50 years hence, will some dulcet-toned lass sing “I dreamed I saw Don Trump last night?”

*   *   *   *

A word of explanation:  50 years from now that dulcet-toned lass could be singing that ode to Donald Trump to the tune of “I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night.”  Joan Baez sang the original song – about Joe Hill – most memorably at Woodstock, back in the summer of 1969.

Another word of explanation.  The day after the last election – November 9, 2016, in case you’ve forgotten – a phrase came trickling up from my memory vault.  In fact, I did a post on Facebook, reminding people of “what Joan Baez said:  ‘DON’T MOURN.  ORGANIZE!”

But then I had to explain it was actually Joe Hill who said that, but she’s the one who made the saying famous.  (At Woodstock, “back in our hippie days.”)  As an aside, Joe Hill was both a labor activist and a song-writer, and as such was credited with inventing the term pie in the sky.

(Which could also refer to Donald Trump, but that would mean going off on a tangent…)

So anyway – and to make a long story short:  Today I finally uploaded Joan’s “Joe Hill last night,” and listened to it on my iPod Shuffle as I did my weekly two hours of kayaking.

That’s when I was struck by the line at the end of the song:  “Where working men defend their rights, it’s there you’ll find Joe Hill.”  Which is what makes the resulting comparison in this post so ironic.  (Either that, or incongruous.  I always get those two  mixed up.)

The thing is, in some strange way Donald Trump – educated at the New York Military Academy, then the Wharton School (at right) and worth an estimated 3.7 billion dollars* – has somehow become a hero to the (white) American working man.

See for example Trump’s fans have more to lose than Trump himself.  That article noted that whatever the outcome of the election, Trump would remain “more or less intact … rich and privileged and more famous than ever.”  However:

The same cannot be said for the millions of Americans who have looked to Trump to save them.  These folks … the angry, white, blue-collar workers who are outraged or terrified that America has become some topsy-turvy multi-cultural nightmare where a hard-working man cannot make a decent living … will emerge from this circus worse off than before.

See also Donald Trump a working man’s hero in US coal country.

But the future may not be so rosy for The Donald.  In another line from from “Joe Hill,” Joan Baez noted, “‘The Copper Bosses killed you Joe, They shot you Joe’ says I.”  In DJT’s case, the same professor who predicted – back in September – that Trump would win is now saying that he’ll be impeached.  And in another irony the Democrats won’t be behind the impeachment.

Professor Allan Lichtman recently noted that Republicans are nervous about Donald Trump, for reasons including that he’s a “loose cannon” and that no one know what he really believes.  “He can’t be controlled.  The Republicans would vastly prefer to have Mike Pence, an absolutely predictable down-the-pipe conservative Republican.*”

Which – you could say – was what happened to Joe Hill.  The “Copper bosses” couldn’t control him, so they had him convicted of murder in a “controversial trial.”  In Donald’s case, if his party bosses can’t control him, they may resort to impeaching him in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, and seeing him convicted in the Republican-controlled Senate.

 (See also – for example – That OTHER “Teflon Don,” which noted – back in March – that Trump “may well be the first president in American history to get both impeached and convicted.”)

And if that were to happen, Trump would remain forever as a hero to many.  (Untarnished by his actual performance in office.)  As the original song said, “Takes more than guns to kill a man…  Says Joe ‘I didn’t die.'”  And it may well take more than an impeachment-and-conviction to tarnish the Donald’s reputation with the American working man.  

And so the final stanza of  “I dreamed I saw Don Trump last night” might go like this:

From San Diego up to Maine,
In every mine and mill,
Where working men defend their rights,
It’s there you’ll find Don Trump,
It’s there you’ll find Don Trump!

*   *   *   *

Hey, it could happen!

*   *   *   *

The upper image is courtesy of Joan Baez – Wikipedia.  The caption:  “Baez playing at the March on Washington in August 1963.”  See also the “Portrait of Joan Baez in 1961.”

For a live version of the song see Joan Baez Live @ Woodstock 1969 Joe Hill.mpg – YouTube, or Joan Baez At Woodstock: Her Song For Joe Hill (VIDEO).”  For the full lyrics see JOAN BAEZ LYRICS – Joe Hill.

