With all the low emotions the election results have placed us some may not have noticed the passing of musical legend Leonard Cohen. While I didn’t know of his music when he was popularly topical I did find his music in the mid 1980’s and have since then decided he was one of those forces, musical or otherwise, which blow through our culture and then gets divided between the factions of left vs right and wound up as an icon to the left. Oddly enough, one of his most famous songs, Democracy, was a diatribe concerning the realities of living in and surviving through the long march toward “d”emocracy in this land.
It's coming through a hole in the air
From those nights in Tiananmen Square
It's coming from the feel
That it ain't exactly real
Or it's real, but it ain't exactly there
From the wars against disorder
From the sirens night and day
From the fires of the homeless
From the ashes of the gay
Democracy is coming to the u.s.a
It's coming through a crack in the wall
On a visionary flood of alcohol
From the staggering account
Of the Sermon on the Mount
Which I don't pretend to understand at all
It's coming from the silence
On the dock of the bay
From the brave, the bold, the battered
Heart of Chevrolet
Democracy is coming to the u.s.a
It's coming from the sorrow on the street
The holy places where the races meet
From the homicidal bitchin'
That goes down in every kitchen
To determine who will serve and who will eat
From the wells of disappointment
Where the women kneel to pray
For the grace of God in the desert here
And the desert far away
Democracy is coming to the u.s.a
Sail on, sail on
O mighty ship of state!
To the shores of need
Past the reefs of greed
Through the squalls of hate
Sail on, sail on, sail on...
It's coming to America first
The cradle of the best and of the worst
It's here they got the range
And the machinery for change
And it's here they got the spiritual thirst
It's here the family's broken
And it's here the lonely say
That the heart has got to open
In a fundamental way
Democracy is coming to the u.s.a
It's coming from the women and the men
Oh baby, we'll be making love again
We'll be going down so deep
That the river's going to weep
And the mountain's going to shout Amen!
It's coming like the tidal flood
Beneath the lunar sway
Imperial, mysterious
In amorous array
Democracy is coming to the u.s.a
Sail on, sail on
O mighty ship of state!
To the shores of need
Past the reefs of greed
Through the squalls of hate
Sail on, sail on, sail on...
I'm sentimental, if you know what I mean
I love the country but I can't stand the scene
And I'm neither left or right
I'm just staying home tonight
Getting lost in that hopeless little screen
But I'm stubborn as those garbage bags
That time cannot decay
I'm junk but I'm still holding up
This little wild bouquet
Democracy is coming to the u.s.a
While I might be able to still echo his line- “I love my country but can’t stand the scene” I am having trouble today and this week finding love for my countrymen and women who could vote for an obvious asshole for President of the United States.
I would venture to say President Groper might take the line: “Sail on, sail on,O mighty ship of state!
To the shores of need, Past the reefs of greed, Through the squalls of hate” as an affront to his very existence which only seems to be made of hate. Hell, his followers espouse hatred at every turn. Hatred for people who don’t look like them, hatred for people who may not be as advantaged as them, hatred for the government and those “elites” which oddly enough President creeper is one.
So, in my immediate shock of the outcome and hearing of Leonard Cohen’s death I read those lyrics and realized it has always been so in the USA. It has always been that the “elites” have ruled over and controlled the levers of power only offering the crumbs of existence to us “little people” when the times and the people stood up to demand it. So began FDR’s Great Experiment, the people being so hungry and downtrodden that they demanded change and threw out those that created it but it took an “elite”, FDR to realize what was needed and to fight against his own class.
I fear the coming Republican onslaught will destroy what’s left of any social safety net, demolish entire communities of people whose value to this country is being questioned by hatred. These haters have been empowered by the words of a demagogue, the deeds of his followers are in evidence as they post their memes and photos of white supremacy. I know that Cohen was being musically “snarky” with these lyrics but I think he was most prescient when he wrote words such as: “It's coming from the feel, That it ain't exactly real, Or it's real, but it ain't exactly there, From the wars against disorder, From the sirens night and day,
From the fires of the homeless, From the ashes of the gay, Democracy is coming to the u.s.a”
Only I feel the words must be changed this day to ‘Democracy is under seige in the u.s.a.’)
In fact I do not feel we are operating as a small “d” democracy any longer. The election of President Groper has moved us firmly into the fascist corporotacracy world in which the word democracy itself no longer has the same meaning and Democracy as an United States concept is dead.