With the Supreme Court decision that overturned an election and handed George W. Bush the presidency, Jack Random adjusted his focus from fiction to political commentaries. The first volume of the Jazzman Chronicles was an indictment of the two-party system, a system designed to serve the elite by negating the power of the people. It is a system paid for and controlled by corporate interests. It offers the appearance of choice but when both parties collect contributions from the same corrupt well, what choice do we really have? In the succeeding years, American democracy has become even more endangered with legislators conspiring to disenfranchise minorities and a Supreme Court defined by corporate bias. Meantime, confronted by the unspeakable tragedy of September 11, 2001, America committed its soldiers to the long and unwinnable wars of Afghanistan and Iraq. As the president attested, it was the day everything changed. For dissidents like Jack Random it meant that all other issues had to yield to a single cause: opposing the wars. The second volume (The War Chronicles) was issued before the invasion of Afghanistan and before Shock and Awe hit Baghdad and place America on a permanent war setting. With the expressed purpose of stopping the wars before they happened, he methodically destroys the Bush administration's case for war. War would dominate American politics for the next decade but Random found his voice on a wide range of issues and a platform on the worldwide web. This collection includes a small sample of his political writings, gathered under the following headings: I. CORE PRINCIPLES: An indictment of the major party system. II. THE WAR CHRONICLES: The case against war in Iraq and Afghanistan. III. THE ANTIWAR MOVEMENT: The continuing struggle to end the wars. IV. ECONOMICS: An attack on deregulation, free trade, austerity policies and anti-labor measures. V. SUPREME INJUSTICE: The perpetual train wreck of a corporate court. VI. EDUCATION: The drive to privatize public education. VII. MEDIA & PROPAGANDA: An indictment of the corporate media. VIII.THE AGE OF CATASTROPHE: Environmental and manmade disasters become commonplace while our preparedness lags behind. IX. IMMIGRATION & DISCRIMINATION: The myth of equality and the racism underlying the anti-immigrant movement. X. ON DEMOCRACY: The erosion of democracy and how to restore it. Taken together, the Jazzman Chronicles represent a contemporary history of American politics at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
About the Author: Jack Random is Ray Miller. He has lived both an ordinary and extraordinary life. His roots firmly planted in the fertile central valley of California, he has marched the streets in protest, haunted jazz town bars, read poetry in cafes and town squares, strutted his hour upon the stage, crisscrossed the country by air, rail, highway and thumb, mourned at Wounded Knee, gazed into the eyes of the crow at Grand Canyon, and paid tribute at the grave of Geronimo. He has labored in the fields of plenty, toiled on the assembly line, pursued higher education, and attempted to enlighten children in the public schools. He has been a pilgrim and a seeker of truth. He is married to the love of his life. All the while he has chronicled his thoughts and revelations in words: plays, poetry, novels, stories and essays. He is the author of Wasichu: The Killing Spirit, Number Nine: The Adventures of Jake Jones and Ruby Daulton (Crow Dog Press), Ghost Dance Insurrection (Dry Bones Press) and the Jazzman Chronicles (Crow Dog Press).