(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Kelly dumps on Trump. "Where have all the flowers gone?" And other perspectives on our times... [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-10-03 “gone to graveyards every one...” ”...in the statement, Kelly is confirming, on the record, a number of details in a 2020 story in The Atlantic by editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, including Trump turning to Kelly on Memorial Day 2017, as they stood among those killed in Afghanistan and Iraq in Section 60 at Arlington National Cemetery, and saying, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?” — CNN, “Exclusive: John Kelly goes on the record to confirm several disturbing stories about Trump,” by Jake Tapper We have been here before. Well, sort of. Our time is likely to be dubbed historically as “the Trump era” and the political meanderings he has inherited from a long list of similarly unstable politicians who gripped a period and made it about them. Trumpism will enter the nation's history books as an era in which our politics broke down and we were held captive by our deepest fears for a time. A time manifested in a movement that took advantage of our fear, led by men who were undeserving of their power and position. Men who didn’t get it because they didn’t try. Back in 1955 Pete Seeger, the folk singer was on a plane for an appearance at Oberlin College in Ohio, Like today, it was a time when our nation was changing and divided. The McCarthy era, also known as the Second Red Scare, was afoot. Much like Trump, McCarthy wasn’t the originator of the movement— just the co-opter. History would likely mark the start of the fear of communist infiltration within the government at the end of the Second World War. In 1947, Democratic President, Harry Truman signed Executive Order 9834, also known as “The Loyalty Order.” McCarthy, a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin would take that order and use it to ferret out communist sympathizers throughout government, the military, and among the general population. It was a time of blacklists and show trials before his House Un-American Activities Senate committee (HUAC) which McCarthy would ride for a time until his ultimate decline. “Long time passing...” Seeger was a member of the popular 50s group, The Weavers. The Weavers were early victims of the “Loyalty Oath” wars waged by McCarthy and his followers and were blacklisted like many other entertainers of the times for having “communist sympathies” related to their outspoken views on social issues that were considered leftist in nature: The Weavers, one of the most significant popular-music groups of the postwar era, saw their career nearly destroyed during the Red Scare of the early 1950s. Even with anti-communist fervor in decline by the early 1960s, the Weavers' leftist politics were used against them as late as January 2, 1962, when the group's appearance on The Jack Paar Show was cancelled over their refusal to sign an oath of political loyalty. — History,com Long story short, Seeger was invited to perform at one of the few institutions that refused to observe the blacklist. Oberlin was an outlier among American institutions as it was the first college to admit women and African Americans. Seeger wrote the anti-war protest song “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” in 1955 inspired by a lyric from a traditional Ukrainian folk song. The song has a universal theme that follows the lyrical “round” of its composition. A plaintive series of vignettes that make us ponder the emptiness and loss of war and the folly of our failures as a species to recognize the futility of lessons unlearned and mistakes repeated. The universalist theme is evident in a Wiki search that lists the number of versions both foreign and domestic that the song has been recorded (30+) and the generations of artists (60+) who find it relevant to their times. It is part of what is known as the ubi sunt poetic tradition that dates back to Roman times where the motif was used to describe loss and regret: Structurally then, Seeger’s song is patterned according to an age-old rhetorical device known by its Latin name as the ubi sunt motif. Meaning ‘where are they?’, repeated ubi sunt questions would be used in ancient literature to introduce lists of people long-since dead, or of places or material objects which have decayed away, or otherwise been lost to time. The device is at least as old as Cicero… — University of St. Andrews blog, “‘Where have all the flowers gone?’ and the ubi sunt motif”, by Dr. Chris Jones Ubi Sunt I suggest the song has a resonance today to demonstrate the loss and regret at the loss of our moral and ethical compass since the latter half of the 20th century. As America considers returning a serial criminal to the highest office in the land, we should need to be reminded that Donald Trump insulted the memory of all men who have served and died to John Kelly as both stood beside the graveside of Kelly’s son who gave his life in Afghanistan after stepping on a land mine in 2010. “Morning in America” was actually the beginning of the dusk we are experiencing both in our political and civic lives. Where has all the honor gone, all the integrity? Where has our sense of national unity, our sense of conscience, of right and wrong— where has it all gone? While the tale refers to the wars gone by, it is really about the men who cause them with their indifference to life and their personal lust for power. The lyric is really cautionary and not at all about the past: Ostensibly what’s going on in these poems and lyrics concerns the relationship between the present and past: look at these people, places, objects or qualities that have only barely survived to the here and now, either only in name and vague reputation, or in physical ruins and fragments. But what’s actually going on is about the relationship between the present and the future. What if we disappear the same way they did? What will the world look like in the future and will we be a part of it? Will our achievements matter or be remembered? — University of St. Andrews blog, “‘Where have all the flowers gone?’ and the ubi sunt motif”, by Dr. Chris Jones The connection to today, at least for me, is stark. Old enough to remember and concerned enough to look ahead, the movement our history books will record as Trumpism is like an inversion of that earlier time when we were told to fear communists and watched as our liberties were assaulted by homegrown undemocratic bullies who used blacklists to curb our freedoms. Most of our current distress emanates from an unrestrained attraction to the autocracy like that practiced in Vladimir Putin’s Russia by the Republican Party and its base. Fear is again the motivating culprit as they want us to fear the bogeymen they create, and then use violence to coerce us to give up more and more of our freedoms in return for security they themselves have stolen. In that time when Joeseph McCarthy offered the same remedy to a problem of his own creation— an insecurity he and his blacklisting compatriots promoted and inflicted on their times— we might recall the words of those who fought back and took on the challenge, and helped us through our own paranoia: “We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men.” — Edward R. Murrow, "See it Now: A Report on Senator Joseph R. McCarthy (transcript)". CBS-TV. March 9, 1954 “gone to soldiers every one” Trump, unlike Joe McCarthy who served as a Marine and earned the sobriquet “tail-gunner Joe,” was never a soldier. A draft dodger and serial liar, he is indeed descended from fearful men, a bully who buckled and limped when his time came to serve. McCarthy, an alcoholic, died of hepatitis in 1957 at the age of 48. Censured and disgraced by his Senate colleagues, when he died his reputation as a “Commie-hunter” yielded not a single conviction of anyone he accused. Mr. Trump, in that tradition, had so few accomplishments during his time in office that he now runs not on his record but on his status as a hunted victim. Facing the consequences of his criminal past, he scowls and rants at our institutional safeguards created to protect us from men like him. Life hands us the same end story that we all share. Our legacies rest on what we accomplished while alive and like the soldiers whose graves Donald Trump insulted because he doesn’t understand. What was in it for them was what allowed him to live his privileged life, free to question their motives and disparage their courage. Pete Seeger's lyrics far more than an anti-war song, ring out in the tradition of protest and ubi sunt— where are they? We know where Trump was when his time came to demonstrate courage and his love of country. It has led him to where he stands now, in courts facing trials, the inevitable fate of losers: When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn? For Donald Trump and his rabid followers, perhaps never. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/3/2196951/-Kelly-dumps-on-Trump-Where-have-all-the-flowers-gone-And-other-perspectives-on-our-times Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/