The United States Versus the World: Net-Zero, Militarism, and Donny Rotten

John White

August 15, 2025

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Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

While much of the world fumbles over how to live in a better future, the United States is going back to the past. More than a standard flip-flop from one administration to the next, basic truths are being discarded in a daily onslaught of insults, threats, and strained logic, military spending is rising, and new-energy projects are being cancelled, rekindling coal, oil, and gas to keep America brown. Elsewhere, the world recoils from an increasingly deranged Trumpmania that sees everyone as an enemy, where ugliness is normalized, might is right, and fossil fuels are clean. How far back America goes is anyone’s guess.

The US has long gone its own way, priding itself on advances in science, technology, and industry, often won through military adventure. The Internet was conceived as a distributed information network in the event of a disabling nuclear strike before being monetized for commercial gain as was the federal interstate highway system that created today’s free-wheeling, oil-hungry America, while the space race built our modern electronics-filled world.

Today, the US has the largest economy (25% global GNP, 4% population), the most Fortune 500 companies (28%), and the biggest armed forces to keep the commerce flowing (1.3 million active-duty combatants), along with an unsustainable carbon footprint and a $37-trillion-plus national debt to finance the bells and whistles. A new kind of adventurism is afoot, however, as the US seeks to undermine international relations, extort economic compliance, and destroy its own competence.

As part of the proposed July 27 EU-US trade agreement, covering €1.7 trillion in yearly trade for 800 million people, Europe promised to buy $750 billion in American energy over three years, including liquefied natural gas (LNG) to replace sanctioned Russian supplies. India was slapped with a 35% tariff (raised to 50%) and instructed not to buy Russian oil as was China, meaning buy American. But more LNG means more fracking, pipeline failures, and toxic fouling. More LNG means increased global warming and less green energy, along with reduced clean water, medication, and basic sanitation for one billion people living in poverty.

Columbia University geochemist Wally Broecker popularized the term “global warming” in a 1975 paper, predicting a rapid increase in global temperatures from “CO2 produced by the burning of chemical fuels.” To suggest a natural cause to environmental change via periodic solar movements, the clear trend of rising temperatures from man-made carbon dioxide – now at 426 ppm or 50% above pre-industrial levels – was labelled “climate change” by George W. Bush, softening the danger for Republican voters.

“Net zero” was the agreed goal of the 2015 Paris Agreement to restore the earth’s carbon balance, reducing man-made CO2 emissions (and methane, CH4) that fuels global warming. Net-zero is not just about removing carbon from the atmosphere, but removing pollution from our streets (7 million deaths per year, increased dementia, osteoporosis), limiting foreign influence, and increasing global security. Self-sufficiency should be on everyone’s improvement list. Alas, mitigation may be all that is left as a new climate produces more fragile weather – higher sea and air temperatures, more hurricanes, more floods – and more devastation.

Instead of helping to combat the worsening climate, the US exited the Paris Agreement (again), abrogating responsibility for any American contribution to anthropomorphic global warming. Donald Trump also gutted the green initiatives in Joe Biden’s 2022 $369-billion Inflation Reduction Act. Already the world’s top exporter of LNG, the US wants to export more, while a MAGA-led bonfire of vanities is emptying the US of workers, curtailing scientific research and development, and reducing local green manufacturing, hampering global competitiveness in a fast-growing new-energy industry.

Even Trump’s former PayPal First Buddy Elon Musk balked at the backward policies and threatened to start a new political party to oppose the stagnant Republican-Democrat duopoly, what writer Gore Vidal called “the property party.” Third parties haven’t had much success since Ross Perot’s 1992 attempt to block NAFTA, securing enough votes to win Bill Clinton the presidency with less than 25% of eligible votes, beginning a super-charged neoliberal era that has generated more inequality and militarism over the past four decades. With more than 200 million X-followers and his fingers on the engagement-based algorithms, Musk’s “America Party” could sway the next election any way he wishes.

Musk may only want to ensure his own fortune after backing the wrong horse in 2024 and seeing his electric vehicle (EV) and autonomous mobility investments tumble. Despite EVs being the most American-made cars, Trump called out Biden’s so-called “electric vehicle mandate,” axed the $7,500 federal EV incentive (starting from September), and dumped the EPA’s clean-air regulations. Although one in four car sales are now electric (17 million, 11.3 million in China, 2024) in a $3-trillion-a-year auto market, support for EVs has plummeted in the US, while Tesla shares have dropped more than 20% since Trump’s inauguration.

Thanks to the backward US policy, China’s EV revolution is carving up the auto-buying world, especially in emerging economies. Chinese investment, innovation, and manufacturing is also outstripping American industry in EVs as well as for batteries, computers, and renewable energy. The world’s second-largest economy is on pace to pass the world’s first on the back of increased renewables.

A record 600 GW of solar power was installed in 2024 – led by China at over half – up almost 20% from 2023. The green-energy market now accounts for more than 20% of grid electricity and is cheaper than fossil fuels (solar 41%, offshore wind 53% cheaper). A third of economic growth in Europe is via renewable energy, while Denmark, Spain, Portugal, and the UK have all scored 100% green days. As noted by University of Sussex energy researcher, Dario Kenner, only a small percentage of solar and wind potential is being used, especially in lucrative emerging markets: “There are genuine choices to meet rising electricity demand. It is not just having to build LNG.”

There is no shortage of new ideas and improved technologies in the green sector. China installed the world’s first 20-MW wind turbine with 124-m blades that can power 96,000 homes. A bladeless turbine is being trialled in France, “clean, quiet, and bird-free.” In Switzerland solar panels were installed between train tracks on the Swiss rail network, while in Spain an adjustable solar shutter was developed to shade and power a home. In the US, green tax credits were axed, ending incentives for rooftop solar and “Solar for All” projects.

