Home We'll Keep the Red Flag Flying Here
Home We'll Keep the Red Flag Flying Here

We'll Keep the Red Flag Flying Here

Ever since FDR made it his campaign song in 1932 while running for office during the Great Depression, the unofficial anthem of the Democratic Party has been that Tin Pan Alley classic, "Happy Days are Here Again." But no matter how often the old Victor spun, it would not be until well after Roosevelt's death that happy days would be here again.

Like Hope and Change, Happy Days are Here Again was a blandly optimistic and non-specific promise that good times were coming. Someday the happy days would arrive, an appropriate enough sentiment for a song whose pivotal moment came in the movie "Chasing Rainbows" where it was sung to reassure a cuckolded husband who is threatening to kill himself. And in an even more appropriate bit of symbolism, the actual movie footage of that moment is as lost as the happy times.

No matter how often the Democratic Party cheats on the American people, it can always break out a new rendition of "Happy Days are Here Again" to win them back. And even if the happy days never seem to actually arrive, the promise of "So long sad times" and "Howdy gay times" where "your troubles and cares are gone" is always a winner.

While the American Democratic Party may not have an official anthem, the British Labour Party does and its anthem, "The Red Flag" would be entirely appropriate for the new Democratic Party that no longer has anything in common with Thomas Jefferson or Andrew Jackson.

It might be awkward to imagine Harry Reid or Joe Manchin trying to make it through verses like, "The people's flag is deepest red" and the sonorous chorus, "Then raise the scarlet standard high /Within its shade we live and die/Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer/We'll keep the red flag flying here."

They would probably look almost as awkward singing it as Labour Party leader Ed Milliband does, but you could easily imagine Barack Obama and Valerie Jarrett belting it out. And that would be only right because while The Red Flag never gets around to mentioning Manchester, despite its popularity there, it does namecheck two cities. "In Moscow's vaults its hymns were sung/Chicago swells the surging throng."

These days red flag songs, once mandatory, are confined to all sorts of vaults in Moscow. The new Russian anthem is Putin's redress of the old Soviet one, with lyrics by the same composer. And the Soviet National Anthem, that secular hymn, has a familiar pedigree going back to the Anthem of the Bolshevik Party in 1938, which took its melody from "Life is better, Life is fun."

You might be forgiven for thinking that the Bolshevik Party had borrowed its melody from some Moscow musical, but that wasn't the case. "Life is better, Life is fun" was based on a statement by Stalin: "Life has become better, comrades. Life has become more fun." The year was 1935 and while it is impossible to know whether Comrade Stalin had decided to crib from the Democratic campaign of 1932, the theme was the same. So long sad times. Happy days were here again.

And just to remind everyone that happy days really were here again, Stalin began another round of brutal purges. A year earlier, Uncle Joe, as the Fireside Chatter liked to refer to one of the world's bloodiest mass murderers, had arranged for the murder of Sergei Kirov, who was everything that Stalin wasn't, and used the murder to begin a purge of anyone more popular than him, with the support of red flag wavers in Chicago, New York, London and Los Angeles.

Unlike Franklin, Stalin's idea of a campaign involved a lot of firing squads to properly soak the red flag in the deepest red, while the band played, "Life is better, Life is fun." After the purges were wrapped up, Stalin signed a pact with another red flag waver from Berlin. The Nazis and Communists might have disagreed on any number of things, but both of them had inherited the Jacobin fetish for painting a flag red with blood and then waving it while calling for more death.

While Moscow might have turned in its red card, Chicago's "surging throng" is still swelling the polls, and even though their shirts are purple, their fingers are red from the strain of repeat voting. If there is anywhere in the United States that the red flag has gone on flying, outside of Marin County, it's Chicago. In its shade, generations have lived and died, and now generations have begun living and dying in its shade across the country as the red flag keeps flying for another four years over D.C.

The red flags of the post-modern, post-American, post-British, post-everything revolutionaries aren't usually as obvious as a gang of wealthy politicians staggering to a microphone once a year and belting out, "We'll keep the red flag flying here". It usually sounds more like the parody of that anthem, known somewhat sarcastically as  the "Battle Hymn of the New Socialist Party,"

"White collar workers stand and cheer/The Labour government is here/We’ll change the country bit by bit/So nobody will notice it." A policy of changing the country bit by bit so none of the workers who want their benefits notices that everything else they value is being dragged away to the rubbish heap while they sleep may be sneered at by the real reds, but it's worked quite effectively.

Tony Blair did a masterful job of changing Britain, leaving behind Neil Kinnock's threats to take the workers into the streets if the election did not go his way. (It did not. He did not.) Kinnock proved good enough for Joe Biden to plagiarize his biography from, but the future rested with a sensible left. A New Labour that would talk like technocrats while importing unprecedented number of immigrants to change the electoral balance of the country, so that the red flag would go on flying here, even if it was green and had a crescent and a pair of crossed swords in the middle.

