GUNS, VIOLENCE, WHITE SUPREMACY:
The American Dream Become Delusion
Jack Carney, DSW, 2015
Buy it – All proceeds will be donated to the Campaign for NY Health
Read it – A small book with a long title about the American Dream
Rooted in White Supremacy and Soaked in Blood.
Greetings, friends and neighbors:
Little more than five years ago, I self-published a monograph with a provocative title whose aim was to get readers to take a look at the foundational myths of the United States whose unexamined acceptance appeared to be tearing the country apart. Having just brushed against my mortality with a heart transplant, I felt impelled to write it. Given the insurrection and attempted coup of January 6, I feel impelled to induce as many of my North Country colleagues and comrades as possible to read it.
All proceeds will be donated to the Campaign for NY Health, New York’s hoped-for precursor to Medicare for All, to which my advocacy efforts will continue to be dedicated.
The book is divided into three sections …
Part I, The American Dream in its Historical Context:
- Introduction: America’s Foundational Myths
- Guns & Violence: The American as Killer
- Slavery & White Supremacy: America’s Legacy
- Reinvention & Regeneration
Part II, Organizing in its Historical Context (or doing something about it):
- Introduction: Talking Points (an Alinsky-based organizing how-to)
- America’s Future: The Constitution Usurped & Privatized
- The One-Percenters & Hedge Funders: The American Dream Usurped & Privatized
- Guns & Violence: Again
- Fighting Back: Unions and the Great Income Gap
- Mental Health: Misnomer & Metaphor
The final section …
- Afterword: What Awaits?
- Appendix: Vietnam Talking Points (A refutation of the Dept of Defense’s proposed nationwide Memorial)
- Annotated Bibliography
I believe this book, prescient and somewhat ahead of its time when I wrote it, remains highly relevant, and will assist anyone who reads it to clearly formulate for her-/himself an understanding of the historical causes of our unsurprising and sorry situation as well as possible immediate and long-, long-term remedies to it, whatever they might be.
To repeat what I wrote above, all proceeds will be donated to the Campaign for New Health, which has grown in strength, resilience and diversity over the last several years of its existence. It continues to be led in the Legislature by two of the foremost legislative advocates of single payer health care in U.S. history, Assemblyman Dick Gottfried and Senator Gustavo Rivera, who have succeeded in having the NY Health Act passed in the Assembly for four consecutive sessions and plan to do so again, this time in both houses; it has the solid support of the statewide Democratic Party, which has sufficient strength in both houses to override any sure-to-occur Cuomo veto. Most importantly, it now numbers individual and organizational members in the thousands, a diverse cohort of support that, significantly, has continued to grow and remain determined to see this struggle through, despite several setbacks and the unrelenting opposition of the corporate healthcare giants, Big Pharma, Big Insurance, Big Medicine, and all they represent, including the Republican Party.
We know that the successful implementation of universal/single payer access to health care will deal severe body blows to our racial caste system and to white supremacy; to the maldistribution of wealth and resources that has occurred in this country for generations and the resulting enormous gaps in income that have become characteristic of a failing country, our country; and to the betrayal of the myth of American pluralism and our consequent failure to develop a diverse and equally safe and prosperous social polity. We can do all this through enactment of the NYHA and ultimately M4A.
A practical, closing note. The book is available on Amazon in hardcover for $12.99 and on Kindle for $8.99. Half of all proceeds go to Amazon and Lulu, my publishing company, the remainder to me, deposited monthly in a Paypal account. Whatever is deposited monthly I will transfer monthly to the Campaign for at least the rest of 2021; similarly, I will publish a monthly accounting of the sum donated on the FB page, North Country Access to Health Care Committee. I ask you to keep your expectations low (as mine usually are): we’ve managed to sell only several hundred copies of the book over the past five years. Publishers of self-published books generally don’t provide well-financed publicity.
Please note the direct Amazon purchasing link in the bottom right hand corner of this post.
Remember. Don’t mourn, organize.
In the struggle for justice,
