Yusuf-Cat Stevens – and one of my favorites – Peace Train
Cat Stevens
Cat Stevens wrote some of the seminal themes of the 1970’s. Peace Train may be the best known song, but his entire 1970 fourth album Tea for the Tillerman was his masterpiece. Where do the Children Play, Father and Son, Wild World, On the Road to Find Out, and Miles from Nowhere became the themes of the end of the “sixties”.
And Stevens himself was on a life mission. In 1976 he converted to Islam. He changed his name to Yusuf Islam, sold all of his guitars and gave up his music. For the next thirty years, his songs echoed alone, unsupported by their author. It wasn’t until 2006 that the man now named Yusuf-Cat Stevens returned to the stage.
His gentle messages were of life as a journey and of hope and peace. They described the dreams of the era of protest, and frustration of little effect on the “real” world. And his life seemed the same, stepping away from music for his religion, then decades later quietly returning to the strengths of his youth.
The President
Unlike Steven’s Peace Train, the modern Trump Train is a very different thing. The President has been stricken with COVID-19, and is currently hospitalized at Walter Reed. It is unclear how serious his disease is, but because of his age and co-morbidities, he is at higher risk. Not only has he been hospitalized, but he is being treated with powerful experimental treatments.
It’s made it difficult to govern. And, as far as the Trump campaign is concerned, it’s made a candidate-centric strategy impossible to continue. The key events of both the 2016 and 2020 campaigns were the “Trump Rallies”. Even in this era of COVID, Trump 2020 has continued to hold these big rallies, where the President harangues the crowd for hours at a time. There has been a great deal of criticism for violating local COVID protocols. But it is the “bread and butter” for Trump, and they aren’t giving it up.
But now, with the President infected, they don’t have a choice. Vice President Pence is doing some major events, but he doesn’t have the draw of the “cult of personality” that surrounds the President himself. And the Trump family can’t be used. They are allsupposed to be in a fourteen day isolation period, though few think that will last.
Instead, Trump 2020 has rolled out their “MAGA Strategy” to replace the Presidential appearances. Not only will “surrogates” fan out across the country to stand-in for their leader, but they have also asked Trump supporters to mass across the country to demonstrate their popularity.
Trump Trains
Columbus, Ohio got to see the impact of the “MAGA Strategy” this past weekend. Trump supporters massed in vehicles, particularly flag waving pickup trucks, and drove slowly down the center lane of the outer-belt highway, I-270. In addition, other Trump supporters massed on the overpasses, waving flags and cheering on the “parade”.
In an era of mass protest and Black Lives Matter, it was a “socially distanced” response to support their candidate. And while it was disruptive of traffic and caused a lot of consternation, the “Trump Train” was a high visibility response and exercise of the First Amendment rights.
“Law and Order” is a founding slogan of Trump 2020. But the Trump folks discovered that just because a truck is waving a Trump flag, doesn’t mean they are committed to following the law. There are always those looking for more violent confrontation in any group, and the “Trump Train” was no exception. A gunshot was fired at a semi-truck trying to get around Columbus. Local police have arrested a “train” participant.
Intimidation
What may be more disturbing than the “official Trump Train” around Columbus was the social media call to “the parade after the parade”. The flyer calls for a “…peaceful raid into the belly of the Beast”, the wealthy northeast suburb of New Albany. The flyer describes New Albany as:
“…Wealthy/elitists that fund Biden/Harris, the Democratic Party, ANTIFA, BLM, the Deep State, the police/surveillance state, human trafficking, systemic pedophilia and other evils…”
A particular target of the “raid” was New Albany’s most famous resident, Les Wexner. He is the founder of L Brands Corporation that included the Limited Stores and Victoria Secrets. Wexner was a life-long Republican who left the party in 2017 with the election of Trump, and has since supported some Democratic causes (USA Today). He is also connected to Jeffrey Epstein, though Wexner ultimately broke all connections with Epstein in 2007 (ABC).
New Albany is also home to a new Facebook data center, and the “Train” hoped to disrupt them as well. As the flyer states:
“…Let’s show these people that we know who they are and where they live, while also showing the decent people who live in their midst that the Trump Train stops everywhere!”
Free speech is just that, free speech. But at what point does the exercise of the right to “parade” become more of an attempt to intimidate and harass those who don’t agree? How much of this is the goal of the “MAGA Strategy,” not just to show support for their candidate, but to suppress those who oppose him? It’s not just the trucks, the black diesel smoke, and the flags. Their implication is pretty clear: the Trump base is ready to “fight back” against perceived enemies.
The “Trump Train” ain’t no “Peace Train”.
