"An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory"

-- Friedrich Engels

The mostly silent, egg-carton table of Trotskyists in a room at the shadowed, dumpy community center summed up everything I NEVER wanted to know about what has become of labor. And more. The Fourth International, or "The World Party of Socialist Revolution"-- the communist die-hards who never threw in the towel of vinegary agitation even after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the stone-faced capitulation of Red China to market capitalism that-dares-not-speak-its-name.

But they raise a finger in interjection (!). You see, when Lenin died and Stalin took over there was Trotsky, who believed in a kinder, gentler brand of communism-- but he was chased off and eventually murdered in Mexico with an ice pick in a flurry of underhanded totalist struggle as the wolves pulled down one of their own in an act of existential "snuffing out", as stark as a sniper in the woods on a cold, starry night.

I had to think to myself that anyone who walked around with such a feral, cat-like expression on his face like Trotsky could afford not to be taken all that seriously with a hot-wired lack of sex, unable to strengthen the faltering trigger finger of the wretch to whom was too loathsome to live.

But they didn't seem to know the difference.

Or appreciate the sacredness of all-American archetypes that hit you in the gut, "Old Glory" flying overhead as you stood for "The National Anthem" at the baseball game with your fellow grunts in jean-jackets and "Sir-Scowl-a-lot" beards, if not the formations of F-15's flying overhead with laconic "Don't Tread on Me" honor.

To them, it was "the science" of dialectical materialism that one world revolution was inevitable-- as certain as a pickled specimen floating in a jar off at the frozen St. Petersburg University and this emotionless fact that hundreds of thousands of Russian women were forced to have abortions in 1926 as America sipped champagne and lived off the fat of the land with teenaged "petting parties" and coin-flipping mobsters.

Theoretically, one world socialism could be achieved through democratic speechifying along the margins, if not spacey, well-meaning attitudes and the occasional Che Guevera moment of iconic greatness that "rallied the troops" like Napoleon reared up on horseback, but not falling over "and getting crushed to death". And if only enough young people could be ripped away from the cream of life's leisurely distractions in our system of glutted capitalistic excess-- such as the internet, cable television, and video games arcing around in a 780º swoop with explosions and spacecraft and Yodas and shit-- everyone could get together and snatch away the rich's hard-earned property for the common, slug-like betterment of all. Hail "The Vegetable Mind", crown "The Dolphin" as mankind's logical successor, and Viva Revolution as we all "trip out" on psychedelics!

As I looked around this underbelly of hopeful, liberal neurosis, I wanted to go home and watch Steven Segal movies-- our sleek, pony-tailed avatar of ultra-violence. . . . . the one where he snapped the arms and legs of Jamaican VooDoo cocaine lords-- and play "Duck Hunt". You can quibble over whether or not that was "false bourgeois consciousness", "and needed the plug pulled" with a flying tackle, but this was a piece of the "po' man's pursuits" and I certainly had my wits about me. Yes, as I slapped away the nattering, declaimed any kind of responsibility, and at the root of it-- wondered "what's in it for me" besides some kind of zany adventure, once again wandering up an alley where I didn't belong like "Beavis & Butthead" as his fellow humans glided along like humorless, 21st century robots gliding around the concourse of McSistence "without getting the joke".

There was only one other young person at this meeting, who didn't seem too perceptive or swift about "the ways of the world". On 9/11 he turned on the television, thought the national coverage was a made-for-tv movie, and went back to bed in a cloud-eyed abnegation of one of modern times' most important moments as he drifted off into corn-chip dreams in his ratty house, in his run-down life. There he sat: short brown hair, pasty skin, plastic glasses, and a pudgy chin as he stared on like an impassive, clod-hopping sphinx tapping papers on the table as he led the meeting with all the facial animation of Chairman Mao.

Or maybe less. . . . . as he spoke with a huffing self-importance as if he almost believed that his task here upon this desk of snail-eyed ooze and gray, stringy, rat-meat "dialectics" really amounted to anything other than joyless mental masturbation, when types like him would have better luck putting all their aircraft power into "breaking through the clouds" and beholding clear skies.

A man in suspenders shook his head. . . . . like a fussing retiree in his late '60s collecting mail on a broken-down old porch. . . . . having "reached his limit'. Rheumy, ice-blue irises like Joe Hill and patches of worn hair out of his skull like sickly, trimmed grass. 

Clearly, Reaganomics had left him behind with the coked-up press of "POWER-LUNCHES". As did tech stocks. And a golden parachute, for that matter. . . . . as he mourned for the defilement of the Earth and the Native American like the ad of the tear-streaked cheek of the Indian Chief in the 1971 public service message like the echo of selfless judgment.

"Why do folks keep 'rewarding' those damn anti-labor politicians with their votes?!", a question that had no answer. Geriomino. Sitting-Bull. Colostomy Bag.

"Because our country operates under a two-party system", the sphinx explained matter-of-factly, The old man ignored this answer, and reiterated a little differently as the kid tried to helpfully answer his question again like a self-important "little professor". The cycle continued, as the old man kept getting more and more flustered and went into "free-fall", twisting and turning with sour disillusionment at this world made polluted for organized labor.

