Category: politics

Today’s Theme Music

Although this song was released and charted in nineteen seventy-six, people probably know it, thanks to President Bill Clinton. He used it as the music for his campaign theme in nineteen ninety-two, and then at his inaugural ball after winning. Since then, it’s played whenever he shows up to speak at a Democratic National Convention.

And it’s good for that purpose. Before Bill Clinton used it, I used it, too, to keep myself moving forward, dreaming and hoping. It’s a rousing damn song. Here it is, Fleetwood Mac with, “Don’t Stop.”

 

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Us

Can there be us, if I can’t see what you see, and you don’t hear what I hear, and you fear what might be, while I strive for what could be, and you worry about what could be, while I worry about what might be, and we can’t understand what the other understands, and the present and the past are broken mirrors of success and failure?

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Today’s Theme Music

This song was written in nineteen sixty-six, and released in nineteen sixty-seven. The lyrics, though, speak to our times now as much as they did to the era which produced them.

There’s something happening here
What it is ain’t exactly clear
There’s a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware

I think it’s time we stop, children, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down

There’s battle lines being drawn
Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong
Young people speaking their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind

It’s time we stop, hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down

What a field-day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and carrying signs
Mostly say, hooray for our side

It’s s time we stop, hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down

Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you’re always afraid
You step out of line, the man come and take you away

h/t to MetroLyrics

What’s interesting about that song is that Stephen Stills wrote it about a curfew on Sunset Strip. While they speak to the mood in America in the nineteen sixties and the twenty-first century, they speak to the life and times in the U.S.S.R, Nazi Germany, and other places ruled by fear, paranoia and oppression. People seek rights and freedoms; others squash them to preserve their status and wealth. It’s a cycle as old as humanity, except, instead of a man with a gun, there was a man with a rock, spear, bow and arrow, or other weapon.

Let’s listen to Buffalo Springfield and “For What It’s Worth.”

 

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Today’s Theme Music

Call me cynical.

I believe people reside on a personal spectrum of being fucked up. Where you appear to reside depends on several factors:

  1.  Your self-awareness;
  2. Others’ awareness and acknowledgement;
  3. Your attitude toward being fucked up;
  4. The desperation level.

You can be aware that you’re fucked up, but then your attitude kicks in. You can decide:

  • You’re not fucked up; it’s the world that’s fucked up;
  • You’re fucked up, but who cares? Just make it work for you.

Of course, some people lie to themselves about anyone or anything being fucked up. They’re the scary ones.

This song reminds me of being fucked up. I’d just returned to America after a four year plus tour of Germany for the U.S. Air Force. The evil Soviet empire had ended its reign, so much of what my military career was about, launching nukes against the evil empire and spying on them, was no longer a factor. While others turned their attention to Southwest Asia and Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, I wasn’t allowed to participate, being deemed as mission critical for the now defunct mission of spying on the Soviets. I couldn’t participate in local activities to help the ‘war effort’, either; while my company grade officers who were pilots and navigators and junior NCOs and airmen were busy helping to erect tent city in the mud of Rhein-Mein Air Base, or working in the post office or chow hall, it wasn’t acceptable for me as a senior NCO to do such menial tasks. My offers to help were denied, then I was rotated back to America.

This all left me feeling pretty isolated and frustrated. I remember listening to this song in nineteen ninety-one while sitting in traffic in Peninsula traffic on Highway 101 in the SF Bay Area during a rain storm and having a mini-breakdown. The song is an introspective ode to self-pity, loss, realization and acceptance, so it was perfect for that era of my life. Although outwardly, I was fine by all the normal social measurements, I was an internal mess, drinking too much and having marital problems.

All the factors and your attitude about being fucked up are usually fluctuating. I’m still pretty fucked up, but I know I can shift my attitude a few points in either direction with fluids such as beer, wine and coffee, and activities like writing and walking. I’ve never been so desperate, angry and frustrated about being fucked up that I’ve contemplated suicide or killing others to make everything better, nor have hard drugs or an outlaw life attracted me. That doesn’t change my basic issues of being an arrogant, cynical, egotistical asshole with emotional problems, but it does adjust my attitude toward myself and the world.

Yet, I love this song. Here’s Gary Moore with “Still Got the Blues (For Your),” from nineteen ninety. He was such a talented guy. R.I.P.

 

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Today’s Theme Music

Trump is attempting to withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Accord. Some say, including lawmakers, say, “It doesn’t matter, God will save us.”

Better get started with your praying then, because where are you going to run to when the water is rising, and the rivers and seas are boiling? Here’s Nina Simone with her powerful rendition of “Sinnerman” to get things rolling.

Sinnerman, you ought to be praying.

 

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Today’s Theme Music

This protest song, from the nineteen eighties, counters what’s normal for rock, at least as it’s experienced in America. Sure, we have some invasion hits from the Brits, Germans, Dutch, etc., and more than a few from Australia, too.

