(Top image: Elina in Chicago 14 June; Second image: Tressa With Emma Lazurus Poem. Both supplied by the Drifter)
The Crowd and the Protest
“The shepherd enters through the gate.” – John, Chapter Ten
ONE
Sadly, the question might easily arise as to WHY anyone in their right mind would bother to fight for, or defend, the so-called “American Dream” any more, in this Year of Our Lord 2025.
The Gonzo journalist and prose master Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, in his prophetic mode, rightly proclaimed the American Dream dead and buried over fifty years ago, not too long after Tricky Dick got finished with his sad, partially unconscious, and certainly pathetic attempts to clownishly crown himself and end American democracy forever.
It seems to me that the American Dream has now become the most destructive lie and delusion the human race ever invented for itself, a vast, mass mental and spiritual health crisis and pandemic that has spread globally everywhere from here to India and all places in between, and has destroyed the human and humane spirits of, literally, billions of people all across the globe (although not everyone).
Because the so-called “American Dream” is nothing now in its very essence and core except a pixie dust mental disorder, a vast, sometimes-seemingly-all-consuming, LSD-like, schizophrenic delusion that is not based on Fantasy (the bad kind), but IS Fantasy the bad kind itself at every level.
Romance Fantasies, House Fantasies, Computer Fantasies, Car Fantasies, Shopping Fantasies, Political Fantasies, Property Fantasies, Robot Fantasies, Rocket Fantasies, Gambling Fantasies, Lottery Fantasies, Vacation Fantasies, Hero Fantasies, College Fantasies, Economic Fantasies, Flower Fantasies, Music Fantasies, Dancing Fantasies, Fame Fantasies, Job Fantasies, Retirement Fantasies, Revenge Fantasies, Drinking Fantasies, Drug Fantasies, Food Fantasies, Screen Fantasies, Sex, Power, and Money Fantasies have burned and buried the real minds and hearts of so many people walking, standing, sitting, or lying down on the globe right now that it’s really chilling and yes, even horrifying, when one thinks on it for more than two seconds before going back to casually scrolling one’s phone as the world burns.
So why fight for the American Dream? Because there’s another side to everything in this world: what the great Chinese poet, philosopher, drinker, and drifter Li Po called the Yin and the Yang.
Harold Bloom, the great American writer, voice and citizen, said many times that an American never feels free unless she or he is alone. And when an American is alone, they do always feel free (even if sometimes terrified, too).
That liberating essence, or core, of American democracy still exists, even though Sojourner Truth, Crazy Horse, Frederick Douglass, Thomas Jefferson, Daniel Boone, and John Wayne are gone (“The mountains have been my church,” said Wayne in his final movie). It means everything to the human mind, heart, spirit and soul all over the globe, is America’s one great contribution.
And that is why I will fight for it, in my own way, and in the spiritual warrior sense of the word fight. I, and many others.
TWO
We came up out of the subway tunnel and were instantly swallowed by the Chicago crowd. I was with my teenaged kids and a few of their friends. I could see the Picasso statue in the distance over the heads of the crowd. It was there, the statue the great Picasso gave to the city of Chicago for free, the one that looks like a horse’s head from a certain angle, a woman’s head with long hair from another angle, something else you had never really imagined before and can’t name, from another angle.
I’d spent a lot of time in the past sitting around in downtown Chicago and studying that huge metal statue. Now I was packed into the middle of so many hot, pressing, human bodies suddenly that I couldn’t even move, not right, left, front, backward or center. One of my daughters had been swallowed and pushed along by the crowd. We were all worse than sardines in cans right now. Suddenly I realized that if I had another stroke like I’d had last year, I would be in a very bad spot because there were angry, shouting, pressing, hot-blooded, hot-breathed, neck-veins-bulging, stinking, sometimes-perfumed, protesting people pressing all around me and there would be no medical assistance happening out here. I turned around again trying to find the stairs from where we’d come up from the subway so we could go back down, but it was already too late. We’d been sucked into the vast black hole of the hot, pressing crowd, literally even before we knew what was happening.