Instead of the flying red flag, Tony Blair's New Labour used D:ream's "Things can only get better" as its election anthem, which despite a title that made it sound like another, "Happy Days are Here" or "Life is better, Life is fun" was more of a love song to a Labour messiah promising to cure "prejudice and greed".

"Walk my path/Wear my shoes/Talk like me/I'll be an angel," New Labour voters were promised and they fell for it. The age of the Me Generation PM was here and the new egotism resounded in lyrics like "Things can only get better/Can only get better/Now I've found you/(That means me)" that took both self-help and self-involvement to a whole new level. But British voters probably should have paid more attention to warning lyrics like, "I sometimes lose myself in me".

Bill Clinton was America's Tony Blair, but with enough Good Old Boy charm to leaven the false earnestness that led so many to hate Blair. If Blair was a liar pretending to be an honest man, Clinton was a liar pretending to be an honest man pretending to be a liar, a rotten sandwich of a paradox that you have to be a politician or an observer of them to properly appreciate. Like Blair, Clinton worked to change the country bit by bit, appealing to white collar workers and leaving the red flag in the trunk next to the road flares and the dynamite.

It's Chicago time now and the red flag is back. Talk of changing the country bit by bit is done. Now the country is being changed aggressively, every change a finger poke in the eye of the people who don't notice right what is in front of their faces. The cuckolding is no longer subtle. It's more out in the open than ever and the country is being bankrupted and the middle class is being wiped out to a rousing chorus of "Happy Days are Here Again", when an entire generation has come of age never knowing a time when happy days prevailed.

Whatever faults Kinnock and old Labour had, losing himself in himself wasn't one of them. But the Baby Boomer and Generation X leaders had the narcissistic habit of doing just that. Clinton and Blair both lost themselves in themselves and since then never appear to have found themselves again. And Barack Obama never lost himself in himself because he never stepped out of himself to begin with.

Obama marries the red flag radicalism of the old left with generational egotism to show us the spoiled brat as leader, the tyke born with a set of silver spoons in his mouth who not only waves the red flag, but who mistakes his shamelessness for political genius. Where Clinton limited his shamelessness to his personal life, for his Democratic successor, in the tradition of both the hard left and the fellowship of mirror gazers, the personal has always been political. To the Hope and Changer, the man is the office, the state is the man, and the whim is the national agenda.

Stalin famously told his mother that he was the new Czar, transmuting collectivist revolution into the egotistical authoritarianism of one man. Obama has managed the same trick, merging revolutionary politics with his own brand until there is no longer a difference between the man and his revolution. FDR only promised happy days, but Obama has become the actual incarnation of hope, which may explain why there is no longer any hope to go around.

There is a flag flying over Washington and it's no longer the stars and stripes, but the same red flag that flies over Chicago. It's the red flag under whose shade misery and tyranny spreads while the band strikes up the same anthem over and over again. "Happy days are here again." Life is better, life is fun." "Things can only get better" and of course Obama's victory speech promise; "The best is yet to come."

It might have been more honest if he had instead admitted, "We'll keep the red flag flying here."

Comments

  1. Passer by9/1/13

    The fact that democrats are not being able to comprehend that the US is a declining nation, shows some very, very serious delusions on their part. The US intelligence itself estimates that the US will no longer be a super power in 2030, yet these people hope for some glorious future ahead.
    "Seventy-four percent of Republicans said that America’s best days are behind us, while 24 percent said they are ahead of us. Fifty-five percent of Independents said America’s best days are behind us, while 43 percent said they were ahead of us. Among Democrats, 69 percent said America’s best days are ahead of us, while 28 percent said they are behind us."

    Poll: Majority Sees America as Declining Power, Facing Economic Difficulty and Rising Crime Rates
    http://cnsnews.com/news/article/poll-majority-sees-america-declining-power-facing-economic-difficulty-and-rising-crime

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous9/1/13

    I have two co-workers who openly voted for Obama. One, I will refer to her as A, loves guns hates government taxes, and doesnt think much of Obama. In her own words she didnt pay that much attention to the election campaign but chose Obama since "Romney would be even worse since he was so stupid". When I asked for specifics she gave an incoherent answer about Romney at the debate. At this point I gave up on her.

    The second co-worker, I will refer to as D, she voted for Obama as well. But her case is different in she openly takes massive government aide by claiming six dependents when she only has one. This gets her free food stamps and a massive tax return. She also takes advantage of charities. D was open that she voted for Obama because D believed Romney would reduce her benefits.

