Been sayin' this all along but to no avail. And like the song says by the time they figure it out they'll already be rounded up to be "resettled", "sold down the river" more likely. That being a reference back to the days of "good old slavery" where that phrase brought terror to the hearts who heard it because it meant being sold down the river to work on the plantations of the "Deep South". This was practically a death sentence because much like the Nazi "work" camps they were worked to death for their masters.
Following the Precepts of Stoicism, Thinking Clearly and Rationally Today
Two thousand years ago a Stoic philosopher by the name of Epictetus said the following: “The Cosmos is imbued with a divine but wholly rational intelligence, when we act rationally, we shake hands with the divine. To act rationally is to in concurrence with the cosmos.” As we observe the world today, leaders, large portions of populations are acting anything but rationally, they are not in concurrence with the cosmos but in direct contradiction to the intelligence of the cosmos. In the US we have elected and installed a group of leaders that seem to be motivated by the lowest realms of human nature, greed, pursuing wealth without limit, pursuing power to assuage egoism and narcissism, pursuing vengeance and retribution against perceived political enemies and competitors. They do not seem to understand what Epictetus articulated two thousand years ago, “that you don’t own anything, not even your own bodies, you always rent never own.” That pursuing wealth and power without purpose or end is a fruitless pursuit, for in your end you will end up with nothing but having harming others. This truism also applies to societies and the human population itself. A society that pursues material wealth at the expense of the ecosystem that sustains that society’s life is the complete opposite of rationality, in fact insanity.
Looking at the world rationally now, one must conclude at this time the human race is at a perilous point in its sojourn on earth. For science is our way of pursuing the truth which is wholly rational and knowable, and science tells us without equivocation that what we are doing now, burning hundreds of billions of tons of ancient deposits of carbon and injecting them into the atmosphere will almost certainly bring an ecological disaster if not extinction of humankind. We also now know that evolution has not in the past and will not in the future tolerate the stupidity and maladaptation of a species. Evolution has a way of dealing with maladaptation and stupidity and that is extinction. Stupidity is what we are now witnessing in a new administration that claims global warming is a hoax and is in the process of dismantling all previous efforts taken to address the problem.
What can a rational person do at this point? Stoic Seneca advises of what not to do: “Anger is a short madness for it is equally devoid of self-control, regardless of decorum, forgetful of kinship, obstinately engrossed in whatever it begins to do, deaf to reason and advice, excited by trifling causes, awkward at perceiving what is true and just, and very like a falling rock which breaks itself into pieces upon the very thing which it crushes.” Stoicism advises not to get upset over things you can’t control. To be rational is not to approach a problem emotionally but rather with reason. Discover what is in your power to influence and then pursue that course rationally. As Epictetus explained, “Some things are up to us, while others are not. Up to us are opinion, motivation, desire, aversion, and in a word, whatever is of our own doing”. If we are horrified about the direction our country and society is taking, then, instead of getting emotionally upset which accomplishes nothing, instead figure out something concrete you can do such as organizing protest, writing letters, running for office or in my case maybe encouraging people to see and act rationally. As the Stoic philosophers would have explained we should live in agreement with nature. To live a life of virtue we not only pursue our natural biological needs, but we live a life in social concord with our fellow humans and live a rational life based on our unique human ability to reason. Today, if never before in human existence on earth, our ability to not succumb to our darkest human impulses but instead to use human rationality and reason to guide our course will be determinative. 2/10/25
Yes, beautiful, haunting and accurate truth telling is exactly what he is trying to eliminate by taking over or defunding the arts. One more front to protect!
In 1923 Adolf Hitler incited an insurrection against the German government. He was tried, given a slap on the wrist, and became a convicted felon. Despite being treated charitably by the judge, Hitler claimed the trial was political persecution and successfully portrayed himself as a victim of the “corrupt" Social Democrats.
Hitler cleverly positioned himself as the voice of the "common man," railing against the "elites," cultural "degeneracy," and the establishment, who he all labeled as "Marxists." He claimed the education system was indoctrinating children to hate Germany, and promised to return Germany to greatness.