Unfortunately, the US is stuck in the past as Trump tries to sell oil and gas via inflationary tariffs and extortionist trade policies. He is even trying to revive coal, the most expensive fuel. Fatih Birol, the head of the International Energy Agency, stated that the world is moving into a new energy world, “the age of electricity,” while the International Court of Justice decreed that major polluters are legally obligated to cut emissions, spurring on more urgency to change and innovate. The world is not waiting for the US to figure out the future.

For the rest of the world, there is no going back. The global economy is being reinvented without American input as countries look elsewhere to reduce their dependence on American goods and services and divest trade from the United States. To Donald Trump, it is bile off a schmuck’s back as he advances his nativist agenda and invests in more brown industries and unworkable “Golden Dome” boondoggles, while an anti-science, anti-immigrant stance excludes foreign workers.

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Increased militarism is also a problem as more money is diverted from essential services, especially in Europe after 5% of GDP was earmarked for NATO by 2035, up from a disparately followed 2% of GDP in the alliance agreement (1.3% Spain, Slovenia, Belgium, and Luxembourg to 3.4% Estonia and the US and 4.1% Poland, on $1.5 trillion defence expenditures in 2024 [.pdf]). More military spending means less money for health, education, and green investment to help finance the transition from carbon-burnt to green-fuelled electricity. More military spending means fewer doctors, nurses, and hospitals.

For the US, more military spending means buying more American arms, making the world more dangerous in a growing advanced-weapons race of drones, missiles, and space-based military toys. Why so much money for war, weapons, and armies? Because money spent on social systems lessens inequality. Peace from strength according to the American catechism.

The agreement may just be words, however, ignored at the next election, and the flattery heaped on “daddy” by NATO secretary-general Mark Rutte forgotten, while only 3.5% is for purely military use. Only Spain balked, opposed to €80 billion more a year (almost half its pension commitments) and lingering worries about military dictatorship. The ruling PSOE’s main coalition partner’s leader Yolanda Díaz cited “rearmament” and “cuts in social spending,” suffering Trump’s ire. Even the US is not expected to meet the proposed target.

In the Netherlands, where Rutte was prime minister from 2010 to 2024, EU agricultural policy now directs farmers to reduce nitrogen fertilizers in favour of sustainable, non-polluting farm practices, but without a workable timetable to implement new measures, far-right parties are rising to oppose the change. Would 5% GDP spending help support farmers during the transition to incorporate environmentally safe practices, including less nitrogen, permits, and land swaps? Brussels signs the bills, but must manage the way.

And yet, the US is increasing its $960-billion military budget, already more than the ten next-largest countries combined despite not being at war (other than with itself). The 1.3 million active-duty troops have to be fed, including 40,000 in the Middle East from where much of the world’s oil and gas flows, and in 750 military bases around the world. The Republican H.R.1. bill adds more military spending abroad and at home, increasing fear on the streets of America. More war games for the war channels if you can stomach the gore.

Add in reactionary tariffs and everything will cost more for consumers, from coffee to cars, from water to wine. Ontario premier Doug Ford questioned Trump’s honesty in the ongoing US-Canada trade war, the legality of which is before the courts, saying he trusts him “as far as I can throw him” and believes Trump “wants to hurt the American people.” Ontario is the number-one trading partner for 17 states and third-largest for the whole of the US, employing millions of American workers. Rome is burning, New Orleans is sinking, and the US is now an enemy.

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The architect of America’s return to a presumed past glory is Donald Trump, who enjoys annoying everyone, knowing that a pliant press will not call out the puerile invective, incessant lying, and backward policies. The list is long: a “pork-filled” spending bill that guts Medicaid yet adds $4 trillion to an already bloated national debt (from a supposed fiscally conservative party), trade deals that aren’t deals (alienating foreign partners and roiling markets), tariffs that increase inflation (raising prices that don’t affect luxury buyers), and laughable anti-green policies that support an unsustainable, old-world oil order.

Sorry Charlie, wind turbines do work, including three states that now count wind as their top energy source (Iowa, South Dakota, Kansas) – remember The Wizard of Oz? China also does wind power. One can see the extent of China’s green makeover in Google Maps, while the United States falls further behind each year in the growing, multi-trillion-dollar, new-energy sweeps. By 2030, China will generate 1 TW from wind and 100 GW via a 250-mile-long Great Solar Wall. A proposed hydroelectric dam on the Yarlung Tsangpo river will help cover grid intermittency, generating 300 TWh/year, almost four times that of the world’s largest Three Gorges Dam.

That few people can stand up to Don Trumpleone is banana-republic bad. That anyone can stomach the endless mangled tangents means the US is being led by a barstool pest. Blame Biden, Obama, the Fed, labor statistics, …. Bollocks to all with another toxic jibe in the ongoing us versus them Whig-Tory court battle, ad hominem ad nauseam. Change the focus, fire another pinball: “woke” cultural Marxism (feminism, gender studies, critical race theory, inequality, DEI), a hoax under every bed.

Social critic Camille Paglia proclaims a standard American exceptionalism in her 1992 Sex, Art, and American Cultural: “America is the most open, dynamic, creative nation on God’s green earth.” One would question that assessment today, given the daily soap opera now playing everywhere on 24/7 digital display: As The Trump Turns, starring a wind-up Mr. T (“Murdoch, you crazy”), sounding more like a grievance-filled Chatty Cathy repeatedly pulling his own string.

Pity those who have to listen. Drug prices cannot be reduced by 1,000% (“numbers the likes of which you’ve never even dreamed of before”). A Trump mobile phone cannot be made in the US for $499 (begging the question of how a president can hawk his own wares). Uncle John was not the longest-serving MIT professor, nor did he teach the Harvard-schooled “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski as told by a fact-challenged Trump to a July energy and innovation forum in Pittsburgh. The bluster might be funny if not so pathetically sad.