We kept talking to each other in the middle of the crowd as we tried to inch our way out of it. I instructed all these teenagers I was with to follow me, and trusted (no choice) that my other wildly intelligent daughter (they both are) would be able to fend for herself, but no one in the crowd was moving, they were all just standing there pressing upon one another (no room for anyone to even sit down, not that you would want to here), holding up signs, screaming slogans and chants, breathing their hot breath on the backs of one another’s necks, and I could feel the outraged intensity of every single one of their souls (it felt like) pressing down on my own personality, which was very quickly becoming nothing less than outraged at their outrage. Trying to keep it under control, trying to keep it under control…
There were very many angry and shady-looking people pressing in the crowd, folks trying to pull suitcases or carrying awkward-looking backpacks, all of the above large enough to carry explosives of course, folks dressed all in black with hands hidden in pockets large enough to carry pistols, folks hunched over with hoods over their heads and masks on their faces and sunglasses covering their eyes.
It was a vast ocean of bodies pressing over me and I realized I was about to panic perhaps because I was now having a bona fide LSD flashback right here in the middle of the crowd, actually triggered by the crowd, in fact. But I had to keep it together in order to lead my daughters and their friends to safety.
It had been my idea to come down here, after all. My kids and their friends instantly agreed. Then I remembered that I had been inspired by them during the George Floyd protests when it had been their idea to go to the protests before it had been mine. We were trying to inch our way along to escape from the crowd. Some people, obviously many people, do not get too claustrophobic in such conditions, because a lot of these protesters actually seemed to be enjoying themselves. But myself, my daughters, and our friends were not some of the non-claustrophobic ones. The kids call it “tweaking” these days. It’s when you’re losing your grip on things, feeling like you’re having an acid flashback, panicking or almost panicking, freaking out, in other words. I was now, officially, and internally, tweaking at every single level I could or couldn’t think of. I was able to hold it together for only two reasons.
One: in order to try and help my daughters and their friends (and myself) get out of this.
Two: I knew if I really started freaking out, it would be like throwing a flaming torch on top of a keg of gun powder.
I knew now, in my blood, how easy it is, and how fast it can happen, that people get trampled to death in a crowd like this.
THE CROWD is so terrifying and horrifying to some of us because it means a complete and total loss of individuality, and control, at every level.
The only place you can maintain your own self-control in conditions like this is within your own mind, and under these kinds of conditions, that is very hard to do, especially when an acid flashback, or whatever it was, is making every single nerve end in your body and brain feel like it’s on fire right out of the blue.
Thoughts of Buddha helped save me this time. His chubby ghost (to me he was chubby) appeared out of nowhere and wafted in front of my mind. It was his kind of mind control I turned to in these desperate circumstances. I was having an acid flashback in the extreme but the purposely recalled thoughts of the strength of Buddha’s mind helped me regain, and keep control of, my own mind. I turned around and all the kids I was with had vanished in the crowd, we had been separated, I couldn’t turn around, and I couldn’t find them. I kept on trying to worm and inch my way out of the crowd, trusting their safety to God, because it was the only thing I could do now.
THREE
During the worst moments of being suddenly caught unawares in the middle of THE CROWD like that, it felt like nothing short of being buried alive in the middle of the most vivid Edgar Allan Poe buried alive short story you’ve ever read, except you’re not reading the story at a safe distance, you are the character in the story who’s actually buried alive, worse than in a dream. For me, to suddenly have millions of anonymous bodies pressing all over mine without warning is one of the worst living nightmares I can possibly imagine. (I’m fond of keeping my distance, which is an essence of being a drifter.)
There are other nightmares just as bad, like maybe being stalked by a great white shark while out swimming in the ocean and you know he’s there but are still a mile away from shore. Only being buried alive for real could possibly be worse.
Losing contact with my kids in the crowd like that was even worse than the buried-alive feeling.
FOUR
It took me ninety (90) minutes to inch and worm my way out of the crowd. Ninety minutes that felt like nine months jammed down into a Siberian prison holding cell (because of the acid flashback/s).
When I finally broke free, onto famous State Street in Chicago, I looked up and there was the Van Gogh-like Muddy Waters mural on the side of the building I’d seen many times before. I had lost track of where I was in the downtown area, and had only been following my instincts to get out. And I got out. And I was free. And there was Muddy, one of my great and lifelong heroes, Muddy Waters, staring down at me. And we were both free.
