I've Found The Exact Point The US Began Its Terminal Decline And It's Billy Joel's 1980 Single 'You May Be Right'

Donald Trump losing is a boost to the world's morale. 

But if the now-defeated 45th President of the United States has taught the world one thing, it's that US people who draw the line at supporting a racist, alleged rapist and open supporter of the super-rich who also wears a dead guinea pig on his head, really really like to say, "What's happened to us?"

It's a fair question.

And how could they look at their history and NOT declare, "We used to be decent genocide committing slave-owning then lynching apartheid enforcing shooting black militants and anti-war activists dead mass murdering around the world governed by certified psychopaths child labour exploiting violent union smashing foreign government overthrowing planet destroying nuclear armed and willing to use it folk!

"If only there was something, anything. in our history to provide some sort of context or precedent for this unsettling turn of events!"

I understand. In Australia, we hear the same thing every time someone living in this nation founded on mass murder and dispossession that explicitely banned non-white immigration for decades and in which Aboriginal people are jailed at a higher rate than Apartheid South Africa expresses shock that we run concentation camps for refugees.

But there is no doubt, whatever the historical context, that the US Empire is in steep decline. 

I mean for fuck's sake, their incumbent president just tried to launch a coup by getting his lawyer, who's just seemingly been caught on film trying to have sex with a woman he thought was a minor, to hold a press conference in the parking lot of Four Seasons Total Landscaping on the outskirts of Philadelphia opposite a crematorium and next to an adult bookstore.

You can't write that shit. I know coz I just did and ever cell in my body screamed, "PLEASE STOP!!!" 

However, we can't look away. For the sake of future generations, we must actually figure out the point at which US society began it's likely terminal decline.

And I think I've found it.

My exhaustive studies have narrowed the point of no return to the release on March 7, 1980 of Billy Joel's single "You May Be Right". It went on to reach the absurdly high position of 7th on the US Billboard charts. 7th! I mean have you heard it?

I know what you're thinking. I'm being ridiculous.

"Is it really worse," I hear you chorus, "than his condescendingly smug 'Piano Man' or Joel's kinda creepy 'Only The Good Die Young' where the 28-year-old singer declares 'You Catholic girls start much too late', or even 'We Didn't Start The Fire', which pretends to be profound but just lists historical events followed by an especially nonsense chorus?"

Look, I'm not denying the inherently barbarous nature of those songs, which clearly indicate a society being violently ripped usunder by its internal contradictions. I'm just looking for the exact tipping point.

To understand why that is clearly the release of Joel's "You May Be Right" in 1980, it is not enough to merely listen to the song. You need to watch the film clip. Try it!

Wild boy on the loose!

Now it's not just the lyrics or the vague musical approximation of "new wave" that was all the rage back then. It's that fucking clip.

In it, Billy Joel displays zero sense of irony. There's no self-awareness here. Nothing to show he's thinking, "Jesus I made my name writing long-winded faux-profound piano songs and then punk rock and new wave came along and now the record company says my guitarist must look at least slightly like Paul Weller from The Jam and my songs need more 'attitude' like what the fuck does that even mean?"

No, Billy Joel just dons a pair of aviator glasses and tries to look like some super-cool but kinda outta control badass. Iggy Pop snarling "Now I wanna be your dog" this is not.

Not Billy Joel.

I feel for the music clip producer. They did not get paid nearly enough for being asked to make Billy Joel look like he might be dangerous.

You can see what the poor bastard had to work with. You can hear the producer yelling "Go Billy, dance like a madman!" and Billy Joel sort of kicks his legs out on either side of him a couple of times and you can feel the producer's soul shrivel into a raisin.

And then there's the words. I'm not saying they capture everything wrong with the entire American psyche, I'm just saying that I'm also not not saying that. If you get what I'm saying.

You May Be Right

By Billy Joel, aged 30

Friday night I crashed your party
Saturday I said I'm sorry
Sunday came and trashed me out again

I was only having fun

Wasn't hurting any one

Come on Billy, wasn't hurting anyone? What about the feelings of this unnamed romantic interest of yours to whom you were forced to apologise? Is this how you propose to treat them? By ignoring and downplaying their entirely legitimate emotional responses to your shit behaviour?

And we all enjoyed the weekend for a change

No Billy. You enjoyed the weekend for a change. You just didn't care to check if that was just you.

I've been stranded in the combat zone
I walked through Bedford Stuy alone

I had to google Bedford Stuy and Wikipedia describes it as a neighbood in Brooklyn known for its "racial unrest". Put another way, Billy Joel is using venturing solo through a Black neighbourhood as evidence of just how "mad" he is and there is nothing ever that will ever be more revealing about Billy Joel.

Even rode my motorcycle in the rain
And you told me not to drive
But I made it home alive
So you said that only proves that I'm insane

No way Billy! You didn't ride your motorcycle in the rain? Didn't your mother tell you how dangerous that could be? But I did admire your skill in that clip in miming riding a motorbike, seeing as it's pretty clear there's zero chance you've ever actually touched one.

You may be right
I may be crazy
But it just may be a lunatic you're looking for

Really? Has anyone in human history ever sat there and thought "You know what I need in my life? Another lunatic." 

Turn out the light
Don't try to save me

The thought never crossed my mind.

You may be wrong for all I know
But you may be right

Odds are that they've had more experience in dealing with lunatic men than you, Billy, so are likely the one who's right. That's science.

Remember how I found you there
Alone in your electric chair
I told you dirty jokes until you smiled

Or they thought, "If I pretend to laugh he might go away".

You were lonely for a man

Were they, Billy? Or did you just see them one day not smiling enough and conclude "I bet they are lonely for a man!" Did you ask?

I said take me as I am
'Cause you might enjoy some madness for a while

Will they?

Now think of all the years you tried to
Find someone to satisfy you

Is this you making an unseemly boast, Bill? I sincerely hope not.

I might be as crazy as you say
If I'm crazy then it's true
That it's all because of you

Way to victim blame, Billy Joel.

