Patrick Comerford
I watch in despair as democracy in the US is trampled under foot, the rule of law is ignored, judges are arrested, constitutional protection and guarantees are over-ridden, elected politicians are barred from public buildings, handcuffed pushed to the floor and forcibly ejected from government buildings, are shot on their doorsteps and murdered on their doorsteps.
Families – mothers, fathers, infants – are incarcerated in cruel and degrading conditions, journalists are pushed around and beaten to ground, even sacked for asking questions. Troops sworn to protect the constitution and the people are deployed on the streets against the people, and are drummed into parades to satisfy the ego of a megalomaniac as his own personal stormtroopers.
Friends in the US – writers, composers, creative aritists – are finding their social media accounts on XTwitter and Facebook are being suspended or cancelled. Books are being withdrawn from libraries, institutions of culture have become captive to the most crass and unlettered of politicians, academic independence is under threat, racism is on the rise, Islamophobia and antisemitism are rampant, and from here it looks as though the United States today is in a place similar to one Germany was in 1937 or 1938, when book-burning had become widespread and just before Kristallnacht and the burning of the Reichstag.
As I watch the news, I weep every night. The ‘No King’ protests last weekend offered some comfort and consolation, but not enough to assure me that we are on the brink of the collapse of democracy in the US, that we are staring into the abyss and that the Trump regime is drawing the US rapidly into political implosion and drawing the world towards inevitable global conflagration.
Not once, but twice, this abject and petulant man without one single enduring quality and totally devoid of basic good manners, has been able to take power, not by stealth or cunning, but through the will of the people. Many coups are staged from outside the political systeml this coup against democracy is taking place from inside, engineered by the felon elected as president has chosen to surround himself with.
I was in a shop in Mayfair earlier this week that has a select or even exclusive clientele. It’s the sort of shop where you’re invited to sit down and offered a refreshing drink before they even start to ask you what you would like.
A well-dressed customer walked in, glanced around, and when he was asked what he would like, he answered, painfully rather than with expectation, ‘Peace in the Middle East.’
Everyone was silent.
I wonder, this Friday evening, how I can possibly say, pray, even hope Shabbath Shalom .
Leonard Cohen had died on 7 November 2016, the day before I found myself watching the election of Donald Trump the first time round. I remember the night sharply. I had recently visited Auschwitz, and as I sat up all night in disbelief in a hotel room in Kraków, I was reminded of the wisdom in the lyrics of his song ‘Democracy’:
It’s coming to America first,
the cradle of the best and of the worst.
It’s here they got the range
and the machinery for change
and it’s here they got the spiritual thirst.
It’s here the family’s broken
and it’s here the lonely say
that the heart has got to open
in a fundamental way:
Democracy is coming to the USA.
Once again, I find myself hearing his words about how in the US
… … the feel
that this ain’t exactly real
or it’s real, but it ain’t exactly there
But so the protests last weekend indicate there truly is and a rising tide of
… the wars against disorder
… the sirens night and day
… the fires of the homeless
… the ashes of the gay …
I wonder tonight whether there is any comfort to be drawn from Leonard Cohen’s hope, that ‘Democracy is coming to the USA’?
Leonard Cohen cared about America but was horrified and revolted by what was happening to it. At a time when the US is in more danger of foundering than ever before, Cohen’s words are the perfect anthem for these times:
Sail on, sail on
oh mighty ship of State,
to the shores of need
past the reefs of greed
through the squalls of hate.
As the world watches while the dominant superpower tetters under the whims and with ever twist and turn of a bigoted bully with fascist tendencies for president, I think too of the many lines that Leonard Cohen cut out of this song, and how relevant this evening – lines that refer to a ‘Concentration camp behind a smile’, or,
Who really gets to profit
and who really gets to pay?
Who really rides the slavery ship
right into Charleston Bay?
More than three decades after he completed this song in 1992, Leonard Cohen continues to speak to these times as though he were still alive and writing today.
