Friday, May 29, 2020

The crooked, white heart of a dying land

You need to watch this. You need to hear what CNN's Don Lemon has to say.

You do that -- I'll wait. Then I have something I need to say. In advance, I ask that you pardon my French.

Have you finished with that Don Lemon video? Good.

Now, you know what the problem is here, right? It's this: Way too many white folk are just like Donald Trump -- narcissists who lack empathy, only in their case that deficit only applies to those whom they've been raised to disdain.

Guess what, people. Those who raised you in such a manner were just as fucked up as you are. They taught you wrong, and you just aren't introspective enough to question your assumptions and conditioning.



LISTEN,
the bad news is we're all fucked up. The good news is you're not alone. The better news is you have the power to fix your fucked-upitude. You have an imagination -- use it. Put yourself in the other guy's shoes for just a minute.


Until I got to Baton Rouge Magnet High, due to life in the public schools of Redneckistan and thanks to my own family dynamics . . . well, let's just say it's easy for me to understand the sort of rage we're seeing tonight. At age 59, I consider it, as Bobby Kennedy related in 1968 after Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated, "the awful grace of God."

It's not terribly difficult for me to imagine just wanting to "burn the motherfucker down." It's not terribly difficult for me to understand internalized rage and humiliation.

Of course, it's not right to just "burn the motherfucker down," but it's certainly understandable as hell. At least if you get a hold of your self-absorbed self and imagine what it's like to have a cop with his knee on your neck . . . just because he can, figuring the consequences for that will be minimal.

WELL, we're seeing the consequences now, ain't we, Cap?

The problem here is that this sort of riotous anarchy has to be quelled, but the ones whose job that is have zero moral standing to do it. Not anymore. That doesn't make a violent mob any less a violent mob; it just makes us well and truly fucked right now.

Really, we're in an awful place when the tripolar dynamic in any society is, first, the lawless, enraged mob. Then, second, there are the jackbooted thugs, as embodied by Donald Trump and his cultists.
Finally, third, there is what appears to be the feckless liberal authorities -- in this case in Minneapolis -- who believe in relevance and self-abasement (self-abasement which isn't unmerited, I hasten to add), but are powerless to do much else but validate the feelings of the unthinking, enraged Id indiscriminately destroying everything in its path.

Welcome to the Revolution, folks. Chances are, it won't end well.

Minnesota copbots' algorithm needs tweaking


Let me get this straight: A mob burns down half a Minneapolis city block, including a police station, and . . . nothing. 

But a CNN crew, standing where the cops said it could do a live shot, gets arrested while on the air.


This after the reporter told the state police copbots they'd move wherever the cops wished. Handcuffs. No explanations for the arrests.

PERHAPS THE crew's mistake was that it didn't burn shit down. Then the CNN journalists would be golden.

Welcome to Amerika. Now, why are mobs smashing in storefronts and burning down police precincts again?

Obviously, there are many paths to mindless thugishness. Indiscriminately burning down your city as part of a mob is only one of them.

Thursday, May 28, 2020

100,000 and counting


One. Hundred. Thousand.

Dead. In less than four months.

Our economy is in ruins. We're not near done.

God help us, because Donald Trump and his followers sure as hell won’t.

And wear a damned mask.

Saturday, May 23, 2020

3 Chords & the Truth: The Blues Cafe

Damn right, I've got the blues.

Damn right, I bet you do, too.

It's a blue world here in Coronavirusland, so there's only one thing for us to do on 3 Chords & the Truth. It's time to play the blues.

Fortunately, if your playlist is as broad as American music, there's lots to pick from. It's hard to escape the blues in something that expansive.

Rock? Blues.

Jazz? Blues.

The American songbook? Look beneath the surface of so much of it. Blues.

Damn right, we got the blues -- right here on the Big Show. Which is perfect for when a whole country done got the blues.

Trust us; the blues will cure your blues. At least a little.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.


Tuesday, May 19, 2020

Ben Sasse explains it all


More than 90,000 Americans have died of the coronavirus. For more than three months, the president of the United States did nothing, despite repeated warnings.

He repeatedly said the virus would disappear -- like a miracle. He repeatedly said it was a Democrat hoax. He repeatedly has touted quack cures.

Americans can't get tested when they need to. Doctors, nurses, first responders and "essential workers" can't get proper protective equipment. The elderly are dying in nursing homes -- alone.

