My book, "Partners in Wonder."

 

AN EXTENSIVE DISCUSSION OF MY BOOK, "PARTNERS IN WONDER" --

http://adventuresfantastic.com/the-women-other-women-dont-see/

 

Solidarity!

 

SOLIDARITY

In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus told his disciple Peter, the devoted "rock" upon which he declared he would build his church, that Peter would disown him in the coming crisis on the morrow.

"Not I," answered Peter, "never."

"Yes," said Jesus. "Before the cock crows you will deny me thrice."

Again Peter denied this.

Then, while his disciples slept nearby, Jesus suffered his own Dark Night of the Soul and doubted his ability to carry through what he knew he must soon do. But, he accepted the cup from which he must drink.

And then Roman soldiers, led by Judas, burst into the garden. They arrested Jesus and took him away. Fearful of a roundup of suspected Jesus-followers, his disciples quickly scattered to their various dark corners and boltholes.

Peter found himself alone, on a strange street, surrounded by hostile strangers. "There's one now!" cried one of the strangers, pointing at Peter. "Get him! He's a follower of Jesus!"

"No, not I," cried the frightened Paul. "I don't even know the man."

"Yes," cried the stranger, as the angry mob crowded around Peter, "you're a follower of Jesus, I saw you with him!"

"No, not me, you're mistaken, I don't even know the man!"

"Yes, it was you I saw with him, you're the one!

"No," cried Peter for the third time, "I tell you I don't even know the man!" And then, in fright, he ran away, and the mob let him go.

And then the cock crowed as a new day dawned.

Moral: Awake, alone, in the Garden of Gethsemane, even Jesus, who had become a mere man, come to suffer and die as a mere man, doubted himself, as a mere man might do, and prayed that he would not have to do what he had to do. But, he was, after all, also the Son of God, and he finally accepted the coming suffering and death that he knew he must face alone.

But the devoted Peter, only a mere man, was made of weaker stuff. And when he faced the crisis alone, he faltered and failed and denied he ever knew Jesus. Isolation makes cowards of us all, even if you're St. Peter.

The Urban-Rural Political Divide

 

THE URBAN-RURAL POLITICAL DIVIDE: 

 

The urban-rural divide goes back *at least* to the 1930s, and has been consistent up to the present. I've documented the New Deal in Pennsylvania. The Dem vote was entirely in the cities, and the GOP controlled the countryside, as it does to this day. 

 

Also, *throughout* the 1930s the rural GOP vote climbed continuously and steadily without break to record numbers by 1940 and beyond.

The NEW DEAL triumphed in Penn., however, because the electoral universe expanded greatly in the Democratic direction by the urban vote. So, this divide is going on 100 years old, and isn't due to recent developments. See my work on the subject:

 

 

 https://www.amazon.com/Crucible-Freedom-Democracy-Industrial-Heartland/dp/0739122398/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=davin+%2B+crucible+of+freedom&link_code=qs&qid=1607006907&sourceid=Mozilla-search&sr=8-1&tag=mozilla-20

Sweet Sorrows & Violent Delights

 

A COLLECTION OF MY SHORT FICTION: 25 STORIES & 2 POEMS. (Less than $10.)

https://www.lulu.com/en/us/shop/eric-leif-davin/sweet-sorrows-violent-delights/paperback/product-195wmp5e.html?page=1&pageSize=4

 

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

 

"AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE," BY AMBROSE BIERCE.

The five minute version, but it encapsulates the entire film perfectly. This French-made film was used as the very last episode of the original Twilight Zone series. A classic, and worth five minutes of your viewing time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk8KO0jZzbk

 

The Enemy of the Good

 

WHAT'S NEXT?

 

As a Bernie supporter in the primary, I share the concern many progressives are expressing about Biden's Cabinet picks so far. Where are the progressives among those picks?

 

However, my friend Carl Davidson made an important point when he said, "The rightwing populist bloc, with its fascist core, is still strong and active. That's something for our left to keep in mind. We can clearly make our differences with Team Biden known, and press for changes. But he is still not the only major player on the terrain, and it would be unwise to aim all our fire at him when the right is doing the same."

