"intellectual
firepower"
Exceprt
from Punk
Planet 's Sander Hicks Interview
by
Will Tupper
PP: How much of a role do you think organized
religion (TV Christianity, etc.) has played in
creating America's current state of being?
SH:
Well, the Marxist answer is that it boils down
to economics, not culture, or religion. And I
think that's right. Christianity and it's more
cosmetic existence in the form of televangelism
is just an expression of the bourgeois principle:
acquire for self, do for self, protect yourself.
PP:
Where do you see America in 50 years?
SH:
It could get ugly. In the next 10 years alone,
a lot of the Baby-Boomers are going to retire.
The Stock Market is buoyed right now and flush
with cash, mostly from these ex-hippies' retirement
plan (401K) money. So it's a bull market for now,
but the busts are inevitable, as we know but don't
want to admit. When the Boomers start retiring
en-masse, they will pull investment cash from
the (401K) system. It could spark a recession
or even a depression. Look how the Nasdaq went
bonkers this week [4.14.00]. It's like a gawky
teenager with no confidence. It seems to be displaying
an alarming sense of worthlessness. $2 trillion
in value vaporized this past week, with one of
the worst weeks in Nasdaq history.
I
think with WTO and the imminent protests against
the World Bank and IMF, a lot of Americans are
waking up to the fact that impoverishing the third
world is bad for the labor market here. We don't
want to keep those people in poverty, that means
they'll work for very low wages. They'll get screwed,
and we'll get screwed. You can say the American
masses are all brainwashed, and I can say that's
just your middle class anarcho-cynicism. Save
it for the suburbs. The World Bank protest in
DC and the WTO conflict in Seattle were all inspired
and partially lead by organized labor, the Teamsters
and the AFL-CIO out there in front, saying the
current order is unfair, and deadly.
PP: Name, say, the top five books you've read
in your life that have helped shape your political
and artistic visions.
SH:
No More Prisons and Bomb the Suburbs
by Upski.
Terra
Firma, USA by Jordan Green (an old Soft Skull
book, a 19-year olds debut novel about stripping
tobacco, raising money to buy a photocopier, making
zines, all in rural Kentucky.) I continue to love
this book for its spirit.
Revolutionary
Road by Richard Yates (Richard Ford himself
just wrote an essay on this book in today's NYTimes
Book Review (4.9.00))
For
that matter, you could also note Rock Springs
by Richard Ford. The Sun Also Rises by
Hemingway & The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
are the books I used to read over and over, and
probably helped develop by sense of what life
was all about. They expanded the world. Made it
seem conquerable.
Politically,
I think the most inspiring thing I've read in
the past couple of years is the Book of Isaiah
[in the Bible]. It's revolutionary, and it's a
great way to reinvent God. In my life, the white-bearded,
jealous father figure of might and power is dead.
But the rich are not, the indulgent, pampered,
spoiled ruling class in Isaiah are out of control.
The only hope for the poor, for the people, is
some sort of unnamable, vengeful force, sure to
come in the future, prophesied to sweep the current
order from the face of the earth. You could have
a Marxist interpretation and see this force as
the revolution. Of course, you would have to update
it and say that this force doesn't just come from
anywhere, but we have to create it. The writing
in Isaiah is completely cranked up, and the vision
is piercing. I recently saw Kurt Weil's opera,
The Eternal Way, and he, as a partner of
the Marxist playwright Brecht, obviously got the
same power, the same feed, from the eternal revolutionary
vision of the Book of Isaiah.
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