The gravely ill are dying in hospitals, about one every minute. Alone.

America's governors and mayors are trying to manage the gravest threat this country has faced since World War II -- alone, with scant aid from the federal government.


ALL ACROSS our land, high-school and college seniors are graduating -- online. And their future? Up in the air, where the virus spreads.

And spreads.

And spreads.

The president -- many governors, too -- pushes to "reopen the economy." We have no tools, no procedures to intelligently and safely do it. Yet we plow ahead into the unknown, hoping magical thinking will conquer biology.

Into the darkness of the pandemic steps a learned man, a United States senator from Nebraska. He beams into little Fremont from the big Internet to shine a digital light -- to offer wise words and sound guidance from afar to the new graduates of his alma mater.

Ben Sasse speaks. He is unshaven. Well, many of us are these days.

The graduates listen, and so do his state and his country. What shall we do? Why is this happening? Where lies hope?

The learned man answers all.

What shall we do? Not major in psychology.

Why is this happening? Blame China. Maybe Jeremy -- you can't trust a guy named Jeremy.

Where lies hope? Obviously, not in Ben Sasse.

He's such a Jeremy.

Saturday, May 16, 2020

3 Chords & the Truth: Virally stylish


New for '20! Style goes viral!

And, perhaps, shaving and lipstick become superfluous?

No matter what, 3 Chords & the Truth is your dedicated follower of fashion . . . and breakout music on the hot spot of your Internet dial. And while you'd be smart -- and considerate -- to mask your face to stop the spread of the coronavirus, there's no masking the reality that good music makes hard times just a little bit better.

And the forecast for the next 90 minutes of the Big Show is a marked improvement in conditions wherever you are.

Now grab a drink, crank up the high-fidelity apparatus, and settle in for the musical journey. It'll be an adventure -- we guarantee it.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all.  Be there. Aloha.


Saturday, May 09, 2020

3 Chords & the Truth: A tuneful light


You remember the old Merle Haggard song, "If We Make It Through December"?

Somehow, it has become not insane to wonder if we'll make it to November. That ain't good.

That can send a body into a serious funk. That can seriously harsh one's mellow. That ain't good.

Seriously, what the hell are we to do? Shine a light into the virus-loaded darkness, I guess. I mean, that's what we're trying to do here on 3 Chords & the Truth -- shine a tuneful light into this darkest night.

So, in that . . . light . . . this is gonna be one hell of a show. A Big Show. The price of admission? Wash your hands.

And keep your distance from your neighbor.

And wear a mask when you're out in public -- which you ought to be as little as possible. There's a virus goin' on.

F*** the darkness. Let's shine some musical light.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.


Friday, May 08, 2020

Uhhhhhh . . . OK, sure. (snort, giggle)

Omaha World-Herald, May 8, 1970

I wonder what the "truth in advertising" version of this would look like.

And where's the gutter and the . . . well, you know?

Then we get to the smart-ass takes on this bit of Midwestern naivete. What was the "junior's beat" (or was it several juniors' beat) on Bourbon Street? Furthermore, did their parents know?

Film at 11. Hopefully not at the Muse Theater at 24th and Farnam.

Saturday, May 02, 2020

3 Chords & the Truth: Calming numbers


It's a fine mess we find ourselves in, this coronavirus thing, and the folks one usually looks to when extrication is called for . . . well. they're pretty much useless.

If not outright existentially threatening.

So. Well. Um . . . what are we supposed to do, then?

Well, there has to be a better answer than one I've taken to in recent months -- sitting on the front stoop with a drink and a Lieutenant Dan cigar, muttering the F-word a lot. Let's brainstorm this, shall we?

FIRST, keep calm and carry on intelligently. Do what your doctor would tell you to do. I'm reasonably sure that doesn't involve a Lieutenant Dan cigar. Hey . . . do as I say, etcetera and so on.

Second . . . chill.

3 Chords & the Truth can help you with that second thing, and we'll do it by the numbers -- 33⅓, 45 and 78. And at whatever speed a compact disc spins.


If music can soothe the savage breast . . . beast . . . both? . . . whatever, music can get us through this epidemiological cluster-you-know-what. Music can mellow us out and calm us the you-know-what down.

Lucky for you, the Big Show is just a click (two at the most) away.

So, let us all center ourselves for the long slog -- by the numbers.

33⅓. 45. 78.

And at whatever speed a compact disc spins.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.