Liberal Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau did not kick Russia out of the G8 (the Conservative Party PM Stephen Harper did after Russia invaded the Donbas and annexed Crimea). Nor did the US send $350 billion in aid to Ukraine. “I never wrote a picture” was Trump’s answer to the 2003 50th birthday message he sent to his best friend Jeffrey Epstein as reported by The Wall Street Journal, despite Trump writing in 2008, “Each year I donate an autographed doodle.” You can’t make this stuff up. Is anything Trump says true?

The worst is the cringeworthy hyperbole replayed over and over: “They’re eating the dogs,” “You’re gambling with World War Three,” “I’d like to be pope,” inciting more fear than loathing. Indeed, the verbal stylings of a pantomime LCD villain with pretend presidential swag is the message to keep Trump atop the news cycle, replaced the next day by more dumbed-up bluster. In the words of Judge Judy, “Baloney, baloney, baloney.”

The facile invective and endless distractions are worrisome – regularly performed before a sycophantic MAGA press/audience – but are a sideshow to keep from seeing the libertarian masters pulling the real strings. There’s nothing neo-liberal about dismantling the government for private gain.

Alas, As The Trump Turns is on every channel, starring a venom-spitting Donny Rotten and the Fringe on the DC main stage for a four-year residency, rehashing a tired collection of songs, “Under my Thumb,” “Anarchy in the US,” and “My Huge Election Victories.” Trump derangement syndrome or the Stockholm syndrome? Or post-traumatic stress disorder after years of made-up wars and rising inequality?

Of course, real lives are being destroyed in Trump’s wake. Starved families in Gaza (Israeli forces killed 1,000 aid-seekers in 10 weeks), bombed Iranian cities (without required congressional approval), reduced weather prediction services leading to over 200 flash-flood deaths in Texas, to which Trump venally claimed, “Nobody ever saw a thing like this coming. This is a once in every 200 year deal.” The now-gutted NOAA did and is predicting an “above-normal 2025 Atlantic hurricane season.” Hard-working immigrants live in daily fear of deportation, including citizens and legal workers carted off without habeas corpus to who knows where. Visitors are jailed. Who wants to travel to the US today even for pleasure?

The rest of the world looks on in horror at the lies (European Union not created to “screw the US,” GERD not funded by the US, fake Obama arrest videos, …), ignorance (many Africans speak English, cancer-causing “wind mills,” Shylock slurs, …), and a daily rota of hate-filled noise. Even a usually silent Barack Obama commented on the “constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House” after being painted by Trump’s hate roller.

At an Iowa rally to celebrate Republican tax cuts, the Barfly-in-Chief noted that no Democrats voted for the bill, claiming they hate him, before stating he hated them: “I really do, I hate them. I cannot stand them because I really believe they hate our country.” The news went out as usual at nine. No mention of the “Top ten lies today as told by Donny Rotten,” a.k.a. The Greatest American President Ever.TM If he wanted to reach more than just the MAGA crowds, he could take over a rebooted The Late Show: “Heeere’s Donny.” GET IT DONE!

Of course, one must wonder about someone who hates opponents. How low is the American civility bar? Hate is the currency of a lost soul, calling the weak to arms. Apparently anger wins ratings, while amplifying anger wins even more air time. One understands swag, but is nauseating narcissism, incessant babbling, and self-aggrandizement an American personality trait? Is everything a ratings grab – the goofy, the ugly, and the horribly cruel – unchecked by basic decency? How did the American DNA become so malignant? If Trump is meant to represent those who have been hurt in the past, why incite more harm? Unless that is the goal.

Trump acts as a contrarian to aggravate rather than alleviate, all the while selling more soap. Getting people to yell and argue amongst themselves is the oldest trick, sowing division and distraction like any three-card-monte carnival huckster. Misdirection is the goal as government services are eliminated and more money trickles up to the already wealthy. Trump incites fear to distract from the real takeover so the state can no longer impede the corporate control of money, aided by a gaggle of brogrammers counting clicks.

Upon his arrival in Scotland in late July to open a golf course near Aberdeen, Trump lectured his hosts on immigration, code for keeping out non-white, non-Christians. Flying aboard Air Force One on the US taxpayer’s dime to advance his own business interests, the green fees for a single round at his new course are $665, almost the average US weekly salary of $770. Many of the MAGA millions couldn’t get through the front gate let alone pay for the gear.

And yet they sing along as the con cons on: Trump for Nobel Prize, Trump for Mount Rushmore, Trump for Mr. Universe. Add in the corruption – from Bibles to crypto, from $400-million 747s to family investments – and it’s long past time to start talking about Kevin.

The rot is not going to stop as the press continues selling the sizzle as steak, standard Madison Avenue jiggery, while As The Trump Turns broadens its reach. In the words of George Bernard Shaw, “The trouble with the media is that it seems unable to distinguish between the end of the world and a bicycle accident.”

Derogatory sports team names will occupy space beside Gaza starvation and Iran bombings. The Redskin-in-Chief (formerly Commander-in-Chief) thinks the best offence is a good offence. But why so offensive? Sugar cane versus high-fructose corn syrup ingredients (sugary cola drinks are all bad) will be sold beside sex trafficking (possibly 1,000 underage girls abused by Jeffrey Epstein and other fiddling Neros). Trump’s best friend was a convicted child sex offender, although Epstein also attended Bill Clinton’s daughter’s 2010 wedding after he was jailed and released in a sweetheart plea deal. The Russian war was supposed to end on “day one,” yet “the attacks on Ukraine have doubled” since Trump’s inauguration. We get the politicians we deserve, but no one deserves this.

