Only the rich and privileged can afford to be “patriotic” in Trump’s world

Music used to be one the principle means in which young people expressed their hopes, dreams and desires. They “spoke” in their natural voices, and artists and their producers took pride on how their messages were transmitted musically. Today, when one listens to what passes as “music” it is not just the lack of guitar “gods,” piano virtuosos or producers with orchestral pretensions, or the incredible banality of songwriting (songs that have “catchy” melodies are derided as “old school”), but the fact songs are delivered by the counterfeit mechanism of Auto-Tune, which can make any tuneless fraud into a “star”; Bob Dylan might not have been a Diana Ross as a singer, but his distinctive everyman “voice” only heightened the appeal of his Nobel Prize-winning music.

Instead of the emergence of contemporary Dylans or Beatles, we must do with overrated vulgarity, self-obsession and alienation transmitted through nothing more than monotonous, computer-generated “beats”; even the instrumentation of so-called “bands” is little more than background noise that provides no “hook” or melody that sticks in the mind. Nevertheless, many millions of people swear by this “music,” and there is no “evolution” in sight, especially since the “music” industry has devolved into promoting “personalities” rather than actual music.

But there was a time when many musicians felt it was their responsibility to provide a “voice” for their generation that was otherwise denied to them by the prevailing political, economic and social order, with a directness that still resonates after so many years. One such song that spoke with remarkable clarity and insight was Credence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son”:

Some folks are born
Made to wave the flag
Ooh, they're red, white and blue
And when the band plays
"Hail to the Chief"
Ooh, they point the cannon at you, Lord

It ain't me, it ain't me
I ain't no senator's son, son
It ain't me, it ain't me
I ain't no fortunate one, no

Some folks are born
Silver spoon in hand
Lord, don't they help themselves? Yoh!
But when the taxman
Comes to the door
Lord, the house look a like a rummage sale, yeah

It ain't me, it ain't me
I ain't no millionaire's son, no, no
It ain't me, it ain't me
I ain't no fortunate one, no

Yeah, some folks inherit
Star-spangled eyes
Ooh, they send you down to war, Lord
And when you ask 'em
"How much should we give?"
Ooh, they only answer, "More, more, more" yoh!

It ain't me, it ain't me
I ain't no military son, son
It ain't me, it ain't me
I ain't no fortunate one, one

This song was recorded 50 years ago, driven by a simple, yet catchy hard-rock guitar riff, yet still sounds as  relevant and fresh now as then.  Nothing has really changed since then, but one wonders if that song was recorded today if it would get any airplay or even “speak” to the current self-absorbed generation whose political philosophy rarely advances beyond what annoys them personally. 

A song like “Fortunate Son” has much to say about who benefits and who pays in our society, then as now. Donald Trump’s current trade war with China has been a botched affair from the beginning because he failed to strengthen his hand by enlisting the support of European allies, instead alienating them with his buffoonish blowhardness that hasn’t impressed the Chinese, either. Now, after raising tariffs to 25 percent on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports, and China retaliating by placing tariffs on American exports, Trump is telling low-to-middle income Americans that it is “patriotic” to suffer higher prices while he and his rich cronies feel none of the pain. Being “patriots” is easy for them, because there is no real price for them to pay. 

Some say the rich should be “patriotic” about paying progressive taxes since they really don’t need all that money they accumulate, while others are in need. According to a recent Forbes article, nearly 80 percent of all Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck; the rich are not among those people, because regardless of what taxes they pay in fact, there is always plenty left over to save. And the rich are always looking for ways to reduce their taxes, and they still have multiple “creative” ways of doing just that; just ask Trump—according to the New York Times, a former Deutsche Bank fraud specialist believes that Trump and Jared Kushner may have laundered millions of dollars to Russians in 2016 and 2017. This is what “patriots” do?

And Trump, with no real basis to do so save that he wants to destroy Barack Obama’s “legacy,” decided unilaterally to undo the nuclear agreement with Iran, forcing signatories of the agreement to enforce old sanctions, and egging on Iranian officials into blustering on about military “retaliation” by itself and its regional proxies. Trump, like the schoolyard bully who becomes a coward when someone confronts him physically, has become a bit frightened by the potential of military conflict with Iran, We are talking about a man whose grandfather immigrated to the U.S. to avoid military service in Germany, whose son Fred avoided serving in World War II, and then his son Donald essentially faked a foot injury to avoid serving in Vietnam. But as much as Trump has told us that he wants to avoid foreign “entanglements—at least he wasn’t the one who lied about WMDs that didn’t exist in Iraq, leading to a pointless war that resulted in 4,000 American lives lost—he has done more than any president in recent memory to set the tables for future conflict everywhere his amateurish meddling has come into play. It is like the master chess player who is at first confused by his opponent’s “strategy” that he doesn’t quite see yet—before realizing he playing against someone who is a complete novice and doesn’t know what he is doing. 

So who will pay for Trump’s international mistakes? Not him, just those who are expected to do their “patriotic” duty and suffer needlessly for their country.