And you wouldn't want me any other way

That's what they really wants, isn't it Billy? They say it isn't, but you know better. You always do.

You may be wrong for all I know
You may be right
You may be wrong but you may be right
You may be wrong but you may be right
You may be wrong but you may be right
You may be wrong but you may be right
You may be wrong but you may be right
You may be wrong but you may be right
You may be wrong but you may be right
You may be wrong but you may be right
You may be wrong but you may be right

Get a grip, Bill! You're losing it! Seriously, they're on the verge of calling the cops! 

I think I've proven my point.

Leaked Transcript Of Donald Trump Sacking John Bolton

Donald Trump has sacked his National Security Adviser John Bolton, apparently over conflicting view on whether to bomb all things or just most things in the world. As one of the world's most famous whistleblowing sites, An Alcoholic's Guide To Modern Life has acquired a secretly record transcript of the meeting. In the interests of transparency, AAGTML publishes it below.

***

[The Oval Office, West Wing, The White House.]

DONALD TRUMP: [Speaking with mouth full] Wow this filet-o-fish is great. They're the best, I order them all the time, I make the best orders. Take a seat John, just move those filet-o-fish wrappers. Thanks for coming to this meeting, I hold the best meetings, they're great, people talk about them, they say "the president's meetings are great", I mean not in the fake news media, they hate greatness, but people know, they do, they come up to me and thank me for my service, they say I'm doing a great job. So I'm glad you came.

JOHN BOLTON: No problem, Mr President.

TRUMP: What was that? I can't hear you through that thing on your face. I gotta tell you John, your moustache is not great, it's not great at all, and I need my people to be, well not as great as me, but great.

BOLTON: I'm sorry Mr President.

TRUMP: OK don't worry about it, we can't all be great. [Into speaker phone] Can I get another filet-o-fish up here? With an extra filet? John, do you know why I called you here?

BOLTON: To discuss who to bomb.

TRUMP: John, I asked you to prepare a detailed briefing paper on the global geopolitical situation in relation to the strategic threats to blah blah blah something whatever. Now I got it here somewhere [sounds of rustling paper] sorry, it's got a little tartar sauce on it, but I had one of my people read it, they're great readers, the best. I only hire the best. They tell me it's got two words on it. It just says "bomb them!"

BOLTON: That's right Mr President.

TRUMP: John, you're my National Security Adviser. I ask you for advice. Your advice is always "Bomb them!"

BOLTON: That's right Mr President.

TRUMP: But bomb who?

BOLTON: Them, Mr President. Bomb them!

TRUMP: Who, Venezuela?

BOLTON: Bomb them.

TRUMP: Iran? North Korea?

BOLTON: Bomb them.

TRUMP: Japan?

BOLTON: Bomb them.

TRUMP: Look John, I'd love to bomb Japan, my TV show ratings were terrible there, really terrible, they got terrible taste in TV, it'd be great. But my guys tell me we're allies. And my guys are great, the best.

BOLTON: Bomb them.

TRUMP: What, bomb my guys? John you're not thinking straight. That facial hair can't help. Look, I'm with you. I love bombing things. And our bombs are great, we do the best bombings. Iran, their bombs are terrible, they're terrible bombers. The Saudis, they're alright, but they're our bombs. We sell them the bombs, we do the best deals on bombs. But John, I'm a businessman, I do deals, I do great deals, everyone says so. But you can't do deals with rubble, believe me I tried. It doesn't work.

BOLTON: Bomb them.

TRUMP: John, my maths guys tell me, and I got the best maths guys, really, they tell me if I follow your advice I'll run out of bombs by next Tuesday. You can't reuse bombs, believe me I looked into it, they tell me you can't. And you can't make America great without bombs. I run out of bombs, they'll say look at Trump, he's got no bombs, he's weak, his terrible, he's the worst. No bombs at all. How will I fight the hurricanes?

BOLTON: Bomb them.

TRUMP: John, can I ask you a question?

BOLTON: Anything Mr President.

TRUMP: Can you shave off that stupid moustache?

BOLTON: Never.

TRUMP: You're fired. I can't have a guy working for me looking like a deformed walrus from some animal freak show! People will say "That Trump, he hangs out with the deformed walrus guy!" You're gone, get out of here.

BOLTON: It was my honour to serve you, Mr President. [Sounds of footsteps and a door closing]

TRUMP: [Calling] And don't bomb anything on your way out! This is my house! It's a great house, the best. What a stupid moustache. (Into speaker phone) Hey where's my filet-o-fish? I'm starving, I can't tweet on an empty stomach! Get me a 12 packer of McNuggets too. They're great, the best. And ask my guys again if they sure we can't bomb Japan?

CONFIRMED! YES! TRUMP COLLUDED WITH A FOREIGN GOVERNMENT!!!

RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA I KNEW IT RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA  rUSSIA Russia Russia... Russia Russia RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA  RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA  Russia Russia Putin Russia Moscow PUTIN PUTIN PUTIN PUTIN PUTIN PUTIN PUTIN PUTIN PUTIN PUTIN Russia Russia Russia RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA ....

RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA  Putin ... I knew it...

PUTIN...

MOSCOW...

PUTIN...

RUSSIA I KNEW IT Russia Russia Russia I kne...

Oh shit, it's not Russia!

Holy fuck!

It's Israel.


The Guardian reports:

Revealed: Trump team hired Israeli spy firm for ‘dirty ops’ on Iran arms deal

Aides to Donald Trump, the US president, hired an Israeli private intelligence agency to orchestrate a “dirty ops” campaign against key individuals from the Obama administration who helped negotiate the Iran nuclear deal, the Observer can reveal... 

Jack Straw, who as foreign secretary was involved in earlier efforts to restrict Iranian weapons, said: “These are extraordinary and appalling allegations but which also illustrate a high level of desperation by Trump and [the Israeli prime minister] Benjamin Netanyahu, not so much to discredit the deal but to undermine those around it.”

