"We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

 

 

 

 The words are those Abraham Lincoln used to wrap up his First Inaugural Address, delivered on March 4, 1861

 

Just a little over a month later on April 12, the first shot from a traitorous battery, fired on the United States federal installation at Fort Sumter. That was how it was received and responded to by those that Lincoln said "were not enemies".

 

 

 

Our nation subsequently spent five long years and the highest cost in blood ever paid by this Republic to keep those who would dismantle the country, from doing so. This is what the outstretched hand to slavers, received in turn...

 

Lincoln was the kind of man who took his political opponents, the very men who had just campaigned against him, and made them his Cabinet Secretaries.

 

Lincoln was also the kind of man that, once they made themselves plain, understood clearly who and what the enemy was. He was relentless in his desire to crush the rebellion. He fired one general after another because he thought them not aggressive enough. He was willing to spend $6,190,000,000 (in 1865 money) and hundreds of thousands (1,094,453 total for both sides, including accidents, suicides, sicknesses, murders, and executions*) of lives to save the Union. So he was no hippie-peacenik as this phrase out of context might lead some to believe.

 

He knew that the bridges he had to build would be with people of many backgrounds, with many differing beliefs, to create a coalition that had at its core the continuation of The Union. That meant the one thing all of these diverse people had in common, was a clear picture of who they were uniting against, i.e. those who were attempting to destroy the Union. Let it never be forgotten or obfuscated that the reason the secessionists decided to take up arms against Old Glory was so that they could maintain fellow human beings in bondage.

 

Today we have once again amongst us the spiritual if not biological descendants of those responsible for the carnage we call the Civil War. People who irresponsibly make statements that encourage secession, that threaten violence if their narrow minded and bigoted ways do not carry the day democratically. People who clamor to create the "christian nation" they are convinced the Founders meant, rather than the secular state they actually created. People who believe women should be kept second class with not even the right to choose when to have children or be paid their worth for their labor. People who cherry pick scripture to justify hatred toward all those they perceive as different, from LGBT, African-Americans, Muslims, Jews, Hispanics and a long list of others...

 

 

 

Yes, the Klu Klux Klan is resurgent, as is the John Birch Society. Skinheads and neo-Nazis and all manner of so-called "fringe" groups swell in numbers, but they are just the tip of the iceberg. These people have infiltrated legitimate political parties and organizations, funded by billionaires who know that dividing public opinion is the best way to get their horrible plutocratic agendas moved forward. Supported by non-think-tank lie-machines that pump out misinformation and deceive the electorate in to voting against its own interests. By mega-church millionaire pastors who use their pulpit to sew bigotry and prejudice. Filled with fear by the constant flow of conspiracy theories and ongoing made up crises. They harass, bully and threaten all who do not give way. And yes, they have even murdered.

 

This is not about Democrats vs. Republicans, left vs. right, or liberal vs. conservative, but simply, about right vs. wrong.

 

Americans are a diverse populace. We are of many races, cultures, heritages, religions and lack thereof. We speak many languages, eat different food and listen to a wide variety of music. We find entertainment in every type of sport, theater, film. We agree on almost nothing, and for the most part this is as it should be. The thing that makes us identify as Americans is our willingness to agree to disagree, to separate church from state, to recognize that those of a differing opinion still have a right to voice it. We must also recognize that not everyone who lives in America, fits this definition of being American. And some of them would not only disagree, but work to destroy this definition.

 

We need to construct alliances that will ensure those who would destroy everything good about this nation can never, ever, gain power in this country. That we, like Lincoln, will band together despite our differences and defeat the forces of darkness.

 

So, let us find common ground as Americans. Americans who believe and are willing to work, and yes, if need be, fight, for liberty, freedom and justice for ALL.

 

 

 

As a post-script; a reminder that the very last act of the same traitorous rebels that Lincoln tried to reach out to as a last ditch avoidance of bloodshed, was the spilling of his brains all over Ford's Theater. Even in defeat, they could not accept their evil way of life was gone.

 

We must always keep that in mind...

