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Hillman: Property. Let's remember that American notion of democracy is property-bound. And land ownership. The whole attempt of the Clinton-Gore change in America, '92, with the former Governor of Arizona, Secretary of Interior, what his name again? -- uh, uh. Who's the Secretary of Interior? He was Governor of Arizona.

Capen: (laughs) Bruce Babbitt.

Hillman: Bruce Babbitt, thank you. I mean he's just been completely squelched!

Capen: We haven't heard from him in six months.

Hillman: -- by landowners. The land. I can do any goddam thing I want -- it's my land! I can put up any building I want. Don't put any codes on me! And the police will protect property against people. That's an old one. It's an old one. And that's what the fighting in Mexico's about. In Chiapas That's what the revolutions in Central America were about. What's more important: people, or property?

Capen: So, effectively, what's the difference between this administration, this government, and Reagan's, with James Watt?


Hillman: I think there is a big difference. I'm sorry. (Laughs.) I think there's a very big difference. First of all, it's more intelligent. I think that counts. (Both men laugh.) And is far less stupid. Secondly, it made many good appointments. To many different offices. Many judges, and lots of other appointments, that are terribly important -- they affect what goes on in the country. Third of all, I think the Clintons are wrestling with this cons -- Somebody is in there wrestling with it -- He may lose most of the battles, but he is at least -- they are at least wrestling with it.

Capen: I want to take it out of the --

Hillman: Reagan didn't wrestle with anything at all. You know, they've now announced the Alzheimer's (laughs) -- we don't know when it began.

Capen: He didn't come out of prison, either. The image of Ronald Reagan as a -- contrasted with a Nelson Mandela -- is not only that he, Mandela, came out of prison, decades of prison -- but that Reagan has never really experienced his own shadow. He doesn't know this dark side.

Hillman: No, no. That's right.

There was a theme I wanted to get back to -- If we could go back to that question of therapy. You know, when I make remarks, or make criticism of therapy, I'm not really out to get therapists. I think they're doing some of the most important work in the culture, because they are sincerely trying to pick up the pieces that Capitalist culture throws into the street. They're trying to hold -- hold people together in one way or another. Which is a nurturing, a nursing kind of task.

But the theory that they practice with, I think, is all wrong. You see, it's not revolutionary, you know. I said in this book with Ventura, therapy, this room, should be a cell of revolution. Which means it should be very aware of the political and social world that people are in. Not just a revolution of consciousness, but actually of the actual social situations.

But I think A.A., and these recovery movements, are also anti-revolutionary. They are calming, quieting things. The word "serenity" -- if you read the A.A. manual, you'll find that serenity is the most important idea, and three years ago the boat -- when you had a private little boat, you know your own little inboard motor cruiser somewhere on the coast, out here or in Florida or in the Gulf or New England, the most popular name registered in America for the name of a boat was "Serenity."

Now, this is in the middle of this horror that we're living. You know, kids being shot, kids being -- you know, it's horror! I'm picking up pieces now left from the earlier part of our discussion, so, another one I don't want to lose is the war against drugs. I said that the war between blacks and white, as Baraka said or Leroi Jones said, this is really a class war and this is a way of dividing the under-class.

The war on drugs is another way. We focus on the war on drugs and say we're losing the war on drugs; there's no way these kids'll -- But we don't realize that these kids turn to drugs 'cause it's the only way out of the ghetto. If you're short, you can't get out through basketball. You can't get out, you know -- I mean, how are you going to get out? The one road out -- is pushing. Dealing. And until the economics of the ghetto is dealt with, you're not going to deal with the drug problem. So, it's again this fake issue.

Another one of the fake issues is gender. We pit men against women and all the bookstores are filled with talk of men against women. It's irrelevant! -- this gender-war. It's bullshit! It should be men and women against the oppressors.

Capen: So, is Fidel Castro's Cuba another fake issue?

Hillman: Oh, sure.

Capen: Now, I'm going go back to what you said about this Clinton-Gore team.

Hillman: It's the votes for who's going to carry Florida in the next election. Isn't it? So, I mean, why doesn't somebody have the guts to say, To hell with you! Florida, you want to all vote for Batista, vote for Batista! I mean it's cruel, our Cuba policy.

Capen: And I still fail to see the difference, aside from an intelligence in these two administrations we discussed.

Hillman: Well then, would you say Clinton and Gore are captives of the system -- of the American Capitalist system? You would say that? They're captives of the system?

Capen: So that now we have the need for the revolution within a revolution. Who is the God? Hades.

Hillman: The revolution within the revolution, how do you mean that?

