(That tweet, for reference is below. Who knows whether or not they were consciously aware that they were closely paralleling a real Nazi slogan, but the sentiment just by itself is clear enough. It's very notable that they are not even trying to pretend anymore.)
Also the transition to a fascist state begins very quickly after Windrip is elected. Within a few months after the Presidential election, America is in a state of fascism. Maybe in the 1930s this looked more realistic than it does now, but with apologies to Sinclair Lewis, I’d say that this rapid transition to Fascism can’t happen here. Not the way he portrays it at least.
....well, I'm clearly a chump, huh! Boy, was I ever wrong about that!
...the video mostly stands for itself. But one thing I do want to add is that whenever you see Christian nationalist politicians raising their heads, it's always useful to remember all of these guys are playacting. This has always been true, so I guess I shouldn't be shocked, but I find Pete Hegseth to be a particularly nauseating example of this. When he talks in the above video (at about 2:11) about fighting a spiritual war, just remind yourself of his past behavior.
Jenny is wife #3 who was married to someone else when she had his baby while he was married to someone else. During the overlap of the relationships a woman claimed he raped her. He claims it was consensual. Jenny had just had his baby. He just got divorced. No really. https://t.co/EZXZx5zEci
Like so much of what we hear today, it sounds unreal, doesn't it? Like, you think that this couldn't possibly be true, but, go ahead and Google it. It's true. I'm surprised this hasn't gotten highlighted more in mainstream news articles, but it's definitely a real story. This video does a good job of breaking down how blatantly corrupt the current administration is:
It's tempting to add my own editorials to all of this, but I think the video actually speaks for itself fairly well. The only things I might add are:
* I worry a little about the performative aspect of denouncing political violence, since I feel like it's assumed (and should be assumed) that all normal people oppose political violence. And yet, since we are living in particularly contentious times, maybe it doesn't hurt to communally remind ourselves of our values. We as a society denounce political violence.
* That being said, I think if you look at the history of political assassinations in America, it's about a 50/50 chance whether the guy who shot Charlie Kirk is an ideologue, or whether he is just some nutcase causing random violence. As was the case with the 2024 attempt on Trump. As was the case with the attempted assassination on Reagan (W). A lot of the gun violence in America doesn't actually have a rational reason to it. The school shootings are a perfect example of this. And in fact, any ideologue with half a brain must know that killing Charlie Kirk accomplishes nothing, since Kirk is just one of many voices in the right-wing movement. And in fact, killing him would just invite a conservative counter-reaction. (As we are currently seeing.) I mean, we'll have to wait until we eventually get more information about the shooter and we know for sure, but I'd be surprised if this was a purely political assassination.
* Speaking of the right-wing counter-reaction, Laura Loomer's statement that "more people will be murdered if the left isn't crushed with the power of the state" is particularly revealing.
Charlie Kirk wasn’t even controversial. He was moderate. He was conservative but by no means controversial.
Imagine who else the Left is going to hunt down and murder on the right if they wanted to kill a guy who said “get married, have kids, there’s 2 genders, vote for Trump.”…
I know the right hates it when the left calls them fascists, but, come on, guys, read a history book or something. You're acting like fascists.
* In other news mentioned in the video, the blatant corruption at Trump's FBI is...well, I guess I can't say it's surprising, but it's certainly depressing.
But then, as I moaned about in an earlier post, another part of me thinks, "What's the point of even getting upset about this anymore? After all, everyone knows how awful Trump is, and he still won the 2024 election. I guess this is just what the American people want.
Further Thoughts: September 12, 2025
Having had another day to think about it, I've decided that what's so infuriating about this discourse is that the Right is simultaneously trying to convince us that Charlie Kirk's inflammatory rhetoric had no consequences at all and also that the Left's inflammatory rhetoric was directly responsible for killing Charlie Kirk.
The Right has also been trying to remake Charlie Kirk out to be some sort of reasonable political commentator. Which he never was in his lifetime, and which no one ever pretended he was during his lifetime. Charlie Kirk was an Internet troll. Charlie Kirk followed the same model that has made so many other trolls famous in this Internet era--He intentionally said outrageous things in an effort to provoke extreme reactions from people, and then he used the publicity from those reactions to get more fame and attention. His comments and statements over the years are a matter of public record, and can be easily Googled. I won't list them all here, but a couple examples will suffice to give a flavor:
The American Democrat party hates this country. They wanna see it collapse. They love it when America becomes less white.
or
We need to have a Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming clinic doctor. We need it immediately.
