Good morning America, how are ya'? (or, Monday Morning Rail) [Video]

“The feeling of freedom evoked by this song about a train is how many people used to feel about America, before this terrible darkness fell.   I wonder if we could ever bring it back.” – Zersetzung

The present fog seems normal to us now.  But it hasn’t always been so.  Sometimes the pain of what we’ve lost - what many of you will never know - is so strong it knocks the air out of me.  Yet I prefer the tears of loss to the hopelessness of forgetfulness.

Zersetzung got it exactly right in Train Time [Original source gone as of 2017]. Think about his words as you listen to Willie Nelson sing Steve Goodman’s 1971 song, City of New Orleans.

Video

Zersetzung writes:

“The feeling of freedom evoked by this song about a train is how many people used to feel about America, before this terrible darkness fell.   I wonder if we could ever bring it back.

“It may already be too late, since the entire younger generation now has no idea how things used to be.  To them, what is happening now seems normal; it is all they have ever known.

“After World War II, the German people were deemed to be collectively guilty for the crimes of Hitler’s regime.    Likewise, the citizens of the USA and other western countries are today collectively guilty for what is happening, because most of them go right along with all of it.  Their continued silence as things get worse and worse eventually leaves only one possible interpretation: their failure to speak constitutes their implied consent to, and support for, what is being done by their governments in their names.

“The truly innocent ones among us who actually stand up for freedom and justice are only a small minority of the population, and so maybe it’s just as well if we all get wiped out.  Because, for the most part, there is little difference any more between the people of America or western Europe and the pathetic subjects of any other third-world police state.   The only difference is that the Americans should have known better, which if anything makes them even more guilty.”

Dear friends, there really was a time of wonder, of hope, of a future.  May God have mercy on us and show us the way back.  Amen.