REVOLUTION: The Salt Lake Tribune speaks!

TUESDAY, JUNE 17, 2025

An unseen revolution: Back in the street-fighting days, the Beatles announced that they weren't endorsing every part of the plan.

By "the plan," we mean the revolution. John Lennon had written the song. Here's part of what it said:

Revolution
Say you want a revolution, well, you know
We all wanna change the world.
You tell me that it's evolution, well, you know
We all wanna change the world.

But when you talk about destruction
Don't you know that you can count me out?

Don't you know it's gonna be—
All right, all right. All right, all right...

You say you got a real solution, well, you know
We'd all love to see the plan.
You ask me for a contribution, well, you know
We're all doin' what we can...

And so on, from there.

For the record, it wasn't "going to be all right" for a lot of people at that point in time. Meanwhile, in the present day, we aren't all doing what we can. 

Almost no one ever does—but that isn't because we're bad people. It's because we're all people people—imperfect in all major ways.

Also, it isn't clear that it's "going to be all right" in the present circumstance! When it comes to our current revolution, that's the overall point of today's report.

For better or worse, there was a backlash to that Beatles song. The leading authority on the era offers this overview:

Revolution (Beatles song)

"Revolution" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles, written by John Lennon and credited to the Lennon–McCartney partnership. Three versions of the song were recorded and released in 1968, all during sessions for the Beatles' self-titled double album, also known as the "White Album": a slow, bluesy arrangement ("Revolution 1") included on the album; an abstract sound collage (titled "Revolution 9") that originated as the latter part of "Revolution 1" and appears on the same album; and the faster, hard rock version similar to "Revolution 1," released as the B-side of "Hey Jude." Although the single version was issued first, it was recorded several weeks after "Revolution 1," intended for release as a single...

Inspired by political protests in early 1968, Lennon's lyrics expressed sympathy with the need for social change but doubt in regard to the violent tactics espoused by some members of the New Left. Despite his bandmates' reservations, he persevered with the song and insisted it be included on their next single. When released in August, the song was viewed by the political left as a betrayal of their cause and a sign that the Beatles were out of step with radical elements of the counterculture. The release of "Revolution 1" in November indicated Lennon's uncertainty about destructive change, with the phrase "count me out" recorded instead as "count me out—in."

And so on, at length, from there.

That was then, but this is now. We speak today of the current revolution. It's a revolution in values and understandings. It's also a revolution in the transmission of information and misinformation and pleasing Storyline.

It's a revolution which major elites in Blue America seem to be unable to spot. In our view, those entities seem to be unwilling to report, discuss and assess the revolution in question. 

In fairness, we'll guess that those major Blue American elites lack the intellectual and emotional intelligence with which to pursue some such objective. But however that guesswork may be judged, the refusal to report and discuss continues to move right along.

Over the weekend, Senator Lee's remarkable tweets were markers of this revolution in values and understandings. As usual, Blue America's major news orgs have largely chosen to "walk on by" the Utah senator's unusual conduct.

We refer to Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah). As we noted in yesterday's report, he launched pair of highly unusual tweets. It seems to us that Blue America's major elites have largely chosen to walk on by his highly unusual conduct.

Those orgs have taken that same approach with respect to the unusual conduct of President Trump and Elon Musk, but also with respect to the collection of "broken toys" who now surround the president. 

By the way: Will Red America's major elites even mention Senator Lee's unusual conduct? The jury is out at this time.

A revolution has already taken place within our flailing nation. On the whole, it's been met with the sounds of silence.

Senator Lee's astonishing tweets are among the fruits of that revolution. It seems to have fallen to the senator/'s hometown newspaper to offer a full report.

In fact, the report to which we refer  isn't exactly a report. The piece in question appears within "a house that is no more a house / Upon a farm that is no more a farm / And in a town that is no more a town," as Robert Frost once said.

The Washington Post and the New York Times seem to be glossing this revolution. Why did Senator Lee do what he did? The Salt Lake Tribune has now stepped up to the plate and reprinted a major attempt at a search.

There is no paywall to block you. Dual headline included, here's what the Tribune has published. The italics are theirs:

‘Have you no decency?’ Read the scathing letter a Minnesota US Senate staffer sent to Mike Lee
The deputy chief of staff for Sen. Tina Smith questioned if joking about the death of Melissa Hortman is a “successful day for Team Lee.”

After Utah Sen. Mike Lee promoted right-wing conspiracy theories about the man who shot two Minnesota legislators and their spouses, killing one couple, a senior staffer for the state’s U.S. Sen. Tina Smith wrote a blistering email to Lee’s office.

In an interview with a local TV station Sunday, Smith, also a Democrat from Minnesota, said she was on a list of the alleged shooter’s targets. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement Saturday that he asked Capitol Police to increase security for both Smith and Minnesota’s other senator, Amy Klobuchar.

