This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
UFPJ Action Alert: Tell Congress - No Weapons Sales! Stop War Crimes in Yemen!
Dear UJP Activist, Donald Trump has just left Saudi Arabia. Stand with us to end US support for the Saudi war in Yemen! The Trump administration has approved the resumption of sales of precision-guided munitions to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in a heartless reversal of the previous administration’s …
On The Occasion Of The Centennial Of John Fitzgerald
Kennedy’s Birthday-Frank Jackman’s Journey
By Political Commentator Frank Jackman
Sure now, as anybody who is familiar with the American Left History on-line site and The Progressive Journal print site that
I write for these days knows, or should be expected to know, I along with many
of my political kindred have long raked many of the policies and projects that
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, President of the United States 1961-1963, initiated
over the coals. Most notable for those of us who were inspired, maybe inflamed
by the exploits of the revolutionaries (without being revolutionaries ourselves
but proper liberals and social democrats) in Cuba who overthrew the Batista
regime was the fumbled Bay of Pigs invasion in the spring of 1961 which was our
first point of serious differences with a generally positive attitude toward
Camelot and the deep state escalation of American involvement in Vietnam which
led to the slippery slope that tore this society asunder as we can as near to a
cold civil war as we had in this country until very recently. There were other
generic differences that came to the fore later when we were seeking,
desperately seeking, for what brother Robert Kennedy called, “stealing” a page
from Alfred Lord Tennyson, “ a newer world.” Looking for more
socialist-oriented solutions to what ailed society.
All that however was later. Today I want to speak of the
promise that the election of JFK meant to a bunch of Irish Catholic corner boys
from the poverty-stricken Acre section of North Adamsville back in the fall of
1960 when we felt that first fresh breeze coming over the land from the icy
depths of the red scare Cold War night that we had come of political age in.
That “fresh breeze,” as I have noted many, many times elsewhere an expression
that fellow corner boy the late Peter Paul Markin (the actual Markin, not the
moderator of the ALH blog site who
uses that moniker in honor of our fallen brother long departed) would endlessly
bore us with in those days when all we gave a rat’s ass (also an expression I
have used many, many times concerning our reaction to Markin’s “fresh breeze”
statement) was girls, getting dough to deal with girls and cars, “boss” cars
not necessarily in that order. (To be fair to Markin he was the king hell king
of the midnight creep when we needed dough at the times when his seamier side
got ahead of the “better angel of his nature”).
While none of us, me, Jack Callahan, Frankie Riley, Phil
Larkin, Jimmy Murphy, Ralph Kiley, Ricky Russo, Allan Stein, the corner boys
although the latter two were not full Irish, but only half Irish got as carried
away with Markin’s fresh breeze coming that he continued to spout forth for
another half decade before it did come in the form of the many threads that led
up to the Summer of Love, San Francisco, 1967 which Alex James and others have
written about in this the 50th anniversary year of that “youth
nation” explosion we were thrilled beyond words to be able to say “one of own,”
an Irish Catholic had done what Al Smith could not do a few decades before and
get elected president in a low-slung Protestant-controlled country. (My
grandfather never got over the dirty campaign waged by the “refined” WASPs, the
Brahmins, you know the people with the three-name monikers like Wesley Stuart
Gardner, names like that.) It did not matter that JFK was the scion of
“chandelier” Irish unlike our own “shanty” Irish digs. He was ours in all its
glory.
Markin, like in many other such endeavors was the bell-weather
for our take on JFK. For getting enthusiastic about the guy, about getting out
the vote in our town for our man. But that election of 1960 was also a prime
example of the contradictions that would a little over decade later do Markin
in and which for many of the rest of us was a close thing between freedom and a
dark dungeon. See Markin was all hopped up about getting rid of nuclear weapons,
was all hopped up for the United States to get rid of them unilaterally if
necessary. The rest of us, especially Frankie Riley, our undisputed and
acknowledged leader, thought he was crazy, crazy with the Russian armed to the
teeth with similar such weapons as we were still seriously hung up on the Cold
War stuff we read about and were taught was the real deal in school.
