Make Love, then War

As published at OpEd News, CounterPunch, Poetry Foundation, Dissident Voice, Information Clearing House, Ikners, Intrepid Report and マスコミに載らない海外記事, 4/27/12:




As this dying empire hallucinates and raves on, its best known poet and anti-war icon is accepting a Presidential Freedom Award from a cynical if affable master of war. What is Dylan thinking? He and Obama are no strangers. On 4/9/10, Dylan performed "The Times They Are A-Changing" at the White House. Dylan appeared sullen that night and he skipped the feel good session at the end, when all other performers gathered, beaming, around our Chief Executive, the one who can order you or anyone locked up without trial, or shot, sans fanfare, because we're in a never ending war. Dylan's old squeeze, Queen Jane, sang at the same soiree. Before crooning, Baez even gazed at Obama and cooed, “Mr. President, you are much loved.” In our inverted country, grizzled peaceniks serenade a war criminal. 

Dear Bob, can’t you tell that the battle outside that is a-ragin’ is a-causa by this missile-firing and slow jamming man? Can’t you see through his tiresome mask? It’s all a joke, as when Obama warned the Jonas Brothers would be zapped by Predator Drones should they come close to his daughters. I doubt the world is laughing. 

The Wall Street Journal muses if this latest honor will inch Dylan closer to a Nobel Prize, as if that award still has much legitimacy after its Peace version was bestowed on Obama not a year into his Presidency, when he hadn’t a chance to really flaunt his bloody hands, though to the astute, there was already plenty of sick irony. The late, great Joe Bageant commented at the time, “The Nobel Committee awarded the 2009 Peace Prize to the very person who dropped the most bombs and killed the most poor people on the planet during that year.” Maybe these Scandinavians just like phony Americans. The previous year, Swedes gave a serial joker, the dismal Paul Krugman, its honor in Economic Sciences. (The Peace Prizes are chosen by the Norwegian Parliament.) These recent gaffs top a long list of errors. Still, it’s a handsome pile of cash, nearly $2 million now. It’s rather remarkable two men have turned it down, Jean Paul Sartre because he rejected all official honors, and Le Duc Tho because North Vietnam was still waging war even after it had signed a peace agreement.  

Gertrude Stein thought Hitler should have bagged one. On 5/6/34, Stein was quoted by the New York Times, "I say that Hitler ought to have the peace prize, because he is removing all elements of contest and struggle from Germany. By driving out the Jews and the democratic and Left elements, he is driving out everything that conduces to activity. That means peace." If driving out everything that conduces to activity leads to peace, today's USA must be Arcadia, but with the collapse of its manufacturing base, an ongoing  process despite recent propaganda, Americans are more restless than ever, as evidenced by the Tea Party and Occupy outbreaks. Far worse eruptions lie just ahead, no matter what jive masters like Krugman and Obama say. On the foreign front, America is busy, as usual, with several overlapping wars.

Maybe Dylan will surprise us all by refusing his Freedom Medal from a war-monger. Breaking protocols, he'll ambush his bloody host with, “Come you masters of war / You that build all the guns / You that build the death planes / You that build the big bombs / You that hide behind walls / You that hide behind desks / I just want you to know / I can see through your masks.” Of course he won’t do anything so outlandish. Instead, he'll glamorize Obama further, just as Katy Perry did to our grunts and guns in a recent music video. 

Breaking up with her cheating boyfriend, Perry impulsively joins the Marines. Instead of squirting a water gun at an arcade with her ex-weasel, Perry now fires an M-16. Instead of lounging in a tub under the creepy eyes of her philandering asshole, Perry is wrestling underwater with a fellow warrior-in-training. Instead of relying on a two-faced fuckface, Perry is now surrounded by tried and true comrades. The video ends with Perry singing ecstatically under a blue-hued flag, her new sky. Filmed at an actual Marines Corps base camp, this video features 80 Marines, as well as tanks and helicopters, so it's a major collaboration between our entertainment and war industries, something we’ve become quite used to by now, and something we’ll see again when Dylan grasps Obama’s hand, looks into his eyes and smiles.






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