{"id":1487,"date":"2023-11-19T20:21:45","date_gmt":"2023-11-19T20:21:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zeppscommentaries.online\/?p=1487"},"modified":"2023-11-19T20:21:45","modified_gmt":"2023-11-19T20:21:45","slug":"frank-zappa-and-the-dominionists-he-would-have-been-appalled-but-oh-the-songs-he-would-write","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zeppscommentaries.online\/?p=1487","title":{"rendered":"Frank Zappa and the Dominionists — He would have been appalled, but oh, the songs he would write!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Frank Zappa and the Dominionists<\/b><\/p>\n

He would have been appalled, but oh, the songs he would write!<\/b><\/p>\n

Bryan Zepp Jamieson<\/i><\/p>\n

November 19th<\/sup>, 2023<\/i><\/p>\n

www.zeppscommentaries.online<\/i><\/p>\n

While noodling around Facebook today, I came across this quote, attributed to the legendary musician Frank Zappa: \u201cSocialism produces bad music, bad art, social stagnation, and really unhappy people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Well, that didn\u2019t really sound like Zappa, who, while a staunch idealistic libertarian, openly admired the freedoms and personal spaciousness afforded by such socialist countries such as Finland, Sweden, France or Denmark. He would have understood that socialism isn\u2019t what most Americans think it is. On that, he did say: \u201cCommunism doesn\u2019t work because it is out of phase with human nature. Are we going to wake up one day to find this statement equally true when applied to the concept of Western democracy?\u201d He did know the difference. He was a fierce defender of personal and artistic rights, and respected societies that observed those rights, having little interest in the political apparatus that was involved. On that he said, \u201cGovernment is the Entertainment division of the military-industrial complex.\u201d Oh, yeah. Current events sure support that notion.<\/p>\n

I did look to see if the socialism quote held up to scrutiny, since as Geoffrey Chaucer once famously observed, \u201cDepende not what thou mightst encountre upon thee internets and lendist not unto it thy minde, for it bee swarming with crappe.\u201d The only source I could find (uncited) was on a \u2018mens\u2019 rights website. So safe to assume he never said it.<\/p>\n

I doubt Frank would be impressed with what passes for Libertarianism these days, and may well have seen it as fascism in drag, a cynical ploy by moneyed interests to strip government and people of power in order to create a power vacuum for churches and corporations to fill. He regarded those as threats to freedoms and creativity, saying: \u201cThe biggest threat to America today is not communism, it’s moving America toward a fascist theocracy, and everything that’s happened during the Reagan administration is steering us right down that pipe. […] When you have a government that prefers a certain moral code derived from a certain religion and that moral code turns into legislation to suit one certain religious point of view, and if that code happens to be very very right wing, almost toward Attila the Hun.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, comparing the fascist right to Attila the Hun would be considered mild. We have a Hitler-spouting authoritarian as the lead candidate for President in one major party, and the second-in-line for the entire country an open Dominionist who wants to subject the citizenry to his own toxic brand of Christianity.<\/p>\n

I suspect Zappa would be appalled.<\/p>\n

Certainly the Founders would be. Mike Johnson, the so-called Speaker who wants Jesus as King of America said, \u201cThe separation of church and state is a misnomer. People misunderstand it. Of course, it comes from a phrase that was in a letter that Jefferson wrote. It\u2019s not in the Constitution. And what he was explaining is they did not want the government to encroach upon the church \u2014 not that they didn\u2019t want principles of faith to have influence on our public life. It\u2019s exactly the opposite.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s referring, of course, to the Danbury letter in which Jefferson wrote, \u201cBelieving with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.\u201d While Jefferson was reassuring the Danbury Baptists that government would not be used against them, what they were concerned about were non-Baptists. Non-Baptists, using government to repress them or punish them for not being of the True Faith. They, like Jefferson and nearly all of the Founders, came from the British Isles, which had, at that time, a long and storied history of various factions within Christianity seizing secular power and using it to promote themselves and punish and repress others. Jefferson in particular loathed Britain\u2019s Test Act, which denied public office to Catholics, Jews, and other non-believers. He insisted on the \u201cNo Religious Test\u201d phrase in the Constitution, which, by its own language, is the only phrase in the Constitution which cannot be amended. \u201cshall EVER be\u2026\u201d is what follows. He wanted anyone of any faith to be able to hold office, but he also wanted to make damned sure that none of those office-holders would abuse it to promote their own faith at the expense of others.<\/p>\n

Far right nativists in America like to claim they are of \u201cScots-Irish\u201d descent, a term that makes about as little sense as \u201cJudeo-Christian.\u201d Scotland and Ireland are two different lands, culturally and socially, and as a rule don\u2019t like one another very much. But both, along with England, have people whose ancestors were punished, imprisoned, sometimes killed for being a member of the wrong religion at the wrong time. For Jefferson and the Danbury Baptists, that was recent history. In fact, in the UK it was also future history: freedom of religion wasn\u2019t formally codified until 1998. Until then, it was illegal for a Catholic to be prime minister (yes, Tony Blair lied about his religious beliefs to hold office), and the monarch must still be Anglican. Scotland and Wales didn\u2019t have separation of church and state until the early 1920s. Every year, England celebrates Guy Fawkes day. It\u2019s a harmless and festive event now, fun for the whole family, but it started out celebrating Catholic traitors by burning them in effigy.<\/p>\n

Dominionists don\u2019t understand their their own country nor their own religion. And they don\u2019t know history, which teaches that all theocracies, without exception, become cruel, corrupt and incompetent because the source authority is forever silent and thus easy for monsters, such as Johnson and Trump, to \u201cinterpret.\u201d Dominionists are the yellow snow of politics.<\/p>\n

Frank Zappa would have used something stronger than \u201cAttila the Hun\u201d to describe it. Cromwell, perhaps, or Pope Benedict IX, or even Hitler.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m glad he isn\u2019t here to see this. But oh! The songs he could write!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Frank Zappa and the Dominionists He would have been appalled, but oh, the songs he would write! Bryan Zepp Jamieson November 19th, 2023 www.zeppscommentaries.online While noodling around Facebook today, I came across this quote, attributed to the legendary musician Frank Zappa: \u201cSocialism produces bad music, bad art, social stagnation, and really unhappy people.\u201d Well, that … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Frank Zappa and the Dominionists — He would have been appalled, but oh, the songs he would write!”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,617,2,60,751],"tags":[939,1752,148,1774,188,1775,1751,1776,940],"class_list":["post-1487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-american-psyche","category-history","category-humor","category-politics","category-religion","tag-communist","tag-dominionist","tag-fascist","tag-frank-zappa","tag-guy-fawkes","tag-liberarian","tag-mike-johnson","tag-popes","tag-socialist"],"yoast_head":"\nFrank Zappa and the Dominionists -- He would have been appalled, but oh, the songs he would write! · Zepp's Commentaries<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/zeppscommentaries.online\/?p=1487\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Frank Zappa and the Dominionists -- He would have been appalled, but oh, the songs he would write! · Zepp's Commentaries\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Frank Zappa and the Dominionists He would have been appalled, but oh, the songs he would write! 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