Re:  “Hence.”  I used the term in main caption in the sense of “archaic, of a length of time,” and/or meaning “in the future from now.”  An example:  “A year hence it will be forgotten.”

Re:  Joe Hill.  See Wikipedia, which noted that as a labor activist and songwriter, he was “variously celebrated as a martyr or a villain.”  And as a song-writer, one of his best-known songs was “The Preacher and the Slave,” in which he coined the phrase “pie in the sky.”

Re:  “Memory vauit.”  The link will take you to Confabulation – Wikipedia, which defined the term in psychiatry as “a disturbance of memory, defined as the production of fabricated, distorted or misinterpreted memories about oneself or the world.”  (Which could “also again” refer to Donald Trump, but as in the main text “that would mean going off on [another] tangent.”)

“Note” also that an asterisk in the main text indicates a statement supported by a reference detailed in these “notes.”  Thus, as to the professor predicting Trump’s impeachment, see Professor predicted Trump win, says he will be impeached.

Re: Trump’s net worth.  See Donald Trump Net Worth | Bankrate.com.

The lower image is courtesy of APG 146 – When Pigs Fly?airlinepilotguy.com.  See also Flying pig – Wikipedia, which defined the phrase in pertinent part as “an adynaton—a figure of speech so hyperbolic that it describes an impossibility.”

A reprise from last December’s Alice’s Restaurant – Revisited.  

*   *   *   *

Last December I posted Alice’s Restaurant – Revisited.  It included the photo-montage above, but who’da thunk it?  Who would have thought that one of those men – (the guy at top center) – would be elected president, a year later, in 2016?  (And I’m sure Donald didn’t inhale either.)

So once again the question is:  “Can you say prescient?”

But back to the point.  Alice’s Restaurant – Revisited was about a Thanksgiving tradition I started back in 1993.  Listening – every Thanksgiving – to the full 18 minutes and 34 seconds of Alice’s Restaurant.  (The “musical monologue by singer-songwriter Arlo Guthrie,” released in 1967.)

I do that to “help my team win.”  Just like Moses did, holding his arms up at the Battle of Rephidim.  (At right.)

That is, Moses held his arms up at the Battle of Rephidim to help his team win.  I do the same thing, in part by listening to Alice’s Restaurant every Thanksgiving.  (To help my team beat its hated arch-rival, just like Moses helped his team beat “the dreaded Amalekites.”  For more see On football, Moses and Rephidim.)

But this year is different.  My team is out of the hunt for a national championship, so the outcome of tonight’s game isn’t going to change much.  (At most it’ll be the difference between going 9-3 in the regular season, or “falling” to 8-4.)  So whatever happens tonight, “we” will still have to wait until next year to win “our” fourth national championship.

This year is different because there are bigger events going on in the world outside sports.

The biggest difference?  This country has now embarked on what we might call “the Donald Experiment.”  Which means the question to be decided over the next four years is whether Donald Trump can deliver on the veritable plethora of promises that he made in his recent campaigns.  (First for the Republican nomination, then for the presidency itself.)  

Or whether those promises are merely “negotiable campaign devices.*”

And that’s where Alice’s Restaurant comes back in.  For one thing, the full title of the song refers to the “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree,” and as Wikipedia noted:

The term “massacree,” used by Guthrie[,] is a colloquialism originating in the Ozark Mountains that describes “an event so wildly and improbably and baroquely messed up that the results are almost impossible to believe.”  It is a corruption of the word massacre … but carries a much lighter and more sarcastic connotation, never being used to describe anything involving actual death.

In turn that phrase – “so wildly and improbably and baroquely messed up that the results are almost impossible to believe“ – perfectly describes the election we just went through.

But getting back to the song itself:  “Alice’s Restaurant” described the Kafkaesque way that Guthrie managed to avoid the Draft – illustrated at right – in 1965.  Briefly, he was rejected because he’d been convicted of littering on Thanksgiving Day.  There followed his encounter with the “surreal bureaucracy at the New York City induction center at 39 Whitehall Street:”

[A]sked whether he had ever been convicted of a crime, Guthrie mentioned the littering incident, and learned that incident was bureaucratically indistinguishable from a violent felony…  In Guthrie’s words, they wanted “to know if I’m moral enough to join the Army – burn women, kids, houses and villages – after bein’ a litterbug.”  (E.A.)

