I Will Stand

"for my conscience, for my country, for my heart!"

In 2016 shortly after the inauguration of Donald Trump, Noel wrote the lyrics to “Impeachable,” set to the tune of “Unforgettable,” and recorded it in his garage. When posted to the Internet, it went viral and turned out to be correct in its prediction. Trump was impeached twice, but Noel’s song was wrong about one thing—that the impeached president would go away. 

Months later Noel was inspired to write another song, “I Will Stand (Work Together),” and invited some of his folkie friends to lend their voices to the recording. It named all the things on Trump’s agenda that Noel and friends would not work together to accomplish—dismantle health care, persecute Muslims, build a wall, limit freedom of the press, eliminate funding for reproductive rights, ruin the environment, deny global warming and disrupt efforts to address it, cripple unions, unplug public media, normalize racism,and propagate hatred. No surprises here. Trump’s is the antithesis of everything Peter, Paul, and Mary have stood for. 

Fast forward to 2020. The COVID epidemic begins. Trump has not gone away. In fact, he runs for president and loses, but denies he has lost and  on January 6, 2021, encourages an insurrection in the U.S. Capitol.  

Fast forward to 2024. Trump has still not gone away. At the first presidential debate of the election season, Trump’s hatred, malice, vindictiveness, narcissism, and showmanship were on full display. As  historian Heather Cox Richardson explained in her newsletter that evening, Trump used a technique called the Gish gallop,

 . . . in which someone throws out a fast string of lies, non-sequiturs, and specious arguments, so many that it is impossible to fact-check or rebut them in the amount of time it took to say them. Trying to figure out how to respond makes the opponent look confused, because they don’t know where to start grappling with the flood that has just hit them.

It is a form of gaslighting, and it is especially effective on someone with a stutter, as Biden has.

Richardson made the  point that television media and pundits were so taken by Trump’s performance and his framing of the event that the fact that “Trump unleashed a flood of lies and non-sequiturs simply didn’t register.” Since the debate many opinion writers have called for Biden to step down because of his age and his poor showing in this first presidential “debate,” but we’re not hearing cries for Trump to step down, even though he is only three years younger than Biden and “liable for sexual assault and business fraud, convicted of 34 felonies, [and]  under three other indictments . . . .” Richardson concluded that “this one night is the clear evidence that stage performance has trumped substance in political coverage in our era.” As another commentator put it, it was a matter of optics, which unfortunately count more than substance. 

Why are news reporters not talking more about substantive issues like healthcare, global warming, public education, immigration, foreign policy, equality, and justice? Why is the media not leading us into conversations about character and wisdom as necessary qualities for political leaders? Why is most of the mainstream media silent about the threats to democracy posed by Trump and the MAGA wing of the GOP? Do substance and truth no longer matter?

In addition to these questions, reflection on “I Will Stand (Work Together) encourages more.  What is the message in this song for now? And in order to work together to elect candidates who care for the common good instead of just for their party or themselves, what do we need to know? What do we expect the press to do?   So much is at stake.   Each of us must ask, “What do I need to do “for my conscience, for my country, for my heart?”

---

Connections

By the time you see this post, you may be tired of hearing the pros and cons about whether Biden should step down. If so, go no further. But if you are interested in a couple of thought-provoking commentaries, here they are.  One is a Thursday night  post-debate podcast from The Convocation, a collaborative Substack magazine featuring writing on faith, culture, and politics from award-winning authors Diana Butler Bass, Kristin Du Mez, Robert P. Jones, and Jemar Tisby. The three present in the video are history professors Du Mez and Tisby and pollster Jones, who is president of Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). The other is Rebecca Solnit’s article in The Guardian, ”The True Losers of This Presidential Debate Were the American People.”

Vibrations

Listen to Noel, joined by Maureen McGovern, Jonathan Edwards, David Roth, Peter Yarrow, Holly Near, David Mallett, Tom Chapin, Barry Ollman, Josh White, Jr., George Emlen and the Work Together Chorus singing I WILL STAND.

Resonance 

What are your ideas about how to bring more substance not only into the presidential debates but also into the whole campaign process?

P.S.  Noel wants to write the next Substack suggesting AI as a possible aid in immediate fact-checking.

---