(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
Daily Kos, You misunderstood our Putin song. That’s our fault. [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags']
Date: 2022-11-08
On Sunday, community member maxpenny posted about our song “Who Was Putin Paying” on the site. Suddenly our 93-second song and video were getting a whole lot of buzz from the Daily Kos community.
Don’t get us wrong. It was thrilling.
But as the comments poured in, both on the site and off, we got a sinking feeling.
The song is a howl of outrage about the American right’s descent into fascism. It’s told from the perspective of a guy who desperately wants to pin the blame for all this on Russian interference.
The point of the song is that this guy is wrong.
It’s an important point. Not just in our song! It’s important today as the election unfolds, and it will be important in the weeks and months to come, as our democracy careens deeper into crisis.
As many people have written many times, right here on this site: in the U.S., fascism doesn’t need to be imported. From the plantations to the reservations to the carceral state, we have our own long history of militarized subjugation. From DW Griffith to Dirty Harry to “lock her up,” we have our own traditions celebrating the exercise of brute strength and enforced consent.
And too many Americans—including Democratic leaders, media figures, and the guy in our song—have done cartwheels to pretend “this is not who we are.” Well, it sure as hell isn’t all of who we are. But it’s a pretty big part. And the urge to disbelieve that fact overlaps, dangerously, with the urge to disbelieve that things could get very, very bad.
So when people responded to our song as if it was an invitation to argue about who was on the Russian payroll—that was distressing. That wasn’t the argument we meant to invite anyone to! Quite the opposite! As artists, we’re trying to help push the conversation in the other direction.
In fact, here’s what we’re trying to do: reinforce all the people doing the hard work of formulating a more brutally honest vision of our country, that can then be the foundation for a more grimly, realistically, urgently hopeful vision of what this country can become.
If that’s you, and you watched our video, and you felt like you had stumbled into a Putin conspiracy zone, we apologize. We think we know where we screwed up. We overrode the key stanza of the song with visuals from January 6 that were so visceral and alarming, that the point of the lyrics got buried. We’ve fixed that (hopefully) by enabling subtitles.
FWIW, here is that stanza:
So we had an insurrection—did you see it on TV?
It kinda got defended by the whole GOP.
And the tragedy, the travesty, the saddest thing I’ll ever see
Is if it should turn out to be…
Oh f- me.
These idiots were doing Putin’s work for free.
If you read this far, thank you for hearing us out. If you watched the video, thank you for giving us your 90 seconds. And if you’re out there pushing for that bigger vision—mobilizing voters, haranguing senators, organizing your workplace, posting comments here—thank you. Thank you. We’re going to need all the help we can get.
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/11/8/2134548/-Daily-Kos-You-misunderstood-our-Putin-song-That-s-our-fault
Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/