To solidify his base, Hitler masterfully scapegoated minorities for the nation's problems, exploiting societal divisions with an "us vs. them" narrative. Many Germans took the bait. Hitler's Nazi Party continued to gain traction, until he became Chancellor in 1933.
Hitler appointed German oligarchs as his economic advisors. He proceeded to privatize government run utilities, solidifying support of the economic elite.
With the working class divided along cultural and ethnic lines, the Nazis shut down workers unions and abolished strikes.
Progressives and trade unionists were imprisoned and sent to concentration camps. Corporate profits skyrocketed while working class Germans lived paycheck to paycheck.
Hitler, who became a billionaire while in office, knew he and his clan of oligarchs could get away with the scam if they constantly had an "enemy within" to blame while the corporatocracy robbed the country blind.
An easy target was one of the smallest minorities. Hitler removed birthright citizenship rights of Jews and started rounding them up for mass deportations for being "illegally" in the country.
The German press under Nazi rule highlighted instances of violence by Jews to convince the public that Jewish immigrants were a danger to the "real Germans."
Hitler wasted no time dismantling democratic institutions. Loyalty wasn't just encouraged; it was demanded. Opponents were silenced. Media that dared to questioned[sic] him were vilified as "the enemy" and "Marxists."
Hitler's Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels, bragged about how the Nazis were able to intimidate the media into giving them favorable coverage, and didn't need to give direct orders.
The Nazi regime and its followers collected all books they saw as promoting "degeneracy" or what would be considered "woke" today, and burned them in large bonfires. They also burned books that promoted class consciousness.
Berlin had a thriving LGBTQ community in the 1920s, and even had the first transgender clinic. The Nazis burned it to the ground. LGBTQ people were sent to concentration camps and forced to wear triangle badges. Many were killed in the Holocaust.
The Nazis also saw manhood as under threat by independent women who didn't rely on men. In 1934, Hitler proclaimed, “A women’s world is her her husband, her family, her children, her house." Laws that had protected women's rights were repealed and new laws were introduced to restrict women to the home and in their roles as wives and mothers.
Reproductive rights were severely rolled back, and doctors who performed abortions could face the death penalty.
Despite all of this, the German people didn't have a similar historical parallel to look upon as a warning.
Most Germans never acted like the sky was falling.
Most just went along with their lives as usual, until many of their lives were snuffed out. By the time Hitler's reign was forced to an end by the Allied Powers, 11 million people were murdered in the Holocaust, and 70-85 million were killed in WW2 .
Thom, I want to know your opinion of us launching a counter coup, launching our military to arrest the lawbreakers. I'm sick and tired of being pushed around by these bullies who think they can break our laws and get away with it - because so far, they have!! What say you?
Damn the US military for not stepping up to do their job. Defend America against terrorists please. No one voted for this two faced, anti American Trump psycho criminal, and no one voted for psycho Musk, the thieving criminal parasites from hell. Defend America you paid off clown-drones that call yourself the US military, and arrest these un-American freaks. Or are they all paid off, coward traitors?
I'm enjoying these every one of them and I sit most mornings with my six string in hand and strum along, figuring out the chords. Uncanny, how damn good these songs are, Hartmanns!
I think it energizes both sides of my brain or something. I'm just an old hillside musician. But I know about the bicameral brain from school days.
Keep the hits coming, Louise!
You are leading the pack for relevant verse and song in this movement.
Lookout, Bobby Zimmerman!
If now only somebody could explain how to listen to the entire track. I can't ever make it work on the Substack. (A blind subscriber I am, using screen reader and the buttons maybe are not labeled or something.)
Louise, you and Thom are a powerful team. He with accurate reason and analysis and you with the incredible power of your poetry. It’s you who who make the tears flow.
