WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 9, 2023
Creedence Clearwater's crazy dream: The Summer of Love took place right there in San Francisco in the summer of 67.
Those on the youthful cultural left were streaming into that city, "flowers in their hair."
As they did, an early type of culture war was forming across the nation. In those days, it was called a "generation gap," but the feelings were very strong.
Two summers after the Summer of Love, it was time for the summer of Woodstock, an "Aquarian Exposition." It was "3 days of peace and music," the posters for the exposition declared—but "out in the United States," a brand-new type of crazy dream had been afflicting John Fogerty.
Those were the summers of peace and love, but Fogerty reported that he'd been seeing something different. The leading authority on Fogerty's dream thumbnails the topic as shown:
"Bad Moon Rising" is a song written by John Fogerty and performed by Creedence Clearwater Revival. It was the lead single from their album Green River and was released in April 16, 1969, four months before the album. The song peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart on 28 June 1969 and reached No. 1 on the UK Singles Chart for three weeks in September of that year (see 1969 in music). It was CCR's second gold single.
[...]
It is one of five songs by the band that peaked at the No. 2 spot on the U.S. Billboard chart and didn't get to No. 1. It was blocked by "Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet" by Henry Mancini.
Henry Mancini's more traditional love theme kept Creedence from topping the charts—but Fogerty had seen a "bad moon rising." As he reported his crazy dream, his lyrics proceeded like this:
I see a bad moon a-risin'
I see trouble on the way
I see earthquakes and lightnin'
I see bad times today.
Don't go around tonight
Well it's bound to take your life
There's a bad moon on the rise.
I hear hurricanes a-blowin'
I know the end is comin' soon
I fear rivers overflowin'
I hear the voice of rage and ruin...
Shortly after the Summer of Love, Fogerty saw the end coming soon. He could hear the voice of rage and ruin. His last verse prophesied thusly:
Hope you got your things together
Hope you are quite prepared to die
Looks like we're in for nasty weather
One eye is taken for an eye.
Musically, the song had an exuberant, happy-times feel. The vision which was being described was something totally different.
Fogerty had been having a highly improbable crazy dream! The Manson murders quickly followed. After that, Altamont.
It was during this time of changing weather that David Brooks says it started to happen. In this column for the New York Times, Brooks says that it was during this time that our (well-intentioned) blue tribe—our well-intentioned educated elite—began down the road which, decades later, helped give us President Trump, and could do so again:
BROOKS (8/4/23): ...I ask you to try on a vantage point in which we anti-Trumpers are not the eternal good guys. In fact, we’re the bad guys.
This story begins in the 1960s, when high school grads had to go off to fight in Vietnam but the children of the educated class got college deferments. It continues in the 1970s, when the authorities imposed busing on working-class areas in Boston but not on the upscale communities like Wellesley where they themselves lived.
The ideal that we’re all in this together was replaced with the reality that the educated class lives in a world up here and everybody else is forced into a world down there. Members of our class are always publicly speaking out for the marginalized, but somehow we always end up building systems that serve ourselves.
As part of this columnist's crazy dream, our liberal / progressive blue tribe—we're the anti-Trump tribe now—started down the wrong road way back then.
We "educated" types got deferments out of Vietnam; our working-class friends and neighbors did not. That was the start of this modern era, in which a more privileged "educated class" has "somehow always end[ed] up building systems that serve ourselves."
To some extent, that initial presentation is slightly over-simplified. Back in those street-fighting days of rage, male college students did get deferments during their undergraduate years—but we were eligible for the draft as soon as those four years were up.
Of course, there were other ways to avoid the draft once you'd graduated from college. Many gentlemen pursued those routes, and many in the pro-war crowd were well aware of this conduct.
The anger became quite intense. We think of the anger which was soon being expressed by our own Uncle [NAME WITHHELD], who we later came to admire for the way he loved his wife.
At any rate, David Brooks has been having a crazy dream in which our own well-intentioned tribe has helped create the world in which Donald J. Trump came to power—and could well do so again. Tomorrow, we're going to run you through the various ways Brooks sees the story going from there.
Brooks seems to say that the rise og Trump is partly our own tribe's fault. At first glance, that may seem like a crazy dream. On the other hand, we can't exactly say that Brooks' thesis is wrong.
For today, we'll leave it at this:
Long ago and far away, John Fogerty went to #2 on the charts on the strength of his own crazy vision. Those "3 days of peace" were just two months away, but he saw a "bad moon rising."
An eye will be taken for an eye? More than fifty years later, we wonder if the strength of Fogerty's crazy dream could have Trump back in the White House.
Could Donald J. Trump get elected again? If so, is our well-intentioned tribe somehow playing a part?
Tomorrow: Brooks' various points
Friday: The extremely young Bob Dylan's extremely sensible offer
Once the media made the collective decision to disappear the open bigotry of Republican voters as the reason Trump was elected President in 2016, nonsense opinions from educated elites, like David Brooks, were inevitable.