This is obviously not speech aimed at healing America's divisions. This is speech designed to inflame hatred against Democrats and the LGBT community. And it's no surprise that people vocalized responses to this. This is rhetoric that's designed to evoke a response. That's how Kirk built his fame.
But then, having responded to these provocative statements (statements which, again were deliberately designed to provoke reactions) Democrats are now the ones who are blamed for creating the inflammatory rhetoric? How does that make sense?
And to be fair to Kirk, I don't believe he ever directly advocated for violence. He spread plenty of hate, but he didn't advocate for people to translate that hate into physical violence.
But then, to be equally fair, nobody on the Left ever advocated for Kirk's assassination. I don't know, maybe you could find some random Twitter accounts. But certainly no one prominently. And no elected members of the Democratic party, despite Republican congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna yelling at Democrats that "You all caused this" and "You fucking own this". But if Democrats never advocated for Charlie Kirk's assassination, then how did they cause it? I'm assuming she means by using rhetoric that demonized the other side. But then, Charlie Kirk made a whole career of rhetoric that demonized the other side.
Donald Trump and other Republicans say that the Left is responsible for Charlie Kirk's death because they compared him to the Nazis. But Charlie Kirk himself regularly made Nazi comparisons against the Left--he said abortion was worse than the Holocaust, he said that we need a Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming clinic doctor.
You can't have it both ways. If Kirk had a right to his rhetoric, then the Democrats have a right to theirs. You can't argue that Kirk's rhetoric had no implications, but that the rhetoric from the Democrats was directly responsible for causing his death.
For the past several years, whenever I am conversing about current events, I often find myself starting out by stating , "I know at this point nothing should shock me anymore, and yet..."
A man without a criminal record, and with court-ordered protected status, is sent to a torture prison in El Salvadore due to an administrative error. This man is a father, and was taken away from his family, including a 5-year-old austic son who he was caring for. Then the court orders the Trump administration to facilitate his return, and the Trump administration refuses to do it.
As far as moral conundrums go, this is one of the easy ones. Just return the wrongly imprisoned father to his wife and son. This doesn't have to be political. This doesn't have to be a left/right issue. Just do the obviously right thing. Please. This is one of the easy ones.
And yet, they won't do it.
And then I thought to myself, "How are we as a country allowing this to happen? Why are we not flooding the streets and demanding Kilmar Abrego Garcia be returned? Have we gotten to a point where we are so complacent and so desensitived that we can just read this in our news feeds and then go on to read something else?"
And that's when I realized, I could no longer stay silent.
The past few years, I've been trying to reinvent myself as apolitical (see here and here). I had become embarrased of my youthful political advocacy, for a number of reasons (in my youth, I had been arrogant, annoying, certain that I was always right, dismissive of other views, tribalistic, I had uncritically adopted the opinions of the thought leaders of the Left, etc.). Now that I'm middle-aged, I wanted to just be quiet and respectable and normal.
I also, although I did not state it at the time, really wanted to keep this blog politically neutral, because I'm currently on the job hunt, and I figured employers would view a politically outspoken blog as a liability.
But how can you keep silent when this stuff is going on?
The deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia is as blatant a miscarriage of justice as you could ask for. If we as a society can accept this, then we as a society can accept anything.
And I know that statistically Kilmar Abrego Garcia is just one person, but the way he's being treated is an indication of what our society will tolerate. When future historians write about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, what are they going to say about how the American public reacted to his case?
And if we stay silent when this type of thing happens, then, what really is the point of being alive? We're only on this earth for a few years. We have to at least do a little bit to confront the injustices of our time.
if I have nothing to offer other than stating the obvious (i.e. "this obviously really bad thing is obviously really bad"), then I'm just going to stay quiet
... but I take it back. Sometimes there's value in stating that something is bad and that you disapprove of it. If we get to a point where people stop doing this, if people are no longer outraged by blatant injustice, then we as a society have lost our morality.