One thing about Markin was he put his money where his mouth
was most of the time. He had heard about a rally, stand-out, vigil or something
in Boston, at the Boston Common near the Park Street subway station against
nuclear weapons in October of 1960 a few weeks before the election sponsored by
a group called SANE, Doctor Spock’s group, some Quakers and other odd-balls. He
was determined to go although he expressed some fears that he might be harmed
by pro-nuclear weapons people and he did so saying later to us that he had
found some kindred spirits who were not afraid unlike a fourteen year old boy
and that got him through. (This is not the place to digress too much about side
stuff but Markin’s fear was the subject of a bet between him and Frankie Riley
that he would not go. Markin was very proud of winning that bet and would bring
it up periodically long after we could have given a rat’s ass about the wager
since we were always betting on almost any propositions that struck our
fancies.)
Here’s where the Markin contradiction came in, maybe the
human condition contradiction when all is said and done after my own fifty plus
years of having gone through my own sets of contradictions. During the
television debates between JFK and his Republican opponent, then Vice President
Nixon who was later a president in his own right and a common criminal as well
Kennedy made a great deal out of some supposed “missile gap” between the United
States and Russia that had developed under the Eisenhower-Nixon regime. To our
disadvantage. That “gap” was among others things in the number and
effectiveness of the American nuclear arsenal. Kennedy’s solution: build more
and better such weapons. Nevertheless the very next weekend after that Boston
anti-nuclear weapons rally Markin rounded us up to go up to the North
Adamsville Kennedy for President headquarters located in a small shed-like
building on the property of the Knights of Columbus and grab a bunch of
leaflets to go door to door putting them in mail slots. Such were the ups and
downs of having “one of our own” getting elected to the White House in sunnier
days.
Click On Title To Link To YouTube's Film Clip Of Jerry Lee Lewis Doing "Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On". Wow.
In Honor Of The Late Rocker Chuck Berry Who Helped Make It All Possible-ast Man Standing', Indeed- Jerry Lee Lewis DVD REVIEW
Jerry Lee or Elvis? What is your choice? Here is mine.
Last Man Standing, Jerry Lee Lewis in Concert, New York, 2006 Elvis, Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins, Bo Diddley. Yes those are the men who created Rock ‘n’ Roll, as we know it. However in that list do not forget one Jerry Lee Lewis. Fate dealt him an uneven hand due to the foibles of his personal life (the subject of a movie, “Great Balls of Fire”, with Dennis Quaid) but his form of rockabilly/boogie woogie piano-driven music and madman presentation must be placed in the mix of influences that drove the best of early rock. If for no other reason that that he is one of the few ‘still standing' from that generation it was nice to see what “The Killer” could do in his 71st year in concert in New York City in 2006 with a host of guests some old, some young. Clearly off these performances he has lost a couple of steps. Hell the kind of energy that Jerry Lee produced in the 1950's definitely had a short shelf life. There are some nice clips from that period interspersed with the concert, by the way. Think about that opening scene in the movie “High School Confidential” of 1958 where he is playing like a madman on the back of a flatbed truck as he heads toward the local high school. Whoa. Despite the lost of energy Jerry Lee can still give out on some tunes like in the old days. Take his duo with R&B master Solomon Burke on “Who Will the Next Fool Be”. How about Tom Jones on “Green, Green Grass of Home”. Or Norah Jones on Hank Williams’ “Your Cheating Heart”. Or Jerry on Chuck Berry's "Roll Over, Beethoven”. Or his classic “ Crazy Arms”. And on and on. In fact the covers of his old material and some Hank Williams material highlight this concert. If you have a couple of hours better take advantage of it. Then you will know what it was like when men (and women) played rock 'n' roll for keeps.
We have a TV advertisement, which we will run in the Washington, DC area on MSNBC. Can you help us let as many people know as possible that veterans are gathering against war, against militarism and against the system that is destroying our society, our future and our planet?
"If you can give $5, $20 or more we can let millions of people know we will be there, in DC, the heart of the Empire, so they can join us and so they, thousands of them, may join us outside the Lincoln Memorial, march to the White House and fight for Peace and against war; for Life and against death; for Love and against hate; for those things we need and we cherish in our society; and against the greed and the destruction that we have too much already in our society." -Matt Hoh, Veteran, Member of Veterans For Peace
You contribution no matter how small or large will help us make a difference.
