We live in danger times
Down below we have a lovely career-spanning essay on the music of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings and a review of their latest album Woodland. You'll need to be a paid subscriber to read it. You can also go directly to it here. Thank you for supporting this newsletter if you can.
Luke O’Neil
Well it seems that the man who has encouraged more stochastic terrorism than anyone else in the past decade now has to constantly look over his shoulder everywhere he goes for the rest of his life. That can't feel good. You wouldn't want to feel like that.
Although I guess we all do in our own American way thanks to people like him. The thought creeping in every now and again that this might be the day. It might be at long last our turn.
Luke O’Neil
“The threat level is high," Rafael Barros, special agent in charge of the Secret Service’s Miami field office said. “We live in danger times."
You can say that again buddy.
"All around, I think it was a good day for the Secret Service – despite this individual getting relatively close," another Secret Service member Robert McDonald said yesterday after the arrest of an apparent would-be assassin at Donald Trump's Florida golf course.
"Copycats are who we are worried about now. Thankfully, so far, injuries have been minimal but the bigger concern now is is somebody going to get a tiny bit closer? Is somebody going to have another high-powered rifle? Is somebody going to be able to inflict some serious damage?"
I imagine that it something exactly like Trump's own inner monologue now.
What a shame.
What a shameful way for any kind of person to have live.
Prem Thakker reported that the suspect Ryan Routh "voted for Trump; donated to Tulsi Gabbard, Andrew Yang, Tom Steyer, Beto O'Rourke, Elizabeth Warren; and then has tweets... yearning for a Nikki Haley/Vivek Ramaswamy ticket..."
All that may sound a bit insane but keep in mind that every presidential election comes down to winning over 50,000 people with those exact politics in a handful of swing states and no one else. It's a perfect system and we can't do any better than it.
Here's what the richest man in the world and operator of numerous sensitive government contracts had to say about the matter last night:
Meanwhile Trump and JD Vance have continued their racist incitement of violence against Haitian immigrants (and all other immigrants for that matter) in Springfield, Ohio (and everywhere else in the country for that matter.) Trump said he plans to visit the town soon apparently. Probably to help cool things down I'd guess.
For his part Vance admitted over the weekend that he was bullshitting about the immigrants eating pets thing which everyone in the world besides people who take JD Vance seriously knew was the case five seconds after he said it.
“If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that's what I'm going to do," he said.
That sounds like me focusing more on writing fiction now come to think of it.
Over the weekend two hospitals in Springfield – where Proud Boys are now marching in the streets – went into lockdown after receiving bomb threats. This came after two elementary schools were evacuated after receiving bomb threats a few days earlier and a local college said they would go virtual all week after threats of their own. So intense is the focus of the deranged right wing in America which is to say the regular right wing that the New York Post is reporting on minor fender benders in a city six hundred miles away because one of the people involved is of Haitian descent.
All this over the mere rumor that certain people are eating different kinds of animals than us but in a sinister way (being Haitian).
Not even just stuff that's outside of American cultural norms by the way. The very same shit most people eat is now an affront to decency.
I love gassing myself up into thinking eating game birds is degenerate.
We truly are a remarkable people we Americans. We can manage to be racist and xenophobic about a group of people who eat animals that we don't – like dogs or horse – but also racist and xenophobic about a group of people who don't eat animals that we do – like pigs. An inspiring ability to adapt.
On the matter of politicians making up stories that feel true to what they want to believe here's a reminder of this:
"Speaking from the Indian Treaty Room" is a nice little extra touch there isn't it?
Oh and while I'm thinking of it here's the New York Times adjudicating who counts as an authentic American in their reporting on the funeral of Aysenur Ezgi Eygi the peace activist assassinated by Israel:
With Turkish flags flying and chants of “God is great” resounding through the cemetery, Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, a Turkish American activist killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank, was laid to rest on Saturday in a town on Turkey’s Aegean coast.
Although she moved to the United States as a toddler, acquired citizenship and spent most of her life there, the funeral for Ms. Eygi, 26, was deeply Turkish, and profoundly pro-Palestinian.