I had to wait around for another thirty (30) minutes before my kids also broke free from the crowd.
But fifteen (15) minutes before that, I received the first text from them telling me they were OK.
FIVE
There is no doubt that I’ll continue to protest personality-crushing authoritarianism wherever it exists, whether that is at the “highest” business and political levels, or within the classroom or the workplace, or on the street corner, or within myself, or anywhere.
Next time, however, I shall be much more careful about how I approach THE CROWD. A word to the wise: The Crowd is bad. In the worst sense of the Word.
ADDENDUM from The Drifter
There are a million different ways to protest, of course, and attending a so-called “Protest” is certainly not the only way, although, as the American Civil Rights Movement showed, it is sometimes a necessary way. The famous “three and a half percent” rule, proved by social science, says you only need that amount of a nation’s population to resist and overthrow the lockdown of true authoritarianism, the kind where the jack-booted thugs are standing around armed on all street corners with their faces hidden and the little old lady you thought was your friendly neighbor just reported you to the secret police for something you didn’t do.
The following poem by Walt Whitman outlines another way to protest, just as profound, or more profound, than the other way.
Poets to come! orators, singers, musicians to come!
Not today is to justify me and answer what I am for;
But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental,
Greater than before known,
Arouse! For you must justify me…
I am a man who, sauntering along without fully stopping,
Turns a casual look upon you and then
Averts his face,
Leaving it to you
To prove and define it,
Expecting the main things
From you.
“The Drifter” is drifting off for now in order to steady his nerves via a combination of medical, psychological, and spiritual advances. This world we currently inhabit will make you nervous if you’re alive; do what you need to; pursue the right kind of excess and eschew the wrong kind as much as possible.
“The Drifter” doesn’t know yet what the column will be about next Sunday in this “Postcards from the Drifter” Sunday series; what he does know is that he will be here.
Saragun Springs 
Hello Drifter
You certainly relayed the feel of the crowd. I so hate them and you got the push and smothering down perfectly.
Good on you, the kids and their friends for standing up against it all. The good guys have yet to win a revolution, but that fact does give us something to aim at!
Leila
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Leila
“The Drifter” sent another response that somehow got lost in the ether. Vaulted out into outer space where the disappeared messages sometimes go, I think; and then they spend their time floating around the globe perhaps only to re-emerge later at just the right time (or not). Sending this one now 2 C if it goes through. Thank you for everything and more later!
The Drifter
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LA
I want to send out a very special thank you to both Tressa Bella and Elina Lynn who allowed their pix to be used for this second official “Postcards from the Drifter” column.
I noticed that these two have been major characters in both official “Postcards from the Drifter” columns so far. Their presence shall continue in all “Postcards from the Drifter” columns. Even in those columns where they don’t appear “on stage,” their powerful characters and rebel spirits will be behind everything.
I can add that both of these 18-year-olds are artists in their own right. Also, their protesting has never been confined to simply protesting at the Protests. Their reputation/s for stirring up good trouble will be confirmed by all who know them, including the Illinois high school they just graduated from.
These two are also twins. The kind with the preternatural connection/s who also remain very strong individuals in their own right at every level. Poets – metaphorically and literally. I think America will be OK in the long run because of them – and all those of whom they are the representatives in this column.
There is a hidden power in the youth of America that hasn’t been seen fully just yet, I do believe. Not everyone has turned into a materialistic shopping shark, a vegetable or a robot.
And, whenever old things end, new things are always beginning.
Thank you!
The Drifter
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Hi Drifter
Yes Tressa and Elina deserve praise. It takes nerve to make a stand, especially as teens.
Good parenting is evident.
Leila
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Hi Leila
Thanks for singing the praises of the kids, as well as for everything as always!
Whenever I start feeling down in the dumps, I think of you again and it always makes me feel better! And that’s no joke.
The D
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Hi Dale
The American Dream seems to promote a chance–even still. Or it’s a very strong lie. Did they make that up in a bomb shelter?
Our democracy shot the crown off the King’s head, and “We the people” saw fit to strive forward.
“The mountains have been my church,” said Wayne. That’s quite an image. Was it “The Shootist?”
