"Ideology is stupid for those of us who have no power. It doesn’t matter what we would do if we did. We don’t. Seizing power, taking out the idiotic, incompetent, greedy, evil and stupid people who are ruining our lives is what matters.” The Anti-American Manifesto. Ted Rall is a political cartoonist, graphic novelist, journalist, proud Marxist, intellectual, and all around agitator, it is his mission to teeter on every edge, pushing the boundaries of what this culture, and other cultures, can bear to hear about themselves. He’s radicalized. Sometimes it gets him into trouble with the Alt-Right, the regular right, the soft Left, and of course Isis. Few people, besides The Pope, dare to say the word revolution these days. Rall doesn’t mince words when he says that revolution is the quest for happiness and that it is worth throwing out the whole political system and starting from scratch. “A revolutionary war against exploitation is the only way we can begin to directly adress and solve most of our problems.” We need to define evil and then point to those doing it, “the politicians, beaureacrats, corporate executives, media power brokers and environmental exploiters who spend every waking minute thinking of new ways to fuck us over and rape the world we live in to make an extra buck.”&nbsp; Ted is an amazingly astute political voice, and after his string of successful graphic biographies he longs to get back to his meatier books, like: The Anti-American Manifesto, which asks the question “Why is there the absence of a full-fledged revolution in America for over two centuries? What’s the explanation for the failure of Americans to revolt, even when they have a chance?” The main feedback was his advocating the use of force to seize power. His position is that we are already living in a system with a huge amount of violence. “We might not always be aware of it being ‘privileged white folks.’ Every time someone is evicted from their home — making people homeless is violence, depriving people of healthcare is violence — drones, bombings, police shootings — there’s violence throughout the system! I’m advocating an end to violence that may require some violence in order to effect.” When I ask him how he moved this far left and became a Marxist, he told me that he’s been paying attention and that he cares about people, that it is “simply illogical and irrational to advocate an ideology that starts from the point of view that we are all created un-equal.” He explains that the metrics that capitalism uses to justify paying some people more than others don’t even make sense. “Some kids are just born smarter than others. Are the ones not lucky enough to be born smart — should they be condemned to a life of poverty and misery and cancer because of this accident of birth?” When I remind him that not everyone agrees that we are entitled, just by being alive, to basic rights — shelter, health care, education — he fires back: “If you don’t believe that — THEN YOU’RE AN ASSHOLE!” "People who want revolutionary change and are totally against violence should think — how is that ever going to happen?! The rich and powerful are never going to give up power voluntarily!” My favorite part of The Anti-American Manisfesto is Rall’s advice for those of us in the bourgoisie and the petit bourgoisie who want to know what we should do to begin to bring about radical change. Rall advises “taking posession of oneself.” He tells me its a mental shift - you just decide — I’m done with this system. I’m no longer vested in it.” “You’re waiting for the day you see people out on the streets with red flags so that you can go join them — yeah! These are my people! I’m dropping everything — let’s go!”

Ted Rall's Marxism In The Hamptons

Who can you call at 2:00 am if you need a raccoon driven across the Shinnecock Canal? Is your family of foxes mangy? Is a hedgehog eating you out of your zinnias? Do you have bats in your basement, swifts in your chimney, or have you seen an Osprey who has forgotten how to fly? If you can’t resort to killing your cousins, there is only one man for the job. Dell Cullum is amazingly well, considering he was flat on his broken back only a couple of months ago; while trying to get a raccoon off a roof in the rain, his ladder slid out beneath him.&nbsp; “It’s only when I got up on my hands and knees to get my phone that I knew I wasn’t paralyzed.” Dell tells me that the last time he got hurt was when he fell out of a tree as a boy, but it didn’t have anything to do with rescuing wildlife, he laughs. When alot of boys were busy killing small creatures, he found a bird’s nest on the ground with tiny hatched birds that he figured out how to feed, nuture, and keep alive. After a successful Gofundme campaign and a community fundraiser Dell is actually up and running his business again, but he is a man who is hard to catch. He is available for wildlife rescue calls at any hour, and for the past week has been waking at 5am to beat the summer traffic to Bridgehampton in order to trap a hedgehog that has obviously had some experience with traps and will not be tempted into Dell’s cage, even with a great delicacy like melon. “Why would he get in?” Dell asks, “He’s an herbivore — he has all the food he needs around him!” The lady of the house doesn’t want him feeding off her cutting garden, but Dell doesn’t kill anything — and I mean anything — so if his humane trap won’t entice the hegdehog, she will have to call another pest control company that will “probably use other methods,” according to Dell After a series of mis-timed rendevous with bats and osprey, we meet finally at his house in East Hampton Village, and Dell unhitchs the back of his pickup truck, which is covered with animal decals and his advertising slogans for his animal rescue service, and we hear the faint howling and growling of a trapped fox that sits crouching in one of the cages. “That’s alright, sweetie. We’re going to get you taken care of. No-one’s going to hurt you,” Dell soothes the frightened animal. “This one has mange — see how bad it is?” The fox gets up, as if on command, and we see his raw hind legs, bald underbelly and ravaged tail. This is the last of three siblings on their way to Evelyn Alexander Wildlife Rescue Center in Hampton Bays, where Dell takes most of his trapped and injured mammals, birds and reptiles. One of their legends is that Paul Macartney brought them a butterfly that he found injured by the side of the road. “I wouldn’t put anything past this place,” Dell says. In his pick up truck he tells me the story of his Jackson Hole hat that sits on the dash with his other straw cowboy hats. A few years ago when Dell and his wife Dee lived at the foot of the Teeton mountains they met an old Mormon cattle rancher and fur trapper who took a liking to him and taught him everything he knows about trapping. “I’m proud to say that I’ve trapped in 7 states. Raccoons, for instance, are very different in every state.” The raccoon is the only animal that NY State demands that trappers kill. It’s illeagal to release a raccoon from a trap, and must be killed within 5 feet of where it is captured.&nbsp; “The state knows that if the trappers even drive out of the driveway with these animals alive, they are likely to let them go,” Dell tells me. “So, they drown them in large plastic garbage cans, even the babies.”&nbsp; He’s seen guys tie ropes around the cages and throw them into the bay until the animals inside have drowned.&nbsp;  “Overpopulation,” Dell smirks sarcastically.&nbsp; Dell usually drives the raccoons he’s trapped at least across the...

Dell Cullums Wild Life

Interviews with: Hamptons International Film Festival world premiere of new documentary, “The Panama Papers”, dir. by Alex Winter, (“Trust Machine”, “Deep Web”), produced by Laura Poitras, (“Risk”, “Citizen Four”), about global money laundering; and “To Dust" a darkly comic first feature directed by Shawn Snyder, produced by husband and wife team Alessandro Nivola, (“Disobedience”, “Laurel Canyon”), and Emily Mortimer (“The Newsroom”, “Match Point”), starring Geza Rohri

Phantom Hampton Podcast