Dear Raulito, please give a message to our new President if you see her.

Well, Raulito, this arrest of the Women in White is not good news. That's fidelista stuff and we need to turn over a new leaf. While you are at it, I suggest you go ahead and cut loose all 75 of the dissident husbands.

We want a new level of tolerance to go along with our distributism. After all, I'll bet when each of those husbands gets his own little plot of land, gardening will become more interesting that protest and with all of the changes you will be making, there will be little to protest against.

I know, I know, George W. and his predecessor have their own violations. I have met with protesters who spent six months in the Federal Prisons for protesting at the School of the Americas.

And of course the Berrigan Brothers. And all of those conscientious objectors.

And then there are those reservists and soldiers who change their minds about going to Iraq. Some were recruited as minors.

I sometimes teach with one of Mumia Abu Jamal's lawyers.

Yes, Raulito, it is true, the Human Rights Watch faults the United States for Guantanamo, torture, secret prisons, detainee abuse, incarcerating a bigger percentage of the our population than anywhere else, death penalty, juvenile life without parole and abusing the rights of non-citizens. Whew.

Cuba, though, appears to have the worst record in Latin America. You have the death penalty and bad prison conditions like us, but Human Rights Watch gives you bad grades on other things:

Cuba remains the one country in Latin America that represses nearly all forms of political dissent. There have been no significant policy changes since Fidel Castro relinquished direct control of the government to his brother Raul Castro in August 2006. The government continues to enforce political conformity using criminal prosecutions, long-term and short-term detentions, mob harassment, police warnings, surveillance, house arrests, travel restrictions, and politically-motivated dismissals from employment. The end result is that Cubans are systematically denied basic rights to free expression, association, assembly, privacy, movement, and due process of law.

I highlighted that second sentence, because I want you to know everyone is hoping you will show Fidel how it's done.

I also know that George W. has been unwilling to talk to you, but maybe a little more distributism and some fewer long-term and short detentions will make it less embarrassing to hang out with you.

Hillary and Obama have both said they (with conditions) they will talk to you. And Nixon went to China; so maybe McCain would work things out with you.

If you see any of them, would you mention the problems we have with people drowning trying to cross the river near Brownsville and the tent city in Raymondville and all of these death penalty prosecutions in Brownsville. We could really use some help.

Communist Cuba Dabbling in Distributism

Bloggers (the few I have met and as best I can tell from reading) seem endlessly fascinated by whether and if so, how much, their blog is being read. I confess this fault. I put one of the free counters on the blog and it is something of a utilometer of my personal happiness. Each little tick of the counter is another little squirt of dopamine.

More sophisticated bloggers apparently have more sophisticated counters and get additional squirts from learning how widely read they are, based on area codes I guess.

I know this all runs counter to my blogging goal as taken from the Granddaddy of All Bloggers:

"I have no thought of serving either you or my own glory. My powers are inadequate for such a purpose. I have dedicated it to the private convenience of my relatives and friends, so that when they have lost me (as soon they must), they may recover here some features of my habits and temperament. Thus reader...you would be unreasonable to spend your leisure on so frivoulous and vain pursuit."

Indulge my pride, though as a tell you based on certain empirical evidence I have a celebrity reader. It was only Friday past when I urged an economic system based on medieval Catholicism, distributism. Two days later, I see the headlines, "Cuba to Lend Land--In a bid to boost agricultural production, Raul Castro's government is lending Cuba's unused land to private farmers and cooperatives."

It is obvious to me: Raul Castro has been reading my blog. Not only that, I have converted him to distributism. Let me say it again: RAUL CASTRO IS ONE OF MY READERS!!!!

Now it is important I carefully cultivate this first new convert to distributism. First, how to address him? We distributists are anti-hierarchical and I hardly think either Mr. President or General Castro are appropriate.

Nor can I bring myself to say, "Comrade." First, I don't know if this will be part of the distributist tradition. I have not seen the word yet in Chesterton or Hilloc. Also, since we have not met, this may overly familiar. On the other hand, "Raul" or even "Raulito" feels OK, for some reason. Maybe because of that guy who sells the eye surgery on TV.

I am so happy to have you on board, Raulito, that I will happily serve as consultant. To that end, I will be reading medieval Church history and economic and legal forms. More to the point, though, Raulito, I would suggest we approach an appropriate order to come in and help run things. I suggest we avoid the more warlike groups like the Hospitallers of Jerusalem in favor of say, Franciscans or Cistercians.

Now that I know you (Raulito) are a reader, I'll give little hints along the way.

This transition from Cuban Communism to distributism should in some ways be quite smooth, because there are not big landowners with whom we must deal. On the other hand the human rights issues have been a problem in Cuba since they were reported by Bartolome de las Casas, but, hey, human rights is the whole idea behind distributism.

Now if only George W. will start reading.

Learning to Love Molly

When Molly Ivins died, the expressions of grief filled a couple of our regular magazines, Texas Monthly and Nation. I don't remember anything showing up in the Economist, International Socialist Review or People. Anyway, I had some mixed feelings about the reviews.

Then, recently, Truth Seeker referred me to an article about Hillary by Molly. He suggested that if I read the piece I would forgive myself and learn to love Molly. It was a good suggestion. I liked the article, I felt better and I agreed with Molly. Why, then, do I not already love her?

This takes me back about thirty eight years. (And Truth Teller thinks he's old). The only time I met Molly Ivins was at a local chapter meeting of an ACLU meeting in Austin. I believe it was the Spring of 1970. Molly was some new honcho at the Texas Observer. She was already a local celebrity and I had been told that when I met her.