What does tomorrow hold? – stay tuned for more of Donny Rotten in As The Trump Turns, daily showing the life of a subversive, small-tent bully, spouting dismissive infotainment in a punch-drunk stream-of-consciousness, Trumpsplained as a call to greatness. Not an embarrassment of riches but riches of embarrassment. The US is being filled with ignorance, applauded by a misinformed MAGA ecosystem that propels anti-diversity, anti-immigrant, and anti-human policy to prime time in a bizarre attempt to create a non-existent version of America. Even the laugh track is stale.

Expect more distractions in the ongoing fame frenzy for ratings: the earth is 6,000 years old, men have one less rib than women, coal was put in the earth by God. Equality doesn’t exist in nature, life is binary, incandescent bulbs are better than LED lighting.

The rest of the world is building a firewall around the United States to reduce American influence and keep the rot from spreading. The rest of the world knows not to court the dark forces of the past as more storm clouds gather. There is no future when one can’t tell the truth from the lies.

Peter Schumann at 90: “I’m a Papier-Mâché Revolutionary!”

Quincy Saul

 February 21, 2025
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The legendary founder of Bread and Puppet Theater is 90 years old and rising. In December I went to interview Peter Schumann in his home in Glover Vermont, together with his carpenter and comrade Henry Harris. We asked him about the wars of our times, about education, about ideology, and about the past and future of Bread and Puppet. Then in January, we decided to go back, and ask the same questions again. We talked for hours – trying to keep up with Peter who, in conversation just as in cirque, dances gracefully on visionary stilts through centuries and subjects. I made a transcript of all this, which billowed out like one of his painted bedsheets, with voluminous vistas of joy and woe… but it was easy to get lost in all the wrinkles and ruffles. So, I chopped it up, and slowly pieced it together again. This is an edited composite of both interviews, cut and pasted and kneaded and baked… hopefully the result will be, at least a little bit, like the world-famous bread and puppets. Heinrich von Kleist wrote that “where grace is concerned, it is impossible for man to come anywhere near a puppet.” And so if what follows is more like a puppet of Peter than the man himself, so much the better. Without further ado, the papier-mâché  revolutionary.

What’s happening in Gaza and what does it mean for this whole civilization?

That’s it – it’s finished, this civilization. It’s a pretend civilization that prides itself on a humanity that it doesn’t have. It has the opposite: it has inhumanity – thoroughly. Very thorough inhumanity – and nothing left over other than in little bits and pieces in individuals and in little clubs, that’s it… I mean how can they survive? … The last circus this last summer we called The Beginning After the End of Humanity Circus. And that’s pretty much what it is. This is no more humanity. This pretense of a humanity with certain moral codes and etiquette of how to behave… that’s violated day in and day out. Right at the announcement of their peace deal they killed at least 100 people – in a school, just a hundred people, you know, mostly women and children, so what, just another hundred. And there’s no protest against that, are you kidding me? The bourgeoisie doesn’t see what it does? Phew. This is the bourgeoisie… And we are dealing with the kids of the bourgeoisie, you know. They come in flocks to us, because they want to learn otherwise. And when the puppeteers travel with their shows, people come even when academia cancels them – cancels their contracts for a few thousand bucks, on the eve of the performance… and there is immediate community support for another place. On tour, during the tour, on the same day, they can find another place. People are hungry for it. People know this is all shit…

There’s a mass media… we call them the truth industry. Yeah, what’s the truth industry? Upside down truths, half truths, quarter truths, all the versions of the truth that are not applicable to the truth. Unbelievable…. I’m trying to find news… Right now the big jargon of the various people who observe it, say OK, so the Axis of Resistance is now kaput, it’s finished, because of what happened in Syria. And others contradict that and say no, take the real latest news: Hamas is fighting as heavy as ever, and the same thing is true with Hezbollah. They are very successfully actually defeating the Israeli army in all kinds of details… the Israelis make no publications of their casualties; they are enormous, and they lose a lot of people and a lot of very valuable billion dollar equipment that the Americans gave them…

[Did you see the] Palestinian journalist [Sam Husseini] in a press conference with this Blinken guy? … As he was talking, the cops came and manhandled him, and he said ‘no it hurts’ – and he’s an older man in his 70s – and they manhandled him and took him out… and the rest of these hundreds of journalists they all sat there! They didn’t jump up and fight the cops? What kind of journalism is that? Why didn’t they jump up? All of them, staying seated?! Their own colleague, simply for asking a question, gets carried out of the room brutally… unbelievable! And the rest of them take that as if it’s part of the game. Yeah it’s a good job probably. Good little New York Times or Washington Post jobs, and they can’t risk them, no… These bastards. Bunch of fascists. That’s all they are. The press in America is disgusting. Just as academia is totally disgusting.  What do they do? I mean, imagine: they call it education and they call the cops to beat up their own kids. Isn’t that the end of the definition of your academia, if you call in the cops to beat people up? By definition that should be the end … that’s not academia… that’s not research of the mind or investigation of the mind… it’s unbelievable, this farce of democracy, this total farce … And all of the world looks on and sees it… they can’t help but being dependent on this empire here, economically or otherwise, but the empire is also going downhill very fast, just like Israel…  people are leaving them, running away from them… you see the Hasidim in Washington Square, and they all support Palestine, they don’t agree with the state of Israel. They say ‘that’s a wrong state, that’s not in our religion at all.’ They are the courageous people. The others are all cowards, idiots, stupid, uneducated…

I mean, imagine, that these fighters for freedom of press, they are immediately made criminals, and this is called the free press… it’s the opposite of what they pretend, all the time. It’s unbelievably false, what they say. They lie from morning to night. For what? For profit, for securities, for good salaries at the New York Times or Washington Post or whatever, or the stupid NPR shit…