And, I guess maybe I'll be doing more political posts on this blog after all. I didn't want to, but... well, to quote from The Fellowship of the Ring:
“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
It looks like the Michigan statewide state-wide interlibrary loan service called MeLCat may be in danger.
I got the following email from my local library:
The Michigan eLibrary (MeL) and MeLCat are made possible with funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). You most likely have heard about the Presidential Executive Order calling for the elimination of non-statutory components of IMLS, and earlier this week all IMLS staff were placed on administrative leave.
The Continuing Resolution that was approved by Congress and signed by the President on March 15, 2025 includes full funding of IMLS through September of this year. With no IMLS staff, it's unclear how the approved funding will be executed, but from what we know at this point in time, there are no changes or interruptions.
Please continue to enjoy use of these services. We are watching the developments closely and will keep you informed of changes as we become aware of them.
This is a service I actually use a lot since returning to the US. (Of course, it would be just my luck that right after I return to the US, they would get rid of this service.)
So, I just called the office of my local representative (link HERE) to let them know that this was a service I enjoyed using, and that I hoped it would continue to stay funded.
I took the kids to the park today. The air was grey, and it reminded me of the way the air looks on a polluted air day back in Saigon. But I thought to myself: "This can't be air pollution. Not here in West Michigan."
As of 3 p.m., Grand Rapids reported the worst air quality in the United States, ranking over other Midwestern cities also dealing with dust. The Air Quality Index in Grand Rapids was 397, which is enough to be hazardous.
397! Back in Saigon, I don't let the kids out of the house if the AQI is over 100. And here I had them playing outside when the Air Quality Index was 397!
I should have known something was wrong with the air by the way it looked. I just never thought I would have to deal with polluted air here in West Michigan. (One of the main reasons we moved back to the United States was because we wanted to escape the bad air quality that is in Vietnam.)
If you read the article, you can see that the bad air quality is supposedly caused by dust, and not factory pollution or anything. Still, I don't remember bad air quality days in Michigan when I was a kid. Is this the result of climate change?
Saturday, March 01, 2025
Serious question: What is our long term objective in Ukraine?
Is it realistic for Ukraine to win this war? Can Ukraine actually get back the land that Russia stole?
Or are we simply funding Ukraine for the sake of "making Russia pay"?
I know that in this war Russia is in the wrong, and Ukraine is in the right, but would it save lives and end suffering to just stop the war now?
I honestly don't know myself. And I won't pretend that I'm well enough informed on the war in Ukraine to have an opinion.
But, based on my Facebook and Twitter feeds from the past 24 hours, I'm a little bit worried that liberals are falling into the trap of just being reflexively against whatever Trump is for.
That being said, let's state the obvious. Trump and Vance are an embarrassment. Just look at the way they conducted themselves. (If you haven't watched the whole video yet, it's worth watching.)
It's impossible to watch this video and not come away with absolute loathing for Trump and Vance, and complete sympathy for Zelensky. Trump and Vance acted like bullies, Zelensky acted like a dignified patriot.
But, I want to be careful about making the following leap of logic: "Because Trump and Vance are bullies, that means we have to continue to support the war in the Ukraine"
I don't know. Maybe we do have to support the war in the Ukraine. What do I know?
But one thing I do know is that we shouldn't support the war in Ukraine just because Trump and Vance are bullies. And after reading Facebook and Twitter this morning, I'm worried that this is where the left seems to be going at the moment: "Trump and Vance are disgraceful, therefore we have to support the war."
Thursday, February 06, 2025
Because of my upbringing, I spent my formative years in conservative Christian culture, and I consider myself well-versed in conservative Christian arguments.
One subject that the Christian Left frequently uses to attack the Christian Right is the Christian duty to care for the poor and helpless. The Christian Left will frequently say, "You guys are being unchristian, because Christians are supposed to care for the poor, and you guys want to dismantle government programs that help the poor."
In response to this, the Christian Right will say, "Exactly. It is not the duty of Christians to care for the poor, not the government. We as individual Christians, or as Christian charities should care for the poor, but not the government." Some of them even go further, and argue that when the government provides for the poor, the government is in effect depriving Christians of their opportunity to care for the poor, and since the Christian duty to care for the poor is a sacred thing, the government is actually depriving them of their religious practice.