Great images of the crowd! The psychological sociological view of being swallowed by this crowd is claustrophobic and massive. Losing oneself in it must be something like how birds fly in flocks and move harmoniously together or appear to. Maybe they are just as swept away? Somehow I doubt it. This is the walking sardine can with all the smells and rubbing muscles.
The art sculpture and artist portraits were like points of meditation. This is a good road map for those who want to march. There’s more dangers than one might realize.
I would say considering the peril of the crowd itself that this was a brave and almost costly cause. Crowds from your perspective have made me think of rushing flooded rivers.
There’s a great story by Ray Bradbury, “The Crowd.”
Great piece!
Christopher
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Christopher
You are a massive influence on the fledgling “The Drifter” series because of your ability, and willingness, to engage with, understand, and respond to this column; I can never say thank you enough! Your poetic, “lean and mean” way of boiling everything down gets the essence of all I’m trying to say down into a few brevity-filled words that are easily just as good as the column itself, and that’s totally cool!
Yes, the John Wayne line comes from The Shootist. Anyone who thinks John Wayne can’t act should watch The Shootist, about a character given a death sentence via a cancer diagnosis while Wayne was living the same in the real world. One reason I cited Wayne is because he was/is the very essence of what a GOOD “conservative” should be, that is, conserving all the best parts and jettisoning all the bad. Anyone who watches his movies will also see, very clearly, that he was the reverse of a racist in his bones at every level. Yes, he was fearless, in certain films, at exploring the horrible nature and reality of American racism. More often, however, his films depict all of the races living in harmony together at a time when that was not seen as the best way of doing things. He was ahead of his time and a lot of people still haven’t caught up with him.
Another charge which can be leveled at Wayne is that he really didn’t know how to act, and that he only ever played himself in all his movies. That is probably true at many levels, but the single character he created was so good he didn’t need to change the template too much. And yes, he sometimes descended into being a jingoistic propagandist full of meaningless slogans and stilted speeches. But no, it wasn’t the core of him, and no one is perfect.
Ray Bradbury is a great example of a writer who stands the test of time, who was ahead of his time, and who will be around for a long time. I was reading The Martian Chronicles the other day. The part where one of the characters recites a poem by Lord Byron while looking down at Planet Earth from Mars is visionary writing at the highest levels.
THANK YOU!!
Dale
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Hey Dale
Thank you!
Your drifter column is engaging and supercharged with great insights and fictional techniques!
I love John Wayne movies! He was a real actor, let the scoffers, scoff. We know better! His movies are timeless and his charterers like Rooster Cogburn and Big Jake were great! His old propaganda war movies were really good too, like Wake Island, and Midway.
I haven’t read the Martian Chronicles I’ll have to check it out. Bradbury is right up there with the best.
Christopher
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CJA
Thanks for throwing your weight behind the great John Wayne! Doesn’t surprise me that you “get” him and his work! He’s in the same realm as Elvis and Marilyn.
Many people don’t know that all of his wives were Latinas and he was an obsessive reader of Charles Dickens. He re-made Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew in one of his movies and he always beats up the bad guys, not the good guys (usually) although sometimes those get mixed up. Most of his best films are dramatic comedies.
Thanks for pointing out the use of fictional techniques in the column! Sometimes a thin line between fiction and reality these days in more ways than one probably for the better and the worst. Mr. John Wayne was a master at inventing himself, which is the job of all of us whoever we are these days. The key differences between him and a simple grifter are two: motive/s, and the art of it all. One of them will say or do anything for money and is a copy-cat. The other one will stick to his guns no matter what and is a lone wolf.
“The Drifter”
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Hey Drifter
I didn’t know about JW’s Latino wives. He sounds progressive–more than I thought.
I heard he got into a pretty good fight with Clarke Gable. Probably endless stories about “The Duke.”
From the corn rows
CJA
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CJA
One of my favorite stories about The Duke is how he started doing his own stunts again for a movie just TWO months after having all of one lung and part of another REMOVED because of cancer.
Literally a little less than two months later, The Duke was back on a movie set being dragged into a near-frozen river by an out-of-control horse. And he was swinging fake punches at Dean Martin before sneaking off into the bushes for hits off a cigar and a tequila bottle, as well. (He quit his five-pack-a-day habit after his lung was removed but kept on with cigars instead.)
