Winds of Change.NET: J.P. Barlow Gets Shown the Light

November 9, 2004

J.P. Barlow Gets Shown the Light

by Joe Katzman at November 9, 2004 1:59 PM

"Once in a while
you get shown the light
in the strangest of places
if you look at it right"
-- Scarlet Begonias

Grateful Dead lyricist John Perry Barlow becomes a sane individual again. It happens in his column (eventually), and it seems to be happening in his larger reality as well - something long-overdue for many Bush Derangement Syndrome sufferers. Barlow makes some important points - and some critical admissions:

"I have a terrible admission to make. I've been so fanatically opposed to this administration that I have taken dark satisfaction in their failures, even though they were American failures as well. I welcomed growing indications that the situation in Iraq was deteriorating into a sump-hole of back-alley insurgency. Good economic news was bad economic news as far as I was concerned, and vice versa. I was tickled to death with Al Qaqaa and its terrorist-purloined WMDs, and not just because the name was so great. Surely all these bad tidings would eventually add up to an indictment that would convict Bush in the eyes of the American people and they would rouse themselves from Fox-hypnosis and 'possum sleep and vote for change."

He wasn't exactly unique, it wasn't exactly a big secret, and it's clear that there's still a long way to go before we get to the kind of dialogue Barlow says he wants. That said, Barlow's admission is more than just refreshing. It's a critical first step. Especially when it's followed by this burst of sanity on his part:

"But it didn't turn out that way. While I still believe that half of America is hallucinating on hot religion and bad TV, I can't say I have been any too sane, having been delivered into a condition where I took comfort in the successes of our enemies and frowned at news of economic recovery. Despite my own financial anxieties, and those of all around me, I have been so zealous that my own well-being was secondary in importance to the political damage bad times might do the Bush administration. Now that's hallucination. And I'm sorry.

Having gone so nuts, I can work on being sane. This is not to say that you're going to find me whispering George Bush's name adoringly, in the eventual fashion of Winston Smith. But from this point on, I will wish him better in many of his challenges. Since we're in Iraq and don't know how leave, I will hope, against my expectations, that our efforts there will result in a functional pluralistic government we can do business with. Hell, I hope for a functional pluralistic government here and pray as well that a kinder, gentler Bush will remember his promises about compassionate conservatism and act on them. I hope that the swan dive he's taking with the deficit flares out and begins to ascend gracefully. I wish him, and us, the best. May all our Gods forgive us and may we forgive one another."

Amen to that. So, what prompted all this? In part, a conversation with a neighbour who hails from a Red State, while Barlow was feeding himself the intellectual junk food of Fahrenheit 9/11. His conclusion after this conversation?

"....But they don't necessarily make a bad fella out of either one of us. We both represent aspects of the American psyche that need each other, the jock and the intellectual, the Boy Scout and the renegade, the guardian and the wild card. We both love this great and terrible country, even as we fear one another's excessive influence on it, and part of what we love is the creative fever that arises from our division. As we need each other, however unwillingly, so America needs us both.

Perhaps it's just the bargaining phase of grief, but I can see that one of the things I must do to feel less a stranger in my own land is to have more conversations like the one I had with Dale. Indeed, as I've said repeatedly before, we must do our collective best to shatter the fetters of intolerance and live more in the necessary amnesty of interdependence. We need to quit scaring each other. Both sides are convinced that the other is trying to impose his culture on us, whether by law or by Internet. Fear of the Other, whether Bush or bin Laden, whether terror without or terror within, has been murdering reason and civility in America. We need to look one another in the eyes and see the human being behind the enemy. If we're not going to start shooting each other over the next 4 years, we will need to do that a lot.

At the very least, I need to take the other side seriously. Dismissing them as a bunch of homophobic, racist, Bible-waving, know-nothing troglodytes, however true that may be of a few, only authorizes them to return the favor. I don't want somebody calling me a dope-smoking, fag-loving, one-worlder weirdo, however true that might be. We are all masks that God wears, whatever God that is. We might try to treat one another with according reverence. At least we might try to listen as though the other side might have a point."

Well duuuuuh! Welcome back to adulthood, John. Nice to have you on the team again.

I've got a little secret of my own, too - for all our differences, I'm relieved and pleased to be on the same team as someone like John Perry Barlow. Not my political team, mind. Not even my national team, unless John moves (or I do). But my team, nonetheless, in a way that "Screw Them" Kos, Michael Moore et. al. can never hope to be.

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"J.P. Barlow Gets Shown the Light"

Tracked: November 9, 2004 5:40 PM

The State of the Nation from The Pryhills

Excerpt: I want to point out two very good articles I ran across today. In the Observer, Mitch Albom (of Tuesdays with Morrie fame) describes the disturbing division felt by the opposing forces and positions in our society. I'm reposting the...

Comments

#1 from Rampant Clam at 4:52 pm on Nov 09, 2004

I applaud John Perry Barlow for blogging about coming to his senses. Welcome back to rationality!

I'm a liberal/libertarian who voted for Bush. The reasons are many, but a lot of it had to do with the hatred coming from the left.

I was going to post a comment on one of the reports of the irrational venom coming from the Democrats since Kerry lost, but it got much too big. Instead I started my own blog and it's my first post - Open Source Thinking

#2 from Paul Brinkley at 6:14 pm on Nov 09, 2004

Poor Mr. Barlow had a lot of comments on that article that don't seem to espouse the same sentiment he did. I hope it doesn't bring him down.

