You can put a price on loss
But what if it’s events that the heart foresees
Like nails upon the cross
There is no calculable worth to tragedies
They come like the ocean’s tides
There’s no counting those or these
–Bearing is all, besides….”
From The Love Song of Joe Hoga
Even in my short and happy adolescence, I wondered how an agricultural labourer, who looks after and feeds cows, had, in America, become the arbiter of good and evil, the dispenser of justice and the symbol of conquest and claim on the land.
I shamefacedly admit now that even at that age, being slightly precocious, I realised that the way America characterised “Cowboys and Indians” was not observed fiction, but modern myth. I suppose many civilisations use shepherds and cowherders in their stories.
In Christianity, aren’t they characterised as the first (apart from the three Zoroastrian Magi, of course!) witnesses to the birth of the Son of God. They don’t ride horses and carry guns — they are seated on the ground.
American myths crept into my youth and that of my class and generation in India. I am not alone in my generation, and possibly, if partially and not so emphatically, in the generation of my parents, to have their childhood peopled by American myths, stories, culture and products.
At first it was the influence of British writers and ways. Enid Blyton, Richmal Crompton and the songs our parents sang. Then came American films and comics Disney, Superman and Lone Rangerish. And, of course, through the radio, Bill Haley, Elvis and others. We were schooled into reading Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn and, later, the whale book.
We followed American politics and from my late teens onwards objected to the foreign policy which sanctioned military murder in Vietnam and Cambodia. In my years in Britain I visited America several times – admittedly New York in the main and LA later — once to the Oscars when Salaam Bombay which I as a TV exec had commissioned when it was nominated in the international category.
Apart from an absolute opposition to America’s foreign military adventures from Vietnam to Iraq, I always regarded American culture and existence with some respect for its great writers but with an amused scepticism as an observer of its “civilisation”.
Maybe some readers will share this duality. Did America in some way influence my growth? Not easy or possible to count the ways. Knowing what influence Russia had? Easy. Great writers and a history of revolt mistaken for “Marxism”, and certainly Stalin was no socialist. Today? Yuck!
The one factor in later life that stirred up my attitudes (yes plural!) to the United States was something that my friend and guru, the Marxist philosopher, civilisational commentator (and much else) CL.R. James passionately maintained. He believed, wrote and said that the country that came closest in the contemporary world to the evolutionary view of Marxist philosophy was — wait for it — not China, Russia, Venezuela or Grenada — but the United States of America. He added that the USA has its darker side which could emerge.
He had lived there and been part of radical groups in the country. His assessment was based, he said, on the advancement, relative to the rest of the world, of classlessness, democratic rights and the advancement of its productive processes without the coercion prevalent in China and Russia and the compulsions through poverty in other parts of the world.
It was to me at first an absurd and later a radical assessment. CLR died in 1989. So, what does one make of CLR’s assessment now – after the disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and electing a black President twice?
With the election, tantrum and now rise of the charlatan Donald Trump?
After this week’s debate against Kamala Harris, 63 per cent of American voters have said she had won the debate. Yet in the swing states, which may determine the result on November 5, the polls say the contest is neck-and-neck.
This is astounding as Donald Trump is now a convicted criminal and faces further charges which carry jail sentences. The Democratic presidential candidate called him “weird”, and that’s apparently got to Mr Trump.
Weird? This is the fellow who falsely claimed in this week’s debate that Haitian immigrants (aren’t Haitians Americans? Of the wrong race for Wigwarm?) are eating their neighbours’ pets. Weird!
He tans his face orange and colours his hair and then repeatedly says that he is “better-looking” than Ms Harris. Weird! She is a very presentable woman and he is an absurdly painted fat man, so that’s a bit like comparing a peach to a pokey jackfruit?
Then again, he once said he’d like to “grab pussy”, and also that he finds his daughter sexually attractive!!! What???
If Americans don’t understand that he is a convicted felon awaiting further charges which carry jail sentences and is a confessed threat to the democracy that CLR extolled, then Walz’s epithet applies to at least half the population.
Weird?
Of course, now that Taylor Swift, who I’m told has a huge fan following, has endorsed Ms Harris, even though I don’t have a vote, I agree with Ms Swift, though I must confess I have never read any of her philosophical works – my pursuit of all things American, literature etc, has grown a bit rusty.
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Publish date : 2024-09-13 07:40:00
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