Hundreds of people, many carrying Palestinian flags and wearing Palestinian scarves, gathered at the central mosque in the town of Didim to say prayers for her, including senior Turkish officials. No American officials attended, and there was not an American flag in sight.
What's your favorite dog whistle in there because there are a lot to choose from. I kind of want to go with "chants of 'God is great'" (if you know what we mean).
Luke O’Neil
All this talk of late about Trump and immigrants reminded me of this piece from back in December of 2020. When we thought we were finally rid of the mother fucker. I asked a very talented lineup of friends – David Roth, Rax King, Dan Ozzi, Rob Rousseau, Kim Kelly, Eli Valley and many others – to reflect back on their favorite Trump moment. It could be absurd or horrifying I said.
I had a great time going back and reading all the suggestions just now and I think you will too but I wanted to reshare mine again because I do think it's the clearest distillation of his entire thing.
My pick for the moment I’ll never get over came in June of 2018 when President Rodney Dangerfield in Natural Born Killers invited a dozen or so parents whose children had been “killed by criminal illegal aliens” to a press conference. One by one the “Angel families” each described in horrific detail the circumstances of their child’s death. Needless to say it was absolutely ghoulish that Trump would use bereaved parents like this to hammer home his point that immigrants are all killers and rapists.
When you tragically lose a family member to a senseless murder or accident people often will take any form of emotional support they can. They want people to know their child existed so so badly. Manipulating them for political ends like this was one of the most disgusting things I’ve seen in four years of being constantly disgusted.
“These are the stories that Democrats and people that are weak on immigration don't want to discuss, hear, see or talk about,” Trump said. “They don't talk about the death and destruction caused by people who shouldn't be here.”
Eight out of eleven of the victims in question were killed in car accidents to be clear. No less tragic but not exactly fitting with the “immigrants are gang members who will rape and kill at will” narrative.
And then it somehow got worse and more Trumpian. As one family held up a picture of their mustachioed son Trump took it and said “This is Tom Selleck, except better looking. Right? Better looking.”
And then it got worse still.
He had signed the photos.
There never was a bottom but we got close to it that day.
Ok paid readers stick around for the piece on Gillian Welch. Thanks as always for being here either way it means a lot to me.
Before that check out two of my favorite releases of the week. The first is "Burn" by Arizona singer-songwriter Hataałii'. His new debut Waiting For A Sign is a collection of pensive country meditations on the American Southwest.
“I’m proud of who I am and where I come from, but I also want to make it clear that I literally don’t know anything, and that I’m constantly at odds with myself," he said of the song. "I’m not sure if being Navajo has anything to do with that, but I do know that I’d rather not be lumped into being anything. But hopefully this song can help some others figure themselves out. Or if not, scratch some existential itch or something that has to do with being 'indigenous,' whatever that means to you.”
And oh man this new record Wasteland Baby from Boston noise-rock veterans Kal Marks is barely-contained chaos. Beautiful and ugly at once. "Insects" is an impending fucking car crash that you want to speed into anyway. It makes me want to fly off the road and never land.
"You won't make it out alive."
“‘Insects’ was an excruciating song to get right," the band's Carl Shane said. "We were listening to a lot more danceable music at the time. Anything from Depeche Mode, Giorgio Moroder, Rhythm Nation by Janet Jackson, Cerone and DAF. We wanted to make something danceable and poppy but have it make sense in our world. We also loved the duality a lot of this music had with dark lyrical themes with upbeat propulsive rhythms. It’s a grim tune to tap your feet to. A lot of frustration in it.”
That’s the way that it goes, that’s the way
by Anna Hamilton
In high school I had a subscription to Spin magazine and a habit of reading most of the new music reviews. I’d usually skip the country albums though. For years, I was one of those people who would say things like “I like every genre except country.” My understanding of the genre then was limited to Lee Ann Womack’s ear worm ballad “I Hope You Dance,” and that cringy Toby Keith song about putting American boots in asses. Gillian Welch changed all of that for me just as she did for so many others. She made me a country music fan.