In a way, you can argue Woody Guthrie was the first punk rocker. He was a hobo rebel who stood up against fascists foreign and domestic and was the spiritual father to Bob Dylan and Joe Strummer. He toured with Pete Seeger and wrote the songs that would later be co-opted by Republicans who carefully edit out his socialism.
He was an activist, a labor leader, and he and I share the same birthday. I don’t make music, but I hope my pen, my pencil, my brush, my computer, like Guthrie’s guitar, kill fascists.
He passed away in 1967, leaving us “This land is your land,” “You Fascists are Gonna Lose,” and of course the now classic “Old Man Trump,” where these lyrics came from.
That’s right, over 60 years ago Woody Guthrie wrote a song about how Old Man Trump was a dirty racist. Granted he was talking about his father, but whatever; racists gotta hate.
I am fed up with the “Opposition” normalizing Donald Trump. I am exhausted. If the Democrats can't mount an effective opposition, then those in power need to step down and let those that can step up. Clinton won because of the tactic of the Sanders’ supporters of “Shut up and vote for Bernie, he’ll eventually take care of you.” Students of history will remember Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” when he said:
Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."
To double down on this reinforcement of white supremacy, they cried “but Bernie Sanders marched with King.” As Mychal Denzel said “If you are using King as a cudgel for the maintenance of the status quo, then you are doing it wrong.”
Because of the systemic racism, we nominated the only person who was incapable of defeating Donald Trump. Hilary Clinton had no agenda, no vision, and no charisma. She needed two of the three to win. But apparently, that’s all Wikileaks, James Comey, and Russia’s fault.
The opposition in power, like Clinton, has no vision. Like the “Berniecrats” who told people of color to wait their turn, they are making the people wait for them to act because they can’t disrupt the order of the establishment. Democrats in the Senate don’t have enough votes to stop Trump, I get that. But there is something about a noble failure.
The idea of a noble failure is out there, yet it is defined definition to the phrase, so I’m going to define it as I mean it. A noble failure means that you try to stop something, knowing you can’t stop it, by defining your alternative vision for it and laying out how the long road to victory can be achieved in the opposition. (Someone needs to Wikipedia this shit, stat!)
Because Democrats are out of power, they must be noble failures. Instead they are showing indifference to side of oppression. They are doing that because they are more beholden to the rules of the institution than the American people. Because of this, they are normalizing Donald Trump and normalizing the hate he is stirring up in the bloodpot of human hearts.
My apologies for missing posting this last week. My computer had a virus. Next week is a living musician who has a song about Trump.
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