1984 ALL OVER AGAIN

Consider this one minute clip which was shown nationally once only:

But before that clip there was this:

“In small, clumsy letters he wrote: April 4^th, 1984”

In four days that fictional line of text will have been written exactly forty years ago. I recently had reason to go back and read George Orwell’s ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ again and it was somewhat of a revelation. The book has been read and analysed by many, it has contributed to the English language (e.g. doublethink, thoughtcrime, Big Brother is watching you) and dystopian political developments are sometimes described as Orwellian. To describe a real life situation as something out of ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ is bound to be an exaggeration as the world described in that book is awfully nasty (see Godwin’s Law), however, the book was a warning based on incipient trends Orwell observed in the real world as he wrote the book exactly 75 years ago. How have things gone over those 75 years?

I had forgotten how well-crafted the book was; it was Orwell’s last – he died a year after it was published, and he had honed his writing skills well over the years with a series of fiction and non-fiction works. Also, a core concept in the book, doublethink, is more extreme, and more subtle, than many commentators, and writers of sequels, have realized.

Most of my references in what follows are going to be to the United States because some dangerous tendencies which have always been bubbling quietly below the surface have suddenly emerged and are accelerating openly since Trump. There are also many of the same troubling developments all over the world, however – Russian elections and mysterious deaths, the developing cult of personality around Xi Jinping, women’s rights in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, escalating bigotry toward Muslims in India, the rise of neo-Nazism in Europe, the quietly desperate lives of too many Brits. All praise to the progressive elements in the United States and elsewhere who are fighting back against these troubling tendencies.

The United States has Stephen Miller, Clarence Thomas, Steve Bannon, Marjorie Taylor Greene and so many others. However they also have Bernie Sanders, Robert Reich, Andrew Seidel and Ketanji Brown Jackson, among others. Unfortunately, in other places in the world, we also have Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, Recep Erdogan, Pierre Poilievre, Benjamin Netanyahu and so on. It says something that after Trump was elected sales of ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ soared on Amazon. The book has been banned in parts of the United States which may have contributed to the increased sales. The fact that the book is not banned in Russia or China tells me that Putin and Xi Jinping are both smarter than American book banners.

In what follows, all page references are to the edition of Animal Farm / 1984 published in hardback by Harcourt, Inc., 2003.

1. THE TWO MINUTE HATE

“A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current” (page 101). During the Two Minute Hate the spectators are delighted as a lifeboat full of the children of enemy forces are slaughtered, and the spectators cheer as the camera follows the arc of a child’s severed arm flying through the air. On March 16, 1968, during the Vietnam War, American forces descended on the village of My Lai and killed between 347 and 504 unarmed civilians. During the massacre a number of females, some as young as twelve, were raped and mutilated before being killed. No enemy soldiers or weapons were found in the village. This massacre was defended by some back in the United States. Let it be noted that several Americans, most notably Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson Jr., Glenn Andreotta and Lawrence Colburn risked their lives in an attempt to stop the massacre and the cover-up that followed. Many Palestinian children have been killed, some from malnutrition, in Gaza in the last five months, a sad state of affairs condemned by many Jews in Israel and elsewhere as well as by others.

MY LAI
By Ronald L. Haeberle – Copied from Krysstal.com, "The Acts of the Democracies" http://www.krysstal.com/democracy_vietnam_mylai.html, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=883801

2. WAR IS PEACE

“All that is needed is that a state of war should exist” (page 268). Orwell talks about how Oceania always needs to be fighting a war, not to win but to use up resources and consumer goods so that the populace back home will remain on the edge of despair and poverty and thus be barely able to even think about let alone foment rebellion. The United States and Russia fought a Cold War from 1945 to 1990. After that President Bush waged a War on Terror in the process going after weapons of mass destruction that didn’t exist. Trump wants to wage war on all sorts of people, particularly immigrants. As Bob Dylan pointed out many years ago in his song ‘Only a Pawn in Their Game’, the powers that be who are responsible for things like economic inequity and anti-democratic behaviours like to manipulate the hegemony so that the wrong targets are under attack.

THE BERLIN CRISIS 1961 – SOVIET AND AMERICAN TANKS FACE EACH OTHER AT CHECKPOINT CHARLIE
By Ronald L. Haeberle – Copied from Krysstal.com, "The Acts of the Democracies" http://www.krysstal.com/democracy_vietnam_mylai.html, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=883801

3. FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.” (page 163). During the Two Minutes Hate (page 99) Goldstein, the enemy of the people, advocated for freedom of speech, the press, assembly and thought (remember the First Amendment to the Constitution?) and is ridiculed. Critical Race Theory and references to gender issues are banned in American schools, Trump attacks accurate media reports as fake news and he attempts to suppress it. When Trump held his photo op with Bible in hand (upside down) he first had the police fire on unarmed protesters assembled legally nearby, and he is on record as saying he wants the police to shoot protesters in the legs. Four unarmed students were shot dead by the authorities at Kent State on May 4, 1970 during an anti-war protest. Eleven days later two unarmed students protesting against the Vietnam War were shot and killed by the police at Jackson State College. Between 200 and 2600 people (depending on the source) died during the 1989 Tienanmen Square protests. There wasn’t much freedom of thought during the Cultural Revolution in China, either.

TIENANMEN SQUARE PROTESTS 1989
By Jiří Tondl (Blow up) – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=68125236

4. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

“War is a way of shattering to pieces . . . materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, too intelligent” (page 267). Anti-science and anti-intellectualism is alive and well in the United States, something that Neil deGrasse Tyson has tried to raise an awareness about. There is data to indicate that Americans are very ill-educated and seem to be amazingly incurious and ignorant about other countries. The misinformation by those on the right about female biology has also put women’s lives in danger. Some people in power want to prevent students from learning about large parts of American history. Former Secretary of State and Housing Development Ben Carson insisted that the pyramids were built to store grain and not used as tombs for pharaohs. When Trump was President he thought Frederick Douglass was still alive, and later he thought that it was Obama who he beat to become president, and he didn’t realize that World War Two had already happened.

FREDERIC DOUGLASS 1884
By Unknown author – National Park Service, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=54496858

5. PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE

“ ‘Who controls the past’, ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’ “ (page 119). Teaching Critical Race is not allowed in parts of the US. The 1921 Tulsa Massacre was erased from the history books for a century. Some Americans think that Britain stood alone against the Nazis (no they didn’t – many Canadian soldiers died fighting the Nazis alongside Britain for years before the United States entered the war which they only did when they were attacked directly) and the United States saved the day and won World War Two single handedly (no they didn’t). The United States won the War of 1812 (no they didn’t). The inventor of the light bulb was an American, Thomas Edison (ever hear of Joseph Swan? He wasn’t an American). The Wright Brothers accomplished the first flight in a heavier-than-air machine (ever hear of Gustave Whitehead? He wasn’t an American). When John Glenn died I heard it reported on an American newscast that he was the world’s first space traveller. No, his flight went up February 20, 1962. The first space traveller was the Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin whose flight took place on April 12, 1961.

When the Smithsonian Institute in 1995 constructed an historically accurate exhibit of the bombing of Hiroshima on the fiftieth anniversary of that event, Republicans and veterans groups called it unpatriotic, and when these groups threatened to implement substantial budget cuts to the institute the man in charge, Michael Heyman, reluctantly backed down and cancelled the exhibition. Some Republican politicians recently have declared that Slavery was a good thing for blacks, that it taught them useful skills. Many Americans believe that their nation was founded on Christian values when in fact some of the founding fathers were deists and non-Christians. Thomas Jefferson even put together the Jefferson Bible in which he pointedly removed anything metaphysical or supernatural from the text, including the stories of the miracles, and the all-important Resurrection of Jesus. Given that Christianity is based on blind belief in and obedience to a higher authority (and if you don’t you suffer eternal damnation), and that the American Constitution is based on freedom of thought and separation of Church and State, I’ve heard it argued that Christianity is unAmerican.

THE 1921 TULSA RACE MASSACRE
By Unknown author – Unknown source, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=65817500

6. CHILD HEROES

“Nearly all children nowadays were horrible . . . hardly a week passed in which the Times did not carry a paragraph describing how some eavesdropping little sneak – “child hero” was the phrase generally used – had overheard some compromising remark and denounced his parents to the Thought Police” (page 110). The learning program known as PragerU is being introduced into some areas of the United States. That is an ultra-conservative program designed to turn children into obedient ultra-conservative adults who have been fed lies about slavery, climate change, immigration, the history of fascism and the LGBTQ community. In fact there is an active movement afoot which wants to either Christianize schools or just get rid of the public school system completely and replace it with a religious educational system, a system teaching young impressionable minds that abortion and contraception are sinful, that women must submit to men when it comes to living a good Christian life, that gay and trans people are sinners, and that authority figures can do no wrong. Wow.

The imposition of the Christian religion on the entire population has been accelerating, with a great deal of help from the Supreme Court ever since the appointment of several conservative justices giving it a six to three conservative to liberal balance. The court has blatantly and incorrectly characterized resistance to giving precedence to Christianity over non-Christians as being religiously intolerant. In the name of freedom of religion the court has been aggressively attempting to dismantle freedom of religion for Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, pagans and so on.

GRAFFITI AT SEINE-ET-MARNE, FRANCE
By Paterm – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21406993

7. FAHRENHEIT 451

“The hunting-down and destruction of books had been done with the same thoroughness in the prole quarters as everywhere else” (page 177). Book burning has a long and illustrious history around the world but its been picking up steam lately. Books on Black History, and books with gay or trans characters are being banned as conservatives have been vociferously taking over school board meetings, sometimes to the point of violence. As mentioned earlier, ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ has also been banned.

8. GIVE ME YOUR TIRED, YOUR POOR

“Foreigners, whether from Eurasia or Eastasia, were a kind of strange animal” (page 197) . . . “an old couple, who were suspected of being of foreign extraction had their house set on fire and perished of suffocation” (page 228). Trump’s perception of foreigners as criminals and animals who were poisoning the American system is well known. He talked about it when he announced he was running for the Presidency in 2015, and he has been getting worse recently, using phrases and ideas from the writings of Adolph Hitler, and unapologetically so.

MEIN KAMPF BY ADOLF HITLER
By Unknown author of dust jacket; Adolf Hitler author of volume – This image is available from the New York Public Library’s Digital Library under the digital ID 487722: digitalgallery.nypl.org → digitalcollections.nypl.org, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10043132

9. NEWSPEAK

“In Newspeak there is no word for ‘Science’ “ (page 269). In September 2020, when asked about the effect of climate change on California wildfires, Donald Trump said, “I don’t think Science knows, actually”. He has called climate change a Chinese hoax, and has stated repeatedly that windmills cause cancer. Too many people reject Science if Science tells them something they don’t like to hear. Science tells us that vaccines do not and never did cause autism but anti-vaxxers reject that fact. Science tells us to wear a mask during the Covid 19 pandemic but some who refused to wear masks maintained that there was no such thing as Covid 19. Religious extremists reject Evolution but when questioned they almost invariably demonstrate that they don’t understand Evolution. When meeting anti-Science people I’m tempted to demand that they give me their tablets, cell phones and cars (all provided by Science), and that they be banned from ever going to a doctor or receiving any kind of medical treatment (again, provided by Science). If you reject Science you don’t get to benefit from Science, thank you very much.

Some deeply religious people reject Science because a religious mind set is the opposite of a scientific mind set. Religion deals with certainty and Science tells us that there is data to either support or undermine a particular hypothesis. Newton’s scientific explanation for gravity was the best explanation given the data which was available in Newton’s day. When Einstein, centuries later, came up with an alternate theory the scientific community welcomed it and brought the Science text books up to date. Einstein’s theory is the best we have given what we know, and what we have confirmed using scientific methods. Einstein himself said that long after he was dead someone else would probably come up with an even better theory of gravity, and he was fine with that. After all, Einstein was wrong about Quantum Physics. Science is about probabilities, and that is frightening to some people.

ALBERT EINSTEIN, 1921
By Possibly Herman Mishkin – Official 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics photograph, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=458521

10. DOUBLETHINK

“. . . Two and two are four [said Winston]

“Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.” [said O’Brien]. (page 326)

Life in 1984 requires everyone party members to practice doublethink. It requires believing in two contradictory ideas simultaneously. You have to believe that Oceania is at war with Eurasia. If the authorities suddenly make a reference to the war against Eastasia everyone must immediately rearrange their thoughts and actually believe that Oceania is at war with Eastasia not Eurasia, and that Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. You know that your thoughts are contradictory and yet AT THE SAME TIME you also have to somehow know that your thoughts are not contradictory. Doublethink is a subtle thing, but I think the following may be a list of examples of doublethink:

• The January 6^th insurrectionists were no different than curious tourists / the January 6^th insurrectionists were aggressive and destructive
• Immigrants are criminals / crime statistics show that when immigrants settle in an area in large numbers the crime rate does not increase
• The economy under Biden is terrible / the economy under Biden is doing great.
• The January 6^th insurrectionists cherish American values such as Law and Order / the January 6^th insurrectionists killed several police officers, and were seeking to execute Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi extra-judiciously.
• The United States lost the war in Vietnam / the United States didn’t really lose the war in Vietnam – they could have easily won but the traitors in the media and the treasonous woke anti-War movement forced the American forces to withdraw.
• Immigrants are lazy and unskilled animals / immigrants are coming in to steal our jobs (jobs that require a work ethic and skills).
• The United States is a democracy /no it’s not, in a variety of ways.
• Russia is a worker’s paradise / except for the rigged elections, and the enemies of Putin who keep dying under mysterious circumstances, and press censorship and on and on.

One wonders what Orwell would make of the world today. He had his shortcomings but he was a principled man, a very well-read and knowledgeable observer of politics and culture, and an enormously talented writer. ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ and ‘Animal Farm’ are his most famous works, but ‘Homage to Catalonia’, ‘The Road to Wigan Pier’, and ‘Down and Out in Paris and London’ are also excellent, not to mention his essays and journals.

There are many insightful four word phrases in our language, e.g. THE DIE IS CAST and PLAY IT AGAIN, SAM. There is ELEMENTARY, MY DEAR WATSON from Sherlock Holmes, and BEAM ME UP, SCOTTY from Captain Kirk. The last words uttered by Shakespeare’s Hamlet are THE REST IS SILENCE. ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’, unusual in its day, does not have a happy ending but the book’s purpose is to warn the reader so that the world described in the book will never become a reality. The Inner Party does indeed get inside Winston’s head. The last four words of ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ are HE LOVED BIG BROTHER.

A LOT CAN HAPPEN IN 60 YEARS

(BANNED AID – a guide to the banning of songs Part 4 – GENDER will appear in one week). This began as a quick acknowledgement of a happy though rather superficial event that took place exactly sixty years ago though back then the world wasn’t a very happy place. However, this post has morphed into something a little longer. In 1964 many of us thought we’d all be dead from a global nuclear conflagration within a few years. People were building fallout shelters and we had drills at school showing us what to do in a nuclear attack. Over the last sixty years things have swung back and forth positively and negatively, but we’ve always somehow survived. Since the greatest enemy of progress is cynicism and despair, I’ve decided to turn this into a paean to sixty years of progress and renewal, and we’ll see what happens over the next sixty years.

Sixty years ago today The Beatles made their first appearance in the U.S., and I vividly remember watching the show with the rest of my family; I can even recall where everyone was sitting in our rec room sizing up this new confident, exotic, British band everyone was curious about (this was before anyone had heard of all the British bands to follow) – but this post is not about The Beatles. It is about other people, and the events, many of them surprises, which have occurred over the last sixty years.