 

 

Posted as a FB NOTE

 

 

 

OTE

In this sense i have been in love with every collaborator I worked with, deeply in love

Thomas, the French film maker & German novelist was the translator of my poems but we became more than that, much more than that. Without him & people like Chris Marker, Jean Pierre Faye & Marcelle Fontfroide, I would not be living in France today. They made it possible – my epic poem, ‘bateau bleu’ which was dedicated to those who kept my spirit alive in Australia, Nicolas Lathouris & Margaret Cameron, became, in France, my laissez passer

We worked on almost everything in those last 23 years either in the flesh or through daily phone calls from the bed in the clinic

To my mind, Thomas was an exceptional film maker who changed the ways films were made & he was perhaps the greatest German novelist of the post war era, with W. G. Sebald. It is not odd that people who knew them both well like Hans Magnus Enzensberger were quick to identify that, the difference was that like Paul Celan he took high German & turned it inside out he beat the living fuck out of it

Thomas was history, in person. Thomas was revolutionary communist, admittedly not within the orthodoxies, like Maiakovski, he went further, much further. He possessed so much history that he felt quite comfortable to be in combat with it. In the same way that Australia can never be whole until it accepts aboriginal sovereignty, it is impossible for Germany top pass over what he wrote because he wrote of the fathers of murderers, of murderers themselves, the murderer’s children, & the children of those children. As much as any nation can become it, Germany was a nation of murderers. Everyone knew. Everybody knew that just as today in North America, they are murderers, who in fact reproduced the Germany Thomas fought against his whole life, as Jan Harlan, his cousin & producer of Stanley Kubrick says, ‘at the cost of his life, physically’ while retaining our specific trajectories we were on the same path & we would sit on the rocks & examine & interrogate what we were doing, over & over & over again. In this we were not kind to each other but we knew the breath between breaths of our work, so only fruit could become of those exchanges in 23 years we only had two differences. He wanted me to publish more often & he often was trying to have some Bulgarian publisher, print my entire work. Thomas thought of me, as his, ‘Christopher Marlowe’ & he believed that & it was not something for which i would readily mock him ; Thomas was an aristocrat, he spoke nearly a dozen languages, fluently & was familiar, as if on personal terms, with the world’s literature. Our other argument was intense, Thomas the son of a violent & murdering anti–Semite, had fought with Klaus Kinskiin the war which created the state of Israel & I the mischling Jew was since we knew each other, a defender of the Palestinian people. I had known Al Hakim, Dr George Habash & many many Palestinian activists who were studying in Paris or who were representing the Palestinian people, officially. There was a quantitative change in Thomas towards the end but it was only that, it was too much a part of the fulcrum of his being

We had multiple & polyphonic interrogations & with Thomas this last word took on new meaning just as it had with my mother, Dorothy but we never argued on anything else. Thomas was my brother, a deep brother & for me he still is, he is here in the studio when i am writing, he is in the hospital making me turn the chambre into a factory, he is with me walking the streets, he is always there & i know he will be there at the end. That is a certitude

We were escaping his clinic & going on a search for the family of the war criminal & head of ‘operation Reinhardt’, Brigadeführer-SS, Odilo Globočnik – we were in search of material that would become central in his landmark novel, ‘heldenfriedhof’

We went on this journey with two young people, the novelist Rochelle Fackl & the film maker, Cedric Venail, people who have remained close to me. We went in Thomas’s old volvo that i imagined he saw as a Russian tank & it is the moment to say, contrary to most mythology, his experience of the red army & its cadre as a boy was one of deep respect, but then as a child he knew what the Germans had done in the east, he understood, revenge. For Thomas, much later he said to me, that relative to wht the germans had done, what the red army did was of little consequence & this is important, in being one of the most deeply political artists i have ever met, he did not have a hint of an ideologue about him, no, not one ounce, he as empowered by his own interrogations for that to ever be the case. He knew the Soviet Union & the eastern bloc inside out, he had taught film for a while in Moscow but a reading of the city of ys – gives a full account of what he felt & it is a beautiful book that will never be able to be repeated by anyone. Mimicked perhaps, but then that is the fate of literature of late capitalism, the vast majority of it is mimicry & not much else

