The Marxist analysis has nothing to do with what happened in Stalin’s Russia; it’s like blaming Jesus Christ for the Inquisition in Spain.

"When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist." Dom Helder Camara, Brazilian Archbishop

President Truman’s loyalty Oath: instead of asking whether the government was loyal to the people, the people had to swear their  loyalty to the government.

Contrary to the image of Bill Clinton as a draft-dodging anti-war  protester in the 60s, it seems, instead, that he was actually  informing on his "fellow" protesters and Fulbright scholars in  Europe for the CIA.  Roger Morris, former National Security  Council official, reports on this in his book Partners in Power.   Almost as surprising is his revelation that wife Hilary — the great  champion of children — was a strong supporter of the contras in  Nicaragua in the 1980s, the same band that just loved to go around  murdering women and children, raping, burning down villages, and  singling out schools and medical clinics for destruction.  The book  further makes it clear that the Mena, Arkansas drug-trafficking charges  against Clinton are not simply a conspiracy freak’s wet dream.

"A painting in a museum hears more ridiculous opinions than anything else in the world."   Edmond de Goncourt (1822-1896)

"Abstract art?  A product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered."  Al Capp

… but the painting gave off the sanctified odor of serious art, so he hesitated to be candid …

The art-collecting spirit can be a variety of greed.

Art, like history, belongs to the winners.

Painting vases and flowers and other "still life" is comparable to writing a poem beginning "Roses are red, violets are blue".

Any institutionalized maniac is able to create chaos out of order, but is that art?

Critics of certain "obscene" art have objected to the NEA giving grants to the artists on the grounds that taxpayers who object to such work should not have their tax dollars supporting work they find obscene.  "This is a novel theory," author Lawrence Weschler has observed.  "I notice, for example, that such logic was never applied to funding for the Stealth bomber or aid to the regimes of El Salvador and Guatemala."

John Cage theorized that music does not have to have sound but can be anything that fills a space in time.  He scored a piece that included the noise from 12 radios, and wrote scores that left choices of sounds to the performers.  In "O’O" – he sliced vegetables, put them in a blender and drank the juice.  In  "4’33" he presented four minutes and 33 seconds of silence in which a pianist simply steps onstage, sits at a piano in silence and then walks off.        In an interview, Cage said he had once listened to several mundane sounds and tried to figure out why he didn’t like them.  He was forced to conclude that there was no reason why he didn’t like them.       What, I wonder, if he ate some excrement and didn’t like it. Would he conclude that there was no reason why?        Consider a patient in a mental hospital being examined by the psychiatrist to determine if he’s well enough to be released.  The patient says he’s composed something.  The psychiatrist is  very interested and says he’d like to hear it.  The patient sits down at a piano and sits there in silence for 4 minutes and 33  seconds.  Would he be released?      "I have nothing to say and I am saying it."  John Cage, response to questions about his music and his musical philosophy.

Coming soon: minimal film — two hours of a completely white  screen, with a long list of credits at the end.

"America is form opposed to content.  Not just form instead of content.  Form opposed.  Often violently.  There are few things resented so much among us as the suggestion that what we do means.  Other cultures have argued over their meanings.  We tend to deny that there is any such thing, insisting instead that what you see is what you get and that’s it.  All we’re doing is having a good time, all we’re doing is making a buck, all we’re doing is enjoying the spectacle … Media is the American war on content with all the stops out, with meaning in utter rout, frightened nuances dropping their weapons as they run."  Michael Ventura, journalist and author

The aesthetics of a revolutionary: being turned on or off by the nature or rationality of his society; he looks for beauty in the  social arrangement as others may look for it in art.

Freud resisted music because he hated being moved by a thing without knowing how and why he was affected.  Lenin avoided Beethoven because the music made him want to pat people on the head.

Remark made to a pacifist: "If only everyone else would live in the way you recommend, I would gladly live that way as well — but not until everyone else does."        The pacifist replied: "Why then, sir, you would be the last man on earth to do good.  I would rather be one of the first."

The question is not what pacifism has achieved throughout history, but what has war achieved?

Leading Nazi leader, Hermann Goering, at the Nuremberg Trials before he was sentenced to death: "Why of course the people don’t want war.  Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece?  Naturally, the common people don’t want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany.  That is understood. But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship … Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders.  That is easy.  All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger." 

The Veterans of Future Wars — those intent upon preventing future wars

In a roomful of smoking guns, they demand a smoking cannon.

The well-known term "conspiracy" may not actually serve us very well, since it suggests an arcane aberration rather than the normal workings of our ruling class.

The trivialization of conspiracism may itself be a conspiracy.

Humpty-Dumpty was pushed.

With the JFK assassination we gave up part of our democracy and we’re not going to get it back unless we find out who did it. Prof. Peter Dale Scott sees the JFK assassination as an "internal adjustment".

A common argument against a JFK assassination conspiracy is that by now someone would have talked.  But at least two men have come forward with plausible stories of how they were directly involved with the assassination (one is the father of actor Woody Harrelson), and others have claimed other important connections.  And what happened?  They have all been completely ignored by the mainstream media.  Only the tabloids have reported their stories.

Capitalism  (or government of the Eons, by the Duponts, for the Chryslers)

Capitalism is the theory that the worst people, acting from their worst motives, will somehow produce the most good.

"The twentieth century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy; the growth of corporate power; and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy."  Alex Carey, Australian social scientist

Shooting your boss is guaranteed in the Declaration of Independence, under the provision for "the pursuit of happiness".

"Politics is the shadow cast on society by big business."  John Dewey

"The drive for profit that determines capitalism at the end of this century fits like an iron mask on our cultural output."  Andr