 

You can turn to any TV sub-channel right here in Pittsburgh and find any number of full-time Right-Wing stations already attacking Biden non-stop. We should be careful not to thoughtlessly join that chorus. 

 

I'm reminded of the defeat of Richard Nixon's proposal for a guaranteed annual income for all Americans back in the early 1970s. (True, amazingly!) Of course, the reactionaries attacked the idea..... but so did the Left! The Left attacked it because the proposed guaranteed income was deemed too low. "It's not enough!" the Left cried. "Defeat the plan!"

 

And, with both the Left and the Right ganging up on the idea, it was indeed defeated.

Which is why Americans don't have a guaranteed annual income today. 

 

We Progressives must think carefully before we uncritically attack. Sometimes the best is the enemy of the good, when good is all we can get.

Ghost Dance

 

"GHOST DANCE" - A THANKSGIVING STORY BY ERIC LEIF DAVIN:

http://www.galaxysedge.com/magazines/issue-29-november-2017-2/ghost-dance/

The Prophetic Vision of Stephen Vincent Benet

 

THE PROPHETIC VISION OF STEPHEN VINCENT BENET.... by Eric Leif Davin

https://dreamforge.mywebportal.app/dreamforge/stories/show/the-prophetic-vision-of-stephen-vincent-benet-eric-leif-davin

 

Please Pardon Me!

 

PLEASE PARDON ME!

 

Donald Trump’s presidency is unprecedented in so many different ways. Throughout his presidency, he has pushed the boundaries of the possible and the imaginable. For example, he has ruled by decree (Executive Order) extensively, wielding his pen liberally to extend the power of the increasingly powerful office of the Imperial Presidency.

Most recently he has become the first losing president since 1896 who has refused to issue a concession statement. Nor, I predict, will this man who refuses to admit that he ever loses, ever concede… unless it’s to concede that the election was stolen from him. I predict he won’t even show up for President-Elect Biden’s Inauguration on January 20^th, as the experience would just be too humiliating and emotionally painful for him.

I also predict he will push the boundaries in one last direction before he is, perhaps physically, forced out of the White House. All departing presidents, both Democrats and Republicans, have liberally used their pardoning power before leaving office. Trump has already generously pardoned a large number of convicted felons. He will do so again before leaving office. The list of names on his roster of pardons will include perhaps everyone who has gone to prison for him, so long as they haven’t turned on him during the interim. And the last name on the list will be Donald J. Trump.

Some have speculated that Trump will resign before Inauguration Day in the expectation (perhaps privately agreed upon) that President Pence will then pardon him from anticipated criminal prosecution. I don’t believe Trump will resign. That would be another form of losing, and he can’t endure losing. So, he will not resign in expectation of a subsequent presidential pardon from Pence. He will, instead, push the envelope once again and pardon himself.

WE DON’T KNOW whether he can legally do this. No president has ever preemptively pardoned himself to escape expected criminal prosecution (and Trump will face a host of criminal prosecutions once he leaves office). The Constitution says nothing about this possibility. Perhaps the Founders never imagined it as a possible problem, but there is so much about the Trump presidency that has never before been imagined.

Since it has never before happened, it is an action that has never been litigated and decided one way or another by a judge or panel of judges. Constitutional lawyers are divided about the legality of such an action; some say it would be legal, others think not.

And so the legality of a president’s preemptive pardon of himself would have to be decided in court, perhaps, finally, the Supreme Court. Trump has already placed three justices on the Supreme Court in hopes that they would one day rule in his favor. Perhaps they will not end up, after all, ruling that the election was stolen from him. President-Elect Biden’s final 306 Electoral College votes (which Trump termed “a landslide” when he won with 306 Electoral College votes in 2016) seems to be too large to overcome. But, they may well rule in his favor when it comes to such an unexpected and unprecedented expansion of the presidential power of pardon.