... [It is not]  known if the black ops constituted only a strand of a wider Trump-Netanyahu collaboration to undermine the deal ...

Yes, collaboration with Israel towards destroying a deal to defuse dangerous tensions with Iran, so as to avoid a dangerous war with unpredictable consequences against a nation with a far bigger population that neighbouring Iraq. COZ WHICH SORT OF SICK BASTARD DOES NOT WANT A POTENTIALLY NUCLEAR WAR AGAINST IRAN???

Not that is the first evidence of Trump collusion with Israel. His team did that before  he was even inaugurated president, which is what they are accused of doing with Russia. Such collusion is not legal.

The Intercept wrote:

Trump’s Transition Team Colluded With Israel. Why Isn’t That News? 

...Thanks to Mueller’s ongoing investigation, we now know that prior to President Donald Trump’s inauguration, members of his inner circle went to bat on behalf of Israel, and specifically on behalf of illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories, behind the scenes and in opposition to official U.S. foreign policy. That’s the kind of collusion with a foreign state that has gotten a lot of attention with respect to the Kremlin – but colluding with Israel seems to be of far less interest, strangely.

Hmmmm. Oh well... I mean if it is the recipient of the largest quantity of US military assistance in the world.... so as to scuttle a deal so as to make war more likely and to back illegal settlements based on ethic cleansing... well... sure it may be collusion with a foreign power, but that kinda thing is about as American as you can get.

As you were.

RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA rUSSIA rUSSIA Russia Russia Russia Putin Putin PUTIN PUTIN PUTIN PUTIN MOSCOW PUTIN RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA ETCETC

RUSSIA.

Here is an irrelevant Tom Waits song coz it is awesome and I haven't posted one in ages.

...And I wondered how the same moon outside over this Chinatown fair
Could look down on Illinois
And find you there
And you know I love you baby
And I'm so far away from home
I'm so far away from home
And I miss my baby so
I can't make it by myself
I love you so...

Margo Price's NPR show the day after Trump won. An emotional, but defiant performance by awesome, rising and political country singer

This NPR "tiny desk" features country singer Margo Price on November 9 last year -- the day after Donald Trump was elected. Yeah I know it is over a year ago now, but I've been busy! With many things! Such as drinking, living in denial at the coming destruction of the last remnants of human civilisation, and not listening to Margo Price's NPR tiny desk show from November 9, 2016. It's been fucking hectic.

Over the past few months I've come across Margo Price and she's great. She has been making waves with music that, unlike much of what dominates country radio, is actual country music, stories of of pain and resilience filled with heart. Naturally, Nashville has little time for her, but she is part of a new wave of great women country singers outside the Nashville mainstream, along with the likes of Dori Freeman, Kristina Murphy (who I literally first heard today but already love) and Sarah Shook.

Price's NPR desk show was obviously always going to have to relate in some way to the rise of Trump, but its no real surprise she openly took it on (the notes from NPR below the clip explain the context). Price is explicitly, but not heavy-handedly, political (as an example, two of the three tracks at the NPR performance were not written as political songs, but took on political dimensions with Trump's win.)

Price is political in a way that gets label in the US as "liberal", but that label doesn't do it justice. This isn't about partisan party politics -- with the Democrats putting in a poor showing anyway of actual progressive politics -- but ordinary people and their interests in the fact of systemic inustices.

The show was recorded a few months after after her impressive debut album, Midwest Farmer's Daughter, last year. The album won many accolades and debuted at number 10 on the US country charts -- the first time a female artist has debuted in the top 10 with her first record.

She has since released her second album, All American Made, it is even more political -- filled with anger and defiance as she takes down institutionalised sexism from a working-class perspective on tracks like "Pay Gap".

It goes beyond shallow liberal anti-Trump stuff with gut-level response to systemic injustice. The title track, although it explicitly refers to and ironically inverts Trump's "make it in America" rhetoric, was written before Trump's win. It swings from general points ("everywhere I go, somebody puts e in the dirt") to references to historical events like the Iran-Contra scandal under Reagan in the 80s.

This is not about Trump dropping from the sky, but being an product of modern America -- he is, himself, very much all-American made. It is further evidence to the emptiness of prejudices that country is a reactionary genre.

And, like the debut, it also has some great country songs about pain of love gone wrong, and features a duet with Willie Nelson. It broke into the top 10 US country, folk and indie charts.

Price is the sort of artist that gives hope for popular music in general and country music in particular, as a vital creative force with some reason for its existence, that can relate to the world around it.

The clip, which features the title track for her latest album and two tracks from her debut, is below, followed by NPR's notes.



Bob Boilen | November 28, 2016 — When I greeted Margo Price in the NPR garage before her Tiny Desk performance, tears were streaming down her face. It was Wednesday morning, Nov. 9, the day after the 2016 election. For her — as for many Americans — it was a stunning and bewildering moment in time, a day when life and the everyday took on new meaning. And so when she and her band began to play "All American Made," a song she's sung many times before, those words about America's changes and failures in the 21st century seemed even more powerful. Margo Price is a Nashville-based musician, the sort of country artist that captures the hearts of those both inside and outside the country-music scene. Her debut album, Midwest Farmer's Daughter, is one of the brightest moments in country in a very strong year. As this Tiny Desk progresses, even "Four Years Of Chances," her song of a love gone wrong, feels less about a lousy husband and more about presidential politics. She dedicates her third and final song, "About To Find Out," to Donald Trump; she says it was originally written about a "musician acquaintance of mine who's a complete sociopath." When the song ends, she rips open her red cowboy shirt to reveal a T-shirt with the words "Icky Trump"— a play on the title of The White Stripes' song "Icky Thump," which criticizes the U.S.'s immigration policies. She smiles, wipes a tear away: It seems cathartic, but temporary. Midwest Farmer's Daughter is available now: iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/mid... Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Midwest-Farmer... SET LIST "All American Made" "Four Years Of Chances" "About To Find Out"

You can see also see a longer show with full band in front of live audience.