Or as I noted in Alice’s Restaurant, in that song “Arlo Guthrie turned a patently absurd situation into a timeless classic.”  Which brings us back to the challenges raised by a Trump presidency.

To many this last election presents many Americans with a “patently absurd situation.”  But it could also present both a challenge and an opportunity.

Or in the immortal words of Joe Biden (at left):

“Calling it an opportunity is a little like saying:  ‘I’ve been dropped in the water that is shark-infested.  But you know, it’s an opportunity.  If I make it to shore, I will set a world’s record.  No one has ever done this before.”*

So if – on the morning after the last election – you started to feel like the next four years will be something like swimming in shark-infested waters, remember this:  It’s an opportunity!

But we digress…  We were talking about the Alice’s Restaurant Massacree and other such blasts from the past.  Which brings up another point that I made in Alice … Revisited:

Alice’s Restaurant reminds us that – for many folks – those good old days weren’t so good[, as seen in the] image at right: “segregated seating at the Super Bowl in 1955.”

And here’s that image, of “segregated seating …1955.”  You can see the full image at Alice’s Restaurant – Revisited, but the point I’m wondering about is whether we’ve made any progress at all.

Or – to put it another way – there always seems to be a significant segment of Americans who keep wanting to drag us back into the past.  And that’s true even though for many people, “those good old days weren’t so good.”

So it seems to me the slogan “Make America Great Again” carries an implied proviso:  “That is, ‘great’ for the people who did have it made back in the good old days.”

But just for kicks, how about this slogan instead:  Make America Better! 

As in, make America better for all those people who didn’t have it so good back in those “good old days.”  Or for that matter, those people who don’t have it so good right now.  And how about working to Make America Better by fulfilling that promise on the Statue Of Liberty:

“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…  Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

And that brings us back to the election we just went through.  In some ways the outcome of that election is perfectly illustrated by this, The House GOP just took the whitest selfie ever:

Which brings up this observation:

“Sometimes you don’t know whether to laugh or cry…”

*   *   *   *

The upper image – which I borrowed from Alice … Revisited – is courtesy of courtesy of Liberal group claims Mitt Romney, Dick Cheney, Donald Trump, others are draft dodgers.  “Note” also that an asterisk in the main text indicates a statement supported by a reference detailed in these “notes.” Thus, as to Trump’s promises being negotiable or campaign devices, see Before taking office, Trump signals campaign promises are negotiable, All the Campaign Promises Donald Trump Has Broken in the Last 24 Hours, and/or Trump backs away from some of his strident campaign promises.

The “Draft” image is courtesy of Draft evasion – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The caption, “U.S. anti-Vietnam War protesters at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.  A placard to the right reads ‘Use your head – not your draft card.’”

Re: The image “segregated seating at the Super Bowl in 1955.”  In Alice’s Restaurant – Revisited I noted an anachronism, a “chronological inconsistency.”  That is, “the first Super Bowl was not played until 1967 – not 1955.  (The Green Bay Packers beat the Kansas City Chiefs 35-10.)”  The image in question – and the “Super Bowl 1955” caption with it – came from ivman’s blague.  The “blague” or “blogue” – apparently French for “blog” – is about “one French professor’s humorous and serious perspectives on life.”  (And specifically, his post on the “Good Old Days of Yesteryear.”)  Accordingly, even though the “Super Bowl 1955” caption was written by a cheese-eating surrender monkey – who got the timing of that ostensible Super Bowl wrong by a full decade – the photo is real enough…

The Joe Biden quote is courtesy of Ethan Bronner‘s book, Battle for Justice:  How the [Robert] Bork Nomination Shook America (1989), Anchor Books edition, at page 211.

A final note:   I borrowed the quote beneath the lower photo – “Sometimes you don’t know whether to laugh or cry” – from On rectal thermometers and “you’re entitle.”  That referred to an essay by Harry Golden, involving “our sense of American ingenuity,” the law of unintended consequences, and a concept he called “gradual integration,” referring once again to those “good old days:”

In the emergency room of the Alachua General Hospital at Gainesville, Florida [in 1962], there are three thermometers.  They stand in a row on a small shelf with nothing else.  The first is in an open container labeled:  “WHITE – ORAL,” the third is in an identical container labeled, “COLORED – ORAL,” and the middle one, which protrudes through a cork, in its otherwise sameness, is labeled “RECTAL.”  This is what I call gradual integration.

