Will the Obama disaster lead liberals to change their way of thinking?

It occurred to me over the weekend that it’s not just conservatives who may experience an awakening to the reality of liberalism as a result of the Obama presidency, but liberals as well, especially the passionately pro-Obama whites in their twenties and thirties who have seen Obama as the incarnate fulfillment of all their hopes. I’m not suggesting that these liberals/leftists will come out and oppose Obama openly, but rather that as the idiocy and incompetence and destructiveness of this presidency sinks in, they will quietly undergo a very salutary re-thinking. Perhaps the Obama regime could even lead to the end of the floridly insane type of leftism that has gripped America since the 2000 Florida election standoff.

Anyway, just as I was in the middle of these meditations, but hadn’t written them down yet, a reader sent me a Free Republic item in which a commenter quotes the lyrics of a song Bob Dylan sang in a concert in Seattle last night. It’s from his first Christian album in 1979, Slow Train Coming (one of the Freepers says that this is the first time he has performed the song in 30 years). Some of the lines are directly relevant to the Obama phenomenon, and some lines might hit young liberals with the wisdom that it’s not just the hated, evil conservatives who are the source of our problems.

Posted on Monday, October 05, 2009 06:08:53.a. by don-o

Bob Dylan began a live concert tour in Seattle last night and the first song he Played was “Gonna Change My Way of Thinking”

Gonna change my way of thinking,
Make myself a different set of rules.
Gonna change my way of thinking,
Make myself a different set of rules.
Gonna put my good foot forward,
And stop being influenced by fools.

So much oppression,
Can’t keep track of it no more.
So much oppression,
Can’t keep track of it no more.
Sons becoming husbands to their mothers,
And old men turning young daughters into whores.

Stripes on your shoulders,
Stripes on your back and on your hands.
Stripes on your shoulders,
Stripes on your back and on your hands.
Swords piercing your side,
Blood and water flowing through the land.

Well don’t know which one is worse,
Doing your own thing or just being cool.
Well don’t know which one is worse,
Doing your own thing or just being cool.
You remember only about the brass ring,
You forget all about the golden rule.

You can mislead a man,
You can take ahold of his heart with your eyes.
You can mislead a man,
You can take ahold of his heart with your eyes.
But there’s only one authority,
And that’s the authority on high.

I got a God-fearing woman,
One I can easily afford.
I got a God-fearing woman,
One I can easily afford.
She can do the Georgia crawl,
She can walk in the spirit of the Lord.

Jesus said, “Be ready,
For you know not the hour in which I come.”
Jesus said, “Be ready,
For you know not the hour in which I come.”
He said, “He who is not for Me is against Me,”
Just so you know where He’s coming from.

There’s a kingdom called Heaven,
A place where there is no pain of birth.
There’s a kingdom called Heaven,
A place where there is no pain of birth.
Well the Lord created it, mister,
About the same time He made the earth.

Copyright ©1979 Special Rider Music

—end of initial entry—

LA writes:

However, I must say that this comment, from another Freeper in the thread, captures my own view of the Dylan of the last two of three decades:

Lil and I saw Dylan in July (with Mellencamp and Willie Nelson). My question would be….how could you tell that he was singing that song?

Often we didn’t recognize a song until we could pick out a few words in his mumbling ejaculations like hearing the words “rolling stone” and figuring he must be singing “Like a Rolling Stone”..even though you’d never know it by listening to the arrangement.

I love Bob, but wow.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 05, 2009 12:25 PM | Send