TAYLOR SWIFT 2007
By minds-eye – Taylor Swift, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3214601

In 1964 the world had almost come to an end a year and a half earlier (The Cuban Missile Crisis) but the Cold War was still cold. The Russians were way ahead of the rest of the world when it came to space exploration. The Vietnam War was on and African-Americans were under attack as the Civil Rights Movement was in full swing. Despite the shadow of nuclear war, and the cowards and fools who have commandeered the corridors of power, we have coped with a recession and a pandemic, global food production is up and poverty is down, we have made some great scientific advances, there is more democracy in the world than there was sixty years ago and we have Taylor Swift.

In 1964 I was an inveterate science fiction fan who read stories set in a future that featured flying cars, time travel and colonies on Mars. Oh well. Perhaps the most important development that was overlooked completely by most science fiction writers was the emergence of the personal computer, and the Internet. In the last sixty years we have also created email and cell phones and social media. We now have YouTube, Netflix, Amazon, Wikipedia, and bloggers and apps galore. We also have electric vehicles, wind farms, robots and drones. We have completed the Human Genome Project, cloned animals, found the Higgs boson, discovered thousands of exoplanets, and even taken a few steps into the realm of teleportation.

CLIMATE CHANGE

Our most daunting challenge is climate change, and though some of us were talking about environmentalism in the sixties our long term fears were mocked and dismissed by most people. There are still scientifically illiterate climate change deniers in positions of power – I would have predicted that we would have learned our lesson long since. There are also the billionaires who are quite aware of climate change but still resist in the name of prioritizing personal profit over the lives of their descendants along with everyone else on the planet. But there’s always hope – we certainly have the means to deal with the problem.

INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION 2010
By NASA/Crew of STS-132 – https://images-assets.nasa.gov/image/s132e012208/s132e012208~orig.jpg(https://images.nasa.gov/details-s132e012208), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10561008

SOME MOMENTOUS SURPRISES SINCE 1964

1. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union collapse.
2. The speed with which we landed on the moon (and the unfortunate politicization of that event).
3. The easily avoidable Challenger disaster, and the effective abandonment of space exploration. At least we also have the International Space Station.
4. The release of Nelson Mandela and the end of Apartheid.
5. Québec has decided not to separate.
6. There has been no global nuclear conflagration despite the nuclear arms race.
7. I’m not surprised at the rise of authoritarianism in the United States. There are anti-democratic features of American society that go back to the founding of the nation, and unregulated capitalism itself is anti-democratic. Various studies in the realm of Political Philosophy have surfaced lately in an attempt to analyse this decline of democracy in America with a view to reversing it. Other studies have attempted to argue that democracy is not a good thing to pursue. Too many of these studies suffer from a lack of knowledge of the works of Confucius, Ibn Khaldun, Hobbes, Locke, Kant, Paine, Marx, Rawls and others. The thing which is a surprise is the speed with which the acceleration of authoritarianism has occurred in our neighbour to the south ever since Bush stole the election in 2000.
8. Boris Johnson’s majority conservative win as Prime Minister of Great Britain was also a pretty nasty surprise. But then they got rid of him before too long, so that was good. I’d rather not think about Marine Le Pen.

PRIME MINISTER PIERRE TRUDEAU WITH TEN-YEAR-OLD JUSTIN IN 1982.
By PBA Lille – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=99588417

SOME MOMENTOUS PREDICTABLE EVENTS SINCE 1964

1. The COVID 19 Pandemic was bound to happen sooner or later. Some nations handled it better than others. More than a million died in the U.S., many unnecessarily, but vaccines were developed and distributed at record speed and things are under control. When will the next pandemic hit?
2. The 2008 Recession was unsurprising. Economic disasters are built into capitalism. It was surprising that those responsible were not held accountable by Obama.
3. The simultaneous rise of the conservative triumvirate was unfortunate but not surprising – Brian Mulroney (Canada), Margaret Thatcher (United Kingdom) and Ronald Reagan (United States).
4. Nine Eleven was tragic and dramatic but there are a lot of people who hate the United States, with good reason, so it’s not all that surprising that Nine Eleven happened. There were also warnings ahead of the event provided by American intelligence but ignored by the powers that be.
5. The patriation of the Constitution in 1982 by Pierre Trudeau was an important landmark in the political evolution of our nation but it was not particularly surprising. No regressive originalist nonsense here, thank you very much.
6. The rise of the European Union was a predictable result of past political processes.
7. Unsurprisingly, a great deal of armed conflict has played out (e.g. the Troubles, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Iraq War, the War in Afghanistan, the Six Day War, the Gaza-Israeli War, the Rwanda Genocide, the War in the Congo, War in Syria, the Cold War, the Dirty War, the Russian invasions of Czechoslovakia, Afghanistan and Ukraine, and so on) but none have escalated into nuclear war.

ANGELA DAVIS ON A POSTER IN 1971
CALLING FOR THE FREEDOM OF POLITICAL PRISONERS
By Wikipedia:Rupert García – https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/libertad-para-los-prisoneros-politicas-116610, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=97922730

THE CULTURE DIMENSION

1. Gay rights have advanced (e.g. legal same sex marriage) but now trans individuals are being targeted. Just the recognition of the existence of transgender individuals was extremely rare in 1964.
2. There was Frank Sinatra in the 1940’s and Elvis Presley in the 1950’s. The Beatles achieved much greater acclaim and influence than either Sinatra (a mobbed up singer) or Presley (a sad and confused right wing puppet), and the Rolling Stones have sold a lot of units too. The 1980’s were dominated by Madonna, Michael Jackson, U2 and Duran Duran. More recently Beyoncé, BTS and Taylor Swift are head and shoulders above everyone else. The periodic musical dominance by one or two individuals or groups is to be expected and welcomed.
3. African-Americans have been in the forefront of some of the greatest music on the planet, creating and excelling at blues, gospel, jazz, soul, rhythm and blues, and funk. In the last sixty years we have also seen the rise of Hip Hop.
4. In the 1980’s music videos came along, many quite elaborate, subtle and expensive. They often gave musical tracks a new dimension but their dominance has waned somewhat. However one still sees excellent music videos from time to time. Two examples – first an elaborate take on Alice in Wonderland by Tom Petty, with a ghastly ending (note Dave Stewart of Eurythmics playing sitar near the beginning) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0JvF9vpqx8&ab_channel=TomPettyVEVO . Then, a video full of fascinating details all over the place, from Elton John – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABSXJiYQFuI&ab_channel=EltonJohnVEVO .

SOME AMAZING PEOPLE

Some people who have been around at some point since February 1964 (can you spot my biases?):

• Greta Thunberg, Rachel Carson, David Suzuki
• Glenn Gould, Yuja Wang, Vladimir Horowitz – Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Oscar Peterson – Benny Goodman, Dave Brubeck, Billie Holiday – Jon Lord, Matthew Fisher, Steve Winwood – Robbie Robertson, Gordon Lightfoot, Leonard Cohen – Ravi Shankar, Rachid Taha, Natacha Atlas
• Roger Federer, Rod Laver, Bjorn Borg – Serena Williams, Steffi Graf, Martina Navratilova – Rocket Richard, Bobby Orr, Vladislav Tretiak – Pelé, Marta, David Beckham – LeBron James, Michael Jordan, Bill Russell – Roger Bannister, Abebe Bikila, Brigid Kosgei – Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Sam Snead
• Laurence Olivier, Ralph Richardson, John Gielgud – Richard Burton, Tom Courtenay, Ian McKellen – Julie Christie, Kate Hepburn, Diana Rigg – Natalie Portman, Jonny Lee Miller, Idris Elba
• Michael Palin, Peter Cook, Lenny Bruce, Tony Hancock
• M.C.Escher, Charles Santore, Robert Bateman
• Philip Pullman, Ursula LeGuin, John Wyndham
• Nelson Mandela, Malcolm X, Angela Davis
• Tommy Douglas, Pierre Trudeau, Bertrand Russell
• Gloria Steinem, Naomi Klein, Taslima Nasrin

THE HAT
By Cmglee – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=129867716

SIXTY YEARS OF MATHEMATICS

1. I never thought I would ever see a proof for Fermat’s Last Theorem. It has been attacked unsuccessfully from every angle by the greatest mathematical minds of the last several centuries, but finally Andrew Wiles proved the damn thing in 1995. He worked on it in secret for seven years, and the proof is incredibly difficult and has opened up new vistas of mathematical research.
2. As recently as 2022 the search for a proto-tile which tesselates the Euclidean plane non-periodically was finally ended (this was known as the Einstein problem – it’s a German pun). Finally a single tile, called The Hat, was discovered by David Smith and confirmed by Craig S. Kaplan, Joseph S. Myers and Chaim Goodman-Strauss.
3. The Clay Mathematics Institute offered a reward of one million dollars for anyone who could solve any one of a series of incredibly difficult mathematical problems which the institute had compiled. The most difficult problem was the Poincaré Conjecture but, much to the astonishment of everyone, it was the first one to be solved, in 2003 by a Russian mathematician named Grigori Perelman. But he turned down the million dollar prize! There is no Nobel Prize in Mathematics so the highest award one can be given in the discipline of Mathematics is the Fields Medal, which was awarded to Perelman for his proof of the Poincaré Conjecture. But Perelman turned that down as well!

FULL CIRCLE

Sixty years after The Beatles first performed in the U.S. in 1964 they released a new single in the UK (in November 2023) and it made it to the Number One position in the charts (at about the same time the Rolling Stones released an entire album of new material). Back in 1964 I would never have guessed that that was possible. The new Beatles single, called ‘Now and Then’, featured all four Beatles even though the de facto leader of the group, John Lennon, was murdered forty-three years ago, and the lead guitarist, George Harrison, died twenty-three years ago, two events which were also quite unexpected. I wonder what the next sixty years will hold. It isn’t time to get the Molotov cocktails out yet but it has been a hard day’s night.

(Which events and people have I left out?)

PAUL McCARTNEY, GEORGE HARRISON and JOHN LENNON (L to R) OF THE BEATLES, 1964
By Omroepvereniging VARA – 64228-KB-34.png Beeld en Geluidwiki – Gallery: The Beatles, CC BY-SA 3.0 nl, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9832115

BANNED AID – a guide to the banning of songs – Part 2 -POLITICS

Previous posts:

• Part 1 – Racism – Part 1 – Racism – https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2024/01/13/banned-aid-a-guide-to-the-banning-of-music-racism/
• Extra post – Bitch I’m back like J.Christ –
• https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2024/01/20/banned-aid-bitch-im-back-like-j-christ/

Future posts:

• Part 3 – Illegal Substances
• Part 4 – Gender
• Part 5 – Religion

There have been many political songs over the years. Here is a link to a particularly comprehensive site that provides a great deal of information about thousands of political songs, in many languages. It began as an anti-war site but has greatly expanded into other political areas – https://www.antiwarsongs.org/argomenti.php?lang=en .

1. The song WHAT IT’S LIKE by Everlast was criticized for including the word ‘whore’ in its lyrics but the song’s words describe a sympathetic character being unfairly called a whore. This is a thoughtful, powerful song about systemic economic inequities – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMYz5SteBBY&ab_channel=EverlastMusic .

2. From 1932, during The Great Depression, came BROTHER, CAN YOU SPARE A DIME by Yip Harburg and Jay Gorney. The Republican Party tried unsuccessfully to get the song banned, calling it anti-capitalist. Thirty-six years later The Doors released the song FIVE TO ONE with these lyrics about violent insurrection but no one tried to ban it: “No one here gets out alive . . . The old get old and the young get stronger . . . They got the guns but we got the numbers . . . Your ballroom days are over”. Here is an excellent cover of Brother Can You Spare a Dime by George Michael – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_cZjgThPks&ab_channel=davidsebile

3. Presently China is using Sina Weibo (the Chinese version of the Internet) alongside Baidu (Google), Baidu Baike (Wikipedia), Alibaba (Amazon) and Tencent (Facebook / Netflix) along with a social credit system to construct a capitalist authoritarian state like no other (some people see democracy and capitalism as being inextricably intertwined when capitalism is actually anti-democratic). The Chinese government has also been developing AI technology for almost a decade now. When you combine all that with the Chinese surveillance system called Skynet (is it just a coincidence that this is also the name of the evil cybernetic system in the Terminator films?) and you have something rather ominous. Hobbes described this development with uncanny prescience in 1651 in his celebrated magnum opus Leviathan (a benevolent dictator is better than no dictator at all). Just as the United States has never been a democracy, neither Russia nor China has ever been a communist state no matter what they say (Marx is rolling over in his grave).

This clip below is a rendition of THE INTERNATIONALE led by several highly celebrated Chinese entertainers (the piano player, Liu Huan, in his prime, was as famous as Michael Jackson was in the US). It begins slowly but it builds dramatically and watch the emotional response of the audience, similar to the emotional response of most people (particularly Americans) to their national anthem. Of course, like so many anthems, the words of The Internationale promise the opposite of what the Chinese government is delivering. Note the legendary Cui Jian at the 29 second mark, the rock singer who single-handedly and subversively turned China from a collectivist society into an individualist society with his song ‘Nothing To My Name’ in 1989 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQFxUdzT-m0&ab_channel=race_to_the_bottom ).

Arturo Toscanini conducted a rendition of The Internationale in 1944 as part of the film ‘Hymn of the Nations’ but during the McCarthy Era the song was deleted from copies of the film when it was shown in the US.

4. TAKE THE POWER BACK, released by Rage Against The Machine, was not allowed to be played at schools because it was found to break Arizona state law which stated that schools cannot advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of people as individuals. Several Arizona secondary school teachers responded by adopting the song as part of their history curriculum. That response, however, was repressed when a School Superintendent issued a notice of non-compliance to the school system.

5. DING, DONG, THE WITCH IS DEAD is a song written in 1939 by Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg for the famous film The Wizard of Oz. In the film it celebrates the death of the Wicked Witch of the East when Dorothy’s house is dropped on her by a cyclone. In 2013 when authoritarian Conservative former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher died many of her victims and their supporters celebrated her death with street parties. Her funeral procession took place under incredibly tight security which cost the British taxpayer over three million pounds. She was truly hated across Britain. In many cases that hatred took the form of people singing the song Ding, Dong, the Witch is Dead. The song was even released as a single at the time and it was so popular it reached the Number 2 spot in the charts in England and made it to Number 1 in Scotland. In response the BBC banned the song. Here is the song with clips from the Wizard of Oz – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ySJtn6oCUA&ab_channel=cozyhollow .

6. In 1977 Queen Elizabeth II was celebrating 25 years as Queen and there were celebrations in her honour across Britain. On Jubilee Day, the culmination of the excitement, The Sex Pistols decided to perform their song GOD SAVE THE QUEEN while sailing down the Thames; the first line of the song is “God save the Queen, the fascist regime”. Despite the monarchists enjoying the day there were so many people in Britain experiencing anger and frustration as they navigated hard times and unemployment that the Sex Pistols’ recording of God Save the Queen reached Number One in the charts. Some radio stations were banned from playing the song. Here is a clip of this nautical performance and the disruption at the end when the band members are arrested – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-38GX2YQig&ab_channel=SexPistolsVEVO .

7. The song WE CAN BE TOGETHER by Jefferson Airplane contains the following lines about fomenting revolution: “In order to survive we steal cheat lie forge fuck hide and deal . . . We are forces of chaos and anarchy . . . Up against the wall, motherfucker . . . Tear down the walls”. The group performed the song unaltered on American television, on The Dick Cavett Show, however when the CD was released, their record company made a lyric change on the accompanying lyric sheet printing the word ‘fred’ in place of both ‘fuck’ and ‘motherfucker’. The printed lyrics were banned but the lyrics as sung were not.