Is there a new Maverick in town?  (Or just another “nothing new under the sun“?)

*   *   *   *

I’m working on a new piece.  It’s based on an article I found in an old (November 12, 1998) issue of Rolling Stone.

Strangely enough, I found the old magazine at the bottom of a dumpster.  (Like the one seen at right.)  And that – you may come to agree – will turn out strangely appropriate.

I decided to keep the old Rolling Stone as a souvenir.  (Based on the cover photo.)  It featured a photo of Bill Clinton, looking rather befuddled, with the headline: Sex, Power & The Presidency: The Clinton Conversation.  (See also Monica Lewinsky.)  But inside – starting on page 92 – I found an article that seemed much more relevant to today’s political scene.

The article noted a presidential candidate who showed “a malignant understanding of how angry words, more than real ideas, can be deployed as weapons of power:”

He knows that repetition – invoking the same foul claims over and over – can transform outrageous lies into popular understandings.  He blithely changes his facts, positions and personae because he is making it up as he goes along and assumes no one will catch up with the contradictions.  Beneath the mask of conservative idealogue is an amoral pragmatist.

Sound familiar?  Or is this instead a matter of:  “Can you say prescient?”

And here’s another hint:  It wasn’t Donald Trump!

Anyway, the project-piece turned to be out a bit more complicated than I expected.  So – in the interim – I offer up this blog-post.  It’s both a look at the past and a teaser.

One thing some politicians bring up a lot today is “how great things used to be.”  I agree.  That was pretty much my point in Whatever happened to … Cassidy?  But I made the same point much earlier in “Johnny YUMA was a rebel.”

The title of that post was a take-off from an old Seinfeld bit:  “A rebel?  No.  Johnny Yuma was a rebel.  Eckman is a nut…”

Which also seems strangely appropriate to politics today.

But take a closer look at that blast from the past:

[Johnny] Yuma faced down intolerance, distrust, greed, confusion and revenge.  Despite his rebellious nature, Yuma respected law and order and despised abuse of power.  He stood up for the weak and downtrodden.  He traveled alone and was often forced to work alone because he was the only one willing to stand up to the bad guys. (E.A.)

Which – I suppose – brings up the subject of mavericks in general.

Originally the term referred to “Texas lawyer Samuel Maverick, who refused to brand his cattle. The surname Maverick is of Welsh origin, from Welsh mawr-rwyce, meaning ‘valiant hero.”

As an adjective the term applies to someone who shows “independence in thoughts or actions.”  As a noun the term means someone “who does not abide by rules.”  Either that, or someone who “creates or uses unconventional and/or controversial ideas or practices.”

But to those of us of a certain age, the more-familiar connection is to Maverick, the “Western television series with comedic overtones” that ran from September 22, 1957 to July 8, 1962, on ABC.  

(The series starred “James Garner as Bret Maverick, an adroitly articulate cardsharp.”)  Which – I suppose – brings us back to the subject at hand.

So:  Is there indeed a “new Maverick in town?”  Or are today’s politics just another example of nothing new under the sun?  (For the original thought, see Ecclesiastes 1:9:  “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”)

I’ll have the answer in the next post.  That post in turn will review more fully the Rolling Stone magazine I found at the bottom of a dumpster.  (Which I expect to turn out as a great metaphor.)  In the meantime enjoy this other blast from the past:

*   *   *   *

HOPALONG CASSIDY:

“Reserved … well spoken, with a sense of fair play,” and:

“His drink of choice being sarsaparilla.”

The upper image is courtesy of Maverick (TV series) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Re: “Dumpster.”  Here the proper term would be “roll-off,” a specific type of dumpster.  “Roll-offs” – as I know them – are used in recycling.  (Converting “waste materials into reusable objects.”)  See also Dumpster diving … Dictionary.com.  Note that when I found the “last century” copy of Rolling Stone, I wasn’t “foraging in garbage.”  I was “stomping down” paper products in the paper-recycling roll-off.  Such stomping-down insures that the roll-off will contain more material to be recycled.  (In this case paper products, which in turn will Save More Trees.

