“Out demons out!” I don’t know why it’s feels so cathartic to me every time I listen to the recording on the 1968 Fugs album “Tenderness Junction” of a historic event a year before, the exorcism and attempted levitation of the Pentagon in USA’s capital city by a determined group of antiwar protestors, poets, musicians, activists and philosophers, with Ed Sanders of Kansas City and New York City leading the ritual. The massive five-sided military headquarters did not leave the ground on that October day, and yet the exorcism was successful because it planted a symbol and an idea in our brains that persists today.
I proudly placed a 2-minute excerpt of this recording at the end of an interview I conducted with Ed Sanders this month for the World BEYOND War podcast, and it gave me a tingle of emotion every time I heard it play while editing. It’s a funny thing that I forgot to even ask Ed Sanders about the exorcism during our exciting 68-minute conversation – because I’d been furiously scribbling notes with other topics I had to ask the bard lately of Woodstock about, and I forgot nearly half the questions I wanted to ask.
If I had remembered to bring up the Pentagon event, I would have asked Ed if he thought William Peter Blatty had gotten the idea a couple years later to write a bestseller called The Exorcist set in Washington DC from him.
I did ask Ed about the rising threat of nuclear apocalypse today, as horrors swirl in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan and so-called democracies teeter. I also asked what he thought about Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. This is a pointed question, since one of these two will apparently be proclaimed President in the Dystopian States of America exactly eight days from now as I write these words, and the polls are calling it 50-50.
I sure hope Harris will win, though she has failed so terribly on Gaza and Ukraine that there is only one issue motivating me to the voting booth: protecting women from the cruel, psychotic attacks on their right to health care by creeps like Donald Trump and JD Vance, neither of whom I would ever recognize as President, just as I never recognized Trump as President before. The so-called USA is a very tense place to live in October 2024, though I notice most people around New York City are putting smiles on their faces and pretending not to notice our country falling apart.
I am especially disturbed by the amount of anti-immigrant hate speech against Latinos and Haitians that comes from the Trump side, and I suppose this is another issue that is motivating me, though the Democrats seem happy to capitulate to Trump-level policies on immigration in order to solicit so-called Republican votes. This horrifies me, and the way immigrants are constantly equated with rapists and murderers in USA news and politics reminds me of the vicious level of hate speech that was prevalent in Rwanda before April 1994.
I wish I believed Kamala Harris would be wise or strong enough to change the craven, corrupt Democratic positions on border refugees, Gaza, Ukraine, China. The Biden presidency’s gullible, war-prone foreign policy has been a massive tragedy. As Ed Sanders said on our interview: “It all leads in one direction: World War Three.”
I personally like and sometimes respect Kamala Harris, but if we manage to escape a Trump putsch, a Kamala Harris presidency is likely to be destroyed by war just as Biden’s was, and LBJ and Nixon and others before him. This calls to mind a quote from Ed Sanders that I actually did remember to bring up during our podcast. “Wars eat social progress.”
I think this is a great interview, and I hope it will be enjoyed by all of my friends at Litkicks as well as everybody who follows World Beyond War (where I am technology director). I love it that this podcast episode combines two parts of my universe. Thanks to Peter Hale and AllenGinsberg.org for coming up with the idea for this episode! I sure hope it’s not the last time I interview a Beat writer about war and peace.
One thing I love about this interview is that we talk a lot about poets and pacifist heroes: Dorothy Day (who got very angry at Ed Sanders for publishing the first issue of “Fuck You Press” on her Catholic Worker mimeograph machine), Allen Ginsberg, Phil Ochs, Abbie Hoffman, Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, Pete Seeger, Judith Malina, Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
What I treasure most about Ed Sanders legacy is his energy as a do-it-yourself publisher with an absolutely fuck-it attitude and an amazing ability to get material out. I published my first zine, Head Express, in 1978 when I was in 11th grade. From Head Express to Literary Kicks, as a DIY publisher I’ve always basically followed the Ed Sanders playbook: use inexpensive available equipment (say, the World Wide Web), have parties whenever possible, publish your friends, don’t try to get rich, don’t censor yourself, don’t get full of yourself, keep changing the formula, have fun, but make it fun (and healthy and educational) for the readers above all.
There are a few ways I’ve diverged from the Ed Sanders playbook. I never felt quite as comfortable with offensive sexual imagery as the Fugs did. (Well, I think Frank Zappa picked this concept up from the Fugs and then took it a lot further than Ed Sanders ever did.) Even though some Fugs or Fuck You Press imagery might not wear well in 2024, the gentle sense of humor and balance that Ed Sanders projects today is likely to win over anybody who has questions about some of the jokes that must have seemed funny in 1965.
The best part of this Ed Sanders podcast interview, I think, is the last 10 minutes, which contains the recording from the Pentagon but also some really touching words from Ed Sanders about what we – all of humanity, that is – would lose if we stupidly allow a nuclear war to steal the future from our own children and our own selves.
Ed Sanders worries about post ex nililo – the impulse of selfish old people to destroy the world along with themselves. Ed Sanders says he believes evil is real, though I’m not sure I think that way. We talk about all of this, and lots more, in this big, sprawling episode of the World Beyond War podcast. It feels good to run it also on Literary Kicks, where we’ve been saying hi to Ed Sanders for a long time.
Also featuring “Dover Beach” by the Fugs, based on the poem by Matthew Arnold.
2 Responses
I wrote down the following thoughts today, and they may or may not have merit:
A multitude of human concerns are in play, a complex matrix, but the continued rise of Corporatism seems entrenched at the middle of it all. The rise of a new uber-religion, to replace (and/or hijack) the old ones. My old roommate (in the ’80s) used to say something like: “there’s always at least 10 or 15 per cent truth in what even the most objectionable people say. That’s pushing it when it comes to Trump– for whom the “broken clock is right only twice a day” analogy is more apt. Still though, he’s not “wrong” when he says things like “government is corrupt.” This is a major reason–certainly not the only reason– why he won. Twice. This normalized hatred of corrupt government in general. Except NOT in general; FOX and a huge, sustained right wing radio blitz for decades have waged a mostly successful propaganda campaign to pin corruption squarely and exclusively on the left side of the aisle. Which of course is bullshit.
Beyond that, the push for a corporate takeover accelerates, aided by asinine divide-and-conquer “culture wars” tactics and the imperative to bow down to the religion of Profit Is God. I doubt that loudmouths like Musk and Swami guy want to make government more “efficient.” They’d rather dismantle it altogether; a fully deregulated stage with all manner of corporate tax cuts, handouts and perks. The corporatist’s wet dream. We just trade one brand of corruption for another.
Well said, Mnaz. I agree with your prognosis.