[The following is a mildly edited transcript of the 267th episode of the Podcast Titled RevolutionZ.]

I borrowed the title Time Has Come Today from a Chambers Brothers song, released in 1967. I added to it “Becoming Revolutionary” which sentiment I felt in that 1967 music. 

But is now 2024. The blink of an eye later. A billion lifetimes later. And to quote the Chambers Brothers again, “now the time has come.” And here is my 2024 argument for “Becoming Revolutionary” before it is too damn late. The argument is a bit apocalyptic, a bit optimistic, and a bit antagonistic. I convey it just how I feel it: with fear, hope, and a fist.

I look around. I see what I see. I hear what I hear. The NBA season is over half finished. Cable images have no end. Everywhere new platforms offer non stop Taylor Swift news. Trump from every spigot. Novels galore. And of course ubiquitous Youtube. It’s infinite entertainment out there. It’s binge heaven out there. 

But simultaneously gold plated armies unleash holy hell. High water floods cities. Low water drains aquifers. Self-absorbed bigotry cremates life-affirming love. Head in the dirt denial begets horrific hypocrisy. Buoyant cowardice swarms center stage. Starve them, sicken them, shoot them, explode them. It’s a genocide parade out there. And can you believe today’s U.S. task: I kid you not, design a new nuclear bomb, the first new one in thirty years. And boy do we need that. It’s binge hell out there.

These things are beyond words. Beyond pain. Beyond desire. Beyond shame. Beyond feeling. Beyond reason. Beyond beyond.

But hey, no problem. Don’t worry. Be happy. Hooray for my team. Incinerate your team. A selfie for me. A thousand million cuts for you. Slow motion murder becomes mass murder. An occasional lie becomes a shit storm of lies. From TV to concert hall, from kindergarden to funeral home, lying is the new maturity. Take a selfie. Take another. Teach your children. Butterflies scream. 

Why do we do what we do? Is it only because it is what we have done and having done it…we do it again lest we realize we were horribly wrong all along? And then we do it again. And again. Unto death. Is it just for power, for money, for sex, for bragging rights? Or is it just to dominate instead of being dominated? But hey, hooray for my team. Incinerate your team. A new toy for me. A thousand million cuts for you. Lions weep.

Science cowers. Respect withers. Lies dominate truth. Truth dies. Is dishonesty our destiny? Is egoism our legacy? 

Robotically welcome robots who look human. Robotically welcome robot love. Fuck the robot. Get fucked by the robot. Cap it off, smoke a cigarette. But wait, that’s sickly. Cap it off. Watch a video of a violent drone. That’s healthy. You can get it all at the mall. Do it for pleasure. Do it for pain. The difference dwindles. Have a cigar. Maybe a joint. Whatever. Dogs whimper. 

Violence calls itself virtue. Violence preens. Violence goes viral. Violence is number one with a bullet. Violence is hunger and bombs. Violence is hurricanes and floods. Violence is regimentation and enforcement. Violence is rape. Violence goes viral. Violence is you and me. We cannot deny this shit. 

Violence is at the mall. Violence is at school. Violence is at work. Violence is in the kitchen. Abort abortions. Shoot at shooting ranges. And the Mall, too.

Violence screams, “see me everywhere.” “I am great.” “Bow down to me.” Violence demands, “on your knees for me.” “What’s my name? “What’s my game?” “Grovel or else””Hate everything.” “Call me Bold. Call me Marauder.”

Greed grabs riches. Preachers pray to penthouse gods. Morons master war. Lunatics lubricate destruction. Idiots immolate history. Learn hate. Teach hate. Aim. Shoot. Mourn. Or better yet: don’t mourn, party. The sky is on fire. The sky weeps. Nowhere is quiet.

But wait just a not so maudlin minute. Yes, that shit is all out there. We can’t miss it. But so is inspiration out there. Demands for peace. Demands for caring. Demands for health. Demands for knowledge. Demands for sexual healing. Demands for an end to billionaires profiting. Demands for an end to billionaires, period. Demands for an end to bosses bossing. Demands for an end to bosses period. No more color coding. No more lives atrophying. No more lives barely lived. No more lives extinguished. 

Demands for dignity. Demands to save the planet. Demands for dignity. Demands to save ourselves. Demands for dignity. Demands to cease firing. Cease firing, dammit. Demands proliferate out there. Doves awake. Change is gonna come.

Demands are nice, but to implement demands we need careful plans and continuous effort. And to attain careful plans and continuous effort we need lots and lots of people. And to align lots and lots of people, and then more people, and then still more people, we have to listen well. And to listen well we need clear voices. We need inspiring actions. We need ears wide open to what’s written on subway walls and what’s reverberating in tenement halls. 

