Bobby Braddock is an award winning, internationally known, admired and respected songwriter. His list of accomplishments in popular music includes such, now standards, as Tammy Wynette's "D-I-V-O-R-C-E", the delightful Toby Keith hit, "I Wanna Talk About Me", the more recent Billy Currington ode to mankind, "People Are Crazy" and the song that will likely be a part of the headline when, to paraphrase fellow Nashville artist Vince Gill, Bobby's time on Earth is through, the iconic George Jones classic, "He Stopped Loving Her Today".
And if the youngsters in the audience tonight still aren't making a connection, try this. Bobby discovered and produced the first hits for a guy you all enjoy watching each week as he trades quips and judges new talent on "The Voice"....Blake Shelton.
Bobby Braddock is, by his own admission, not a particularly "political" person. His writings over the past 50 plus years have, obviously, been more prolific than partisan, more down home than dogmatic.
But, of late, he, like many of us whose craft is wordsmithing, has been moved to speak out. With an eloquence difficult to refute because it comes, not from a political party mouthpiece or a White House staffer on a quest to deflect legitimate criticism of a runaway train of a presidency and/or simply save their own jobs in that administration.
Whatever your position, there is no denying that what Mr. Braddock offers in his comments is balanced and reasonable.
And important. If only because 'reasonable' in the America that put Donald Trump in the White House is joining clean air, clean water and civil discussion on the list of endangered species.
What follows is a recent post from Bobby Braddock's Facebook page.
From a guy with an iconic way with words, no more important words could be offered.
THEN
AND NOW: "The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the
bad people but the silence over that by the good people." Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr.
I know how many of my Trump friends will think, "stick to songwriting," which is sort of like telling a woman to stick to cooking. I don't love writing about politics, the result always leaves me feeling yukky. I love much more the good feelings generated by writing about music and music history. But every once in awhile I see something so wrong that I have to say something, otherwise I'll be one of those people Dr. King was referring to. So I'll just have to risk losing the opportunity of getting a song recorded, or making a friend mad at me. I think I could have done a lot more for my country when I was younger, so I guess I'm trying to make up for it now.
President Trump is at it again, dividing us, playing on people's fears and prejudices, never mind the toll it takes on our country, the objective being to fire up his base and hoping, through fear, to get enough additional people on board to eke out another victory in another election, caring nothing about the wreckage strewn along the way. He reminds me of the rabble-rousing Southern politicians of yesteryear. All they had to do to win an election was yell "n****r, n****r, n****r." Trump's not a Southerner (in fact he makes fun of Southerners like he does everyone else, ever heard him trying to mock Jeff Sessions's Alabama accent?), but he does practically the same thing as the old demagogues, characterizing Mexicans as rapists and murderers, blacks as "low IQ," and all Muslims as potential terrorists.
So enter freshman Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. a Somali refugee and a Muslim, who several weeks ago made a statement that was ill-spoken and inappropriate but more anti-Israel than anti-Semitic, and certainly not as bad as the remark made by enthusiastic Trump supporter and Ku Klux Klan guru David Duke, who said that Jews made up their Holocaust survival stories in order to get more money for Israel. Trump immediately said that "Ilhan Omar is the voice of the Democratic Party" and "anti-Semitism is the face of the Democratic Party." So untrue because almost every Jewish member of Congress is a Democrat, and Jews are the strongest and most reliable Democratic-voting demographic in America, except for African Americans. He knew exactly what he was doing; he was trying to please right-wing Republican donor and Casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, and he's trying to bring the normal Jewish 30% Republican-vote up a few points for next year's election.