I mean when Hamas broke out to do these hostage takings, you know, the big thing they make about that as if it was a war, did they ever look into how many Nazis were killed in the Warsaw uprising? Did they ever research that? It’s the same thing…  But the biggest part was done by Israelis anyway; it’s pretty well researched. They had already, what’s it called, the Hannibal Directive – it was already in place at that time, and they decided no, no more deals, just kill our own citizens, why not, that’s better. Just as it is with the exchange of these hostages, again and again, there were so many chances to do it and they didn’t do it… Whatever they say turns out to be just lies. Convenient for making a speech in the New York Times or some bullshit like that…

I mean they gave Netanyahu standing ovations, for the mass murder of the day – the biggest mass murder in a long time, unbelievable…. so in other words, they steal the people’s money, hard earned money, usually, and give it to the mass murderer, and then he gets cheered for that? Are they so stupid, didn’t they go to school? I mean there’s an amendment to the constitution, the Leahy amendments, which forbid them to transport things without investigation of what it’s used for and how it’s misused… and they totally disregard what they themselves swear for. When they take their seat in congress they have to first swear with a hand on the bible to the constitution. Bullshit. They are totally liars. And cowards, cowards to the bone!

… All these Americans including Obama, they’re all war mongers – by education. They were all brought up to be war mongers, and that’s the only venue they have. The weapons manufacturers are so happy that it is like that; it’s the biggest production in America, it’s way bigger than any Coca Cola or anything… You can’t be an innocent bystander, there’s no such thing. This is our fate, to be artificially made into innocent bystanders, which we are not. We are guilty bystanders. The inability, the impotence of not knowing what is available to us, the great liberties that we have… The languages that are available to you are tremendous – they are huge, they are available; some of them are not available and have to be invented, or translated from older languages, all of that, but they are. But this is our lifetime, what do you do with our lifetime? That’s what we have to do! We have to do! No other way.

But you don’t support the war in Ukraine?

(Uproarious laughter) They don’t even take a look, they don’t even remember how Biden smiled on the TV screen when he said, oh I’ll take care of that gas line that goes from Russia to Germany… And he killed it, bombed it, and he told it to the American public with a smile; he said yeah we’re going to take care of that, and that’s what they did. And then they even gave aggressive weaponry to penetrate Russia, inside Russia. Are you kidding me? Russia is huge, fantastic, even way bigger than America. Siberia is bigger than America. Russia has no comparison to America. It’s a way bigger thing, and economically probably better off than America I would think. After they told them not an inch further with NATO: that was during the time when there was still the Warsaw Pact, when the Communists had their own thing, and Gorbachev canceled it, he said, no we will stop, in return for not an inch further of NATO, we will stop the Warsaw pact… Classic American trick… trick people into believing them… It’s not real, the reporting on it…. what the old Ukraine was, how the Nazis divided it, how it survived the empire afterwards… the American empire, and the Russian empire, and how it lived through this and still was the main agricultural background for wheat, and super precious goodies… It’s unbelievable, the stupidity of the reporting of what’s happening there….  it’s pretty horrendously the opposite of what is being told to the population.

The most common reasonable assumption from this moment is that we are going to die in nuclear holocaust. This is the logical conclusion of this type of warfare, because… Americans have a concept of ‘winnable nuclear war’… this is so typical for capital, there’s no conscience in it, no heart in it, no mind in it, it’s all just calculation, and the shameless, ridiculousness of this moneymaking… how many more objects does it take to make a person happy, it doesn’t make any sense, it’s ridiculous… All colonies live that way, whether it was Spanish or French or German, all these bastards establish these little aristocracies of superiority, little clubs of people… the beneficiaries of this, the exceptional ones… who wants to be part of that club. Disgusting. 

Another theme in almost all the Bread and Puppet shows is migration. Alongside world war, mass deportation is in the news again. How can we understand migration and deportation?

After all, these wars necessitate migrations. Whatever you do there in those South American countries, with drug wars and other horrible inflictions on them, necessitates migration. There’s no other way; you can’t live. And to pretend otherwise, it’s ridiculous, for this continent of America which consists almost entirely of migrants, in the first second or third generation… How is that understandable, that a nation of migrants is against migrants?! What a ridiculous thing to do! Doesn’t make any sense. And these borders, as if they’re all evil over there – they eat dogs or cats, naturally, that’s what they do…

I’m Silesian. We were bombed out at the end of the war, just a few minutes later when the war was finished, the big bosses signed papers, they made Silesia into Poland and Czech Republic and phew, it was gone, so 95% of Silesians were deported…

Academia is in free-fall. What’s the beginning after the end of education? How should we work with young people? Can you recommend some good books?

There are so many good guidelines. Me, I’m at an advantage because we grew up as kids learning poetry by heart. So we are full of incredibly wonderful things that are just coming by themselves. We don’t have to research it, it’s in our vocabulary, you know. And these kids never learn poetry by heart. Their schools abandoned that habit a long time ago, and they don’t have that vocabulary. They have a shallow vocabulary educated by mediocre terms that are fashionable… it’s ridiculous to me… What happens to them when they are deprived of their computers and how much time they spend with this stupid information business all over the place instead of weeding the garden and planting the potatoes?