Deduction: to have lots and lots of people seek peace, justice, and liberation, we need lots and lots of people to see hopeful welcoming movement possibilities and to anticipate worthy movement successes. Beyond woke we need for many many people to compatibly and caressingly share where they want to go and how they intend to get there.

We can’t deny that our times are in our face. That our times are undeniably embarrassing. That our times are off the chart disgusting. That our times are mindlessly brazen and suicidally blatant. The devil whoops it up. 

But we can’t deny that our times are also undeniably hopeful. Unions, communities, youth, couples, loners, parents, and kids smolder. We stir. We wake. Hell no, we won’t go. 

At stage right, Nazi apocalypse surges and proliferates. It hollers hatred. At stage left, freedom, dignity, respect, mutual aid, and a new world peek out and perk up. Staying alive. Movements flex. Dignity strides again.

Our times are undeniably wretched. Our times are undeniably hopeful. Which side is our friend? Which side are you on? Which side are we on? 

No more nit-picking. No more ghosting. No more self delusion. No more business as usual. No more yesterday’s papers. No more excuses for joining the wrong side. No more excuses for silence. Silence is golden, but only for the rich. Silence is sustenance, but only for violence. Hey, what’s that sound? People coming round the bend. 

No more accommodating. No more being busy dying. Better is possible. Better is necessary. Better is dignity. Better is life. Time has come today.

There is no way to avoid this boiling confrontation. We will either be living dead and then dead dead, or we will be born anew over and over. Liberated. 

I hate apocalyptic formulations. I can’t stand them. But here I am. Here we are. Apocalypse beckons around every corner. We can no longer deny, fear, ridicule, or play act at fundamental change. Time has come today. But the abyss is deep. Its tentacles are strong. We won’t win the world in one gulp. We want the world, yes, but we can’t get it in one sitting. One gulp rhetoric is gluttonous nonsense. Amassing support takes time. Amassing support takes reaching out and welcoming in. Out of the abyss into beauty is not the work of an hour. History takes time. 

To win we must unify many threads. To unify many threads we must inter weave countless partial steps that overcome the past and construct the future. Gender steps. Cultural steps. Legislative steps. Economic steps. Ecological steps. International steps. Steps we help happen. Magical mystery steps that go where we want to arrive. No vanguard, no rearguard, just collectivity to create a real utopia.

Conclusion: No more denying the obvious. Our pursuit, our job, our agenda, our profession, what we admire, what we aspire to, what we respect, what we celebrate, who we want to be, who we must be, and who we will be has got to become patiently, smartly, and unrelentingly revolutionary. Sail on, sail on, to fundamental change. We have got to become caring, mature, sober revolutionaries. No macho nonsense. No passive reticence. Step by step, we have to engage ourselves until we civilize ourselves. Until we civilize the world. Time has come today. 

Back when the Chambers Brothers sang their song, I felt it. So here are their lyrics from 1967. They are very good. But with the music, if you give it a listen, they become still better. You may feel it too, today.

Time has come today

Young hearts can go their way

Can’t put it off another day

I don’t care what others say

They say we don’t listen anyway

Time has come today

(Hey)

 

Oh The rules have changed today (Hey)

I have no place to stay (Hey)

I’m thinking about the subway (Hey)

My love has flown away (Hey)

My tears have come and gone (Hey)

Oh my Lord, I have to roam (Hey)

I have no home (Hey)

I have no home (Hey)

 

Now the time has come (Time)

There’s no place to run (Time)

I might get burned up by the sun (Time)

But I had my fun (Time)

I’ve been loved and put aside (Time)

I’ve been crushed by the tumbling tide (Time)

And my soul has been psychedelicized (Time)

Now the time has come (Time)

There are things to realize (Time)

Time has come today (Time)

Time has come today (Time)

 

I remember hearing that at a concert in of all places, Harvard University’s football Stadium in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The audience resonated to the beat. We stamped our feet in time all over the stands. Not football, revolution. Thousands and thousands of criminals in the eyes of America. Together. The whole place shook. Imagine it. 

For us, in 1967, Time Had Come Today. But no, it had seemed to, but it hadn’t. Just over a half century ago a whole lot of shaking went on but we didn’t build enough. We didn’t unite enough. We didn’t envision enough. We didn’t share enough. We didn’t get whole enough. We didn’t sufficiently seize the time.

So what about now? What about 2024? What’s warranted? What’s required? Do you ask yourself that? What is on our minds? A new product at the Mall? Tonight’s TV stream? Tomorrow’s exam? How to avoid pissing off our school, our boss, the older generation, the next generation, the unborn, the dead?

What is on our minds? Dinner? Getting laid? Paying rent? How to get out of bed? How to get out of bed? How to get out of bed? How to not get drowned? That’s not sarcasm. That’s all quite reasonable. Certainly it is. Straitjacketed by society’s pliers, to make believe we are wholly totally free will accomplish nothing. We have to navigate narrow options and heavy baggage. But what about asking how to turn it all around, how to break imposed chains, how win better?

