Kinky Brainwash

Last week, two of my oldest friends Butsh and Dan came to a parting of the ways due to their differences in political approach. They have been friends for more than 50 years. Neither of them care for Trump but Dan is much more active in his antipathy. Butsh told Dan, in no uncertain terms to stop prosletyzing. Dan figures that he's just "stirring up some good trouble" in the words of the recently departed John Lewis. As usual, I understand both sides of the argument.

That's part of my gift/problem. I'm a circular thinker by nature which enables me to empathize with both sides of a conflict even after I've chosen the side I want to support. I try to stay open but who am I kidding? While I was contemplating the rift between two of my lifelong peeps, each distinguished in their own field, each qualfied to state and defend their position...a song came to my mind which helped me clarify my position sorta.

The song is Brainwashed recorded by the Kinks in thier 1973 album Arthur.

If you want to hear the song, which I hope you do, I've included a link. Give it a listen. Here's the lyrics

You look like a real human being

But you don't have a mind of your own

Yeah, you can talk, you can breathe

You can work, you can stitch, you can sew

But you're brainwashed

Yes you are, yes you are

Get down on your knees

You've got a job and a house

And a wife, and your kids and a car

Yeah, you're conditioned to think

What they want you to think

And be happy to be where you are

Yes you are

Get down on your knees

Get down on your knees



The aristocrats and bureaucrats

Are dirty rats

For making you what you are

They're up there and you're down here

You're on the ground and they're up with the stars

All your life they've kicked you around and pushed you around

'Til you can't take any more

To them you're just a speck of dirt

But you don't want to get up off the floor

Mister you're just brainwashed

They give you social security

Tax saving benefits that grow at maturity

Yeah, you're content just to be

What they want you to be

And to do what they want you to

Yes you are, yes you are

Get down on your knees

The song articulated in 73 what I had been suspecting for many years....that the other guy was brainwashed. The other guy being all the other guys who weren't listening to the onging messages of rock and roll hidden between the lines. Now almost fifty years later, I am more aware of the insidious brainwashing of the other guys in regards to our divided nation. Yeah, the MAGAs aside forn their hats look like real human beings but they sure as hell don't have a mind of their own. All I have to do is turn on CNN where I can hear from the upright folks who have a mind of their own. 

Then every once in awhile listening to the obvious CNN bias, I get that troubling thought that to the other guy, I'm the other guy who is brainwashed, down on my knees and supporting the status quo through my own naiveity and ongoing desire to re-enforce my empty minded biases by listening to the whining gasbags at CNN. I am after all, a guy with a wife and a car and a house. I'm retired from y job with a pension. I'm even collecting social. security.

Am I they?

Then I'll come out of that funk and listen to the Kinks again.  Young, idealistic, broke and pissed off. If I gotta believe somebody, it might as well be Ray Davies after all he's a rock and roll guy who doesn't even live in this country. Today, I'm realizing that the Kinks themselves have been brainwashing me about brainwashing for the last fifty years so I'm back where I started, here we go round again.

Still looking for America.

I'm back in the circle, waiting for Elvis or Vonnegut or Shakespeare or Jane Austen or Yoda or Walter Kronkite to come back and straighten everything out. This time it's up to me. I've got to stay clear, keep absorbing, keep reading literature, be empathetic but stand up to the other guy when he mistakes me for the other guy.

I am not they much less them.