BONUS TRACK!

Here is an upbeat, cheery track all about exploitation and systemic sexual harassment of women in the industry and in general!



In this town everybody's trying to get a piece of everybody else
It gets hard to tell a real friend from a fake one
So many promises, favors, and lies
Most of the town wears a good disguise
And even I, too, have been known to wear one

As the saying goes, it's not who you know
But it's who you blow that'll get you in the show
And if that's not the case I hear you pay 'em
But I don't come easy and I'm flat broke
So I guess it's me who gets the joke
Maybe I'd be smarter if I played dumb

I can't count all the times I've been had
Now I know much better than to let that make me mad
I don't let none of that get me down
From what I've found this town gets around

Now the very first manager I ever had
He was old enough he could have been my dad
He took me out for drinks and talked a big talk
He said, "darling sign on the dotted line
You know, "kiss my cheek and drink this wine
But if you walk on me, then you can just walk

I can't count all the times I've been had
Now I know much better than to let that make me mad
I don't let none of that get me down
From what I've found this town gets around

When I first came here the streets were paved with gold
And you can walk that road, I've been told
But I won't put out or be controlled
I don't write the shit that gets bought and sold
Ask any man
He might know
Who used to live on Music Row
But that was then, and this is now
He told me this town gets around
From what I've found this town gets around

It's not all bad, well OK a lot of it is, but still here is audio of me ranting on a stage

Well, a lot sure seems to be happening in the world.

I am sure like me, when you saw Donald Trump in Puerto Rico cheerfully lobbing paper towels at a crowd of people in that devastated Caribbean island, your first thought was: "Holy fuck, I'm also out of paper towels, what kinda natural disaster worsened into an extreme humanitarian crisis by a combination of climate change and extreme ongoing colonial exploitation do I have to organise to get the US commander in chief to chuck a few of them my way?"

Looking into the matter, it turns out the answer is "a pretty fucking bad one". Like we are talking a Category Five Hurricane so bad it caused Trump to stop golfing and actually visit after just two weeks, which is the highest level of severity meteorologists recognise.

Of course, Trump did more than that in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. He also wagged his finger at the Puerto Ricans, largely without electricity, clean drinking water ad with a gutted health care system already weakened by the savage austerity forced on the island by their US colonial masters that is unable to deal with potential disease outbreaks, and declared, as only Trump could:

“I hate to tell you, Puerto Rico, but you’ve thrown our budget a little out of whack ..."

This is a bit like if you've been stabbed by some random bloke, and your mate, who is driving you to the emergency department before the last of your life leaks out into the growing bloody pool on the passenger's seat, points out that the cost of the petrol for this trip is really stretching his fortnightly pay check, despite you knowing for a fact he has more than half-trillion worth of high-tech weaponry in his backyard.

Say what you will about Trump, but he has a brutal honesty that is almost refreshing. No hypocritical tears for the dead or pretence that the US state and or its corporate masters give a flying fuck for the half-drowned, already-screwed people of the US's "I Can't Believe It's Not a Colony" colony of Puerto Rico, which has been a "not-colony" colony since the US won control over the Caribbean island from the Spanish in the 1898 Spanish-American War.

In all-too-predictable news, almost two weeks after Puerto Rico was hit by the super-storm, the US was hit by another mass shooting, one of the deadliest in recent decades (though not in US history, as the Lakota could point out).

Such a tragedy has many repercussions, one of which is Australians enter a new round of smug self-congratulation about how, unlike those nutty Yanks, we solved our gun problem after the 1996 Port Arthur Massacre when automatic and semiautomatic weapons were banned and we've not see a repeat of that horrific event.

No doubt this is to Australia's credit, so perhaps while we are on a roll having successfully managed one single positive  reform of note since 1996 about we may take some pride, perhaps we might, I don't know, consider not torturing innocent people in isolated prison camps, then abandoning them to their fate in impoverished Third World countries that cannot deal with them?

I know sometimes change is slow, and we're all a bit exhausted from spending the past 21 years patting ourselves on the back for the unprecedented (if you exclude large chunks of the world) wisdom in not letting nutcases have access to major weapons of death except when they serve in the SAS in Afghanistan,

But in the act of congratulating ourselves, we by-and-large missed yet another Black Death in Custody. Tan Chatfield, a 22-year-old Aboriginal man, died in custody at the Tamworth Correctional Centre on September 20 under what may politely be called "suspicious circumstances". This is only one of hundreds since the 1991 Royal Commission into Black Deaths in Custody laid down more than 300 recommendations to stop more Black Deaths in Custody — which have gone ignored and unimplemented.  In 2013, a review of deaths in custody by the Australian Institute of Criminology found that the number of Aboriginal deaths in custody had increased over the previous five years.

Still, how wacky are hose Yanks with their automatic rifles and paper-towel throwing presidents eh?

Meanwhile, Tony Abbott, the ex-and-wannabe prime minister of the nation one of the highest per capita carbon emissions in the world,  gave an absurd speech in Britain, questioning whether climate change was real before suggesting that possibly it might be a good thing regardless, because more people die in cold than heatwaves (yes he fucking said that).

Abbott clearly sees himself as "Australia's Trump", so it is just as well he's not, I dunno, heading a government in Queensland greenlighting and providing taxpayer funds for a large corporation's planned mega-coal mine that will condemn the great Barrier Reef to death and drastically worsen the global warming crisis, which, just to prove I know how to shoe in a callback, contributed to the strength of Hurricane Maria that devastated Puerto Rico.

No, that would be Queensland's Labor government, a government of a party that actually accepts global warming, but presumably just figures this planet is screwed so let Adani hasten our fate.

