It's Time to Vote Blue or Else

There are a few things on my mind.  With the midterm elections less than a month away and the commencement of early voting, two things could be happening.  I have to remind myself of one, and it is neither easy nor pleasant to do.  In the last few rounds of the election fight, things get dirty.  The mud slinging begins, and slander is rife with Super PAC sponsored television ads.  If we thought the news was predominantly negative, remind yourself what is at stake.  Democrats have a chance of controlling the House of Representatives flipping it blue.  It has not been long since they controlled both houses of Congress, but it seems like ages.  The first two years of Donald Trump's second presidency seem like an eternity, because his administration diligently has tried to dismantle  democracy and establish autocratic dictatorial rule.  This happens by expanding the President's powers, ignoring the courts, and mounting scare and intimidation campaigns against political enemies.  It has been two years of thuggery, and America is tired of being pulled backward into our unpleasant past.  Most Americans are honest, hard working, God fearing people who want a life for themselves and their families.  There is no time to dote on racism, bigotry, and fascism.  Americans are working trying to realize what is left of the American dream.  Those championing Trump's ideals are the super rich, who no longer do anything for a living except move money.  These include huge hedge fund managers.  It is so disturbing that the core grassroots philosophy of Americans, through our unique culture  of Jazz, Rock, cinema, and television has been usurped.  These artistic endeavors, which forged America, are being disguised, hidden, and eradicated.  It is Cancel Culture, and it is racist, because of the monumental and long reaching accomplishments of many African-Americans.  I am involved and interested in these endeavors including the Blues, improvisational Jazz, Gospel organ, R&B, and Soul.  I have made a conscious effort to further my knowledge of these art forms, because when taking the General Exams at The Ohio State University, Dr. Ted McDaniel candidly pointed out my shortcomings.  It didn't seem to matter to him, one of my doctoral committee members, that my degree was in Contemporary Classical Music.  I was involved with Jazz at OSU and won several awards for trumpet performance and composition, but he was not keen on my departure to larger, European-based, classical ensembles and their accompanying musical repertoire.  Thirty years later his words continue to resound in my head urging me to continue my study of music but in the aesthetic of the remainder of American Popular Music.  In this quest for further musical knowledge,  I immersed myself in the emotional and historical side of purely American music.  The Blues, Roots Music, Old Time, Bluegrass, Country, String Band, Civil War, Ragtime, Minstrel, Vaudeville, Broadway, and Americana all have been on the menu.  It is a wide pallet and no wonder one scholar could not know it all.  It is not dissimilar from the history of European art music, with its wide pallet created by different languages, countries, and bloodlines.  Art at its best is being created at the communal level with many interested parties fueling each others' passions.  "It Takes a Village," and America no longer is a village or even remembers what one is.  The Trump Presidencies, instead of reinforcing American solidarity with a resurgence of support of the Civil Rights Movement, have sought to separate cultures, languages, and skin colors, and pit them against each another in violence.  They have fueled civil war among the American people; it is a miracle that full throttle civil war domestically has not emerged.  Maybe it has, and it covertly is being waged by the overtaking of our own governments and the destroying of American principles and processes.  We all should remember DOGE and Elon Musk, as they are responsible for this assault on American agencies, the Civil Service, and the Deep State.  Their metaphor is, "No regulation for the private sector," without which Corporate America has become weaponized against the common man.  It is nothing new.  Ask DuPont about the beginnings of PFAS contamination decades ago and the settling of one lawsuit at a time masking the severity of illness caused by the byproducts of the manufacturing of Teflon.  It has been ongoing since the 1960's.  They, this company, with its negligence and greed, causes death and severe illness in thousands of product-buying American citizens.  Cloaked domestic genocide, the same methodology Donald Trump is using to dismantled a free America.  Are we listening?