The 2024 election is over. Donald Trump won the popular vote as well as the Electoral College totals and will be the next President of the United States. And what first came to mind when I woke into this new reality was that when I was eighteen and nineteen and twenty I was deeply involved in the anti-war movement (The Vietnam War), and had I been a college student in 2024 I would surely have been among those protesting the ongoing Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people. And though I’m Jewish, I would never have voted for anyone supporting Israel’s crime against humanity.
I doubt Trump won because of Kamala Harris’s solidarity with Biden in supporting the Israeli slaughter of tens of thousands of defenseless people, but I do feel there is a karmic connection to that ongoing genocide and Harris’s loss.
In my musings this morning about the election, I was reminded of something I wrote and posted five years ago when I was supporting Bernie Sanders for President. I thought I’d include that post herein, recalling that it was the strategy of the Democratic Party to make sure Bernie did not win the nomination for President.
May 2, 2020
Bernie and Precious Dream
I’m voting for Bernie Sanders and contributing to his campaign because he is the second person in my lifetime (Jimmy Carter the first) who wants what I want for our society and the world and has a chance, however slim, of becoming President of the United States. I hope you vote for him, too.
Twenty years ago, I wrote a song called ‘Precious Dream’. Marcia and I recorded the song on our CD So Not Jazz ten years ago. When the CD came out, we gave some concerts and ended each of our shows with a performance of ‘Precious Dream’.
Many people said the song would make a good campaign song for a dream candidate yet to materialize. And now Bernie Sanders has materialized and here’s hoping our precious dream can at least start to come true.
You can hear our rendition of ‘Precious Dream’ on YouTube.
Precious Dream
Last night I had a precious dream, dreamt I woke into the dawn,
walked out of my little cottage, found a newspaper on the lawn
When I picked up that morning tribune
it opened to the very front page
and the headlines they told me
it was the dawning of a brand new age
Yeah the rich folks had all decided
to share their money with the poor
and the leaders had disbanded all the armies,
not another dollar to be spent on war.
They’d stopped building prisons,
put that money in our schools and neighborhoods
and instead of building bombs and things we don’t need
we were all of us working for the greater good
Yes they stopped clear-cutting the forests,
killing all the animals,
stopped dumping poison in the ground
and the rivers and the sea.
Oh the cars ran clean, trains ran smooth and fast,
the air was clear,
food and shelter, health-care guaranteed
And the movies were about fascinating people
with real problems, you know, the real stuff
and our heroes were bright and generous,
pioneers of truth and love
When I woke up, my heart was pounding,
and I prayed my dream had all come true,
but I knew as well as you do
that that’s really up to me and you
Yes, we have it in our power to change the way we live
we have it in our power to take no more than we give
we have it in our power to love instead of hate
we have it in our power to make these changes
before it’s all too late
fin