Now he's at it again. Congresswoman Omar said in a speech the other day that "some people did something" that resulted in Muslims losing their civil liberties. Trump jumped on it, said she was trivializing 9/11 by calling it "some people" doing "something" that she's a horrible person, and implying that she has sympathy for the terrorists. Now Trump is saying once more that she's the face of the Democratic Party. Most people don't know who she is. He's determined to change all that, wants to make her famous, and a rallying cry to get people to vote for him out of fear, so he can warn America about this new, dangerous Democratic socialist party. Forget the reality that a majority of Democrats in a recent Wall Street Journal poll call themselves moderates or even conservatives, and that Joe Biden who leads in the Democratic polls, is a centrist who derides the smaller "socialist" branch of the Democratic Party. Many of the Democratic candidates came to her defense, but I think they would have been better served if they had told the politically incorrect but factually correct truth, that Ms. Omar never spoke English until she came here to seek asylum in her teens, and she may not be the most articulate person in the world (in English), but she was attempting to say that SOME, not a majority, of Muslims, did some despicable things, causing many Americans to turn against all Muslims, and as a result they started losing their civil liberties. We have a president who just throws anything out there that he thinks will help him, he says it and automatically it is believed by his followers. As a result truth matters less and less, and we are becoming a culture of lies. I would say to my Trump friends, you should hate this for the sake of your children and grandchildren and great grandchildren. I think most of us had parents who taught us that it's a sin to tell a lie.
My friends, I would welcome anyone but this man to be at the helm of our ship of state. I would welcome Mike Pence. I wouldn't vote for him, but at least we would be back to battling over the merit of issues, instead of being in the middle of a red hot, name-calling, threat-making culture war. Our president is consistently dishonest but surprisingly transparent at the same time, tweeting threats of investigating those who oppose his policies, threatening TV networks with the possibility of looking at their licenses, expressing his admiration for dictators, saying he wishes our people would show him the loyalty that the North Korean people show Kim Jong Un, and tweeting that he likes the sound of Chinese President Xi's position of "president for life." His base is listening to him, because now showing up on social media are memes that read "Trump for President For Life." I would bet you my very life, my heartbeat, that if given the opportunity to have authoritarian rule in America, he would seize it in a second, and he would have solid support from at least a sizable portion of his base. I've always said if his approval rating ever got past 50% we would be in serious trouble.
And while I'm letting it all hang out today, I want to call B.S. on something else. If Trump were a real leader, he would be calling meetings about there being so many people at the border, so all the leadership in America could put their heads together and help solve this. He would be calling the mayors of the sanctuary cities and asking them would they be willing to take in a certain number of refugees, and most would probably welcome it, rather than him playing the roll of the bully, the "big man." threatening to put them on buses into those cities like it's some kind of a high school prank. The art of that kind of deal is B.S. The Bible, which he's probably never read since it is, after all, a book, says "Let us come and reason together," and Jesus said, "Blessed are the peacemakers." He didn't say "blessed are the troublemakers."
The telling thing here is the president is saying, "We're full. No more room." So this is not about illegal immigration. These are people who are following the right protocol, they are coming to our border asking for asylum. People are being murdered by gangs in their home countries, and Trump hasn't helped matters by cutting off aid to those countries. So I think the problem, since it's not illegal immigration, is that he's playing on the fears and prejudices of people who do not want ANY more foreigners in this country, especially people from Mexico, who unlike Cubans who are basically Spanish and European, instead are heavily of Amerindian origin, and people from Central America who are Amerindian and sometimes African in origin. In other words, people of color.
If we want to cut back on the number of immigrants that we allow into our country, there is a way to do that, and that is through Congress. But the president isn't saying "less," he's saying NONE, he's saying we're FULL. Really? The United States has all of THIRTY-FIVE people per square mile. The UK has 275 per square mile, India has 455 per square mile, but we have THIRTY-FIVE. We're full?
If we really think America is full and we don't have any more room, consider this. During what was called the Great Migration, from 1890 to 1920, there were as many as 160,000 a year coming here from Italy, and as many as 100,000 Jews a year coming here from Eastern Europe. There were a lot of people saying NO to that, thankfully no presidents were. This is already getting too long, so I won't recite a huge roll call of famous Italian Americans, past and present, or famous Jewish Americans, past and present, who lived the American dream and who also made our lives better. But thank God we let their forebears in. If we're going to be with the president on this, and declare America to be full, with no more room, we need to remove that bronze plaque on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty that reads
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”
Or better yet, take the statue down, box it up in crates, and ship it back to the people of France who gave it to us in 1886.
I'm old enough to remember seeing it on TV, and most of you have seen it in documentaries or on the History Channel, the people in foreign countries going wild over JFK. And then twenty years later, the people over there going wild over Ronald Reagan. But they don't like our current president. A lot of his supporters will say "Well we don't care what other countries think about us." They're nationalists, like our president, our first nationalist president.
