Apple Pie

Oppression is as American as apple pie.

― Audre Lorde

With July 4th as the time and Mt. Rushmore the place, Donald Trump has made clear he's on the warpath and wants you to join him.

"This attack on our liberty, our magnificent liberty, must be stopped, and it will be stopped very quickly," Trump said. "We will expose this dangerous movement, protect our nation’s children, end this radical assault, and preserve our beloved American way of life."

"Demagogues tend to be narcissistic and authoritarian," says psychiatrist Saul Levine. "Their vitriol appeals to the vulnerable and darker places in psyches and hearts."

But of course Trump didn't write his bombastic speech.

Who did? Stephen Miller; the same Stephen Miller responsible for Trump's inaugural address, the speech George W. Bush could only describe as "some weird shit.”

Part of the Breitbart pack that helped elect Trump, Miller is a white nationalist from Southern California and the power behind the migrant children's camps strung along the the US-Mexico border.

For a Jew, he's awfully fond of camps. 

Working with Trump, of German descent, they make a truly odd couple.

Miller is only 35, but has been a right-wing spokesman for nearly 20 years.

A graduate of Duke, he is a proponent of eugenics, a defender of the Confederacy, an advocate for segregation, and a hater of liberalism, socialism, communism, Muslims, Latinos and Blacks.

Miller also believes that "diversity"―which he calls America's "national religion"―is a veil for the "great replacement," a plot by large multinational corporations whose aim is to wipe out Whites worldwide.

No president since Harding has written his own speeches. They've all had to find their voices in others.

The liberal FDR found his voice in Samuel Rosenman; the moderate JFK, in Ted Sorensen; the conservative Reagan, in Peggy Noonan.

The demagogue Trump has found his voice in the bigot Stephen Miller.

A match made in heaven.

Or elsewhere.

Anthem

No nation has a single history, no people a single song.

― Jill Lepore

Activists are calling for "Imagine" to replace "The Star Spangled Banner" as the national anthem, a move I can get behind, although my first choice is the ripsnorting "Born to Run."

But if we want a timeless national anthem―a tune that's perennially PC―one without lyrics makes the most sense.

In which case, my vote goes to the majestic "Fanfare for the Common Man."

With that decision, the US would be join the coterie of five other countries whose national anthem has no lyrics: Spain, Kosovo, San Marino and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

For years, Bob Dylan skipped a warm-up act and, before taking the stage, instead played a recording of "Fanfare for the Common Man" (along with other Aaron Copland favorites like "Hoe Down," "Simple Gifts," "Quiet City" and "Lincoln Portrait").

Historian Sean Wilentz was the first Dylanologist to point out that Daylan and Copland, both American Jews of Lithuanian descent, are culturally linked by way of their roots in the Popular Front.

The Popular Front was an anti-racist, anti-fascist movement in the arts promoted by the Communist party during the 1930's and '40's. 

The movement held sway over hundreds of "fellow travelers," including Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Paul Robeson, Lena Horne, Ernest Hemingway, Theodore Dreiser, John Steinbeck, Richard Wright, W.E.B. DuBois, Dashiell Hammett, Arthur Miller, John Dos Passos, Orson Welles, Frank Capra, Dalton Trumbo, Rita Hayworth, Edward G. Robinson, Dorothea Lange, Jacob Lawrence, Ben Shahn and Mark Rothko.

Copland composed "Fanfare for the Common Man" on commission during World War II after hearing then-Vice President Henry Wallace give a speech in which he said, “The century that will come out of this war, can be and must be the century of the common man.”

It's high time to replace Francis Scott Key's ditty with something more rousing.

If it can't be "Born to Run," nothing would please me better than a song composed by an anti-racist, anti-fascist fellow traveler.

What's your pick for a replacement?

Painting "Homeland" by Bo Bartlett

Hanging On

We must all hang together, or we shall all hang separately.

― Benjamin Franklin

Last evening, I spent an hour on a Google Hangout with the organizers and volunteers for a political campaign.

I never involve myself in politics, but I want to help a progressive who's challenging an incumbent US senator in my state's Democratic primary.

The crowd was mostly young, eager and soft-spoken―everyone duly chastened, I think, by the uphill battle they're waging.

This morning's news is filled with mentions of Antifa, Boogaloo and QAnon, groups whose names sound like brands of stool-softeners.

I'm glad to know there are at least a few folks committed to orderly progress.

To everyone still with a scintilla of civility―left, right or center―I say this: 

We must all hang on, or surely we'll all hang each other.

Happy July 4th! Wear a mask in public.

Buffoon

Great men have not been boasters and buffoons, but perceivers of the terror of life, and have manned themselves to face it.

― Ralph Waldo Emerson

English borrowed the oft-used word buffoon from the 16th century French word bouffon, meaning a professional clown, joker, or comic fool.

The French borrowed their word from the Italian buffare, meaning "to puff out the cheeks," a routine gesture performed by jesters. 

Jesters would swell their cheeks and slap them to expel the air, producing a noise resembling a fart.

After so many stolid US presidents, it's refreshing to have one so ready to look vulgar and ridiculous, though I'm not sure the 130,000 Americans who have died from Covid-19 would wholeheartedly agree.

Coffee Black

Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?

― Albert Camus

Hardship's on the horizon for millions of Americans, who will learn in July that the landlord's leniency is fairly short-lived.

Debt is about to displace one-third of the nation's homeowners, as it did during the Great Depression, when lenders foreclosed on 1,000 homes every day.

And millions more are about to lose their over-leveraged luxuries–boats, RVs, second cars, and second homes.

It's time to "stop and smell the coffee."

Thoreau understood. 

On his 28th birthday, he built a pine cabin near Walden Pond and began to spend his days gardening, walking, writing and pondering the "mean and sneaking lives many of you live."

Awash in debt, "the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation," he noted.

Americans are drunk on debt. 

Many are about to hit bottom. 

Thank goodness there's coffee.

Painting "Coffee Black" by Lyn Boyer