As veterans who took an oath to defend the Constitution “against all enemies foreign and domestic” We cannot stand by and let this happen.
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*****Frank Jackman’s Fate-With Bob Dylan’s Masters of War In Mind
From The Pen Of Sam Lowell
Jack Callahan’s old friend from Sloan High School in Carver down in Southeastern Massachusetts Zack James (Zack short for Zachary not as is the fashion today to just name a baby Zack and be done with it) is an amateur writer and has been at it since he got out of high school. Found out that maybe by osmosis, something like that, the stuff Miss Enos taught him junior and senior years about literature and her favorite writers Hemingway, Edith Wharton and Dorothy Parker to name a few, that she would entice the English class stuck with him with through college where although he majored in Political Science he was in thrall to the English literature courses that he snuck in to his schedule. Snuck in although Zack knew practically speaking he had a snowball’s chance in hell, an expression he had learned from Hemingway he thought,of making a career out of the literary life as a profession, would more likely wind driving a cab through dangerous midnight sections of town occasionally getting mugged for his night’s work. That Political Science major winding up producing about the same practical results as the literary life though. Stuck with him, savior stuck with him, through his tour of duty during the Vietnam War, and savior stayed with him through those tough years when he couldn’t quite get himself back to the “real” world after ‘Nam and let drugs and alcohol rule his life so that he wound up for some time as a “brother under the bridge” as Bruce Springsteen later put the situation in a song that he played continuously at times after he first heard it “Saigon, long gone…." Stuck with him after he recovered and started building up his sports supplies business, stuck with him through three happy/sad/savage/acrimonious “no go” marriages and a parcel of kids and child support.And was still sticking with him now that he had time to stretch out and write longer pieces, and beat away on the word processor a few million words on this and that.
Amateur writer meaning nothing more than that he liked to write and that writing was not his profession, that he did not depend on the pen for his livelihood(or rather more correctly these days not the pen but the word processor). That livelihood business was taken up running a small sports apparel store in a mall not far from Lexington (the Lexington of American revolutionary battles to give the correct own and state) where he now lived. Although he was not a professional writer his interest was such that he liked these days with Jimmy Shore, the famous ex-runner running the day to day operations of the store, to perform some of his written work in public at various “open mic” writing (and poetry) jams that have sprouted up in his area.
This “open mic” business was a familiar concept to Jack from the days back in the 1960s when he would go to such events in the coffeehouses around Harvard Square and Beacon Hill to hear amateur folk-singers perfect their acts and try to be recognized as the new voice of their generation, or something like that. For “no singing voice, no musical ear” Jack those were basically cheap date nights if the girl he was with was into folk music. The way most of the "open mics" although they probably called them talent searches then, worked was each performer would sign up to do one, two, maybe three songs depending on how long the list of those wishing to perform happened to be (the places where each performer kicked in a couple of bucks in order to play usually had shorter lists). These singers usually performed in the period in front of the night’s feature who very well might have been somebody who a few weeks before had been noticed by the owner during a pervious "open mic" and asked to do a set of six to sixteen songs depending on the night and the length of the list of players in front of him or her. The featured performer played, unlike the "open mic" people, for the “basket” (maybe a hat) passed around the crowd in the audience and that was the night’s “pay.” A tough racket for those starting out like all such endeavors. The attrition rate was pretty high after the folk minute died down with arrival of other genre like folk rock, heavy rock, and acid rock although you still see a few old folkies around the Square or playing the separate “open mic” folk circuit that also ran through church coffeehouses just like these writing jams.
Jack was not surprised then when Zack told him he would like him to come to hear him perform one of his works at the monthly third Thursday “open mic” at the Congregational Church in Arlington the next town over from Lexington. Zack told Jack that that night he was going to perform something he had written and thought on about Frank Jackman, about what had happened to Frank when he was in the Army during Vietnam War times.
