American Famine

 Most of the time I don't regret being a musician.  When push comes to shove I resort to music to regain my sanity, reset my ideals, and express my thoughts and feelings about a declining America.  Lately the overt emotion is grief for the loss of just about everything.  America's music industry, once a driving force in our domestic economy, has been castrated by Napster, Apple, and Youtube.  While the network of file sharing created by Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker quickly was shut down for multiple copyright infringements, Steve Jobs used his business and personal savvy to court lucrative agreements for music distribution through his newly created iTunes online store.  Digital music distribution through the internet has hobbled America's once thriving music industry.  Like other corporate monopolies in America who stifle competition, also they cherry pick the revenue for themselves doling out minuscule royalty payments to writers and performers.  At the onset of 2024 the reality of a professional, wage-earning, musical performing artist is a fantasy pitched on any of the evening television talent shows.  These shows, along with Reality TV as a genre, have undermined professional artist opportunities.  Consequently what now is offered as "content" is inexpensive, shallow, and disposable fodder polluting the minds of everyone.  Before internet distribution music, television, and film aspired to higher ideals, because mainstream society would not accept less.  Today we have no choice, and this inane content has become poisonous, manipulative, and vituperative.  It has become propaganda.  The morality tales of yore have long passed, and the oft predicted age of Grift has arrived.  It is a modern American Dark Ages.  Being a musician, a thoughtful, caring, contemplative artist who is concerned with the health of humanity is not in vogue.  It is not wanted.  Music of this caliber is a distraction.  The Trump Era has made it the enemy not unlike the Third Reich.  Music that explores, embraces, and enhances the human spirit and its capabilities now is evil instead of good.  Herein is the plight of the persecuted Jesus.  For believing in and supporting Jesus Christ, you will become persecuted.  While I know and understand these things, it is easier to become mute.  The burden of carrying the weight of society's morality is unusually heavy.  There comes a time when your well becomes depleted, and you must turn to your community and environment for inspiration.  One particular situation in American culture has become troublesome, and it is the infusion to the point of exclusion of LGBT tendencies in theater.  It is not possible to frequent a local theater show without being confronted with the LGBT agenda.  They have chosen theater as their club, and the traditions and ideals of American musical theater have been lost.  This is because the male female romantic relationship upon which was based most story lines now is passe.  It seems unobtainable, because America has changed so much in the last two decades.  We have reached such a point of doubt, malice, and vengeance, to support such a relationship seems naive and absurd.  In reality it is the LGBT movement that has undermined this concept replacing it instead with campy drag depictions of satirical vitriol.  The once sacrosanct, eternal, and God-sanctioned sacrament of heterosexual love has been rejected.  Good luck trying to resurrect this dinosaur.  Existing only in the hypothetical isn't healthy, and the rose-colored glasses will cause your eventual demise.  One must acknowledge and confront reality to some degree.  Wearing the necessary sentiments on your sleeve for artistic expression exposes your most tender flanks, and the wolves are hungry.  Believe me, there is nothing to eat.