Is This Land Your Land and My Land?

Today, I was listening to the Gordon Lightfoot station on Amazon Music. I know. Amazon…It’s a contradiction to many of the things I believe in but I just can’t pull the plug on my membership yet. Anyway, back to my experience today and leave my Amazon Guilt for another day. What can I say, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” is one of the greatest storytelling songs of all time and “If You Could Read My Mind” is just a great song, along with most of Mr. Lightfoot’s vast catalog.

Interspersed with “Sundown,” “Carefree Highway,” and other Lightfoot standards are songs by artists of similar era and genre. Neil Diamond, Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel, Carol King and the like. As I was listening away, enjoying the soothing sounds, Amazon had to go and slip one in that caught me up short. Woody Guthrie’s twangy delivery cut through the fog, bringing my mind, divided between the soft melodies and even softer vocals and the current task in which I was at that moment involved, into sharp focus. I had to pause my productivity, put down the mouse, and listen. Really listen.

This land is your land, this land is my land From California, to the New York Island From the Redwood Forest, to the Gulf Stream waters This land was made for you and me.

I’ve heard this song so many times, performed by so many artists. I remember singing this song at elementary school music programs. I’m sure all of us have heard it so many times that when we hear it, we don’t give it too much thought. It’s just another song that makes up our cultural collective. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone claim that this was their favorite song of all time. It doesn’t appear on any of the Top 100 or Greatest 1000 Hits of all time, as far as I’ve ever heard or seen.

Back to today. Today, it was a long, sharp needle entering my ear canal and embedding itself in my previously multi-tasking brain, drawing my full attention.

As I was walking a ribbon of highway I saw above me an endless skyway I saw below me a golden valley This land was made for you and me.

If you know me, I’m not much of an emotional creature. I’m rather adept at collapsing my limbic responses, boxing them up, and relegating them as wasted energy and psychic clutter. I’m so much more a thinking than feeling person. Suffice it to say, the “T” in my Meyers-Briggs typology is off the scale and the “F” is barely a blip. But today, damn it, Woody Guthrie caught me unprepared. That song hit me hard today. A momentary weakness? A crack in my rational shell? A fault in my logical armor? I don’t know. Maybe, along with my recently diagnosed need for bifocals, just a side effect of getting older.

Or maybe, just maybe, its fatigue. Not the kind caused by missing a couple of hours of sleep staying up too late a few nights back watching the latest Democratic Candidate Debate, but the soul-tiredness of witnessing the unraveling of our society.

I've roamed and rambled and I've followed my footsteps To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts And all around me a voice was sounding This land was made for you and me

Each day is a new assault, a salvo of ordinance, a mining of the walls, an attack by a ravenous mob, whatever creative evocation of violence you can think of, against much of what our country has been built upon. I’m not an apologist defending a U.S. history that is often whitewashed and sanitized or a cheerleading flag-waver with unwavering, blind support of our country. I’m also not a proponent of chucking it all in the dustbin and calling it quits, hating everything that the U.S. stands for. Like most of you, I’m somewhere in the middle, more to the left politically-speaking, yes, but still present on the spectrum. That’s my point. I think that’s what flummoxed me today when Woody began to sing.

This land is your land, this land is my land From California, to the New York Island From the Redwood Forest, to the Gulf Stream waters This land was made for you and me.

Woody Guthrie penned the original lyrics of this song during a time of great social, cultural and economic upheaval. In the throes of the Great Depression, the level of economic inequality was apparent to everyone owing to the prevalence of bread lines, homeless camps, and the mass migrations of those displaced juxtaposed to the conspicuous wealth of their “betters,” still driving in big cars, living in big houses, and casting disparagement at those viewed as inferior and undeserving. Any of this sound familiar?

The current administration seems to be bent upon worsening the existence of large demographic swaths, punishing those not blessed, in the American sense, by a God that only cares to bestow blessings on those who are already blessed. This is the overarching, corkscrew philosophy of the far right and its media machine. In this neoliberal system, this land does not belong to you and me, but only to those who have the means to possess it. Here’s a not oft used stanza of Guthrie’s song:

There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me; Sign was painted, it said private property; But on the back side it didn't say nothing; This land was made for you and me.

