A Musical Observation
Eye of the storm, indeed.
When it comes to patriotic pop songs, I have long preferred Neil Diamond’s America, to Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the USA. Diamond’s immigrant anthem is simply deeper and better captures so much that I do love about this country, while Greenwood’s song just comes across as overused to the point of being jingoistic. Maybe it is also because Diamond has a far broader and deeper artistic career,* and Greenwood seems to have become God Bless the USA as a business proposition (let’s not forget that the Trump Bible started out as a Greenwood product).
I recently came across America on YouTube, and it depresses me because the pure hope, optimism, and promise of the song are currently tainted by the Trump administration’s approach to immigrants.
Free
Only want to be free
We huddle close
Hang on to a dream
On the boats and on the planes
They’re coming to America
Never looking back again
They’re coming to America[…]
Every time that flag’s unfurled
They’re coming to America
Got a dream to take them there
They’re coming to America
Got a dream they’ve come to share
They’re coming to America
Those lyrics just don’t feel real at the moment.
For example, via ABC News, Russian researcher at Harvard being held after failing to declare frog embryos at customs.
A Russian researcher at Harvard University is being detained at a Louisiana detention center over failing to declare frog embryos while passing through customs, according to a complaint filed by her attorney.
Kseniia Petrova, a Harvard medical researcher who is in the U.S. on an exchange visitor visa, was detained last month at an airport in Boston after a Customs and Border Protection officer found “noninfectious and non-toxic frog embryos in her luggage,” the complaint said.
[…]
According to the complaint, Petrova told the CBP officer that she feared being returned to Russia, where she faced past persecution for her political activities, and instead requested to be returned to France — at which point she was detained.
Got a dream to take them there? They’ll detain you in America.
Based on other accounts that I have read, she was confused about the rules and that the fine for what she did would be $500. I am not saying she should not have been fined. I am saying that sending her to a detention center in Louisiana while facing deportation to Russia is the stuff of totalitarian police states, not of a place where, when the flag is unfurled, dreamers are drawn to your shores.
Or, there’s this: German tourist with US visa reflects on being held in ICE custody for weeks.
U.S. border agents handcuffed Tyler, a U.S. citizen who lives in Las Vegas, and chained her to a bench, while her fiancé was accused of violating the rules of his 90-day U.S. tourist permit, the couple said. Authorities later handcuffed and shackled Sielaff and sent him to a crowded U.S. immigration detention center. He spent 16 days locked up before being allowed to fly home to Germany.
“It was horrible. You are just innocent and want to go to America and then they put you in jail and they asking you questions and you don’t even know what to say,” Sielaff told NBC 7 from his home in Germany.
Sielaff was allowed into the United States under a waiver program offered to a select group of countries, mostly in Europe and Asia, whose citizens are allowed to travel to the U.S. for business or leisure for up to 90 days without getting a visa in advance. Applicants register online with the Electronic System for Travel Authorization.
[…]
After four hours, Tyler was allowed to leave but said she was given no information about her fiancé’s whereabouts.
During questioning, Sielaff said he told authorities he never lived in the U.S. and had no criminal history. He said he was given a full-body search and ordered to hand over his cellphone and belongings. He was put in a holding cell where he slept on a bench for two days before being transferred to the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego.
There, he said, he shared a cell with eight others.
“You are angry, you are sad, you don’t know when you can get out,” Sielaff said. “You just don’t get any answers from anybody.”
He was finally told to get a direct flight to Germany and submit a confirmation number. In a frantic call from Sielaff, Tyler bought it for $2,744. He flew back March 5.
If I understand the timeline properly, he was in custody from February 18th until March 5th.
For going to Tijuana.
A new and a shiny place, indeed!
To drop the snark and to set aside any analytical point or complex language, this all simply makes me sad. Listening to the song hurts my heart because Trump and his allies and supporters are taking away something very special about the United States of America. He is sullying our national symbols and changing the way the world looks at us.
Freedom’s light is not burning warm.
It is a tragedy.
At any rate, for whatever reason, I cannot get the YouTube video to embed, so if you want to hear and see America, go here.
*I saw Diamond live in Los Angeles at the Forum over thirty years ago. We had been given tickets as he was not someone I would have simply pursued seeing, but it was a truly remarkable show. The funny thing is that he seemed old at the time! We won’t get into the fact that he was younger than I am right now.,
My parents played the soundtrack and songs to The Jazz Singer nonstop* on long drives from Mexico City to Monterrey (10-12 hours). I just about can’t stand it all, especially Neil Diamond.
That said, the meter seems to work with “They’re fleeing from America.”
*Not non stop. They alternated with Cabaret and the Sound of Music, two others I can’t stand either.
Maybe Leonard Cohen’s “Democracy” might be closer to the mark?
You know, as an adult, Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday. That’s because for one thing, it’s more ecumenical. I can invite Jewish friends to celebrate Thanksgiving to me. They have no problem with that, by and large. I can invite atheists too.
I now see it as a recognition of immigration. The first Thanksgiving involved native peoples, too. Everyone here has some tale in their past of someone coming here seeking a better life. In some way, the native peoples did that too, on a crazy migration through Siberia and Alaska. Seeking a better life.