… And they go to schools… what used to be called radical schooling, and they come running here totally disappointed… it’s all over the place, we used to have sort of the semblance of opposition… That’s how it was in postwar Germany, all these radical schools – Rilke ran a school. There were beautiful radical schools; schools where kids had to learn carpentry in addition to academia – languages  and skills, plumbing and poetry – the real stuff. Great ideas. My father, he was deep into that… The best advice we can give to kids who come here is to make as little money as possible. Try to live with as little money as possible. Don’t waste for that shit, it’s only good for beer-buying otherwise. Even beer you can make yourself. Don’t bother about that shit thing with money… I’m a proletarian and I realize that…. We work with the bourgeoisie; with their kids. In the kids’ education, art is a privileged enterprise of entertainment, of surplus, it has nothing to do with life, it’s bullshit. And we are teaching them no, it’s not bullshit, it’s the real thing. It’s the address, it’s the language. And that’s what you do when you do art, you do the language. What is your language going to be, how are you going to address the masses, how do you get it out? … Instead of shopping for beautiful paints and all that, no, you pick them up from the garbage, you take old sheets and cardboards and cut them out, and make big figures of them – it’s all available in the garbage of this civilization, this civilization is so rich in that…

…Use real good books. For example Kropotkin… So amazing, the biggest anarchist sensation in European literature, and Americans don’t even know about Kropotkin.… you know, the prince who at a teenage age told his parents ‘no more prince for me, I’m just Pyotr’… and then they sent him to a military academy and he traveled thousands of miles through Siberia, and he collected information that was the opposite of what Darwin said, which capitalism uses as its philosophy of competition. And Kropotkin found… in meadows, in birds, in deer, in coyotes – it’s the total opposite of that. It was the exact example of the opposite of the competitive philosophy that used to be the inspiration for capitalist enterprises, and he points it out so clearly. It’s called Mutual Aid… It’s a huge book, fantastic, American students don’t even read it in the university, it’s ridiculous, how can they avoid it? And so he’s put down in the category of an “anarchist,” an anarchist philosopher, and he is, yeah. Another [by him] is The Conquest of Bread – a few very good readable books, excellent examples… and there’s another companion book written by a German forester, The Hidden Life of Trees … fantastic, pointing out the secret languages of a much huger life … what’s underneath the tree – every form of life from mushrooms to insects – it’s unbelievably bigger… and how communication travels in there, how diseases get fought, how trees talk to each other in families, how they communicate between the fungi and the leaves; unbelievable, so beautiful. But it’s huge…. Same with Ernst Bloch’s The Principle of Hope: people don’t even know about it… he started writing it during Nazi Germany and then continued it after he went back to Europe, an American emigre like all the others… Instead of going to Frankfurt – Adorno and Horkheimer and all the people went there – and Bloch no. Bloch and Brecht went to East Germany, to the communists. Yeah. Very big difference… you know, corrupt system, difficult communism and all that, you know. But so what, way better than capitalism. Rents are cheap, health care is cheap, school is free. You know, a totally different system. People in America don’t even know that. In China people don’t pay for school. Why, what? How come Americans don’t even get informed on that? … Or Cuba… they could learn it from anybody. And they think of that as not relevant? Are you kidding me? Relevant to people’s life? How you make your money; naturally it’s the most relevant thing – how much rent, how much food costs… Americans grow up so incredibly stupid, uninformed on the world, uninformed… people have no idea how much bigger the world is. How there is more puppetry in Siberia than the whole of the United States. There is more versatility and ancient information from old theater forms… in old communication forms of theater.  Definitely in Tehran; unbelievable, the richness of Iranian society, it’s so rich, so huge, much bigger than Europe… and when Khomeini was elected he threw out the Hollywood movies and all of a sudden puppetry was a major faculty in the Tehran university… I went to India, to Kerala, to one of the communist states of south India. Same thing; what they have to offer in way of ancient cultures, it’s vastly bigger than what Europe has, and definitely America. It’s so much bigger, in quantity and variety. And people here when they talk about Iran, they say oh but women get stoned for adultery. Really? Take a look at America. Who has the biggest prison system? Who tortures people with solitary confinement? And then to point fingers…

What’s your ideology? One time after a pageant, you stood next to a door frame in the middle of the pasture, and everybody walked through it, and you said “Now you’re a socialist!” But do you have to subscribe to the little red book?

No you don’t have to. Naturally I’m a communist, why wouldn’t I be… The overriding, call it the ideology of the day – it’s not the necessary outcome of this kind of thinking. Still you understand the ultimate simplistic difference of free education and healthcare, that’s a huge difference… What’s art good for? What do you do with a bunch of youngsters who don’t know what to do with themselves? What do you do with a beautiful landscape that’s not utilized agriculturally, but you could use for walking and revolutionizing and learning how to march together? …These are the realities; these little details of it, way more than the overriding ideology title, whether communism or socialism – it’s secondary to the reality of it. The reality of it is this big thing – they call it life I think. It’s a big thing: itches and twitches and grandma dying and auntie dilapidating and kid growing up – all of them together, same time. Yeah, my god, look at family life, look at what happens around here… it’s all over us, all around us…

Possibilitarians are proletarians… they are the masses, they are the 99 percent and they are available to everybody. We call them possibilitarians, because that’s it – but the possibilities are not opened up. Possibilities are just asleep, you know, and both Bloch and Kropotkin talk about that: the asleep-ness, the Not-Yet of things. The Not-Yet is so much bigger than the thing that’s here! And that’s the real expectancy of life… the Not-Yet in the sense of our living is the most important part of what Bloch calls Hope: it’s this vague thing that doesn’t have to be as vague as all that. It can be analyzed, it can be gotten, especially if you think of the difference of the 99 percent life and the 1 percent life and the controversy and the little politically pre-arranged battle between them… What could be clearer at this moment in American history, with three billionaires sitting right next to this new president – isn’t that as clear as it can be for the rest of the world? … Other people realize it in the rest of the world; this is a declining empire, it won’t be as Trump thinks at all. It’s an empire in decline…

…The Not-Yet is in the landscape also. You walk into our pine forest which is full of memorials, and people’s ashes, all of that, even grave sites, and what’s coming out of it… for example, the fact that people do have the hunger for memorializations, that people want that in their life. They don’t realize it, it doesn’t exist in this culture. When you go to Asian cultures it’s all over the place – meaningful memorializations – and here it doesn’t exist. And when you do it and the youngsters come and they sit there and talk about their aunts and their suiciding brother and all this stuff, it’s amazing what comes out. It’s a whole life in itself, just as part of realizing that life is so much bigger than the cliches about what life is… every week we do it. Once a week we go there and people let loose and do their talks. Part of life! Joel [Kovel] is in there, with his big book…..