If you grew up in the church, you've probably heard this all before yourself. If not, take my word for it, it's an argument frequently used by conservative Christians to justify why they want to end government assistance to the poor. If someone were to do the work, and go through conservative Christian publications from the last 40 years, I'm pretty you'd be able to find this argument articulated in print numerous times.
Anyway, you can probably tell where I'm going with all this. With the shutdown of USAID, it's been widely predicted that this will result in a lot of deaths. From the Guardian:
Analysis confirms that several thousand women and girls are likely to die from complications during pregnancy and childbirth as a direct result of Trump’s order to freeze aid to the agency for 90 days.
...
The initial repercussions include the abandonment in warehouses of supplies of crucial drugs in Sudan, the site of what is currently the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, as well as in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where recent fighting in the east has further destabilised the fragile region.
Across Africa, hundreds of thousands of children who rely on school meals have been left without sustenance after food was left to rot in the wake of Musk’s declaration that he wanted the US aid agency to “die”.
...
In Bangladesh, the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, which coordinates pioneering research into one of the most prolific killers of children, has laid off some of the world’s most respected scientists working on malaria programmes.
...
Elsewhere, the director of a major international aid organisation in Colombia – who also requested anonymity – feared the impact on those who most needed help. “The people who this is going to affect the most are those already without a safety net. Precisely those who are least able to find another source of food, shelter or income,” they said.
...etc. Go read the whole article for all the impending humanitarian disasters.
Okay, Christians, now is your chance! Time to put your money where your mouth is. This is your opportunity to step in and fill the gap that is left by the withdraw of Government aid to the poor. This is what you've been waiting for. Now dig into your pocketbooks, and do your Christian duty.
The world’s richest man has decided that the world’s richest country shouldn't help some of the world’s poorest people.
This is blatantly illegal. An unelected billionaire cannot simply shut down federal agencies authorized by Congress at will. pic.twitter.com/uzExo2xc1z
Update update: Just now saw Jeremy Konyndyk quoted on the Philip Defranco show. Watch from 7:38 to see him quoted:
Monday, July 15, 2024
Information is of course still coming out, but based on this CNN profile of the shooter, I wouldn't be surprised if the shooter was entirely apolitical, and just wanted to assassinate Trump as a way to make his mark on the world, and let everyone know he existed.
It wouldn't be completely unheard of. Arguably most assassinations in the U.S. are of this variety. (Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinkley Jr., Mark David Chapman--You'd have to go pretty far back in U.S. history to find an assassination that was actually political).
This is also the motivation of many school shooters. And as has been pointed out by others, this young man was in the same age range as the typical school shooter.
I've been seeing a lot of talk on social media about how this is a sign that political polarization is out of control, but I'm tempted to see this incident not as an example of political extremism, but just another example of the problem of gun violence in the United States--a lot of available guns, and a lot of disturbed young men do not make a good combination.
But of course the Right is going to make this into a huge martyr story. I mean, of course they will. To be perfectly honest, I think that if the positions had been reversed, and a prominent Democratic politician had been shot at, I would probably have a hard time not seeing it as a political attack. That's just the way we humans think. We can't imagine that this was just a random example of gun violence, so we have to see it as a political conspiracy.
(Someone, I forget who at the moment, used this tendency to explain all the elaborate conspiracy theories behind JFK's assassination. We humans can't fathom that a President could just be killed by some random nobody, so we have to make an elaborate conspiracy theory about it.)
So... be prepared for the Right to be talking about this event in political terms for some time to come.
Addendum: This Tweet popped up in my Twitter feed.
According to Twitter, Trump staged a fake assassination attempt to win an election he thinks he’s winning, or Biden brilliantly masterminded this plot to distract from his cognitive decline
I've been using Google Podcast to listen to my podcasts for the past several years now. It was easy to access from a web-browser, it worked great, and it didn't require me to sign in or create a special account or anything. (Don't even get me started on how cumbersome I found itunes.)
The good news is, I'm transitioning to Youtube Music, and it seems to be working pretty well. So it looks like I'll still be able to listening to my podcasts without any major interruption.
The bad news is, on this blog I've linked to Google Podcast links many times over the last few years, and those links are all dead now.
Link Rot is unfortunately a big problem in my archives. So many of the links I've used over the years are now dead. And now, we can add all the Google Podcast links to that list.
