There aren’t many songs featured in today’s issue, so no playlist. Also, this issue is shorter than usual. So it should be a quick read for those interested.
Warning: If you believe politics and art should be separate, you probably won’t count yourself among those interested.
Courtesy of my wife, Padmasini, a doctor, an immigrant and someone deeply invested in the rights of all people, who now lives in the U.S. but is from Mumbai.
This song was suggested by my wife, who, being from Mumbai, was raised on Bollywood movies and music. It also features my favorite Bollywood actor, Aamir Khan.
It was created by legendary composer A. R. Rahman for the movie “Lagaan,” which is about a small village in India that, during the British colonial period, is challenged to a game of cricket in order to avoid the oppressive taxes levied against them. On top of British oppression, the village is also in the midst of a years-long drought. And the lyrics of “Ghanan Ghanan” are a call for rain. But they also read as a call for hope amid the pain of British imperialism.
I’m a big fan of artistic rebels who use their music to punch up, as evidenced by my piece on women in punk. And I also love a hopeful message, such as those imparted by early- and mid-aughts rappers like Lupe Fiasco, Chance the Rapper, or Noname, which I wrote about in my piece on regional rap music.
I believe wholeheartedly in the power of art as a vehicle for political messaging and change. In my mind, anyone who thinks we need to remove politics from music is either an ignorant idiot or being disingenuous. If the former, someone should teach them. And if the latter, they’re liars. In other words, as I’ve been saying since the dawn of Napster, fuck Metallica.
Music has always been political. Including in India. Trace the history of Indian film back 80 years and you’ll find the song “Desa Sevai Syya Vaareer” from the Tamil movie “Thyaga Bhoomi.” This song calls for the Indian people to take pride in their at-the-time colonized homeland. The movie was later banned by the British government. Fast forward to the early 2000s and you’ll find Sri Lankan Tamil rapper M.I.A. making music about the Tamil genocide and calling for the liberation of the Palestinian people.
And now, as the Cockroach Janta Party in India takes to the streets in protest of the competitive authoritarianism of Narenda Modi and the BJP, they’ve created an official playlist in support of their movement.
Art is inherently human, and so it is inherently political. It’s that simple. And that’s what brings me to my message for today’s short and sweet issue. In the immortal words of YG and Nipsey Hussle, “Fuck Donald Trump.”
In a few days those of us who live in the U.S. will have an opportunity to do more than change the makeup of Congress. We’ll have a chance to direct the political trajectory beyond Donald Trump. It is as an important a midterm election as there has been in generations.
Politically, I lean pretty far to the left. But I believe that, regardless of where you stand, we should build a coalition of liberal voters arrayed against the illiberal, fascist forces dominant on the right. Not just in the U.S., but worldwide. And, to be clear, when I say liberal I don’t mean American liberalism, which simply means left-of-center or progressive. I refer to the classical definition grounded in individual rights, equality before the law, and pluralism, among other things.
The United States is and always has been a liberal country founded in liberal ideals, even if the South was, for long stretches, a white supremacist authoritarian enclave. Even the conservatives of the 20th century pursued a liberal program, albeit one that sought to leverage accumulation of capital to centralize power in a ruling class.
(I understand that there’s a strain of left thinkers who believe liberalism is incompatible with leftism. There’s a long history of liberal socialists who would disagree.)
Tuesday, November 3 is our opportunity to punch back. To punch up against the forces of oppression. To punch up against billionaire class. To punch up against the manifestation of evil that is people like Donald Trump, Stephen Miller, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Pete Hegseth.
I believe in the dignity of every person, a belief that, as I’ve grown older, I’ve increasingly attributed to my Catholic upbringing. Not that you need to be raised Catholic to recognize that dignity. Historian and Catholic theologian Garry Wills wrote that creation isn’t a one time event, but a constant. God is creating every moment we experience and so all that is is imbued with his divine touch. Therefore, evil is the lack of is. It is the act of replacing creation with nothing.
While it is wrong that the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation, it is correct that Christian thought played a role. Many of the founders actually weren’t all that religious, at least in an orthodox Christian sense. Thomas Jefferson rewrote the Bible to remove all the miracles.
But they were religious enough to believe that all people have dignity (or, at least in their case, all white men). That is the ideal that America was founded on. And over the course of time we’ve righteously reformed our constitution and laws to reflect the dignity in all people, not just white men.
Trump and co. seek to negate the dignity of people they see as less than them. They seek to replace that dignity with nothing. That is especially true of the effort to erase the dignity of other humans. And it is what makes the people in charge of this country forces of evil.
The illiberal coalition led by people like Donald Trump, Stephen Miller, and Elon Musk aim to erase the dignity of the people they otherize in order to reify the existence of a ruling class comprising themselves. They’ve suffocated whatever good was inherent in themselves in order to cast an evil pall over the people of the world.
Immigrants have dignity. Poor people have dignity. The disabled have dignity. Women have dignity. People of all races have dignity. Gay people have dignity. Trans people have dignity.
Any act to erase that dignity is an act of evil.
The forces of good are the forces that oppose those who seek to divide us by erasing the inherent dignity of the few in the eyes of the many in order to accumulate power for themselves. The forces of good are the forces of creation. After all, as I wrote a couple weeks ago, artistic creation is a small-scale replication of divine creation. And art has long taken this role seriously. From the beginning art has been imbued with political purpose.
So, fuck the illiberal forces of evil who seek to invalidate your vote or stir distrust in the electoral system. And, honestly, fuck the wing of the left that disparages democracy too. Power belongs in the hands of the people, because the people have inherent dignity. But right now, those in government and in the 1% seek to concentrate it in the hands of their own ruling class.
It’s time to take the art of punching up to the polls. It’s time to create a better future for people everywhere.
I don’t have much more to say other than this:
Vote.