Not Afraid of Elon, Are You?

You can learn to draw like this — see my art books for more!

That’s right, I’m not afraid of Elon. Not that I don’t believe he has the power of life and death over me, but that doesn’t scare me — why would it? Let me tell you a story:

It was Poland, on September 1st, in the year 1939, just as World War II was about to begin, that an old Jewish peasant was walking along a country road, when suddenly up swoops a convoy of Mercedes Benz limousines and military vehicles.

The convoy slows down, and and comes to a stop. The peasant looks up to see Adolf Hitler sitting directly across from him, in the back of the fanciest limo.

Two soldiers grab the old man and haul him up to Hitler’s car. Hitler lowers the window and asks, “Do you know who I am?” The old man nods “yes”.

“And do you know that I have the absolute power of life and death over you?”

“I suppose so,” the man nods.

“Suppose so? Suppose so? Hitler raged. “Mueller, Sterner, show him!” So they forced the old man to eat some mud, then they made him drink from a puddle on the side of the road, and after that, they pulled him back up to his feet, and again dragged him up to the open window of Hitler’s Mercedes.

“Now do you believe me?” Hitler screamed.

“Yes, I believe you,” the old man managed to gasp out. The two soldiers dropped him to the ground, the window rolled up, and the convoy proceeded on its way.

The old man staggered along the road until he came to his farm. His wife ran out into the yard, exclaiming over his torn clothing and mud-stained face. “What happened to you?” she cried out.

“Never mind what happened to me,” he said, “you’ll never guess who I had lunch with!”

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It’s that kind of attitude, that funny way of looking at things, that sustains me in the hard times and it will come in handy once again in the Hard Times that are coming.

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The story of the old man and Hitler is, in essence, what it feels like to be under the thumb of Elon Musk, a South-African apartheid billionaire immigrant who’s pretending to be an American citizen, and is a fair copy of Adolf Eichmann’s latest reincarnation.

It’s amazing that this idiot, sitting in Washington but with no actual position, could affect me directly in my daily life, but he does, every day, and there’s no way to avoid him.

I try to maintain my sense of humor, but those guys are in my face every day — to them, every day is just another news cycle.

I’m an artist, author, jeweler, antiquarian bookseller and, to top it all off, I’m a registered protest singer from the 1960s, all of which could easily cost me dearly in this sick, thoroughly fascistic, public environment.

What this Time-Frame needs most is a Bobby Dylan, a Country Joe MacDonald, a Joan Baez or if they’re not available, I guess it’d be me who’s left standing, to sing us back to sanity. Hell, I volunteered for this mission a long time ago.

You think a song can’t bring down a creep? Sometimes the first shot across the bow is enough to stop the fighting before anyone actually gets hurt.

If President Musk ever sits behind the “Intrepid” desk in the oval office, we’re doomed, and that’s no exaggeration, so share my protest songs everywhere you can.

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And then I was thinking, the one-third rule always holds — one third will hate it, one third will like it and one third will be totally indifferent to it and unaware of it, whatever it is. With that in mind, remember that I performed at the Gaslight with Bob Dylan, Hugh Romney, Shepard Sherbell and Peter, Paul & Mary, but we weren’t all on the stage at the same time.

My music teacher for nine years was Pete Seeger, which is why my folk songs almost always come out in the flavor of protest. I find that recently I have a lot of complaints, which I will surely turn into songs of protest-without-rage. That last is important. No rage.

Why no rage? Because unlike all the other protest song writers, I do it for the money.

That’s a joke.

At the Gates of Heaven, three gentlemen appear. Saint Peter asks the first one, “How much money did you make?”

“Oh, gosh,” the first man said, “I made a hundred thousand a year.”

“What did you do for a living?” Saint Peter asked.

“I was an investment banker.”

“I made two hundred thousand a year,” the second man said.

“And what did you do for a living?”

“I was a stockbroker specializing in short sales.”

“Huh,” said the third man, “I only made twelve thousand a year, and that was the good times.”

“Oh,” Saint Peter exclaimed, “so what instrument did you play?”

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And then there’s the protest song about protest songs… sort of an endless loop, if you look at it one way, and an open door if you see it quite a different way. It’s all about how you look at it, or if you even do look at it, whatever it is.