We Need More Woody

I have intentionally and unintentionally taken a bit of a hiatus from writing this blog.  Part of the reason was because Christmas happened, and I was busy, that was the unintentional part.  The other part was a sort of pre-new years resolution that I would try and write things only when I had something good to say.  Of course, you can argue with my definition of "good," but this is, after all, my blog not yours.  At the end of November I just felt burnt out on politics, the election seemed important and I was pretty happy that my side managed to wrestle at least one hammer away from the toddler (credit Will Rogers for that imagery).  But a month after that result and pretty much daily assaults on the dignity and decorum of nation left me feeling like I had just run out of outrage, and I don't want to run out of outrage, in case I need it for something important.  Besides that point, I kind of feel like me just pouring my outrage out here on the interweb, only increases the level of general outrage, and I think that is not what we collectively need right now.
So I'm going to talk, again, about Woody Guthrie.  I have a deep admiration for Woody Guthrie as a songwriter, but honestly, if he were trying to make a go of it these days, his twangy folk style probably would sell in Nashville or any where else, no matter how clever the words were. I have come to suspect that perhaps one of the cures for what ails us politically might just be found in the ethos of Woody Guthrie.
Let me explain what I mean. Despite being exceptionally well known for a ragamuffin folk singer, despite writing This Land Is Your Land, This Land Is My Land, despite being a primary influence on Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, Woody never got rich.  Woody died poor after suffering from the debilitating progressive horror of Huntington's disease.  Guthrie had, as a young man traveled around getting involved in various labor causes.  Living a life that was sort of like the life that John Steinbeck's fictional character Tom Joad lived, Okies and migrant workers, factory workers and coal miners, Woody didn't just write songs about them, he went among them.  Bruce Springsteen, in his recent Broadway show, admitted that while he made his living writing songs about hard work and factories and such, had never held an honest job in his life (it was his Dad that did that, and it's really a powerful and touching story, but that's for another day).
That was not the approach Woody took, his sympathy and his identity came from the blue collar and the no collar workers.  His music told their stories, but it wasn't just an act, those were his stories too.  I think that if we're going to get past this current mess of outrages, we're going to need more Woody.  I'm not just talking about a person cut from his cloth, but an actual re-discovery of the ethic of the common man and the values of hard work and honest work at that.  I know that kind of sounds Republican, and it could be if they were honest about it instead of just using it as a con to sucker the rubes while they hand money to the bankers.
Once upon a time both the Democrats were the party of Labor Unions and working people, and they still are in some essential ways, but they've also become the party of the metropolitan areas and the cultural progressives, which essentially sends the working people running to the... well to Donald Trump, who I guess is about as much of a traditional Republican as Bill Clinton.  The problem I see is that no one is really looking out for the masses of people, because the masses don't have anything to give the politicos other than their vote, and votes have been cheapened by a lot of different mechanisms and systems.  Votes are so cheap, in fact, that nearly half the eligible population just throws theirs in the garbage.
Our democracy doesn't work very well when the people who live in it don't care enough to know what's going on for real, which brings me back to Woody.  One of the things good folk music does is put you in touch with reality, it tells you a hard luck story or two, if reflects the good, the bad and the ugly of human experience, often without much window dressing.  We don't have much in the way of folk music these days other than as a sort of acoustic museum exhibit of songs that used to be about important things. Rap can do it, and has done it at moments, rock can do it, it doesn't have to just be twangy, beat up guitars and gravelly, wiry ragamuffins, but songs can relate to people about things that are true, and truth seems to be in short supply these days, so yeah, we need more Woody.