Jack knew almost automatically what Zack was going to do, he would somehow use Bob Dylan’s Masters of War lyrics as part of his presentation. Jack and Zack ( a Vietnam veteran who got “religion” on the anti-war issue while he in the Army and became a fervent anti-war guy after that experience despite his personal problems) had met Frank in 1971 when they were doing some anti-war work among the soldiers at Fort Devens out in Ayer about forty miles west of Boston. Frank had gotten out of the Army several months before and since he was from Nashua in the southern part of New Hampshire not far from Devens and had heard about the G.I. coffeehouse, The Morning Report, where Jack and Zack were working as volunteers he had decided to volunteer to help out as well. Now Frank was a quiet guy, quieter than Jack and Zack anyway, but one night he had told his Army story to a small group of volunteers gathered in the main room of the coffeehouse as they were planning to distribute Daniel Ellsberg’s sensational whistle-blower expose The Pentagon Papers to soldiers at various spots around the base (including as it turned out inside the fort itself with one copy landing on the commanding general’s desk for good measure). He wanted to tell this story since he wanted to explain why he would not be able to go with them if they went inside the gates at Fort Devens.
Jack knew Zack was going to tell Frank’s story so he told Frank he would be there since he had not heard the song or Frank’s story in a long while and had forgotten parts of it. Moreover Zack wanted Jack there for moral support since this night other than the recitation of the lyrics he was going to speak off the cuff rather than his usual reading from some prepared paper.
That night Zack was already in the hall talking to the organizer, Eli Walsh, you may have heard of him since he has written some searing poems about his time in three tours Iraq. Jack felt right at home in this basement section of the church and he probably could have walked around blind-folded since the writing jams were on almost exactly the same model as the old folkie “open mics.” A table as you entered to pay your admission this night three dollars (although the tradition is that no one is turned away for lack of funds) with a kindly woman asking if you intended to perform and direct you to the sign-up sheet if so. Another smaller table with various cookies, snacks, soda, water and glasses for those who wished to have such goodies, and who were asked to leave a donation in the jar on that table if possible. The set-up in the hall this night included a small stage where the performers would present their material slightly above the audience. On the stage a lectern for those who wished to use that for physical support or to read their work from and the ubiquitous simple battery-powered sound system complete with microphone. For the audience a bevy of chairs, mostly mismatched, mostly having seen plenty of use, and mostly uncomfortable. After paying his admission fee he went over to Zack to let him know he was in the audience. Zack told him he was number seven on the list so not to wander too far once the session had begun.
This is the way Zack told the story and why Jack knew there would be some reference to Bob Dylan’s Masters of War that night:
Hi everybody my name is Zack James and I am glad that you all came out this cold night to hear Preston Borden present his moving war poetry and the rest of us to reflect on the main subject of this month’s writing jam-the endless wars that the American government under whatever regime of late has dragged us into, us kicking and screaming to little avail. I want to thank Eli as always for setting this event up every month and for his own thoughtful war poetry. [Some polite applause.] But enough for thanks and all that because tonight I want to recite a poem, well, not really a poem, but lyrics to a song, to a Bob Dylan song, Masters of War, so it might very well be considered a poem in some sense.
You know sometimes, a lot of times, a song, lyrics, a poem for that matter bring back certain associations. You know some song you heard on the radio when you went on your first date, your first dance, your first kiss, stuff like that which is forever etched in your memory and evokes that moment every time you hear it thereafter. Now how this Dylan song came back to me recently is a story in itself.
You remember Eli back in October when we went up to Maine to help the Maine Veterans for Peace on their yearly peace walk that I ran into Susan Rich, the Quaker gal we met up in Freeport who walked with us that day to Portland. [Eli shouted out “yes.”] I had not seen Susan in about forty years before that day, hadn’t seen her since the times we had worked together building up support for anti-war G.I.s out at the Morning Report coffeehouse in Ayer outside Fort Devens up on Route 2 about thirty miles from here. That’s when we met Frank Jackman who is the real subject of my presentation tonight since he is the one who I think about when I think about that song, think about his story and how that song relates to it.