But it is not all bad! Not only is their push back on protests on these things (such as the growing campaign against Adani), no, even better! Here is some dodgy audio of me ranting on a stage, recorded on the first night of my solo show Inspired? at the Sydney Fringe Comedy festival! (Warning: it starts abruptly, as I had forgotten to turn it on, so just begins with me yelling about something...)

https://theunaustraliandotnet.files.wordpress.com/2017/09/carlos-show.mp3

I am very kindly providing this to you all for free, coz that is the kinda guy I am. Just a decent guy and not at all desperate to get my angry voice out there for some sort of deeply disturbed personal reasons I have never investigated for fear of what might surface. However, the show was a fundraiser for Green Left Weekly, so if you wish you can make a donation to the publication, which relies entirely on supporter donations to survive.

'Give me a drink!'

'Son of bitch! Get me a drink!'

This truly is a song for our times.

I think here Nathaniel Rateliff from the wonderful soulful R&B combo Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats speaks for all of us right now. I dare say anyone who tried watching Donald Trump's latest surrealist performance art/press conference, caught up on the latest climate science, or even just had the misfortune of watching the ridiculous so-called performance the Western Sydney Wanderers put on to lose 2-0 at home to the Central Coast Mariners, for fuck's sake.

Jesus fuck, get me another drink.

Banning gingers from power? Tough, but fair

This is a tough call.

This placard appeared at Sydney's refugee rights demonstration on February 5, called in response to bickering between the Orange Freak and the Australian government over a deal to illegally traffic desperate human beings from the isolated, offshore, torture camps Australia holds them in to the United States of America, where brown people are, like, not exactly fucking loved right now.

It makes a controversial point. In the interests of full disclosure, I am obliged to point out I am, actually, one of them.

I am a ginger. A ranga. One of "the Orange People". A carrot-topped possessor of some fire-crotched Fanta pants. (Actually... maybe just pretend I didn't refer to my own crotch on this blog and we'll all sleep better at night.)

This is a sensitive issue for me. A life-long history of savage bigotry, of the sort it is hard to bring myself to even describe... but... and a trigger warning to victims of gingerphobia... but it includes a childhood in which ... god this is hard... but it includes a childhood in which I was repeatedly called "Bluey".

This despite the fact that I was, and indeed am, demonstrably not "blue" in any way. My hair colour is clearly orange, of the sort popularly called "red".

Too little research has been carried out into the long-term affects of such demonstratably false nicknames being applied to innocent children, too young to comprehend the social context... but I can only assume my long record of sustained adult (and teenage, let's be honest) alcohol abuse must at root be tied back to this false characterisation of my hair colour.

My point is... the rise of Donald Trump has brought with it a terrifying rise in hate. For instance, the very day after he won the elections, I personally witnessed a clear cut example of Trump-fuelled hate right here in Sydney!

Yes! An angry Mexican abused me just coz I'm orange!

He saw me, came right up and angrily pointed his finger as he almost spat out the phrase, "Your people!"

My first response, when I got over the shock, was like, "Hey dude! #NotAllGingers, yeah? Like #GingerLivesMatter!"

But then... once I calmed down and thought it through... I was forced to admit the prick had a point.

And so does that placard.

Because there is something us Orange People don't talk about much, even among ourselves. And it is that we have always known, deep down, if we are willing to admit it, that a ginger would destroy the planet.

It is just one of those things. Of course it would be a fucking ranga.

We are just broken somewhere deep inside.Whether from the schoolyard abuse or some deep flaw in the DNA that produces the deformity that is red hair... I cannot say. But yeah. A fucking ranga. Just fucking had to be.

That protest placard is a tough call, yes, but fair. Ban all orange people from holding any office now. Except maybe in Scotland, otherwise they'd never find enough bastards to fill their devolved parliament.

Down by the Riverside motel
It's ten below and falling
By a ninety-nine cent store
She closed her eyes and started swaying
But it's so hard to dance that way
When it's cold and there's no music
Oh, your old hometown's so far away
But inside your head there's a record that's playing

This bears no relation to the rest of the post, it is just you can't get enough Tom Waits.

OK 2016 wasn't great but don't panic, Tony Abbott's on a crusade to promote Western civilisation

'So the really great thing about Western civilisation up until 1955,...'

Many treat this year like it has little to commend it, and OK it is has been a bit of a bumpy ride, sure, but it is important to look at the positives. There was one development, in particular, I firmly believe history will record as of profound historic importance. A huge turning point for humanity.

I refer to the day it was announced that Tony Abbott had been appointed director of a new think tank to "promote" Western civilisation. On October 4, in a rare piece of good news, The Guardian reported:

Tony Abbott has been appointed a director of a new centre for western civilisation – a thinktank which he says aims “to promote a more widespread study and understanding of the western canon.”

If nothing else, this should end Western civilisation pretty quickly. And not before time, or we could face World War III or another season of The Farmer Wants A Wife.  Don't forget, there was no bigger "promoter" of Tony Abbott's prime ministership than Tony Abbott. Western civilisation looks as doomed as the 2014 federal budget and Prince Philip's now-retracted knighthood.

Those worrywarts concerned about a Trump presidency potentially bringing on a nuclear war... it is hard to see Western civilisation staggering on long enough for that even to be a factor. I am not sure when the former Prime Minister and onion lobbyist takes up his position, but if it is January 1, we might not even make it Trump's Jan. 20 inauguration.

There was thunder, there was lightning
Then the stars went out
And the moon fell from the sky
It rained mackerel, it rained trout
And the great day of wrath has come
And here's mud in your big red eye
And the poker's in the fire
And the locusts take the sky
Well, the earth died screaming
While I lay dreaming

Look, for God's sake, *you* are working class, you bloody idiot!

Not actually working class: A billionaire property mogul and a private schooled City banker. 

"I was looking for a job and then I found a job and Heaven knows I'm miserable now," sung Morrissey in Manchester band The Smiths' song from the depths of Thatcher's England in the mid-80s.

I have never really heard a better description of the essential condition of the working class, forced to look for work they hate just to survive. I don't want to get all "Karl Marx" on you, but that is the basic definition of that mythical beast, The Working Class ... those that fucking work, or seek fucking work, and do so because they have no fucking choice.

