Friday, April 28, 2017

Resistance moon: Ten thousand miles

Since last year’s presidential election one of the constants has been the theme of resistance, of something that’s protest, but much more than protest. Maybe it’s the new technology of everywhere-connectivity, Internet infrastructure and social media that enables people in their tens of thousands to convert their outrage into action. They’ve taken to the streets in their hundreds of thousands, but they’ve also broken the telephone systems of pretty much every Congressmoron in D.C.—especially the ones who are too cowardly to meet with constituents in person.

Odd, that, how the ‘Pugs were eager to hold town halls right up until they started getting voters who asked questions and wouldn’t accept deflection. And videos of those meetings were slapped up on Facebook and Twitter, showing them for the spineless bloated slugs they are. Right after that—dang, no town hall meetings…

This is protest writ large, and the lines drawn in the sand about immigration, healthcare, SCOTUS and kompromat have played a powerful part in blocking some of the power grabs of the Kleptocrat, his Gauleiters and their Congressional enablers. Viz.:

A HuffPo writer got hold of the >500-page list of people who invested in the Kakistorcrat’s inauguration; she converted it to a spreadsheet, put it on a Google drive and asked Twitter to crowd-source the names. In 24 hours last week We The Digital People drilled down and discovered substantial donations made under questionable names—one of the NASA mathematicians of Hidden Figures fame—and the ever-popular ruse of addresses that were empty fields. After these results came to light, the Klepto-committee made the equally ever-popular admission of those who’ve been caught out in chicanery: “mistakes” were made.

(The digital detectives turned up at least 340 instances. Oopsie! Moreover, in tracking down some of the non-existent names, by focusing on “business” addresses and looking at other building tenants, the diggers found that a number of them have connections to Russian interests. Um.)

And that miserable tool Jason I-Can-Look-My-Daughter-In-The-Eye-But-Not-My-Constituents Chaffetz has not only announced that he won’t seek re-election after his current stint at the trough, but evidently he’s “taking a break” from Congress, because he’s got to have suddenly immediate surgery to correct a previous surgery on his foot. “Previous” = 12 years ago. Nothing to do with evidence mounting that he’s involved in a cover-up of the connections between the Russians and the Kleptocrat and his Gauleiters. Or with the mounting pressure he’s been getting from people around the country to #DoYourJob as chairman of the House Oversight Committee that doesn’t think it’s necessary to investigate anything to do with the Kleptocrat and his Gauleiters. No. This is a “medical emergency” (his words). And evidently he must think with his foot, because he’s going to be “out” from Congress for three weeks.

Well—thinking with his foot might explain some of his actions. And maybe he plumb wore himself out with his interminable “investigations” of Hillary Clinton and Benghazi.

Okay, right—but we’re here for poetry. Poetry and protest. So…gotta be Bob Dylan.


There were protest song writers before Dylan, but he distilled the art form at a time when the nation was looking for a way to articulate rage and revolution. You want to flip the bird at the government, or at the banksters who broke the economy—and you aren’t Elizabeth Warren? Dylan. Need something to restore your flagging energy, or remind you of what’s at stake? Dylan. Just want to clear your mind before the next call to a politician’s office or taking to the streets? Yeah.

With Dylan’s protest songs, we’re dealing with an embarrassment of riches. I’m going to go with a few of my favorites.

The first cover of “A Hard Rain’s A-gonna Fall” I heard was Pete Seeger’s. I was a kid and I had no real grasp of what it was, but the kind of awkward phrasing, jamming syllables into apocalyptic lines whether they fit or not, and the bolshie repetition really made me stop and pay attention. Also—it’s long. It’s early Dylan at his most complex and demanding.

So I’ll give you the young Dylan singing it.


Though it was written during and for the Cold War, “Hard Rain” is still appropriate for our times. Pick a line—any line—and see if it doesn’t resonate: “a dozen dead oceans”; “guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children”; “a young woman whose body was burning”. Do images from the news come to mind? And regarding the “pellets of poison…flooding the waters”, Dylan has said that it’s nothing to do with acid rain, but with the lies we’re fed by various interests. Whoa—that one’s certainly relevant.

“Blowin’ in the Wind”—well, in contrast to “Hard Rain”, that’s pure, distilled Dylan: three verses, five chords on the guitar, easy to harmonize, fills up a hall like the roar of a tsunami. Everyone on the planet knows “Blowin’ in the Wind”, everyone on the planet can sing it, and everyone on the planet understands its meaning. It would be hard to find a song with more universal resonance (outside, perhaps, of “We Shall Overcome”). By the time a performer has finished with “How many roads”, the audience has joined in.

Racism, militarism, Babbitism, general inhumanity and bloody-mindedness: three verses, five chords, easy harmonizing, tsunami roar. Will it be sung 50 years from now? If there are still humans, probably.

Every artist on the planet has covered “Blowin’ in the Wind”. It was the signature piece of Peter, Paul and Mary, closing all their concerts (including their Christmas one at Carnegie Hall). Stevie Wonder, Marianne Faithfull, Sam Cooke, Bruce Springsteen, Marlene Dietrich, Johnny Cash, the Supremes, the London Freakin’ Philharmonic. Joan Baez was one of the first to sing it, and the purity of her early recordings is amazing. Baez, as you know, was one on the frontlines of protest back in the 60s. She’s sung this one throughout her career, around the world. Here she is in Paris, in 1983.


The anthem for those times, though—the Vietnam War, the youth explosion, tie-dying, Woodstock, Watergate, drugs, communes, a president resigning rather than face impeachment—that was “The Times They Are A-changin’”. Someone ought to park a sound truck outside the Capitol and play this one full blast for a week. Every word is as true now as it was when Dylan wrote it in 1964.

The fuckwits and do-nothings inside the building would rightly begin to tremble at it, because they’re still standing in the doorways and blocking up the halls. And the battle outside raging is shaking their windows and rattling their walls.

So many versions to choose from, but I keep coming back to Tracy Chapman, at Dylan’s 30th Anniversary Concert.


No surrender.


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