    My point is when people vote for the Democrats out of profound ignorance or dishonesty is there any real hope of reaching the country?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Miracle, magic: some impressive effect without associated apparent and obvious cause. Attractive manufactured reality can be created with various tricks and illusions (Nigerian and Kenyan princes are well versed in techniques). The trouble is that it cannot be sustained for too long. Reality usually tends to bite back.

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  4. The most powerful argument which leftists tend to avoid like a plague:

    "That country went ahead and implemented all our ideas - see how great and wonderful and happy they are now?"

    Makes one wonder.

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  5. Anon, your first co-worker is the Saturday Night Live vote. A depressing and idiotic phenomenon.

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  6. What is truly strange is that the reds here in USA insist on labeling conservative states as "red states." Seems like a cruel trick to me, since most of the God-fearing, hard-working folks who populate those "red" states are actually true-blue Americans with noticeable inclinations toward self-sufficiency and independent thinking instead of gov dependency, a la, as you mentioned, Jefferson and Jackson.
    It may be time to go underground, a la Harriet Tubman, or more likely blatantly alarmist something like Paul Revere or Vaclev Havel.
    Hopefully in won't go so far as to require a Solzenyitzen.

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  7. Anonymous10/1/13

    Wonderful article, Daniel!


    Keliata

    ReplyDelete
  8. Anonymous10/1/13

    And since the US was discovered by an Italian my Italian American spirit sings

    Dilegua, o notte! Tramontate, stelle Tramontate, stelle! All'alba vincerò!

    Vincero! Vincero!

    VINCERO!!!!




    Vanish, o night! Set, stars! Set, stars!
    At dawn, I will win! I will win! I will win!



    Keliata

    ReplyDelete
  9. MK Crow10/1/13

    Great article, as always, SK, but the problem is that there are people for whom the "scales" are spot welded not only to their eyeballs but to their critical thinking abilities.

    The re-election of BHO despite his catestrophic effects on the economy, foreign policy, the energy sector and rule of law is proof of this.

    Sadly, too many of our citizens have become spoiled, fat, willfully ill-educated sheeple, content to passively live at the behest of the very "red flag" fed.gov that now sustains them.

    This is the not-so-secret reason why the Dems keep winning (yes, I know they cheat) elections. They keep just enough people on the dole in critical districts to vote for MORE FREE STUFF. The conservative argument of self responsibility, self reliance, freedom and liberty falls on deaf ears. Worse, it scares the daylights out of the parasitical class because they fear such a life.

    Until the fed.gov titty runs dry, I see very little chance of changing this paradigm.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Anonymous10/1/13

    Like everyone else, I’m trying to see the bright side of the current disaster in DC. Since the Law of Unintended Consequences hasn’t been repealed, here are my top 20 reasons to support the Difi Assault Weapons Ban and any other measure her or Bloomberg want to pass. After putting this list together, I don’t feel so bad any more. The inspiration for this is linked below.



    1. No more pesky yellow forms to fill out

    2. You can wear your Che Guerva beret in public and not be laughed at

    3. No more worried about being on the no fly list....only granny deserves to be treated this badly

    4. You are no longer eligible for prosecution since you’ll be a real criminal, just keep plenty of cash on hand and the chief on speed dial

    5. Your toy budget won’t be supporting the California teachers retirement plan

    6. No more waiting in line at Wal Mart, everything sold in the parking lot!

    7. Prices will go down due to surplus AKs and ammo now being abundant, plus no smith fees for that really silly downgrade. We only have 5 million now, and there are 95 million more in the world! Let’s get them!

    8. That grenade launcher or artillery piece you've always wanted ……..and ammo for it will be plentiful as pot..

    9. Cheap Silencers!

    10. No more paperwork or legal fees after self defense shootings, just leave the body where it is and someone will be along to clean up the mess...eventually.....just like Chicago and Detroit.

    11. No more traffic tickets! Cops will be too busy with unsolved murders…….again, just like Chicago or Detroit

    12. No more listening to politicians running for office, since the elections will be permanently canceled

    13. Banks will actually offer customer service when you call and the IRS will be polite.

    14. ATF agents will rival the competence, professionalism and integrity of the …..…TSA!

    15. Expanded career choices due to various drug and warlords hiring people with your unique skill set…..the ability to shoot straight and teach others to do so

    16. Your “civilized” liberal metrosexual neighbors will cry when they find out the “barbarian” isn’t around to protect them anymore

    17. You might be eligible for a Fast and Furious Weapon!

    18. Republican establishment reveals itself to be unemployed Democrats

    19. Your beat up 60 y/o POS hunting rifle will now be considered an ultra-cool long range sniper rifle

    20. Blue Helmets make great targets.





    http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/52292

    ReplyDelete

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