Funny as many Dylan songs as I knew Masters of War, written by Dylan in 1963 I had never heard until 1971. Never heard the lyrics until I met Frank out at Fort Devens where after I was discharged from the Army that year I went to do some volunteer anti-war G.I. work at the coffeehouse outside the base in Army town Ayer. Frank too was a volunteer, had heard about the place somehow I forget how, who had grown up in Nashua up in southern New Hampshire and after he was discharged from the Army down at Fort Dix in New Jersey came to volunteer just like me and my old friend Jack Callahan who is sitting in the audience tonight. Now Frank was a quiet guy didn’t talk much about his military service but he made the anti-war soldiers who hung out there at night and on weekends feel at ease. One night thought he felt some urge to tell his story, tell why he thought it was unwise for him to participate in an anti-war action we were planning around the base. We were going to pass out copies of Daniel Ellsberg’s explosive whistle-blower expose The Pentagon Papers to soldiers at various location around the fort and as it turned out on the base. The reason that Frank had balked at the prospect of going into the fort was that as part of his discharge paperwork was attached a statement that he was never to go on a military installation again. We all were startled by that remark, right Jack? [Jack nods agreement.]
And that night the heroic, our kind of heroic, Frank Jackman told us about the hows and whys of his Army experience. Frank had been drafted like a ton of guys back then, like me, and had allowed himself to be drafted in 1968 at the age of nineteen not being vociferously anti-war and not being aware then of the option of not taking the subsequent induction. After about three week down at Fort Dix, the main basic training facility for trainees coming from the Northeast then, he knew two things-he had made a serious mistake by allowing himself to be drafted and come hell or high water he was not going to fight against people he had no quarrel with in Vietnam. Of course the rigors of basic training and being away from home, away from anybody who could help him do he knew not what then kept him quiet and just waiting. Once basic was over and he got his Advanced Infantry Training assignment also at Fort Dix which was to be an infantryman at a time when old Uncle Sam only wanted infantrymen in the rice paddles and jungles of Vietnam things came to a head.
After a few weeks in AIT he got a three day weekend pass which allowed him to go legally off the base and he used that time to come up to Boston, or really Cambridge because what he was looking for was help to file an conscientious objector application and he knew the Quakers were historically the ones who would know about going about that process. That is ironically where Susan Rich comes in again, although indirectly this time, since Frank went to the Meeting House on Brattle Street where they were doing draft and G.I. resistance counseling and Susan was a member of that Meeting although she had never met him at that time. He was advised by one of the Quaker counselors that he could submit a C.O. application in the military, which he had previously not been sure was possible since nobody told anybody anything about that in the military, when he got back to Fort Dix but just then, although they were better later, the odds were stacked against him since he had already accepted induction. So he went back, put in his application, took a lot of crap from the lifers and officers in his company after that and little support, mainly indifference, from his fellow trainees. He still had to go through the training, the infantry training though and although he had taken M-16 rifle training in basic he almost balked at continuing to fire weapons especially when it came to machine guns. He didn’t balk but in the end that was not a big deal since fairly shortly after that his C.O. application was rejected although almost all those who interviewed him in the process though he was “sincere” in his beliefs. That point becomes important later.
Frank, although he knew his chances of being discharged as a C.O. were slim since he had based his application on his Catholic upbringing and more general moral and ethical grounds. The Catholic Church which unlike Quakers and Mennonites and the like who were absolutely against war held to a just war theory, Vietnam being mainly a just war in the Catholic hierarchy’s opinion. But Frank was sincere, more importantly, he was determined to not got to war despite his hawkish family and his hometown friends’, some who had already served, served in Vietnam too, scorn and lack of support. So he went back up to Cambridge on another three day pass to get some advice, which he actually didn’t take in the end or rather only partially took up which had been to get a lawyer they would recommend and fight the C.O. denial in Federal court even though that was also still a long shot then.
Frank checked with the lawyer alright, Steve Brady, who had been radicalized by the war and was offering his services on a sliding scale basis to G.I.s since he also had the added virtue of having been in the JAG in the military and so knew some of the ropes of the military legal system, and legal action was taken but Frank was one of those old time avenging Jehovah types like John Brown or one of those guys and despite being a Catholic rather than a high holy Protestant which is the usual denomination for avenging angels decided to actively resist the military. And did it in fairly simple way when you think about it. One Monday morning when the whole of AIT was on the parade field for their weekly morning report ceremony Frank came out of his barracks with his civilian clothes on and carrying a handmade sign which read “Bring the Troops Home Now!” That sign was simply but his life got a lot more complicated after that. In the immediate sense that meant he was pulled down on the ground by two lifer sergeants and brought to the Provost Marshal’s office since they were not sure that some dippy-hippie from near-by New York City might be pulling a stunt. When they found out that he was a soldier they threw him into solitary in the stockade.