As you all probably know, THEY THOUGHT THEY WERE FREE: THE GERMANS, 1933-1945 was a book published by journalist Milton Mayer in 1955. I read it for the first time in college in the early '70s and reread it for about the 5th time a couple years ago. Gist is that these Germans continued to think they were free even as their country was destroyed around them. If they wand technology have changed remarkably since the mid-20th century, but that willingness to be fooled hasn't gone away. It's grown. Technology, especially social media, has made it possible to fool most of the people -- or at least 35-40% of them -- all of the time, and certain flavors of Christianity (notably the Roman Catholic Church and white evangelical Protestantism) have primed many of those USians to submit to authoritarians.
I'm guardedly optimistic that "we" will manage to get through this -- if only more pro-democracy USians realize what we're up against. Because at the moment only a handful of us seem to get it.
Wow…beautiful and haunting and very, very accurate description of today.
Dedicated Follower of Fascism
They Sieg him here
They Sieg him there
His voice is coarse
He fancies fear
His loathsome coronation
Retribution is his quest
He’s a dedicated follower of fascism
He is a thief,
He’s crude and loud
Keeper of oafs
His boys are proud
Everything is theater
As he rakes in all the cash
He’s a dedicated follower of fascism.
Oh yes he is, oh yes he is
He comes across like Orange Mussolini
He’s eager to please his benefactors
In him they will invest
They are dedicated followers of fascism
Oh yes they is, oh yes they is
America First will find itself in last place
Eggs will cost a thousand dollars
He’ll wear them on his face
He’s a dedicated follower of fascism.
Oh light the torch
Put on the sheet
We’ll goose in step
On down the street
We will take our marching orders
Off the highest cliff
We’re dedicated followers of fascism
Oh yes we is, oh yes we is
We charged the halls of Congress and got locked up
We only served a few months and then we got released
We is the dedicated followers of fascism.
Oh yes we is, oh yes we is
In love with Kim Jong-UN, he sent him letters
But Spaceman X is in his heart
He’s looking to invest
They’re all dedicated followers of fascism
Dedicated followers of fascism?
They are dedicated followers of fascism.
________________
By em. Apologies to Ray Davies of the Kinks
Hey all you fans of parody, thanks for liking this unfortunate use of a great Kinks song to make a point. Appreciate it. Ed
Been sayin' this all along but to no avail. And like the song says by the time they figure it out they'll already be rounded up to be "resettled", "sold down the river" more likely. That being a reference back to the days of "good old slavery" where that phrase brought terror to the hearts who heard it because it meant being sold down the river to work on the plantations of the "Deep South". This was practically a death sentence because much like the Nazi "work" camps they were worked to death for their masters.
Are we feeling MAGA yet!
Following the Precepts of Stoicism, Thinking Clearly and Rationally Today
Two thousand years ago a Stoic philosopher by the name of Epictetus said the following: “The Cosmos is imbued with a divine but wholly rational intelligence, when we act rationally, we shake hands with the divine. To act rationally is to in concurrence with the cosmos.” As we observe the world today, leaders, large portions of populations are acting anything but rationally, they are not in concurrence with the cosmos but in direct contradiction to the intelligence of the cosmos. In the US we have elected and installed a group of leaders that seem to be motivated by the lowest realms of human nature, greed, pursuing wealth without limit, pursuing power to assuage egoism and narcissism, pursuing vengeance and retribution against perceived political enemies and competitors. They do not seem to understand what Epictetus articulated two thousand years ago, “that you don’t own anything, not even your own bodies, you always rent never own.” That pursuing wealth and power without purpose or end is a fruitless pursuit, for in your end you will end up with nothing but having harming others. This truism also applies to societies and the human population itself. A society that pursues material wealth at the expense of the ecosystem that sustains that society’s life is the complete opposite of rationality, in fact insanity.
