So I was buying a sheet of Pete Seeger stamps at the U.S. Post Office the other day … What? I seem just like the type of lib who uses stamps honoring an American treasure like folk singer Pete Seeger? Actually, I was searching for Billie Holiday stamps or any musical stamps (since music is my passion). But the only music stamp was an illustration of Seeger singing while playing his trademark banjo.
And I started thinking about what would Pete Seeger do if he lived in these times, given our latest presidential election of a convicted felon awaiting sentencing for almost three dozen crimes plus the civil sexual assault conviction culminating in millions of dollars still owed his victim? Seems Americans are willing to go with any man who’s had a TV show and been on the screen so many decades now that everyone feels like he’s family.
Long ago I determined as an old person when it came to world affairs, I wanted to carry on like Kurt Vonnegut, Arthur Miller, Larry King, and the old-school reporters on classic “60 Minutes”: crusty but wise, fine detectors of bull$&^*, able to call a spade a spade. Wow, the freedom they had, the bravery, the willingness to risk all for what they knew to be truth, justice and right. They all lived through World War II—the worst modern event to have happened to humanity and the planet—and to their dying breath they always believed (no, they knew): The world keeps spinning. We the people carry on. I would put Seeger in this high echelon of famous Americans worth admiring and emulating.
In the past few weeks, along with half the country’s population, I indeed shed tears over the loss of yet another first woman U.S. president. And more tears over having to live through another Trump reign. He never acted like a U.S. president (one who knows he’s one of the people) but prefers to be treated like a king.
That right there just chaps my hide.
And so it also would anger Americans who know the U.S. presidency to be part of a governing trio that everyone understands will ‘check and balance’ each other. In this country, no governing entity is a higher authority than the others: judicial, executive and legislative branches. That’s how we learned it in school. But the incoming president doesn’t go for that historical and unique concept. He only proves that some businesspeople with no background in government operations (or basic law), especially American democracy that absolutely permits and puts up with the watchful eye of the press, should be president ever.
Waist Deep in the Big Muddy
That anti-war song by Pete Seeger was banned on radio and TV in the 1960s and even had something to do with a major network canceling “The Smothers Brothers” show which would feature Seeger’s performance of the song. It was based on Seeger’s knowledge of WWII when he served Uncle Sam as an entertainer. He knew war and therefore was against the Vietnam War. He was anti-war period.
Seeger, whose father was an educated musicologist who preserved folk music, was raised in a comfortable Eastern U.S. family. Traveling with his father while exploring folk music, young Pete asked for a banjo, and that started his own musical exploration and enthusiasm with folk music. Along the way, he would befriend not only Woody Guthrie but Bob Dylan and maintain lifelong friendships with both innovators and poetic observers of 20th century American life. Being a political radical from the Great Depression—and rather a famously unabashed one—he was called in to name names before HUAC, the House Un-American Activities Committee, that went after American commies or Democrats or liberal thinkers. As did playwright Arthur Miller, Seeger eloquently told the committee he didn’t recognize their authority and stood by his constitutional right to free speech which included free thinking. His guilty verdict was overturned years later, and he was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Bill Clinton.
There were those who did not support Seeger, a known commie, being awarded an American medal for anything. But Clinton was a Seeger fan and admirer. Didn’t matter what Seeger’s political affiliation was. Free thinkers, people, Americans who allow others to think what they want and believe what they want are always outsiders. They can form groups and organizations and now meet online and vent like I do here. But … they’ll always be outnumbered for it is so much easier to just go along with the crowd whether political or religious. It’s just easier for people to get along if their opposing beliefs and thoughts are … kept to themselves.
My heroes above would say “Horse$#!+!”
So for now as 2024 turns into the first quarter of the 21st century, it seems we Americans still find ourselves living in a time remarkably known and experienced by my heroes mentioned above like Seeger, Vonnegut and Miller. We who are still here must accept it’s always been … and always will be.
Pete Seeger sings Waist Deep in the Big Muddy.