John Kass has a lot on his mind. America’s in turmoil, and he’s got deep misgivings. But instead of a stool in a dimly lit coffee house, Kass had to settle for page two of the Sunday Tribune, a venue where the lights are bright and logic comes first.
“On those nights when they were young,” he wrote, “they smoked pot in the streets and listened to Dylan in the car and dreamed of the risks they’d take.” But they’re much older now, “and they rush toward the warm embrace of big government and promised security.” In Kass’s vision, the boomers grew up to be a generation of nervous Mister Joneses, and so many of them they can turn their fears into laws and governments.
That might work as a song.
And now big government has sunk its fangs into the financial industry, and when bureaucrats are running high finance the dreamers with big ideas won’t stand a chance. “The entrepreneurial mind isn’t willing to settle and wants to make more than $250,000 in salary or whatever the federal government deems proper,” said Kass. “They don’t want proper. What they want is to take risks and reach the American Dream. [But] when they get close to victory they’ll get whacked with tax increases and the rug will be pulled out from under them.”
There could be a song in that, an angry, foot-stomping “Ballad of Joe the Plumber.”
The column was a cry from Kass’s heart. “Will our children speak of liberty, as we once did before we forgot?” he asked, in clear torment. “These days, liberty isn’t in vogue. It’s so, so olde.” He closed with a parable about catching a wild pig. It’s such a powerful parable that I believe it’s earned Wild Pig a song of its own, a song that will exhilarate us even though we have our doubts about the metaphor.
Update: Having just reread the Kass column–did they fire all of the editors over there? It’s just bad.