In the great scheme of things, such an expansion of the power of presidential pardons will not affect the daily lives of ordinary Americans going about the business of simply trying to survive in this age of the pandemic. But it would be yet another way in which Donald J. Trump expanded the powers of the Imperial Presidency, thus moving America one more step away from the rule of law and equal justice for everyone, and toward a more autocratic rule of an increasingly powerful Imperial President, whoever that Imperial President may be.

A SONG FOR EURYDICE

 

ONE OF MY STORIES:

http://www.galaxysedge.com/magazines/issue-38-may-2019-updates-in-progress/a-song-for-eurydice/

OTHER WORLDS MAGAZINE

 

Here's my review of an old issue I thought particularly important:

https://socialistjazz.blogspot.com/2019/12/guest-post-eric-leif-davin-on-other.html

Sweet Sorrows & Violent Delights

 

CHECK THIS OUT!

 

A collection of my award-winning fantasy and science fiction: 

 

https://www.lulu.com/en/us/shop/eric-leif-davin/sweet-sorrows-violent-delights/paperback/product-195wmp5e.html

BE AFRAID

 BE AFRAID...

 

Of the people over here

And the people over there,

The dark-skinned mother,

And your own blood brother,

Of the red

In your bed,

And people everywhere.

Be afraid

Of your shadow

And kids in Colorado

Who might be packing guns,

Of the man with the beard

And people looking weird,

Of the graveyard ghosts

And the people on the Coast,

Be afraid of the nuns!

Be afraid

Of the short and afraid of the tall,

Of just about any damn one at all

Who doesn’t look like you,

And doesn’t cook like you,

Doesn’t drink like you,

And doesn’t think like you.

Trust only in the Lord,

And the brute in the suit

Pointing his finger

At the people over there,

And the people over here

At the straight and the queer

And people everywhere,

Telling you

Ya gotta,

Ya gotta

Ya gotta be afraid,

Ya gotta be afraid,

Ya gotta be very, very afraid.

The Great Strike of 1877

 

IT'S THE GILDED AGE, & THE OLIGARCHY IS CRUSHING DEMOCRACY. BUT THE PEOPLE STRIKE BACK AND ANGRY WORKERS BURN PITTSBURGH. THE GREAT STRIKE OF 1877:

 

https://www.amazon.com/Great-Strike-1877-Eric-Davin/dp/1387878263/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=davin%20%2B%20great%20strike%20of%201877&qid=1599971943&sr=8-1&fbclid=IwAR3dVHZJS9yVtU3KTuwqlQfmgyPX5LqXAz99UHVGsV1ONpruOFAvYflDuC0

Crucible of Freedom

 

CHECK THIS OUT! THE DEFINITIVE POLITICAL HISTORY OF PITTSBURGH FROM 1930s-1960s:

https://www.amazon.com/Crucible-Freedom-Democracy-Industrial-Heartland-dp-0739122398/dp/0739122398/ref=mt_other?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=1602818068

Orphans of the Storm-New Memoir

 Here's the link to my new memoir: 

https://www.lulu.com/en/us/shop/eric-leif-davin/orphans-of-the-storm/paperback/product-m5v7ny.html

Lucinda Williams-"Man Without A Soul" - Dedicated to Donald Trump

 Listen to Lucinda Williams: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBdU0tvZfAc

The Paterson Strike Pageant, 1913

THE PATERSON STRIKE PAGEANT OF 1913: 

 

https://truthout.org/articles/eric-davins-strike-pageant-chronicles-the-paterson-silk-strike-of-1913/

 

The Great Uprising of 1877

THE GREAT UPRISING OF JULY, 1877:

On July 22nd, 1877, angry workers burned a large portion of Pittsburgh to the ground. The entire Strip District, from (and including) the Union Depot train station on Grant Street to Lawrenceville, was left a burning ruin.

The burning of Pittsburgh, however, was merely the epicenter of a larger uprising that hot summer month in 1877. Excluding the Civil War itself, the Great Strike of 1877 was the largest insurrection in American history. It was also the biggest instance of labor violence anywhere on earth for the hundred years between the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 and the beginning of the Great War in 1914.

