I am currently carrying out a final read-through of my On Track Phil Ochs book. So much is so relevant to what is going on in the States right now – the rise of fascism, the conservatism of the working class, the propaganda machinery of Fox News. MAGA comes out of a system that has brainwashed generation after generation, run on fear, racism and conspiracy. Phil Ochs predicted it, described it and saw it all coming. The billionaires orchestrate it. Trump is the charismatic conman.
Here’s a little extract:
To end, he plays a rousing ‘I Ain’t Marching Anymore’ and says this:
‘I’m going to play you a protest song. A protest song is defined as something
you don’t hear on the radio. They say you don’t because the guy can’t sing
or because the words are too bad. The shit they play these days. It’s all to do
with the process all around the Western hemisphere – England, France, the
USA, Canada, the media syndrome where they control everybody’s mind with
mindlessness and mind distortions, distortions of the facts, which led all of us
into the Vietnam War and all of us into the Kennedy assassinations. What can
you do? Here you are, a helpless soul, a helpless piece of flesh amid all this
cruel, cruel machinery and terrible, heartless men. All you can do is turn away
from the filth and hopefully start to build something new someday.’