James Brown Sings In The Beginnings Of Our Current Predicament

Welcome to the analog world, where every sound is hand-made, and recorded on magnetic tape, to be pressed into vinyl records and played with a needle vibrating in the grooves. Welcome to the late 1960s. 

I am not here to sing the praises of the America that gave voice to this wonderful music. I will only mention that as James was singing this song, the very beginnings of the terrible reality that we now inhabit were beginning to form in the minds of a few conservative political scientists, sociologists, economists, historians, philosophers, and public intellectuals. This is when they were beginning to tilt their lances at the windmills of uppity blacks, anti-war protesters, hippies in general, women, and any politicians who believed in compromise and cooperation. They began their program of organizing at the state, the local, and the local-local level, they started their conservative think-tanks, they lined up their donor systems, and they declared war on minorities, the public school system, the Democratic party, higher education, any restraints on corporations or the rich, unions, the New Deal, the social safety net, and the federal government itself. 

So, what do you think? How are they doing? Our glorious year 2019 looks like a Monopoly game where one player has all of the properties and all of the railroads, with plenty of houses and hotels, and the other players can only hope that they keep landing on Go, or Free Parking, or Community Chest, or Go To Jail, because one more hard landing and it's bankruptcy court for sure.