Apropos of nothing at all, I swear, and for no discernible reason, I found myself thinking of these lyrics this morning:
John the Baptist, after torturing a thief,
Looks up at his hero, the Commander in Chief,
Saying "Tell me, great hero, but please make it brief,
Is there a hole for me to get sick in?"
The Commander-in-Chief answers him while chasing a fly,
Saying "Death to all those who would whimper and cry!"
And dropping a barbell he points to the sky,
Saying "The sun's not yellow, it's chicken!"
Those lines are from Bob Dylan's "Tombstone Blues," recorded in 1965. For some reason they seem relevant even today. Moreover, the same song contains these lines:
The sweet pretty things are in bed now of course,
The city fathers, they're trying to endorse
The reincarnation of Paul Revere's horse
But the town has no need to be nervous...
Nope, no reason to be nervous at all. I'm not nervous about America; are you?
If you want to understand America 2014, you might start by trying to understand America in the 1960s; and to do that, you have no better sources than either the books of Rick Perlstein or the music of Bob Dylan. I bid you go and read, and go and listen. And when you're done with that assignment, I will next direct you to Hunter Thompson's FEAR & LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS...but that's more of a graduate course.
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