Capen: It's the revolution itself. You need to change the system. A revolution --

Hillman: We need to harness the system. You see, when you talk about "change the system," we have to see what we want to change. I don't want to change certain of our institutions. I think the Tripartite system of government, the Supreme Court -- there's a whole series of institutions I would not want to see changed. I wouldn't want to see a new constitutional convention where these assholes who are now in Congress compared to the people who drew up our Constitution, with their extraordinary minds, and libraries, and knowledge and education. There isn't anybody who could do that, in our Congress today. I don't want to see any of that happen.

So, when we say "change," we have to think, what, precisely, needs changing, what needs harnessing, what needs doing away with. I'm still in the realm of harnessing. That's the Theodore Roosevelt mode. You, know, restricting monopoly practices, breaking -- trust-busting -- that's what the language was in those days.

Capen: Don't you think it's runaway in the opposite direction, James?

Hillman: In which way?

Capen: This is the exact opposite era, the era of dereg.

Hillman: Yeah.

Capen: My association's with broadcasting--and it's been predicted that in five years, four companies will own most of the broadcast property!

Hillman: That's right. So Theodore Roosevelt tried -- was focusing on that problem around 1900. The railroads owned everything. The steel companies owned everything. And he tried to bust those monopolies. And they did. They put in these laws about -- I don't know what they were, but they were the Anti-Trust Laws, and the anti-this -- do you know what I mean? To prevent that. Wall Street owned it all, Morgan, and so there was a revolution then against the big cats.

We need that same kind of harnessing. I think that's the first attempt -- has to be harnessing. Of course dereg is ridiculous. Ridiculous. We're going to deregulate the Food and Drug Administration -- we don't know what the hell we're eating already now, but can you imagine when they go further with that; and that's in the new budget! There'll be less fish inspectors, less chicken inspectors --

Maybe Congress will get a big, heavy case of, of stomach, -- ptomaine poisoning, salmonella, whatever the hell it's -- what's it called?

Capen: Salmonella.

Hillman: Yeah.

Capen: And older people --

Hillman: Too far. By far too far. This is a -- that's what you mean -- there is a revolution going on now for the Free, what's called the Free Market, which means, exploitation! Yeah. Oh, yes. So, that's what we began talking about: how do we awaken to that fact? How do we awaken to that fact? Do you think we need a leader to awaken to that fact?

Capen: I think it's always focused in an individual like that. Gandhi earned the faith of his people. And I was about to ask you if there's anyone on the horizon who has anything to do with politics or otherwise -- because Havel did not -- who might carry that forward.

Hillman: I don't see anyone. It's partly because those who are visible are made visible by the media, and we see very little of Norman Mailer, or of Noam Chomsky, or anyone else who might have something -- or Leroi Jones -- or someone who might have something interesting to say on the media (laughs) We're still going to be shown Kissinger. They're going to drag this mummy up, and let him growl a while, and put him back. They'll bring him in on anything. Ridiculous! One of the great criminals of our age, they bring him back to pass judgment on something or other.

So, we would not be able to see -- certainly you wouldn't imagine Powell carries a vision?

Capen: He's got the -- a few makings here and there -- and the old joke, "as soon as he opens his mouth." I mean, he came from the South Bronx. Of first-generation Jamaicans in this country. So, he had it. But he's been playing with the big guys for a long time now.

Hillman: Yes. So, go ahead, what is your thought about that? Are you suggesting that the real stuff could come through? That the uniform is only a cover of the real South Bronx man that could come through? Or do you think he's lost it?

Capen: I think by, my own personal opinion is that, these people, by the time they've reached that stage, they've been bought and sold enough. We know which side they're on. I always have a difficult time with what people will do in order to get elected, to further agendas; i.e. -- Jerry Brown. Some very good agendas, and yet he's -- it's real easy to peg him as a "nut" and dispose of him with the vast body of voters. And so I have a hard time with what it takes to be elected. There's that system again, it's not --

Hillman: Well, maybe we don't need to look at it in terms of the -- maybe our mistake is continuing to think in terms of the election, and getting elected. Maybe the leadership is outside of the political process. In that way Jerry Brown is still a functioning figure through his radio show. Maybe a very important figure in a certain way. Maybe he could even be more important. 'Cause I value his education and his mind and his courage. Maybe we shouldn't look at Malcolm Forbes (laughs) or [Pete] Wilson -- I mean these people as running the -- that's irrelevant. And that's part of the media's game -- to keep us focused on them!