And he also lived another decade-plus after all of the above happened, and continued to be in such good shape (as good as you can be under those circumstances) that many people didn’t even know he was sick.
That kind of bad-ass, take-no-prisoners, consequences-be-damned COURAGE and bravery is something we can all look up to and should look up to. America is supposed to be a tough place filled with tough people and for John Wayne it was.
Thanks!
The Drifter
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Hi Dale
It sounds like “Rio Bravo.” Or another one with Dean M. Those were some great movies! Dean M. playing the discredited alcoholic sheriff who slaps John W. (seeing JW take a slap from a sick drunkard was amazing and decent in its brutal sympathy) then sickeningly Dean Martin reaches into a spittoon for a coin to drink on, lol. Or maybe before the slap. Pretty strong stuff about alcoholism.
JWs movies were intense. Like the “Searches” about the kidnapped girl who may have been raped and that was like 1948 or something. There are scenes of John Wayne that stick in the mind like all great art.
The only time I ever saw John Wayne when he was scared was in the movie where they crashed an airplane somewhere in the Arctic maybe Greenland. (Alfalfa all grown up from “the Little Rascals” was in it). JW looks across the vast desolate, frozen, tundra, and they have no radio either, in thousands of square miles of nothing and you could see the fear come to his face and his voice may have trembled. What a great actor!
And bearing out what you said early about his conviction to his craft and reinventing himself–he got better as he got older. Which doesn’t always happen with a lot of actors. I thought Paul Newman was in that category and Gene Hackman–even though they were always great. “Hud” by Newman and “Cool Hand Luke” with his buddy George Kennedy are hard to beat.
I’m not surprised that The Duke would fight cancer and you wouldn’t even know it. Yes Americans are supposed to be tough. The pioneers. A lot of people have forgotten this.
Sometimes I think we have bought into psychology and socialism to ease our sin and collective and individual weaknesses. But I think a lot of things–lol–and seem to question my own statements and beliefs on a daily basis. I’m bedrock on sobriety. I drink I die that’s pretty clear lol.
CJA
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CJA
Thanks for this great commentary on the great John Wayne “from the corn rows”! You really brought The Duke alive again here, especially in your description of his moment of fear. Probably Wayne was such a good actor that it seemed like he WAS NOT ACTING most of the time, and that fact had a lot of people fooled for a lot of the time. You really nailed what makes him great. As such, your commentary is a great epistolary micro-essay on the Arts which can be pondered and cherished by all Real Readers. Thanks for adding such great material to The Drifter column/s, it’s invaluable!
The D
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Hey Dale
Thanks and your’re welcome! The heat is on! I’ve been reading some Whitman. “Beat! beat! drums!—blow! bugles! blow!
From the Crossroads
CJA
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Wife/editor went to a protest here in Lake Oswego. I do my anti Cult47iq think on Twitter. Interesting the immediate proof that it is a cult. The cult bought the no new wars avidly, now many are saying another war is good.
Enjoy the weekend
I’m more or less living the American Dream – got a house, a car, sort of health. Better long term relationship I don’t really deserve. On the other paw, I’m happy that I won’t live another fifty years because they will probably be really crappy.
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Hi Doug
You deserve your share of the American Dream, because you are a writer who tells it like it is. It’s the sell-outs, the moral bankrupts, the liars, the fakers, the “movers and shakers,” and the snake oil sales folks who really make me think sometimes, “This is the end.”
Dale
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Dale – I fear this is nothing new. It was always so.
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Hawley
You are surely correct to point out with The Preacher of Ecclesiastes, that there is “nothing new under the sun.” At the same time, too often I fear that America has NEVER had such a dishonorable leadership as it has now, and not even close. That says volumes, too, about all the people who allowed this to happen as well, and that doesn’t necessarily mean only the people who voted for this. History does show that there’s nothing new under the sun, and one of those things is that great empires do topple. The only thing holding the world in a precarious balance MAY have been the good old United States of America. As it falls like the rest of the world, one begins to wonder what the consequences from all this might be…(and the world didn’t used to have 15,000 ready-to-go nuclear weapons, although it’s also true that this has been true for at least 80 years now; or, ONLY 80 years…) I guess the truth is, NO ONE knows…and that has certainly always been true!
The D
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