#3 from d-rod at 7:24 pm on Nov 09, 2004

�jetting back towards my crazed, stupefied, dangerous country after three days in Berlin. I dread coming home�. Barlow, Oct 3, 2004

I�d like to see Barlow renounce a little more of the nonsense and anti-Americanism he has helped promote on his blog before conceding he is perfectly sane.

#4 from Bradley Cooke at 7:52 pm on Nov 09, 2004

John Barlow did not write the lyrics to Scarlet Begonias!!! It was Robert Hunter, as the link below the text clearly shows.

#5 from Joe Katzman at 8:11 pm on Nov 09, 2004

That's true - I'd just seen it attributed to Barlow so often that I didn't even notice the attribution. Fixed now.

Paging the cognitive psychology department...

#6 from Thorley Winston at 8:14 pm on Nov 09, 2004

I�d like to see Barlow renounce a little more of the nonsense and anti-Americanism he has helped promote on his blog before conceding he is perfectly sane.

I agree, the rest of his post seems peppered with the sort of BDS conspiracy-mongering that the excerpt provided by Joe Katzman supposedly denounced.

#7 from gus3 at 8:28 pm on Nov 09, 2004

After that screed, I think I'll peel the EFF bumper stickers off of my car. I'm sorry I ever gave cash to his organization.

#8 from Joe Katzman at 9:00 pm on Nov 09, 2004

Gus3,

The guy admitted he was wrong. He apologized - and when confronted by comprehensive debunkings of the 100,000 Iraqis casualty figure in his comments (in reality, the study said a range of, get this, 8,000-198,000... how's that for useless?), he took them seriously and admitted error. See comment #100.

Yeah, Barlow has wayyy too much conspiracy b.s. in his head right now. But admitting a problem, beginning the task of returning to sane discourse, and saying the kinds of things quoted above doesn't strike me as something to be upset about.

Unless, perhaps, you're a distributor of Michael Moore's fevered propaganda films.

#9 from SteveO at 3:06 am on Nov 10, 2004

But while Barlow is one of the intellectuals behind the left wing radicals, he's not one of the principal instruments.

And I don't see him exactly caving to the body of his misguided thought. He's simply, logically (for once) seen where some of this misguided thoughts may lead him. I doubt they're in any kind of frenzy over at Kos.

#10 from gus3 at 3:23 am on Nov 10, 2004

I saw that comment. However, could he ever bring himself to say in that post, "Maybe there isn't really a conspiracy?"

That is not the same as "I still think there's a conspiracy, but so what?" (which he did say). I want him to embrace the possibility that his pet ideas are mistaken. Nowhere in that article does he even come close.

(point to SteveO:) He can't even finish it out without making dire predictions. "Christian Ayatollahs on the Supreme Court"? Give me a break. Would he prefer Buddhist Ayatollahs instead? Sure, JPB would say, "no ayatollahs at all." So then why the gratuitous reference to Christianity? Just because he thinks it's still in vogue to demonize Christians.

This is not a return to sanity. It is only a pretentious manipulation by a delusional mind.

#11 from Tim in PA at 3:14 pm on Nov 10, 2004

Hey wait a minute; " I was tickled to death with Al Qaqaa and its terrorist-purloined WMDs"

But.. but .. but... I thought Saddam had no WMD's? (sarcasm alert) I find it ironic that the people who say Bush is a liar because we haven't found a huge heap of them, now think he was incompetent for the (alleged) loss of WMD's that aren't even WMD's. Please, explain to me again why I should ever listen to any of these people again?

#12 from michael at 3:22 pm on Nov 10, 2004

Nice post - there's a great response to it at Dean's World. A bit ironic to quote lyrics by Robert Hunter (mostly Jerry Garcia's writing partner) in a post about Barlow (mostly Bob Weir's writing partner), but then again the quote is certainly apt. :-)

BTW, it's been very tough for those of us Deadheads who support GWB, seeing Bob Weir abandon Jerry's rule of using the mic only for music... I sure hope they'll cut out the politics now that the elections are over!

#13 from Joe Katzman at 4:05 pm on Nov 10, 2004

Michael, as a fellow Deadhead, I hear ya. And yeah, the quote does fit. I was also thinking of Cassidy's "Faring thee well now/ Let your life proceed by its own design/ Nothing to tell now/ Let the words be yours I am done with mine..." - but it had some overtones I didn't want.

As for Dean Esmay's response, I've already got it linked up above. But if you're someone reading this comment and you're curious, check out Dean's Letter from a Pot-Smoking Deadhead Bush Voter

#14 from Gerard Van der Leun at 4:58 pm on Nov 10, 2004

Just as an aside, I've worked with Barlow years ago and I can tell you that he is anything but an "intellectual," he's a poser. And a very successful one at that.

Beware anyone or anything that uses the lyrics of pop songs for a base. They aren't written to be right, they are written to be glib.

#15 from M. Simon at 12:10 am on Nov 11, 2004

Jeeze guys,

I've been a Dead Head since '66.

Saw the band and Lou Reed on the same bill at Winterland.

What a long strange trip.

And here (until I saw Dean's riff) I thought I was alone as a Bush supporter.

Nice to have such a fine support group.

PLGV,

Simon

#16 from d-rod at 7:35 pm on Nov 11, 2004

Looks like Dean's "abusive, foul-mouthed response" pushed Barlow over, Joe.

I saw the Dead at Winterland too, but not 'til 1976. Oakland's Day on the Green featuring The Dead and The Who will go down as one of the best shows ever.

#17 from Anonomous at 5:38 pm on Jun 29, 2005

who is Harris S. Truman