Mississippi one summer and it was educ for me altho prob less for the poor black kids but I was scared at first). I finally realize i count too and if I am a very happy person, that is one happy person, a surer thing than being unhappy to make someone else happy. Of course you can be fulfilled and altruistic and I haven’t tried hard enough to do that, but c’est la vie. I know a lot of people like the Cambidge elite who talk the talk, but they live better than I do so I’ve given up letting them make me feel guilty because I’m aware of my priv life and they aren’t of theirs even tho they are more priv than I am. (This doesn’t necessarily refer to you). I now have $350 000 dollars, a lot of it ill gotten gains from the stock market, and $800 a mth soc sec. If anything is left at my demise, 1/3 will go to family, 1/3 to an org that is really doing good in the world, and 1/3 to an org that is really doing good for gays in the world. Meanwhile I will dance around the world as long as seems right, then go to Mex and enjoy it while trying to learn the culture incl polit and econ possiblities, and hopefully eventurally find some volunteer work that will really help in some way. I’m ony 65, I don’t see the nec of rushing to save the world. There are people dying tragically every day, there were infinite numbers in the past, and forcing myself to do good rather than letting fulfillment and altruism come together naturally doesn’t seem important. The appreciation of art and beauty all over the world is a supreme value for me. You seem to have a puritan disdain for esthetic experience. I travel simply, it certainly is a form of exploitation, but I am able to do it on $20 000 a yr and use a lot less resources than a lot of pious speaking people and hopefully some money will be left to do good after I’m gone. I’m not pure but I’ve given up on that. Viva Mexico, J
March 12th, 2006 at 11:22 am
George, I like you personally but I think you are really too hard-ass, not to say judgmental, and worse, in a way which is not useful.
First of all, there’s a difference between Bill Gates and those of us living on a modest or extremely modest social security check, which was EARNED (I don’t suppose you agree with GWB and advocate doing away with SS?)and often earned, as in the case of me and our friend, by working for non-profits.
Secondly, this income, being very modest, scarcely suffices for living in the USA - traveling, or settling in a poor country like Mexico, is a common alternative -I can name half a dozen minimally financed Americans right here in Oaxaca. This is not the same as the wealthy buying up the beaches and rivieras of the world.
Third, tourism, the largest industry in the world, is not at the expense of other people, it is jobs for other people. Without it, until the redistribution of wealth is a social reality, it is a significant way to redistribute American wealth to poorer countries, or at least to OTHER countries. Most of us of modest means are not sleeping in the Sheratons and Hyatts of the world, and we’re not dining in fancy restaurants. In the poorest hotels, as in the richest, people also have jobs when they might otherwise be unemployed.
Those who are wealthy, as you recall from statistics, are 1%, and those of us who have modest or minimum incomes are the other 99%.
Therefore, please don’t make generic uninformed judgments on who is or is not having fun at the expense of other people. If we (our friend and me) were eating beans and rice in Boston, there would be no fewer murders and mutilations. Likewise, it’s incorrect, and I would say offensive, to assume that somebody who travels thereby accepts or endorses or is unaware of the world’s bad shit. You are making an ideological, false point.
Instead, you might suggest that wherever we happen to be, we make known our objections to present unacceptable conditions and strive toward a more cooperative and generous attitude toward our fellow human beings.
April 14th, 2006 at 5:35 pm
[…] Hey Joe, just tried to call you — knew you were probably on your way to or already at work but thought maybe I could get your work number from Barbara. You’re desperate, I know, and you’re right, we’ve got to act, and right now! Trouble is, we don’t really know what to do. I’ve been trying to encourage folks to overcome the feeling of impotence that’s so effectively promoted by all the corporate media, and the only possible route I can imagine is to develop our own truly locally-based communal communication systems to displace the dominant media. We need, as Al Giordano has said, to get to ordinary, non-college educated people by radio, but it’s got to be radio based in the people, and of course it’s going to be “pirate” radio. We have to take back the electromagnetic spectrum (the air waves) that those bastards (with Clinton at the helm administering the coup de grace) stole from the public. Forget counting on a “Democratic” electoral victory. Of course we’ve got to displace the current regime. But, like here in Mexico, we can vote for the least obnoxious candidate (imagine an anarchist saying it’s OK to vote), but put the bulk of our energy into what the Zapatistas are promoting in their “other campaign”. We have to encourage all the communities in the U.S. that are beginning to challenge the power of federal, state, and county forces to override local needs, an already noticeable movement in preventing corporate control of water and sever services and now in the actions of towns to refuse to have their police help “higher” authorities in actions against “illegal” Latino immigrants. All these communities ought to be in touch with one another, the low-power “pirate” radio systems ought to be linked together into a vast popular-based network. When James (Herod) and I were visiting Al Giordano some years ago in the small town of XYZ we heard this great story of the fierce independence of the locals, who, when federal officers came to see about the enforcement of a directive that the locals didn’t accept, the Feds were undressed (I think they were permitted to retain their boots and socks) and sent walking out of the town, and told not to return. They didn’t. God damn it, Americans can do the same. But we have to have our consciousness raised first. We have to stop seeing the world through the prostituted eyes of the government-corporate media. We have to establish our local autonomy as our birthright. We have to learn what the Zapatista base communities are doing to establish self-sufficiency. We have to learn that there’s no such thing as “government money” — it’s all stolen, confiscated from the ordinary working people of America. We don’t need taxes. We need to become, as much as we can, self-sufficient. Fuck WalMarts and all the rest of the mega-giant corporations. Fuck everything that denies ordinary humble people from having pride in ourselves, from meeting our truly simple and basic needs, from loving our lives, from truly pursuing life, liberty and happiness. Joe, I know you’re desperate. Any half sane American is desperate these days. Nancy can’t even read the internet for long, and she’s a great reader, because it’s totally a horror. All the intellectuals are busy contemplating a nuclear attack on Iranian nuclear facilities — what does Seymour Hersh say?, what does so and so think, and on and on and on. Nancy is also almost crazy with despair. And I of course am furious, and wish to hell I could help find a way out. One thing that really bugs me is the near impossibility of getting those Americans who could really make a contribution to turning things around by giving up a part of their privilege to do so. Go look at my correspondence with JK, a really nice guy, by chance a Catholic, who’s having a great time and rationalizes, saying that at least that’s one happy person in the world. It’s the posting on my weblog at pwgd.org/gs/2006/03/12/tourism-for-the-well-to-do-another-blight-of-capitalism/. The point is that he’s really not a bad person, and very likeable. I have many friends, really good, close friends, who are so wedded to their privileged lives that in the face of the destruction of their children’s and grandchildren’s futures, they can’t consider renouncing significant parts of their privilege. Many of them, of course, are intellectuals, and not surprisingly, Jewish by birth, as I am. And part of it is the feeling they have, promoted of course by the sea of corporate-government propaganda in which we all swim, that even if they did make some sacrifice, it wouldn’t have any significant effect. A sense of impotence. Take care Joe, with all best wishes, George P.S. I’m sending this out to a very limited list, still, if you want me to take your name off this list (it’s not my so-called e-mail distribution list of about 1400), please let me know. ————————————————————————————– Subject: Re: The statement by, and the statement by someone else but signed by Dean From: Date: Wed, 12 Apr 2006 12:19:25 -0400 (EDT) […]
April 14th, 2006 at 5:38 pm
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