ReplyDeleteMost people were horrified by the murder of George Floyd, and there were strong calls to fundamentally change our society to be more equal, at that time. But once white people realized they wouldn't automatically be at the front of the line, we decided we shouldn't be too hasty when implementing change.
ReplyDelete"Those "3 days of peace" were just two months away, but he saw a "bad moon rising."
ReplyDeleteOddly, Somerby equates Woodstock with Altamont, but there was no violence at Woodstock. It was a wonderful and peaceful concert that presaged festivals like Monterey and Coachella, Austin City Limits and SXSW, not some dark future ruled by Hell's Angels. The main problem with Woodstock was that the attendees left trash behind, as they do at all outdoor festivals and concerts.
Today's Trump followers never had to worry about the draft, so why should they resent the people who received deferments back before they were born?
ReplyDeleteElites went to college, but those of lower SES avoided the draft by marrying and having kids. Half of graduating seniors married in the year after high school in those times. By the time that no longer exempted young men from service, there was a lottery that at least provided peace of mind to those with higher numbers.
Trump of course was as elite as they come. That makes it seem odd to suggest that elites pushed voters toward Trump with their eliteness. Trump avoided the draft by getting a letter from a doctor about bone spurs. Dylan left college, married and had a child in the early 60s. When the draft was taking men with families, he had suffered a horrible motorcycle accident that gave him health issues. He and his wife divorced in 1977, after the draft was no longer an issue, just as Somerby himself worked with inner city kids for his deferment, then went into standup comedy after the draft was no longer a threat.
I can understand that men who avoided the draft may feel guilty about those who went to war, but how does that explain any of the current supporters, whose only experience of war (short of volunteering for Iraq or Afghanistan) has been their fantasies of boogaloo?
Teens are attracted to dytopian fiction and dark music (look at heavy metal) because it reflects their fears at a point when they are growing up and entering a workforce with an uncertain future. The books and music and movies that appeal to teens feature young protagonists who cope with truly awful threats (even Buffy the Vampire Slayer). This has little to do with Trump's promise of white supremacy and exclusion of immigrants. Young people are going strongly Democratic with each generation.
So this suggestion by Somerby makes no sense at all in the context of what was going on in the real world. And it is worse than Maureen Dowd has ever written. Juxtaposing two things (e.g., Fogarty and Trump) doesn't make them causal, even if the word "bad" appears in the lyrics.
Many of Trump’s most dedicated supporters are GenXers. People who were either babies or maybe toddlers during Woodstock and Altamount. Many more who hadn’t been born. Even the youngest Boomers were only in elementary school during the Summer of Love and the aforementioned concerts.
DeleteBob’s thesis is that these kids have been harboring animus toward the Elites for more than 50 years spurred on by a bunch of hippies.
As a member of that group of youngsters, I’d place the blame on 12 years of Regan-Bush.
This is just Somerby's roundabout way of saying that right wingers don't like hippies (or as South Park calls them, "those dirty hippies".
ReplyDeleteSomeone stabbed somebody at Altamont, so we all have to vote for Trump now.
What a steaming pile of festering bullshit.
ReplyDeleteDid the liberal whites like John Fogarty who supported the social programs and voting rights acts of the sixties build a system that served only themselves? Nope, they greatly expanded the black middle class, albeit over the objections of the future Lindsey Graham, Donald Trump right. Graham’s constituency hated that expansion so much he tried to take down the us twice, first by his totally partisan, one party impeachment of President Clinton, later by making phone calls in support of Trump’s election lies. Conservatives like Brooks grew up in opposition of such leveling of the playing field, saying the programs actually hurt black people (like he cared).
Some such programs did no doubt contain waste, did fail, but the over all effect was a huge gain for blacks moving into the middle class, and to hold office. Isn’t this what really bugs Bob and Brooks?
Fortunate Sons like Bob and Brooks will go to great lengths is support of this doctrine of “everybody’s guilty ( especially the liberals we hate)”, it’s a nice way of ignoring the terrible consequences that will occur if nothing is done about Trump’s obvious, serious as hell crimes. But Bob hasn’t even come to grips with the price we paid for letting the south destroy reconstruction, so I guess it’s wrong to expect much out od him.
After bragging that he was the best President ever for black people, Trump was asked about Johnson and the voting rights act.
“Yeah,” snapped Trump. “What did THAT
get you?”
Bob would seem to agree.
Falling Black Support for Biden Has Democrats Worried
ReplyDeleteThis is how DeSantis works for the black vote:
Delete"Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis Wednesday morning, for the second time, suspended a Black elected Democratic State Attorney and replaced them with an appointee of his own choosing."
What Gunk, you think you are going to get up to six or seven percent this time?
DeleteBlack people will keep bailing-out the country, no matter how much it bothers 11:35.