So we escaped the clinic with a whole bag of medicaments, much as i am obliged to do when I leave Nantes. The young ones were in the front & i was in the back with Thomas lying his head on my knees, a hospital of substitution listening from anything from Schubert’s lieder, to Theodorakis or Jimi Hendrix & Albert Ayler

We sped through Austria until we came to the town where Globoknik's son lived. I have never felt as ill at ease in a country as i have felt in Austria, it is washed with blood & the absence of memory, or memory transformed into great perversion. Very great perversion. My brother, Robert Thorpe speaks of Australia as a crime scene, then Austria was a crime scene you could literally smell

Thomas wanted to see the son alone, because he said, « you have the face of assassin, my dear » so i & the young ones, stayed in an Austrian bar - it was awful, the music was the music of marches, grotesque & creating very jagged nerves & they knew why we were here – it was like a little European version of the film deliverance & we were just waiting for dueling accordions with men in lederhosen with swastika bands around their arm. I am mocking myself but the environment was so without taste & place it bordered on torture & looking at the old men’s faces it was easy to imagine them torturing people. Historically, it needs to be remembered over 90% of the death machine of the Germans was Austrian, at the highest level, in the SS, the SD, Kripo, the einsatzgruppen, the bureaucrats of murder, were Austrian. In murder, they were the principal initiators, the first day of the Anschluss, the Austrians had their Jews cleaning the pavements with toothbrushes. Then they threw those Jews from the 7th floor of the metropole hotel

I hated being there, but was doing what i always did for Thomas, I made notes of almost everything. He came back from the sons who had lied & lied, so we went on a visiting tout of SS & SD graveyards, whole graveyards dedicated to murderers with a landscape of almost complete silence, except if you stayed still long enough, all you could hear was screaming, a screaming that would never end, ever

All of us, except Thomas wanted to leave. Rapidly & then hugging him we took off for Italy at a speed i am surprised the old tank could manage

You breathed in Italy, even though at this point Thomas’s breathing was always labored, always difficult but he always shared his knowledge & we talked into the night in Udine We would go to Trieste, the scene of many of Globocniks crimes where my horse's hours began

 

 

It is 71 BC and I'm Spartacus

You are Marcus Licinius Crassus

 

It is 60 AD and I'm Boudica

You are Gaius Suetonius Paulinus

 

It is 415 and I'm Hypatia

You are the christian mob

 

It is 1215 and I'm an English Baron

You are King John Lackland

 

It is 1305 and I'm William Wallace

You are King Edward of Caernarfon

 

It is 1380 and I'm Wat Tyler

You are King Richard II

 

It is 1609 and I'm Gaspar Yanga

You are Pedro González de Herrera

 

It is 1770 and I'm Crispus Attucks

You are the 29th Regiment of Foot

 

It is 1739 and I'm Jemme

You are the South Carolina militia

 

It is 1776 and I'm Thomas Paine

You are King George III

 

It is 1789 and I'm among the Estates-General

You are King Louis XVI

 

It is 1802 and I'm Toussaint L'Ouverture

You are Jean Baptiste Brunet

 

It is 1817 and I'm Policarpa Salavarrieta

You are Spanish soldiers in Columbia

 

It is 1831 and I'm Nat Turner

You are slavers in Southampton County, Virginia

 

It is 1831 and I'm Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee, Creek and Seminole

You are President Andrew Jackson

 

It is 1844 and I'm Carlota Lukumí

You are the Spanish slavers in Cuba

 

It is 1856 and I'm John Brown

You are Colonel Robert E. Lee

 

It is 1860 and I'm Frederick Douglass

You are Jefferson Davis

 

It is 1864 and I'm the 6th U.S. Regiment Colored Heavy Artillery and the 2nd U.S. Colored Light Artillery

You are Nathan Bedford Forrest

 

It is 1876 and I'm Crazy Horse

You are George Armstrong Custer

 

It is 1913 and I'm Emily Wilding Davison

You are King George V

 

