"Murder Most Foul," by Bob Dylan

Perhaps no cultural icon had more influence on early baby boomers (those born, let's 

say, between 1946 and 1955) than poet/folk-rock singer Bob Dylan.  His first album, 

The Freewheeling' Bob Dylan, was released in 1963, when the oldest of us were 

about to head off to college.  Containing classics like "Blowin' in the Wind," "A Hard 

Rain's A-Gonna Fall," and "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right," most of our copies of this 

vinyl LP were worn out by the time we graduated from college.  (Unlike digital music,

analog LP's would eventual deteriorate from over use).

After 39 studio albums, 94 singles, and 12 live albums, his 40th studio album, his first

 in 8 years,  is being released June 19. The Album, Rough and Rowdy Ways includes 

a "somber 17-minute ballad that's eerily fitting for our current moment" according to 

Rolling Stone's review.  We are a generation that often wrapped it's collective head 

around social and political crises with help of the music we got from our rock gurus. 

 "Murder Most Foul" may well be a Dylan song we need right now. 

We older baby boomers all still carry deep and often traumatic memories of where we 

were when JFK was assassinated in November 1963, as we all do of when  the twin 

towers fell, or many of us do when Donald Trump was elected,  Perhaps we will also

retain deep memories of how we first dealt with Coronavirus outbreak.  In "Murder 

Most Foul" Dylan once again crystalizes in poetry how a generation dealt with perhaps

 the first widespread trauma of it's collective life.

Murder Most Foul

Bob Dylan

Twas a dark day in Dallas, November '63

A day that will live on in infamy

President Kennedy was a-ridin' high

Good day to be livin' and a good day to die

Being led to the slaughter like a sacrificial lamb

He said, "Wait a minute, boys, you know who I am?"

"Of course we do, we know who you are"

Then they blew off his head while he was still in the car

Shot down like a dog in broad daylight

Was a matter of timing and the timing was right

You gotta pay debts, we've come to collect

We're gonna kill you with hatred, without any respect

We'll mock you and shock you and we'll put it in your face

We've already got someone here to take your place

The day they blew out the brains of the king

Thousands were watching, no one saw a thing

It happened so quickly, so quick, by surprise

Right there in front of everyone's eyes

Greatest magic trick ever under the sun

Perfectly executed, skillfully done

Wolfman, oh wolfman, oh wolfman howl

Rub-a-dub-dub, it's a murder most foul

Hush, little children, you'll understand

The Beatles are comin', they're gonna hold your hand

Slide down the banister, go get your coat

Ferry 'cross the Mersey and go for the throat

There's three bums comin' all dressed in rags

Pick up the pieces and lower the flags

I'm going to Woodstock, it's the Aquarian Age

Then I'll go to Altamont and sit near the stage

Put your head out the window, let the good times roll

There's a party going on behind the Grassy Knoll

Stack up the bricks, pour the cement

Don't say Dallas don't love you, Mr. President

Put your foot in the tank and step on the gas

Try to make it to the triple underpass

Blackface singer, whiteface clown

Better not show your faces after the sun goes down

Up in the red light district, they've got cop on the beat

Living in a nightmare on Elm Street

When you're down in Deep Ellum, put your money in your shoe

Don't ask what your country can do for you

Cash on the ballot, money to burn

Dealey Plaza, make a left-hand turn

I'm going down to the crossroads, gonna flag a ride

The place where faith, hope, and charity died

Shoot him while he runs, boy

Shoot him while you can

See if you can shoot the invisible man

Goodbye, Charlie

Goodbye, Uncle Sam

Frankly, my Scarlet, I don't give a damn

What is the truth, and where did it go?

Ask Oswald and Ruby, they oughta know

"Shut your mouth, " said the wise old owl

Business is business, and it's a murder most foul

Tommy, can you hear me?

I'm the Acid Queen

I'm riding in a long, black Lincoln limousine

Riding in the backseat next to my wife

Heading straight on in to the afterlife

I'm leaning to the left, got my head in her lap

Hold on, I've been led into some kind of a trap

Where we ask no quarter, and no quarter do we give

We're right down the street from the street where you live

They mutilated his body, and they took out his brain

What more could they do?

