Should We Abandon All Hope Now?

And avoid the rush later?

WLBOTT: Good morning, Elder G. Is today the day we abandon all hope?

Elder G: Good morning, John! Let’s not abandon all hope just yet. Shall we embrace the absurdity and see where it takes us?

WLBOTT: Okay, let’s keep some hope in reserve. What would be an appropriate amount of hope? 5%, 10%?

Elder G: Ah, the age-old question of hope budgeting! I’d say keep at least 10% hope in reserve—enough to keep the spark alive!

In other words, there’s biscuits to bake and BLOTTs to write.

---

There’s been a lot of talk lately about “FAFO” – a liberal fantasy that the worst-of-the-worst will be held responsible for their election choices, as if uninviting Uncle Bob from Thanksgiving dinner is going to solve the world’s problems.

Rather than FAFO, I think we’re in for “YGWYD” – You Get What You Deserve. The majority of Americans are willfully ignorant, bigoted, greedy, entitled, whiny, profoundly uneducated, selfish, self-absorbed, short-sighted, self-serving, gullible…. You’ve heard of American college students who can’t find Iraq on a map? I doubt if most Americans could find a map on a map.

For all the talk of the “Founding Fathers”, the reality is that most of them were wealthy businessmen, and many were slave owners, and the founding documents were really about creating a stable system to promote commerce.

Remember, at the time Columbus “discovered” America, there were between 7 and 20 million Native Americans living in what is now “America.”

---

Blind Willie McTell

Let’s keep some history alive by looking at Bob Dylan’s Blind Willie McTell.

See them big plantations burning
Hear the cracking of the whips
Smell that sweet magnolia blooming
See the ghosts of slavery ships
I can hear them tribes a moaning
Hear that undertaker's bell
And I know no one can sing the blues
Like Blind Willie McTell

There's a woman by the river
With some fine young handsome man
He's dressed up like a squire
Bootleg whiskey in his hand
There's a chain gang on the highway
I can hear them rebels yell
And I know no one can sing the blues
Like Blind Willie McTell

God is in His heaven
And we all want what's His
But power and greed and corruptible seed
Seem to be all that there is
I'm gazing out the window
Of that old Saint James Hotel
And I know no one can sing the blues
Like Blind Willie McTell

---

---

References

Blind Willie McTell (born William Samuel McTier; May 5, 1898 – August 19, 1959) was an American Piedmont blues and ragtime singer, songwriter and guitarist. He played in a fluid, syncopated finger picking guitar style common among many East Coast, Piedmont blues players. Like his Atlanta contemporaries, he came to use twelve-string guitars exclusively. McTell was also adept at slide guitar, unusual among ragtime bluesmen. He sang in a smooth and often laid-back tenor which differed greatly from the harsher voices of many Delta bluesmen such as Charley Patton. He performed in various musical styles including blues, ragtime, religious music, and hokum and recorded more than 120 titles during fourteen recording sessions.
[…]

He made his last recordings in 1956 at an impromptu session recorded by an Atlanta record store owner. He died three years later, having lived for years with diabetes and alcoholism. Despite his lack of commercial success, he was one of the few blues musicians of his generation who continued to actively play and record during the 1940s and ’50s. He did not live to see the American folk music revival when many other bluesmen were rediscovered.

Wikipedia