The following is the text of the letter, shared with The Salt Lake Tribune, that Smith’s Deputy Chief of Staff Ed Shelleby said he sent about the killing of Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband:

I knew Melissa Hortman. Many people in this office did. She was a longtime friend of Senator Smith’s, who had seen her hours before she was murdered. So you’ll forgive my candor as I speak through enormous grief.

It is important for your office to know how much additional pain you’ve caused on an unspeakably horrific weekend. I am not sure what compelled you or your boss to say any of those things, which, in addition to being unconscionable, also may very well be untrue.

But that is not the point. Why would you use the awesome power of a United States Senate Office to compound people’s grief? Is this how your team measures success? Using the office of US Senator to post not just one but a series of jokes about an assassination— s that a successful day of work on Team Lee? Did you come into the office Monday and feel proud of the work you did over the weekend?

Let’s recap Saturday so you fully understand what Minnesota was going through. Melissa Hortman and her husband were murdered. Sen. Hoffman and his wife were shot numerous times and remain hospitalized. By the grace of God it appears they will survive. Senators are discovered to be on a hit list of an armed man on the run — Senator Lee’s colleagues. And the decision of the office of Senator Mike Lee was not to publicly condemn the violence or to express condolences to her shattered children — it was to intimate that Melissa and Mark somehow deserved this? By making jokes? Did you have any consideration for the survivors in her family? For the Hoffmans in the hospital? For their families?

You exploited the murder of a lifetime public servant and her husband to post some sick burns about Democrats. Did you see this as an excellent opportunity to get likes and retweet[s]? Have you absolutely no conscience? No decency?

I pray to God that none of you ever go through anything like this. I pray that Senator Lee and your office begin to see the people you work with in this building as colleagues and human beings. And I pray that if God forbid, you ever find yourselves having to deal with anything similar, you find yourselves on the receiving end of the kind of grace and compassion that Senator Mike Lee could not muster.

Lastly, I suggest you take a few minutes today to read about Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark. They were remarkable people. Here’s a story in the St. Paul Pioneer Press called “Melissa Hortman: Once a teenager with a job making burritos, she became a powerful MN lawmaker who trained service dogs.”

She was a force. And a human being. And I beg of you to exercise some restraint on social media as we continue to grieve.

To its credit, the Tribune seems to be willing to express its puzzlement with one of the fruits of the current revolution in understandings and values. The paper seems to be willing to ask, out loud, for an explanation of Senator Lee's highly unusual conduct.

By now, the New York Times and the Washington Post have each published fairly short reports about the senator's conduct. The Times report does not appear in this morning's print editions. It isn't being given high visibility on the Times' website.

We don't know if the Post's report on the senator's tweets has landed on D.C.'s doorsteps. That said, we'll guess that the explorations by those two papers are going to end right there. 

By way of contrast, the local paper in Salt Lake City has been willing to go all the way back to the famous question asked of Senator Joe McCarthy not that many years after the Beatles were born.

Why did Senator Lee do what he did? It's a fairly obvious question.

Will the leading newspapers of Blue America be willing to pursue that question? Or will those newspapers hurry along, implicitly suggesting that there's nothing to look at there—implicitly adopting the stance they've taken with respect to the bizarre behaviors of revolutionaries like the apparently disordered Musk?

We're going to leave it here for today, with the suggestion that we explicitly acknowledge the existence of the revolution which has already occurred. In our view, that revolution has been built upon some perfectly valid types of complaints—valid complaints which have been pursued in ways which are baldly disordered.

Tomorrow, we'll move ahead to some of what we saw on the Fox News Channel this Sunday—first on the gruesome Fox & Friends Weekend show, then on The Big Weekend Show between 6 and 8 p.m.

Some of what we saw on the latter show was as dumb as anything we've ever seen on a TV "news" program. That said, life is still good for the finer people, the ones who refuse to report or discuss the nonsense which is rolled out, each day ab each night, on that "cable news" channel.

Let's say this much for the Beatles! They were willing to acknowledge the fact that a revolution was being pursued in 1968.  They seemed to say, in that famous 1968 song, that they weren't entirely comfortable with certain aspects of what was being proposed.

In the current instance, a revolution has already taken place. It's a revolution is values and understandings, but also in the transmission of information and its opposite. 

Like denizens of a famous land whose emperor had a new suit of clothes, our self-impressed elites in Blue America seem to be unwilling to report, seem to beunable to see, what is standing right there before the.

In our view, possibly this:

Something we were withholding made us weak / Until we found out that it was ourselves / We were withholding from our land of living...

Why did Mike Lee do what he did? Is someone going to ask?

Tomorrow: In our view, stunningly dumb