Addendum:
I may have spoken too soon. Now I'm having trouble getting my podcast to play on Youtube Music. Hopefully they get the bugs sorted out of it before too long.
Is the Christian Reformed Church in the process of splitting? That's certainly the impression I get from reading recent Facebook posts from my friends who are still in Grand Rapids. But I don't know, I'm out of the loop. (If anybody out there know what's really happening, feel free to let me know in the comments.)
In one sense, cantankerous protestant churches splitting over church doctrine is a classic "dog bites man" story.
But in another sense, this is kind of a big deal, isn't it? I mean, if a major split does occur, it would be the first time the CRC split in living memory. The last big split was all the way back in 1924.
I remember my 11th grade religion teacher taught us about that split. He used it as an example to illustrate how fiercely our great-grandfathers had argued over minor doctrinal points. The way he described it, the whole town of Grand Rapids was worked into a fervor over the issue. Passionate speeches were made on both sides. People were putting up signs in their yard denouncing rival theologians. Everyone was choosing a side.
After describing this ridiculous scene, my religion teacher lamented, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, that we had lost that passion for debating theology.
I've never been entirely sure how much of the picture he painted was accurate. (He was one of those teachers who loved to tell a good story, and was sometimes prone to exaggeration.) But the split itself did indeed happen. You can read all about it on Wikipedia.
The issue that split the church at the time was the issue of Common Grace--something that it's very hard to imagine people getting worked up about nowadays, but, like my religion teacher said, our great-grandfathers took their theology a lot more seriously.
(Or...perhaps people just always need something to argue about. If there are no major theological disagreements to hash out, like woman in office or LGBTQ rights, then people will settle for getting worked up about common grace.)
[Common Grace, as my 11th grade religion teacher described it, is basically the idea that there are some aspects of God's grace which are available to all--Christians and non-Christians alike. So a non-Christian might not be saved, but they might still be inspired by God to do something good. Non-Christians may also be inspired by God to create great works of art.--See more info in the Wikipedia article on Common Grace]
The Wikipedia article alludes to three doctrinal points on common grace that caused the split, but doesn't actually say what they are. But that information can be found easily enough elsewhere on the Internet. See this article from the Protestant Reformed Website: The Three Points of Common Grace (CRC - 1924). I'll quote the main idea from each of the three points below:
1. Apart from the saving grace of God shown only to those that are elect unto eternal life, there is also a certain favor or grace of God which He shows to His creatures in general.
2. God by the general operations of His Spirit, without renewing the heart of man, restrains the unimpeded breaking out of sin, by which human life in society remains possible
3. The unregenerate, though incapable of doing any saving good, can do civil good.
...and that's what caused the 1924 split. Crazy, huh?
The article contains this depressing line at the end:
El Nino is forecast to end this year, however, Quyet believes that the intensity of heat in the south is unlikely to decrease in the dry season in the coming years. Current climate fluctuations are becoming increasingly unusual. They easily break old rules, which means forecasting is also more difficult.
"There is only one sure trend, which is that the temperature will keep increasing, both globally and in Vietnam," Quyet said.
Granted I don't spend a lot of time outside--just going to and from work, and going out at lunchbreak. But during the times that I do go outside, it's not like I'm burning up or anything.
If this is the what the future holds, I guess I can survive it.
And although I have been spending the majority of my time inside air-conditioned buildings the last few days, as longs as there's no apocalypse, and electric air-conditioners continue to work fine in the future, I should be okay. (If society ever breaks down, and we lose our source of electricity, then I'll be in trouble. But that's probably unlikely. Right?)
*****************************************
Yesterday my wife told me that we need to spend 11 Million VND ($430 USD) to buy her parents an air conditioner.
They have spent their whole lives living out in the provinces in Vietnam and never needed an air conditioner before. But now it's so hot that they can't stand it anymore. (My wife says that during the afternoon, the whole extended family goes to her brother-in-law's house. He has one room which has an air-conditioner, and they all sit in that room.)
I was reluctant to spend the extra money. (Every month I keep thinking that this will be the month when we finally save some money, and every month we have new expenses come up.) But I agreed, they needed an air-conditioner. You don't want to be in this heat without an air-conditioner. "Yes, buy it for them," I said. "They're going to need it."