Are you angry, furious, but also curious about how to exit? If not, why the hell not? After all, Time Has Come Today.

A court pronounces—Well yes, let us ponder it, let us pontificate it, be patient with us—but okay, yes, okay, certainly, yes, we see it, genocide is genocide. Wow! Amazing. After all, until now genocide has been the courageous work done with God on our side. The robes whisper otherwise and so now we know. It is genocide. But now what? Back to school? Back to work? Out of sight, out of mind? Except it isn’t out of sight and it will eat our minds until we are hollow.

Scientists say—The floods, blizzards, and draughts are just getting going. They know whereof they speak. So now what? Back to school? Back to work? Out of sight, out of mind? Except, listen, they say, it is just the beginning. So the world goes on suicide watch. But who is watching? More important, who is intervening? Trump? Biden? Of course not. So what about us? Time has come today–hasn’t it?

A friend, my age, and whatever I may tell myself, that’s teeth-missing, eyes-failing, ears-shot old, recently told me that most everyone he knew, and he knows a lot of people, normal people, good people, have no thoughts for the Mideast, no thoughts for global warming, and no thoughts for onrushing lunatic fascism. Instead, he told me, they may courteously chat for a minute about it, they only seriously think about what’s new at the Mall, what’s happening on TV. They only think about affecting the most proximate, most individualistic things. 

And I get it. Those people aren’t crazy. But they have no hope. You wake up, you get out of bed, you drag a comb across your head. You learn to dance, get dressed, try to be a success. Meantime life outside goes on all around you…until it doesn’t.

Here are some more lyrics also from back when I stood stamping my feet in unison with so many others, feeling like the whole damn stadium and Harvard too, and every elitest master of the universe thing like Harvard was going to come down, and that we would rebuild the world. It was when the time had come for me and for lots of others, but it was a time that ultimately didn’t succeed. We didn’t succeed. We were kids. We should have stayed kids. Do better. Be young. Stay young. 

From a little later, here is Jackson Browne’s song titled The Pretender. His warning is, in the blink of an eye, you may grow up and you may become—a Pretender. So what the hell am I ranting about? Don’t become a Pretender. Love, but also fight. Live for today, but also for tomorrow. So Jackson Browne sang: 

I’m going to rent myself a house

In the shade of the freeway

Gonna pack my lunch in the morning

And go to work each day

And when the evening rolls around

I’ll go on home and lay my body down

And when the morning light comes streaming in

I’ll get up and do it again, Amen

Say it again, Amen

 

I want to know what became of the changes

We waited for love to bring

Were they only the fitful dreams

Of some greater awakening?

I’ve been aware of the time going by

They say, in the end, it’s the wink of an eye

When the morning light comes streaming in

You’ll get up and do it again, Amen

 

Caught between the longing for love

And the struggle for the legal tender

Where the sirens sing and the church bells ring

And the junk man pounds his fender

Where the veterans dream of the fight

Fast asleep at the traffic light

And the children solemnly wait

For the ice cream vendor

 

Out into the cool of the evening

Strolls the pretender

He knows that all his hopes and dreams

Begin and end there

Ah, the lovers as they run through the night

Leaving nothing but to choose off and fight

And tear at the world with all their might

While the ships bearing their dreams

Sail out of sight

 

I’m gonna find myself a girl

Who can show me what laughter means

And we’ll fill in the missing colors

In each other’s paint-by-number dreams

And then we’ll put our dark glasses on

And we’ll make love until our strength is gone

And when the morning light comes streaming in

We’ll get up and do it again

Get it up again

 

I’m gonna be a happy idiot

And struggle for the legal tender

Where the ads take aim and lay their claim

To the heart and the soul of the spender

And believe in whatever may lie

In those things that money can buy

Where true love could have been a contender

Are you there? Say a prayer for the pretender

Who started out so young and strong only to surrender

 

Say a prayer for the pretender

Are you there for the pretender?

Say a prayer for the pretender

Are you there for the pretender?

Are you prepared for the pretender?

 

My bard sang, back then too. My rant is getting too long so here is just one stanza: 

 

Advertising signs that con you into thinking you’re the one 

That can do what’s never been done, 

That can win what’s never been won, 

Meantime life outside goes on all around you. 

 

And oh well, here is another stanza from the same song: 

 

My eyes collide head-on with stuffed graveyards

False gods, I scuff

At pettiness which plays so rough

Walk upside-down inside handcuffs

Kick my legs to crash it off

Say okay, I have had enough

What else can you show me?

 

So this is Michael Albert saying our world is not alright which is why our time has come, and why we have to show ourselves the way to ditch struggling for the legal tender and become revolutionary.

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