Shut up and Sing

Or, wait. Never mind. Sting hasn't done anything I've been interested in listening to in ... 20 25 years.

It’s aggressive and violent and full of fear,’ he said of the [conservative] backlash against Obama. ‘They don’t want change, they want things to feel the same because they feel safe there.’”

***
“They came of age during the great abundance, circa 1980-2008 (or 1950-2008, take your pick), and they don’t have the habit of worry. They talk about their ‘concerns’—they’re big on that word. But they’re not really concerned. They think America is the goose that lays the golden egg. Why not? She laid it in their laps. She laid it in grandpa’s lap.

“They don’t feel anxious, because they never had anything to be anxious about. They grew up in an America surrounded by phrases—’strongest nation in the world,’ ‘indispensable nation,’ ‘unipolar power,’ ‘highest standard of living’—and are not bright enough, or serious enough, to imagine that they can damage that, hurt it, even fatally.

“We are governed at all levels by America’s luckiest children, sons and daughters of the abundance, and they call themselves optimists but they’re not optimists—they’re unimaginative. They don’t have faith, they’ve just never been foreclosed on. They are stupid and they are callous, and they don’t mind it when people become disheartened. They don’t even notice.”

WTF is Sting talking about? Doesn't this dude live in a castle or something?


Let's review Sting's life which must be full of forclosures and anxiety. Sting was born in 1951. By 1978, his band "The Police" were well on their way to being a chart sensation. So after 27 long-hard years of slogging through (was he foreclosed on?) he FINALLY made it.

27.

How many people achieved such wealth and success at that young age? From Wiki:

Sting owns several homes worldwide, including Elizabethan manor house Lake House and its 60-acre country estate near Salisbury in Wiltshire, England, a country cottage in the Lake District, a New York City apartment, a beach house in Malibu, California, a 600-acre (2.4 km2) estate in Tuscany, Italy, and two properties in London: an apartment on The Mall, an 18th century terrace house in Highgate.[15] He also once owned a home in West Hempstead, New York. He also owns homes in the Caribbean, including one in the upscale community of Casa de Campo, Dominican Republic.

Yet, this tool is telling ME that I've lived a life of abundance, free of anxiety.

Conservatives have never had anything to be anxious about? Oh my lord. Stupid and callous.

Pot. Kettle. Honestly, there is so much wrong with Sting's little rant, I don't even know where to begin.

I came of age worrying about everything. Nuclear war. Remember that, Sting? "The Day After" ring any bells? Yep, a nuclear war was going to break out with the USSR and we were all going to die either a horrible fiery death, or a slow and painful one. Used to have nightmares about it.

You know, I've never been foreclosed on. But has money ever - EVER - been easy for me? That would be no, Sting. I took out (a zillion) loans to get through college, then bar-tended nights as a young mom to keep the kids out of day care. My life has been nothing but years and years of anxiety.

You, Sting, can go take a flying fuck at the moon.