They piled on the pain

But his soul's not there where it was supposed to be at

For the last fifty years they've been searchin' for that

Freedom, oh freedom

Freedom above me

I hate to tell you, mister, but only dead men are free

Send me some lovin', tell me no lies

Throw the gun in the gutter and walk on by

Wake up, little Suzie, let's go for a drive

Cross the Trinity River, let's keep hope alive

Turn the radio on, don't touch the dials

Parkland hospital, only six more miles

You got me dizzy, Miss Lizzy

You filled me with lead

That magic bullet of yours has gone to my head

I'm just a patsy like Patsy Cline

Never shot anyone from in front or behind

I've blood in my eye, got blood in my ear

I'm never gonna make it to the new frontier

Zapruder's film I've seen that before

Seen it 33 times, maybe more

It's vile and deceitful

It's cruel and it's mean

Ugliest thing that you ever have seen

They killed him once and they killed him twice

Killed him like a human sacrifice

The day that they killed him, someone said to me, "Son

The age of the Antichrist has just only begun"

Air Force One coming in through the gate

Johnson sworn in at 2:38

Let me know when you decide to thrown in the towel

It is what it is, and it's murder most foul

What's new, pussycat?

What'd I say?

I said the soul of a nation been torn away

And it's beginning to go into a slow decay

And that it's 36 hours past Judgment Day

Wolfman Jack, he's speaking in tongues

He's going on and on at the top of his lungs

Play me a song, Mr. Wolfman Jack

Play it for me in my long Cadillac

Play me that "Only the Good Die Young"

Take me to the place Tom Dooley was hung

Play "St. James Infirmary" and "The Port of King James"

If you want to remember, you better write down the names

Play Etta James, too

Play "I'd Rather Go Blind"

Play it for the man with the telepathic mind

Play John Lee Hooker

Play "Scratch My Back"

Play it for that strip club owner named Jack

Guitar Slim going down slow

Play it for me and for Marilyn Monroe

Play "Please Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood"

Play it for the First Lady, she ain't feeling any good

Play Don Henley

Play Glenn Frey

Take it to the limit and let it go by

Play it for Karl Wirsum, too

Looking far, far away at Down Gallow Avenue

Play tragedy, play "Twilight Time"

Take me back to Tulsa to the scene of the crime

Play another one and "Another One Bites the Dust"

Play "The Old Rugged Cross" and "In God We Trust"

Ride the pink horse down that long, lonesome road

Stand there and wait for his head to explode

Play "Mystery Train" for Mr. Mystery

The man who fell down dead like a rootless tree

Play it for the Reverend

Play it for the Pastor

Play it for the dog that got no master

Play Oscar Peterson

Play Stan Getz

Play "Blue Sky"

Play Dickey Betts

Play Hot Pepper, Thelonious Monk

Charlie Parker and all that junk

All that junk and "All That Jazz"

Play something for the Birdman of Alcatraz

Play Buster Keaton

Play Harold Lloyd

Play Bugsy Siegel

Play Pretty Boy Floyd

Play the numbers

Play the odds

Play "Cry Me A River" for the Lord of the gods

Play Number 9

Play Number 6

Play it for Lindsey and Stevie Nicks

Play Nat King Cole

Play "Nature Boy"

Play "Down In The Boondocks" for Terry Malloy

Play "It Happened One Night" and "One Night of Sin"

There's 12 Million souls that are listening in

Play "Merchant to Venice"

Play "Merchants of Death"

Play "Stella by Starlight" for Lady Macbeth

Don't worry, Mr. President

Help's on the way

Your brothers are coming, there'll be hell to pay

Brothers? What brothers? What's this about hell?

Tell them, "We're waiting, keep coming"

We'll get them as well

Love Field is where his plane touched down

But it never did get back up off the ground

Was a hard act to follow, second to none

They killed him on the altar of the rising sun

Play "Misty" for me and "That Old Devil Moon"

Play "Anything Goes" and "Memphis in June"

Play "Lonely At the Top" and "Lonely Are the Brave"

Play it for Houdini spinning around his grave

Play Jelly Roll Morton

Play "Lucille"

Play "Deep In a Dream"

And play "Driving Wheel"

Play "Moonlight Sonata" in F-sharp

And "A Key to the Highway" for the king on the harp

Play "Marching Through Georgia" and "Dumbaroton's Drums"

Play darkness and death will come when it comes

Play "Love Me Or Leave Me" by the great Bud Powell

Play "The Blood-stained Banner"

Play "Murder Most Foul"

