Collective mass denial - Bob Dylan’s America
From the archives: Peter talks about Bob’s comments on race in the USA and takes a deeper dive into recent American politics.
These are a collection of comments Peter made about American politics over the years and about Bob Dylan, centred initially around racism in the USA and the Civil War. We should heed his words, especially now. He died before Biden was elected, but his words could equally apply to this moment, and his cynicism, could equally apply to Biden, Harris and Trump. We should be careful to think things will change whoever wins. Although it’s clear one choice is far more worrying than the other, time and again Democrats let the American people down. It’s not good enough to just be a lesser evil. These conversational comments should not be judged in the same context as his written essays.
- Trev Gibb
It was 2012 and I was out playing Johnny Cash songs, at some private party in a bar, the only bread I'd made in six weeks, when I saw the Bob Dylan Rolling Stone interview. And of course as I read, there “it” was. And “it” may have been the only sane part of that interview:
“Mmm, I don’t know how to put it. It’s like . . . the United States burned and destroyed itself for the sake of slavery. The USA wouldn’t give it up. It had to be grinded out. The whole system had to be ripped out with force. A lot of killing. What, like, 500,000 people? A lot of destruction to end slavery. And that’s what it really was all about. This country is just too fucked up about color. It’s a distraction. People at each other’s throats just because they are of a different color. It’s the height of insanity, and it will hold any nation back or any neighborhood back. Or any anything back. Blacks know that some whites didn’t want to give up slavery that if they had their way, they would still be under the yoke, and they can’t pretend they don’t know that. If you got a slave master or Klan in your blood, blacks can sense that. Just like Jews can sense Nazi blood and the Serbs can sense Croatian blood. That stuff lingers to this day. If slavery had been given up in a more peaceful way, America would be far ahead today.” — Bob Dylan’s comments to Rolling Stone, 2012.
The whole race thing is just so insane and so rampant. Dylan is right, it totally fucked the country up and I don't think it will ever recover, certainly not in my lifetime. For most of my life, I've known this country would fall, they all do. But to be honest, I didn't think I'd be alive to see it and I'm seeing it.
I remember when I first heard Dylan sing Dixie from ‘masked and anonymous’ (it leaked before the movie or album was released). I was actually in South Carolina at the time visiting a friend while on a little tour of Tennessee, Kentucky and North Carolina. I laughed hysterically. But I also thought it was great. If you want to know what Bob Dylan really thinks about things I think it’s all there in ‘masked and anonymous’.
Ever since the British burned the white house down
There’s a bleeding wound in the heart of town — Narrow Way, Bob Dylan (Tempest)
When Barack Obama was running in the primaries in 2008 a friend of mine in England asked if I thought Obama would win and I said, “no way! America is far too racist for that.” Well I was wrong, but not completely wrong because look what's happened since.
“Tony Garnier is wearing the Obama button… Tony likes to think it’s a very good time now… An age of light. Hey, I was born in 1941, that was the year they bombed Pearl Harbour, I’ve been living in a world of darkness ever since… but it looks like things are gonna change now"
At Northrop Auditorium Minneapolis, Minnesota on 4. November 2008, a few minutes before Barack Obama was officially declared the 44th President of the United States.
There is no doubt in my mind that all the shit Obama got from the Republicans, from congress and from quite a few other people was because he's black. It couldn't be more obvious.
I saw Wanda Sykes one night on Bill Maher's show, and she said she saw the whole “NO” thing from the Republicans in congress as racism, and I agree with that. They just wanted Obama to fail. And of course it’s not that I agree with him either. I pretty much became disillusioned with him from the minute he started picking his cabinet in 2008, which initially seemed like a Clinton cabinet, I felt like if I'd known he was going to pick Clinton people, I would have voted for Billary.
Obama was not who we thought he was. As for the environment, he put that do nothing scientist (sorry can't even remember the name) in somewhere and that was the end of that. Obama should have named RKF Jr. head of the EPA. As for any other environmental concerns, like for instance food, it was all putting the wolf in charge of the hen house and as for the vaunted health care bullshit, to me it was basically making buying insurance from absolutely hideous insurance companies mandatory with a few things like pre-existing conditions thrown in. But then people if they had any sense should have been screaming in the streets or something the minute clerks in cubicles started making medical decisions. I seem to remember this same guy, who way back in ‘09 sometime in the spring during the initial healthcare fight, needed a vote in the Senate, and said the following words, “Chuck Grassley is a good man.” The following week Grassley did the opposite of what Obama wanted.
