I woke up at 2:58 am this morning with the lyrics of this old song running through my head. It’s by Harry Chapin from his Album, Verities and Balderdash, which came out in about 1974. I know this is long, so those of you with ADD are just going to have to bear with me.

What Made America Famous

It was the town that made America famous
The churches full and the kids all gone to hell
Six traffic lights and seven cops and all the streets kept clean
The supermarket and the drug store and the bars all doing well

Now they were the folks that made America famous
Our local fire department stocked with short haired volunteers
And on Saturday night while America boozes the fire
Department showed dirty movies, the lawyer and the grocer
Seeing their dreams come to life on the movie screens
While the plumber hopes that he won’t be seen
As he tries to hide his fears and he wipes away his tears

But somethings burning somewhere
Does anybody care?

We were the kids that made America famous
The kind of kids that long since drove our parents to despair
We were lazy long hairs dropping out, lost confused, and coppin’ out
Convinced our futures were in doubt and trying not to care

We lived in the house that made America famous
It was a rundown slum, the shame of all our decent
Folks in town, we hippies and some welfare cases
Crowded families of coal black faces, cramped inside
Some cracked old boards, the best that we all could afford
But still too nice for the rich landlord to ever tear it down

And we could hear the sound of something burning somewhere
Is anybody there?

We all lived the life that made America famous
Our cops would make a point to shadow us around our town
And we love children put a Swastika on the bright red firehouse door
America, the beautiful, it makes a body proud

And then came the night that made America famous
Was it carelessness or someone’s sick idea of a joke
In the tinder box trap that we hippies lived in
Someone struck a spark at first I thought that I was dreaming
Then I saw the first flames gleaming and heard
The sound of children screamin’ comin’ through the smoke

And something’s burning somewhere
Does anybody care?

Oh, it was the fire that made America famous, the sirens wailed
And the firemen stumbled sleepy from their homes and the
Plumber yelled, Come on let’s go, but they saw what was burning
And said, Take it slow, let ’em sweat a little, they’ll never know
And besides, we just cleaned the chrome, said the plumber
Then I’m goin’ alone

Well he rolled on up in the fire truck and raised the
Ladder to the ledge where me and my girl and a couple of kids
Were clinging like bats to the edge, we staggered to salvation and
Collapsed on the street and I never thought that a fat man’s face
Would ever look so sweet

I shook his hand in the scene that made America famous
And a smile from the heart that made America great
We spent the rest of that night in the home of this man
We’d never known before; it’s funny when you get that close
It’s kinda hard to hate

I went to sleep with the hope that made America famous
I had the kind of a dream that maybe they’re still
Trying to teach in school of the America that made America famous
And of the people who just might understand that how together

Yes we can create a country better than the one
We have made of this land, we have a choice to make
Each man who dares to dream reaching out his hand
A prophet or just a crazy, damn dreamer of a fool
Yes a crazy fool

And something’s burning somewhere
Does anybody care? Is anybody there?
Is anybody there?

Harry was famous for his song Cats in the Cradle which has been terribly abused over the years for its sickly sweet sentiment about spending time with your kids before they grow up and don’t have time for you. It was on the same album, but this was the song that spoke the most to me. I actually used it as part of a presentation to a group of kids about five years younger than me in a college English class in 1977. They knew virtually nothing about the Vietnam era and what it was like for young men to be subject to the draft. It reminds me of young people today, who have virtually no memory of anything that doesn’t come from the internet. They I started thinking about Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.

So here’s a portion of David Brooks’ column from The New York Times yesterday. He titled it Time for a Republican Conspiracy! Take your Adderall and keep that ADD at bay!
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The Tea Party, Ted Cruz’s natural vehicle, has 17 percent popular support, according to Gallup. The idea that most women, independents or mainstream order-craving suburbanites would back a guy who declares his admiration for Vladimir Putin is a mirage. The idea that the G.O.P. can march into the 21st century intentionally alienating every person of color is borderline insane.

Worse is the prospect that one of them might somehow win. Very few presidents are so terrible that they genuinely endanger their own nation, but Trump and Cruz would go there and beyond. Trump is a solipsistic branding genius whose “policies” have no contact with Planet Earth and who would be incapable of organizing a coalition, domestic or foreign.

Cruz would be as universally off-putting as he has been in all his workplaces. He’s always been good at tearing things down but incompetent when it comes to putting things together.
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He goes on to recommend a grass roots uprising to support candidate C – any of the others that could be C, instead of the two truly dangerous A and B candidates. And he ends his column with a rather plaintive request of Republicans:

Please don’t go quietly and pathetically into the night.

I say: Don’t allow Donald Trump and Ted Cruz to “let us sweat a little” and get us to worrying about the polished chrome. I know – I previously wrote a piece that said there have been other presidents in the past worse than Donald Trump. And that is possibly true. And I’m sure firemen in Peshawar, Beijing and Tehran have saved people from burning buildings. But those countries are already ruined beyond salvation. Let’s not let America be ruined too by electing either of these “gentlemen”.