“We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.” - Lord Palmerston
I've wanted to start a Substack for quite a while now, and I suppose the release of this new remix is as good of an excuse as any. The site has been a source of strength for me in these insane times, through both the lock-down and the associated “clampdown” on information that half the country is cheering on.
The song was written back in 2011 or so. It's a bit "woke" in tone because at that time I was deeply affected by roommates who used racial slurs while regularly holding court in our living room watching the news, and co-workers who emailed the kinds of jokes about watermelon on the White House lawn in reference to President Obama.
The exaggerated second verse was a kind of therapy for me after a lifetime of dealing with such people and never having the courage to purge them all from my life. The roommates were the worst, and tensions rose to the point of a physical attack. I shouldn’t feel the need to explain this, but I can see how in the current climate of constant and over-the-top virtue signaling by corporations, artists, comedians, etc., that it could be seen as pandering.
The song was the title track of an acoustic EP I did where I started to write about politics, but it was right on the cusp of my #DemExit (before Bernie and the Justice Democrats temporarily gave me hope again). Once I became aware of Obama's kill list, the deliberate assassination of an American child with a drone, "double taps", Afghanistan night raids, and the legalization of indefinite detention, I began to feel pangs of regret over writing a song called "My Baby Left Me for the GOP" (a nod to Joey Ramone's "The KKK Took My Baby Away").
Fellow vegetarian, Jorah of the Labeled Nothings, has wanted to re-mix the song for years and I've rejected everything he's tried, mainly due to my vocals. I paid a singer to sing it, but he didn’t like her. In 2017, I re-recorded the vocals in a better key, and re-did the arrangement entirely for a film he was directing. He didn't use it. And he kept going back to my original version with different remix ideas, which were great, but that original version was in a bad key for my voice, which I didn’t think worked at all in this format. I finally convinced him to try my re-recorded vocals, and move the things he liked about his original re-mix into the new key, which we both liked the result of.
It’s basically a song about feeling like an alien, never finding a “tribe”, and how the word “radical” is used for the least radical among us who advocate for peace and for eliminating as much of the needless suffering in the world as we can.
The left has split, and split, and split again over things like Hillary Clinton, Russiagate, #ForceTheVote, 2020, 1/6, vaccine mandates, and finally this new enhanced round of Russia hysteria where nuclear war is being normalized as some sort of cure for the climate crisis. From my perspective, it started small, grew with the advent of Bernie, and from there has shrunk again to a point where it feels even smaller now than it did when I started paying attention.
When it comes to opposing war, as Julian Assange said, there's only Jimmy Dore. (And of course David Swanson, who I really wish Jimmy would interview regularly because the world would be a better place if he did.)
There's also the Covid truth wing (who have kept me sane in the past two years), despite their own brand of virtue signaling, embracing God and meat eating in ways that ironically ape the “woke” culture they claim to despise. In some ways they even bring me back to the darkness that inspired the song. I can’t help but question the blind spots some seem to have where the same infiltrators who made 1/6 violent didn’t also make BLM violent, or the seemingly on-purpose re-defining of what it means to “defund the police”. Then again, I can’t help but acknowledge that some of their work may have saved black lives.
Even the vegans, who would say vegetarianism is meaningless when you eat dairy (forcing the murder of males and the raping of female cows), would call me out.
In the words of one of my best friends who is vegan, "We are all just doing the best we can". I think being the change we want to see in the world probably means leading by example, not judging or preaching. I know that’s the effect his veganism has on me.