Bread and Puppet Theater has been called political art, medieval art and religious art. You have been compared to Brecht, Genet, O’Neill… but what gets left out of all the analysis? Break it down for us; what are puppets? What is bread? What’s happening on this land? Who are you?

You think a puppet is a thing, a factual thing, a thing that you pick up and you can learn how to manipulate it, or somewhat. It’s not. It’s an opposite to your body and it emphasizes elements in your body that you didn’t even realize were there; that can do things that the body can’t do. For example a puppet has a little neck – no dancer can ever do what that neck can do; that neck can go all the way back, can go over here, there; can pick up the rest of the body and drape it around itself… It’s a divinity, it’s something that isn’t even comprehensible to people… no learning of effectiveness and what you want to say; that would be commandeering it — no way. It’s so secretly something, a whole thing, you can’t even imagine it. Only people who work with it – they realize it, slowly… and they start kneeling down in front of them before picking them up, carefully. Yeah…

The normal American diet is not only wonder bread but noodles, which go straight through the body to the shithouse…. Chewing is severe and real. And it massages your brain. So whoever eats pumpernickel becomes a revolutionary and whoever eats noodles becomes a capitalist. It’s a real thing, the simple recognition that food is something that you have to gain. Not just by tooth and saliva mixing, but also how you gather it, how do you get it… gleaning… a lot of tedium of all these little things coming together and nourishing families… When Elka’s parents bought his farm do you know why they bought it? Elkas’ mom was a peasant woman – poor family with nine kids – they took it because of this hillside here which is the watershed. This is the best water you can get anywhere in a landscape, to be so close to a watershed… it’s incredibly good, I keep telling the kids who come here, please drink the water, you won’t get it anywhere… And if you continue the stupid noodle eating, ok you’ll stay stupid, and if you chew pumpernickel you’ll be intelligent.

…Naturally in order to get land you have to team up with other people and make communities. Even Bread and Puppet, it couldn’t have worked with just a family; it needs more people, kids, gardens… there isn’t any other way of doing it. And then you have inherited an anarchy that is in total chaos, very hard to live with, but it’s worth it, because it produces something that the system can’t produce… outside the ambitions… nothing to do with the entertainment issues, and the desire to tickle people’s beautiful muscles for desire… that’s it, and the confusion makes it very attractive… It just does itself, and it will do it in conjunction with the latest news and horrors, and also the imbecility of not being told about it; having to live with the realization that it’s not in people’s conversation…

…Well I’m a papier-mâché revolutionary. I build giant papier-mâché swords to defeat the empires. Or divinities that are way more superior than capitalism; therefore come down on them when they don’t expect it and crush them with papier-mâché! Hahaha.

There are a lot of books and movies about Bread and Puppet. And there’s a big archive next door… but give it to us straight; how did this get started and what’s it all about?

Well, when you go into, you know, the details… it’s starting in the early years when we did Vietnam in the street… And we did things that we needed hundreds of people for, in the street: bombardments of prisoners, resurrections, pulling them up, cops, all that, death masques, all that – it was totally easy to get the couple hundred people that we needed to do it… People were sick and tired of the slogans… they didn’t want to do that. They wanted to be a shark in an airplane, they wanted to be a Vietnamese woman being bombarded – it was easy to get people to realize that, the big spectacle of it. It was a carnival you know. Like throwing shit at the cardinal.  And you can do that during the carnival: a limited revolution, a very time-limited revolution, which is not quite a revolution because of its limitation, just a jubilee for the sake of relief. That’s what carnival was…  it was time-limited and then it went back to normal… Wonderfully liberating for populations, but not meaningful until you take a look at what happened in the 14^th century, which is when peasant revolutions – Engels wrote about them – became serious. And peasants – rye bread eating peasants – crowded together, and beat the shit out of the latest state of the art weaponry: knights on their horsebacks. And the peasants came…  people with hayforks – ripping the brightest beautiful knights with their fancy attack methods of killing – they ripped them off their horses and beat the shit out of them. You know, there are big records of this. It happened again and again, starting in the  14^th, century, into the 15^th  century, and into the 16th century… peasant revolution would have been the likely thing if Luther and Zwingli and the other reformers would have coordinated their moves with the peasantry. And they didn’t. They sided with the aristocracy… Thomas Müntzer, one of the biggest successes of peasant revolution – way more successful than Luther as a speaker – he was the big thing, not Luther. And then Luther has him hanged, publicly tortured to death, by the aristocracy… the 14^th and 15^th century would have been the ideal time to create real political revolutions. It didn’t happen. It totally could have happened… the bourgeoisie took over, and from the beginning, they imitated the aristocracy… and that became the goal, to become as nice as the aristocracy…

