The first original song from Bob Dylan since 2012 is a 17 minute lament about the death of President John F. Kennedy. Details of the Kennedy assassination are scattered amongst an extraordinary checklist of musicians, songs and events that have been part of Dylan’s long career. It seems that Dylan believes art needs to be heard and talked about in the context of modern America.
While the lyrics are the point of the song, the startling music that underpins it is like the rumbling of a dying world. At least that is how it made me feel – and why it seems appropriate for the times.
Appropriate because America is dying. Shot through the head, like Kennedy. Covid-19 proves it. And the man pulling the trigger is Donald Trump – it is murder most foul.
Listening to Dylan’s Murder Most Foul made me sad. Watching America and Trump reduces me to tears.
America has a complex and contradictory history – what nation does not? But America was the great experiment, the champion of freedom that the whole world looked to for leadership.
The moment it reached its peak, however, in the years after the Second World War, it began a slow tortuous decline until now its people are reduced to watching two hour long ramblings by a lunatic on television each night as an apocalypse unfolds around them.
What is so mind numbing is not just that Trump is the President of the United States of America but that, over the past three plus years, his core support has remained strong, his enablers have cleaned up his mess, sycophants have lavished him with praise and good people have forced themselves to be complicit in maintaining the charade that passes for the Presidency in an attempt to keep the country functioning. Meanwhile he pulls it apart. The country is now so compromised that no one seems able to bring down the curtain on what is the very worst of shallow reality shows ever to appear on television.
This state of affairs existed before Covid-19, but as America rose to become the nation with the most cases of the virus and most deaths, the utter bankruptcy of its situation was laid bare. Trump has not stopped misleading, lying and obfuscating since the moment he was asked what he was going to do to combat Covid-19. His inadequacy was matched only by the inability of the government and the public sector that he has emasculated to organise a national response. By anyone’s estimation the response has been a shambles, and it will continue to be a shambles.
Because of the late, disorganised and contradictory way America has gone about dealing with Covid-19, the prospects for bringing the disease under control without the assistance of a vaccine (12-18moths away) are not good. For every area where a concerted effort is being made to flatten the curve, there is another where only the most cursory attention is being paid to what needs to be done. The disease will roll on from one area to another.
While this happens, the damage will grow to the point that Trump will feel forced to do what he is itching to do – open the economy. A playground for the virus will be revealed.
This will be a tragedy for America and the rest of the world because we can only beat the virus if we work together.
It could have been very different. America still boasts the biggest economy with the biggest military and wields the most influence of any nation. It could have been a leader.
But Trump has made it clear that America comes first. In the ‘us’ versus ‘them’ world that Trump epitomises, cooperation and collaboration is for chumps and losers. Witness the stomach churning behaviour exhibited when other nations have asked for help or for the United States to work with them to combat Covid-19. Like Jekyll and Hyde, the talk has been of working together while the action has been to try and grab as many pharmaceuticals and as much medical equipment as possible exclusively for America. As expressed in the popular television series, Deep State, American foreign policy can now be summed up as, “It’s America, bitch”.
If murder is afoot in America, the rest of the world is being given a severe beating.
Where do we go from here? Covid-19 has made it abundantly clear that America is a nation in decline. The most powerful nation in the world has proven to be the worst at handling the most serious health crisis seen since the Spanish Flu.
Yet, powerful nations in decline are still powerful. In the shadow of Covid-19, as long as Trump and those who support him control the White House we should expect to see all of the emotions a narcissist can display – overwhelming self-interest mixed with a willingness to feel hurt by the slightest opposition. America is now a wounded nation embarrassed by the failures that are on show to the rest of the world. Don’t expect good things to come from this.
Let me return to the beginning. Dylan’s song is a lament, not a celebration. There are still many Americans, I suspect the majority, who do not want to live in a nation with an emotionally damaged President at the podium and a public sector that has neither the capacity nor the capability to protect them from a pandemic.
No doubt (I know this to be true) this majority watch Trump and what is happening in disbelief and anger. They know this is wrong. They know that change must come.
The only question is when that change will be. Maybe it can come in November with the Presidential elections. Perhaps the grown-ups can take charge. Let’s hope so because the futures of not just Americans but all of us depends on something happening soon. What is happening now is murder most foul and it must be called for what it is.