DeleteBlack people built this country, we owe almost everything to them, and even though right wingers treat them like they are subhuman, they keep at it the best they can.
Delete"almost everything"? Taking a reasonable statement and exaggerating it into something people will disagree with -- is a form of trolling. But this is why history classes should specify what happened, so that general statements about owing almost everything will not be confused with knowing exactly what our country owes to the contribution of slaves. And yes, slave owners and their descendents not only treated them like they were subhuman but thought of them as subhuman by attributing non-human characteristics to them (impervious to pain, childlike, unable to feel higher emotions or too unintelligent to make good use of freedom without someone to take care of them).
DeleteAnd black people don't "keep at it" but rather pursue goals and try to live a good life the same as white people do.
6:44 that’s a fairly aggressive tone you’re taking considering all you have to offer is bluster and nonsense.
DeleteBlack people know who you are and what you’re about, but we still keep at it.
Uh oh. Mad Cow Disease break out amongst the anonymices.
DeleteTrump has totally lost the women’s vote and youth vote. All the rabid MAGAts in the rural South can’t offset that. Even black Republicans were upset about those new anti-black history Standards which Trump and Somerby both defended.
ReplyDeleteJohn Fogerty is a supremely talented national treasure.
ReplyDeleteHe still tours and puts on a tremendous performance. I plan to see him soon, as it's become a tradition for an aging old hippie.
And, we might mention, a confirmed liberal, whose “bad moon” was no doubt the ascendance of Richard Nixon.
DeleteThere's very few people that have ever lived that have written better songs than he has.
DeleteYou can damn someone with faint praise but also by over-praising. Fuck off @9:04.
Delete“Bad Moon Rising” is the ringtone I have designated for my old man’s phone calls.
ReplyDeleteGood for you. Does this mean you are now going to vote for Biden, or has the ring tone pushed you toward Trump. It isn't clear to me what Somerby is suggesting about that song.
DeleteThe ringtone I have for my daughter is “Isn’t She Lovely”.
Delete(However, I may have this backwards.)
The ringtone I have for my old lady is "Cecilia."
Delete“The Sound Of Silence” would be nice.
DeleteBob means the rights descent into the moral sewer is the left’s fault. It doesn’t have anything much to do with the song, but that’s really all Bob has to say about anything.,
DeleteRight wingers are so weird, of our resident right wing commenters: one pretends to be a woman, one pretends to have a cousin that he doesn’t, one pretends to be a lawyer…such is the tragedy of unresolved trauma.
DeleteThe more interesting debates and divides are amongst classes, not the two parties.
DeleteWhat is interesting depends on the debaters. But poor people in one culture are not necessarily like those in another. That's why people think about intersectionality and not simply class or culture or gender alone.
DeleteSounds like a bullshit excuse not to address class issues head on.
DeleteWhen have Democrats not addressed class issues?
DeleteWhen they are selling their stocks.
DeleteThere is no law against anyone being prosperous while trying to improve outcomes for others. The goal is not for everyone to be poor. But this class-related trolling is not coming from the left.
DeleteI don’t understand why Somerby’s comments are worth the effort trolls have been investing here.
Well aren’t you just the helpless little critter.
DeleteAnger toward college grads (supposedly for getting draft deferments) goes back centuries, not generations. It is documented in Richard Hofstadter's Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1964).
ReplyDeleteThe scapegoating of college educated people by the right wing is better equated to the scapegoating of Jews in antisemitic Germany, which also predates Hitler himself but was used for political purposes to gain power. Antisemitism has greatly increased in the US too. Globalism is being used as a euphemism to refer to Jews. It feels to me like references to educated elites is a similar euphemism, even though neither globalists nor educated college grads are exclusively Jewish.
The suggestion that college educated elites are responsible for our nation's problems and have pushed voters into the arms of Trump with their wrongdoing (whatever that is besides not being drafted), is similar to Hitler's blaming the Jews for everything bad in Germany.
I can see Brooks writing stuff like this, but why is Somerby doing it? He should know better.
This essay is kind of like the South Park episode with the underpants gnomes. There is no connection made between Fogarty and Woodstock and any motive that would drive people to vote for Trump. Brooks confesses to being a hypocritical elite, but where does Somerby connect that to us liberals? Does he assume no liberals were veterans? That is certainly untrue. I know poor people who avoided the draft too. As Arlo said, just go into the draft board and confess to being gay.
ReplyDeleteSo step 1 is steal the underwear, step 2 is ? and step 3 is make lots of money. Somerby's step 1 is elites are hypocrites, there is step 2 ?, and step 3 is get lots of votes for Trump. Step 2 is the hard part and it is conveniently missing. But really, job 1 is to convince readers that liberals are bad (like hippies), and voting for Trump should naturally follow from that.
Thank you so much, I enjoyed reading your blog.
ReplyDeleteFrance Visa Online