8. BUTTERFLY BOYS. In 1974 the symphonic rock band Procol Harum was most unhappy about the way they were being treated by their record company, so when they recorded the album ‘Exotic Birds and Fruit’ that year, one of the tracks was called Butterfly Boys with lyrics such as: “They say we haven’t got a choice / refuse to recognize our voice / yet they enjoy commissions from the proceeds of the joke”. Much later two of the higher-ups at their record company, Chris Wright and Terry Ellis, suddenly realized what the song was really about. Their record company was Chrysalis Records (hence the butterfly reference) and Wright and Ellis were the butterfly boys. Wright and Ellis insisted Procol Harum re-record the song and change the title and lyric to ‘government boys’ but the band refused. Here’s the track (nice guitar solo at the 3 minute mark): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNk72AE4khM&ab_channel=DavidRequena

9. Then there was the case of a song that was censored though no one knows why. The song LOUIE LOUIE was composed in 1955 by Richard Berry, based on the Afro-Cuban song El Loco Cha Cha recorded by René Touzet. The Kingsmen had a hit with the song in 1963 and that’s when things went crazy. As music journalist James Marshall wrote, “All you need to make a great rock ‘n’ roll record are the chords to ‘Louie, Louie’ and a bad attitude.” The FBI investigated The Kingsmen over reports that the lyrics were obscene. They weren’t. Some also thought the song was about championing Communism. Besides the singer in the group could never remember the lyrics anyway so he usually just sort of mumbled random words in performance. Radio stations across the US banned the recording but after a 31 month investigation the FBI came up with nothing and the case was dropped. In 2005 an American marching band was not allowed to play the song so it had a surge in popularity again. To date there have been over 2000 cover recordings of the song by some estimates, and it was the last Number One hit in America before Beatlemania hit the US. When will the censors ever learn – banning a song often draws attention to that song that otherwise might have been ignored or quickly forgotten. The original recording was done in two takes at a cost of less than $50 so The Kingsmen must have profited enormously from the song’s success. Here’s the song – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfRZNNyQoF0&ab_channel=SmurfstoolsOldiesMusicTimeMachine .

10. The Kinks got into trouble when they released the song LOLA because the lyrics reference Coca-Cola so it broke the laws against naming commercial brands in song lyrics. I also wonder whether Coca-Cola was not happy with inclusion in a song that was awfully controversial back in 1970 (it was about a transvestite). In order to avoid trouble Ray Davies, in the U.S. at the time, flew all the way back to the U.K. just to record the lyrics to the song again changing “Coca-Cola” to “cherry cola”. Here’s a clip from 1971 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GP0X0CRMZLU&ab_channel=thevisitor .

11. Less than a month ago Les McCann died (on December 29, 2023). He was eighty-eight, and an accomplished painter and photographer, but what he did best was play piano and sing (world music, soul, funk, jazz). Like most African Americans in the mid-twentieth century, McCann was very successful in Europe and Africa and treated with greater respect there than in the US. In 1969 McCann co-wrote (with Eddie Harris) and recorded one of the more subtle protest songs, COMPARED TO WHAT performed live in Montreux, Switzerland. It was a big hit, and was released on the highly influential record ‘Swiss Movement’. The song has been covered more than 250 times. McCann was a very intelligent player, but his work is far more accessible than the technical complexities of Charlie Parker and John Coltrane. The lyrics of this song are particularly important. For example:

• this was four years before abortion became federal law in the US, and we get these lines: “Unreal values, crass distortion / unwed mothers need abortion”
• this was at the height of the Vietnam War and we get these lines: “The President he’s got his war, folks don’t know just what it’s for / Nobody gives us rhyme or reason, have one doubt and they call it treason”.

Perhaps the best part of the recording is the music. It sounds effortless but it’s difficult. There are great solos by Eddie Harris on tenor sax and Benny Bailey on trumpet. Notice, by the way, how in the first thirty seconds McCann is playing and is simultaneously looking around and directing the other musicians. There’s something else that impresses me even more, though. Most compositions are written in a particular key and they stay in that key till the end. In some cases the piece changes keys at some point but often returns to the original key. This process is called modulation so the vast majority of songs don’t modulate at all or only modulate twice. The track Penny Lane by The Beatles is unusual because it modulates six times. The track ‘Compared to What’ modulates eighteen times! Eighteen! Changing keys rapidly is like code switching and requires considerable cognitive discipline. After all that, here is the track from 55 years ago – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCDMQqDUtv4&ab_channel=riksurly .

FINALLY, THE FAB FOUR –

Many contrasted the safe Beatles (acceptable to parents) with the subversive Rolling Stones (unacceptable to parents) but it was never as simple as that. The Beatles drank alcohol, took illegal drugs, swore with the best of them, and cheated on their girlfriends (in Lennon’s case his wife) while their manager created a lovable Fab Four moptop image for the press and their fans.

The Beatles released drug songs which were banned in various places (e.g. A DAY IN THE LIFE; WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIENDS; LUCY IN THE SKY WITH DIAMONDS). As early as 1964 when they released their first feature film, A Hard Day’s Night, Lennon slips in a coy reference to hard drug use most viewers missed. Then in the song REVOLUTION Lennon advocates violent revolution. He had been trying to learn the intricacies of Marxist Dialectical Materialism from Tariq Ali.

After The Beatles broke up Paul McCartney’s pro-Irish song GIVE IRELAND BACK TO THE IRISH was banned in the UK and his song HI, HI, HI was banned for sexually suggestive lyrics. As a solo artist many of John Lennon’s songs were political, and some were banned. Lennon’s WORKING CLASS HERO was banned, perhaps because of its politics, or its use of the word “fucking” twice – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ve-mANenpC4&ab_channel=JohnLennonMusic .

Other highly political songs from Lennon which some might like to have seen banned: POWER TO THE PEOPLE, BORN IN A PRISON, LUCK OF THE IRISH, SUNDAY BLOODY SUNDAY (about the Bloody Sunday massacre in 1972), ATTICA STATE, and ANGELA (in praise of Angela Davis, who was a member of both the Black Panther Party and the Communist Party of the United States). Angela Davis is the only person to have had a song written and recorded by both The Rolling Stones and a Beatle (the Stones’ song Sweet Black Angel is also about Angela Davis).

BANNED AID – A guide to the banning of music – RACISM

This is the first in a series of five posts on the banning of music. Future posts:

• Part 2 – POLITICS
• Part 3 – ILLEGAL SUBSTANCES
• Part 4 – GENDER
• Part 5 – RELIGION

These posts will include lyrics containing strong language so that we are all aware of exactly how vile some songs are.

Would you ban this song? –

What about this song?

The first song contains the n-word, the second one doesn’t. Which song is more offensive? I know which one I find more offensive and it’s not the first one.

Beyoncé, much to her credit, voluntarily changed the line “Spazzin’ on that ass” from her song HEATED when she discovered that it referred to people suffering from Spastic Cerebral Palsy. But if one thinks it’s acceptable to mock the disabled (I’m looking at you Trump) then one would be fine with Beyoncé leaving her lyrics unchanged. John Lennon and Yoko Ono wrote WOMAN IS THE NIGGER OF THE WORLD but before they recorded and released it they went to several African-American political activists first and said that if the activists objected John and Yoko would re-write the lyric leaving out the n-word. You can hate John and Yoko and / or their music all you like but give credit where credit is due. Here are a dozen thoughts about lyric banning to keep in mind as one works through these five posts:

1. On what grounds should a lyric be banned?
2. Can a hateful lyric, perhaps combined with other factors, provoke violence against people? There is a great deal of both antisemitism and Islamophobia violence going on presently (December 2023) surrounding the Gaza-Israeli War. What might happen if Taylor Swift were to release an anti-Israel or an anti-Hamas song tomorrow?
3. Who decides? A Nazi isn’t about to ban a song lyric praising the Holocaust.
4. Consider context. The 1939 song Ding, Dong, The Witch is Dead from The Wizard of Oz contains nothing intrinsically offensive (set aside its misogynist misrepresentation of witches for a moment) but when the song was sung relentlessly at street celebrations and a recording of the song made it to the Number Two position in the charts when former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher died in 2013, it was banned by the BBC.
5. Consider time and place. In the 1960’s many songs advocating the use of illegal drugs, including cannabis, were banned. Today cannabis use is legal (I’m a Canadian).
6. Banning a lyric is an attempt to suppress its message but banning it calls attention to it, increasing the number of people who hear the song as people are curious about why the song was banned.
7. Therefore is it more effective to educate rather than ban, that is, point out the negative ramifications of harmful song lyrics, some of which might go unnoticed at first glance?
8. If someone is brought up in a healthy, diverse environment and they hear a racist song then they’ll denounce it, or ignore it, right? So is banning unnecessary?
9. Should racist songs be kept from minors rather than being universally banned? But there are some minors who could responsibly handle hearing racist lyrics, and some adults who are racist or prone to racism.
10. Offence varies with culture and demographic. Should we let someone from a racist or sexist culture or background decide which lyrics are offensive?
11. Banning lyrics often raises cries of suppression of free speech. How can we tell when those cries are justified?
12. Would it be all right to approve of a song lyric in which a character who is portrayed as villainous and nasty used a racist epithet? What do you think of this song in which the singer uses the n-word –https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVyhQ4qnWeY&ab_channel=RandyNewman-Topic .

Here is sheet music for the 1924 song THE BRIGHT FIERY CROSS by Alvia O. DeRee published in the US and glorifying the Ku Klux Klan – note the hooded figures gathered around the cross –

Any decision about how to use a racist term can only ethically be made by the group the racist term targets. Some African-American bands or singers include the n-word in their lyrics, e.g. DON’T CALL ME NIGGER, WHITEY (Sly and the Family Stone), LIVING IN THE CITY (Stevie Wonder), and ANTI-NIGGER MACHINE (Public Enemy). But there are other people who perceive this as a double standard. Such people may also display a sign reading ‘All Lives Matter’ in response to the Black Lives Matter movement thus missing the point completely. But things are not always simple. What if a songwriter creates a character in a song who is racist but the songwriter makes it clear that the character is someone to be condemned? If the songwriter has that character use the N-word is that acceptable if the songwriter is Caucasian? Some examples of songs which use the n-word in this way:

• The Rolling Stones – Sweet Black Angel
• Patti Smith – Rock-N-Roll N*****
• Bob Dylan – Hurricane
• Eyehategod – White N*****
• Dead Kennedys – Holiday in Cambodia
• Clawfinger – N*****
• Elvis Costello – Oliver’s Army – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrjHz5hrupA&ab_channel=ElvisCostelloVEVO
• Randy Newman – Rednecks (linked to above)
• Randy Newman – Christmas in Capetown (linked to above)

At least there have also been songs which are anti-racist. One that comes to mind is Gordon Lightfoot’s BLACK DAY IN JULY. It was released soon after the 1967 race riots in Detroit which lasted five days. 43 people died, 467 were injured, there were about 7200 arrests and more than 2000 buildings were damaged or destroyed. Lightfoot’s song was played quite a bit in Canada (Lightfoot is Canadian) but it was banned in the US. Here it is – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L07TKGjseyg&ab_channel=CrystalDawne . More than fifty years later George Floyd was murdered and Donald Trump called the Black Lives Matter movement a terror organization. Some examples of race-related lyric changes:

1. In 1955 Emmett Till, an African-American teenager visiting Mississippi, was alleged to have flirted with a white woman and as a result he was abducted, savagely tortured, and executed by white racists. At his funeral his mother insisted on an open casket so everyone could see how his face had been badly mutilated and his right eye had been dislodged from its socket. In 2013 African-American artists Future (Nayvadius Wilburn) and Lil Wayne (Dwayne Carter Jr.) released the song KARATE CHOP (REMIX) which contains these lines: “Bout to put rims on my skateboard wheels / Beat the pussy up like Emmett Till”. Later Lil Wayne apologized for trivializing a horrible event and changed the line. As far as I know, however, he was still fine with this use of the word ‘pussy’.
2. PUTTIN’ ON THE RITZ, written by Irving Berlin in 1927, is about poor blacks in Harlem dressing up and parading up and down Lenox Avenue to mock the rich whites elsewhere in New York City showing off their wealth. The lyrics express approval and admiration for the creative way in which poor New York blacks are making fun of rich New York whites. In 1946 Berlin rewrote the lyrics so that they meant the opposite of what they originally meant. The amended song is about how great the wealthy white socialites are and how envious everyone should be of them. Here is Fred Astaire’s rendition of the updated version – Astaire, and all of the dancers behind him, are white – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKPMk5_gStk&ab_channel=fredl and here is Tommy Tune’s version using the original lyrics. Tune is white but all of the dancers behind him are black. By the way, the song, meant to be rhythmically interesting, is in 8 / 8 time but see if you can spot the 7 / 8 bars cleverly thrown in to throw off the listener even further – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-xmVjr570k&ab_channel=jsnwse
3. In the original version of African-American Chuck Berry’s hit JOHNNY B. GOODE Johnny is described as a “little coloured boy” but Berry, under pressure, changed that to “little country boy”.
4. In 2011 Lady Gaga released BORN THIS WAY containing the lyric “No matter black, white or beige, chola, or Orient made”. But ‘chola’ is a variation of ‘cholo’, a derogatory term for people of mixed blood heritage in Latin America. When Orville Pick recorded his version of the song he changed the line to “No matter black, white or beige, Asian or Latinx made”, with Lady Gaga’s approval.
5. The Guns N Roses song ONE IN A MILLION on the CD ‘Appetite For Destruction’ contains the N-word as well as the word ‘faggot’, used in hate-filled ways, and the lyrics are also xenophobic. The words were written by Axel Rose, and Slash, the band’s lead guitarist, tried to stop Axel from releasing the track because of the lyrics but Slash was unsuccessful (Slash’s mother is African-American). Axel Rose was damned and determined to release the track.

Then there have been the times when the lyrics remained unchanged when perhaps they should have been banned. Many openly racist songs have been deemed quite acceptable when they first appeared in early twentieth century America, for example:

• N***** BOYS – by Eugene Engel
• UNDERNEATH THE HARLEM MOON – by Mack Gordon and Harry Revel
• NEVER TRUST A N***** WITH A GUN – by C.S. Livingston and J.G. Lewis
• YOU’SE JUST A LITTLE N***** STILL YOUSE MINE ALL MINE – by Paul Dresser
• THE BRIGHT FIERY CROSS – by Alvia O. DeRee
• AN AWFUL WICKED N***** – by S.B. Alexander and Summit L. Hecht
• DAR’LL BE A N***** MISSIN’ – by Lew Bloom
• RUN, MISTER N***** – by Frank J. Kent and Henry E. Lower
• DANGEROUS BLACK MAN – by Irving Jones
• PICCANINNY’S TEARS by Cesare Celani
• SAMBO’S HUNTING SONG by Richard Coerdeler
• ALL COONS LOOK ALIKE TO ME by Ernest Hogan and Richard Morton

Stephen Foster’s song OH! SUSANNA has been covered by many people (e.g. James Taylor – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J63ZQqa-VCQ&ab_channel=GaryLarson ), however in the second verse there is a description of an industrial accident that “killed five hundred n****** ” by electrocution”. In the 1960’s, as a reaction to the Civil Rights Movement, Clifford Trahan, using the name Johnny Rebel, recorded songs full of the n-word, songs that voiced support for racial segregation, the Ku Klux Klan and the Confederacy. Here are the titles of some of Trahan’s recordings:

• KAJUN KU KLUX KLAN
• N*****, N*****
• COON TOWN
• WHO LIKES A N*****?
• N*****-HATIN’ ME
• SOME N****** NEVER DIE (THEY JUST SMELL THAT WAY)
• MOVE THEM N****** NORTH

The German neo-Nazi band Landser covered Trahan’s song Coon Town under the title Kreuzberg in 1997. The word ‘Kreuz’ means ‘cross’ in German.