For two weeks after the burning of Pittsburgh, warfare convulsed America. A general strike closed down St. Louis. The Workingmen’s Party, America’s first socialist party, briefly took charge of the city while the local sheriff made plans to raise a 5,000 man army to fight them. A huge private army of wealthy citizens led by two Civil War generals, one Union and one Confederate, eventually broke that city’s general strike.

In Chicago bloody street battles between the police and striking workers left 30 workers dead, many more wounded. The National Guard killed another ten striking workers in Reading, Pennsylvania. Fighting spread from small towns like Altoona, Johnstown, and Scranton, in Pennsylvania, to Buffalo, New York. In New York City police attacked and bloodily dispersed twenty thousand New Yorkers meeting to support the workers.

But wealthy vigilantes, police forces, and National Guard units could not suppress the workers’ rebellion everywhere. Panicked governors and local officials called upon President Rutherford B. Hayes to quell the rebellion with federal troops. In response, President Hayes issued a proclamation of emergency and insurrection, after which he ordered U. S. Army troops to occupy major cities. It was the first significant use of the Army to break a strike in American history.

Previously, the question of slave labor had torn America apart. Now class conflict and incessant small-scale labor wars would tear at the American fabric for decades to come. The Great Strike of 1877 was, therefore, a major turning point in American history. Americans left the Civil War and Reconstruction eras behind and thenceforth fought over the meaning of America in a new era of industrial and corporate capitalism.

The Great Strike of 1877

The Problem with "Caring" & "Loving" People

THE PROBLEM WITH "CARING" AND "LOVING" PEOPLE:

In the midst of pandemic, with millions of Americans out of work and in the depths of despair, this Republican president continues to reveal the height of his cruelty.

How can anyone who thinks of themselves as "caring" and "loving" people support such a man?

It is because these "caring people" care only for people like themselves. People who aren't like them aren't really "people" at all. They are the Other. They're a different race, religion, class, sex, nationality. They don't dress like them. They don't cut their hair like them. They don't speak like them. Therefore, they are not worthy of care and concern.

"All men are created equal," the slave master Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence. That is, white men like himself. Obviously not his own slaves, obviously not women, as he was talking about "men" being equal. But, if you were a white man, he cared about your political rights and independence.

Dr. Josef Mengele, the "Angel of Death" Nazi doctor at Auschwitz, was, reportedly, a very caring and loving father to his own children.

Hitler like dogs and blonde blue-eyed children. As a youth in Vienna, as a struggling and aspiring artist, Hitler painted roses.

The "loving" and "caring" people who continue to support this cruel and evil man in the White House -- reportedly, about 40% of my fellow Americans -- are people who have de-humanized other people who aren't like them and cast them into the Outer Darkness. Therefore, those outcasts are not worthy of their care and concern.

It's a failure of imagination and a failure of empathy.

Women in Weird Tales Magazine

...... extensively cites my work in second paragraph:

See second paragraph. 

https://thepolyphony.org/2020/06/25/the-house-of-death-postpartum-psychosis-and-infanticide-in-the-weird-tales-magazine/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-house-of-death-postpartum-psychosis-and-infanticide-in-the-weird-tales-magazine

 

The Past is Never Past

The release of the Equal Justice Initiative’s report documenting southern white supremacist terror and the lynching of at least 2,000 Southern blacks during the Reconstruction Era highlights the fact that history is not an eternally objective record of the past. (“Report Documents Over 2,000 Lynchings in 12-Year Period After Civil War,” New York Times, June 17.) Instead, it is something that is deliberately constructed, which is what the South did after the Civil War. The South may have lost the Civil War, but it won the peace. For a hundred years or more after the end of Reconstruction in 1877, the Southern version of Reconstruction dominated our history books and popular culture. “Reconstruction was a failure,” that version said. This new report makes clear how political that constructed history of Reconstruction was. Reconstruction didn’t fail. Reconstruction was lynched by white supremacy. And that racist legacy is still with us. As Southern author William Faulkner said, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

My Letter in the Post-Gazette on the Pandemic & Protests

https://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/2020/06/05/We-are-not-all-in-this-together-but-we-need-to-be/stories/202006030109

No, We Are Not All In This Together

The universal mantra of this pandemic is that, “We Are All In This Together.” It’s a nice slogan. But, no, we are not all in this together.