‘Democracy’ is the sixth of nine tracks on The Future, the ninth studio album by Leonard Cohen, released on 24 November 1992. Almost an hour in length, it was Cohen’s longest album at the time.
Both the fall of the Berlin Wall and the riots in Los Angeles that year took place while Cohen was writing and recording the album, expressing his sense of the world’s turbulence. The album was recorded with a large cast of musicians and engineers in several studios.
The album built on the success of his previous album, I’m Your Man, and sold a quarter of a million copies in the US, which until then had not been enthusiastic about Leonard Cohen’s albums.
In an interview with Paul Zollo in Songwriters on Songwriting, Leonard Cohen spoke at length about ‘Democracy.’ He admitted that he wrote 60 verses for the song. As he watched the fall of the Berlin Wall, he recalled, ‘everyone was saying democracy is coming to the east.’ But he thought to himself, ‘I think a lot of suffering will be the consequence of this wall coming down.’
‘But then I asked myself, “Where is democracy really coming?” And it was the USA … So while everyone was rejoicing, I thought it wasn’t going to be like that, euphoric, the honeymoon. So it was these world events that occasioned the song. And also the love of America. Because I think the irony of America is transcendent in the song.
‘It’s not an ironic song. It’s a song of deep intimacy and affirmation of the experiment of democracy in this country. That this is really where the experiment is unfolding. This is really where the races confront one another, where the classes, where the genders, where even the sexual orientations confront one another. This is the real laboratory of democracy.’
According to Ira Nadel’s book Various Positions (1996), the title track, ‘The Future,’ was originally called ‘If You Could See What’s Coming Next.’ I cannot predict the future, I cannot see what is coming next. But on this evening I wonder whether the US is ‘the real laboratory of democracy’ or whether we are watching the end of democracy in the USA, perhaps even the beginning of the end of the USA.
In ‘Democracy’, Leonard Cohen sings:
It’s coming through a hole in the air
From those nights in Tiananmen Square
It’s coming from the feel
That this ain’t exactly real
Or it’s real, but it ain’t exactly there
From the wars against disorder
From the sirens night and day
From the fires of the homeless
From the ashes of the gay
Democracy is coming to the USA
It’s coming through a crack in the wall
On a visionary flood of alcohol
From the staggering account
Of the Sermon on the Mount
Which I don’t pretend to understand at all
It's coming from the silence
On the dock of the bay,
From the brave, the bold, the battered
Heart of Chevrolet
Democracy is coming to the USA
It’s coming from the sorrow in the street
The holy places where the races meet
From the homicidal bitchin’
That goes down in every kitchen
To determine who will serve and who will eat
From the wells of disappointment
Where the women kneel to pray
For the grace of God in the desert here
And the desert far away:
Democracy is coming to the USA
Sail on, sail on
O mighty Ship of State
To the Shores of Need
Past the Reefs of Greed
Through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on
It’s coming to America first
The cradle of the best and of the worst
It’s here they got the range
And the machinery for change
And it’s here they got the spiritual thirst
It’s here the family’s broken
And it’s here the lonely say
That the heart has got to open
In a fundamental way
Democracy is coming to the USA
It’s coming from the women and the men
O baby, we’ll be making love again
We’ll be going down so deep
The river’s going to weep,
And the mountain’s going to shout Amen
It’s coming like the tidal flood
Beneath the lunar sway
Imperial, mysterious
In amorous array
Democracy is coming to the USA
Sail on, sail on …
I’m sentimental, if you know what I mean
I love the country but I can’t stand the scene
And I’m neither left or right
I’m just staying home tonight
Getting lost in that hopeless little screen
But I’m stubborn as those garbage bags
That Time cannot decay
I’m junk but I’m still holding up
This little wild bouquet
Democracy is coming to the USA
Shabbat Shalom, שבת שלום
Democracy lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