Does that apply to you? Does that apply to the vast majority of people you know? Then I am sorry to be the one to break the news, but you're Working Fucking Class. Or WFC if that makes you feel any better in this age of social media-speak, hell go for a #wfclol hashtag if you want to retain your essential ironic sense of self-deprecation. You'll still have to get up far too fucking early tomorrow morning and go perform mind-numbing and possibly body destroying tasks under the direction of some prick you despise.

Does this matter? Does such a passe concept as "class" really count for much in our glorious neoliberal post-modern, post-class, post politics, post fucking a safe fucking climate for human fucking habitation world? Does it matter if most people view "working class" as some outdated trope of a white bloke in a hard hat or as some sort of sociological label determined simply by income level? As opposed to, you know... whether you work?

Yes, I think so, to judge by the endless think pieces right now on a fictional working class where everyone is white and fulfilling the stereotype thought up in the heads of some journalist who, just days ago, was certain Donald Trump would lose badly and now, having ignored class for years, is full of wisdom about a mythical Working Class that Must Be Heard.

I think it matters because, understood as "those that work", the working class is a large majority in the world, divided up, of course, across many racial, ethnic, gender and other lines.

It matters because we've been hearing so much about this great mythical Working Class beast since the Brexit vote in Britain in June. We've been hearing even more since the position of Leader of the Free World/Nation that Drone Strikes Children and Overthrows Governments for Fun and Profit, was won by the KKK-backed billionaire child rapist slumlord Donald Trump.

Many, understandably, want to know how the Hell did that freak reality TV show bigot win the White House.

Was it maybe the hollowing out of US institutions and total corruption of what little democracy that was by oceans of corporate money? Was it maybe the fact that the Democrats, in the Oval Office for the past eight years, have long pushed a brutal neoliberalism destroying livelihoods across the country, while also pursuing brutal war overseas and mass incarceration of predominantly Black people at home (a key part of their voter base), while also mass deporting Latino migrants... and in doing so totally destroying the ground on which they seek to stand?

Was it the fact that when Bernie Sanders ran an insurgent campaign for the Democrat nomination, setting it alight with calls for a "political revolution" against the "billionaire class", and received polls after polls suggesting he could easily defeat Trump while Clinton would struggle, the Democrats sabotaged his campaign and installed the ultimate establishment candidate any way?

Was it the extreme restriction of democracy in the self-proclaimed Greatest Democracy on Earth(TM)? Things like the fact that many who wanted to vote couldn't, in part coz the elections are on a working day, the Voters Rights Act to protect Black voters had been rolled back for the first time in 50 years, and there were hundreds of less polling booths in places where predominantly poor and black people vote? Was it the fact that literally millions of (again disproportionately Black) prisoners and ex-prisoners were denied the right to vote at all?

No. It was, as alleged "think" piece after alleged think piece insists, The Working Class. Somewhere, Hillary Clinton is angrily shaking her fist as terrified campaign workers cower while she shouts, "AND I WOULD HAVE GOTTEN AWAY WITH IT, TOO, IF IT WASN'T FOR THOSE DARN WORKERS!"

Don't worry about the fact that actually the evidence is Tump attracted the support of wealthier voters than Clinton (perhaps not surprising since he did promise widespread tax cuts), don't worry about his appeals to deep-seated racism and bigotry, don't worry about the fact that the Republican vote actually dropped overall compared to 2012, it is just the Democrat vote dropped even more.

Forget all of that. In some key states, some white rural workers with economic concerns voted for Trump and therefore, we must all listen to The Working Class, OK?

And don't get the liberal think pieces wrong. They don't mean this as an attack on The Working Class! God no!

Sure their version of The Working Class voted for a misogynist racist self-confessed sexual abuser, but it is only because the poor people are in such pain. We just need to listen to their pain! Don't call them racist just because they say, think, chant and vote racist. Try to understand.

Of course, at this point, it probably important to note that the working class of these think pieces has one clear characteristic that is usually openly admitted.

That it, it is white.

Yes it was the white working class, which, to go by the think pieces, is the most workering working class to ever be a class and also work! 

This, of course, is not the entire US working class. Huge chunks of working people in the US are not, actually, white and research suggests white people will be a minority of the US workforce in about 15 years.

Not a white worker.

But not only do many pieces talk about the US working class as if it is exclusively white, they describe a narrow layer of blue collar white workers.

Take this piece I've seen shared around. It's headline is "What Many People Don't Get About the US Working Class" and it was shared by Daily Kos, a pro-Democrat liberal, progressive leaning site as a "must read".

Despite a headline suggesting it is about the "US" working class, it explicitly about, and only about, a narrow sector of workers — a layer of blue collar white workers who, as the post spells out, support a right-wing agenda, such as resenting and opposing those poorer than them receiving government assistance.

And what does the Daily Kos, a website associated closely with the Democrats, conclude?

Must read Harvard Business Review article for all of us as we reflect and regroup. We don’t have to pander to any racism but we still need to retain enough of the white working class vote in MI, PA and WI for 2020 with a message of economic populism even as we wait for the demographics to turn. 

Well that is real caring for The Working Class right there!  Send a "message" of "populism" to a sector you clearly don't understand and seem to despise while you "wait for the demographics to turn"!

Really I have no idea how such people failed to defeat Trump.

Forget Black people robbed of the right to vote! Forget the poor who found voting near impossible or just couldn't bring themselves to vote for either candidate who hates their guts, forget the fucking millions of Latino migrants who grow the fucking food and clean the fucking homes and face mass fucking deportation (and not just from Trump but from Obama first)...

The Key Sector is the White Working Class. And the White Working Class backed Trump because... well because it seems to suit people to imagine they did even when the statistics say that wasn't who voted Trump.

And I see this shit about the "need to listen to the working class" being shared on social media by people who a) don't support Trump in the slightest and b) are themselves working class.

Now that is self-hatred for you. Left-wing working class people pushing the idea that the working class, as a collective, is right wing. The working class is forever presented as some sort of "Other", mysterious, romantic, hard-to-pin-down... as opposed to what it is — that is, those who work.