Almost every day Obama did something to piss me the fuck off. However Romney would have been even worse.
Another political pumping out his piss, another angry beggar blowin’ you a kiss,
You got the same eyes your mother does
If only you could prove who your father was
Pay in Blood, (Tempest)
I remember when I first heard Pay in Blood and at least in parts I thought it was about Obama. He sings with with more passion than anything since ‘Love and Theft’, the lyrics are scary as shit (so is Scarlet Town) and the music is finally different and not some old blues song or some old swing song.
Night after night, day after day
They strip your useless hopes away — Pay in Blood
As for the world, well, it's completely fucking insane. We are witnessing the beginning of the end. Actually, we're probably way past the beginning. You know that Leonard Cohen song, "Everybody Knows," with the line: Everybody knows the good guys lost. I mean it's just how it is. As for the US, we are witnessing the end of the empire. I didn't think it would happen in my lifetime and the final end may be a ways off, but it's over. It couldn't be more obvious.
I keep thinking about things my dad used to say. One he started saying pretty much when Reagan was elected if not before, and continued to say just about every time I talked to him until he died, that the Republicans want to destroy the middle class and he was right. The other thing he used to say was “one day the earth is going to vomit up all the shit that man has done to it,” and it sort of appears that may be happening too. I think about my dad a lot, and what he'd be saying now and for the last ten years, he’d be ranting beyond belief. He'd be ranting so much he'd probably blow up. Or he would've found the money and said, grab your guitar, some clothes, we're getting the fuck out of here. He once said “never underestimate the stupidity of the American people.”
I think what I like to refer to as the Big THEY, whoever it is that's really running things, well they don't give a fuck.
I was watching a documentary on Link TV, a listener supported very radical station, called "Heist: Who Stole the American Dream?" It was pretty damn interesting and made moreso because it included some corporate guys like the ex-CEO of American Airlines and a couple of other guys who do realize what the fuck is going on.
We are so fucked it's beyond belief and the Democrats are equally complicit and in some ways perhaps more evil. If I ever get out of here and move somewhere else, I don't think I'm gonna register as a democrat and I've registered that way all my life.
I started thinking about the 2012 convention and how Bill Clinton gave what I thought was a good speech, a rallying cry against Romney and maybe it was for those few minutes, except he's just as fucking evil. And Obama's even worse. One part was about social security and how the very people he appointed to that so-called commission from a couple of years ago, well most of them were from some far right wing thinktank totally against social security to begin with.
And the Libertarians are totally dangerous. They masquerade as one thing but
ultimately are totally fascistic. When it comes down to it Libertarians don't want to pay taxes. Before someone like Aaron Russo, before a Ron Paul, there used to be Lyndon LaRouche. They would regularly set up on street corners, entrances to stores etc as being anti-war. That's what their signs would say, until you'd go up and actually check them out. They're dangerous. They're not for anything, they're only against things. They don't want education, they don't want healthcare, they don't want anything. Most of them became the tea party and there are few groups as ludicrously
stupid as the tea party with their signs, keep the government out of my
medicare, when medicare is the government. That's how fucking stupid they
are.
Ron Paul said quite a few things I agree with about Iraq and Afghanistan. And it's also easy to be taken in by him becaue he'd go on TV and say stuff like, the war on drugs is ridiculous and a waste of money. So you hear that, and you think, okay, that's cool. But when you go deeper, into what he really wants to do, he's a lunatic and basically an isolationist. At the same time he did say one interestion thing about the
terrorists, which was maybe we should find out what they want. And statements like that got me intially interested in him, until I found out the rest of what he had to say, which was downright scary.
His moron son who ran for Senate in Kentucky is worse. But both of them have no interest in helping people. He would abandon education, he would abandon
any kind of healthcare, like the funding that provides my medication for instance. All they know is no taxes. Well, no one likes paying taxes.
If someone like Aaron Russo had his way, you (me: Trev) wouldn't even have gotten into this country the times you came because he would have closed the borders, the other big phony hot button current issue, again racist because people don't like Mexicans.
