Grassroots Preview: A Pattern of Cruelty

What We are Witnessing is the Culmination of Decades of Rightwing Anger (for Paying Subscribers)

Hank Kalet Jul 6

Tear gas is deployed against insurrectionists outside United States Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Photo: Tyler Merbler (Creative Commons license)
This is an advance copy of my next column for the Progressive Populist. It is a brief attempt to tie together 70 years of Rightwing mania, the anti-abortion ruling, guns, violence, and the innate cruelty I see as festering within a cult of “real Americanism,” as represented by Donald Trump.

To read this preview column, you need to become a paid subscriber, which will give you access to this and future columns, and a variety of other paid posts. Paid subscribers also get a copy of my book As An Alien in a Land of Promise.

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This is a free, public post from Hank Kalet’s Channel Surfing. You will continue to receive these email stories and newsletters as long as you remain a an email subscriber. Consider becoming a paid subscriber and get paywall-protected posts, the ability to comment on posts and participate in discussion boards, offers to write guest blog posts, and copies of my books. If you are a $5-a-month Patreon patron, you already are considered a paid subscriber.

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This is a free, public post from Hank Kalet’s Channel Surfing. You will continue to receive these email stories and newsletters as long as you remain a an email subscriber. Consider becoming a paid subscriber and get paywall-protected posts, the ability to comment on posts and participate in discussion boards, offers to write guest blog posts, and copies of my books. If you are a $5-a-month Patreon patron, you already are considered a paid subscriber.

Thanks for reading.

Subscribe now

This is a free, public post from Hank Kalet’s Channel Surfing. You will continue to receive these email stories and newsletters as long as you remain a an email subscriber. Consider becoming a paid subscriber and get paywall-protected posts, the ability to comment on posts and participate in discussion boards, offers to write guest blog posts, and copies of my books. If you are a $5-a-month Patreon patron, you already are considered a paid subscriber.

Thanks for reading.

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Listening to the Crack of Doom on the Hydrogen Juke Box (Part 2)

Living in the Shadow of Armageddon (From Reconsidering Paradise, a manuscript in progress)

Hank Kalet Jun 29

This is the second installment of a long chapter from a manuscript I’m working on that fuses memoir, cultural and literary criticism, politics, written through the lens of my decades-long involvement with Jack Kerouac’s work. Kerouac, along with a few other writers, inspired me to make the written word my art form. It has been a love-hate relationship over the years (more love than hate, of course), as any relationship that lasts will be.

Beatdom’s special Kerouac Turns 100 issue included my essay “Women on the Margins of the Kerouac Legend,” which was conceived as part of Paradise Reconsidered. You can get the issue here.

You can read the first installment of ‘“Listening to the Crack of Doom on the Hydrogen Juke Box” here.

Another planned section, “Notes on My Early Beatdom,” can be read here.

The earlier posts were free, but this and future posts from the Kerouac manuscript will be housed behind a paywall.

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Listening to the Crack of Doom on the Hydrogen Juke Box (Part 2)

An air-raid drill, age 5 or 6, folding our compact bodies, tucking ourselves under desks. As if the hard plastic would protect us from the shock of light and the fires of nuclear war. From the radiation. The poisoning of the atmosphere.

The feds distribute a pamphlet. A handbook on nuclear war. You can protect yourself, it says. Get “inside a shelter.” Take cover “before the nuclear explosions occur.”

“By getting inside or under something within a few seconds, you might avoid being seriously burned by the heat or injured by the blast wave of the nuclear explosion.” This “might save your life or avoid serious injury.”…

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© 2022 Hank Kalet
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