For his offenses Frank was given a special court-martial which meant he faced six month maximum sentence which a panel of officers at his court-martial ultimately sentenced him to after a seven day trial which Steve Brady did his best to try to make into an anti-war platform but given the limitation of courts for such actions was only partially successful. After that six months was up minus some good time Frank was assigned to a special dead-beat unit waiting further action either by the military or in the federal district court in New Jersey. Still in high Jehovah form the next Monday morning after he was released he went out to that same parade field in civilian clothes carrying another homemade sign “Bring The Troops Home Now!” and he was again manhandled by another pair of lifer sergeants and this time thrown directly into solitary in the stockade since they knew who they were dealing with by then. And again he was given a special court-martial and duly sentenced by another panel of military officers to the six months maximum.
Frank admitted at that point he was in a little despair at the notion that he might have to keep doing the same action over and over again for eternity. Well he wound up serving almost all of that second sex month sentence but then he got a break. That is where listening to the Quakers a little to get legal advice did help. See what Steve Brady, like I said an ex-World War II Army JAG officer turned anti-war activist lawyer, did was take the rejection of his C.O. application to Federal District Court in New Jersey on a writ of habeas corpus arguing that since all Army interviewers agreed Frank was “sincere” that it had been arbitrary and capricious of the Army to turn down his application. And given that the United States Supreme Court and some lower court decisions had by then had expanded who could be considered a C.O. beyond the historically recognized groupings and creeds the cranky judge in the lower court case agreed and granted that writ of habeas corpus. Frank was let out with an honorable discharge, ironically therefore entitled to all veteran’s benefits but with the stipulation that he never go onto a military base again under penalty of arrest and trial. Whether that could be enforced as a matter of course he said he did not want to test since he was hardily sick of military bases in any case.
So where does Bob Dylan’s Masters of War come into the picture. Well as you know, or should know every prisoner, every convicted prisoner, has the right to make a statement in his or her defense during the trial or at the sentencing phase. Frank at both his court-martials rose up and recited Bob Dylan’s Masters of War for the record. So for all eternity, or a while anyway, in some secret recess of the Army archives (and of the federal courts too) there is that defiant statement of a real hero of the Vietnam War. Nice right?
Here is what had those bloated military officers on Frank’s court-martial board seeing red and ready to swing him from the highest gallow, yeah, swing him high.
Masters Of War-Bob Dylan
Come you masters of war You that build all the guns You that build the death planes You that build the big bombs You that hide behind walls You that hide behind desks I just want you to know I can see through your masks
You that never done nothin’ But build to destroy You play with my world Like it’s your little toy You put a gun in my hand And you hide from my eyes And you turn and run farther When the fast bullets fly
Like Judas of old You lie and deceive A world war can be won You want me to believe But I see through your eyes And I see through your brain Like I see through the water That runs down my drain
You fasten the triggers For the others to fire Then you set back and watch When the death count gets higher You hide in your mansion As young people’s blood Flows out of their bodies And is buried in the mud
You’ve thrown the worst fear That can ever be hurled Fear to bring children Into the world For threatening my baby Unborn and unnamed You ain’t worth the blood That runs in your veins
How much do I know To talk out of turn You might say that I’m young You might say I’m unlearned But there’s one thing I know Though I’m younger than you Even Jesus would never Forgive what you do
Let me ask you one question Is your money that good Will it buy you forgiveness Do you think that it could I think you will find When your death takes its toll All the money you made Will never buy back your soul
And I hope that you die And your death’ll come soon I will follow your casket In the pale afternoon And I’ll watch while you’re lowered Down to your deathbed And I’ll stand o’er your grave ’Til I’m sure that you’re dead
“Even The President Of The United States Sometimes Must Have To Stand Naked”- Tales From The “Pennsylvania Avenue Bunker”
It's All Right Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)
Lyrics
Darkness at the break of noon Shadows even the silver spoon The handmade blade, the child's balloon Eclipses both the sun and moon To understand you know too soon There is no sense in trying
Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn Suicide remarks are torn From the fool's gold mouthpiece The hollow horn plays wasted words Proves to warn that he's not busy being born Is busy dying
