By David Futrelle
Donald Trump has tweeted many horrifying things since becoming our Fake President, but none perhaps as horrifying as the … thing … he tweeted out early this morning as a Fourth of July greeting to his subjects: video of a Trump-branded ersatz national anthem sung by an (almost) all-white mega-church choir.
My fellow Americans, witness the musical and political atrocity that is the song “Make America Great Again.” (And see if you can spot the Asian woman amidst the sea of white performers.)
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/882186896285282304
If Trump could figure out how to make this the new national anthem he almost certainly would. I guess this is what we get for electing an authoritarian meglomaniac to the highest office in the land.
While this song “feels like a dystopian anthem or a piece of explicit propaganda,” the Daily Dot notes,
[i]t’s actually an entirely real song performed by First Baptist Church in Dallas Saturday night.
The song was performed as part of an introduction to Trump’s speech during its Celebrate Freedom Rally and was written by the church’s former minister of music Gary Moore.
I can’t help but think of this clip from North Korean state television.
Enjoy your 4th of July, fellow Americans, as best you can given the circumstances.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/janetwburns/2017/07/04/now-44-states-have-refused-trump-commissions-demand-for-voter-info/#35fea7c14458
Must be annoying with 44/50 state saying “no we aren’t going to give you the voters’ info.”
Then again Trump would have a reason to use that tweet to calm himself.
http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-faces-uncomfortable-conversations-world-leaders-g20-summit-n778671
/ tiniest orchestra for the man who keeps digging his hole with the best of shovels
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoLywiaM6PA
^have a black woman say that shit, and it’s just about my feelings towards this administration today
Er…
(He could always sell Alaska back to Russia. Then it would be technically true.)
It hit me halfway through this thing. Hancock. The Will Smith movie where he’s a screw-up superhero who causes more harm than he prevents. Trump wants to make America great again so badly he doesn’t care how much havoc he creates, as long as he can gold plate it and put a monogram on it.
Real superhero opportunities don’t come along often. We had one in WWII, where we faced down real danger and evil. Iraq grabbing Kuwait was wrong, but dealing with it was akin to slapping a schoolyard bully upside the head (and I was in it). We had another one in the Civil Rights era, but it turns out a lot of people who applauded politely were closet villains.
Most of the time, you show you’re a hero by being civilized, keeping your hands off other people and their stuff, and doing your job. That’s tedious. Plus showing your heroism by making sure everyone is well treated costs money. A bombastic choral piece with absolutely zero character or melody is quicker and more fun.
He is the least Christian President ever. Yet they laud him. Ugh.
Pussy Riot’s lyrics to their song “Make America Great Again” is far closer to the reality of our US:
@Steven Dutch
This is something I try to teach my son, too. We rarely get the opportunity for a big, dramatic hero moment.
Being a hero is doing the little things, like being honest, reliable, and compassionate. It’s being there and supporting your loved ones, taking care of people when they’re sick, feeding someone who is hungry, listening to someone who feels alone.
Yeah, I’d like to be someone who pulls a child from a burning building or saves some in some other death-defying scenario. But mostly we just have to make do with the quieter, smaller stuff.
I’ve never made a serious study of music, but even I can tell that’s a crappy composition. It’s so cliched and pandering! How can anyone like it unironically?
@Steven Dutch:
I’ve always liked Fred Clark’s description of the ‘Anti-Kitten Burning Coalition’… those people who get absolutely incensed about some (usually) obvious moral issue, and somehow convince themselves that this makes them more righteous than everybody else who hasn’t said anything and therefore can be assumed to be okay with it.
He had another call back to it yesterday:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2017/07/03/alex-jones-kitten-burners/
I just had a flashback to Ashcroft’s “Let the Eagle Soar.” Brrr.
I failed to spot any people who weren’t white. Not watching again because the song was schlocky bad. I think we’ll be seeing it again, though, probably at a pointless rally.
Am I the only one who feels like wearing black today? Not that I’m going to because, too damn hot.
Husbeast and I are going to a barbecue later. I’ll be wearing khaki cargo pants and maybe a red tank unless I decide on another color like light aqua.
Oh, that’s… exactly what I expected. And I couldn’t find the asian lady in that sea of vanilla.
If you should wish to contact First Baptist Church of Dallas, who provided the choir, and the friendly platform for Trump:
This is their contact us page.
That “Song for America” by Hugh Laurie had better melodic composition. Lyics were better, too.
Here’s a better US president talking on the 4th:
A song so over the top even Kim Jong Un would be embarrassed about having something similar sung to him.
I’m in bed for the fourth day straight with an atrocious summer cold. I refuse to inflict that piece of music on my poor aching head!
Hope everyone can find what enjoyment they can find today
A better song for today:
@SCROTUS: Ugh.
Do they have no concept of musical dynamics? The song is just one long crescendo. And what the hell was that ‘tinkle tinkle tinkle’ noise? How do you even get a triangle that loud?
Off-topic (from a lurker, so extra apologies):
How do I report a person pretending to be a business somehow located in a park (how did Facebook allow that in the first place??) with a misleadingly named Facebook place page?
Add to that they use it to post right wing propaganda comments you can’t actually block in any meaningful way on almost every single Des Moines Register Facebook post. The DMR page already has several regular trolls, but blocks actually work to hide their comments.
Oh, and the cherry on top is the page itself is full of anti-environmental pseudoscience posts.
I’ve tried [page menu] > Report > Not a Public Place a while ago but that didn’t work. I’m hoping flagging everything he posts as spam (which it is coming from a “business”) eventually works, but I’m not very hopeful.
It aggravates me to no end that this guy has been able to do this for months with no action so far (and there isn’t an obvious way to report this specific kind of abuse), but people legitimately using non-legal names so easily get the boot.
Needs more cowbell?
“Peter Piper claimed he picked them/ he just underpaid Pablo” ouuuuuch
Thank you, Victorious Parasol
What a garbage song; I’m not wasting my time contacting them, though.
Wow, that was unpleasant. Repetitive, cliched, unimaginative, bombastic and trite. Trump must have loved it.