Looking at the world rationally now, one must conclude at this time the human race is at a perilous point in its sojourn on earth. For science is our way of pursuing the truth which is wholly rational and knowable, and science tells us without equivocation that what we are doing now, burning hundreds of billions of tons of ancient deposits of carbon and injecting them into the atmosphere will almost certainly bring an ecological disaster if not extinction of humankind. We also now know that evolution has not in the past and will not in the future tolerate the stupidity and maladaptation of a species. Evolution has a way of dealing with maladaptation and stupidity and that is extinction. Stupidity is what we are now witnessing in a new administration that claims global warming is a hoax and is in the process of dismantling all previous efforts taken to address the problem.
What can a rational person do at this point? Stoic Seneca advises of what not to do: “Anger is a short madness for it is equally devoid of self-control, regardless of decorum, forgetful of kinship, obstinately engrossed in whatever it begins to do, deaf to reason and advice, excited by trifling causes, awkward at perceiving what is true and just, and very like a falling rock which breaks itself into pieces upon the very thing which it crushes.” Stoicism advises not to get upset over things you can’t control. To be rational is not to approach a problem emotionally but rather with reason. Discover what is in your power to influence and then pursue that course rationally. As Epictetus explained, “Some things are up to us, while others are not. Up to us are opinion, motivation, desire, aversion, and in a word, whatever is of our own doing”. If we are horrified about the direction our country and society is taking, then, instead of getting emotionally upset which accomplishes nothing, instead figure out something concrete you can do such as organizing protest, writing letters, running for office or in my case maybe encouraging people to see and act rationally. As the Stoic philosophers would have explained we should live in agreement with nature. To live a life of virtue we not only pursue our natural biological needs, but we live a life in social concord with our fellow humans and live a rational life based on our unique human ability to reason. Today, if never before in human existence on earth, our ability to not succumb to our darkest human impulses but instead to use human rationality and reason to guide our course will be determinative. 2/10/25
Yes, beautiful, haunting and accurate truth telling is exactly what he is trying to eliminate by taking over or defunding the arts. One more front to protect!
In 1923 Adolf Hitler incited an insurrection against the German government. He was tried, given a slap on the wrist, and became a convicted felon. Despite being treated charitably by the judge, Hitler claimed the trial was political persecution and successfully portrayed himself as a victim of the “corrupt" Social Democrats.
Hitler cleverly positioned himself as the voice of the "common man," railing against the "elites," cultural "degeneracy," and the establishment, who he all labeled as "Marxists." He claimed the education system was indoctrinating children to hate Germany, and promised to return Germany to greatness.
To solidify his base, Hitler masterfully scapegoated minorities for the nation's problems, exploiting societal divisions with an "us vs. them" narrative. Many Germans took the bait. Hitler's Nazi Party continued to gain traction, until he became Chancellor in 1933.
Hitler appointed German oligarchs as his economic advisors. He proceeded to privatize government run utilities, solidifying support of the economic elite.
With the working class divided along cultural and ethnic lines, the Nazis shut down workers unions and abolished strikes.
Progressives and trade unionists were imprisoned and sent to concentration camps. Corporate profits skyrocketed while working class Germans lived paycheck to paycheck.
Hitler, who became a billionaire while in office, knew he and his clan of oligarchs could get away with the scam if they constantly had an "enemy within" to blame while the corporatocracy robbed the country blind.
An easy target was one of the smallest minorities. Hitler removed birthright citizenship rights of Jews and started rounding them up for mass deportations for being "illegally" in the country.
The German press under Nazi rule highlighted instances of violence by Jews to convince the public that Jewish immigrants were a danger to the "real Germans."
Hitler wasted no time dismantling democratic institutions. Loyalty wasn't just encouraged; it was demanded. Opponents were silenced. Media that dared to questioned[sic] him were vilified as "the enemy" and "Marxists."
Hitler's Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels, bragged about how the Nazis were able to intimidate the media into giving them favorable coverage, and didn't need to give direct orders.
The Nazi regime and its followers collected all books they saw as promoting "degeneracy" or what would be considered "woke" today, and burned them in large bonfires. They also burned books that promoted class consciousness.