I see this as a fundamental story/mythology about America. Which these gremlins are trying to erase and destroy.
@Kingdaddy: The cradle of the best and of the worst.
I thought John Edwards got it right in the “two Americas” speech 30 or 40 some years ago. He was just the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time for the message.
@just nutha: John Edwards had one family in each of those Americas, so he had first hand experience.
If I had a secret family, I would simply not run for President*. The odds of him not being caught out on that were low, and the damage that would be caused if he won the primaries first would have been enormous.
On the other hand, had he gotten the nomination and then had everything implode, we likely wouldn’t have had President Obama, and the country might not have had the insane reaction to a Black Man in the White House.
And McCain wouldn’t have had to make a Hail Mary VP choice and brought Palin to the mainstream. He wanted Lieberman.
——
*: is this why I’m not running for President? It’s either that or a complete and utter lack of the required skills.
From “Dirty Boulevard” by Lou Reed:
It was hyperbole in 1988, but compared to sending people to a torture prison for the rest of their lives*, clubbing them to death, getting it over with and dumping them on the boulevard seems kind.
——
*: even if the prisoners are never physically harmed, the conditions constitute torture. And they are denied medical care, so even in the best case scenario, they are being killed via neglect.
Add that to the “even terrible people have a right to due process”, no one should be subjected to the conditions in CECOT.
Yes, really like Diamond’s America
But I have to add that when the song is placed in the context of the movie it has even greater significance (and goosebumps)
It reminds me of another musical piece, Pappa from Yentl.
Regardless what you think about the performer, both are deeply emotional – and hopefully remind us of our best selves.
@Gustopher:
Indeed. That’s a big part of the whole “wrong man/wrong time” issue. He still wasn’t wrong factually/philosophically/metaphysically tho.
ETA: I looked it up now, and my Edwards timing was off a decade or so. Apologies.
And if you’re going to disqualify otherwise credible candidates just for being hypocritical, you’re only going to have crackers and Luddites running for office. This will be a mistake.
My vote goes to Woody Guthrie singing his “This Land is Your Land”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxiMrvDbq3s
Thanks for writing this terribly lovely post. Cuts deep.
So too does Willie Dunn’s I Pity the Country. I learned how to play it several years ago — straight up, no embellishments. I’ve returned to it recently — this time adding my own flourishes. For some reason, that feels right.
The second concert I ever attended* was a Neil Diamond show. Late 80s, I was but a child.
Earlier that year, my mom told me that the concert had been booked. I decided to ask my grandma to go, as she was a longtime lover of Neil and his sparkly shirts (and chest hair).
I’m a saver by temperament and had acquired a good little pile of cash from birthday gifts, tooth fairy generosity, etc. So I gave my mom money for the tickets, and she bought them for me and grandma.
We took a taxi (grandma didn’t drive) to a Chinese restaurant for pre-show dinner and then another to the concert. I insisted on paying for everything — with my very own money!!
The show was incredible. What a performer. The second encore was America. No lie, I remember it clearly. That evening changed my life.
*My first concert was that same year. BB King! Me, my pops, and the guy who cut our hair (a Wiccan High Priest). That show also changed my life.
Yeah, Yeah!
@a country lawyer:
I love Sharon Jones’ version of “This Land Is Your Land”
https://youtu.be/XQ78uDio_ao
Ooh, I hadn’t seen this version she did.
https://youtu.be/XMbBdNEjaFk
The most moving performance of the song was with Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen at the Lincoln Memorial during the Obama Inauguration. I remember the great feeling that day. Hard to believe we’ve fallen so far.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnvCPQqQWds
I heard Sharon Jones do This Land… and got chills. I actually saw her three times and unfortunately never got called up to the stage.
Our border controls are a large self induced black eye. Having said that I do think that careful controls on biological materials is important. The frog embryos should have been vetted properly.
I was 17, had just come back from hitchhiking around Europe. I’d lost my girlfriend, all my stuff had been stolen, and I’d been sleeping under a bridge in Frankfurt. I finally get back to the States and had just enough to buy a bus ticket home. Most of the people on the bus were returning Americans. And this Black woman started to sing.
It used to be fun to travel abroad, but also great to be back in the States. Past tense.
Woody’s, Deportees is a reminder that we’ve been here before. Though this is worse.
@a country lawyer:
my vote is for Phil Ochs “power and glory”
https://genius.com/Phil-ochs-power-and-the-glory-lyrics
“[Chorus]
Here is a land full of power and glory
Beauty that words cannot recall
Oh, her power shall rest on the strength of her freedom
Glory shall rest on us all”
@a country lawyer:
my vote is for Phil Ochs “power and glory”
https://genius.com/Phil-ochs-power-and-the-glory-lyrics
“[Chorus]
Here is a land full of power and glory
Beauty that words cannot recall
Oh, her power shall rest on the strength of her freedom
Glory shall rest on us all”
@Gustopher:
That album never felt like hyperbole. Just hard, gritty reality. I think Reed’s vision of the US was spot on.
@Gustopher:
That album never felt like hyperbole. Just hard, gritty reality. I think Reed’s vision of the US was spot on.
“Let America Be America Again” by Langston Hughes