Uncle Dave Macon (1870 – 1952) was a popular country singer known as the Grandfather of Country Music. He was a banjo player, comedian, singer, songwriter, Vaudevillian and star of the Grand Old Opry. Two of the pallbearers at his funeral were Roy Acuff and Bill Monroe. Many of Macon’s songs were pretty uncontroversial, but he also released a song called RUN, N*****, RUN. David Allan Coe is a country singer born back in 1939 who has had a checkered career, including run-ins with the Internal Revenue Service over unpaid taxes. He has recorded many songs and one of them was titled N***** LOVER. Musical racism is not restricted to the United States either. The 1932 British song THE SUN HAS GOT HIS HAT ON by Noel Gay and Ralph Butler, Caucasian both, also uses the n-word.

The abduction of black Africans during the Slave Trade is trivialized and romanticized in the song BROWN SUGAR (by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards) released by The Rolling Stones with these lyrics: “Gold Coast slave ship bound for cotton fields . . . Skydog slaver knows he’s doin’ all right / hear him whip the women just around midnight . . . Brown Sugar, how come you taste so good / Brown Sugar, just like a young girl should” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxXV2UftL7Q&ab_channel=Sound%26Vision .

Finally, in the song SOME GIRLS, again released by The Rolling Stones and written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, the band generalizes unflatteringly about French, Italian, American, Chinese and English ‘girls’, and Jagger sings: “Black girls just wanna get fucked all night, I just don’t have that much jam”. This song was released on the album Some Girls released in 1978. One would have thought that by then the Stones would have known better. Some people at the time noticed the racism but most people did not. It’s like reading old James Bond novels and being embarrassed that one didn’t notice the blatant racism when they first read the novels when they first came out. Then there is the antisemitism in old Ngaio Marsh novels, and Agatha Christie’s murder mystery ‘Ten Little Niggers’ whose title was changed to ‘Then There Were None’ for the American market. Don’t talk to me about the good old days.

Do not go gentle into that good night

EUBIE BLAKE (1887 – 1983)
By Unknown author – This image has been downloaded on English Wikipedia by en:user:Emerson7 from the website of the the U.S. Library of Congress at [1], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3943796

• “In me thou seest the glowing of such fire
• That on the ashes of his youth doth lie”
• – William Shakespeare, Sonnet 73, lines 9-10

A few quick thoughts on creativity. I can’t believe I’m saying this in November 2023 but less than a week ago The Beatles released a NEW record, and a week before that The Rolling Stones released an album of NEW material. The leader of The Beatles, John Lennon, died 43 years ago, and the lead guitarist, George Harrison, died 22 years ago, but they’re both on this new record. Brian Jones, Charlie Watts and Ian Stewart, three original Rolling Stones, are all deceased but the Stones keep Rolling. Both new records are OK but not great. Ringo Starr is eighty-three and Paul McCartney is eighty-one, Mick Jagger is eighty and Keith Richards will turn eighty next month. The Beatles first five albums were full of forgettable music, the early Stones stuff was better but not that great – their best stuff came later. So, when is one most active and creative during one’s lifetime? That depends on how you define active and creative.

One can be active and creative at any age even if one isn’t at the head of the class. In my teens and twenties I participated in political demonstrations, protests, attempts at public education and so on. In my thirties and forties I was doing boring behind the scenes but productive political stuff as a member of various community organizations. I’ve slowed down physically lately but I hope that I’m more effective at political analysis than previously because of my accumulated experiences and ongoing reading and talking to others. I’ve also been a multi-instrumentalist, composer, and active musician my entire life.

NIGERIAN MASTER DRUMMER TONY ALLEN IN OSLO AT THE AGE OF 75
By Tore Sætre – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=42566184

To return to music, some great musicians, similarly, may slow down physically with age but their accumulated musical experiences, and life experiences, can lead to a deeper, more subtle, more substantive level of music in their later years. In that sense they are as creative as they ever were. In the last decade of Bach’s life he composed what I think is his greatest work, The Goldberg Variations. He also did the final revisions of the St. Matthew Passion which is arguably one of the greatest if not the greatest musical composition ever created. Beethoven, though he was deaf at the time, began composing his greatest work, the Ninth Symphony, just five years before he died. Jazz legend Benny Goodman was still performing into his seventies, Dave Brubeck was still performing into his eighties, Eubie Blake was still performing into his nineties. The great Nigerian drummer Tony Allen who invented Afrobeat was still recording albums at the age of eighty in 2020 the year he died. Many of the old blues musicians also kept performing most of their lives.

JON LORD IN 2007
By Menerbes – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6228696

Rock musician Gary Brooker (Procol Harum) was performing into his seventies, Steve Winwood (Traffic, Blind Faith) was still performing this year a week before his seventy-fifth birthday, the greatest of the rock drummers (IMHO), Ginger Baker (Cream), was still touring in 2014 at the age of seventy-five. Jon Lord, the greatest of the rock keyboardists (IMHO), who started out as a founding member of the heavy metal band Deep Purple, released the last of his large scale classical compositions, To Notice Such Things, a six movement suite for solo flute, piano and string orchestra, two months before his sixty-ninth birthday, about two years before his death in 2012. Roger Waters (Pink Floyd) is eighty and he is still touring, headlining concerts in front of massive audiences using enormous multi-sensory technology.

THE TEMPEST, ACT I SCENE ii, FERDINAND COURTING MIRANDA – CALIBAN ON THE FAR RIGHT
By William Hogarth – 1. The Yorck Project (2002) 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei (DVD-ROM), distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH. ISBN: 3936122202.2. frankzumbach.wordpress.com, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=152823

In terms of other disciplines, I remember my secondary school English teacher telling me that though Shakespeare’s most famous work was Hamlet, his most thoughtful and nuanced work was The Tempest which was written in 1610-1611 near the end of his life. In the process of completing my Masters in Philosophy I discovered that though Plato’s most famous work was the Republic, arguably his greatest work was his last and longest dialogue, the Laws. The last book that George Orwell wrote shortly before he died was arguably his greatest work, Nineteen Eighty-Four. Karl Marx was still working on his magnum opus, Das Kapital, when he died and volumes 2 and 3 were published posthumously. Ronald Reagan began the first of two terms of his American presidency when he was seventy. Bertrand Russell, one of the greatest logicians in the twentieth century, received his Nobel Prize for Literature (not Peace) when he was 78, and he went to jail when he was 89 for participating in an anti-nuclear arms race demonstration. Of course I am a senior citizen myself so I am biased.

So, sometimes it’s just nice to listen to something a musician created as a senior citizen if only because it reminds one of that musician’s other great works from years past.

Do not go gentle into that good night

Rage, rage, against the dying of the light

– Dylan Thomas

GHOST STORY 13 – They Are Afraid of Us Because We Are Not Afraid of Them

AN IFRIT GHOST NAMED ARGHAN DIV
By Unknown author – Online Collection of Brooklyn Museum; Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 24.47_front_IMLS_SL2.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10959147

A series of posts about important people long ago whose names are either forgotten, or were never well-known in the first place. The posts may also deal with little known aspects of the lives of famous people no longer alive.

You have probably heard of environmental activists Greta Thunberg and Naomi Klein, but there are others, no longer with us, who you may not have heard of. Some have even sacrificed their lives for the environmental movement.

BERTA CÁCERES
By UN Environment – ONU Brasil – https://vimeo.com/214055225, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=75284769

BERTA CACERES

In 2013 Honduran environmental activist Berta Cáceres wrote: “The army has an assassination list of 18 wanted human rights fighters with my name at the top . . . I take lots of care but in the end . . . when they want to kill me, they will do it.” After years of death threats, on the night of March 2, 2016 armed intruders entered her home and killed her. Within a month of the killing two other environmental activists were also murdered in Honduras.

As a student activist Berta Cáceres protested illegal logging, plantation owners, and the illegal presence of U.S. military bases on indigenous land. Later she became the co-founder and coordinator of the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras. The Goldman Environmental Prize was given to her for her grassroots campaign which successfully pressured the largest dam builder in the world to abandon plans to build the Agua Zarca Dam at the Rio Gualcarque. The dam builders had broken international law in not first consulting the indigenous inhabitants of the area, and the dam, one of four, would harm the environment and compromise indigenous access to water, food and material for medicine. The campaign succeeded but it took a long time, three protesters died and three were seriously injured in the process.

One of Berta Cáceres’ favourite expressions was “They are afraid of us because we are not afraid of them.”

ENRIQUETA MEDELLIN (1948 – 2022)

Medellin was a Mexican surgeon and environmentalist, focusing particularly on the relationship between disease and the environment. She had a degree as a surgeon from the National Autonomous University of Mexico specializing in human genetics, and has also studied environmental education and management. She also participated in humanitarian aid projects following the 1985 Mexico City earthquake.

MEXICO CITY EARTHQUAKE 1985
Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10821360

She founded the Ecological Consciousness organization in 1992 which set up the first recycling operation in Mexico as well as raising awareness about waste disposal and preserving the environment. It also organized protests against environmentally harmful development projects. Medellin was the first person to be awarded the state prize for Environmental Merit in 2006, and she received Mexico’s highest environmental award, the Ecological Merit Award, in 2012. She received various other awards and honours as well, and recognition for her work on clean water, habitat preservation and tree planting initiatives.

STATUE OF RACHEL CARSON AT THE MUSEO ROCSEN, ARGENTINA. NOTICE THE CAT.
By LFSM – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4110663

RACHEL CARSON (1907 – 1964)

I’m not sure how many people today know of Rachel Carson. She was well known when I was a teenager but that was over sixty years ago so I’m going to include her in this post. Carson was a marine biologist whose trilogy of books Under The Sea Wind, The Sea Around Us, and The Edge of the Sea were all bestsellers. However her 1962 book Silent Spring had an enormous impact on the environmental movement. Despite fierce opposition from chemical companies against its publication the book, focusing on pollution, led to a nationwide ban on pesticides, including DDT. It also helped create a grassroots movement which was strong enough to lead to the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Carson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her work.

She graduated from John Hopkins University with a Masters degree in Zoology in 1932 and had been invited to get a Ph.D. but had to drop out due to a lack of finances – this was during The Great Depression. In 1936 she joined the Bureau of Fisheries as an Aquatic Biologist having outscored all other applicants when she took the Civil Service exam. This was the beginning of a long career of effective writing and rigorous research on environmental issues.

WANGARI MAATHAI (1940 – 2011)

Kenyan activist Maathai’s story is a long and complicated one. She was the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, and when she received a Ph.D. from the University of Nairobi she became the first woman and East and Central Africa to do so. She was a Member of Parliament, and the Assistant Minister for the Environment and Natural Resources, and so much more. She was also an author and intellectual whose published works dealt with the philosophy of ecology, and she received the Goldman Environmental Prize. But perhaps her most important achievement was the establishment of the Green Belt Movement.

WANGARI MAATHAI 2005
By Kingkongphoto & http://www.celebrity-photos.com from Laurel Maryland, USA – Wangari Maathai 2004 Nobel Peace prize winner, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=75053665

Maathai set up the Green Belt Movement in 1977 to address environmentally-related concerns for rural Kenyan women. The organization paid poor rural women to plant tree seedlings throughout the country. In order to encourage literacy the organization also paid people to keep accurate records of the seedlings planted. In 1986 the movement expanded across Africa and led to the formation of the Pan-African Green Belt Network. This organization successfully combated desertification, deforestation and water crises. Maathai also organized many other environmental initiatives.

Throughout her career she had to face a great deal of misogyny because women were generally expected to stay at home and have babies in Kenya, but that never stopped her. As a pro-democracy activist in Kenya as well she was on a government list of assassination targets. She was also charged and jailed for her political activities at one point but international pressure resulted in all charges being dropped.

PENNY WHETTON (1958 – 2018)

Penelope Whetton was an Australian climatologist and her area of expertise was regional climate change projections. She had a Ph.D. from the University of Melbourne and became a researcher in the Department of Geography in Victoria in the late 1980’s. Later she became the Lead Author on several climate assessment reports put out by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and it was in that role that she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. She has been a popular speaker at conferences of environmental issues and published numerous article in scientific journals as well as contributing to popular publications.

Whetton lived with her wife Janet Rice, a Greens Senator and former mayor of Maribymong, and they have two sons. In 2003 she underwent sex reassignment surgery. Here is a two minute visit with Penny Whetton and Janet Rice – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVSiEAszFk4&ab_channel=EliasClure

KATHARINE GILES (1978 – 2013)

Giles was a British climate scientist researching sea ice cover, ocean circulation and wind patterns. She was given first class honours for her degree in earth and space science at University College, London, and earned her Ph.D. in 2005. She performed the first ground-based experiments to demonstrate how to use satellite altimetery to monitor the thickness of sea ice. At the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling she used the European Remote-Sensing Satellite and Envisat to prove that fresh water in the Arctic was due to an intensification of the winds in the Beaufort Gyre. She also showed that between 2003 and 2012 the Arctic sea ice volume in the winter had decreased by 9%.

POLAR BEAR ON ARCTIC SEA ICE
By No machine-readable author provided. Polarbear~commonswiki assumed (based on copyright claims). – No machine-readable source provided. Own work assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=693376

There are those on the right who are aggressive climate change deniers. There are formidable corporate interests which stand to lose billions if climate scientists are to be taken seriously. It was soon after she was appointed lecturer at University College, London, that Katharine Giles was assassinated, at least that is the claim of Peter Wadhams, professor of Ocean Physics and Head of the Polar Ocean Physics Group in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge. Giles, and her colleagues Seymour Laxon and Tim Boyd all died within the first few months of 2013. Giles was thirty-five when she died.

IDELISA BONNELLY (1932 – 2022)

Born in the Dominican Republic Bonnelly moved to New York in order to study marine biology and she completed her Masters at New York University in 1961. She returned to the Dominican Republic where she established the country’s first institute for the study of biology. In 1966 she also established the Research Centre for Marine Biology, and in 1974 the Academy of Sciences of the Dominican Republic. She also published influential works on the conservation of marine resources, and she created the first protected area for the humpback whale.

Over the years she was given a variety of awards and prizes, and in 1991 she created the Dominican Foundation for Marine Research. She was also a member of The Organization for Women in Science for the Developing World. She died in 2022 at the age of 90.