Berlin had a thriving LGBTQ community in the 1920s, and even had the first transgender clinic. The Nazis burned it to the ground. LGBTQ people were sent to concentration camps and forced to wear triangle badges. Many were killed in the Holocaust.
The Nazis also saw manhood as under threat by independent women who didn't rely on men. In 1934, Hitler proclaimed, “A women’s world is her her husband, her family, her children, her house." Laws that had protected women's rights were repealed and new laws were introduced to restrict women to the home and in their roles as wives and mothers.
Reproductive rights were severely rolled back, and doctors who performed abortions could face the death penalty.
Despite all of this, the German people didn't have a similar historical parallel to look upon as a warning.
Most Germans never acted like the sky was falling.
Most just went along with their lives as usual, until many of their lives were snuffed out. By the time Hitler's reign was forced to an end by the Allied Powers, 11 million people were murdered in the Holocaust, and 70-85 million were killed in WW2 .
Monica Aksamit
Bluesky
Love the song, and it can be sung to the melody and rhythm of Dylan's The Times They are a Changing..
Thom, I want to know your opinion of us launching a counter coup, launching our military to arrest the lawbreakers. I'm sick and tired of being pushed around by these bullies who think they can break our laws and get away with it - because so far, they have!! What say you?
IMHO, involving our military would be a very dangerous thing to do...
Yes, so is everything they are doing right now - so how do we fight back?
Damn the US military for not stepping up to do their job. Defend America against terrorists please. No one voted for this two faced, anti American Trump psycho criminal, and no one voted for psycho Musk, the thieving criminal parasites from hell. Defend America you paid off clown-drones that call yourself the US military, and arrest these un-American freaks. Or are they all paid off, coward traitors?
Me too curious on that front.
Otherwise, I feel like we’re a bunch of sitting ducks.
Thank you.
I'm enjoying these every one of them and I sit most mornings with my six string in hand and strum along, figuring out the chords. Uncanny, how damn good these songs are, Hartmanns!
I think it energizes both sides of my brain or something. I'm just an old hillside musician. But I know about the bicameral brain from school days.
Keep the hits coming, Louise!
You are leading the pack for relevant verse and song in this movement.
Lookout, Bobby Zimmerman!
If now only somebody could explain how to listen to the entire track. I can't ever make it work on the Substack. (A blind subscriber I am, using screen reader and the buttons maybe are not labeled or something.)
Thank you both for all of your great work!!
Rik
So glad Thom started publishing your work. A really nice compliment to his work.
Louise, you and Thom are a powerful team. He with accurate reason and analysis and you with the incredible power of your poetry. It’s you who who make the tears flow.
Powerful lyrics! Hopefully we will resist and overcome the destruction within. Hopefully by then, we all share our LOVE of democracy once again!
As you all probably know, THEY THOUGHT THEY WERE FREE: THE GERMANS, 1933-1945 was a book published by journalist Milton Mayer in 1955. I read it for the first time in college in the early '70s and reread it for about the 5th time a couple years ago. Gist is that these Germans continued to think they were free even as their country was destroyed around them. If they wand technology have changed remarkably since the mid-20th century, but that willingness to be fooled hasn't gone away. It's grown. Technology, especially social media, has made it possible to fool most of the people -- or at least 35-40% of them -- all of the time, and certain flavors of Christianity (notably the Roman Catholic Church and white evangelical Protestantism) have primed many of those USians to submit to authoritarians.
I'm guardedly optimistic that "we" will manage to get through this -- if only more pro-democracy USians realize what we're up against. Because at the moment only a handful of us seem to get it.
It’s a f-cking great song, man. You need it professionally produced. Move over Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan. Thank you so much.
This music is fantastic and I know just the guitarist to backup. My 32yo son!! lol www.peterstonemusic.com
https://open.spotify.com/track/5ya3RH9KaHPqFl9zB0TToH?si=QBFpGIy-TjCHzWRb35Zm5A&context=spotify%3Aalbum%3A19b7EGvg1frqnEJCt1zTRu