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.
No comments:
Post a Comment