A BREACHING HUMPBACK WHALE
By Even Neuhaus (6.2.1863-20.4.1946) – http://www5.kb.dk/images/billed/2010/okt/billeder/object11164/da/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=90160922

PREVIOUS GHOST STORIES:

1 – Houdini’s Secret Army and The Decline of Democracy – https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2022/11/19/ghost-story-1-houdinis-secret-army-and-the-decline-of-democracy/

2 – The Power of the Spirit (Sophie Scholl, Stephen Biko, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Oscar Romero) – https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2022/11/25/ghost-story-2-the-power-of-the-spirit/

3 – A Slaughterhouse, a Melancholy Dane, an Impossible Cat and a Cambridge Apostle (Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Richard Burton, Niels Bohr, Frank Ramsey) – https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2022/12/02/ghost-story-3-a-slaughterhouse-a-melancholy-dane-an-impossible-cat-and-a-cambridge-apostle/

4 – Tickling the Ivories 1 (Jon Lord, James Booker, Dave Brubeck, Leon Russell, Oscar Peterson, Gary Brooker, Oscar Levant, Teddy Wilson, Jess Stacy and Glenn Gould) –

GHOST STORY 4 – Tickling the Ivories 1

5 – Tickling the Ivories 2 (Cleo Brown, Hazel Scott, Nina Simone, Alice Herz-Sommer, Myra Hess, Lil Hardin, Maria Mozart, Hiromi Uehara and Yuja Wang) –

GHOST STORY 5 – Tickling the Ivories 2

6 – Marching to Different Drums (Ginger Baker, B.J.Wilson, Chick Webb, Levon Helm, Gene Krupa, Charlie Watts, Keith Moon, Baby Dodds, Joe Morello, John Bonham and Tony Allen (Yuriko Seki, Matt Chamberlain, Ringo Starr) –

GHOST STORY 6 – Marching to Different Drums

7 – Quantum realities, electromagnetism, genetic insights and the transfinite (Werner Heisenberg, James Clerk Maxwell, Gregor Mendel and Georg Cantor) –

GHOST STORY 7 – Quantum Realities, Electromagnetism, Genetic Insights and The Transfinite

8 – Hats off to Antoine-Joseph Sax (David Bowie, John Coltrane, Fela Kuti, Charlie Parker, Frankie Trumbauer, Sam Butera, Don Redman, Leroi Moore, Paul Desmond and Dick Parry) –

GHOST STORY 8 – Hats Off to Antoine-Joseph Sax

9. More Complicated Than It Looks

GHOST STORY 9 – More Complicated Than It Looks

10. Immortal Music / Extraordinary Mortals (Richard Rodgers, Georges Bizet, Larry Adler, Marlene Dietrich) –

GHOST STORY 10 – Immortal Music / Extraordinary Mortals

11. Political Metaphysics

GHOST STORY 11 – Political Metaphysics

12. By Which We Measure Our Pain

GHOST STORY 12 – God is a concept by which we measure our pain

IS DEMOCRACY ON THE DECLINE IN THE U.S. ? – It’s complicated, and important.

STATUE OF LIBERTY
By Vrysxy – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12569772

PARADES OF GREY-SUITED GRAFTERS, A CHOICE OF CANCER AND POLIO (M.Jagger, K.Richard)

I read last week that Marjorie Taylor-Greene is the most probable choice to be the running mate of Ron DeSantis in the 2024 Presidential election in the United States. I live in Canada and what happens in the United States indirectly affects what happens here. Given how there is also talk about Republicans abandoning Trump, will they embrace DeSantis (who is as nasty as Trump but smarter), will DeSantis / Greene win in 2024? The democrats don’t seem to have a strong candidate in the wings, Biden is not particularly good at his job and his popularity waxes and wanes. Unfortunately the people who should be President of the United States, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or perhaps Elizabeth Warren (but not Hilary Clinton) are probably not electable. So, if DeSantis / Greene are victorious, will they act in accordance with what the majority of the people in America want? I doubt it. This is not democracy in action.

“It’s here the family’s broken, and it’s here the lonely say, that the heart has got to open in a fundamental way”

DEMOCRACY – Leonard Cohen – with an excellent backing band including Dino Soldo on mouth harp and the great Webb Sisters (Charley and Hattie) on vocals.

We hear quite a bit these days about the dangerous rapid decline of democracy in the United States. Are these alarmist exaggerations or is there some substance to the claims? After all democracy is declining pretty quickly in places like Poland and Hungary. Democracy is gone in North Korea, and I don’t think it was ever there in China. But what about the United States? When in doubt, look at the data:

In recent years some countries have become more democratic but others have become less, a process known as autocratization. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), the research division of the UK-based company that publishes the highly esteemed newspaper The Economist, in 2016 the United States slipped down from being a ‘Full Democracy’ to being a ‘Flawed Democracy’. Will this trend continue? When did the factors causing this to happen first begin to emerge?

Donald Trump expressed his wish to have five African-American teenagers executed, after those same teenagers had been proven innocent of a crime they had been accused of. He bragged of sexually attacking women. He was known to refuse to pay workers for work done. And so many other things. All this before the 2016 election. I like to think that the number of Americans who disapprove of this behaviour outnumber those who are okay with it. Yet he won in 2016. Yes, I know that Hilary Clinton received three million more votes than Trump but the Trump victory stood. As it was it was disgusting that he got as many votes as he did given that he was not only nasty, but incompetent. The will of the people was not reflected in the 2016 election. We can thank the Electoral College, and the Primaries, for that.

This week eleven people died in a mass shooting in California, then a few days later seven more people died in a second mass shooting. Then there was Uvalde, and Sandy Hook, and so many others, including many incidents of individual handgun-related murders, accidental deaths and suicides. I know that the pro-gun lobby say that they are as appalled as the anti-gun lobby at these killings but there is hard and fast evidence that the pro-gun lobby’s assertions regarding how to stop these killings are simply wrong. On the other hand polls tell us that the majority of Americans want tougher gun control legislation. No such legislation exists. The will of the people has been stymied again and lots of people are dying unnecessarily because of it. One could also talk about reproductive rights, capital punishment and other issues. The United States is clearly not democratic. What’s going on?

I have heard it argued that when the United States was born it was anything but a democracy. For a start, all women, and all African-Americans had no legal right to the vote. African-Americans were in fact designated as being three-fifths of a human being. Some would say that the American nation was founded by a group of rich white males whose aim was to maintain their own power and control over the economy and the populace in general. Eight of the early presidents were slave owners, for example. That’s a complicated matter for a separate post. It is true, however, that lies have been circulated regarding the founding fathers, a group of flawed human beings worshipped as minor gods by many Americans. Many of the founding fathers were deists, for example, and they also may not have had the best interests of the average person in mind when they designed their new nation. Even if one grants that the United States at least attempted to become more democratic over the centuries since its inception, there are signs that it is no longer doing so. People have suggested various points at which the United States ceased to aspire toward democracy and started to become an autocracy:

1. The pardoning of Richard Nixon after Watergate
2. Letting Ronald Reagan off the hook after Contragate
3. The Supreme Court stealing the presidency from Al Gore
4. President Obama letting the banks off the hook in 2008 followed by the creation of the Tea Party Movement in 2009
5. The election of Donald Trump

Why didn’t people riot in the streets when Nixon was pardoned? He was pardoned by the Republican Party. Why, after the pardon, didn’t every eligible voter (except the few who were on Nixon’s side) who voted in an election for Senate, House of Representative, Governor, Dog Catcher and so on simply refuse to vote for a Republican? The same with Trump and all the rest. Some of the phenomena which work to undermine democracy:

1. Neoliberalism
2. Neoconservatism
3. Government support for the interests of corporations coupled with anti-union activity
4. The loosening of campaign finance laws (e.g. the Citizens United decision)
5. Rising inequality in wealth and political influence
6. The rise of Christian nationalism / white supremacy
7. The erosion of reproductive rights
8. The rise of the conservative judiciary (assisted by the Federalist Society)
9. The refusal to accept legitimate electoral outcomes
10. Voter suppression
11. Lack of meaningful gun control legislation
12. Increasing intolerance toward the LGBTQI community
13. The influence of Fox News, Newsmax and One America News

Are any or all of these things happening in the United States? Are they happening with greater frequency and intensity than previously? Will they continue to happen?

On the other hand, what does democracy look like? What forms can democracy take, and are those forms commonplace in the United States? Are they diminishing? How present are they compared with other countries? Democratic institutions and practices include freedom of expression, freedom of the press, freedom of speech and internet democracy for a start, all of which will help to ensure that the electorate are well informed so that they can vote in their own interest. Other aspects of democracy include freedom of assembly and association, freedom of religion, inclusiveness, consent of the governed, voting rights and minority rights.

Dilemmas also arise. What if the voice of some of the people want to take away the voice of some other people? According to a Jardina and Mickey poll in 2022 approximately a third of Americans want “a strong leader who doesn’t have to bother with Congress or elections”, and approximately one quarter were actually in favour of military rule. If those minorities become majorities than the United States will have become de facto anti-democratic. Are the people expressing these views working against their own self-interest? Is it tribal warfare we’re talking about?

Furthermore, in recent years many voters in the United States have complained quite justifiably that there’s not a lot of point in voting if both choices are terrible (or if their vote isn’t even counted). Of course it is still essential to vote despite lack of choice since a nasty powerful politician can be far worse for the citizenry than a mediocre politician. Though third parties have come and gone, with little effect and staying power, there remain only two choices, Democrats or Republicans. In Canada there are three viable parties federally and even more regionally. So in the United States many eligible voters stay at home.

“Spare a thought for the stay-at-home voter, His empty eyes gaze at strange beauty shows”

SALT OF THE EARTH – The Rolling Stones back in the day when they were much more political, and worth listening to. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOiLH-2hTPQ&ab_channel=ABKCOVEVO

But all is not lost. Many Americans are pushing back against those attempting to dismantle their democracy. I have just finished reading ‘One Person, No Vote; by Carol Anderson. It does a comprehensive job of detailing and analysing the process of voter oppression primarily against African-Americans, but also against the poor generally, in the United States. Despite the long and bloody history of preventing African-Americans from voting, an oppressive process carried out with more subtlety now than in previous decades but still going on, I was impressed by the response to those anti-democratic initiatives. The African-American response has been well-organized, determined, strong and courageous, with many lives lost along the way, but it has also had considerable success. There is presently a long list of organizations working skilfully to dismantle voter suppression. This is impressive.

Throughout history there have been attempts to establish democracies but remember that many states that called themselves democracies, and had legislation promoting democracy, were democratic in name only, and their pro-democracy laws were either never enforced, or enforced selectively only against the poor and minorities. It was not uncommon for political leaders to pretend to lead democratically as a way of keeping people from rebelling when in fact they knew, and were all right with the moneyed classes, and, as capitalism developed, the corporate elites, pulling the strings behind the scenes.

Things are not always what they seem. Back when it was a country, the extremely undemocratic East Germany’s official name was ‘Deutsche Demokratische Republik (German Democratic Republic)’. In Russia Vladimir Lenin basically invented what has been called democratic centralism in 1902 (in his work ‘What Is To Be Done?’) but Russia has been not just undemocratic but anti-democratic for about a century. By the way Russia also calls itself Communist but according to classical Marxist theory Russia has been very uncommunistic for over a century as well. It is categorized as Authoritarian by the EIU.

“I support the left, though I’m leaning to the right”

POLITICIAN – Cream – 2005

Democratic centralism is also specifically enshrined in the Constitution of present day China (Article 3) but there isn’t very much democracy in China. It became somewhat less autocratic with the clandestine ground-breaking appearance of anti-collectivist music by Cui Jian, the emergence of yaogun into the mainstream, and the rise of bands such as Tang Dynasty and Cobra. However, China is still anything but democratic. It is categorized as Authoritarian by the EIU.

“Boss man, Boss man, what do you say, gonna get you alone in the mine some day”:

BOSS MAN – Gordon Lightfoot

Some have also declared that capitalism is by its nature undemocratic, and those in power in the United States have taken capitalism to whole new levels. It’s certainly true that advanced capitalism is anti-union and would never abide by phenomena such as worker-owned businesses. Capitalism is based on private ownership of the means of production designed to generate profit. It requires competitive markets and if they can’t be found domestically then you end up with imperialism and colonialism (and the mass murder and atrocities that often go with them), and the exploitation of foreign labour to the detriment of domestic workers. Capitalism also gives us periodic depressions and recessions – it’s built into the system. The rampant materialism of profit-driven corporatism has invaded the political sphere and things like human rights, economic equality and an equitable distribution of power and influence have all been ignored. And how exactly do advanced monopoly capitalist regimes maintain control, and keep the dissenters in the Labour Movement, and the spiritual leaders in the Liberation Theology Movement, from making progress in their attempts to dismantle corporate networks? The methods of the powers that be often include misdirection and racism, cynicism, even patriotic armed conflict:

MISDIRECTION

“To keep up his hate, so he never thinks straight, ‘bout the shape that he’s in”

ONLY A PAWN IN THEIR GAME – Bob Dylan (Note: Medgar Evers was a prominent Civil Rights activist who was the victim of assassination)

CYNICISM

“ ‘Til the pain is so big you feel nothing at all”

WORKING CLASS HERO – John Lennon

PATRIOTIC ARMED CONFLICT

“The patriot’s dream is as old as the sky, it lives in the lust of a cold callous lie”

THE PATRIOT’S DREAM – Gordon Lightfoot

That’s unregulated capitalism, and deregulation gathered steam under President Reagan and has continued to thrive under more recent Republican regimes. But what about regulated capitalism? Or mixed economies and socialist financial structures? The word ‘socialism’ is one of those words, like ‘democracy’ itself, which is an umbrella term for a wide range of possibilities. Socialism, if nothing else, is clearly more democratic than straight capitalism given that the nations that hover around the top of the list of the world’s most democratic states are at least partially socialist. By the way, many right wing politicians also equate socialism with communism, of course, intentionally, as a scare tactic, when they are in fact quite different. American conservatives also talk about dangerous leftists in the Democratic Party when in fact the Democratic Party in America is to the right of centre on the Canadian political spectrum. It is laughable.

There are some who are not in favour of democracy. Plato didn’t believe in democratic ideals at all. He was a great philosopher, but guess who he thought should be in charge of society? Philosophers. What a surprise. Read all about Philosopher Kings (not the Canadian rock band) in Plato’s ‘Republic’ (Part III, Book V, Chapter XVIII). However democracy to my mind is the best way to go but to do that you need to have an electorate who have been trained in critical thinking at school, who have access to complete and accurate information about the political environment, and who are incentivised to use that information. People need to know how to vote in their own best interest. They need to vote using logic not emotion, policies not personalities.

But not to despair. Democracy is still alive and kicking in the world. According to the Varieties of Democracy Institute (an independent research institute) which has ranked nations on scales of electoral democracy, participatory democracy, liberal democracy, deliberative democracy and egalitarian democracy, the five most democratic nations in the world are, in descending order, Denmark, Sweden, Costa Rica, Norway and New Zealand. Other countries in the top twenty include Canada, Finland, the United Kingdom, Ireland and The Netherlands. These are all categorized as full democracies. Number thirty-three on the list is the United States, lower than countries such as Argentina and Slovakia. The EIU ranks Canada at 12, with the United States at twenty-six on the list of the most democratic nations.

So, time will tell whether the United States can move from being a Flawed Democracy back up into the Full Democracy category, or whether it will continue down the road to autocracy. For now:

“You mothafuckas owe me, Grandma told me, Get your money black man”)

THIS IS AMERICA – Childish Gambino (2018)

“When I think of the road we’re travelling on, I wonder what’s gone wrong”

AMERICAN TUNE – Paul Simon (1975)

I don’t know what to think when all is said and done. I see millions of American voters elect an openly boastful sexual predator, a grifter and racist, to be president in 2016. I see far too much racism, misogyny and xenophobia on the rise. The electorate are grasping at straws. But I also see plenty of anonymous Americans working hard to push back against the decline of democracy. The undemocratic legal framework in place, the cultural impetus to be cynical and resigned, the widespread misinformation being disseminated, and the growing economic inequality designed to distract people from an accurate assessment of the power structure, all make it difficult to make progress.

“Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried” – Winston Churchill, Nov. 11, 1947, in the House of Commons

I am no fan of Churchill. He was a racist, an imperialist and a staunch monarchist, but I give him full credit for this quote. After capably leading Britain to victory in World War Two as Prime Minister he was voted out of office democratically in 1945 when the British citizenry in their wisdom voted Clement Attlee in as Prime Minister for Labour. This quote comes after Churchill’s defeat. No complaints from him about election fraud.

I’d recommend something revolutionary except that all the revolutions I’m aware of ultimately failed. The Russian Revolution in 1917, and the revolution in China in 1949, led to disaster and tragedy on a massive scale despite good intentions. Better not to heed Elton John’s advice (burn down the mission). If you decide to stage a second American Revolution, good luck to you.

“There’ll be fighting in the streets, with our children at our feet”

WON’T GET FOOLED AGAIN – The Who in 2000 – with Noel Gallagher of Oasis – at the Royal Albert Hall:

Music Left and Right Redux

My last post brought up an issue which is fascinating and important so this is a follow-up to address those musical issues at greater length, and talk about them in a non-musical content as well. Is it important to differentiate the non-musical views of a composer and the quality or appeal of that composer’s work? That is the question. There are many examples of musical recordings I admire and love by people who I disagree with non-musically and it would be a surprise if that was not the case. These things lie on a continuum, however, and the question becomes whether a sufficient change in quantity ever creates a change in quality.

Many great musical figures are devoutly religious, for example Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frederick Handel, Ludwig van Beethoven, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Louis Armstrong, Dave Brubeck, Johnny Cash and on and on. The greatest single musical composition that I have ever come across, in my opinion, is The Goldberg Variations by the devoutly religious Johann Sebastian Bach ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gv94m_S3QDo&ab_channel=kanfoosj ). I am not devoutly religious. That’s irrelevant. The Beatles came up with some great stuff and the de facto leader, John Lennon, was an atheist, while the lead guitarist, George Harrison, was a serious follower of the Hindu faith. On a less serious level, Procol Harum have come up with some excellent music (Repent Walpurgis, Crucifixion Lane and Pilgrim’s Progress) ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNag2W9yFBU ) but the leader and primary composer, Gary Brooker, is a standard issue conservative who has actively supported the upper class spectacle called the Fox Hunt. I still love Procol Harum’s music.

I love recordings such as Salt of the Earth, Factory Girl and You Can’t Always Get What You Want by the Rolling Stones, ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlZ1o1EIA9s&ab_channel=ABKCOVEVO ) but the Stones were a bunch of unapologetic misogynists, Bill Wyman loved underage females, and Mick Jagger treated his first wife terribly. For a good, detailed analysis of Jagger’s misogyny see ‘Betwixt and Between: The Travesties of Mick Jagger’ by Manon Steiner in the anthology Under My Thumb: Songs That Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them edited by Rhian E. Jones and Eli Davies. This particular collection gets right to the point. It is not a straightforward book that simply condemns woman-hating lyrics (and some of them are pretty extreme) and the people who write those lyrics. It tries instead to get a handle on how it is possible for women to love misogynist music, even women with feminist insights.

As Em Smith writes, in another essay from the book (‘It was a Different Time: Negotiating With the Misogyny of Heroes’) – “The Velvet Underground appeal was already entrenched in so much of what I loved, so then came the tricky business of separating my feelings about the treatment of women and my feelings about the creation of great art” (page 61) after she referenced the line “You’d better hit her” from the Velvet Underground song There She Goes Again. The question becomes how serious do the unethical behaviours have to be before the music is ruined. David Bowie had sex with an underage girl (fifteen year old Lori Maddox) and Iggy Pop had sex with Sable Starr when she was thirteen. In my earlier post I condemned Ted Nugent for his song Jail bait about wanting to have sex with a thirteen year old girl. Mick Jagger in concerts also talked approvingly of bedding a thirteen year old.

I would list the album Wheels of Fire by Cream as one of my ten favourite albums. Eric Clapton was a member of Cream. When he became not slightly but vociferously, poisonously and publicly racist I had second thoughts, but Cream also included Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker, and Clapton really is a good guitar player. When I found out that Clapton, like his good friend Gary Brooker, were both aggressively supportive of the Fox Hunt I began to have second thoughts. Recently Clapton has, again openly and loudly, proclaimed that Covid 19 is a hoax, that people must ignore mask mandates and refrain from getting vaccinated, and I can no longer listen to his music without thinking of his politics. Fuck him.

I love David Bowie’s work (Cygnet Committee, Fame, and Lazarus) ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-JqH1M4Ya8&ab_channel=DavidBowieVEVO ) but he went through a Nazi phase. He voiced support of a right wing revolution and praised Adolf Hitler. But first of all the phase didn’t last long, and second of all he apologized profusely afterwards. Does that make a difference? Enough of a difference? What do you think of Leni Riefenstahl’s abilities as a film director? ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hu-CK47NM8E&ab_channel=DreamWeaver ).

I have never flirted with right wing ideas. In my day, however, going back more than fifty years now, I was actively involved in leftist politics, but then political activism was surprisingly common at the time. It was the 1960’s. Besides, I’m still almost as far left now as I was then. I also tried my hand at composing music and creating mathematical art, and I would like to think that people judged and either enjoyed or condemned such efforts based on the works themselves and not on whether their political opinions lined up with mine. On the other hand if my political ideas were expressed through my music and art, that’s a different matter, isn’t it? If the greatest artist in the world created a work of art in praise of Pol Pot or Torquemada or Augusto Pinochet, I would not be surprised or upset if people hated the work. That the work was well-done becomes irrelevant to whether or not someone likes the work, irrelevant to whether the work can be judged good or bad in an ethical sense. Of course if I was a follower of or supporter of people like Pol Pot, Torquemada or Augusto Pinchet I would most likely love any artwork that celebrated my heroes.

There are those on the far right who may be going through the same process as those on the left. What happens if a hawk who supported the Vietnam War likes the musical style of a band that opposes the war? Are they still going to buy that band’s music as long as that band writes songs with lyrics about things other than the Vietnam War? During the 1960’s the overwhelmingly dominant views among popular bands were left wing. That must have been a tough decade for them. They also had every right to their views, and the views of right wing bands they supported. It just becomes tricky if the views of, say, Ted Nugent, in opposition to gun control expressed in his songs has a measurable negative effect on the effort to introduce gun control legislation.

It’s one thing to write a sonnet in praise of Christianity. It’s quite another to write a sonnet in praise of Christianity that also condemns Islam, Hinduism or the Jewish faith. What about a sonnet that condemns how Hindus treat the Dalit community?

In my previous post I set forth the works, with links to examples, of a series of right wing musicians whose ideas I abhor (Ted Nugent, Elvis Presley, Kid Rock, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Gene Simmons, Johnny Ramone, Meat Loaf, Mike Love of the Beach Boys, Joe Perry of Aerosmith, Alice Cooper, Charlie Daniels, Marty Robbins, David Bowie and Eric Clapton). Unfortunately musicians write songs and songs have lyrics and lyrics sometimes express political ideas. I might love the wonderful way in which a particular band composes and executes a wonderful instrumental song, and I would probably get the song from Spotify. But if that same band then releases the same song again, this time with lyrics about how wonderful Donald Trump is, I would pass on downloading a copy of the song.

Just as importantly, people change and so do their opinions. I concluded things, thought things, felt things, did things in my teen years and twenties that were at times immature and irrational. As long as people acknowledge the follies of youth and learn from past mistakes, and therefore make meaningful changes in their behaviour, they should not be held accountable forever, and repeatedly be condemned for such past behaviours.

What goes through your head when you watch a Roman Polanski film? He sexually interfered with an underage girl years ago, he has never denied it, he fled the United States before he could face the consequences of what he did. Since then he has lived in comfort in Europe, and his later work has been lauded and rewarded. Woody Allen has been credibly accused of sexual predation but has never been held to account. Would you pay to stream some of his more recent work? Would you work on his latest project if the pay was good enough? If you did boycott his work would that make any difference in terms of the damage done which can’t be undone? Perhaps it would. Perhaps it would give his victim some solace knowing that Allen didn’t get away with it entirely.

There is overwhelming evidence that Bill Cosby violated dozens of women. He admitted some degree of guilt. He has also shown no remorse but expressed only anger at being held to account. Now, after only serving a short fraction of his sentence it looks like he’s going to be released. How would you feel now watching an old episode of The Cosby Show? Or, in my case, how would I feel if I went back and watched an episode of I Spy which I enjoyed as a kid, a series in which Cosby displayed impressive serious acting skills? I know how I would feel.

If I only listened to music recorded by people whose political ideas agreed with mine I’d lose out on the joy of listening to a lot of great music. What usually happens is that one listens to songs whose lyrics are politically neutral, or are political identical to one’s own political views, or are at least in the ballpark to one’s own views, or are only mildly different from one’s own views so that they can be ignored for the sake of great music.

If one is a professional session musician then one plays as well as one can on a particular singer’s album even if one disagrees with the singer’s political views. Nine times out of ten the session musician has no idea what the political positions of the singer they’re working for are anyway. I have come across only one exception to this rule. James Taylor’s album One Man Dog, consisting of 18 short tracks, includes the track entitled Mescalito whose lyrics praise the use of the illegal hallucinogen drug mescaline. The musicians who play with Taylor on that track went on the record, in a notice on the album’s accompanying lyric sheet, saying that they disagreed with the lyrics of the song. This was in 1972 so it may have been a reaction to the drug-related early deaths of Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones in 1969, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin in 1970, and Jim Morrison of the Doors in 1971.

Time to move from the musical arena to the political. Many voted for and supported John F. Kennedy because he was young and witty and optimistic. But his political opinions were terrible. People talked admiringly about The Great Communicator, smiling friendly Ronald Reagan who would give you the shirt off his back. His political policies made sure you needed his shirt. Furthermore, the idea that one’s political or religious opinions must take precedence over things like human rights puts this issue onto a higher level. Ted Nugent’s music is boring anyway so not listening to it is no loss to me. But in June 2018 The Supreme Court of the United States ruled seven to two that a baker in Colorado could legally refuse on religious grounds to bake a cake for the legal marriage of a same-sex couple. So they can go to another bakery. But what if all the bakers refuse them service? Does this mean that another business or institution (e.g. a bank or grocery store) could on religious grounds refuse to provide service to someone who was a Democrat, or who was Jewish, or black, or female? What if all the banks, and grocery stores, and churches, and hospitals in the state (or the country) refuse to provide services to LGBTQI+ people, or Jewish people, or blacks, or women? There was also the Hobby Lobby Case ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pU7UA8dTbdk&ab_channel=CompanyMan ). People who run these businesses and institutions shouldn’t even have the right to know what the political and religious views of their customers are anyway. None of their business. They shouldn’t have the right to know what the political and religious views of their employees are either.

The principle of helping or refusing to help people according to one’s religious views if one is providing a service or product can have life-threatening implications. A pregnant woman in an ambulance on the way to Mercy Health Partners Hospital in Michigan began to miscarry. The doctor waiting for her at the hospital, upon hearing about the miscarriage, consulted a specialist who said unequivocally that the baby would die and there was a good chance the mother would as well unless labour was induced immediately. When the ambulance arrived at the hospital, however, staff refused to do this. They were following a set of instructions put together by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops that forbid terminating a pregnancy unless the mother is in grave condition. So the doctors delayed until sepsis (a life-threatening response to an advanced infection) set in. The health and lives of five women over a span of 17 months (2009 – 2010) were put unnecessarily at risk in this way ( https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/18/michigan-catholic-hospital-women-miscarriage-abortion-mercy-health-partners ). Catholic hospitals in the United States are legally allowed to refuse abortions but what if the only hospital near you is a Catholic hospital? What about contraception? What about the Supreme Court of the United States showing themselves this week to be on the verge of outlawing abortion or at least making it pragmatically impossible, due to the religious views of the conservative justices on the court? So what happened to diversity of opinion? What about the capitalistic promise of a free market of ideas? What about the old cliché that tells us that your right to vigorously swing your arm ends when your arm meets my face?

Even if one party gets more votes than the other, and therefore is given more power, in any democracy worth its salt the views of those whose party didn’t win still need to be heard and in some cases heeded, particularly if no harm is done to unwilling victims. There is a fear of the other in the United States, a fear of those outside one’s tribe, fears that are used to justify the suppression of minority opinion, which would be bad enough. However, the Republicans have updated the game in some bizarre sort of irony. They are able to impose their will with regard to certain issues such as abortion and gun control even though the majority disagrees with them.

When Donald Trump was running for election he actually said (at least) three things which are startlingly horrific after which Trump still won the election. First of all he said that any woman who gets an abortion (abortions are legal remember) should be punished. Second, he said that he intended to make sure that he would only nominate people for the Supreme Court who will remove the right for women to get an abortion in the United States. Then, in terms of just the standard issue degradation of women he also made his famous statement about grabbing women by the pussy. Why didn’t any one of these three guarantee that he would lose the election? Since then more than one Republican woman has said that they were fine with that. Trump got a lot of votes in 2020. He may win the 2024 election. A large enough minority of people in the United States hold racist and misogynist views so that with voter suppression and intimidation, gerrymandering, the anti-democratic primaries and Electoral College, coupled with the complacency of the rest of the electorate, and people who don’t represent majority opinion still end up in power. This goes right back to the death of democracy in the United States when Bush was handed the presidency by the Supreme Court in 2000.

As I said above, people change. If you can come up with what I consider to be good reasons for disagreeing with something I have said here I would like to think that I was still capable of changing my mind on the matter. There may be facts I am unaware of, arguments that have not occurred to me. Feedback welcome.

MUSIC TO YOUR EARS – 11. Music Right and Left

artwork by Murray Young

This is a series of posts about the politics and history, the structure and the culture of music. From The King to the Kid, Uncle Son to Joe Hill.

“Obama, he’s a piece of shit. I told him to suck on my machine gun.” Singer Ted Nugent quoted by Rolling Stone Magazine August 24, 2007, not long before Obama became the president of the United States for the first of two terms.

PLEASE NOTE: I have attempted to include a wide range of music in these posts, including music I don’t like but which is important or demonstrates a musical idea well. Almost any piece of music is interesting in some way. I recommend at least sampling all the music here – you might be pleasantly surprised. At least check out specific sections of compositions which I have identified. If you don’t like a clip just stop and jump to the next clip.

ELVIS PRESLEY AND RICHARD NIXON, DECEMBER 1970.
By Ollie Atkins, chief White House photographer at the time. See ARC record. – White House photograph by Ollie Atkins via https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/nixon-met-elvis/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39264

The terms left wing and right wing are derived from the seating arrangement of the Revolutionary Assembly during the French Revolution and you may not have been aware of where on that political spectrum various well-known and highly successful musicians have positioned themselves. Elvis Presley, for example, was a great fan of an anti-Semitic anti-progressive American president by the name of Richard Nixon who was forced to resign over his illegal political actions. I will attempt to avoid mindless mud-slinging and simply present the political views of various musicians. My own position is more or less on the far left but there are those on both the left and right whose views and actions I reject. As time goes on I discover that things aren’t always as simple as left and right.

TED NUGENT. Lead vocalist with The Amboy Dukes, he has also had a lengthy solo career. He is a strident supporter of gun ownership rights, a board member of the NRA and a staunch Republican. He has admitted to having sexual relations with underage women and his song Jail bait is about wanting to have sex with a thirteen-year-old girl ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJwOlRhGbeU&ab_channel=therockandrolltv ). He is quoted in a Newsweek article by Greg Price (April 7, 2018) as saying that Democrats, members of the media, and others, are like “rabid coyotes” and people should shoot them on sight. He has been out-spoken on other political matters but this is enough. He seems to be sincere and not just attention-seeking. At least the band Goldfinger released a track on their CD ‘Open Your Eyes’ entitled Fuck Ted Nugent.

