The Arts

Vincent (Starry, Starry Night)

Now I understand      
What you tried to say to me 
And how you suffered for your sanity          
And how you tried to set them free   
They would not listen, they did not know how        
Perhaps they'll listen now

It takes a very long time to listen to artists, but art is forever.

A Vincent Van Gogh painting was worth very little during the artist's lifetime.  The value of Starry Night has increased by an unbelievable amount since Van Gogh’s death.  During Van Gogh’s lifetime, the news was dominated by rulers, politicians, and the rich.  But I am sure that it would take a lot of effort to determine who were those rulers, politicians or the rich during Van Gogh’s life.  We have forgotten them while we remember Van Gogh.

I can remember only one king in ancient Greece, Oedipus and that is because of the Sophocles' play Oedipus Rex.  I remember King John, Edward III, and Richard II because of the plays by William Shakespeare.  I visited and admired the Coliseum in Rome despite not knowing who fought in, or attended, that stadium.  The Parthenon in Athens and the Pantheon in Rome are famous for their architecture, not their religion.  In the long run it is the arts that endure. 

We may place more attention on politics, sports, finance in the short term, but like in the fable of Tortoise and the Hare, it is not who is fastest in the short term, but it is he who endures to win the race that is remembered. We will be remembered for our arts, not our finance or our politics. 

Patriotism

 I Love My Country

I'm loud and proud

Rolling into town

Hanging out the window

Like a blue tick hound

Ain't sorry, ain't nothing to be sorry about

I love my country
And I love my country up loud 

Loving your country does not mean hating another country.

Go watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOeFhSzoTuc.  In that scene from Casablanca, the French national anthem, Les Marseille, was led by Victor Lazlo, a Czechoslovakian, whose wife Ilsa  was a Norwegian, at Rick’s Cafe American.  Yvette, the crying French woman who shouts Viva la France, was dating a Nazi soldier earlier in the scene.  The Nazis were fearful of inspiring the love of a country other than their own.

Now listen to Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture to see how ironically the same song, Les Marseilles, was used to indicate Napoleon’s attempted conquest and failed invasion of  Moscow. The Marseilles fades as a Russian folk song becomes triumphant.  This overture of the Russian love for their country has become a fixture of America's Independence Day since Arthur Fidler picked it for Boston’s celebration of the Fourth of July. 

Love of one’s country is to be something to be admired, even if you yourself are from a different country.  Loving your country can be perverted and confused into hatred and domination of another country.  We may not all like the same music, but love of country is not a matter of musical taste.  It also does not mean that we prove our love by hating another country.

Unity

 United We Stand

For united we stand     

Divided we fall

And if our backs should ever be against the wall          

We'll be together, together, you and I

There is a clamor for unity today.  It is important to understand that there is much that unites us.

Francis Scott Key, the author of the Star Spangled Banner was a slave owner.  His view of slavery can be seen in the often unsung third verse of the song, which contains the words,

No refuge could save the hireling and slave    
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave.

Woody Guthrie, the author of "This Land is Your Land”, while never a member of the Communist Party, was admitted to be a fellow traveler.  His views can be seen in the often ignored fourth verse of that song.

As I went walking I saw a sign there,
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."      
But on the other side it didn't say nothing.    
That side was made for you and me.

However those are not the verses that are traditionally sung.  We sing verses that proclaim their love of America, “the Land of the Free” and the "Land (that) was made for you and me”.   That love comes through despite wildly divergent politics.  Let’s remember that the love of America unites us much more than politics divide us.

Satire

 

Those Were The Days (Theme to All In The Family)        

And you know where you were then,         

Girls were girls and men were men,

Mister we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again,     

Didn't need no welfare state         

Everybody pulled his weight,          

Gee our old Lasalle ran great,         

Those were the days.

Archie Bunker was an object of satire.  He was not meant to be a taken as an ideal.

Jonathan Swift, in his essay A Modest Proposal, proposes that the country ameliorate poverty in Ireland by butchering the children of the Irish poor and selling them as food to wealthy English landlords.  He meant that as satire, not as a serious proposal.  Those who did not get the satire treated it as a serious proposal. 

Similarly Norman Lear’s All in the Family was a meant to satirize, not idolize, Archie Bunker’s behavior.  You can see that in the lyrics of the theme song.  Herbert Hoover was not an ideal president.  The LaSalle was a discontinued automobile line. Everyone knowing their place was an unfair restriction on those in “lower” places.  You were meant to laugh at Archie Bunker, not agree with him.

