Let Freedom Ring
By Libby
I'm in an odd mood today. I have a thousand thoughts roiling in my head as I read the news and try to make sense of what has become of our country in the last six years. I wanted to write something uplifting and hopeful to commemorate our nation's birthday and I've struggled all morning trying to find the words. I just can't. I see no hope in our present and the future looks very dark to me. In the end, this video sums up my mood better than any written language can express the profound bleakness I feel today.
I lived through those times and the dissonant wailing of Jimi's guitar that day struck a chord in our collective soul and bound us together in a unified sense of purpose that seems impossible to acheive today. With the cacaphony of technological distractions that compete for our attention and our time, it seems a simple message of peace and brotherly love just can't break through the noise to become a universal theme that unites us despite all other social and ideological differences.
When we spoke of freedom in the 60s, it had a deeper meaning that is perhaps lost on the generation of Young Republicans who now sneer at affirmative action and all the other victories for justice and inclusiveness that we fought in those days. They didn't witness the brutal discrimination against blacks. They don't remember when women were treated as little more than chattel. They have no historical frame of reference to understand how dangerous a paranoid president run amok is to the privileges they take so for granted today.
Hendrix understood it all too well. As a black man who broke through into the "white" music scene, he lived it and expressed his pain in his music.
It strikes me when I look at the historic footage in these pieces, that this is what we've lost that I miss the most. A media that was able and willing to put a face on war and other injustice. There won't be any Pulitizer Prize winning photos in the so-called war on terror because embedded journalists aren't allowed far enough from their military minders to get them and their corporate keepers wouldn't print them even they could. Bullets and bombs didn't bring peace in the 60s. Vietnam ended and freedoms were won, because when our government lied to us, the media delivered their fatal shots with cameras. Americans were free to see the unspun footage and and decide what it meant for themselves. Today, we have a "Great Decider" who dictates what we get to see. It's only made us less free.
But in an attempt to end this on a less depressing note, here's an straightforward video of Jimi's anguished rendition of our national anthem. Despite the brutality of the era, this was surely a gentler time in our history.
For all the anger inherent in the chords, it still spoke of hope and a belief that we could make the world a better place. And for a while we did. One can only hope a new Woodstock Nation will arise again to hold the ground we won.
I'm in an odd mood today. I have a thousand thoughts roiling in my head as I read the news and try to make sense of what has become of our country in the last six years. I wanted to write something uplifting and hopeful to commemorate our nation's birthday and I've struggled all morning trying to find the words. I just can't. I see no hope in our present and the future looks very dark to me. In the end, this video sums up my mood better than any written language can express the profound bleakness I feel today.
I lived through those times and the dissonant wailing of Jimi's guitar that day struck a chord in our collective soul and bound us together in a unified sense of purpose that seems impossible to acheive today. With the cacaphony of technological distractions that compete for our attention and our time, it seems a simple message of peace and brotherly love just can't break through the noise to become a universal theme that unites us despite all other social and ideological differences.
When we spoke of freedom in the 60s, it had a deeper meaning that is perhaps lost on the generation of Young Republicans who now sneer at affirmative action and all the other victories for justice and inclusiveness that we fought in those days. They didn't witness the brutal discrimination against blacks. They don't remember when women were treated as little more than chattel. They have no historical frame of reference to understand how dangerous a paranoid president run amok is to the privileges they take so for granted today.
Hendrix understood it all too well. As a black man who broke through into the "white" music scene, he lived it and expressed his pain in his music.
It strikes me when I look at the historic footage in these pieces, that this is what we've lost that I miss the most. A media that was able and willing to put a face on war and other injustice. There won't be any Pulitizer Prize winning photos in the so-called war on terror because embedded journalists aren't allowed far enough from their military minders to get them and their corporate keepers wouldn't print them even they could. Bullets and bombs didn't bring peace in the 60s. Vietnam ended and freedoms were won, because when our government lied to us, the media delivered their fatal shots with cameras. Americans were free to see the unspun footage and and decide what it meant for themselves. Today, we have a "Great Decider" who dictates what we get to see. It's only made us less free.
But in an attempt to end this on a less depressing note, here's an straightforward video of Jimi's anguished rendition of our national anthem. Despite the brutality of the era, this was surely a gentler time in our history.
For all the anger inherent in the chords, it still spoke of hope and a belief that we could make the world a better place. And for a while we did. One can only hope a new Woodstock Nation will arise again to hold the ground we won.
Labels: Media, society, viral videos
posted by Libby Spencer at 1:21 PM
3 Comments:
I share your thoughts. Bleak doesn't begin to describe the current situation and I'm afraid it's going to get a whole lot worse very soon. The fascists are never going to give up their new powers and will do some very ugly things to maintain them and seize more. It sucks that there's basically no hope for the future; it will be far worse, no getting around it.
To me the biggest bummer is that there are actually people who think that things are going along just swimmingly, and cheer the bastards who steered us into this swamp.
Nice one Libby, as usual.
Nolo - that's what depresses me the most. I wonder what has happened to so many of my fellow Americans that they can't see the extreme danger the republic is in.
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