There are two separate Americas enduring this crisis, and they are suffering completely separate fates. More than 100,000 Americans have now died of Covid-19, and around 60% of them are black or other people of color. In New Mexico, for instance, Navajo Indians, who constitute 11% of the state’s population, account for a majority of the state’s virus fatalities.

Likewise, 25% of Americans have lost their jobs and over 40 million Americans have applied for unemployment. Again, black and brown Americans constitute a disproportionate number of the unemployed. Professionals in higher paid occupations, disproportionately white, continue working via computer from home. Service workers, those who work at jobs where they must provide a physical service, and who are disproportionately people of color, do not have the luxury of continuing to work from their homes. They are the majority of those 40 million applying for unemployment benefits. They are the majority of those now facing eviction because they cannot pay their rent or their mortgages. They are the majority of those lining up for miles at food banks for the free food they can no longer afford.

The pandemic has ripped the veil from America’s vastly unequal economy. It has not only revealed the vast rift between the rich and the comfortable and the poor and near-poor who have always struggled from weekly paycheck to weekly paycheck, it has widened that rift. An unequal America will be even more unequal once this pandemic has passed into history. It will be more evident than ever before that we live in two separate and unequal Americas: The comfortable and mostly white America, and the other America, the struggling and drowning America, mostly comprised of people of color.

So, despite the Pollyanna tone of the pandemic’s universal mantra that, “We Are All In This Together,” the reality is that, no, we are not all in this together.

Vote Him Away (The Liar Tweets Tonight)

Other Worlds SF Magazine

My review of one especially important issue:

https://socialistjazz.blogspot.com/2019/12/guest-post-eric-leif-davin-on-other.html

Avenging Angel

My short story, "Avenging Angel," in Far Frontiers from Baen Books, can be found here:

https://www.abebooks.com/9780671559540/FAR-FRONTIERS-2-BAEN-BOOKS-0671559540/plp

A Song For Eurydice-Short Story

HOPE IN HOPELESS TIMES: A SONG FOR EURYDICE:

http://www.galaxysedge.com/magazines/issue-38-may-2019-updates-in-progress/a-song-for-eurydice/

The Scarlet Queen-Novel

SOMETHING TO READ DURING SOLITARY CONFINEMENT:

https://www.amazon.com/Scarlet-Queen-Eric-Leif-Davin/dp/0359641563/ref=sr_1_11?crid=2ABDKWU2OXCM2&dchild=1&keywords=eric+leif+davin&qid=1585636650&sprefix=eric+leif+%2Caps%2C262&sr=8-11

The Desperate and the Dead-Novel

This is the perfect time to read one of my novels, delivered right to your door:

The Desperate and the Dead.

https://www.amazon.com/Desperate-Dead-Eric-Leif-Davin/dp/1387113631/ref=sr_1_16?keywords=eric+leif+davin&qid=1585370731&sr=8-16

Be Afraid

Be Afraid

Of the people over here

         And the people over there,

                  The dark-skinned mother,

                           And your own blood brother,

                                    Of the red

                                            In your bed, 

                                                   And people everywhere.

Be afraid     

         Of your shadow

                  And kids in Colorado

                           Who might be packing guns,

                                    Of the man with the beard

                                             And people looking weird,

                                                      Of the graveyard ghosts

                                                               And the people on the Coast,

                                                                        Be afraid of the nuns!

Be afraid

         Of the short and afraid of the tall,

                  Of just about any damn one at all                                  

                           Who doesn’t look like you,

                                    And doesn’t cook like you,

                                             Doesn’t drink like you,

                                                      And doesn’t think like you.

                           Trust only in the Lord,

         And the brute in the suit

                  Pointing his finger

                           At the people over there,

                                    And the people over here

                                             At the straight and the queer

                                                      And people everywhere,

                                                               Telling you

                                                                        Ya gotta,

                                                                                 Ya gotta

                           Ya gotta be afraid,

                                    Ya gotta be afraid,

                                           Ya gotta be very, very afraid.