The lower image is courtesy of The HOPALONG CASSIDY Poster Page, WILLIAM BOYD.

A poster celebrating that other “Greatest Showman on Earth” – circa 1882…

*   *   *   *

Just a couple thoughts on the 2016 U.S. Presidential Race.

First of all, if “The Donald” – shown at right in 1988 – does manage to get elected, he may well be the first president in American history to get both impeached and convicted.

And here’s a BTW:  So far we’ve only had two presidents impeached – Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton – but neither man ended up getting actually convicted by the U.S. Senate.

(And that statement about “impeached and convicted” is judging by the GOP’s late[st] push to stop Trump.   “Which is being interpreted:”  If Trump does turn out to be as bad as many people expect – on both sides of the aisle – it seems likely that Congressional Republicans would gladly join any Democratic effort to impeach and convict him, if only to secure their own future employment…)

The other observation:  It wouldn’t surprise me a bit if Donald Trump is really trying to help Hillary get elected.  In other words, it wouldn’t surprise me a bit to learn that Master Showman Donald Trump is actually playing those far-right conservatives like a piano.

Who knows?  He may be trying to get some kind of political payback from Hillary.  Or he may have felt it more advisable to run for president as a Republican rather than a Democrat. (How would “two New York Liberals” have played out at the Democratic convention?)  Or maybe he just wants to shake things up, to “show that he can.”  But whatever his true intentions, you can be sure he’s got something up his sleeve.  (There’s “more here than meets the eye.”)

But we’re digressing.  The title of this post refers to “that other ‘Teflon Don.'”

The thing is, I originally planned to do a post comparing Donald Trump to P. T. Barnum – at left – known for an earlier Greatest Show on Earth.  But surprisingly, I found a number of distinct differences between the two men.  (One of them: Barnum turned out to be an effective elected official.)

But first, here’s something of an experiment.  I Googled the phrase “donald trump fraud” and got 3,120,000 results.  I Googled the phrase “donald trump hoax” and got 1,157,000 results.  On the other hand, I Googled “donald trump huckster” and got a mere 32,400 results.

The point being that somewhere along the line, my recent free association on Donald Trump ultimately led me to that other Great American Showman, P. T. Barnum.

One surprising thing I learned about Barnum:  He served 60 days in prison when he was 19 years old.  He was publishing the weekly Herald of Freedom in Danbury, Connecticut.  In the process he managed to upset “some very powerful people,” and got convicted of libel:

Traumatic though this spell in prison must have been …  Barnum found that far from damaging his career the conviction increased both his notoriety and his popularity…  He became a folk hero for some and upon his release from prison he was met by a band and a horse-drawn carriage organised by his supporters for a parade back to town.

Which might have led to Barnum being labeled “Teflon P.T.”  However, that doesn’t have the same nice ring to it as “Teflon Don.”  (And besides, Teflon hadn’t been discovered yet…)

Then too, in what might be called a similarity between the two men, Barnum (1810-1891) was known for an alleged comment, “There’s a sucker born every minute.”

But that seems to be like many another American myth, to wit: “greatly exaggerated:”

“There’s a sucker born every minute” is a phrase most likely spoken by David Hannum, in criticism of both P. T. Barnum, an American showman of the mid 19th century, and his customers.   The phrase is often credited to Barnum himself.  It means “People are foolish, and will always be fools.”

Wikipedia went on to indicate that we simply don’t know who first coined the phrase.  (But it did add that in the “1930 John Dos Passos novel The 42nd Parallel, the quotation is attributed to Mark Twain.”)  On the other hand, his biographer said Barnum “was just not the type to disparage his patrons.”  For that matter, Barnum thought his audiences should get their money’s worth:

Often referred to as the “Prince of Humbugs” [as shown at right] Barnum saw nothing wrong in entertainers or vendors using hype (or “humbug,” as he termed it) in promotional material, as long as the public was getting value for money.  However, he was contemptuous of those who made money through fraudulent deceptions, especially the spiritualist mediums [of] his day…

Now, about his serving as an “effective elected official.”

