The fiddle and the drum...

One of my all-time favorite contemporary artists is Joni Mitchell. Over the years I have written about how her creativity ignited something within my soul that opened me to insights and emotions I didn't yet know how to express. I have also been intrigued with her highly personal and transcendent poetry as well as her genre-bending exploration of jazz, rock and folk music. Indeed, forty years ago when I was trying to find my own way into a spirituality of music, I took a cue from "the mayor of Greenwich Village" - Dave Von Ronk - and spent time working with Joni Mitchell's ballads - especially "I Had a King" and "Marcie" - because they were so honest, beautiful and haunting.

As a young man coming of age during the Vietnam War, her tune, "The Fiddle and the Drum" from the CLOUDS album, captured best my own sadness, anger, confusion and grief about the war, the country I loved dearly and my own protests against that war. I was never "anti-American" nor was I blindly pro-Vietnam during those ugly times. And I just couldn't get myself grounded in the harsh or rhetorical anti-war music of the day - the exception being Marvin Gaye's work on WHAT'S GOING ON - as they were often simultaneously mean-spirited and naive. Not so with Joni Mitchell...

Since those days her music has matured even as she has explored new directions or tangents. And even after officially resigning from the cesspool of the "music business" in 2002 - and doing battle with a strange disease known as Morgellon's syndrome - Joni continues to find a way to bring beauty and challenge back into the mix. Herbie Hancock, for example, has done new work with her old songs in 2007 on "River: The Joni Letters" and Joni herself brought out a new album - "Shine" - that is a jazzy prayer of protest about life in the midst of the Iraq war.

So it isn't unusual that Joni Mitchell comes to mind when reminded that this Saturday - August 28th - is the 47th anniversary of the first March on Washington, DC. I recall watching that march unfold on TV as a child - we had a friend of the family participating - and even at 11 was captivated by Dr. King's speech. Soon afterwards, I was turned on to the sounds of Peter, Paul and Mary, Joan Baez and Bob Dylan. In 1983, my young family and I went to DC with my seminary classmates for the marking of the 20th Anniversary of that event in the midst of the Ronald Reagan years.

And now... Glenn Beck and the tea-baggers are attempting to not only high jack the legacy of Dr. King, but rewrite history as THEY hold their own "Restoring Honor" rally on Saturday. Calling up the image of Dr. King - but misrepresenting his essence - this rally mimics the social propaganda perfected during the Third Reich. Remember, the Nazis took the images and holidays of the Christian Church and perverted and redefined them to fit Hitler's racist agenda. They literally stole the stories, songs and symbols of the Christian faith - discarded the Cross and all of its wisdom - and filled the empty shell of a church with anti-Semitic lies and jingoistic assurances about living into the will of God by conquering weak and inferior nations.

After the Holocaust, the cry of humanity became "never again." But as Ellie Wiesel has observed, not only has catastrophic and premeditated death and destruction been allowed to take place over and over again, but we seem unwilling or unable to stop it. And now, the heirs of the Nazi propaganda machine are at it again: they have replaced anti-Semitism with anti-Muslim hatred and fear - they have inserted "illegal immigrants" for the Jews, homosexuals and Roma of the previous generation - and they are exploiting the social/economic anxiety of the current recession in ways every bit as malicious, calculating and ugly as their Nazi forebears.

And please understand that it is not too shrill or exaggerated to make this comparison: Palin, Beck et al are careful and precise in exploiting fear and pinpointing scape goats - no less so than Goebbel's implementation of the Fuerher's insights in Mein Kampf:

Propaganda must always address itself to the broad masses of the people. (...) All propaganda must be presented in a popular form and must fix its intellectual level so as not to be above the heads of the least intellectual of those to whom it is directed. (...) The art of propaganda consists precisely in being able to awaken the imagination of the public through an appeal to their feelings, in finding the appropriate psychological form that will arrest the attention and appeal to the hearts of the national masses. The broad masses of the people are not made up of diplomats or professors of public jurisprudence nor simply of persons who are able to form reasoned judgment in given cases, but a vacillating crowd of human children who are constantly wavering between one idea and another. (...) The great majority of a nation is so feminine in its character and outlook that its thought and conduct are ruled by sentiment rather than by sober reasoning. This sentiment, however, is not complex, but simple and consistent. It is not highly differentiated, but has only the negative and positive notions of love and hatred, right and wrong, truth and falsehood...

Propaganda must not investigate the truth objectively and, in so far as it is favourable to the other side, present it according to the theoretical rules of justice; yet it must present only that aspect of the truth which is favourable to its own side. (...) The receptive powers of the masses are very restricted, and their understanding is feeble. On the other hand, they quickly forget. Such being the case, all effective propaganda must be confined to a few bare eessentials and those must be expressed as far as possible in stereotyped formulas. These slogans should be persistently repeated until the very last individual has come to grasp the idea that has been put forward. (...) Every change that is made in the subject of a propagandist message must always emphasize the same conclusion. The leading slogan must of course be illustrated in many ways and from several angles, but in the end one must always return to the assertion of the same formula.

The Beck/Palin machine knows how to exploit both our fears and our commitment to free speech. So let's be vigilant in holding their feet to the fire of truth. How did Dr. King put it so well in the face of resistance to his higher calling: When evil men plot, good men must plan. When evil men burn and bomb, good men must build and bind. When evil men shout ugly words of hatred, good men must commit themselves to the glories of love.

Once again, Joni calls out to me with her unique wisdom, heart and soul...