This Is What Joe Strummer Trained You For

Winston Churchill, one of the original Antifa, is often quoted as saying “a man who is not a liberal at 16 has no heart, but a man who is not a conservative at 60 has no head.” The actual origins of that aphorism are lost to time, but whoever said it, it speaks to a truth about political evolution as one ages.

I had an excess of heart in my youth, and I may suffer from a deficit of brain as I approach retirement age. It's been more than a decade now since I retired this site's slogan "too old to be cool, too young not to care" because I was, in fact, too old. And my cultural touchstones show that age.

My first political hero was a musician, not a politician. At the impressionable age of 17 I discovered the Clash and their leader and lyricist, Joe Strummer. It was the dawn of the Reagan Time and I was terrified of getting drafted and sent to Central America, and Joe Strummer had written a gigantic record just for me, with the in your face title "Sandinista!". It taught me about draft resistance and revolution and imperialism.

 

I went through a grad student proletariat phase when I fancied myself quite the political expert. I didn't do or accomplish anything, but I talked a good game and I insufferably thought I knew it all. 

Then I got to Iowa City intending to pursue a Ph.D. and instead I walked into a campaign headquarters, where my real postgraduate education begin. I still had a lot of Joe Strummer in my head, and there's a third party vote in my past that I can't honestly say I regret. But bit by bit, I grew more pragmatic and gained more experience: as a volunteer, as a campaign staffer, a failed run for office, and finally the career in government where I found my calling.

Sometimes I cringe at my younger self, especially when faced with people who remind me of myself at that age. For those who are going to attack me: I get it. I was you once. Sometimes I still look deep inside myself and wonder "what would Joe Strummer do?"

Strummer struggled with contradictory goals. He struggled with it within the music itself, self-awarely noting the irony of "turning rebellion into money." He wanted to keep the uncompromising purity of punk rock yet he also wanted the mass popularity and success that would allow his message to reach a mainstream audience. The dissonance eventually destroyed the Clash right at their moment of commercial breakthrough.

Unfortunately Joe Strummer can't speak to today's events. He died at age 50, far too young, in 2002. The autopsy found an undiagnosed congenital heart defect, though personally I think the only thing wrong with Joe Strummer's heart was that it was too big.

During those grad school days, I found another musician who has now become a role model: Peter Garrett. He is a gigantic man, an imposing presence with an intense stage manner and a shaved head. (He may have been separated from J.D. Scholten at birth.)

Garrett's band Midnight Oil was big in their native Australia in the early 80s, and Garrett ran for office as a third party candidate of the Nuclear Disarmament Party  while still in the band. They had a very brief window of American and global success with their album "Diesel And Dust," a thematic record about the very Australian yet universal issue of native land rights. It was uncompromising - "it belongs to them, let's give it back."

This platform was not enacted, the international success did not last, and Midnight Oil faded back to their previous rank of being big only in their home country.

 

Garrett left the band in 2002, and two years later announced a run for Parliament - but now as a member of the Labor Party (the mainstream center left party filling the role the Democrats play in the USA).

This time Garrett won. He served a decade and was in two cabinet posts, Environment (where he was a friend of endangered turtles) and later Education, until stepping down in the wake of an internal party power struggle. Then he called the guys up and joined Midnight Oil again.

Henry Rollins, 2017

Musicians only need to get support from a niche, a relatively share of the audience. Protest vote politicians can also push the limits.

But serious politicians? They need to win a majority.

 

 

 

I still ask myself "what would Joe Strummer do?" 

But now I also ask "what would Peter Garrett do?"

All of this, somehow, relates to our local politics of the moment. Stay tuned for that.