Some Comments from Kerouac

Just before the publication of On the Road made Jack Kerouac famous, he spent a summer on Mt. Desolation as a fire lookout. Desolation Angels (1965) is one of his autobiographical novels that he wrote about the year in his life that followed his summer of solitude. Though known primarily and rightly for novels that are full of parties and wild travels and certainly rather apolitical, Kerouac was too well informed, too aware of the world around him, too well read, to keep the occasional political comment from creeping into his spontaneous prose.
I just finished reading Desolation Angels, and the following passages brought to mind the cliche "the more things change, the more they stay the same."
The passage reminding me of things staying the same is:

"As far as I can see this Forest Service is nothing but a front, on the one hand a vague Totalitarian governmental effort to restrict the use of forest to people, telling them they can't camp here or piss there, it's illegal to do this and you're allowed to do that, in the Immemorial Wilderness of Tao and the Golden Age and the Milleniums of Man - secondly it's a front for the lumber interests, the net result of the whole thing being, what with Scott Paper Tissue and such companies logging out these woods year after year with the "cooperation" of the Forest Service which boasts so proudly of the number of board feet in the whole forest (as if I owned an inch of board altho I can't piss here nor camp there) result, net, is people all over the world are wiping their ass with the beautiful trees-"

The passage below indicates for me a profound change in the United States. Kerouac was, is, very American, and he sometimes displayed a certain optimism, IMHO, regarding America as a whole. This change is the cancer that eats at our democratic souls.

" And I know American is too vast with people too vast to ever be degraded to the level of a slave nation, and I can go hitch hiking down that road into my remaining years of my life knowing that outside of a couple fights in bars started by drunks I'll have not a hair of my head (and I need a haircut) harmed by Totalitarian cruelty - "

The link for these two passages is the word "Totalitarian". While I do not believe that the United States is anything like a totalitarian society, the NeoCons and their toadies, without apology or embarrassment, have pushed the USA down that Road way farther than is necessary, decent or ethical. Our Constitution has been bent and twisted in their rush to power and their wish to consolodate that power. Thier intended destination would be a United States cast in darkness, spreading its malignant policies through out the world; certainly Jefferson, Washington and Madison, and the other framers would not approve. I would add Jack Kerouac to that esteemed list; that NeoCon Road would be one Road that Jack would not wish anyone, or any country, to travel.

Thanks for reading,
Mike