Every issue that is going on now in this country besides the economy is about racism and basically white fear because they're no longer going to be the majority in this country which for obvious reasons scares the shit out of them. That's what the Muslim thing is about, that's what the immigration thing is about, that's what the Obama thing is about. It's what America is about, becaue it always has been a racist country and never have been the so-called melting pot they taught in school. As it hasn't always been about color either.
As Jon Stewart aptly pointed out, before the Mexicans, it was the Irish, and it also was the Italians and the Jews. It's the same bullshit over and over. What makes it all doubly absurd is that all these people forget where the fuck they fucking came from. The whole country is a nation of immigrants, and they stole it from the American
Indians. Until people bother to pay attention to history they are not going
to learn from it.
“If you want to know what [The Civil War] was about, read the daily newspapers from that time from both the North and South. You’ll see things that you won’t believe… it’s nothing like what you read in the history books. It’s way more deadly and hateful. There doesn’t seem to be anything heroic or honorable about it at all. It was suicidal. Four years of looting and plunder and murder done the American way… Places like the Pittsburgh Gazette, where they were warning workers that if the Southern states have their way, they are going to overthrow our factories and use slave labor in place of our workers and put an end to our way of life. There’s all kinds of stuff like that, and that’s even before the first shot was fired. The Southern states already had rights. Sometimes more than the Northern states. The North just wanted them to stop slavery, not even put an end to it, just stop exporting it. They weren’t trying to take the slaves away. They just wanted to keep slavery from spreading. That’s the only right that was being contested. Slavery didn’t provide a working wage for people. If that economic system was allowed to spread, then people in the North were going to take up arms. There was a lot of fear about slavery spreading. - Bob Dylan (2012, Rolling Stone)
Philadelphia was one of the first integrated cities in the country and when I was a kid my parents deliberately moved to an integrated neighborhood. I remember going to a local Y to swim and making black friends there. We only lived in that neighborhood for a year and I was going to a private very cool alternative school so I never really got to experience that neighborhood the way I might have if I had gone to the neighborhood school. Then we moved out of Philly and ended up in North Jersey in a town that had like maybe 2 black families.
When I was in 7th or 8th grade, I was in the school play, "The Miracle Worker", playing Helen Keller's brother. There’s a part in the house in the woods and there's one of the black servant kids (if my memory serves that was post Civil War) assisting them. It was a boy, but they couldn’t get a boy to play the part so they changed it to a girl. But then they wanted to put black face on her. I fucking freaked and I threatened to quit. This was an extremely rich Republican town, at the time the richest community in Jersey, "Short Hills," which was part of Millburn where we moved. We were anything but rich and they, well they weren't expecting anything like me. And there was one black girl in school, I was like get her for the part which they didn't. They didn't use blackface, but they made her look darker.
We looted and we plundered on distant shores
Why is my share not equal to yours? — Narrow Way, Bob Dylan
One of the things Obamacare did (and it's actually a good thing) is require the Insurers to provide certain things which they may not have previously. Like for years I was on the Blue Cross poverty plan which is called Special Care and pretty cheap. What did I get for it, four doctor visits, no prescriptions, maybe an x-ray here and there, emergency room if I was admitted (meaning treated) and limited hospitalization. But like if I wanted to had a colostomy or something, I would get: "No, that's a 'special.' " So you know like all those blue cross ads, we care about you and all that bullshit, well preventive measures weren't covered.
Now if I had their top plan (I forget the fucking name, I used to have it), probably with that plan there were few changes, 'cause almost everything was covered.
But you have to remember, the big problem with ACA all along was a) no public option and quite clearly single payer is the way to go. Both were gone early. So the big problem with it is the insurance companies! So the positive is they now have to provide certain things. The negative is instead of making the existing plans better, they're cancelling those plans and creating new plans and that's why everyone's freaking out. THEY SUCK! And the insane thing is this fucking bill was totally designed to appease them, but they still find every way they can to fuck with people.
The damage is done, and of course Obama was a conservative, though he ran on liberal (now known as progressive) talking points. The first time 'round (2008) I voted for Obama, then I voted to defeat Romney. And so it goes in America. Once again, as it's been for some time now, a vote for 3rd party is a vote for Romney. It's as simple as that. And as annoying and disappointing as Obama was, there was no mistake that Romney/Ryan would have been way worse.