TED NUGENT AT THE TRUMP WHITE HOUSE APRIL 2017
By Madeleine Westerhout – https://mobile.twitter.com/madwest45/status/855051139833843712/photo/1, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=69878581

KID ROCK. An American singer, rapper and songwriter, he is a self-taught multi-instrumentalist who has overseen the production of most of his albums, and has a long list of awards to his name. He also flies the Confederate flag at his concerts, and was a supporter of the Iraq War. In 2012 he campaigned for Republican candidate Mitt Romney who used his song Born Free on the campaign trail, and he is a vocal supporter of Donald Trump ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bu3rsha1ZtI&ab_channel=KidRock ). He was arrested in 1991 and 1997 on alcohol-related charges, he was charged for assaulting Tommy Lee (the drummer for Motley Crue) and a month after that he was arrested for assaulting a customer at Waffle House.

LYNYRD SKYNYRD. This was a southern band that displayed the Confederate flag during their shows, then stopped because they didn’t want to associate with racists, then started displaying it again when their fans got angry at its absence. Draw your own conclusion. The band also appeared at the Sean Hannity Freedom Concert in 2010. Here are some lyrics from their song This Ain’t My America:

“It’s to the women and men who in their hands they hold a Bible and a gun

And they ain’t afraid of nothing when they’re holding either one

Now there’s kids that can’t pray in school, hundred dollar tanks of gas

I can tell you right now this country ain’t supposed to be like that”

Here’s the complete track – ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_J4ysDsI0Yg&ab_channel=BillyRay ).

GENE SIMMONS. He is a bassist, co-lead singer and composer with the band Kiss. He referred to Islam as a “vile culture”, he supported the Iraq War and he hates people who condemn the soldiers that fought in it. Of course there are many who condemn that war but do not condemn the soldiers who fought and died for what they had been told was a just cause. Simmons also says that he is “grateful to America for going into World War II when it had nothing to gain . . . and rescued my mother from the Nazi German concentration camps”. Of course the way ethics works is that often there are ethical imperatives that must be heeded though one not only has nothing to gain but one has a great deal to lose sometimes. Also, at the end of World War Two, it turns out, many Nazi war criminals were welcomed into the United States covertly (google Operation Paperclip) while many concentration camp inmates were shut out and in many cases left in horrible conditions in those same camps for months and in some cases more than a year after the war. The famous General Patton who was in charge of the liberation of many of the concentration camp inmates, said this about the Jewish victims of Nazi brutality: “They have no conception of sanitation, hygiene or decency and are, as you know, the same sub-human types that we saw in the internment camps.” ( https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2021/the-passion-of-american-collectors-property-of-barbara-and-ira-lipman-highly-important-printed-and-manuscript-americana/patton-george-s-jr-a-dark-and-disturbing-letter ). This was the same General Patton who was the subject of a highly laudatory book by Bill O-Reilly of Fox News.

JOHNNY RAMONE. He was the guitarist with the punk band The Ramones, and a staunch supporter of the Republican Party. He once declared “God bless President Bush” and “Ronald Reagan was the best President of my lifetime”. Shall we talk about the horrors of Reaganomics, and the Iran-Contra affair? Ramone has also said that “punk is right wing” which actually is somewhat (but not completely) true.

MEAT LOAF. He has sold more than eighty million units worldwide and his first album stayed on the charts for nine years. He has also endorsed Rick Santorum, John McCain and Mitt Romney, Republicans all, and has said various complimentary things about Donald Trump, Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Junior.

MIKE LOVE. He co-founded The Beach Boys, one of the most musically creative, innovative and successful groups to emerge from America. He is a long time singer and songwriter with the group. He has not performed with other members of the group since 2012, however, and after a great falling out between him and other group members he formed and toured with his own group known as Mike Love’s Beach Boys. It was this group that performed as the headliner at a fundraiser for Donald Trump’s re-election campaign. Love’s group also played at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago’s New Years Eve celebrations in 2020. Love has praised Trump for his “support of music” and Love has said that Trump had “been a friend for a long time”.

JOE PERRY. Joe Perry is a founding member and lead guitarist with the band Aerosmith, the best selling American hard rock band of them all, with 150 million units sold worldwide. Perry and lead vocalist Steven Tyler make up one of the most successful rock songwriting duos. However, Perry is a self-described lifelong Republican who endorsed John McCain in the 2008 presidential election.

JOE PERRY, MICHIGAN 2015
By Abog – Photographed Joe Perry performing with Aerosmith at a concert on August 4, 2015, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=53763174

ALICE COOPER. Alice Cooper, the Godfather of Shock Rock, is a singer and songwriter with a career spanning five decades, and whose stage show includes guillotines, electric chairs, reptiles and miscellaneous stage illusions. In 2004 he said that musicians campaigning for Democratic candidate John Kerry were committing “treason against rock and roll” and he was a supporter of President Bush.

CHARLIE DANIELS. Daniels was a singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist whose career lasted more than fifty years before he died last year. Daniels in his day has been on both ends of the political spectrum but he ended up firmly on the right. He once stated that “In the future Darwinism will be looked upon as we now look upon the flat earth theory.” When New York governor Andrew Cuomo passed the Reproductive Health Act Daniels responded like this: “The NY legislature has created a new Auschwitz dedicated to the execution of a whole segment of defenceless citizens. Satan is smiling”. Nice.

MARTY ROBBINS. This American singer, songwriter, actor and multi-instrumentalist had a highly successful career over four decades. He was a self-taught guitarist who was an early Outlaw Country pioneer. He also recorded the song Ain’t I Right during the Vietnam War era, with these lyrics:

“Communism, socialism, call it what you like. There’s very little difference between the two

. . . If we’re to win this war with Communism let’s fight it here as well as Vietnam

Let’s rise as one and meet our obligations so Communistic boots will never trod

Across the fields of freedom that were given to us with the blessing of our great almighty God”

Here’s the complete song – ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWsxkzSzKRo&ab_channel=DhshkaBeutmetka

DAVID BOWIE. Bowie is one of those rare individuals who is a talented and charismatic musician and actor but who is also head and shoulders above most of his contemporaries as a cultural force. Unfortunately he also went through a Nazi phase and has been quoted as follows: “I think Britain could benefit from a fascist leader . . . Adolf Hitler was one of the first rock stars . . . You’ve got to have an extreme right front come up and sweep everything off its feet and tidy everything up.”

ERIC CLAPTON. There have been various white supremacist bands over the years but their following has always been relatively small. Eric Clapton, however, is one of the mst successful musicians of all time, selling more than 280 million units worldwide, receiving eighteen Grammy awards, a Brit award and four Ivor Novello awards. He is the only musician to be inducted, most amazingly, into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame three times, as a solo artist and as members of the bands The Yardbirds and Cream. I loved his work with Cream, and as a solo artist. I think he is incredibly talented. But then it was Clapton who inspired the creation of Rock Against Racism and its offshoots by publicly declaring his support for right wing racist Enoch Powell and, at a concert in 1976 in Birmingham making the following incredibly racist statements:

“Get the foreigners out. Get the wogs out. Get the coons out. Keep Britain white. I used to be into dope, now I’m into racism. It’s much heavier, man. Fucking wogs, man. Fucking Saudis taking over London . . . The black wogs and coons and Arabs and fucking Jamaicans don’t belong here, we don’t want them here. This is England, this is a white country.” He continued in this vein, ending finally with the phrase ‘Keep Britain white’.

Given that throughout his career Clapton specialized in playing the blues, a genre created and popularized by African-Americans, this speech was unexpected and devastating. However now, forty-five years later, Clapton has done it again, supporting Van Morrison in championing the idea that the Covid-19 pandemic is a hoax and that mask mandates should be strongly opposed. It’s always disappointing to discover that people you admired and assumed to be progressive were actually dangerous and ill-informed, and who refuse to change when someone informs them.

Some punk bands have displayed swastikas simply for shock effect but then there are the extreme right wing bands whose lyrics are full of overt hate towards various groups.

Some Neo-Nazi bands: Endstufe, Prussian Blue, Honor, Race War, Skrewdriver, Stahlgewitter, No Remorse, and Skullhead.

Some National Socialist Black Metal bands: Aryan Blood, Aryan Terrorism, Before God, Blutkult, Clandestine Blaze, Der Stürmer, Evil, Gaszimmer, Gestapo SS, Graveland, Hate Forest, Inquisition, Kristallnacht, Legion of Doom, Nacht und Nebel, Reich of the Black Sun, Satanic Warmaster, The Shadow Order, Thor’s Hammer, Thunderbolt, Totenburg, Wolfnacht, and Xenophobic Ejaculation. The Metal Archives list about 200 active bands in this genre ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rr8ljRgcJNM&ab_channel=RammsteinOfficial )

Kristallnacht (The Night of Broken Glass) refers to November 9, 1938, during which the Nazis demolished Jewish homes, hospitals and schools, destroyed 267 synagogues, damaged or destroyed over 7000 Jewish businesses, and sent over 30 000 Jewish men to concentration camps. Nacht und Nebel (Night and Fog) refers to a directive from Hitler issued December 7, 1941 which led to the imprisonment, execution or disappearance of thousands of political activists and resistance fighters.

KRISTALLNACHT SHOP DAMAGE IN MAGDEBURG, GERMANY
By Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1970-083-42 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5418870

There are also the White Power bands such as Tragic Minds and White Boss, and the extremist Christian musicians (for example Struggle Jennings who recorded the song God We Need You Now. Jennings is the grandson of that great pioneer of guitar instrumentals Duane Eddy).

Keep in mind, however, that there have also been hard rock and punk bands who have publicly condemned racism and specifically the rise of the fascist National Front party in England. The Clash, Elvis Costello and others hve played benefits in support of the Anti-Nazi League and the Rock Against Racism movement. In Germany, too, another European hotbed of fascist music, you also have the highly popular long-lived hard-edged band Rammstein playing in support of left wing political parties, and recording songs with left of centre lyrics mocking fascist bands. For example, in the following song notice that starting at the 3 minute 12 second mark those are left wing raised fists from the audience not Nazi salutes – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6TFkmzUIbU&ab_channel=electroteck60 . In this second video, from 2004, the band unambiguously satirizes American economic imperialism with lines like “We’re all living in Amerika, Coca-Cola, sometimes war” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rr8ljRgcJNM&ab_channel=RammsteinOfficial

There are plenty of left wing musicians as well, many of whom I have referenced and discussed at length in previous posts on political music, for example Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, The Doors, Pete Seeger, Rage Against The Machine, Billy Bragg and others. Here are a few particularly political left wing tracks:

1. The Kinks – Uncle Son – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koFuwPiV7R8&ab_channel=LightningLyrics
2. Paul Robeson – Joe Hill – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8Kxq9uFDes&ab_channel=JulianO.Long
3. John Lennon – Working Class Hero – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMewtlmkV6c&ab_channel=johnlennon
4. Chumbawamba – The Day The Nazi Died ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLkPwxcIji0&ab_channel=Huppelplopp1848 ) and Her Majesty ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2d4FD9SRww&ab_channel=jshchingchongchoocho ) which is an expanded version of a Beatle song.
5. Pink Floyd – On The Turning Away – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZLuDvN7W0c&ab_channel=DavidGilmourHD
6. The Clash – London Calling – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfK-WX2pa8c&ab_channel=theclashVEVO
7. The Rolling Stones – Little Indian Girl – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvLGadrbBCo&ab_channel=meganmcr

Are the musicians on the right simple folk who have imbibed the patriotic propaganda poured over them from birth, in school and at church, about how great their country is, and about how everything is black and white, good and bad? In highly politicized places like America on the Good Side are the Christians, the flag-wavers, the Republicans, the obedient souls who love their country right or wrong. On the Bad Side are the non-Christians, the media, those who think their country isn’t perfect, the uppity females, the uppity blacks, the nasty people who want gun control and abortions, the Democrats. Should we feel sorry for these poor manipulated folk on the right, and try to civilize them? That’s pretty condescending and elitist, isn’t it? There are also some on the right who are quite capable of nuanced political analysis but who continue to aggressively espouse anti-democratic views.

The people who say they love their country obviously do, but many also say they aspire to democracy, but I don’t think they do. They seem to think that white Christians, usually male, somehow deserve to be in charge, deserve to have more rights than people not like them. Selective democracy is an oxymoron. Most of those on the right are racist, anti-Semitic and misogynist so Trump is their man. Don’t feel sorry for them. Make sure they have no power or influence. Condemn their attitude though remember that attitudes lie along a continuum. Not everyone more or less on the right is an extremist. There are also those who hold some traditionally conservative / right wing views on some issues and traditionally liberal / left wing views on other issues. It’s also imperative that one keep a global perspective since right and left are relative terms. The Democratic Party in the United States is viewed there as left wing yet it would lie to the right of centre in countries such as Canada or the Scandinavian nations.

What to do? Complacency favours the right. Make sure authoritarian people don’t take away the rights of people they don’t like, keep everyone informed, teach people critical thinking, then let them decide who to vote for and let the chips fall where they may, making sure that the voting process is itself is as unbiased as you can make it, and more or less is accurately reflective of the views of the voters. From all that I have read about the United States it never was a real democracy, and now a huge segment of the general populace aren’t even in favour of democracy while most of the rest of the populace are complacent. There is an ever growing list of absolutely horrible anti-democratic overt behaviours being exhibited by politicians who continue to be re-elected, who face little or no backlash or sanctions by most Americans, politicians selling out their country to corporate America. I see no hope for the country. Please prove me wrong.

One can argue that the right wing people can only take the stance they do by ignoring reality, by denying provable facts. That may be true of some of them, but many of them are quite aware of reality and are all right with ignoring empirical evidence. They have psychological or economic reasons for ignoring evidence, or for rationalizing the evidence away. At least with people like Trump, who knows he’s lying, it’s not complicated, or not even particularly ideological.