Also, I was nineteen and she was barely older, or at least looked that way through those nineteen year old eyes. I knew there was a huge social gap already, she a college graduate with a job at the Texas Observer and I was star struck. On stardom level, she could have been Willie Morris as far I was concerned.

Anyway I got to meet her. She shoved a damp, limp piece of flesh towards my chest. The rules I knew were that you could offer to shake the hand of a man, but you could not offer it to a woman, but if she offered it to you, you could shake it. Boy was I excited. I grabbed her hand and pumped it like Willie Loman. She grimaced, complained about my grip and moved away. The whites of my eyes turned yellow and I have viewed her ever since through jaundiced eyes.

...aside the Devil turnd For envie, yet with jealous leer malign Eyed them askance, and to himself thus plaind....

The years passed and this early first impression hardened into certainty and fact: she was a phony and a snob.

She had gone to an expensive private prep school. She grew up in a big city filled with sophisticated people. I went to a public high school in a small city filled with hicks. So who was she to pretend she had a clue what this creature, a "Texan" was, indeed make a career based on explaining it to New Yorkers.

I did think she knew something about Bush, but not in the way she later sold it:

As it happens, I have known George W. Bush for a long time -- not well, but for a long time. Since we were both in high school. He went to prep school in the East, and I went to prep school in Houston, but he hung around with friends of mine, dated girls I knew. I would never claim we were friends, but he was someone I vaguely knew.

Molly, if you were at a level to hang around with Bush, you don't have a clue about what you're talking about. And is this a sly way, wink, wink, of saying, "I'm really a upper class kind of person. When I talk about being from Texas and 'bidness,' I'm just slumming?"

I never bought her accent. How could such a sophisticated private school snob girl pretend to talk like that. And all of this dropping of the "g"'s:

"So keep fightin' for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't you forget to have fun doin' it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin' ass and celebratin' the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was."

Please. Fraidy-cats? Please, again.

Contrived country was what it was to me and this was phoniness just like pretending you had an English or French accent. I thought I saw it in other places as well: Jim Hightower. Even (please, Lord, don't strike me dead) Dean Page Keeton, and it always sounded phony to me and I didn't like it.

I knew what a rural Texas accent sounded like--it was my father in law, Joe. But unless you grew up on a ranch, had 6th grade education and had broken most of the bones in your body on steel erections, cows, drunks' skulls, bad horses, falling from bad whiskey, oil rigs and high curbs in Ojinaga, you did not have a right to try to talk like that, and she didn't have a right to talk like that and she never got it right. I didn't like it one damn bit.

Then she began to rise on this Bush thing, Shrub.

I saw this as pure hustle. "Let's tell the New Yorkers that they can't understand Bush because he's a Texan. But since I'm a Texan, I can explain him to you. Texans are x, y, z and Bush is x, y, z and that is why he acts like that. So if you need to understand something about him you can read my books and articles."

Her premises offended. That Bush acted like a Texan and that Molly accurately described Texans. Some examples:

The president is a Texan, the governor is an Aggie, God's in His heaven, all's right with the world. And I want it noted for the record that I am doing my dead-level best to be cheerful about this revolting development.

High entertainment value: The fact that Bush cannot express himself well in the English language is a constant source of delight to us all. In his defense, no matter how badly he mangles it, you can almost always tell what he was trying to say. The Texanism is, "My tongue got caught in my eyeteeth, so I couldn't see what I saw saying."

His favorite foods are chili dogs and chicken-fried steak, which will gross out the entire East Coast. Take that, you radicchio-eating foodies.

His new ranch in Crawford will force the entire national press corps to spend tons of time in Waco, upping their cultural IQ by going to the Dr Pepper Museum.

The famous Texas two-step is getting a heavy workout in Washington. You glance away for just a moment to watch the World Series and -- oops -- we're no longer for regime change in Iraq.

First, why concede Bush is a Texan? He was born in Connecticut. Connecticut is not part of Texas. It is not like Texas. His grandfather Prescott Bush was United States Senator from Connecticut and on the corporate boards that profiteered to allow Hitler's rise to power. Bush is multi-generational Eastern malefactor of great wealth. Then Bush grew up in Midland. Midland is the management town. It is New England with hot summers. They play polo there. Odessa is Texas, the labor town. Bush grew up in Midland, not Odessa. Then Bush went to Houston (River Oaks?) were he hung around with Molly and her friends, because those private school kids stick together. I'll bet he didn't grow up in the Fifth Ward.

I don't see Bush as a "typical Texan" at all. I see him as a spoiled rich frat boy, part of the power elite who own most of the wealth of the country and won't share, who always thought he was entitled, never loved anyone but himself, and was socially promoted through big name expensive schools and elitist secret societies. I thought Jesse Jackson pegged him better than Molly: He was born on third base and thought he hit a triple.

Next, why concede Texas is what Molly says it is. It is not rich and rural. It is not like Dallas on TV. It is urban and poor and many parts are mostly black or brown. And I've never heard anyone say "my tongue got caught in my eyeteeth," and I've gotten my hair cut a thousand times in Texas barbershops. Even the rural ones where people speak English, nobody ever said this.

So I read her articles when they happened to pop in front of my eyes, but I never bought or read one of her books. Then she died, damn her.

I am sorry she died so young. But I haven't learned to love her.

But it is Easter time. OK, Molly, I forgive you.