It has a hell of a lot to do with history…. [For example] what happened with Matthias Grünewald. He was Germany’s major late-medieval, early-renaissance northern artist… he was on horseback in 1502 going over the Alps… and during that travel was the 1502 total solar eclipse, which was the most serious thing… this one was really like the end of the world. Everybody thought this was the apocalypse; this was it, in the middle of the day – and he experienced that riding on horseback through the Alps… and whatever he painted after that is obviously influenced by the blackness. No question about it, everything comes out of the deepest possible darkness, even the most polychrome events that he invented like nobody else, come out of a darkness that is so severe; all his things, his crucifix and nativity and all of it. And that happened at a time when one of the major diseases in the middle ages was ergot, caused by rye, a fungus in rye. Rye was the food of the peasants, it’s much easier to grow than wheat; it grows in the Alps, in the deserts, even in Mongolia it grows fine. When I bought rye I went to the highway department in New York because they keep rye – it’s the toughest of grasses – when they need to fix highway entrances they grow rye… and that’s what the peasants ate, and the effect of ergot is craziness, total craziness, and skin diseases and so on; weird, serious stuff. So there was a whole sect of healers called the St. Anthonites, who dealt with the ergot effect, mostly in the peasantry. And they hired Grünewald to paint… and then people flocked to it, like to a healing altar. And people threw their crutches – they have records of all that, unbelievable! And that was the reality of painting. He painted all the healing arts available to him, underneath crucifixes, and painted all the most graphic horror of ergot… no comparison to any other picture in the renaissance…  nothing compares to Grünewald… The peasant struggles are so important. The situation will come up again. For example with migrants being deported. This will happen again. People have to realize – what we eat is food. Food has to be made by people. Saying it comes out of tin cans is not good enough. So there could be a shift of attention when people realize what a serious thing food is. It’s huge…

In 1968 you lit a fire in hearts and minds; first it burned in New York City, then it moved to Vermont… and at some point you’re going to graduate; shuffle off the mortal coil; join the extraterrestrials…  and we’re going to be left here running around wondering what to do. Any advice for the future of Bread and Puppet, post-Peter Schumann? 

Oh yeah, totally ready for it… Death is little, death is big, or death, don’t believe it. Haha…. You’re right, it’s a good point, because puppeteers talk all the time about my funeral, and what kind of whiskey we’ll have served, and I agree a lot of good whiskey is needed for that funeral. But it’s so apparent what has to happen. The organization of Bread and Puppet is so changing according to etiquette, according to bourgeois habits, according to the latest result of the job market, which you know is so unfair to people’s talents… people are forced into these straitjackets of being slaves, just as Marx called them, slaves to the system… of – what? What is it? It’s slavery, whatever you call it – a form of slavery that you have to pay rent and all this. It’s ridiculous! Why? Totally unnecessary, stupid! Why? The 99 percent, let’s take a little close up look at what they are. OK, Bernie [Sanders] tried to do a little bit of awareness for the working class and so on. Not enough. Needs more. Yeah, mama mia…. our bourgeois little company needs it all the time, they need to be re-radicalized all the time. 

Ernst Bloch says that “the true Genesis is not at the beginning but at the end.” What comes after the end of humanity? What do we do next?

My best examples come from Gaza and Lebanon, where people from under the rubble are declaring that: ‘no we are not giving up.’ No, my family is dead, my grandpa died, my cousins are no more – we are not giving up. They built a horse from trash, from ambulances destroyed by Israel; a German sculptor with teenagers built a big horse, a big statue, and then the Israelis destroyed it, immediately, and the message was yeah, out of this crap, we’re going to make a horse, galloping. It’s amazing what’s happening there…

…We will never totally explore a summary of what we need to do, but we should keep doing it. And you know that, I mean you have to do it, it’s never a solo enterprise, anyway. It won’t be done by a solo singer… it can only be done where not even conversation happens, something less than that… it’s trying something, doing something, pronouncing something – into the public, unexpectedly, you know – and see what happens to it, what’s the response to it, how do you get it? Yeah!

Immediacy. Do it immediately. To not do planning revolutions, to not do lengthy developments of a new type of engineering of this and that. But to step right into the street, step right into whatever is available, to speak right out in front of whatever you have out here… whatever size the group is doesn’t matter. You know the tour just went all across the country… the universities canceled them, quite a few of them, where they had contracts, and on the same night they found a community center, on the same night… In other worlds there’s a real hunger in this truth-deprived nation for other versions of truth, for looking at what the real thing is…

(December 16, 2024) Any thoughts you want to share with us before Christmas?

Santa and Walmart and whatever. Santa… at least in southern French culture, is a witch! Santa is a child molester and is a demon – nothing to do with goody goody. The house that he hits is seriously hit; he’s equipped with torturing equipment, and he is sincere. And so that fake little man is the sugary version of reality, which is a very bitter horror thing in culture. How was it transformed, it would be interesting to find out, how did they manage to turn it so upside-down? …The excuses for the great god of love religion don’t exist anymore. Because now people can read this world enough to realize that the god of love was a gigantic murderer, of genocidal proportions, all over the place … they discovered all the kids’ grave sites in Catholic schools here in America, remember that, shit like that? Yeah, is that the god of love or not? Yeah, it is.

(January 21, 2025) Do you have any New Years’ resolutions?

Good idea. I had a dream last night, about revitalizing the Domestic Resurrection Circus, and meeting crowds and crowds of people like we used to have, in the thousands, and walking with them… and as we walked, we called it, Revolution… Just walking around these circus fields, in my dream… doesn’t matter where do we go right? … I mean you have a job to do, with your teammates, it’s obvious, whether the town gives you permits or not is secondary. It will happen – you will get whatever you need, and otherwise you find other ways of doing it. But this is the important thing: you get those kids going.

This interview was conducted with Henry Harris.

Recommended

Bread and Puppet Theater: https://breadandpuppet.org

Ah! The Hopeful Pageantry of Bread and Puppet Theater … directed by DeeDee Halleck and Tamar Schumann, 2001

An Existing Better World: Notes on the Bread and Puppet Theater … by George Dennison, Autonomedia, 2000

Rehearsing with Gods: Photographs and Essays on the Bread and Puppet Theater … by Marc Estrin, Ronald Simon, and Grace Paley, Chelsea Green, 2004

“On the Marionette Theatre” by Heinrich von Kleist, 1810:

The Lost Traveller’s Dream, by Joel Kovel, Autonomedia, 2017