Politics of war in Fresno
Submitted by jarah on Sun, 02/05/2006 - 15:09.
The Los Angeles Times has launched a new Sunday magazine called West. Editor Rick Wartzman says "we will be writing not just about California but to California: to that distinct part of every thinking Californian's self-identity, to that California sensibility that resides in all of us."
Mark Arax has a long, wondering piece in the premier issue, The Valley's Not So Civil War.
People still call us "the other California," and as far as politics goes, we have more in common with Oklahoma City than Los Angeles or San Francisco. Up and down the valley, the church is a kind of state. The mayor, police chief and city manager of Fresno are all evangelical Christians: men who don't hesitate to publicly invoke Jesus' name to explain their successes or scrub their pasts clean. And yet there is a farmer's honesty that comes with the land. Unlike those in the big city, folks in the valley don't disguise their words. In coffee shops and greasy spoons, you can hear people talking about issues such as race and class in the most raw and rancorous form, as if they were sitting in their own living rooms with only kin around.Thus this place, my place, would become an ideal window to observe the war as it twisted and defined America.
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Why We Fight The PNAC
Thanks for that link Jarah.
Is not name calling and bullying just another form of propaganda, to join the fear mongering.
If these Christian & Jewish leaders truly believe that an Atomic Bomb would be the solution to the Middle east problem, then these people are the evil in the world, don't they know their history and the aftermath of just one Atomic Bomb would do to all living life there? With Fear and Hate they hurry on the end of the world.
the disastrous rise of misplaced power (PNAC) - Quicktime
Why We Fight - flash
"How does tyranny arise? That it comes out of democracy is fairly clear Does the change take place in the same sort of way as the change from oligarchy to democracy? Oligarchy was established by men with a certain aim in life: the good they sought was wealth, and it was the insatiable appetite for money-making to the neglect of everything else that proved its undoing. Is democracy likewise ruined by greed for what it conceives to be the supreme good?" - Plato, The Republic
"Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it" - G.S.
King of California
I'd highly recommend that book to anyone who has even the slightest interest in the Central Valley. You may not think you're interested in how Friant Dam came to pass, but it explains a lot. We're big fans of Mark Arax.
I'm reading the book Arax
I'm reading the book Arax wrote with Rick Wartzman, "The King of California". I'm amazed by the depictions of what the valley used to look like before ag took over. I feel as though something has been lost, and that something explains why the valley is struggling today. I can't help but think that we'd all be better off if we restored a significant portion of the native habitat, and just paid more for food.
Culture and progressive thinking is something that you usually associate with urbane, metropolitan areas. The way we are today is more likely then not a result of the agricultural history of the valley. I think there's a huge conflict between what the valley is, and what we're trying to become. How to reconcile that conflict, I really don't know.
arax article
that was a great article. long, but meaningful.
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