Nationalists believe, "Our country is better than yours."
All our other presidents have been patriots.
Patriots believe, "I love my country."
That's the big difference between then and now.
The poignancy of Bobby Braddock's commentaries, aside from their sincere "every man" tone is what his commenting, in the first place, means.
That a good and decent man, with no particular self-interested political axe to grind, is prepared to risk push back from a lot of hostiles who will, bet the farm, so to speak, push back... but feels sufficiently motivated, even, perhaps inspired to not simply sit on the sideline, tsk tsk the chaos in the atmosphere of America and go on about his business as if that chaos were someone else's problem.
It's not someone else's problem.
Patriots understand that.
Nationalists don't believe there is a problem now that Donald Trump has come along.
And that....is also....a big difference between then and now.
I know how many of my Trump friends will think, "stick to songwriting," which is sort of like telling a woman to stick to cooking. I don't love writing about politics, the result always leaves me feeling yukky. I love much more the good feelings generated by writing about music and music history. But every once in awhile I see something so wrong that I have to say something, otherwise I'll be one of those people Dr. King was referring to. So I'll just have to risk losing the opportunity of getting a song recorded, or making a friend mad at me. I think I could have done a lot more for my country when I was younger, so I guess I'm trying to make up for it now.
President Trump is at it again, dividing us, playing on people's fears and prejudices, never mind the toll it takes on our country, the objective being to fire up his base and hoping, through fear, to get enough additional people on board to eke out another victory in another election, caring nothing about the wreckage strewn along the way. He reminds me of the rabble-rousing Southern politicians of yesteryear. All they had to do to win an election was yell "n****r, n****r, n****r." Trump's not a Southerner (in fact he makes fun of Southerners like he does everyone else, ever heard him trying to mock Jeff Sessions's Alabama accent?), but he does practically the same thing as the old demagogues, characterizing Mexicans as rapists and murderers, blacks as "low IQ," and all Muslims as potential terrorists.
So enter freshman Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. a Somali refugee and a Muslim, who several weeks ago made a statement that was ill-spoken and inappropriate but more anti-Israel than anti-Semitic, and certainly not as bad as the remark made by enthusiastic Trump supporter and Ku Klux Klan guru David Duke, who said that Jews made up their Holocaust survival stories in order to get more money for Israel. Trump immediately said that "Ilhan Omar is the voice of the Democratic Party" and "anti-Semitism is the face of the Democratic Party." So untrue because almost every Jewish member of Congress is a Democrat, and Jews are the strongest and most reliable Democratic-voting demographic in America, except for African Americans. He knew exactly what he was doing; he was trying to please right-wing Republican donor and Casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, and he's trying to bring the normal Jewish 30% Republican-vote up a few points for next year's election.
Now he's at it again. Congresswoman Omar said in a speech the other day that "some people did something" that resulted in Muslims losing their civil liberties. Trump jumped on it, said she was trivializing 9/11 by calling it "some people" doing "something" that she's a horrible person, and implying that she has sympathy for the terrorists. Now Trump is saying once more that she's the face of the Democratic Party. Most people don't know who she is. He's determined to change all that, wants to make her famous, and a rallying cry to get people to vote for him out of fear, so he can warn America about this new, dangerous Democratic socialist party. Forget the reality that a majority of Democrats in a recent Wall Street Journal poll call themselves moderates or even conservatives, and that Joe Biden who leads in the Democratic polls, is a centrist who derides the smaller "socialist" branch of the Democratic Party. Many of the Democratic candidates came to her defense, but I think they would have been better served if they had told the politically incorrect but factually correct truth, that Ms. Omar never spoke English until she came here to seek asylum in her teens, and she may not be the most articulate person in the world (in English), but she was attempting to say that SOME, not a majority, of Muslims, did some despicable things, causing many Americans to turn against all Muslims, and as a result they started losing their civil liberties. We have a president who just throws anything out there that he thinks will help him, he says it and automatically it is believed by his followers. As a result truth matters less and less, and we are becoming a culture of lies. I would say to my Trump friends, you should hate this for the sake of your children and grandchildren and great grandchildren. I think most of us had parents who taught us that it's a sin to tell a lie.
