By the Senior Editor
There is a reason athletes take a knee or as in the past give the black power salute when the music behind the racist Francis Scott Key poem is played, a former pub song from England.
It is our belief that Neil Diamond describes America, not FSK, whose prose is based on his hatred of the runaway slave battalion of Colonial Marines that fought at Baltimore and took part in the first storming of the US Capitol.
Slave owner Key wrote his SSB to attack those who fought for their freedom on behalf of Britain and his poem was poorly chosen as a national anthem. There is nothing American about it, unless you edit the useless crap out of it and try to pass it off as something other than a racist diatribe by someone of low character.
Give me Neil Diamond anytime.
The story of America is one of immigration. Some of us traveled a land bridge from Asia 20,000 years ago or more. Others, like my “great great…etc” from Scotland to French Detroit as a fur trader in the 1700s, or my grandmother, on a boat to New York from Germany, during its first year of existence, in 1872.
Others came to America as indentured servants and more in the bellies of slave ships. The Bruce Lee TV series Warrior, depicts the struggle of the Chinese. Great TV, great history reveal.
The case I make is a simple one, it is time to toss our national anthem. Like our constitution, penned by the corrupt and powerful to suppress democracy, it has proven unfixable and has brought America down except for those few who hold the line, fewer and fewer it seems until, some day soon, none may stand at all.
Only a dozen men saved America after a Fascist revolt under Trump.
This is from our national anthem:
And where is that band who so vauntingly swore,
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion
A home and a Country should leave us no more?
Their blood has wash’d out their foul footstep’s pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Behind it is a story.
You know, back in 1900, James Weldon Johnson wrote Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing, which, in 1919 was adopted as the National Anthem of the Negro by the NAACP.
Stony the road we trod
Bitter the chast’ning rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat / Have not our weary feet,
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
Madison sent Key to Fort McHenry on a special mission, to bribe the English to release one of his wealthy friends, Dr. William Beanes, who the British were holding. Oh, you didn’t know?
So, what about that stanza (3) we began with? What is it about? Well, you see, in 1814, one in 5 Americans was a slave or indentured servant or “hireling.” Few Americans could vote and droves moved West to seek the freedom and opportunity that no longer existed in the 13 colonies.
The Northeast was politically aligned with Britain against the US, the Federalists, with ties to London banks and the Frankfurt family that dominated Europe’s financial markets and currencies.
Under the weak constitution, America had been carved up as China would later be, into zones of trade and exploitation. As a payoff, the Federalists that remained in America (many were hanged as traitors or fled to Canada) were to take over the real “triangular trade” which didn’t involve molasses. It was slaves and opium, how the real fortunes of those who still rule America were earned, on the whip and the pipe.
As time went on, that Frankfurt family would fill the halls of congress, stacking the US Senate with stooges from unpopulated states run by their banking, mining, rail and cattle cartels. The constitution made this possible, it was engineered to bring it about.
Key was a slave owner and his stanza, Number 3, refers to the Colonial Marines. This organization, recruited by the British from escaped slaves, fought against the US based on a promise of freedom by Great Britain.
Britain would free her own slaves, mostly held in her vast colonial empire, in 1833, some 30 years before the United States would do so, at the cost of over 500,000 dead.
What the US is left with is a fake national anthem, never really ours, something we need to move on from. Keep the Confederate statues, the sports team names and get us better music before “play ball.”
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At some point in the future, if things continue on the present trajectory, the powers-that-be will probably find it more suitable to their scheme of operations, to change the national song to something along the lines of a hypnotic “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”
The tempo for the anthem is lively. It should simply be sung faster. I would love to see America the Beautiful become the new anthem. Or maybe Woody’s This Land is Your Land. Racism has always been a influence in the creation of the USA. Just ask an Indian.
Maybe, Bibi’s This Land is Your Land…. it might be a bit more realistic…. 🙂
Harry, This Land is Your Land is problematic too, as it’s painful for American Indians, especially the tribes in the land claims litigation process that started years ago. Although I did learn to sing both that tune as well as Blowin’ in the Wind, in Cree.
Well, I’d rather hear Lynyrd Skynyrd, for one, before Neil…. 🙂
I would rather hear Neil Young mock Reagan and Bush I campaign speechwriter Peggy Noonan in a song (Rockin’ In The Free World).
My suggestion would be to hold a national referendum and contest to vote for a new anthem.
But, my choice in the interim would be, BB King , The Thrill is Gone.
And I would hope we would take our time in choosing the new one and set a limit of ten years for that and each following. It is a thing we should renew often.
I thinks this is a great idea…the dancing with the stars option where those who have to listen to it get to choose which one they like the best. This should not be a big deal. Why should people be prisoner to music selections made 200 years ago for that group of Americans, as we are not the that America anymore, other than the childish version that is taught to the kids as part of the mind control that you have no right to change things or you will be a bad person.
I would love to ditch the anthem, but not because of the lyrics. It’s the tune, the most viciously difficult anthem to sing, which is feared by all performers. I have long proposed 2 simple alternatives: 1.Irving Berlin’s God Bless America, or 2.America the Beautiful. Either one would work for me. Schoolkids could learn some songs, and then vote for their favorite.
Btw, the OTHER lucrative triangle trade was the Fur Trade. John Jacob Astor, the first American multi-millionaire, made his fortune in the fur trade, starting right after the Revolutionary War. He traded with Canada and Europe before 1800, and then added China in 1800. But he was already a rich man by then.
It is time America moved on from jingoistic fakery
In case there is doubt, I don’t like the lyrics either. But the music is the killer, even for a vocalist with a great range. I know there are people who say, Well we could just keep the tune, but redo those lyrics. That wouldn’t work for me.
Be more clever or smarter.
To counter the offense to the ears, there is the schadenfreude of hearing the poor vocal technique of “pop stars” exposed when they try to sing the USA national anthem at public events. However, it is easy to sing for anyone who has sung verismo opera in the leading houses.
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