Then a gay man with bushy eyebrows like Satan himself purred on about Chicago labor relations from those 1970's of national malaise which was "the last cry" and incidentally the era of "The Village People" carrying on in one big homo-hump at the "Y.M.C.A", which doubtlessly this character was a tooshie-shaking veteran and only symptomatic of the left's decline into unmanly irrelevance.

There was a talkative, quaking woman who wore a purple union t-shirt like a futile existential stand for lettuce. The skin of her neck sagged like garments on a clothesline. She tittered on graciously. . . . . gregariously. . . . . quivering behind her glasses like a mother rabbit. On the run, perhaps, from the farmer in the story of "Flopsy, Mopsy, & Cottontail" on the American plantation.

Another looked like an old English hen-- a hooked nose protruding over puckered lips, dipped forward as if she was pecking at the yard. A shock of auburn, curly hair the color of wet early '80s Styrofoam in a flooded basement of St. Louis Catholic ruin. Her last name was jarringly Hispanic-- perhaps she saw all men as utilitarian interchangeables across all cultures even if her husband picked fruit for sustenance wages and married her mostly with the aim of getting a green card as he spoke in broken syllables and stared on with the insistence of a stray, hungry dog.

A warlike 50 year-old seethed in, fresh from her job feistily bagging groceries at Safeway like a public-relations hazard. With her long, blond hair and beady eyes I could see her witch-like ancestor burned at the stake back in medieval France. . . . . spitting curses at those who wouldn't burn with her as the clergy stood with a staff rooted in the ground with great solemnity.

And other misfits-- more & MORE-- around the table who would make me conclude that the 4th International was nothing more than one, big unhappy hole in the ground that would sooner overthrow capitalistic injustice as I'd settle down and get a straight job instead of being a fascistic ward-heeler for some local strongman, if not raving into the microphone like Mussolini.

Then ole' Jim spoke with a wobbling voice. Yes, the same who suckered me in this dim, dull room of radical labor's shadows with the earnestness of his wobbling entreaty. He called and asked if I was busy on Saturday and other then watching Blackie Lawless drink blood from a skull in a W.A.S.P. concert video like inspiration, fuel for my fire, I couldn't right well think of anything. He was the ringleader of all this subdued madness, and was the one who set up the literature table that even the stalwarts ignored. One book, published in the late 1950's, tried to lengthily reconcile existentialism with the universal destiny foretold in Marxism. That had all the relevance in my life as the Algerian war of independence circa 1960. Too French.

God only knows how he dug up my father's phone number-- an old acquaintance from college-- or even why he kept calling like honking insistence, even though my father would sooner believe in the coming Trotskyist overthrow just as soon as he'd put stock in "Big Foot" chasing around buxom college co-eds in the Pacific Northwest woods with its arms raised and its foot caught in a 1976-issue Hanoi Hilton chamber pot.

But Jim, in his own tempered way, seemed almost reasonable. His strong suit was never getting agitated, or even discouraged like throwing members off the parapet wall. The table might rattle with petty feuds, the din and futility of socialist democracy as followers looked around nervously or stared straight down at the dry, incomprehsnible literature, but Jim would reclaim order with a hand waving up and down in the air like an emaciated bear at the circus. His trick was balancing on top of the red ball of intricate ideology, a yellow Communist star painted on the side, and holding it all together up in his mind like a wobbling theologian of dry Marxist theory. This was proof that no higher power intervenes in man's affairs, because the indifferent universe had aloud this man to go on for so long without the ball being kicked right out from under him. And certainly, I didn't have the heart to do it, even though "Michael" in Hebrew translates to "he who is like God?".

And wouldn't it make Jim's day when I volunteered to write about an anti-war rally downtown in our fair city. Yes, St. Louis-- otherwise known as "the rectum of the Midwest". White people flee it, automatic weapons fire through the night like howling Negro lyncanthropes, and then the politically-correct lie that we amounted to anything held together by liberal screws and shoddy duct tape (-- refer directly to mayor Francis Slay's office). Who remains behind is human flotsam on the befouled riverbank as everyone else hightails for Chicago.

(No offense, but I live here)

And who would I find down at this rally but left-wing JETSAM who would only fortify the national post 9/11 sentiment in that Toby Keith song for all those snorting cowboys pointing their finger at the Arab world like a cowhide-leathered Scotch-Irish steer, "I Wanna put my Boot up Someone's Ass".

A neo-hippie in an Indian mumu held up one side of a finger-painted peace banner with "a thousand yard stare". What he saw in the distance, perhaps only "Wavy Gravy" could perhaps explain in a clown suit as he capered about like "A San Marx-Cisco Faggot".

Amid ardent, squeezed-lemon-expressioned wienies and whey-faced ghouls with dark circles under their eyes-- the kind of lapsed secular Catholics who probably still wore a crown of thorns around their thigh to atone for the world's suffering-- anarchists wandered around with black masks over their faces like craven desperados, a flagpole over their shoulder with "Old Glory" hung upside down with an anarchy sign sprayed on it with black paint. It might as well have been smeared on with shit, for all the good it was going to do them.