My friends, I would welcome anyone but this man to be at the helm of our ship of state. I would welcome Mike Pence. I wouldn't vote for him, but at least we would be back to battling over the merit of issues, instead of being in the middle of a red hot, name-calling, threat-making culture war. Our president is consistently dishonest but surprisingly transparent at the same time, tweeting threats of investigating those who oppose his policies, threatening TV networks with the possibility of looking at their licenses, expressing his admiration for dictators, saying he wishes our people would show him the loyalty that the North Korean people show Kim Jong Un, and tweeting that he likes the sound of Chinese President Xi's position of "president for life." His base is listening to him, because now showing up on social media are memes that read "Trump for President For Life." I would bet you my very life, my heartbeat, that if given the opportunity to have authoritarian rule in America, he would seize it in a second, and he would have solid support from at least a sizable portion of his base. I've always said if his approval rating ever got past 50% we would be in serious trouble.
And while I'm letting it all hang out today, I want to call B.S. on something else. If Trump were a real leader, he would be calling meetings about there being so many people at the border, so all the leadership in America could put their heads together and help solve this. He would be calling the mayors of the sanctuary cities and asking them would they be willing to take in a certain number of refugees, and most would probably welcome it, rather than him playing the roll of the bully, the "big man." threatening to put them on buses into those cities like it's some kind of a high school prank. The art of that kind of deal is B.S. The Bible, which he's probably never read since it is, after all, a book, says "Let us come and reason together," and Jesus said, "Blessed are the peacemakers." He didn't say "blessed are the troublemakers."
The telling thing here is the president is saying, "We're full. No more room." So this is not about illegal immigration. These are people who are following the right protocol, they are coming to our border asking for asylum. People are being murdered by gangs in their home countries, and Trump hasn't helped matters by cutting off aid to those countries. So I think the problem, since it's not illegal immigration, is that he's playing on the fears and prejudices of people who do not want ANY more foreigners in this country, especially people from Mexico, who unlike Cubans who are basically Spanish and European, instead are heavily of Amerindian origin, and people from Central America who are Amerindian and sometimes African in origin. In other words, people of color.
If we want to cut back on the number of immigrants that we allow into our country, there is a way to do that, and that is through Congress. But the president isn't saying "less," he's saying NONE, he's saying we're FULL. Really? The United States has all of THIRTY-FIVE people per square mile. The UK has 275 per square mile, India has 455 per square mile, but we have THIRTY-FIVE. We're full?
If we really think America is full and we don't have any more room, consider this. During what was called the Great Migration, from 1890 to 1920, there were as many as 160,000 a year coming here from Italy, and as many as 100,000 Jews a year coming here from Eastern Europe. There were a lot of people saying NO to that, thankfully no presidents were. This is already getting too long, so I won't recite a huge roll call of famous Italian Americans, past and present, or famous Jewish Americans, past and present, who lived the American dream and who also made our lives better. But thank God we let their forebears in. If we're going to be with the president on this, and declare America to be full, with no more room, we need to remove that bronze plaque on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty that reads
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”
Or better yet, take the statue down, box it up in crates, and ship it back to the people of France who gave it to us in 1886.
I'm old enough to remember seeing it on TV, and most of you have seen it in documentaries or on the History Channel, the people in foreign countries going wild over JFK. And then twenty years later, the people over there going wild over Ronald Reagan. But they don't like our current president. A lot of his supporters will say "Well we don't care what other countries think about us." They're nationalists, like our president, our first nationalist president.
Nationalists believe, "Our country is better than yours."
All our other presidents have been patriots.
Patriots believe, "I love my country."
That's the big difference between then and now.
The poignancy of Bobby Braddock's commentaries, aside from their sincere "every man" tone is what his commenting, in the first place, means.
That a good and decent man, with no particular self-interested political axe to grind, is prepared to risk push back from a lot of hostiles who will, bet the farm, so to speak, push back... but feels sufficiently motivated, even, perhaps inspired to not simply sit on the sideline, tsk tsk the chaos in the atmosphere of America and go on about his business as if that chaos were someone else's problem.
It's not someone else's problem.
Patriots understand that.
Nationalists don't believe there is a problem now that Donald Trump has come along.
And that....is also....a big difference between then and now.
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