First of all, Barnum started out by promoting “hoaxes and human curiosities such as the Feejee mermaid and General Tom Thumb.”  But that didn’t pan out, and after “economic reversals due to bad investments in the 1850s, and years of litigation and public humiliation, he used a lecture tour, mostly as a temperance speaker, to emerge from debt.”  (Is is possible that, “The Donald” is also just trying to work himself out of debt?)  The point is that from there:

Barnum served two terms in the Connecticut legislature in 1865 as a Republican.  [On the issue of slavery] and African-American suffrage, Barnum spoke before the legislature and said, “A human soul, ‘that God has created and Christ died for,’ is not to be trifled with. It may tenant the body of a Chinaman, a Turk, an Arab or a Hottentot – it is still an immortal spirit.”

Which no doubt surprised a number of people.

From there he was elected as Mayor of Bridgeport, CT in 1875.  He “worked to improve the water supply, bring gas lighting to streets, and enforce liquor and prostitution laws.  Barnum was instrumental in starting Bridgeport Hospital, founded in 1878, and was its first president.”

Which no doubt surprised even more peope.

In another strange twist, before the Civil War Barnum produced blackface minstrel shows, but with a twist:  His “minstrel shows often used double-edged humor.”

Then too, in 1853 he promoted a “politically watered-down stage version of Harriet Beecher Stowe‘s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”

But in Barnum’s version, the play, had “a happy ending, with Tom and other slaves freed.”  And finally, another similarity:  Both men started out as Democrats.  In Barnum’s case, his “opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act which supported slavery, of 1854 led him to leave the Democratic Party.”

And so, in joining the “new anti slavery Republican Party,” Barnum had “evolved from a man of common stereotypes of the 1840s to a leader for emancipation by the Civil War.”

The question is:  In light of Donald Trump’s often-shifting political positions, will he eventually be seen as an “effective elected official,” a funhouse showman, or a Simon Legree?

Simon Legree hunting fugitive slaves in “UTC.”

 *   *   *   *

The upper image is courtesy of the Jumbo link within P. T. Barnum – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The caption:  “Jumbo and his keeper Matthew Scott (Circus poster, ca. 1882).”  For further information on Barnum, see P.T. Barnum, Human Freaks, and the American Museum, and/or P T Barnum Facts, information, pictures | Encyclopedia.com.

Re: To play someone like a piano.  The cited reference is actually to playing someone like a fiddle – Wiktionary, meaning to ” manipulate (a person) skillfully.” 

Re: Free association.  See also Free association (psychology) – Wikipedia.

The lower image is courtesy of Wikipedia’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”  The caption:  “Simon Legree on the cover of the comic book adaptation of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Classic Comics No. 15, November 1943 issue).”  And a note on Barnum’s “happy ending.”  In the original version Uncle Tom died, a victim of Simon Legree.  In turn, he is portrayed as “the perfect Christian.”  That is, at the end of the novel the character George Shelby returns to his Kentucky farm and frees all his slaves.  In doing so he “tells them to remember Tom’s sacrifice and his belief in the true meaning of Christianity.”

Re: Trump’s political positions:  “On specific policy, Trump has been described as a moderate Republican.  His politics have been described as populist, nativist, protectionist and authoritarian by a variety of sources.”  A few examples:  Trump has said he wants to “lower taxes for middle and working-class people, and increase taxes on wealthy private equity and hedge fund managers.”  He has supported “improving America’s infrastructure,” even though on the federal level – he has said – “this is going to be an expensive investment, no question about that.”  He started out pro-choice but now describes himself as pro-life.  He supports “states’ rights to legalize and regulate cannabis.”

One final note:  The “Simon Legree” comparison is based in large part on Trump’s emphasis on Mexico sending “its people” into the U.S., mostly “criminals, drug dealers, rapists, etc.,” while “some, I assume, are good people.”   He has said that on “Day 1 of my presidency, illegal immigrants are getting out and getting out fast,” and that he would build a wall similar to the Israeli West Bank barrier.  Finally, “Trump opposes birthright citizenship based solely on birth within the United States, arguing that it should not be protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.”