Ready To Die Music

 

My musical library is entirely dominated by two demographics that would seem mutually exclusive to the uneducated.  I generally prefer music written and recorded by white men born very poor no later than 1955 or black men born very poor no earlier than 1965.

One theme that my favorite musical artists explore regardless of their background is death, and specifically the concept of when one is Ready to Die.

For my generation, the term "Ready to Die" is instantly associated with the first album released by Biggie.  Biggie today is regarded among rap elitists as the best rapper of all time.  He released ONE album during his life.  He recorded TWO albums during his life.  His second release, "Life After Death", was released shortly after his murder in 1997.  He was 24.

24.  Take a moment to consider how many years ago you were 24 years of age.  He died at 24, and was prophetic enough to openly doubt that he would live to see his work released.

To call Biggie the best rapper of all time is a bit like calling James Garfield the best president of all time based solely on the fact that both men were murdered before they could accomplish very much, leading their followers to wonder what might have been.  Twenty years after his death, Biggie's music does not stand up when measured against what his still-living contemporaries have released in the intervening years.

He was 21 when he recorded his debut album.  And he was, according to himself at least, "Ready to Die".  But again, think back to your early 20's.  Think about how smart and sexy and invincible you were.  And now consider how much you have grown and evolved since then.

The idea of nationally-available music in America is not old.  In fact, some of the first people to take advantage of that fact are still among us.   

Rap is still a young enough art-form that there are still no "old" rappers.  The Golden Age of rap began in 1992.  The rappers who emerged from that era, if they are still alive, are still younger than President Obama was when he was first elected.

American forms of folk and rock music are older than rap, of course, but several of the pioneers from that era are still among us as well.  And they are the first recording artists in our culture to face down death not as a twenty-something living out a self-destructive thug life fantasy, but as actual old people.

Johnny Cash spent his last years on the remarkable, and perfectly named, "American" recordings.  As accomplished as Cash was by virtue of his previous work, the music recorded at the end of his life, with him knowing it was the end of his life, is perhaps his greatest contribution to American music.

"Hi, death.  Don't make me do you like I did that man in Reno..."

Bob Dylan, being Bob Dylan, was 20 years ahead of everyone else by recording his Ready to Die album, Time Out Of Mind, in 1997.  Two decades later, Dylan lives, having again reinvented American music when he's not busy meeting popes, presidents, and winning Nobel Prizes and not returning the Nobel Committee's phone calls.

Bobby was bigger than the Beatles when Barack was still in diapers

But the gold standard has been set by Leonard Cohen, who just released the third piece of a trilogy of Ready to Die music.  It is astonishing in its serenity, fatalism, and grace.  Like Cash and Dylan, Cohen could have died 30 years ago and still have been a first-ballot lock of the Hall of Fame.

Cohen's recent work (Old Ideas, Popular Problems, and You Want it Darker) are evidence that life is a gift that keeps on giving if we are humble enough to accept the natural rhythms of life and not define ourselves or our art by young men's trivial and short-sighted obsessions.  

 

Does Character Count?

The final three weeks of this election cycle seem destined to be dominated by the wife of a sexual predator arguing that being a sexual predator disqualifies a person from being fit to be president, unless said sexual predator is her husband or a member of her political party.  Because of course that's the most important issue at stake in our nation right now.

Character counts.  But there are two issues that muddy the water when we try to apply that truth to politics.  The first issue is that poor character in one person does not imply virtuous character in his or her political opponent.  We are sometimes left with a choice between two people with poor character, and 2016 is decidedly one of those instances.

The second issue is that "character" in modern American media has become synonymous with "sexual behavior".  A person's sexual behavior can indeed often be relevant to their overall character, but sexual behavior is far from being the most important component of a person's character in most cases.

Mr. Trump has huge character flaws, and it takes zero imagination to believe that those flaws probably have often expressed themselves via unwanted sexual advances.  It is also relevant to his character because he was married during most of these alleged incidents.

But for the Democratic Party to collectively clutch their pearls and feign shock and outrage at Trump's comments and the allegations levied against him is disgusting.  If there is such thing as morality, character, and virtue (and there is ) then that morality, character, virtue is only sincere if it is applied to all people equally.

If Democrats claim that sexual behavior is central to character and fitness to serve, then John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Edward Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Bill Clinton were not fit to serve.  And perhaps they were not.  But they did.  Some of them were bona fide sexual predators.  Their affairs were legion, and not always "consensual" by our 21st century standards.

I think relatively highly of President Kennedy.  I consider his American University Peace Speech and his Civil Rights Address, both delivered in the last months of his life, to be the two greatest speeches by an American leader in the post-war era.

But John F. Kennedy engaged in behavior that is so beyond repulsive that it literally defies belief. Kennedy was fortunate enough to live (and die) in an era when taking a teenager's virginity in your wife's bed was considered an "affair" and kept private.

 Republican Presidents of the last 50 years stand in stark contrast.  Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush I and Bush II have never had any allegations of boorish, aggressive predation, or even adultery.  According to Democrats' newfound evangelism, they must be the greatest presidents in American history.