This one came from Australia with a strong rhetoric against taking the Earth from the people who already inhabited it, along with choice rails against global warm and environmental destruction. Featuring a heavy base line, it also has a fat horn section, pretty unexpected in a rock hit in nineteen eighty-seven. But the lead vocalist’s voice and enunciation will never challenge anyone for smooth delivery.

Know the song? It made news again during the opening of the Olympics in Sidney in two thousand. Sure, it’s “Beds Are Burning,” by Midnight Oil, perfect for a walkabout on an unusually hot spring day – in North America.

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Less Is More

Yes, get ready, friends and family who hate it when I go political. They would rather I don’t, and I try not to, but here we fucking go again – will this carousel ever end? 

The tRump WH Budget Chief, Mick Mulvaney, is singing about how great the tRump budget is. Why, they’re enabling and empowering people by taking money away from their greedy little hands.

Mulvaney added: “We don’t want to measure compassion by the number of programs we have and the number of people on them — true compassion is the number of people we want to try to get off of those programs and get back in charge of their own lives.”

Sure, those people who need the safety net aren’t working because of anything except their own damn weak wills and lazy nature. That’s why they’re poor, hungry and sick, or why they need aid from the rest of us. If they need more money, they should work two or three more jobs while going back to school and getting a better education. Taking away the social net will put them back on their feet!

Yea, verily, I was exposed to that hypocritical crap in the military and corporate life. “We must do more with less!” “We must give one hundred and ten percent!” Yes, tell me, how do you get one hundred and ten percent out of your mind and body? Can you drink one hundred and ten percent of a glass of water? How do you eat one hundred and ten percent of that bowl of soup? You can’t, can you? So, with your logic, tell me, where does that extra magic ten percent come from? Nowhere but your feeble, feeble brain.

Yet, strangely, of course, the wealthy must be given more. Why, giving them more will help them help others more! Funny, how their logic changes when it’s applied to their own class, isn’t it?

Ironically, too, when it comes to military spending, more is better. More military spending gives us greater protection. Why doesn’t the less is better logic work in that situation?

Mulvaney must be a good Christian. Seems like it’s always Christians in this modern era who claim that helping the poor is contrary to the Bible. When searching out more information on the Mick, I found out this about him:

As it turns out, Mulvaney has faced questions regarding his payment (or non-payment, as the case may be) of taxes before. In 2013, a blogger discovered that Mick Mulvaney had owed thousands of dollars in back taxes for as long as five years. The website wonkette.com picked up the story, but it barely made a ripple during the negotiations for raising the debt ceiling.

Mulvaney is nothing if not consistent, advocating for the country not to pay its bills while he neglects paying his own.

Sickening, sickening, sickening. Mulvaney, and the White House administration and the agenda he represents, has no morals, compassion or empathy.

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Twenty-two

Twenty-two dead today

More will die tomorrow

In the name of freedom, choice, democracy and God

We’ll strike back to teach them a lesson

Twenty-two dead today

More will die tomorrow

In the name of freedom, choice, democracy and God

Twenty-two dead today

How many more tomorrow?

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Today’s Theme Music

Mom gave this album to me for a Christmas present in nineteen seventy-three, a gift made on my older sister’s recommendation.

I was ecstatic. I’d only heard and read a little about the album, ‘Quadraphenia,’ but I was an enormous Who fan at that point. Come on, they were fresh off ‘Tommy’ and ‘Who’s Next?,’ with the legendary, ‘Won’t Be Fooled Again.’ Their music spoke to a wannabe teenage rebel on the cusp of childhood’s end.

I played the bejesus out of this album, generally at a wall-shaking volume. This song, ‘The Real Me,’ was the opening track. While the song speaks to me with its lyrics and Daltry’s delivery, I’m enamored with Entwhistle’s flowing, active, dominating bass.

The cracks between the paving stones
Look like rivers of flowing veins
Strange people who know me
Peeping from behind every window pane
The girl I used to love
Lives in this yellow house
Yesterday she passed me by
She doesn’t want to know me now

h/t to Metrolyrics.com

I think it’s an appropriate song for the Internet age and the era of fake news. People hide behind anonymous posts and comments, putting forward false identities, deploying lies and false information to stoke fear and doubt, and further their causes.

Can you see the real me?

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Political Dream

The dream was short but intense. Throngs were milling and shopping. Indoors, a warm, festive ambiance dominated. I was with my wife and some friends, going in and out of stores and other places. People, including my wife and our friend, Marty, kept trying to point things out to me or ask me questions, but I was intent and focused, shopping for something for myself that I’d always wanted. I don’t know what that was in the dream, but the dream’s backstory, learned from overheard conversations, was that we were shopping for a new POTUS.

I awoke surprised and pleased.

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