Peter Matthiessen Quotes
I was just very interested in the American frontier and the growth of capitalism - those enormous fortunes that were being made, more often than not, on the blood of poor people, black people, Indian people. They were the ones who paid very dearly for those great fortunes.
Matthiessen, Peter. Interview by Matthew Rothschild. The Progressive, vol. 62, no. 12, Dec. 1998, p. 35.
Even a cursory reading of the Koran and early Muslim history would show that there were vast inequalities in the economic order long before the ‘imperialists’ were involved in the Middle East. Throughout the Islamic world there has always been the oppressors and the oppressed and inequality has usually been much worse than in the ‘imperialist’ countries.
What is fascinating about this quotation is that although the head of a religion, Smith was not advocating the kinds of personal lifestyles of his church the way modern religious leaders do, but was concerned with the much larger issues of expansionism, corruption of the courts and judiciary, and land distribution. He was a classic reform candidate in that sense. Smith had written to most of the then likely Presidential candidates of both major parties asking for their position on the Mormons who were facing persecution wherever they went. None of the politicians would make any satisfactory commitments. Smith took Direct Action and became the only major religious official to have run for the Presidency of the United States until Pat Robertson tried and failed in 2000. Smith’s assassination shortly thereafter cut his run for the Presidency short before it made much headway and politically he had no chance to affect the race.
The highway was planned to go through a poor neighborhood which had a high percentage of Black residents—all of whom would have to find other housing and move to make room for the highway. If the government plans a highway through a wealthy area, the cost to condemn and pay for the land will be much greater than if a poor neighborhood is acquired. For urban highways, the poor almost always bear a disproportionate share of the inconvenience while the major benefit inures to the wealthy and middle class. Abbot had been a labor organizer and a professional artist before he entered politics. The graphic is of his famous poster which by itself stopped the plans to build the highway very quickly.
Webster was taking regular bribes from large corporations and even complained when his payments were late. So he might have had a pro-large business bias. At the time taking bribes even if there was a quid pro quo was not illegal or even “unethical” by then Congressional rules.
Peter Matthiessen was an American novelist, naturalist, wilderness writer, zen teacher and CIA officer. A co-founder of the literary magazine The Paris Review, he was the only writer to have won the National Book Award in both nonfiction (The Snow Leopard, 1979, category Contemporary Thought) and fiction (Shadow Country, 2008). He was also a prominent environmental activist.
