As is often the case, I completely forgot the original inspiration for my last article, The Culture War is Spiritual.  Because the music issue has been at the forefront of my consciousness for years, it has a tendency to take the wheel when I'm not looking, and drive me straight into a wall.  It isn't gospel, but I meant what I said.  The point bears repeating.

But that's not what inspired me to write in the first place.  I left the U.S. years ago.  I took the hint.  They don't want to listen.  I get it.  They've dug their own graves, and passed out drunk in them while humming the latest piece of patronizing, overproduced, instantly-dated political content by John Rich.  The point bears repeating, but I wouldn't write the article just about music.  Not anymore.

But when I saw this article on The Gateway Pundit about the January 6th show trials, I started outlining The Culture War is Spiritual in my mind.  Since I outlined it in my mind, and not on paper, and because I'm doing it for free, the focus shifted toward music once I started writing.  But if the U.S. has devolved to the point where people who walked into the Capitol Building on January 6th are getting decades of prison time, while rapists and murderers are let out of jail without bail, there's no way to deny it:

The hammer's coming down.  "If he dies, he dies," indeed.

It sickens me to watch it.  I hate it.  I miss the U.S., and have nothing but appreciation for the blessing that it is (or was).  I like Mexico, but the sense that I'm on a liferaft, against my own will even, however slightly (I like the raft, but if I can't disembark without falling into freezing water full of sharks....?), persists.  I like Mexico, but the sense that it's a MORTAL ERROR to return to the U.S. is not a joyful one, and adds to the sense of self-imposed exile.  Whether I like it here or not.

The music issue is a deflated party balloon floating on the surface of a joyful, loving sea, compared to the Soviet-style show trials for the January 6th prisoners.  I don't care if musicians have to live in cardboard boxes in subway tunnels while car mechanics and construction contractors buy expensive cars and send their kids to private schools; if people are being sentenced to prison for engaging in an "insurrection" on January 6th, and if 90% (or more) of search results about January 6th refer to it as an "insurrection," while BLM and Antifa are allowed to run free,

Then the situation has become terminal, and is way beyond the capacity of artistic appreciation to save it.  It doesn't matter if Ted Nugent is there to shoot cans of beer with Kid Rock while making monosyllabic entreaties to some wasted, would-be deity to restore the Republic to its former outlaw glory, or if Miles Davis shows up with John Coltrane, Frank Zappa, Johnny Cash, and Janis Joplin to remind the world that music is important,

If people are getting decades of prison time for walking through the Capitol Building on January 6th, the time to stand with a bunch of musicians as an act of cultural solidarity has passed.

Which is, perhaps, why God told me to get out of there.

It is beyond sad and infuriating to behold.  But if God has allowed this judgment to fall on the U.S., if Apollo Creed goes down, it must be for a reason.  God, please be with the political prisoners in the Soviet D.C. gulag.  Please, God, have mercy on anyone and everyone on the receiving end of this atrocity.  Give us the grace to heed the warning.  We are grateful for the gift of freedom.  We are sorry for squandering it on vanity and trifles.  Please forgive us, and save our souls, if not our nation.  We repent.

That's all I wanted to say.

Thanks.