MUSIC TO YOUR EARS

Posts already posted or still being planned as we speak:

1. STAND TO ATTENTION, OR ELSE – Anthems, National and Unofficial. From Black Power to one small flower of eternity, from Oceania ‘Tis of Thee to Lift Every Voice and Sing – https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/09/22/music-to-your-ears-1-stand-to-attention-or-else/
2. WHY? – Twenty-five purposes and functions of music. From Pressed Rat and Warthog to Rainy Day Women Number Twelve and Thirty-five, from propaganda to religion, labour relations to storytelling – https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/09/29/music-to-your-ears-2-why/
3. LISTEN UP – Things to listen for when you listen to a piece of music. From Kashmir to Vine Street, St. James Infirmary to Scarborough Fair – https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/10/06/music-to-your-wars-3-listen-up/
4. THE BRIGHT SIDE OF LIFE – Silly and Satirical Songs. From vegetables to metaphysical dogma, inebriated philosophers to short people – https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/10/14/music-to-your-ears-4-the-bright-side-of-life/
5. THE COMPLEXITIES OF WAR – https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/10/21/music-to-your-ears-5-the-complexities-of-war/
6. HOMELAND AND LIFE: A Case Study – An examination of the recent explosive viral video Patria y Vida – https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/10/27/music-to-your-ears-6-homeland-and-life/
7. REALITY CHECK – From Kristallnacht to the Long March, massive floods and burning rivers, Wounded Knee to the École Polytechnique – Music memorializing real events – https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/11/03/music-to-your-ears-7-reality-check/
8. CINEMATIC MUSIC – From the Squid Game to the Witcher in the heat of the night in the darkest depths of Mordor – how music offers an added dimension to the cinematic experience – https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/11/10/music-to-your-ears-8-cinematic-music/
9. DRAMATIS PERSONAE – From Nelson Mandela to Albert Einstein, Harriet Tubman to Sally Ride – Music celebrating real people – https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/11/17/music-to-your-ears-9-dramatis-personae/
10. GOOD, BAD AND WRONG – From The Rolling Stones to Pete Best, from Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds to the Walrus – things about The Beatles rarely said but which need to be said.
11. MUSIC LEFT AND RIGHT – From the King to the Kid, Uncle Son to Joe Hill – music from the extremes of the political spectrum.
12. STREAMING AUDIO – Third Stream Music
13. Dance to the Music
14. Musical Women, Musical Men – 2700 BCE to 2021 CE
15. Music Religious and Secular
16. Session Musicians and Supergroups – the forgotten and the famous
17. Rhythm Part One
18. Rhythm Part Two
19. The Great Depression – music born out of the economic devastation of the Stock Market crash of 1929 and the hellish decade (for most) that followed.
20. Musical Families – musical dynasties and the women left out
21. The British Invasion
22. The Evolution of Music
23. Crossroads and Crossbones (Musical Deaths)
24. Economic Inequities
25. Music About Music and Musicians
26. Extraordinary Musical Instruments
27. Weak Here, Strong There
28. Band Names

MUSIC TO YOUR EARS – 6. Homeland and Life

artwork by Murray Young

A series of posts about the politics and culture, the history and structure of music.

HOMELAND AND LIFE: A CASE STUDY

A lot of dangerous nonsense has been written about America’s relationship with Cuba and in the last few months a video (Patria y Vida) has gone viral, a video which is powerfully executed; a lot of thought went into the lyrics, and the driving energetic music is captivating. However emotions can be triggered by a high quality musical performance, emotions which make it difficult to do a rational assessment of what a song is all about. Reagan loved Springsteen’s Born in the USA because the music and presentation were strong, and Reagan didn’t realize that the song was sharply critical of Reagan’s America. Here is Patria y Vida and you can come to your own conclusions:

Things are definitely bad in Cuba these days, and the government is taking some pretty brutal actions. The intentions of the song’s creators and the video’s director are honourable but its power and emotion are perhaps being manipulated by those who stand in direct and aggressive opposition to the political goals espoused in the song itself. Ask yourself who is at least partly to blame for the economic failures the country is experiencing, and who is applauding and promoting the song and the video. The performers in the video:

1. YOTUEL (Yotuel Omar Manzanarez Romero) – lead singer and songwriter in the Cuban Latin Grammy award-winning rap group Orishas, he is also an actor, model and record producer

2. GENTE DE ZONA – this is a Cuban reggaeton band consisting of Alexander Delgado and Randy Malcom. They have won Latin Grammy and Latin Billboard awards.

3. DESCEMER BUENO – a Cuban singer, songwriter and producer, he formed the jazz band Estado de Animo in 1990, and the hip-hop band Yerba Buena in 1999. He was also an artist-in-residence at Stanford and taught at the University of South Africa.

4. MAIKEL OSORBO – Cuban dissident rapper. He has been detained more than once by the police who gave no cause for the detention, and in one instance he was badly beaten up while a member of the State Security police looked on and did nothing to stop the beating and in fact recorded the incident.

5. EL FUNKY (Eliecer Marquez Duany) – a Cuban rap singer born in 1981, whose music is heavily influenced by Tupac, Dr. Dre and Redman.

6. ASIEL BABATRO (who directed the video) – a Cuban filmmaker, art director and screenwriter

An explanation of some of the references in the lyrics:

1. “You, five nine. Me, double two” and later “It’s over now! It’s sixty-two doing harm” – Fidel Castro defeated the American-backed dictator Batista in 1959 to become Cuba’s new leader. Double two refers to 2020, sixty-two years of life after the Revolution.

2. “Great fanfare with the 500 of Havana” – In 2019 Havana celebrated the 500^th anniversary of its founding.

3. “exchanging Che Guevara and Marti for currency” – Che Guevara was an important member of Castro’s government. Batista was finally defeated and ousted when Che Guevara led rebel troops to victory at the Battle of Santa Clara. Guevara, an Argentinian medical student, supported Guatemala’s reformist leader Jacobo Arbenz until he was overthrown by the CIA in support of the United Fruit Company which radicalized Guevara who became a major figure in Castro’s Revolution. Guevara was in his thirties when he was executed by CIA-backed Bolivian forces.

Jose Marti was a poet, philosopher, essayist, journalist, translator, educator and publisher born in Cuba in 1853. He was a political theorist and revolutionary philosopher who as a political activist fought fiercely for Cuban independence from Spain and is considered to be a national hero in Cuba. His ideology was a driving force in Castro’s Revolution but his position regarding the United States was mixed. He viewed the American government as a clear danger to Latin American independence, and he was opposed to the American embrace of capitalism. At the same time he admired the American ideals of liberty, freedom and democracy and likened the Cuban fight for independence to the American revolution. Marti died at the age of forty-two while fighting for Cuban independence from Spain at the Battle of Dos Rios in 1895.

4. “advertising a paradise in Varadero” – Varadero in Batista’s day was a luxury resort, one of the finest in the world, and during the Revolution many of its mansions were expropriated from their wealthy owners and they became museums, and the area became transformed into a cultural centre and concerts, festivals and sporting events were held there.

5. “Let us no longer shout ‘Homeland or Death’ but ‘Homeland and Life’ “ – On December 11, 1964 Che Guevara made his famous ‘Homeland or Death’ speech before the United Nations General Assembly in which he argued for “peaceful coexistence among states with different economic and social systems” but he also criticized various international human rights abuses, many carried out by the U.S. in Vietnam, Cambodia, Panama, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Mexico, Haiti, The Dominican Republic and the Congo, and of course Cuba itself when Batista was in charge. He also condemned the racism in two countries in particular, South Africa under Apartheid, and the United States. He ended the speech with the words “Patria o muerte” (Homeland or death). There were two attempts on Guevara’s life while he was in New York giving this speech but he shrugged them off saying that such things just made life more interesting.

6. “There we lived with the uncertainty of the past, in a hunger strike, Fifteen friends in place, ready to die” – There is a long history of political hunger strikes in Cuba. One, for example, was carried out by Otero Alcantara, one of the leaders of the San Isidro Movement. I was unable to find information on any specific group of fifteen hunger strikers.

7. “Anamely Ramos, firm with her poetry” – Ramos was known as a staunch defender of Cuban cultural rights. For example, she used her poetry to oppose Decree 349 which was a government decree designed to suppress anti-government artistic expression in Cuba.

8. “Omara Ruiz Urquiola providing us with breath of life” – Omara Ruiz Urquiola was a professor at the Higher Institute of Industrial Design, and a vociferous critic of the Cuban medical system. She was arrested in 2019 as she was preparing to appear at a Breast Cancer Awareness event on the International Day of Breast Cancer Awareness. She is a cancer survivor herself. While in prison she found it was almost impossible for her, and for other imprisoned cancer patients, to receive cancer medication due to bureaucratic inertia. This was unacceptable to her and because of her strong and sustained vocal reaction to this state of affairs the medical system was improved which resulted in the acquisition of much-needed cancer medication for many cancer sufferers.

9. “The San Isidro Movement is still in position” – The San Isidro Movement consisted of a group of artists and journalists in Cuba protesting since 2016 against increased government censorship of artistic expression, censorship given legal weight by Decree 349 which made approval of all artistic activity by the government’s cultural ministry compulsory.

The song Patria y Vida attempts to tell “the true story, not the incorrectly narrated one”. I am not a supporter of Castro and believe that he is guilty of unacceptable crimes. Having followed the ongoing news about the Cuban situation for over half a century now, however, I have discovered that most of what has been said about Cuba by American politicians has been false, dangerously so. The American actions regarding Cuba have been far worse than anything Castro ever did. Before Castro came to power Fulgencio Batista led a military coup against existing President Socarras and took over the country in the early 1950’s. With backing from the United States he revoked many liberties including the right to strike. Then, with the help of the wealthiest sugar plantation landowners he systematically widened the gap between rich and poor and gave the American Mafia control over a network of drug, gambling and prostitution enterprises. His secret police carried out wide scale violence, torture and public executions. A resistance movement grew up against Batista’s repression and Castro took over the country on January 1, 1959.

Castro implemented various socialist reforms but many of Batista’s supporters were executed without fair trials. He set a cap on landholdings, expropriated the casinos and properties from Mafia leaders such as Meyer Lansky, judges and politicians had their pay reduced and low-level civil servants had their pay raised. He also seized the property of wealthy Cubans who had already fled the country, many re-settling in Florida. He implemented major educational reforms and improved the country’s infrastructure. Cuba initially attempted to negotiate with the United States; Che Guevara is on record as arguing for “peaceful coexistence among states with different economic and social systems” but the American response was an economic embargo on Cuba and when that created major economic problems, Castro went to the Soviet Union for support though he has always denied being a communist.

President Eisenhower financed (119 million dollars worth) a CIA attempt to overthrow Castro’s government in 1960 and assassinate Castro. In April 1961 President Kennedy authorized an invasion of Cuba which ended disastrously for the American forces. In 1962 Soviet leader Khrushchev installed Russian nuclear missiles in Cuba, as a defence against further aggression by the United States. Kennedy demanded the missiles be removed. While waiting for Khrushchev’s response the world wondered whether a nuclear war would occur which would have wiped out the human race. The North American media said nothing at the time about the American nuclear missiles already in Turkey near the Russian border. The American embargo initiated soon after Castro took power remains in effect today, the longest such embargo in history. Every year for decades the United Nations has condemned the embargo. The Cuban government’s response may not have been very fair or democratic but the video Patria y Vida places the blame for the poverty and devastation squarely on the government when a good deal of the blame rests with the American embargo.

Republicans have had considerable success in Florida by supporting the community of former wealthy Cuban exiles there who lived on their large plantations back in Cuba while they supported the murderous regime of Fulgencio Batista. The people who made the Patria y Vida video have legitimate concerns for the people of Cuba, their opposition to some of the actions of the government in Cuba are justified but when the people in the video performed this song in Miami they were given overwhelming support by the wealthy Cuban exile community 1.2 million people strong:

Gente de Zona perform ‘Patria y Vida’ at a Cuba protest rally in Miami:

Finally, a response to the video Patria y Vida by local Cuban artists:

THE CANADIAN CONTEXT

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s father, Pierre Trudeau, who was also the Prime Minister, winning more than one federal election, was a great friend of Castro and when Castro took power in Cuba Canada was the first nation to officially recognize his government. The Trudeau family, including young Justin, visited Castro in Cuba more than once. Castro was particularly fond of Justin’s younger brother Michel, an infant at the time. On one occasion Pierre visited Cuba and gave a laudatory public speech praising Castro and his educational reforms. Trudeau gave the speech in Spanish. When Pierre died in 2000, Fidel Castro attended Pierre’s funeral in Canada where he was greeted warmly and respectfully by the Canadian media and Trudeau’s family. American politicians at the time were outraged at his presence but could do nothing about it. When Fidel Castro died in 2016 Prime Minister Justin Trudeau paid his respects and when the Conservative Party criticized him for praising Castro, Justin didn’t back down. He recognized that Castro was not without his faults (e.g. Pierre Trudeau and Castro disagreed over Castro’s handling of the Angola Crisis) but Justin gave credit where credit was due.

I leave the final verdict on the Patria y Vida video up to you.

MUSIC TO YOUR EARS

Posts already posted or still being planned:

1. STAND TO ATTENTION, OR ELSE – Anthems, National and Unofficial. From Black Power to one small flower of eternity, from Oceania ‘Tis of Thee to Lift Every Voice and Sing – https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/09/22/music-to-your-ears-1-stand-to-attention-or-else/
2. WHY? – Twenty-five purposes and functions of music. From Pressed Rat and Warthog to Rainy Day Women Number Twelve and Thirty-five, from propaganda to religion, labour relations to storytelling – https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/09/29/music-to-your-ears-2-why/
3. LISTEN UP – Things to listen for when you listen to a piece of music. From Kashmir to Vine Street, St. James Infirmary to Scarborough Fair – https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/10/06/music-to-your-wars-3-listen-up/
4. THE BRIGHT SIDE OF LIFE – Silly and Satirical Songs. From vegetables to metaphysical dogma, inebriated philosophers to short people – https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/10/14/music-to-your-ears-4-the-bright-side-of-life/
5. THE COMPLEXITIES OF WAR – https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/10/21/music-to-your-ears-5-the-complexities-of-war/
6. HOMELAND AND LIFE: A Case Study – An examination of the recent explosive viral video Patria y Vida.
7. REALITY CHECK – From Kristallnacht to the Long March, massive floods and burning rivers, Wounded Knee to the École Polytechnique – Music memorializing real events.
8. DRAMATIS PERSONAE – From Nelson Mandela to Albert Einstein, Harriet Tubman to Sally Ride – Music celebrating real people.
9. GOOD, BAD AND WRONG – From The Rolling Stones to Pete Best, from Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds to the Walrus – things about The Beatles rarely said but which need to be said.
10. Celluloid Music
11. Music Left and Right
12. Miscellaneous Matters – Third Stream, Contrapuntal and Other Things
13. Dance to the Music
14. Musical Women, Musical Men – 2700 BCE to 2021 CE
15. Music Religious and Secular
16. Session Musicians and Supergroups – the forgotten and the famous
17. Rhythm Part One
18. Rhythm Part Two
19. The Great Depression – music born out of the economic devastation of the Stock Market crash of 1929 and the hellish decade (for most) that followed.
20. Musical Families – musical dynasties and the women left out
21. The British Invasion
22. The Evolution of Music
23. Crossroads and Crossbones (Musical Deaths)
24. Economic Inequities
25. Music About Music and Musicians
26. Musical Instruments
27. Weak Here, Strong There

POLITICAL MUSIC LINKS

Some months back I did a series of posts on Political Music. Here are links to those posts:

1. BLACK AND BLUE – American Racism – https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2020/08/12/black-and-blue/

2. WEEPING – Apartheid – https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2020/08/19/weeping-apartheid/

3. RESPECT – Gender Issues – https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2020/08/26/gender-issues/

4. CREEK MARY’S Blood – Indigenous Music – https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2020/09/02/creek-marys-blood/

5. WE GOTTA GET OUT OF THIS PLACE – Classism Part One – https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2020/09/09/we-gotta-get-out-of-this-place-classism-part-one/

6. THE COVERT BATTALIONS – Classism Part Two – https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2020/09/16/the-covert-battalions-classism-part-2/

7. ROSIE THE RIVETER – The Music of World War Two – https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2020/09/23/rosie-the-riveter-music-of-world-war-two/

8. MASTERS OF WAR – The Vietnam War – https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2020/09/30/masters-of-war-the-vietnam-war/

9. WE ALMOST LOST DETROIT – Nuclear War, War and Peace – https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2020/10/07/we-almost-lost-detroit-nuclear-war-war-and-peace/

10. COME OUT YE BLACK AND TANS – The Troubles – https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2020/10/14/come-out-ye-black-and-tans-the-troubles/

11. NOTHING TO MY NAME – International Protest – https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2020/10/21/nothing-to-my-name-international-protest/

12. THE KILLING OF GEORGIE – Miscellaneous Matters – https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2020/10/28/the-killing-of-georgie-miscellaneous/