For What It's Worth . . .
The Buffalo Springfield, c. 1966
According to an urban legend, rocker Stephen Stills wrote the 1966 classic protest song “For What It’s Worth” as a response to the Vietnam War. As with many such legends, it’s simply not true. Rather, that which provided the motivation for his writing one of Rock’s all-time legendary protest songs was the long-forgotten Sunset Strip Curfew riots in 1966 - a classic countercultural clash between the L.A.P.D. and young people on the Sunset Strip in my hometown, Hollywood, California. This song, as recorded by the then 21-year old Stills and his band, The Buffalo Springfield, became an instant classic. So much so that here in 2021 - 55 years after it was first recorded - it is just as vibrant and meaningful - even if misunderstood - as during the Capitol Hill invasion by President Donald Trump’s militant crazies just this past week.
There's something happening here
But what it is ain't exactly clear
There's a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware
I think it's time we stop
Children, what's that sound?
Everybody look, what's going down?
Many of you reading this blog will remember various marches on Washington, in which we came together in the late 1960s and early 1970s to protest the war in Vietnam. I myself attended many . . . not as an angry protester, but rather as an “insider,” whose task it was to teach the many, many protesters coming largely from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Chicago and Berkeley, to teach them the basics of decorum when meeting up with members of the Cabinet and elected officials in Congress. (While they stayed on the floors of youth hostels, I had the great fortune of being put up at Averill Harriman’s home in Georgetown.) We wanted to make sure that these largely teenage protesters, regardless of their political pique, and addiction to both pot and Country Joe and the Fish, acted like civilized adults. It must have worked; shortly after our “attack” on the nation’s capitol, LBJ announced that he would not run for reelection.
There's battle lines being drawn
Nobody's right if everybody's wrong
Young people speaking their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind
It's time we stop
Hey, what's that sound?
Everybody look, what's going down?
Mind you, we did not storm the Capitol bearing weapons of harm and hurt; we were content to have our presence duly noted, our voices and lyrics heard. For the most part, we were a pretty literate, well-educated mass . . . so totally unlike the mob of right-wing insurgents who acted far more like criminal cultists than engaged citizens. We - yesteryear’s mass gathering of anti-war, anti-draft protesters - were just as angry back then as the largely White Supremacist, racist criminals who shot an arrow into the heart of democracy this past Wednesday. We were against what a tone-deaf administration was engaged in; this new gathering - ironically made up largely of people (mostly males) the age of our eldest children - were attacking and attempting to bring down an entire society. We were armed with tons of facts, blamed LBJ for the war and General Hershey for the Selective Service System and had a lot of negative feelings about what was then collectively known as “The Establishment”; we were accused of being immoral Communists and Socialists. Today’s insurrectionists are motivated mostly by lies they believe to be the utter truth; lies perpetrated by their cult leader, the President of the United States. The one thing that remains the same is that we, the protesters of yore are still being called immoral Communists and Socialists. One major difference is that back during the “Days of Rage,” many of us actually knew what the difference between Marxists, Maoists, Trotskyites and Titoists were, whereas to today’s Trumpian seditionists, a lower-case “communist” is simply someone who has not bought into the lies, the fears, the conspiracies or stereotypes spread about by their beloved leader.
What a field day for the heat (Ooh ooh ooh)
A thousand people in the street (Ooh ooh ooh)
Singing songs and they carrying signs (Ooh ooh ooh)
Mostly say hooray for our side
It's time we stop
Hey, what's that sound?
Everybody look, what’s going down?
With each passing day, we are learning more and more about what this horrifying event:
About how it was all planned in plain sight;
About how much culpability Donald Trump and his many cowardly Congressional enablers possess;
About what these craven thousands brought with them to Washington, D.C in terms of weaponry;
About how far they were willing to go in their attempt to overturn the 2020 election;
About the conspiratorial nature of the event;
About just how lucky that things were not worse.
Without question, what Donald Trump and his hypnotized hooligans carried off was the absolute low-water mark in all American history. Drawing upon his childhood in post-World War II Austria, former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, compared Wednesday's riot at the Capitol to Kristallnacht, also known as the Night of Broken Glass, the rampage of violence by the Nazi regime against Jewish communities, synagogues and businesses in Germany and Austria in 1938. "Wednesday was the day of broken glass right here in the United States," he said, referring to broken windows in the Capitol building. But the mob also "shattered the ideas we took for granted" and "trampled the very principles on which our country was founded." Not a particularly successful governor of the nation’s largest state, the “Governator” firmly placed the blame on Donald Trump for continuing to make baseless claims of election fraud and "misleading people with lies."
"My father and our neighbors were misled also with lies and I know where such lies lead," the former actor said. "President Trump is a failed leader. He will go down in history as the worst President ever."
Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid
Step out of line, the men come and take you away
We better stop
Hey, what's that sound?
Everybody look, what's going down?
It has long been clear that Donald Trump is a psychological train wreck; a person who never should have been elected president. Some of the harshest, most on the money criticism of him was voiced more than 5 years ago by people like Senators Rubio (FL), Cruz (TX) and Graham (SC) who of course are still in his enabling corner. In all, it turns out that 8 senators and 139 representatives voted to overturn the 2020 election results. And despite the fact that there were and are a tremendous number of anti-Semites among the most fanatic and delusional of Trump supporters, all three Jewish Republican members of Congress (Tennessee’s David Kustoff and New York’s Elissa Slotkin and Lee Zeldin) voted to decertify the electoral college returns. To my way of thinking not only these three - but indeed all 147 members of Congress should be held accountable in the next election.
As I write these words, Vice President Mike Pence - who is currently in his boss’s dog house - is visiting the White House. Whether he’s there to convince Donald Trump to resign (in exchange, perhaps for a pardon), submit to being replaced by his #2 under terms of the25th Amendment, or be impeached for the second time is anyone’s guess. Two things which are reasonably certain:
Donald Trump is in a very, very dark place; scared to death of what’s going to happen to him the moment he leaves the White House, and
He’s going to known throughout the rest of history as America’s biggest loser; the man who, ironically is going to hear the words “YOU’RE FIRED!” every hour of every day for the rest of his life.
Then too, it is possible that the movement he and his enablers have created is going to suffer a tremendous loss of political potency. Historically, cults begin to fade once the leader leaves the stage . . . whether through imprisonment, mortality or suffering from the “Wizard of Oz syndrome.” President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris are going to have their hands full bringing America back from the brink and reintroducing what is best about this country to not only our friends and allies, but our enemies as well.
We better stop
Hey, what's that sound?
Everybody look, what's going down?
Copyright©2021 Kurt F. Stone
For What It's Worth lyrics © Cotillion Music Inc., Ten-east Music, Springalo Toones, Ten East Music, Richie Furay Music, Cotillion Music, Inc.