Capen: The media is owned by these people, so --

Hillman: Yeah. So we keep looking at them. And maybe that's not where we should be looking. We should be looking at the ideas, and the people outside of all that. Now, I'll tell you where my worry is today. That's -- we're talking the political one. But I have a worry about these new -- this new triangle combination of high-tech business, high-tech pharmaceutical, bio-genetics, and academia-- M.I.T. and so on. There's a new triangle, which is not the triangle of the military-industrial complex anymore. It is something to do with computers, bio-genetics, and business. And that combo worries me a lot. I'm a member of this thing called the Global Business Network, so I read a lot of the stuff that is sent through this network. There are a lot of interesting thinking people in it. But the tendency of the whole movement is -- it's not the Trilateral Commission and that kind of stuff, it's not that -- but it's the mode of philosophy, the mode of thinking -- and it seems very "puer," futuristic, and shadowless, and almost, valueless. I haven't been able to dope it out yet completely. But I have a hunch, or an anxiety about it, a fear, even.

Capen: Well, when Monsanto is busily patenting life-forms, of potatoes, in one instance, on an island off Chile, we've got something to worry about. They're talking about genetic engineering making the nuclear dawn look like small potatoes.

Hillman: You're using small potatoes there (laughs).

Yeah, it really a thinking of engineers and accountants. And that's never very good. They may be very high class, and very, very bright people. But there's other things, you know -- there's something missing, whether you call it religion, or art, or religion, or humanism, or -- something else. Something -- I don't know what's missing. I haven't studied it enough. But I don't like to see that grow into the major philosophical way of looking at life in the 21st century. That's also part of my ship going down. This is not the lifeboat, bio-genetics, business and computer science. I don't think so.

I think we've been sold on this Internet stuff, this superhighway...what do we call it, what's this highway? Information Highway -- it's just a vast new sales game, that's spiked the stock market and, you know, made us all inflated. We love anything that's called "denial." You know, we're "up" in the wireless, on the top of the rigging while the ship's got a giant hole down below. People getting flooded as the guy's stoking the ovens (laughs).

Capen: Down in the hold.

Hillman: Down in the hold. Right!

Capen: (laughs) Jesus!

I had to write a story a couple years ago, and it wound up in the "Village Voice," because a relative of mine was taking L-tryptophan to sleep. She'd had problems with alcohol. She couldn't sleep. This is what they found: It was marketed as a protein supplement, over-the-counter in health food stores.

Hillman: Hmm. Yes.

Capen: And she was hit with a tainted batch out of a Japanese-based petrochemical corporation in Tokyo, was paralyzed within six months and died two years later.

Hillman: Really?

Capen: Thus far this company, Showa Denko KK, has succeeded in buying off everybody that's taken them to court, and thus not facing jury trials -- evading damages, and responsibility, for this. They take care of as much as they can in medical bills, reach settlements, keep them secretly coded, and move right along.

Hillman: Wow.

Capen: This is genetic engineering. The fact was that they cut back on purification to rush the product out. And this is what we got.

Hillman: One of the great complaints right now with the, of the Republicans, is that the FDA takes too long to release these drugs that could save lives! Now, ridiculous. I'm very, very afraid of all that.

Capen: It's cloaked...

Hillman: I am one person though. I mean I'm one person, but I'm not one person: there are thousands and thousands of people who distrust the... what they eat, what they take -- and yet the amount of pills that are taken are just enormous. In my little town in Connecticut there are now, I don't know, six huge pharmacies. It's a huge -- we don't have anything else there. Nothing. But we've got all these pharmacies. And there are statistics on how many prescription drugs people over 65 take in the United States. It's in a number you wouldn't believe. Different prescriptions taken in a year -- in other words, over 65, you might have sixteen or eighteen different prescription drugs.

Capen: Well, they won't be anti-nausea drugs, if you're on MediCare, any longer. If you're being treated with chemotherapy, say, you will not get anti-nausea drugs if the bill the Republicans want passes, cutting $270 billion or so from it.

What does it take, James? What does it take?

Hillman: What does it take? Yeah, what does it take? Well, as long as the message comes over that the pie is of an absolute form, we can all only fight for who's going to get which piece of it.

The fear of deficit is a very strange one. We've lived for centuries with deficits. Most governments -- most nations have lived with deficits. Surpluses are very rare. Why should a government make money? This is -- another piece of propaganda, it's a way of keeping them down in the hold -- in the name of cleaning up the act.

Yeah. Well, I think we're sort of near the end, aren't we?

Capen: Yeah, yeah.

Hillman: What time have you got?

Capen: I don't.