So was Brexit and Trump's win a "revolt" of the working class?

Yes, in Brexit, many working class people voted for Brexit. Many working class people also voted to stay in the EU too. In the stay camp was the large majority of people who identified as Black, as Asian and/or as Muslim — who are overwhelmingly working class — and most Scottish and northern Irish people.

So if you want to talk about the "working class revolt" in Brexit and ignore Black, Asian, Muslim, Scottish and Irish workers within the British state.... then... well the polite way to put it is you are not really helping combat racism exactly.

And in Trump's win...  we are told, endlessly, we need to listen to Trump supporters. Never mind that actually the vast majority of American people did not vote Trump and he won with about 25% of registered voters.

The problem with presenting The Working Class as that narrow layer of white blue collar workers who joined the largely middle class voting base for Trump is it ignores a key challenge facing the actual working class. Which is how, when so stratified by race, ethnicity, gender and more, to actually unite to pose a challenge to all of our enemies in the corporate elite?

Because Trump's appeal is to small-minded privilege, for white people to blame those weaker, for men to keep their power over women in their lives, and to see the "Swamp" in Washington in these terms — those whose "political correctness" hands over the narrow, petty privileges of white people, of men, of straight people, of "proper Americans" over the fucking usurpers of every minority that wants to get the fucking boot off their necks.

We hear repeatedly that "We need to listen to Trump supporters", but the people who say that clearly don't. I mean have a fucking listen! It is not like they are quiet! These bastards SHOUT their views and concerns at the any opportunity!

As  wise man once said (ie me in my Green Left Weekly column last week):

When Trump supporters chanted “We don’t like Muslims, we don’t like Blacks, we want our country back”, it is unlikely this was code for “we need to be more concerned about the impacts of pro-corporate trade deals on our nation’s manufacturing industry and its flow-on effect to a drastically weakened working and middle class”.

It is likely they meant they don’t like Muslims and they don’t like Blacks.

And when Trump supporters at Sydney University responded to Trump’s win by chanting “grab them by the pussy, that’s how we do it!”, it is unlikely they meant “What Australian politics needs is a genuine outsider to take on a corrupt, out of touch political class and reverse the neoliberal economic policies causing a serious decline in living standards”.

It is likely they meant they like sexually assaulting women.

 Plus there is this tweet, which says the same thing in much less words:

Please keep an open heart/mind and understand that people drawing swastikas on walls are just concerned about the economy.

— Sam Kalidi (@samkalidi) November 13, 201

If you want an actual working class revolt in the United States... well I can think of two right now that are worth actually listening to... and these revolts are completely against the interests and policies of BOTH Trumpite Republicans and Clintonite Democrats.

On May 1 2006, more than 1 million largely Latino migrant workers staged mass walk-outs in protests for amnesty for undocumented migrants and and end to deportations. They shut the country down.

More workers who aren't white.

As Green Left Weekly said at the time:

According to combined police estimates, 1.1 million immigrant workers and their supporters marched in more than 75 major cities across the US on May 1 ...Over and above those who marched were hundreds of thousands more who boycotted shopping and skipped school or work ...

One of the goals of the actions was to demonstrate the impact of a "day without immigrants". This goal was surely met. School attendance in cities with large concentrations of immigrants was way down. The New York Times reported that "stores and restaurants in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York closed because workers did not show up or as a display of solidarity with demonstrators". In one area of Chicago, only 17% of students showed up. There were TV pictures of empty supermarkets usually patronised by immigrants. 

In California's Central Valley, where much of the country's produce is grown, no farm workers came to work. TV showed eerie shots of vacant fields. Much of the construction industry was shut down across the country. Major meat-packing companies, including Tyson Foods, Swift and Perdue chickens, shut down many plants because their immigrant workers didn't show up. The largest port on the west coast, in Long Beach, California, was shut down, because the truck drivers were nowhere to be seen. 

Vast swaths of service industries — hotels, restaurants, car washes, and so forth — were affected. Nannies took a day off. Workers who couldn't take the day off went to rallies after work ... 

I might go out on a limb and suggest this is what a working class revolt against an out-of-touch establishment looks like. But there is a second, more recent, example. CNN reported on October 31 on a mass strike by US inmates, who do large amounts of forced labour for very low pay, producing key goods for various authorities and companies:

Last month, on the 45th anniversary of the infamous Attica Prison uprising, tens of thousands of US inmates launched a nationwide protest that continues today, according to advocates who helped organize the effort.

The inmates' grievances are as varied as the states they came from: Pennies for labor in South Carolina, racial discrimination in California, excessive force in Michigan. However, they share an overarching goal: End legalized slavery inside American correctional facilities...  the 13th Amendment of the US Constitution, while banning slavery, allows prisoners to work for little to no pay, in what inmate advocates say crosses the limits of human decency, amounting to modern-day servitude ... 

Since September 9, the Incarcerated Workers' Organizing Committee, a prisoner rights advocacy group, estimates as many as 50,000 inmates have taken part in coordinated strikes planned through social media on cell phones and snail mail across nearly two-dozen states ...

OMG,  more non-white workers? But then who do we listen to???

Don't forget that those carrying out these working class revolts generally can't vote (as prisoners or undocumented migrants). Yet, hand-wringing liberal media responses to the rise of right-populism notwithstanding, they form part of the working class you might want to consider listening to.

This all matters because working people have some real power. But not if you invent a fictional working class, based on a narrow layer of some white workers, because it fits some strange narrative you are trying to present. Consider that actually, the actual working class, the one capable imposing its will  for progressive change, includes you.

Here are two songs about the working class I really like. The first is those working class Welsh rockers and socialists, the Manic Street Preachers, with their track about working class culture and defiance (which went to number 2 int he UK charts in 1996). the second Latino hip hop duo from the Bronx, Rebel Diaz, re-interrupting the classic working class anthem "Which Side Are You On", written in the 1930s in support of a US coal miners strike, for the 21st Century.