...I am, of course, fully aware of the air conditioning paradox. So hopefully the change to renewable energy happens soon, so we don't have to worry about our air-conditioners running on fossil-fuels.
But in the mean time, what can you do? You have to keep cool somehow.
It's scary, but the climate crisis is no longer something off in the distant future. It's here now.
Fortunately, it hasn't finished me yet. I've been hot, but I've been surviving. (I like to think that years of living in the tropics have acclimatized me somewhat to the heat.) But I also spend most of my day inside air-conditioned rooms.
(...and that's not even counting all the times I've made little throwaway references to Kissinger over the years when I wanted to use him as an example of evil--like in my review of The Count of Monte Cristo, etc.)
Now, looking back at all these posts from the past 20 years, I do admit to some embarrassment about them. There was certainly a performative element to hating Kissinger. (It was a way of virtue signaling on the Left.) There was also an element of bandwagonism in my Kissinger hating. (The people I admired, Chomsky, Hitchens and Tom Tomorrow, all hated Kissinger, so I hated Kissinger.)
Now that I reflect back on my 20 years of blogging, I look back with embarrassment on posts that reflect virtue signaling, performative hating, and tribalism. In the future, I hope to do better.
...which is not to say that any of the awful things that Chomsky, Hitchens, Shawcross, etc. attributed to Kissinger are not true. I'm sure it's all true. It's just to say that I regret appropriating their anger for my own virtue signaling.
Yea, fuck no. Of all people, the dude who basically blamed me and my friends' existence any time more than 3 people died together is not getting a pass. And just WAIT til Kissinger dies, man. I could be on my deathbed, and I would drag myself out to celebrate that shit. https://t.co/5BFShivdLw
— Ela Bambust, 🏳️⚧️ professional author (@Elamimaxima) June 8, 2023
Look, I don't like Pat Robertson any more than the next guy. (See my old posts HERE , HERE and HERE).
But... it doesn't make any sense to view it as a victory when he dies.
To my mind, the only way this would work as a victory (or even as a jeer), would be if the person jeering at Pat Robertson was somehow immune from death themselves.
Like, "Alright! Awesome. Pat Robertson's dead at 93 years old! I guess we've won today. Because he lived out his full natural lifespan and then died. But I will never have to die. So who's laughing now, Pat Robertson?"
(I think part of what's going on here is that most of us are, on some subconscious level, in denial about our own mortality. So we tend to view death as "something that only happens to other people" and thus something that can safely be jeered at.)
*Sigh* Twitter's going to be just awful when Kissinger finally dies, isn't it? I'll probably have to come back to tap the sign again at that time. Until next time...
We've actually moved past that phase now. (He's walking around by himself now.) But for those few months, at least, this video was one of the ones I had in regular rotation in our apartment.
The legend of David Crosby has long been a source of fascination to me. Over the years, I've spent a few afternoons researching David Crosby to try to figure out at what point exactly this man became such a rock and roll icon.
I mean, I do get that he was part of two of the biggest pop groups in history--The Byrds, and Crosby, Stills and Nash (and sometimes Young). But he was hardly the driving force behind either group. When you think of The Byrds' characteristic sound, you're thinking about Roger McGuinn, right? And think of classic a CSNY hit. It's not one of David Crosby's songs you're thinking of, right?
Plus, neither The Byrds nor CNSY were particularly associated with hard rock. The Byrds were folk rock. And as for CSNY... okay they had a few rocking songs, but they also had a lot of songs that would play on soft rock stations. I used to hear at lot of CSNY while getting my teeth cleaned at the dentist back in the 80s and 90s.
[Sidenote: Do soft rock radio stations still exist, or was that just an 80s and 90s thing? I don't know, I've been - living - abroad for the past 20 years. But I feel like I haven't heard anyone say the word "soft rock" for a couple decades. Anyway...]
But in the 90s, when I started first becoming aware of the pop culture world, David Crosby was frequently referenced, and often parodied, as someone who embodied the rock and roll lifestyle. Back then he was referenced on Wayne's World, SNL, The Simpsons, etc.
So, every now and then, I would get curious, and spend some time on Wikipedia trying to figure out: At what point exactly did David Crosby become such an icon?