Humorless young Marxist women read straight from prepared texts on rumpled notebook paper through the screeching P.A, hardly pausing in their flat, murmuring Jew-babe delivery as the throng gave a hardy yet half-hearted cheer, and I thought of Rosa Luxembourg and her legions crushed by the remnants of the Kaiser's army in 1919. Remember, that in short order it was all over except for the bayoneting. That, or the anguished gargling.

Word went around that these young Marxistas of the caste of Winona Ryder, but more brined with searing doctrine-- were planning to chain themselves to the fences around McDonnell-Douglass where munitions were being manufactured-- the police standing by to throw them in the paddy wagon as soon as they so much stepped on the grass-- and I figured that in terms of stopping the Iraq invasion this had all the logic of these fine-boned young Emma Goldman's laying on the railroad tracks with their legs spread wide open in order to get themselves pregnant.

As a red-blooded American, I had endured all I could stand. It was a hard blow, when the last helicopter flew away from Saigon in 1975. Or when Clinton wouldn't resign from office over the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Or when "Rambo: First Blood Part II" was not nominated for best picture at the Academy Awards. But this was beyond the pale! I turned around on my heel as a principled young stooge of "the vast right-wing conspiracy" and walked away.

But not before Jim's hand shot out of nowhere from the crowd, and grabbed me by the sleeve like the leftist undead, a hand from the milling grave of public indfference. I almost screamed in terror, when I looked into his placid face and buoy of gray hair covered with a gray cap. . . . . yes, doubtlessly like something a 1930's laborer would wear in a movie before beaten down by strike-breakers. He startled me, you see. Even as I tried to escape from this unrelenting drum-beat of doom and high-tail it for the ole' car, he wondered where I was going-- his voice wobbling around as always. Was that accusation-- probing, Probing, PROBING-- or was it just my imagination?

Then he started introducing me . . . . . Rolodox style, to people, creeps and homos and piteous-eyed Arabs other unAmerican types my hero, Richard Nixon would have on his "Secret Enemies" list.

Oh, the ACLU and "People for the American Way" may insist that we're all equally American, but both me and "Tricky Dick" knew that "there were enemies inside these walls. . . . .". Here was one now!

Jim next introduced me to a Polish national. A thick-set body, a pumpkin-like skull under a black beret, his wide face marred by a crooked grin of yellow teeth. Evidently, they didn't have dental care in that former Soviet paradise.

The stranger gestured with his hands, smiled with his humble, gap-toothed grin, and spoke in the murmured tones of foreigners. He nodded "yes, yes" as Jim praised this gathering of demonstrators, this proof of global worker solidarity. And I wouldn't be surprised if he started bouncing a soccer ball on his knee, for the sense of ecumenicalism present here.

Jim laughed heartily-- this carousel of "diversity" in motion-- like this introduction signified a turning point in the 4th International's struggle for all of history's pages. He begged me to take a picture of him and the Pole standing on the curb, holding up cardboard peace signs like sheepish Detroit machinists in a 1930's curio of a "Life Magazine" moment mixed in with the jungle of globalism. In terms of moments of transcendent destiny throughout all of recorded human history, it had all the significance of a true believer spotting the Virgin Mary in a taco.

This secular-humanist/socialist iconography was getting to be too much for me. With one last look at Jim slapping the Pole on the back, and the Pole's silent, heaving laughter-- the foreigner's eyes dancing manically like hazel geods, I circled around the other side of the demonstration, past the 400 pound white man with dreadlocks, a tie-dye t-shirt, and mascara, toward Busch stadium.

But not before the crowd started chanting "Drop Bush, not bombs!", over and over, pumping their fists in the air in their putrid version of left-wing slaughter.

There was one angry young man who had chained up his earth-friendly bicycle to a helpful street sign of duly-paid public dollars that probably wasn't gonna pay more to the likes of we rabble-- anyway, with a short beard and a closely-cropped receded hairline who was hopping up and down like an angry primate, raising and lowering his arms like the Iraqis would do when Saddam Hussein's statue was pulled down by American tanks.

Back in J. Edgar Hoover's day, the bureau took pictures of protesters, and doctored them-- sticking heads on the bodies of apes and air-brushing on clothes-- to make them as loathsome-looking as possible. They needed not have bothered here in the fall of 2002. The local news caught it all as Toby Keith fans threw beer cans at their televisions and sighted their rifles.

With a lumbering run, I made it to the stadium. . . . . just when the baseball fans were exiting. Streams of wholesome, ignorant Americans mercifully unaware of what I had just experienced. Pot bellies, beer coolers, dressed in red with kids in tow. Red shirts, red caps. But this was for the St. Louis Cardinals. But now I experienced cognitive dissonance of another sort. Lost in this mooing stampede of Red-State ignorance, of hunting and fishing and raunchy talk radio and fantasies of bonking twin voluptuous Hooter's waitresses at once. And megaplex theater chains and slick car dealers and high school football and some little 16 year-old slat-eyed sociopath fucking your daughter and diabetes and crotch-rot. A life without reflection, and a hole in the ground they threw you in, and a tombstone that read: "he always believed what he was told".