It is a sad that there are those who have adopted Archie Bunker and his ideas as an ideal. They have missed the point of the satire.  Perhaps we can also interest them in a recipe for sautéed Irish babies?

The Future

 The Future

Give me back the Berlin wall    

Give me Stalin and St. Paul     

I've seen the future, brother     

It is murder.

The future for Leonard Cohen may have been murder, because too many people did not believe in a future.

If you do not believe in a future, then money spent on insurance, spent on agencies to deal with future disasters, or money put aside to deal with the future is wasted.  For example, if people do not spend on health insurance, then when, for example, there is a pandemic, they may have no health insurance available to deal with that pandemic.  If an employer does not provide sick days, perhaps his employees will come to work while sick.

Social Security Insurance is a government operated insurance program that was instituted to compel people to save for their old age. Insurance does not have to be government sponsored.  I live in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts where the ability to register a car is contingent on that car having private automobile insurance.  

That is it wise to put aside money for the future is not a new concept.  Almost 2500 years ago Aesop’s fable of The Ant and the Grasshopper discussed the moral virtues of hard work and planning for the future.  But there are those who do not believe in a future.  That also includes those who believe that the current conditions will not continue because there will soon be a doomsday that is either man-made, (e.g. doomsday preppers ) or divine (e.g. those who believe that we are living in the ”end times”).

But belief in a future is why old men plant trees that they will never see mature and young men go to school to learn something that they hope to use in the future.  The stock market, with its focus on day trading and current earnings, and the political system, with its focus on the next election, may not be the best way to plan for the future.  But those who ignore the future, should not prevent others from planning for a future.   Otherwise the future will be murder.

Insurrection 2

 

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

The revolution will not be televised   

The revolution will not be brought to you     

By Xerox in four parts without commercial interruptions.

Gil Scott-Heron was wrong.  The revolution will not only be televised,.…it will be live-streamed.

“When in the course of Human Events…a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.” After that declaration it may be necessary to “take arms against a sea of troubles”.  However once you make that declaration or take up arms against a government, if you lose, you should expect to be punished by that government.  The Founding Fathers knew this.  That is why John Hancock so famously signed the Declaration of Independence in a large signature so that “ King George could read it without his spectacles”.  It is thus hypocritical for those who participated in the insurrection against the government at the Capitol Riot on January 6^th to now claim that they were only exercising their First Amendment Rights bestowed by that government.

No one should expect to be an officer of the government against which one has rebelled. The Fourteenth Amendment makes it clear that this incudes those whom “shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof".  That Amendment does allow mercy to those if two-thirds of the Congress agree.  But this remedy only includes the ability to be an officer of the government, it does not extend to criminal penalties due to those persons.  It is wonderful that so many of the Capitol rioters live streamed or posted images of their rebellion  It makes it so much easier to determine their guilt.

Insurrection

 

For What It’s Worth 

There's something happening here.    

But what it is ain't exactly clear    

There's a man with a gun over there.    

Telling me I got to beware.    

I think it's time we stop,    

Children, what's that sound?    

Everybody look, what's going down. 

What is going down? When did things go wrong? 

Many fine people have called the storming of the US Capitol on January 6^th, 2021 an insurrection.  Those fine people apparently do not include many Republicans.  So this division must be a recent phenomenon, correct?  Actually it goes back at least to my childhood, which is as far as I can remember. Barry Goldwater said, “Extremism in defense of liberty is not a vice and moderation in pursuit of freedom is no virtue”  Ronald Reagan said, “Government is the problem”, Nixon said that he was the Law-and-Order president.  George W Bush said Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction.  Each of these statements was false. 

If extremism is a vice and moderation, liberty and freedom are all virtues, then together the vice of extremism (a negative) and the virtue of liberty (a positive) ARE a vice (a negative).  If moderation and freedom are both virtues then together they ARE a virtue.  

The policies of government might be thought to be a problem, but government, as the collective will of the people, can not by definition be the problem. 

Those who break the law can not be the Law-and-Order president.  

Weapons of Mass Destruction were not found in Iraq.  

"You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts."  Hearing Daniel Moynihan's phrase uttered by Vice President Pence during his pre-election debate was cringe worthy from an administration that prided itself on having its own alternate “facts”. 

The insurrection was a long time coming.  There is something happening here, but its has been happening for a very long time.