Looking back on it now, I think the answer is actually surprisingly simple. David Crosby was in the news a lot in the 1980s for his drug related problems. So, in the 90s, he was the go-to punch line for comedians who wanted to reference the excesses of rock stars. I was too young in the 1980s to be following pop culture trends. I started absorbing popular culture in the 1990s, so I was just old enough to absorb all the jokes about David Crosby, without really understanding the context.
**********************************
As for my own history with David Crosby, I was a huge Byrds fan at one stage in my life (from about 17-22.)
The Byrds are, at least in my opinion, an acquired taste. Their melodies don't really catch you the first time you hear them. But if you listen to their albums a few times, they'll start to grab you.
I started out intrigued by the look of The Byrds (Roger Mcguinn in the iconic granny glasses, etc), which I got glimpses of from some of the rock and roll documentaries that were on TV in the 1990s. And the distinctive twangy sound of The Byrds also intrigued me. So I first got their greatest hits album, and then, once I had absorbed that, moved on to their other albums.
I only bought the first 4 albums of The Byrds: Mr. Tambourine Man, Turn! Turn! Turn!, Fifth Dimension, Younger Than Yesterday--i.e. the 4 albums that David Crosby was a part of.
The reason being is that I was overly influenced by the notes on the CD jacket that claimed that these 4 albums were the true Byrds sound, and that after David Crosby left, it just wasn't the same band anymore. (These were the 1996 CD re-releases--the ones with the remastered sound and all the bonus tracks.)
In the years since then, I've come to realize that I probably missed out by not following The Byrds on through their later albums (there were actually some good songs by the later Byrds) but unfortunately, I'm easily influenced, and at the time I just took the advice of the notes on the CD jacket.
I think I got those albums when I was 17, and played them a lot over the years from 17 to 22.
As I mentioned above, David Crosby was hardly the driving creative force behind The Byrds. Most of their signature songs were by the other members of the band. But there were a few David Crosby songs on those albums, and of those David Crosby songs, the ones that I really loved at the time were:
It is with some embarrassment that I add that when I was 17 and 18, I thought these songs were much better than they actually were. I thought at the time there was a lot of deep meaning to these songs. I listen to them now, and am struck by how shallow and banal they actual are in comparison to the deep meaning I once ascribed to them.
For example, I once thought Why was a really deep song about teenage rebellion. I listen to it now, and I realize it's an incredibly banal song about teenage rebellion. I also used to, at one point, imagine Renaissance Fair was a critique of capitalism. Etc.
(This is, unfortunately, very typical of 19 year old me. I thought I was so deep, and didn't realize how shallow I actually was.)
In addition to The Byrds, another band I was huge into at this time was Jefferson Airplane. (As I've written about on this blog before HERE and HERE), and David Crosby was really tight with Jefferson Airplane back in the day. He gave them the song Triad . And the song Wooden Ships was co-composed by David Crosby and Jefferson Airplane members.
(This episode was re-run on VH1 during the 1990s, which is where I saw it.)
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As I mentioned above, most of the iconic CSNY songs are by one of the other members. But a few years ago, when I was going on one of my aforementioned David Crosby research rabbit holes on Wikipedia, I came across one of the signature David Crosby CSNY songs: I Almost Cut My Hair:
...which I had never heard of until a couple years ago, but immediately fell in love with it once I heard it.
For one thing, it's a genuinely soulful blues number played earnestly.
The lyrics are incredibly silly. It's self-parody territory really. And I do imagine David Crosby wrote it somewhat tongue-in-cheek. But then they play it so earnestly that it's hard to know what to make of it.
I mean, this whole song about just thinking about cutting your hair, and then making it into a whole dramatic number like this? How can you not love a song like that?
At that time, a couple years ago, my hair was getting a bit long, and my wife kept telling me I was overdue for a haircut, so I used to play this song a lot in our apartment.
Happy Lunar New Year, and welcome to 2023, the Year of the Cat.
What's that you say? You say it's actually the year of the rabbit. And that there is no year of the cat. And in fact, there's a whole legend to explain why the cat got left out of the zodiac--the mouse tricked the cat by telling him to come on the wrong day, and thus the cat got didn't get a year appointed to him, and that's why cats have been chasing mice ever since.
Ahh.... you're thinking about China, Japan and Korea. In Vietnam, this is the Year of the Cat.
