John Prine, 1977 (Photo by Paul Natkin/Getty Images)
Martin will have a lot more to say on the topic I’m sure, but right now I just wanted to leave a short tribute to John Prine.
Maybe that’s the way that the world goes ’round. And yeah, you’re up one day and the next you’re down.
A lot of times your problems really are a half an inch of water and you think you’re gonna drown.
But John Prine’s death was wholly unnecessary and before anyone asks or objects, I do in fact blame the president and the Republican Party. Don’t tell me “it’s too soon” for politics.
I’m not ready to fish and whistle with the people I hold responsible, and frankly I probably never will be. “You forgive us and we’ll forgive you?” Not this time, not this guy anyway. Don’t complain at me about that sentiment, because Prine, in his own words, thought Trump was “a jerk” just like George W. Bush, who he also didn’t like very much.
It’s sad but prescient that Prine wrote about the people who would eventually get him killed, on 2005’s “Fair and Square,” singing “some humans ain’t human, some people ain’t kind”. Is there a better description of Donald Trump and the GOP than “ice cubes with hair” whose charred and blackened hearts are nothing but “a few frozen pizzas?”
Paraphrasing another of Prine’s songs as a question for Republicans: now that you got an American icon killed—never mind thousands of other not-famous people—through your negligence and incompetence, do you really think you’re going to go to heaven with your little plastic flag?
Safe travels, Mr. Prine. You deserved to go out better than you did.
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5
5
There was no bigger antidote for, and refutation of, the cult of Trumpism, and all the hatred of his followers, than the music of John Prine. I just can’t express in words how I felt last night when I saw the news of his death. I was only 21 when John Lennon died, and I didn’t really have a good perspective at that time for his influence on people and the culture at large. But I’ve since sat with a lot of old hippie friends who talk of how shattered they were at his death, and how a light went out in them that would never quite be rekindled after his loss. I think I know now just a little of what they felt. I came to Prine’s music a little later in my life, but I am still discovering and learning new things from his music that have actually impacted my personal perspective on a lot of things. In a way, his songs became a sort of beacon for me; a frame of reference to use when looking at the world, and at people, and how to understand both the marvelously wonderful side of them, and the horrifically evil side, too. I will be just a little bit more lost today than I was yesterday. And it will take me some time to figure out how and when I will be able to move past this moment.
My dad, who is an 85 year old MAGA guy to the core, “discovered” John Prine’s music a couple of years ago. I’m not sure what it was about the music that caught my dad’s ear, but in the middle of all his Facebook postings about libtards and misogynistic memes about Nancy Pelosi, there were John Prine videos shared. This obvious dichotomy always fascinated me. But he really had started, in some small way, to absorb a little of message that John Prine was always trying to convey. Last Christmas, my brother gifted dad with tickets to see John Prine. The concert was to be in Louisville in late May, and all three of us were going to go. I cannot tell you how much I was looking forward to seeing my MAGA dad in the middle of thousands of John Prine fans, and to see his reaction to anything John said from the stage. I had some hope that this experience might actually teach him something, as his exposure to anyone outside his MAGA bubble is slim to none. Now, of course, that will never happen.
Yes, John Prine did not have to die. And it is not hard to draw a line from Trumpism to Prine’s death. The very thing that he fought against his whole life ended up being his killer. The death of John Lennon in 1980 at the hands of a mentally ill individual was, in almost all ways, an aberration which seemed to have no obviously attributable cause, beyond our inherent lack of societal concern for the mentally ill. The death of John Prine, however, was much more likely to happen, and as a direct result of the decisions and conduct of Donald Trump and his supporters. That is not to say that Prine might not have contracted the disease and died anyway, but his chances of surviving this were most certainly greatly diminished by the weeks of refusals, lies, and false information given and promoted by Trump.
I can pretty much know, without a doubt, that John Prine is okay with politicizing this. No doubt he would write a song just as damning as “Some Humans Ain’t Human” was to George W. Bush and all his evil contemporaries in the Republican Party and conservative politics. John Prine didn’t give two fucks about waiting until it felt appropriate to talk about evil people and their deeds. Yesterday would not have been soon enough, but today will do just fine. And tomorrow it will still be okay.
4.5
To borrow a phrase: Trump has blood on his hands. This is surely incompetence. But it is more. Like voting in Wisconsin yesterday. It was an attempt to harm your political enemies in favor of yourself.
John Prine: I love you man. Rest In Peace.
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