Temptation's page flies out the door You follow, find yourself at war Watch waterfalls of pity roar You feel to moan but unlike before You discover that you'd just be One more person crying
So don't fear if you hear A foreign sound to your ear It's alright ma, I'm only sighing
As some warn victory, some downfall Private reasons great or small Can be seen in the eyes of those that call To make all that should be killed to crawl While others say don't hate nothing at all Except hatred
Disillusioned words like bullets bark As human gods aim for their mark Made everything from toy guns that spark To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark It's easy to see without looking too far That not much is really sacred
While preachers preach of evil fates Teachers teach that knowledge waits Can lead to hundred-dollar plates Goodness hides behind its gates But even the president of the United States Sometimes must have to stand naked
An' though the rules of the road have been lodged It's only people's games that you got to dodge And it's alright ma, I can make it
Advertising signs that con you Into thinking you're the one That can do what's never been done That can win what's never been won Meantime life outside goes on All around you
You lose yourself, you reappear You suddenly find you got nothing to fear Alone you stand with nobody near When a trembling distant voice, unclear Startles your sleeping ears to hear That somebody thinks they really found you
A question in your nerves is lit Yet you know there is no answer fit to satisfy Insure you not to quit To keep it in your mind and not forget That it is not he or she or them or it That you belong to
Although the masters make the rules For the wise men and the fools I got nothing ma, to live up to
For them that must obey authority That they do not respect in any degree Who despise their jobs, their destinies Speak jealously of them that are free Do what they do just to be nothing more than something they invest in
While some on principles baptized To strict party platform ties Social clubs in drag disguise Outsiders they can freely criticize Tell nothing except who to idolize And then say "God bless him"
While one who sings with his tongue on fire Gargles in the rat race choir Bent out of shape from society's pliers Cares not to come up any higher But rather get you down in the hole that he's in
But I mean no harm nor put fault On anyone that lives in a vault But it's alright ma, if I can't please him
Old lady judges watch people in pairs Limited in sex, they dare To push fake morals, insult and stare While money doesn't talk, it swears Obscenity, who really cares Propaganda, all is phony
While them that defend what they cannot see With a killer's pride, security It blows the minds most bitterly For them that think death's honesty Won't fall upon them naturally Life sometimes must get lonely
My eyes collide head-on with stuffed graveyards False gods, I scuff At pettiness which plays so rough Walk upside-down inside handcuffs Kick my legs to crash it off Say okay, I have had enough What else can you show me?
And if my thought-dreams could be seen They'd probably put my head in a guillotine But it's alright ma, it's life, and life only
Yeah, the legendary now Nobel Literature Laureate Bob Dylan had it right way back in 1965, in the time of Lyndon Johnson, President of the United States and major war criminal when he wrote as part of the lyrics to the early folk rock song It’s All Right Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) the following “… even the president of the United States must have to sometimes stand naked.” Maybe he was thinking LBJ but somehow the current occupant of the White House seems more appropriate. See it took LBJ almost four years to get down into the bunker and today’s occupant, do I need to mention his name, has gone down into the bowels of the Pennsylvania Avenue bunker after only four months. That is newsworthy, worthy moreover of some extended commentary in this space as we begin the “death watch” that has become something of a familiar part of the modern American presidential landscape.
My, our, motivation on this site for this new series of commentaries is that we are truly worried about the fate of the Republic these days. Something that even in the darkest days of the Lyndon Baine Johnson administration and the criminally dark days of his successor one Richard Milhous Nixon, a lowly common criminal as it turned out we did not see tattering. I have “confessed” elsewhere that I had seriously underestimated the differences between the wretch Hillary Clinton and this sociopath we are contenting with now and that underestimation has only led me to become haunted by the specter of having to fight in the streets to defend the hard-fought democratic gains of the past couple of centuries that are now on the chopping block. We are in hard and troubled times and as much as I like to give conventional bourgeois politics the back of my hand the times demand more-demand some contributions to build the resistance, build it right now as a firewall against the time when these guys come up and out of the bunker one more time. More, much more later as this cheapjack soap opera unfolds before our disbelieving eyes. I can only add where is “Doctor Gonzo,” the late journalist Hunter S. Thompson when you need him. He would have this thing picked clean already. Stay tuned.