This is hard country to stay alive in
Blades are everywhere and they’re breaking my skin
I’m armed to the hilt and I’m struggling hard
You won’t get out of here unscarred — Narrow Way
Gun control is no more than a bandaid and it won't solve that problem. Until people wake up and realize that this is a society that fosters and forces insanity, the problem will continue. Turn on your TV and channel surf, and look at the clock and how long will it be before you see one or several people get shot or similar violence? A minute? 30 seconds? When you have a society that puts money above all, that glorifies and celebrates violence, where trends are more important than art, where celebrity is valued over culture or achievement, where information is more important than knowledge, where learning is about memorizing answers for a test, where all the so called important things have nothing to do with life itself and productivity is valued over creation, then people are going to go insane and this shit will continue to happen.
I think the US, as Chris Hedges has often said, is over, finished, done. I see very little hope for that changing. I mean shouldn't it be clear to anyone with half a brain that the weather has been totally bizarre and keeps getting more bizarre. Shouldn't it be clear that mountains that were covered with snow for thousands of years aren't. Does anyone give a fuck that bees and frogs are disappearing? Shouldn't it be clear that fracking is just totally INSANE? Shouldn't it be clear that the polar ice caps are melting at an alarming rate and all that water has to go somewhere?
Years ago, I remember someone in one of my bands talking about having to give back to the company he worked for. I told him, you don't fucking give back. People fought and died so you could have some job benefits.
I mean the minute all this total bullshit drug testing for jobs started people should have said fuck you. The minute all this homeland security bullshit started whether in airports or any other kind of invasive shit, people should have said fuck you. So it didn't escape my eye by any means fucking Obamaextended all that bullshit and continues to make it worse.
The only question I have is was Obama lying all along or when he won, did the forces who really control things say, yeah we know you said this in your campaign, but here's the way it is. I mean Lyndon Johnson who I fucking hated, who I marched in the streets against at least knew how to get something through congress.
It’s amazing to me that I things that Eisenhower said that make him seem like a flaming liberal in the context of today's reality with the totally insane (and they are) rethuglicans. I mean, christ, fucking Nixon extended unemployment benefits a zillion times and it was never a big deal. And I remember this because my housemate on the time was on unemployment and I was quite jealous. Not to mention that Nixon was ready to do a health care deal and created the EPA. He couldn't have done any of that shit now.
Is it any wonder that Dylan’s performance of the Times They Are A Changin’ in 2010 at the White House was so mournful, sad and subdued. The promise of the song has not been achieved. It’s ongoing.
"Thank you everybody. We tried to play good tonight, after the president was here today. You know, we just had to do something after that. It's hard to follow that. I think he's still the president, I think he's still gonna be the president. Yeah, we know. You know the media's not fooling anybody, it's probably gonna be a landslide” — Bob Dylan, Madison, Wisconsin, 5 November 2012
I remember one primary election night earlier in 2016, a night where Bernie Sanders won, and I’m watching MSNBC where fucking Rachel Maddow (who I used to like) is giggling at Brian Williams on a split screen, while the other screen is showing a podium and empty mic awaiting Donald Trump. Did they show a Sanders victory speech, no? Just a microphone awaiting Trump for an interminable amount of time. There’s a lot of blame to go around and the media have fucked up big time
The fact that they couldn’t nail Trump on a million things that would’ve cause any other candidate to drop out was beyond incredible. It used to be if a presidential candidate was divorced that was a liability or any other number of dumb bullshit stuff. I mean all that stuff about Trump not paying the various contractors who built his buildings is true. I know people who know people.
For nine fucking years I transcribed reality shows, and the whole time I did it, I thought of what Warhol said about everyone being famous for 15 minutes and here it was, but I could see where it was leading.
Following the convention, Hillary Clinton spent a lot of the summer going after Republican dollars instead of seriously courting millenials and blacks. The Democrats fucked up as usual by taking them for granted.
The country's turning into Masked and Anonymous.