Libraries gave us power
Then work came and made us free
What price now for a shallow piece of dignity
I wish I had a bottle
Right here in my dirty face to wear the scars
To show from where I came
We don't talk about love we only want to get drunk
And we are not allowed to spend
As we are told that this is the end
A design for life

Making money for suckers and our communities poor
Ripping flags off of coffins, man, this ain't our war
Colonized and terrorized by the world's biggest killers
The US government, the biggest weapon and drug dealers
Filling prisons with children, incarcerating the future
Myspace and Facebook got us stuck on computers
Stuck on stupid bumping music that's abusive to the shorties
And the nonsense that you spitting, they just listen and absorb it
I've been dormant, I've awoken, I'm a giant, I'm ready
I'm with the APPO in Oaxaca and we holding machetes

'All the news is bad, is there any other kind? And everybody's talking at the same time...'

I think I might just leave this here.





Get a job, save your money, listen to Jane
Everybody knows umbrellas will cost more in the rain
All the news is bad
Is there any other kind?
Everybody's talking at the same time


Well it's hard times for some
For others it's sweet
Someone makes money when there's blood in the street
Don't take any lip
Stay in line
Everybody's talking at the same time


Well the dog is in the kitchen
And the war drags on
The trees wait by the freeway
All the moneys all gone
Well she told me she would leave me
I ignored all the signs
And now everybody's talking at the same time
Everybody's talking at the same time


Ain't no one coming to pull you from the mud
You gotta build your nest high enough to ride out the flood
I know you're leaving and there's no more next time
Everybody's talking at the same time


A tiny boy sat and he played in the sand
He made a sword from a stick
And a gun from his hand
Well we bailed out all the millionaires
They've got the fruit
We've got the rind
And everybody's talking at the same time

Everybody's talking at the same time

'To hell with you're double standards, we're coming rougher every time'.

President-elect Donald Trump can talk all he wants about walls and send armed thugs in uniform to deepen the terrorisation of immigrants in the United States. But it is unlikely you can stop people who are determined to win what little freedom and safety this fucked up world has to offer.

For that matter, that smug suited prick Malcolm Turnbull should consider this too.

Immigrada, Immigraniada
Immigrada, Immigraniada da da
Immigrada, Immigraniada
We coming rougher everytime

In corridors full of tear gas
Our destinies change every day
Like deleted scenes from Kafka
Flushed down the bureaucratic drain

But if you give me the invitation
To hear the bells of freedom chime
To hell with your double standard
We comin' rougher every time

We coming rougher, we coming rougher
We coming rougher everytime
(Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey)
We coming rougher every time

Immigrada, Immigraniada
Immigrada, Immigraniada da da
Immigrada, Immigraniada
We comin' rougher everytime

And those who made it and quickly jaded
To them we got nothing to say
Immigrada, Immigraniada
For them Don Quixote kind of way

But if you give me the invitation
To hear the bells of freedom chime
To hell with your double standard
We comin' rougher every time

We coming rougher, we coming rougher
We coming rougher everytime
(Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey)
We comin' rougher every time

Immigrada, Immigraniada
Immigrada, Immigraniada da da
Immigrada, Immigraniada
We coming rougher everytime

Frozen eyes, sweaty back
My family's living on the railroad track
All my life I back in black
But man, I got to earn this black

I gotta pay representation
To be accepted in a nation
Where after efforts of a hero
All comes start again from zero

It's a book of a true stories
True stories that can't be denied
It's more than true, it actually happened
It's more than true, it actually happened
It's more than true, it actually happened
We comin' rougher every time
Rougher every time
We comin' rougher every time

We coming rougher, we coming rougher
We coming rougher everytime
(Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey)
We coming rougher every time

Immigrada, Immigraniada
Immigrada, Immigraniada da da
Immigrada, Immigraniada
We comin' rougher everytime

Political scum, political scum! You lead the way and you beat the drum...

In the Land Of The Free (TM). a vote is about to happen. Like the rest of the world, multiple alien civilisations are no doubt watching, looking down on us and watching the result closely to see if there is any point invading. 

The short answer is: probably not. At least, if Clinton wins, not unless you can muster the invasion force within the for years or so before the inevitable nuclear war with Russia and/or eco-holocaust renders the planet simply not worth occupying. If Trump wins... well, no one need bother travelling galaxies with a bid to harvest our brains, they will have all melted in horror, even ignoring the near-inevitable nuclear war even sooner

A wise man (ie me)  once said of these elections that it was a battle "to determine who gets to order new crimes against humanity, in which one candidate is a far-right, racist, woman-hating, tax-avoiding failed property mogul, reality TV star and serial sex offender, and the other is, by all available evidence, a robot built by Goldman Sachs".

As a less wise man (ie not me, but unAustralian writer Peter Green at The unAustralian) summed it up in an unOz piece headline: "America Prepares To Vote For Which Type Of Chaos To Descend Into"

But  ultimate, chicago-based Celtic punk veterans The Tossers say just about what needs to be said in this little ditty below:

Well over the sea, and far away,
Our kids die in deserts, they been sent that way,
To guard oil rigs where the head cutters reign,
And blow them away without any refrain
Well why are we here? It’s thinning us out,
To see our life’s work in your constituents clout,
Is your exclusion of dissidence masking your guilt?
Do you want to be dissident in the world that you’ve built?

Political scum! Political scum!
You lead the way, you beat the drum
Political scum, Political scum!
Sacrificing your own while their under your thumb

When broke powerless people grab any power they can get
Dominance over women, racism and threats
We’ll be loosing media jobs and you make us your pet
Reconsidering this weakness and the promise he forgets
Do you really believe in the stories you tell?
How Christ turned his cheek or came down from the hill
Will you profiteer or ransack with the soldiers you kill,
Are you upward bound or will you burn in hell?!

Political scum! Political scum!
You lead the way, you beat the drum
Political scum, Political scum!
Sacrificing your own while their under your thumb...