It is 1915 and I'm Joel Emmanuel Hägglund

You are Chief Justice Daniel Straup

 

It is 1916 and I'm Emiliano Zapata Salazar

You are Pablo González Garza

 

It is 1917 and I’m Rosa Luxemburg

You are Friedrich Ebert

 

It is 1917 and I'm a citizen of Petrograd

You are Tsar Nikolay Alexandrovich Romanov

 

It is 1934 and I'm César Augusto Sandino

You are Anastasio Somoza García

 

It is 1945 and I'm Annelies Marie Frank

You are SS-Oberscharführer Karl Silberbauer

 

It is 1950 and I'm Pedro Albizu Campos

You are the City of San Juan Police Department

 

It is 1960 and I'm Patria, Dede, Minerva and Maria Teresa Mirabal

You are Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina

 

It is 1963 and I'm Medgar Wiley Evers

You are Byron De La Beckwith

 

It is 1964 and I'm James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner

You are Cecil Price, Samuel Bowers, Alton Wayne Roberts, Jimmy Snowden, Billey Wayne Posey, Horace Barnett, and Jimmy Arledge

 

It is 1965 and I'm Malcolm X

You are Talmadge Hayer

 

It is 1967 and I'm Ernesto (Che) Guevara

You are Félix Rodríguez

 

It is 1968 and I'm Martin Luther King, Jr.

You are James Earl Ray

 

It is 1969 and I'm Fred Hampton

You are State's Attorney Edward Hanrahan

 

It is 1970 and I'm Julio Roldan

You are hacks at the "Tombs" prison facility

 

It is 1973 and I'm Presidente Salvador Guillermo Allende Gossens

You are the General Augusto Pinochet

 

It is 1977 and I'm Stephen Bantu Biko

You are Harold Snyman and Gideon Nieuwoudt

 

It is 1978 and I'm Harvey Bernard Milk

You are Dan White

 

It is 1993 and I'm Dr. David Gunn

You are Michael F. Griffin

 

It is 2012 and I'm Malala Yousafzai

You are the Taliban

 

It is 2014 and I'm Felina / @Miut3

You are the Zetas and Gulf drug cartels in Tamaulipas, Mexico

 

It is 2015 and I'm a parishoner at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church

You are Dylann Storm Roof

 

It is 2015 and I'm Ruqia Hassan

You are ISIS

 

Throughout history and in all corners of the globe I have struggled to be free and to free others, to stand for liberty, justice and equality. To make the world a better place for ALL.

You have defended the baser instincts, the bigoted motive, the greedy goal.

 

I have often lost the battle, but never the high ground.

You will always be there. You will use every weapon at your disposal to crush me. You are the evil in men's eyes.

 

I will never back down. I have the right and history on my side.

 

No matter the time, or the place, or the odds, I'm Spartacus...

and I always will be.

 

Spartacus (film)

Originally published as a Facebook Note

On D-Day in Philly, in Forty-Four,
I, at fifteen, sat on the floor –

All night long, as it turned out to be –
It was finally D-Day, a big deal for me.

The radio screeched from the undersea cable.
I pressed my ear close, to hear what I was able.

For months we had known this day was to come.
I was excited, somewhat more than some.

I had followed the war since I heard of Pearl Harbor.
Having been out all day, when I saw the ajar-door.

I found everyone around the radio clustered;
“Japanese” and, “Pearl Harbor” were the few words I mustered.

The next day, at Junior High, we met in assembly.
Roosevelt on the radio spoke of an, “Infamy.”

The Philadelphia Inquirer showed maps every day;
Two theaters of action were always in play.

The world opened to me on the Seventh of December,
Cascading in with news I’ll always remember.

Ration books followed – less dairy and meats;
Air Raid Wardens pounded their beats.

Black curtains covered home lights and cars;
The only things allowed to shine at night were the stars.

Those elsewhere would laugh at these things;
We had no idea on what real life clings

Quite superficial for us was the war;
It went for us as with me on the floor:

Listening to disembodied reports of men dying –
Excited and interested, but not even crying.