In Scarlet Town the end is near
The seven wonders of the world are here
The evil and the good living side by side
All human forms seem glorified — Scarlet Town
The other thing that gets me is all this “if you’re a progressive, you’ll do the right thing” bullshit. What the fuck is a fucking progressive? It’s a totally meaningless term. Some dorkmonger came up with it to replace liberal after the GOP made liberal a dirty word, because the fucking liberals as usual are too chickenshit to say, no, it’s not a dirty word. Billary is not a progressive and she’s not a liberal either. Way back in ’92 a friend of mine said the Clintons are Republican lite and it was true then and more true now. She is one of the most lying, easy to see through candidates ever. I don’t believe a word she says because all she wants is to be president. So when she sees Bernie say something, then all of a sudden she coopts it and says she’s for it. As I posted on FB last week, pissing a bunch of people off, she is someone who can’t make up a shopping list without consulting the internet to see what foods are trending.
Another political pumping out his piss — Pay in Blood
The night before the election in 2016 Dylan sang Beyond Here Lies Nothing playing a killer solo. In spot 4 of the set list there’s been a recurring ‘It’s All Over Baby Blue”, but after the election Beyond Here LiesNothing replaced it permanently.
They’re peddlers and they’re meddlers, they buy and they sell
They destroyed your city, they’ll destroy you as well
They’re lecherous and treacherous, hell bent for leather
Each of them bigger than all men put together
Sluggers and muggers wearing fancy gold rings
All the women going crazy for the early Roman Kings — Early Roman Kings (2012)
Yes, there’s tons of blame to throw around about 2016 and Wikileaks certainly didn’t help. I didn’t see the fake news bubble on Facebook myself, what I saw was a lot of Hillary supporters posting shit from propaganda sites as if they were real articles which they weren’t, for instance that the FBI had cleared her when they hadn’t. Another way her campaign fucked up is that she didn’t go into Central PA while she came to Philly a lot and had the final night rally in Philly. And I was like “what the fuck!?” because Philly has been a solidly Democratic town my entire life. Before 1950 there were Republican mayors. Once Joe Clark who later became a Senator was elected in 1950, it’s been Democratic all the way. A lot of people I know said if only she had spoken the way she did in her concession speech during the entire campaign, it might’ve been different. Also I think if it wasn’t so blatantly obvious what the DNC was doing during the primary season, that would’ve helped. As the Podesta and other emails revealed, the DNC was doing all the nasty shit everyone suspected them of doing.
I knew very early in the year that 2016 was like no other and that people were pissed off. And it quickly became obvious that it wasn’t the usual election when all the shit Trump did which would’ve made any other candidate quit immediately just went by almost as if nothing happened.
The presidency is now a fucking reality show, finally they elected someone so totally unqualified for the job in every way and guiding him will be the worst most insane bunch of rightwing lunatics out there.
I just have myself to worry about and I’m fucking scared ’cause I’m in every way the person they fucking love to hate. No job, on social security, medicare, medicaid barely making it. And I have a whole shitload of health issues. But almost ignored in all of this is climate change. I’m sure you’ve seen the maps of the future. And you may think I’m completely nuts, but if the true effects of climate change started happening now, I think it’s the only thing that would stop this shit. I think it’s gonna happen a lot faster that people think it will.
All over downtown Philly including my old neighborhood (Swastikas were painted on building election night right on my old street two blocks from my house) humongous condos and office buildings are going up and I see it and I think what are these people thinking?
This collective mass denial thing about Trump bothered me because it reminded me of something and it took me most of yesterday to figure out what it was. It was the presidential campaign. From roughly September a year ago (if not before) we were constantly told not only by the media but by what I like to call Hillary-pod people that she was a qualified, experienced pragmatic candidate and a progressive. Of course those of us who decided to peek a little below the surface knew that was total bullshit, and the real truth was that just about everything she touched was a disaster. And again and again we were told that she was quite possibly the most experienced presidential candidate ever. And somehow this experienced candidate lost to a total moron. A moron she should have easily beaten. And then following the election, it was eventually revealed she didn’t even campaign in the counties she lost in Pennsylvania and the other swing states she lost. Yet where did she campaign over and over, in fact hold her final campaign rally? Philadelphia, a city that has been staunchly democratic since 1950. The most experienced, most qualified candidate ever. Collective mass denial.