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Tuesday
It’s too early to say for sure how many of the 100+ deaths from the horrific flooding in Texas could have been prevented with a fully functional National Weather Service (NWS) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). With Trump having gutted both, however, the event dramatically captures the recklessness of his nihilistic sloganeering. First there is the way he has been denying climate change, which includes him actually accelerating the carbon build-up in the atmosphere that is leading to increasingly frequent extreme weather events. Then there is his open contempt for governmental monitoring agencies and governmental aid agencies. We are getting a clear view of what a reconfigured America could look like, and it’s not pretty.
Bob Dylan’s “When the Ship Comes In” comes to mind at such a moment. “For the chains of the sea will have busted in the night,” Dylan predicts. More chains are busting with every passing year.
Dylan’s lyrics may owe something to Bertolt Brecht’s “Pirate Jenny” from Three Penny Opera, a revenge fantasy by a chambermaid about a pirate ship that arrives one night to kill her employers and everyone else. First there’s the frustration:
You gentlemen can watch while I’m scrubbin’ the floors
And I’m scrubbin’ the floors while you’re gawkin’
And maybe once you tip me and it makes you feel swell
On a ratty waterfront in a ratty old hotel
And you never guess to who you’re talkin’
You never guess to who you are talkin’…
Then comes the bloody fantasy as her ship comes in:
By noontime the dock is all swarmin’ with men
Comin’ off of that ghostly freighter
They’re movin’ in the shadows where no one can see
And they’re chainin’ up people and bringin’ them to me
Askin’ me, “Kill them now or later?”
Askin’ me, “Kill them now or later?”
Noon by the clock and so still on the dock
You can hear a foghorn miles away
In that quiet of death, I’ll say
“Right now”
And they pile up the bodies and I’ll say
“That’ll learn you”
Then the ship, the black freighter
Disappears out to sea
And on it is me
While Jenny’s resentment is class driven, Dylan’s apocalyptic scenario is vaguer and thus has a wider application. The song was written during the 1960s and various political groups certainly imagined themselves shouting out, “Your days are numbered” from the victor ship. When the song is applied to the current climate change upheavals, however, the images of seas splitting and fish swimming out of their path no longer sound metaphorical.
There’s a general sense throughout the song that various chickens are coming home to roost. That’s how it was seen in the 1960s and how it can be seen now. Here are the lyrics.
Oh the time will come up
When the winds will stop
And the breeze will cease to be breathin’.
Like the stillness in the wind
‘Fore the hurricane begins,
The hour when the ship comes in.Oh the seas will split
And the ship will hit
And the sands on the shoreline will be shaking.
Then the tide will sound
And the wind will pound
And the morning will be breaking.Oh the fishes will laugh
As they swim out of the path
And the seagulls they’ll be smiling.
And the rocks on the sand
Will proudly stand,
The hour that the ship comes in.And the words that are used
For to get the ship confused
Will not be understood as they’re spoken.
For the chains of the sea
Will have busted in the night
And will be buried at the bottom of the ocean.A song will lift
As the mainsail shifts
And the boat drifts on to the shoreline.
And the sun will respect
Every face on the deck,
The hour that the ship comes in.Then the sands will roll
Out a carpet of gold
For your weary toes to be a-touchin’.
And the ship’s wise men
Will remind you once again
That the whole wide world is watchin’.Oh the foes will rise
With the sleep still in their eyes
And they’ll jerk from their beds and think they’re dreamin’.
But they’ll pinch themselves and squeal
And know that it’s for real,
The hour when the ship comes in.Then they’ll raise their hands,
Sayin’ we’ll meet all your demands,
But we’ll shout from the bow your days are numbered.
And like Pharaoh’s tribe,
They’ll be drownded in the tide,
And like Goliath, they’ll be conquered.
Will reality finally penetrate the bubble that Trump and his MAGA supporters have created for themselves? Will they pinch themselves and squeal and know that climate change is for real? I can’t imagine them ever saying, “We’ll meet all your demands.” Better to be drownded in the tide than admit you were wrong.
Unfortunately, since we’re all being drownded together, there will be no triumphal shouting from the bows of the ship. Just some, “We told you so.” Which doesn’t take one very far.