We have, unfortunately, no shortage of men in modern American history who have behaved in ways that virtuous men would not, but that did not render them wholly evil or incompetent, and the only Democrat during that period that managed to keep his pants on, Jimmy Carter, is not remembered as being a very effective leader.

Nobody's perfect, but some of us are more imperfect than others.  Human beings are complicated, and great sin and virtue can coexist within the same human soul.  But implying that keeping your clothes on makes you a person of great character is lazy and dangerous.

Hillary can't argue that Trump's sexual rhetoric and behavior makes him unfit without delegitimizing her own husband.  And we can't pretend that voting for the invasion of Iraq showed good character just because she was fully clothed when she did so.

Moses, Mark, Martin, and the Sometimes Rhyme

"History doesn't repeat itself, but sometimes it rhymes."  That quote is attributed to Mark Twain, who was perhaps the most American person to ever American, in the vein of Johnny Cash.

Moses is civilization's archetype for a leader.  He is strong, patient, forgiving, but irreducibly human.  He leads his people through all manner of danger and desperation, and is often not appreciated by the very souls he is saving.  Sometimes, he is in fact mocked and disparaged.

But he leads.  And when he is inches from his ultimate goal, the proverbial and literal Promised Land, he finds his fate.  His fate is not only to die before realizing his final destination, but to be informed that, after his death, the people he led will falter and reject his memory and consign themselves to further misery.

Martin Luther King walked the same path.  Some of his people thought him too confrontational.  Some thought him not confrontational enough.

Moses is as good a vessel as any to carry the label of "founder of Western Civilization."  In the Torah, he codified, through God, the right to reasonable self-defense (Exodus 22:2), the idea of an impartial "Supreme Court" (Deuteronomy 17:8-12), and the necessity for limits on executive power (Deuteronomy 17:14-20).

Martin Luther King took and embraced those concepts and laid bare the moral truth that those liberties and securities must apply to every citizen, channeling Moses, who constantly enjoined the Jews to treat the alien as they would treat themselves.

The night before Martin Luther King was assassinated, he spoke to his people and channeled his precursor, with an eerily prescient premonition that his fate would be the same as Moses'.  He spoke of the promised land, and how he would not live to see it.

The ways in which Jews and African-Americans may have failed the visions of their leaders after the death of those leaders is too large an issue to tackle here, but the parallel sagas of Moses and Martin remind us of the glory of Western Civilizations and the fact that these two men represented the most persecuted minorities within the same.  That's not a coincidence.

History doesn't repeat itself, but sometimes it rhymes.

.He was not yet 40 years old.  If that doesn't make your face tingle, you might want to go see a doctor.

The Pride and The Fall

As one of millions who are revolted by both candidates for president, I watched the first debate strictly for purposes of entertainment, as one would watch a demolition derby or a movie about the apocalypse.  The problem, of course, is that if this were a demolition derby, we would not be safely ensconced in the bleachers but would instead be in the car.

By any objective standard, Hillary cleaned Donald's clock.  She was more prepared, more measured, more self-assured, more informed, and more disciplined.  But we already knew that.  Hillary is the girl who stays up all night studying.  Donald is the boy who copies off someone else and then assures us that he has "a very good brain" and knows all "the best words".

But the most telling dynamic was psychological rather than rhetorical.  Hillary had a plan, she stuck to it, and it worked.  Trump winged it, and he used his wings not to fly, but to swat at invisible insects.  And in the course of doing so, he made an ass of himself (not to mix animal metaphors),

Every personal jab Mrs. Clinton sent his way was seized upon by Mr. Trump as a starving dog would seize upon a steak.  He couldn't let anything go.  He is clearly incapable of doing so.  On the biggest stage of his life, Trump navel-gazed.  And he did so, dare I say, bigly.

Trump spent so much time defending himself that he never raised his signature issue, illegal immigration.  He never brought up his opponent's biggest weaknesses: Benghazi, the Clinton Foundation, her entire public career, etc.

There was a question about cyber-security.  How did Trump not immediately pounce upon that while debating a women who cyberly-unsecured our entire diplomatic policy?

There was a point where Mrs. Clinton implied that all Americans have "inherent bias".  How did Trump not ask Mrs. Clinton whether she herself was "inherently biased" about the African-American debate moderator?
 
Because we have no good choice, it is clear that we need to settle for the more mature and disciplined individual.  The first debate left absolutely no doubt at all who that is.  These two people are deeply unappealing and corrupt in their own ways, but only one of them is capable of behaving like an adult who is cognizant of something larger than themselves. 

It may be damning with faint praise, but Mrs. Clinton must win this election by default.  Mr. Trump has played a valuable role and raised some important issues that establishment politicians would not, but he is so utterly unacceptable in terms of character and decorum that all of that virtue is swept away by his bottomless narssicism.

The good news is that whoever wins this election will probably due so with less than 50% of the popular vote.  He or she will be largely despised by half of the country and will probably not be able to implement most of their plans.  We're past due for a one-term president.  Let's just get this over with and then press reset.

All that aside, if I lived in a state where it mattered, I would purge myself, hold my nose, vote for Mrs. Clinton, and then purge myself again.  It is a sad truth that millions of people who vote for Mrs. Clinton next month will do so while suppressing a gag reflex, but it is, astonishingly, better than the alternative.