The Trump Administration continues an assault on the commons, selling off rights to public property for extractive industries to pillage and collect and destroy. Mr. Trump crows about rolling back regulations written to curtail the dumping of toxins and pollutants into the water, air and land that we all drink, breathe and live on, respectively, all in the name of greater profits for those apparently blessed and condemning the rest of us sorry souls who don’t deserve clean water, air and land. This land was obviously not meant for the rest of us.

Here’s another little known verse:

In the squares of the city, In the shadow of a steeple; By the relief office, I'd seen my people. As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking, Is this land made for you and me?

And not a fairer question could have been asked by Mr. Guthrie. Is this land made for you and me and everyone, or only a select few who continue to dangle the artificial bait of a better life built on hard work and sacrifice so that these scions of those Woody Guthrie spent a career calling out can continue to accrue unGodly (I use this spelling on purpose) fortunes and political power in order to continue to protect their “blessings?”

This is at the heart of what grabbed me this morning as I was passively listening along, minding my own business, doing my job. Just as most of us are passively listening along, minding our own business, doing our jobs. Just as those in control—of industry, of banking, of education, of media, of political power, of so much more—want us to be. This is when we can be controlled and complacent. Why do you think the Trump Administration keeps touting the false narrative of “the strongest and greatest economy in the history of the world”? If enough people buy into this, then the myth self-perpetuates and only a handful of naysayers and critics and those embittered by the previous Presidential election defeat are accused of sour grapes, as Mr. Trump continues to remind us. Sure, there are some indicators that look great—the right-wing media talking points of low unemployment and a soaring stock market—but these points don’t equal a flourishing economy. Things like the job quality index, the staggering pace of retail closures, farm bankruptcies, record family and student loan debts, the skyrocketing growth of wealth and income at the top with paltry wage growth, if any, for the majority of people and the burgeoning gap in economic equality tell a much, much different story.

When the sun came shining, and I was strolling And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling A voice was chanting, As the fog was lifting, This land was made for you and me.

It is time that the fog lifts. It is time that we do live into the reality that this land was made for all of us. I fear that if we continue treading the steep downward path that we are currently walking, this country will continue to be for fewer and fewer people. The continued slide towards neoliberal authoritarianism, the American version of fascism, is real, apparent, and a growing danger. Each Tweet, mass rally, press conference, executive order, complicitous non-action by elected officials, etc. moves us further and further away from the norms, rule of law, Constitutional dictates and morals that rally around the idea that this land was made for you and me.

Woodie Guthrie loved his country, indeed loved it and its disparate people so much that he was unafraid of publicly criticizing its shortcomings and facing severe backlash and threats and accusations of being a Communist. He accepted these attacks willingly, knowing that the messages embedded in his art were hitting close to home for the powerful in his time, otherwise he would have been left alone.

In today’s toxic discourse, criticism of the Trump Administration often results in the charge of hating America and being un-American or of being a leftist or a liberal or a Communist or a Socialist (or ironically enough a Communist Socialist Liberal or some other combination of those terms). All one has to do is dip one’s toe into the morass of social media commentary to experience the palpable vitriol of those enthralled by the false promises of economic and cultural nationalism espoused by Mr. Trump. The venom flows both ways, to be sure, as those who oppose Mr. Trump and his administration can also be just as callous and uncouth as Trump supporters. It is unfortunate that we can’t live in a time where polite civil discourse is the rule rather than the exception, where reasoned and researched discussion is the norm and not unthinking adherence to a leader or party.

We are, I believe, approaching a time of reckoning. The upcoming election will determine the existential and philosophical direction of our country. One way is the continued move towards an authoritarianism fraught with further inequality, selectively applied rights, an arbitrary justice system and a squelching of the democratic voice of the people. Another way is towards a regeneration of the rule of law, the reestablishment of the balance of governmental power, equal rights and a more economically equitable society. Is this land made for only a relative few or is it, indeed, made for you and me and everyone?

Remember this, Woodie Guthrie played his songs on a guitar emblazoned with a handwritten message that read “This Machine Kills Fascists.” Fascism is the antithesis to this land belonging to you and me as its leaders seek to control and gain as much of the wealth and power as possible for their own benefit and the benefit of those who remain loyal and devout. I choose to fight fascism. I believe that this land was made for you and me.

This land is your land, this land is my land From California, to the New York Island From the Redwood Forest, to the Gulf Stream waters This land was made for you and me.