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Bob Dylan

Murder Most Foul lyrics © Audiam, Inc

Review of Charles Reich, The Greening of America

Review of Charles Reich’s The Greening of America
When Random House first published Charles Reich’s The Greening of America in 1970,they thought so little of the radical manuscript that just 5,000 copies were printed. The New Yorker followed the book’s publication with the longest excerpt in the magazine’s history, prodding the publisher to issue a dozen reprints—eventually selling some 2 million copies.  The debate about American political culture the book unleashed has been compared to the impacts of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and the Kinsey Report upon environmental thinking and the sexual revolution, respectively.
Impact of Greening of America on Me
For me Greening had a substantial impact midway in my transition from a Goldwater conservative to a democratic socialist.  I first read the book in either 1970 or 1971 and I recall feeling that I shared Reich’s assessment of the principal strains of American political culture.  Re-reading it this fall, I discovered the book to be surprisingly, if simplistically, current. Popular American political culture today still resembles Reich’s Consciousness I—an expressed preference for small government, individual rights and free enterprise.  Like Reich, I believe this Jeffersonian consciousness might have been appropriate for a nineteenth century society of small towns, face-to-face relationships and individual economic enterprise; but even by 1970, this ideal had long since failed to fit the complex, interdependent, highly organized cultural and political landscape we actually lived in.
Greening of America Themes
By the second half of the 20^th century, Reich concluded the beliefs of Consciousness I were drastically at variance with reality.  Virtually unfettered individual rights, small government and unregulated free enterprise had been increasingly restricted by the growth of cities, large corporations, and bureaucracies.  A new catechism had by then grown up around the organized technological and corporate society of the New Deal.  This Consciousness II underlay an America where organization predominates, and the individual must make his way through a world directed by others.  Consciousness II, according to Reich, “ultimately believes that individuals have no existence apart from their work [for an organization] and their relationship to society…The richness, the satisfactions, the joy of life are to be found in power, success, status, acceptance, popularity, achievements, rewards, excellence and the rational, competent mind.”  Consciousness I may have continued (and still continues) to describe our aspirations (just listen to the presentation of the most recent conservative nominee to the US Supreme Court), but the levers of power are wielded by elites with far different objectives than individual liberty, and maximum distribution of property.  The result, according to Reich, is a society guided by a consciousness that is far removed from the realities of human needs. 
This much of Reich’s analysis—that our nominal beliefs in free enterprise and individual liberty have been overwhelmed by the transfer of power from the man in the street to elites with degrees from Yale Law and Harvard Business School--could be a 2016 treatise emanating from “Occupy Wall Street” or the Bernie Sanders campaign. 
Greening of America Conclusion
But Reich’s conclusion—that a revolution led by the youth of the 1970’s was inextricably leading to the overturning of the no longer relevant Consciousness I and of the dehumanization of Consciousness II—was purely wishful thinking in 1970; and it is no less wishful in 2019.   Our hip generation (specifically led by the college Class of ’69) would preside, said Reich, over a revolutionary transition into a new age of American justice, fairness, ethical work.  Conscious III sees, “with an astounding clarity that no ideology could provide, a society that is unjust to its poor and its minorities, is run for the benefit of a privileged few, is lacking in its proclaimed democracy and liberty, is artificial, harmful to the environment and self, and, like the wars it spawns, unhealthy for children and other living things.”  Not only all this, but Reich asserted that nothing will stop the eventual ascension of this youth-led peaceful revolution; nothing will stop the power of this new consciousness.
Fifty Years After Greening of America
Fifty years later, there has been no such peaceful revolution in American political culture.   I am afraid the result of the deeply degrading dominance of Consciousness II  has been much more accurately foreshadowed by recent works by Madeleine Albright (Fascism: A Warning) and Timothy Snyder (The Road to Unfreedom).  But that’s a discussion for another day.

Our Education Was So Deprived

I am an early baby boomer.  OK, more precisely, I am  one of the oldest baby boomers.  Born in 1946, I went to school in the Northeast US during the 1950's and 1960'.  I graduated from college in 1969--the infamous Class of '69.  The American education system of those decades had a number of blindspots and most of us boomers suffered from the lack of attention to a number of crucial social, economic, political and cultural biases.

American-centered.

In no particular order of importance, I wish I had been confronted during my education with a less ethno-centric understanding of the world.  It did not dawn on me until well after 1969 that US dominance in the 20^th century (and before it, British) was an aberrant blip in the course of history.  We boomers were not  prepared either for the 21^st century decline in Pax Americana, nor for the resurgence of a world-power in Asia in the 21^st century.

Racist.

Secondly, our schools did not prepare most of us (at least most of us White kids) for the powerful grasp of institutional racism in the US.  That the nation was founded by men who either personally benefitted from slavery, or at least facilitated the perpetuation of slavery for many decades  after the American Revolution was not a part of the core curriculum were encouraged to study. 

Misogynistic.

Furthermore, at no time during our education was it made clear to us that we were part of a misogynistic culture, I didn’t take a single course, or even find a single reading on the topic in any of my syllabi.  Now 50 years later, the extent of gender discrimination and harassment is inescapable.  Only now so clearly recognized, can we look to the possibility of true gender and racial equality.

Environmentalism.

Lastly, even though I was a social science major in college, my education was remiss in not teaching me of the well-founded science of climate change, already clearly identifying by 1969 its anthropocentric roots.  I got all the way though obtaining a Ph. D. without a single assignment on the topic.